"Silliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... go, it was with the chill certainty that they had forgotten all about him. Nan had settled herself by the fire and his uncle was bringing her a footstool, an elderly attention, Dick floutingly thought, very well suited to Aunt Anne, but pure silliness for a girl who flung herself about all over the place. At any rate, he wasn't wanted, and he did go to Cambridge and hunted up some of the fellows likely to talk sense; but no sooner had he settled within their circle of geniality ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... uncompromising militarist will not be moved from his determinations by our horror and hostility. These things will but "brace" him. He has a more vulnerable side. The ultimate lethal weapon for every form of stupidity is ridicule, and against the high silliness of the militarist it is particularly effective. It is the laughter of wholesome men that will finally end war. The stern, strong, silent man will cease to trouble us only when we have stripped him of his last rag of pretension ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... tell you frankly that it strikes me as precisely what in conventional language with the customary silliness is styled a woman's book, in its merits and defects,—and supremely timid in all the points where one wants, and has a right to expect, some fruit of all the pretence and George Sandism. These are occasions when one does say, in the phrase of her school, 'que ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... presenting her a letter as she quitted the chamber for the night. Iduna seized it with a feeling of curiosity not unmixed with pleasure. It was the only incident that had occurred during her captivity. She recognised the hand-writing of Nicaeus, and threw it down with; vexation at her silliness in supposing, for a moment, that the matron could have been the emissary of ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... with the queerest platitudes about royalist politics and religious morality. Not possessing, like the Chevalier de Valois, a snuff-box adorned with a princess, by the help of which he could stand this torrent of silliness, the poor poet listened to the words of her whom he loved with a stupid air, gazing, meanwhile, at her enormous bust, which held itself before him in that still repose which is the attribute of all great masses. His love produced in him a sort of intoxication ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... picture at Hampton Court. She must have been difficult to please, for she insisted upon being painted without shadow. "Glorious Gloriana" was to be the sun of female beauty. She is quite as well as some in "The Book." For modern "beauty" manufacturers make beauty to consist in silliness or sentimentality. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... whole would be impossible, and one of the very few excisions in this book is made in the midst of it. Dryden, so adult and so far from simplicity, bears himself like a child who, having said something fine, caps it with something foolish. The suppressed part of the ode is silly with a silliness which Dryden's age chose to dodder in when it would. The deplorable "rattling bones" of the closing section has a ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... a small committee was appointed, with Brander Matthews for managing director and spokesman. It issued a list of three hundred words, of average silliness as to spelling, and proposed new and sane spellings for these words. The President of the United States, unsolicited, adopted these simplified three hundred officially, and ordered that they be used in the official documents of the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... anything else in all this big world that anywhere near comes up to it for silliness. Why, don't you think," and here her voice took a lower and more solemn tone, and the wide cap frill trembled with earnestness. "Don't you think, there's men and women who believe that every word in that Bible over there is true, and ...
— Three People • Pansy
... own importance to enhance, Inspirited by self-esteem, Is quite a common thing in France; A French disease it well might seem. The strutting cavaliers of Spain Are in another manner vain. Their pride has more insanity; More silliness our vanity. Let's shadow forth our own disease— Well worth a hundred tales ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... all the silly, stupid, fatuous, fungus-grown, doddering, drivelling dolts anywhere, past or future, I alone am far and away ahead of the whole lot of 'em in silliness and absurd behaviour! Damnation! I'm ashamed! The idea of my being made a fool of twice at my time of life in ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... pretty. It is more gracious to begin with this declaration, instead of saying that, in the first place, she proved very silly. It took a long day to arrive at the end of her silliness, and the two ladies at Posilippo, even after a week had passed, suspected that they had only skirted its edges. Kate Theory had not spent half an hour in her company before she gave a little private sigh of relief; she felt that a situation which ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... no silliness about it at all—only the profoundest respect," said Aglaya, very seriously. She had quite recovered her temper; in fact, from certain signs, it was fair to conclude that she was delighted to see this joke going so far; and a careful ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bravado, as you might think, and for the sake of doing what I'd been told not to do. I—I felt as though I must be out in the air, and in motion. I didn't sleep last night, and I didn't eat any breakfast this morning, which may partly account for this silliness of mine, perhaps. I thought I should feel better out of doors, but it seems that nothing in the world can do me any good. Everything I attempt must always end in disaster, and—oh, Mr. Stanton, I am so very, very ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... and the healthy unreasonableness natural to lifelong acquaintance. The only difference was that now, when she and Blair squabbled, they made up again in new ways; Blair, with gusts of what Elizabeth, annoyed and a little disgusted, called "silliness"; Elizabeth, with strange, half-scared, wholly joyous moments of conscious power. But the "making-up" was far less personal than the fallings-out; these, at least, meant individual antagonisms, whereas ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... accounts discloses the abuses common among the slave-holders under Spanish rule, and the silliness of the belief that the masters for their own benefit would treat their human property well. This account refers to one Juan Palomeque, a rich landowner and promoter of mule-transports, who lived in Gage's ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... "What silliness! Course, it isn't really lost. You've just mislaid it, that's all, an' forgot. I do that, time an' again. Put something away so careful 't I can't find it for ever so long. You'll remember after a spell, and say, Dolly! I won't be able to write that telegram to Mabel ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... a gay, crowded room, wild gamblers shouting in their excitement, a band playing delirious waltz music, champagne corks popping merrily, painted women laughing, jesting loudly, all kinds of revelry and devilry and Bacchic things undreamed of. This was silly of her, no doubt, but the silliness of inexperienced young women is a matter for the pity, not the reprobation, of the judicious. If they take the world for their oyster and think, when they open it, they are going to find pearl necklaces ready-made, we must not blame them. Rather let hoary-headed ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... she expected in return an exchange of ideas, seductions, and pleasures in harmony with the elevation of her own mind and the extent of its knowledge. Instead of that, she was filled with disgust for the commonplaces of conversation, the silliness of gallantry; and more especially was she shocked by the supremacy of military men, to whom society made obeisance at that period. She had, not unnaturally, neglected the minor accomplishments. Finding herself ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... exception a month after when he understands it, and then be abused again into a reconcilement; and you cannot endear him more than by cozening him, and it is a temptation to those that would not. One discoverable in all silliness to all men but himself, and you may take any man's knowledge of him better than his own. He will promise the same thing to twenty, and rather than deny one break with all. One that has no power over himself, over ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... myself conducted by experience. And besides, Mr. Fenwick, is not love a warfare? has it not rules? have not our fair antagonists their tactics, their weapons, their place of arms? and is there not a touch of—pardon me the word! of silliness in one who, having fought and having vanquished, sounds a parley, and capitulates to his own prisoner? Had the lady chosen, had the fortune of war been other, 'tis like she had been Mrs. Austin. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over-stimulated every activity of the body, and spent our lives doing all kinds of things in which there was no sense. Think of reading one or two morning and evening papers every day. To be sure we said there was nothing in them, but we used up our eyesight over them, and let a stream of silliness and scandal dribble through our minds. As ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... broke the strain under which Stuart had been labouring for hours. It was ridiculous. He began to laugh at the silliness of the whole thing—what an idiotic performance anyhow—these lovers' quarrels! He saw the comedy of it, ate a hearty supper, and went to bed firm in the conviction that he would see Nan ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the Kaiser boasted to his council at Potsdam in June, 1908, from continuing its activities among us now and henceforth; and we can prevent our school textbooks from playing into Germany's hand by teaching hate of England to our boys and girls. Beside the sickening silliness which still asks, "What has England done in the war?" is a silliness still more sickening which says, "Germany is beaten. Let us forgive and forget." That is not Christianity. There is nothing Christian about it. It is merely sentimental slush, ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... and her father have been socially ostracized. I should be proud to be her friend." Once the words were gone from him, he saw their silliness. "A presumptuous statement," he added; "I ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... other. It may be useful to state the principal causes of this unhappiness, and to give some definite directions in the way of remedy. Absence of love, absence of reason, absence of justice, absence of taste, in other words, harshness and neglect, silliness and frivolity, vice and crime, vulgarity and slovenliness, are the leading and inevitable creators of alienation, dislike, and misery in marriage. Whatever tends to increase these tends to multiply ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... soldiers under bad commanders getting drunk in the Spanish cellars, insomuch that not all had the power to run away. On this expedition, some verses were handed about, which probably are now first printed, from a manuscript letter of the times; a political pasquinade which shows the utter silliness of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... regard for decency and no reverence or respect for beings of a higher moral or religious nature than themselves. The man who habitually uses profane language, lowers his moral tone with every oath he utters. Moreover, the silliness of the practice, if no other reason, should prevent its use by every man ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... a great deal to answer for as regards men, and every girl should do her best to be on the right side and to help a man to be at his best, by showing that she thinks silliness and vulgar chaff objectionable. Every girl sets the tone of those she talks with, for every one's conscience responds to the tacit appeal of a nice-minded girl's dislike of these things. If you do not respond, it checks ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... for the simple, brutal and magnificent cry of life renders useless the efforts they make to galvanize and erect doctrines which cannot stand alone. The disapproval which attaches in our time to the word "internationalism" proves together the silliness and meanness of public opinion. Humanity is the living name of truth. Men are like each other as trees! They who rule well, rule by force and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Juliet, with her principles, would be bound to believe we weren't, even if we were. We've only got to put it to her that way and she won't have a ghost of a grievance left. It's the simplest form of Christian Science. But in any case, whatever silliness Aunt Juliet may indulge in, we were simply bound to have the Tortoise today. It's a matter of duty. I don't see how you can get around that, Cousin Frank, no matter how ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... five worst maladies that afflict the female mind are indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy and silliness. These five maladies infest seven or eight out of every ten women, and it is from these that arises the inferiority of ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... simplicity with ignorance, too often also with silliness—which is not the case with you," I added, with a smile. "Real, that is to say, conscious simplicity is not even recognised; and, when it becomes active, it appears to vulgar minds a danger that must be averted. The better to attack it, they disfigure it. It is ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... whispered, clasping her hands tight against her breast. "I'll have a chance to show them that I'm really sorry for my silliness. I'll do something, I'll have something ready for them when they come back that will prove I'm done with sentimental nonsense ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... nature of the country in which the sheep is straying; and also the nature of the sheep that is straying there. He knows the roughness of the mountain passes, and the silliness of the solitary truant sheep; he divines accordingly what track it will take. He conjectures beforehand, with a considerable measure of accuracy, the pit in which it will be found lying, or the thicket in which it will be seen struggling. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... blue of innocence was in his eyes, and a gay smile of springtide abode upon his lips. His iron-gray hair, falling naturally like that of the Christ in art, added to his ecstatic air a certain solemnity which was absolutely deceptive as to his real nature; for he was capable of committing any silliness with the most exemplary gravity. His clothes were a necessary envelope, to which he paid not the slightest attention, for his eyes looked too high among the clouds to concern themselves with such materialities. This great unknown artist belonged to the ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... ill-strung assistant, more an overgrown boy than a man of brawn, but expanded around his upper part by the fullness of a short white surplice. He had a face cheerful to silliness. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... happened, that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part in the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labor to minister to its appetites. The stomach, however, merely ridiculed the silliness of the members, who appeared not to be aware that the stomach certainly does receive the general nourishment, but only to return it again, and redistribute it amongst the rest. Such is the case," he said, "citizens, between you and the senate. The counsels and plans ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... in my neighbour to break his egg at the broad end when the Squire and the Vicar have declared their predilection for the narrow end, therefore it is right for the Squire and the Vicar to hang and quarter him for his silliness:—for it comes ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... at this minute. Leslie Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne and the Josselyns half way up above there, in the Minster. Mr. Wharne and Miss Craydocke at the top. And I down here, where I belong. Impertinence! To think of the things I've said in my silliness to that woman, whose greatness I can no more measure! Why didn't somebody stop me? I don't answer for you, Frank, and I won't keep you; but I think I'll just stay where I am, and not spoil ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... expression from Dominick was a hypocritical refinement of sensitiveness. To draw myself up haughtily, to turn on my heel and walk away,—that was the silliness of a boy. Still, I am glad I did both those absurd things. When I told my mother how I had ruined myself in politics she began to cry,—and tears were not her habit. Then she got my father's picture and kissed it and talked to it about me, just as if he were there with us; and for a time I ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... her a most wonderfully strong and valiant spirit: she was once timid; now she tramples on all the evil spirits. She has put far away from herself all the littleness and silliness of women; she is singularly free from scruples, and ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... they do to us? They will kill you, and they will ill-treat me so that never again shall I be able to look my husband in the eyes—his brave eyes; but now perhaps they are closed in death!" There was an older, harsh-featured woman who rated the mother for her silliness, and, while we ate our omelette, the room was filled with the clamour of them until a dog outside began to howl. Then the mother went and sat down in a chair by the fire and stopped crying, but every ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... ever I happen to speak of the Duchess of This or Lady That, Mama's eyes fairly dance, but Aunt May isn't going to be hoodwinked by any title. 'Ha!' she says. 'Do you think they're one bit better in the sight of God than I am?' And I like nothing better than to regale her on their silliness, tell her how one has forty wigs, and another is so afraid of losing her diamonds she has a man sit and watch them every night. Long afterward I hear her exclaiming to herself, 'Wigs, indeed!' or ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... after week. Kathlyn had no especial adventures. Nothing in particular happened to Mary. The million dollar mystery was: why did the millionaires who owned such a magnificent instrument descend to such silliness and impose it on the people? Why cannot our weekly story be henceforth some great plan that is being worked out, whose history will delight us? For instance, every stage of the building of the Panama Canal was followed with the greatest interest in ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... are fallen and so did Christ's; but the good Sioux Fallians are above it. They pull all the hay to their side of the manger and forget that we, having never used such food, don't miss it now. It is a pity that we can't infuse more of the "God-honor-and-the-ladies" spirit into this depth of silliness out here. ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... about scapegraces. Don't, like Sam, get it into your heads that you are destined to get into scrapes, and that therefore it is no use trying to keep out of them. That would be a proof of nothing but your silliness. I can't tell you how it was Sam's stone always broke the window, or why the master's eye always fell on him when there was a row going on; but I can tell you this, that if Sam hadn't thrown the stone, the window would not have been broken; and ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... determine, two or three days beforehand, to get up earlier, and to walk to Fleet Street by way of Great Queen Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields, and upon this he would subsist till the day came. He could make no longer excursions because of his lameness. All this may sound very much like simple silliness to most people, but those who have not been bound to a wheel do not know what thoughts come into the head of the strongest man who is extended on it. Clark sat side by side in his gallery with other young men of rather a degraded type, and the confinement bred in them a ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... like to shake her, mischief-making thing. Father liked Nelson well enough before that, but he came home from that seance as bitter against him as if the poor boy had committed murder. Marietta told him that a small dark man was trying to take away his daughter, or some such silliness. Nelson isn't very small nor VERY dark, but he was the only male in sight that came near answering the description. As a ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... course open to her, and ran out of the room, to the astonishment of three puzzled and rather frightened adults. Her shame was now notorious. "Baby! Great baby!" she gnashed at her own inconceivable silliness. Had she no pride?... And now she was in the gloom of the lobby, and she could hear Florrie in the kitchen softly whistling.... She was out in the dark lobby exactly like a foolish, passionate child.... She knew all the time that she could easily persuade her mother to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... thought more contemptuously of Mary Ann. Idealise her as he might, see all that was best in her as he tried to do, she remained common and commonplace enough. Her ingenuousness, while from one point of view it was charming, from another was but a pleasant synonym for silliness. And it might not be ingenuousness—or silliness—after all! For was Mary Ann as innocent as she looked? The guilelessness of the dove might very well cover the wisdom of the serpent. The instinct—the repugnance ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... with her childish silliness of character, might not have found it so easy to prevail over her husband's firmness and good sense in such a matter, had she not been supported and counselled by the Baroness de Valricour, of whom, to own the truth, the marquis always stood in awe. Nobody knew this better ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... "Silly? An adorable silliness! Could you not be happy with me here in this palace? You would be a princess, indeed, a queen of my heart. I would put every luxury at your command." In mingled eagerness and wariness he watched her, incredulous of her assenting mood, but with ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... is another instance of perversion. Her silliness is exaggerated in order that she shall weary and disgust the blase aristocrat who has married her. Some of her chatter is more inconceivable than the 'coo-ee-ing' which Mr. Hornung's 'Bride from the Bush' employed to ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... might have walked right in, and said to the butler: "Here's a month's wages. Hook it." But he was a peculiar fellow, verging sometimes on silliness. He merely turned away. The vertiginous rapidity of his wife's developments, manoeuvres and transformations had dazed him into a sort of numbed idiocy. In two days, in a day, with no warning to him of her extraordinary ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... must be something wrong with her since she was celebrated and George Tanqueray was not. It was Tanqueray's belief in her that had kept her up. It consoled her with the thought that her celebrity was, after all, only a disgusting accident. For, through it all, in spite of the silliness of it, he did believe. He swore by her. He staked his own genius upon hers. As long as he believed in it she could not really doubt. But now for the first time since she was celebrated ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... to his uncouth person; and his limp, badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman's countenance, we had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a doctor of civil law, and heaven knows what besides. So of course we were mistaken, and he must be a very talented man. He conceals it so well though—perhaps with ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... what will befall you too. The power of fairies is great,' she added, when she had finished her story, 'but they cannot destroy the work of another fairy. Very shortly you will pass into the weakness and silliness of extreme old age, and all I can do for you is to make it as easy to you as possible, and to preserve you from the death that others have suffered, from having no one to look after them. But the charm is working ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... to be doubted if any county has a monopoly of silliness. The fault of Sussex people rather is to lack reserves, not of wisdom but of effort. You see this in cricket, where although the Sussex men have done some of the most brilliant things in the history of the game (even before the days of their Oriental ally), they have probably made a greater ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... there was so much practising to do, it had been arranged that she should remain there from the night of the sermon until after she was graduated. If Mrs. Comstock decided to attend she was to drive in with the Sintons. When Elnora begged her to come she said she cared nothing about such silliness. ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... and we always tried to make our progress more a pleasure than a toil. To hurry over the ground, abuse, and look ferocious at one's native companions, merely for the foolish vanity of boasting how quickly a distance was accomplished, is a combination of silliness with absurdity quite odious; while kindly consideration for the feelings of even blacks, the pleasure of observing scenery and everything new as one moves on at an ordinary pace, and the participation in the most delicious rest with our fellows, render travelling delightful. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... who died early, himself an excellent Greek scholar, saw my negligence and folly with pain, instead of contempt. He came to call on me in George's Square, and pointed out in the strongest terms the silliness of the conduct I had adopted, told me I was distinguished by the name of the Greek Blockhead, and exhorted me to redeem my reputation while it was called to-day. My stubborn pride received this advice with sulky civility; the birth of my Mentor (whose name was Archibald, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... heart, she had resolutely determined to put the sweet illusion out of her mind. "I was very foolish to let him see that I cared," she thought, "for it can never be, and by and by he will forget me, or if he does think of me, it will be to recall me as one of his summer girls who had a fit of silliness." ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... who ruled the two men with that most powerful domestic rod—foolish weakness. This combination in a woman will cause a mountain (a masculine mountain) to fly from its firm base; while kindness, justice, and good sense leave it upon unshaken foundations of selfishness. Mrs. Cyrus was a Goliath of silliness; when billowing black clouds heaped themselves in the west on a hot afternoon, she turned pale with apprehension, and the Captain and Cyrus ran for four tumblers, into which they put the legs of her bed, where, cowering among the feathers, she lay cold with fear and perspiration. Every ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... you've been saving me again from myself, from my silliness, from my romanticism, that you've given me another revelation of the falsity, the unreality of my attitude toward ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... Thackeray has given us over and over again living pictures of women of power, intellect, wit, charm, they are all marred by atrocious selfishness, cruelty, ambition, like Becky Sharp, Beatrix Esmond, and Lady Kew; or else they have some weakness, silliness, or narrowness which prevents us from at once loving and respecting them. Amelia is rather a poor thing and decidedly silly; we do not really admire Laura Pendennis; the Little Sister is somewhat colourless; ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... her manner, the curtness of her laugh, her way of speaking, puzzled Stane, and moved him to press for an answer. "Never mind the silliness," he ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... a remembrance of this repulsive habit, which argues a silliness so constitutional, and noting also the obstinate (almost it might be called the brutal) folly with which, during the last seventeen days of her life, she persisted in criminating herself, volunteering a continued rehearsal of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... spreading the absurdest delusions, makes so many fresh dupes every day. My complaint of socialism is not that it has appeared among us without cause, but that it has clung so long and so obstinately to its silliness. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... to Sir Henry Clinton; but there had been a decisive preliminary struggle in the legislature in January. The most active of the Antifederalists was Rawlins Lowndes, who had opposed the Declaration of Independence. Lowndes was betrayed into silliness. "We are now," said he, "under a most excellent constitution,—a blessing from Heaven, that has stood the test of time [!!], and given us liberty and independence; yet we are impatient to pull down that fabric which we raised at the expense of our blood." This was not very convincing to ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... (No. 382). In this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of Louis Quinze art. It is simple and natural, and entirely free from the besetting sins of so slight a picture triviality, affectation, empty prettiness, or simply silliness. In its way it is perfect, and for that perfection is for ever reserved the popularity which we find temporarily accorded to pictures like Frith's Dolly Varden ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Yes, yes, she knew; I need not blaze out. I had made myself a hero, as simple hearts do, but my idol was clay all the same. Wealth and power would do for John Hollingford what his father's misconduct had undone. It was utter silliness my abasing myself, saying that Rachel Leonard was more lovable than I. Her rich expectations were her superior charm. Oh me! how people will talk, just to be thought knowing, just to be thought wise, just to dazzle, and to create an ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... thunderation foolishness! Two good Southern soldiers trying to kill each other, when they've sworn to use all their efforts killing Yankees. It's a breach of faith and it's silliness on its own account. You've received the hospitality of my father's house, Captain Bertrand, and he's helped you and been kind to you elsewhere. You owe me enough at least to listen to me. Unless I get the promise of you two to drop this matter, I swear I'll go straight to General ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on earth but themselves had any idea where I had gone. And I had further divulged to them the important fact that I had plenty of ready money in Bank of England notes! I stood aghast at my own silliness. But still, I did NOT ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... the beauty which our present system of primary instruction attributes to it. Historical research has verified the opinion of these witnesses. It is impossible to relate the taking of the Bastile Saint-Antoine without recognizing the silliness or the unworthiness of the citizens who were the principal actors in this enterprise. This old prison had just been put out of commission by a royal ordinance which decreed its demolition. Very many of the 'conquerors of the Bastile' cried 'Vive ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... she cried. "You ain't so unprofessional as to remember all that silliness against me, are you? I was only a girl, and you couldn't expect me to love you—either of you. I'm a poor widow now," she sighed, "and I need work. And here you have been laying up grudges against me—the two of you—all these years! What would ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... deadened; all pride of personal appearance, all nice self-respect and proper regard for the good opinion of others, every sense of decorum, and at last every pretence of decency. Dignity of behavior yields to clownish silliness, and the person lately respected is now an object of pity and loathing. The great central convictions of right and wrong now find no place in his nature; conscience is quenched, dishonesty prevails. This is true both ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... want of breath and Aileen stared, her face tense and white. Her father could be so ridiculous. He was, contrasted with Cowperwood and his views, so old-fashioned. To think he could be talking of some one coming into their home and stealing her away from him, when she had been so willing to go. What silliness! And yet, why argue? What good could be accomplished, arguing with him here in this way? And so for the moment, she said nothing more—merely looked. But Butler was by no means done. His mood was too stormy even though he was doing his best ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... boasting and bragging," said his housewife, "and thou shouldst not utter such stuff and silliness to any one than thyself. As for me, I will willingly give Kari meat and other good things, which I know will be useful to him; but on Bjorn's hardihood, Kari, thou shalt not trust, for I am afraid that thou wilt find it quite otherwise ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... of your ignorance of a sex accustomed to have its silliness respected. You will find it hard to keep on good terms with my friend without some ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... but was cut down while deprived of his own sword, and as he strove in vain to draw the strange one. O valiant Amleth, and worthy of immortal fame, who being shrewdly armed with a feint of folly, covered a wisdom too high for human wit under a marvellous disguise of silliness! And not only found in his subtlety means to protect his own safety, but also by its guidance found opportunity to avenge his father. By this skilful defence of himself, and strenuous revenge for his parent, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... neo-classic stalwart good sense and the canons of decorum did not collapse easily, and the cultivation of the ballads had, as we have suggested, a certain aspect of silliness. It is well known that Addison's essays elicited the immediate objections of Dennis. The Spectator's "Design is to see how far he can lead his Reader by the Nose." He wants "to put Impotence and Imbecility upon us for Simplicity." ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... that man feel that he must cast away the works of darkness; whether of the darkness of foul and base sins; or the darkness of envy, spite, and revenge; or the mere darkness of ignorance and silliness, thoughtlessness and frivolity. He must cast them away, he will see. They will not succeed—they are not safe—in such a serious world as this. The term of this mortal life is too short, and too awfully important, to be spent in such dreams as these. The ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to me to matter one jot how such laughter is achieved. Humour may rollick on high planes of fantasy or in depths of silliness. To many people it appeals only from those depths. If it appeal to them irresistibly, they are more enviable than those who are sensitive only to the finer kind of joke and not so sensitive as to be mastered and dissolved by it. Laughter is a thing to be rated according ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them—the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these—a composite order of feminine fatuity—that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... curiosity even, or else surely he would have responded in some way to all these hints he had been given. . . . Such insensibility was almost mysterious. Massy's state of exasperation seemed to Sterne to have made him stupid beyond the ordinary silliness ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... putting in place of these elements ideal love, self-sacrifice, knightly devotion—Sunday-school Garden-of-Eden pictures with a mediaeval, romantic coloring. These day-dreams were always sexual, involving situations of extreme complexity and monumental silliness. Masturbation was always continued and usually with increased frequency. The end of these periods was always abrupt and much like awaking from a dream in which the dreamer has been behaving in a manner to arouse his own disgust. They were followed by feelings of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... if I were I'd go ahead and defeat his intentions as I'm doubtless doing this minute. Let's make up now, so you'd as well stop talking silliness." ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... the citizens will, of course, depend upon themselves; but may we pray them to beware of the silliness of local pride—(we imagine that upon reading this paper the cities and towns named will at once move in the business of monuments, and we would not leave them unadvised in any particular)—in choosing their sculptors and architects? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... are much better avoided. I do not say that it is necessarily wrong to go there, or that you are certain to come to harm if you frequent them, but there is more chance of temptation, and an inferior entertainment for your money. Well acted plays may open out your mind, but the silliness of the music hall entertainment will only react upon you. You can tell a music hall frequenter, not by the words of his mouth so much as by the shuffle of his feet: his highest ambition seems to be to dance the double shuffle, and perhaps sing a few verses of some jingling rhyme. ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... exhibition of himself on the 4th of March, when in a fit of rage, he rose before day-light and set out in his coach for Massachusetts, refusing to wait and take part in the inauguration of his successor. With the mellowness of growing years, he realized the silliness of the act, and he and Jefferson became fully reconciled and kept up an affectionate correspondence to the end of ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... not only what he seemed to want, what he had feebly longed for. She was more than this. Her nature was the complement of his. A lack of shrewdness, of mental grasp, a certain silliness were absolutely essential to the maintenance of a lifelong devotion to him. Wentworth had found the right woman to give him what he wanted. Fay had found ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... over here go into politics and into public-houses—I don't see why they shouldn't. If such things are good enough for men they are good enough for women; we haven't your sort of chivalry. But it's the peculiar malignant silliness of this sort of Toryism that's so discreditable. It's discreditable. There's no good in denying it. Those people you have heard and seen are a not unfair sample of our governing class—of a certain section of our governing class—as ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... of God that was allowed to grow in his mind as a child. These are his words: "He and his hell were the nightmare of my childhood.... I thought of him as a fantastic monster perpetually waiting to condemn and to strike me dead!... He was over me and about my silliness and forgetfulness as the sky and sea would be about a child drowning in mid-Atlantic." It was only as the child grew into youth, and was able to discard this false idea of God that he came ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... Well, if such silliness as this pleases my daughter, it makes no difference to me. For, after all, you would be the one they'd poke fun at, ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... her as if she were a splendid race horse; he glories in knowing she is lovely and accepts the admiration offered to her as a tribute to his own judgment, his own taste and even his merit, which obtained her. There is a certain amount of silliness in her which he soon detects, a touch of helplessness, and unsophistication in knowledge of worldly things that he yet feels is mysteriously guarded against intrusion upon and which makes companionship with her sometimes irksome. He feels superior and uncompensated; from the superb isolation ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... They are two silly children. Their fingers aren't in their mouths, but their heads are on the side when they see each other, and the thing's getting on my nerves. Almost any kind of sin is easier to stand than some sorts of silliness. ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... foolish or lascivious in your own sex exaggerated with a malignant licence, which makes a young and beautiful woman an epitome of all the vices, uniting the extreme of masculine profligacy with the extreme of feminine silliness. Will you encourage by your presence the wretches who libel your sex? Will you sit smiling to see your sisters ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... much of silliness, and how much of truth were wrapt up together in some of the things he said, it was impossible to determine. I believe Kirsty came pretty near knowing, but even she was not always sure where wilful oddity and where misapprehension was at the ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... of smelling-bottle from his pocket, which he held to her nostrils. She came to at once, and began to laugh at her own silliness, but begged them all to go away and leave her quiet, which they did. Godfrey was going too, but she stopped him, saying that the carriage would not be ready till after tea, and that it was too wet for him to walk in the garden, for now autumn had come in earnest. The tea arrived, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... longer nominally under the authority of Miss Morley, and the confidante of all her follies, but the companion of two sensible girls, young and bright enough to enter into all the liveliness about her that was not silliness and a great deal that was, and to drive away some of her nonsense by laughing ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... thousands of spirits have appeared; the ghosts of the greatest men have said their say, and yet the substance of it has always been the absurdest silliness. Not one inspiring thought has yet been transmitted by this mystical way; only the most vulgar trivialities. It has never helped to find the truth; it has never brought forth anything but ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... ages like isolated heroes, keeping up single-handed a desperate struggling against the onslaught of an army of opponents.[1] Is not this characteristic of the miserable nature of mankind? The dullness, grossness, perversity, silliness and brutality of by far the greater part of the race, are always an obstacle to the efforts of the genius, whatever be the method of his art; they so form that hostile army to which at last he has to succumb. Let the isolated champion achieve what he may: it is slow to be acknowledged; ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... stenographers before, who refused their employers, and who invariably quit their positions immediately afterward. But Dede had not even hinted at such a thing. No matter how baffling she was, there was no nonsensical silliness about her. She was level headed. But, also, he had been level-headed and was partly responsible for this. He hadn't taken advantage of her in the office. True, he had twice overstepped the bounds, but he had not followed it up and made a practice of ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Europe the Italians had never understood or practised chivalry, save in such select and exotic schools as the Casa Gioiosa under Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua. The oath of Arthur's knights would have seemed to them mere superfluity of silliness. Onore connoted credit, reputation, and prowess. Virtu, which may be roughly translated as mental ability combined with personal daring, set the standard and ruled opinion. 'Honour in the North was subjective: Onore in Italy objective.' Individual ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... existence like his, always solitary, reduced to the satisfaction of mere needs, deprived of money and all pleasures in youth, may explain to physiologists and thinkers the clownish expression of the face, the feebleness of mind, the vacant silliness of the man. His sister had steadily prevented him from marrying, afraid perhaps to lose her power over him, and seeing only a source of expense and injury in some woman who would certainly be younger and undoubtedly less ugly ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... secured a yacht to carry our friends out to see us this evening. My message said about the same thing, so now, you see, it was ridiculous in Eleanor to tease about it being a love-note. Had she been sensible I would have read it aloud to all, but because of her silliness, I made up my mind to ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... personable if somewhat heavy creature of twenty-eight, because she kept company with a young man. He had caught them arm-in-arm and practically hugging each other, one Sunday afternoon in the street. He could see naught but silliness in that ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... you like the phrase better, commonplace, existence agreed with me, satisfied my natural tastes for changes and silliness. I lived on the boulevard, in theaters and cafes, always out of doors, always without a regular home, though I was comfortably housed. I was one of those thousands of beings who let themselves float like corks, through life, for whom the walls of Paris are the walls of the world, and who have ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... either doesn't know, or does know and won't tell. Then he told me about a trick that Tommy Watson and himself played on William, only it didn't work out in the way they expected. It puzzles me to know how men find time to go into such silliness. Between them they wrote a letter, in a disguised hand, of course, and supposedly from a girl to William. He had been taking part in one of the amateur performances that Epstein arranged for the Children's Hospital, and the letter ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... Antony Thouret, threw in here and there energetic words of advice. M. Dufaure, resolute and indignant, protested with authority. M. Odilon Barrot, motionless in a corner, maintained the silence of stupefied silliness. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... cultivation of poetry in the average sensible man is an absurdly inflated notion of the ridiculous. At the bottom of that man's mind is the idea that poetry is "silly." He also finds it exaggerated and artificial; but these two accusations against poetry can be satisfactorily answered. The charge of silliness, of being ridiculous, however, cannot be refuted by argument. There is no logical answer to a guffaw. This sense of the ridiculous is merely a bad, infantile habit, in itself grotesquely ridiculous. You may see it particularly in the theatre. Not the greatest dramatist, not the ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... The characters are strongly marked, the wit genial, and not indecent. Steele was among the first who set about reforming the licentiousness of the old comedy. His satire in the "Funeral" is not against virtue, but vice and silliness.—DR. DORAN.] ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... a half length of a modestly dignified lady, having no tendency at all to that silliness that Walpole insinuates was characteristic of her. The face is oval, the eyebrows well apart and distinctly arched, and the hair brushed back from the forehead and falling on the very graceful neck. The dress is cut low, showing a delicately-moulded ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... definite end of his stay at Deventer. Reminiscences of his life there repeatedly crop up in Erasmus's writings. Those concerning the teaching he got inspired him with little gratitude; the school was still barbaric, then, he said; ancient medieval text-books were used there of whose silliness and cumbrousness we can hardly conceive. Some of the masters were of the brotherhood of the Common Life. One of them, Johannes Synthen, brought to his task a certain degree of understanding of classic antiquity in its ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... as a child, a little girl, after that silly joke! I beg your pardon for that silliness, but you must bring me the letter, if you really haven't got it—bring it to-day, you must, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... distinct atmosphere of the period. It might just as well be of the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The character of Chiappino may be found in any provincial town. This compound of envy, self-conceit, superficial cleverness and real silliness is one of our universal plagues, and not uncommon among the demagogues of any country. And he contrasts him with Ogniben, the Pope's legate, another type, well known in governments, skilled in affairs, half mocking, half tolerant of the "foolish people," the alluring destroyer ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... puerility, as characteristic of a part in posse, and as being a trait of the performer in esse. To this rule Mr. Selby, in this part, is a melancholy exception; for he seems utterly ignorant of such a distinction, broad as it is—he is silly himself, instead of causing silliness in Spooney. This is the more to be regretted, as whoever witnessed, with us, the first piece, saw in Mr. Selby a respectable representative of an old dandy in "Barnaby Rudge." Moreover, the same gentleman is, we understand, the adapter of the drama from Boz's tale. That too proves him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... rotten feet on the sheep, which animal I by nature despise, on account of its cowardice and a tremendous silliness, the one running after the other, but if a man will plague himself with farming who has been a sailor from his mother's apron-string, he must keep these beasts and others like his neighbours, although he understands nothing, or very little, about ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... ha! ha!—So, my dear Simplicity, let me give you a little respite.—[Altering her manner.] Let girls in my station be as fond as they please of appearing expert, and knowing in their trusts; commend me to a mask of silliness, and a pair of sharp eyes for my own interest under it!—Let me see to what account have I turned my simplicity lately.—[Looks at a paper.] For abetting Miss Lydia Languish in a design of running away with an ensign!—in money, sundry ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... you lookin' at her," went on his grandfather, "as if you was kind of wonderin' whether to laugh at her or pity her. You needn't do either. She's kind-hearted and that makes her put up with Rachel's silliness. Then, besides, Rachel herself is common sense and practical nine-tenths of the time. It's always a good idea, son, to sail one v'yage along with a person before you decide whether to class 'em as A. B. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... with the want was, of course, a vacant tablet, washed clean of every recollection by the copious tears he had wept in his silliness since ever the shock of the battle came on him; Stewart was so much of an unscrupulous liar that no word of his could be trusted; and the minister alone could give us any idea of what had been the sentiment in the army when the men of Montrose (who were really the men of Sir Alas-dair, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... course. I'm very silly." Dinah dabbed her eyes and began to smile. "But he makes me feel all the while as if—as if he wants to eat me. I know it's all my silliness; but I wish you weren't going to the Dower House all the same. Shall you ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... said. "I know it's absurd. But, somehow, little things do worry me, even when I know they're silly. And there's just enough that's not silliness in this to let it be ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... woman in England who would have been so entirely generous, so unaware even of the possibility of evil? He admired her for it, and wondered—if it was a little silly (which he had a kind of undisclosed suspicion that it was), yet what a heavenly silliness. There was nobody else who would have been so magnanimous, so confident in his perfect ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... mood should not be forgotten, because later on it was partly quenched by ill health, responsibility and the advance of years. He was often, in the old days, excessively, delightfully silly—silly with the silliness of an inspired schoolboy; I am afraid our laughter sometimes sounded ill in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... non-sceptical: it is touched superficially with the coloring of superstition, with its tenderness, its humility, its thankfulness, its awe; but, on the other hand, it is not therefore tainted with the coarseness, with the silliness, with the credulity of superstition. Such a faith reposes upon the universal signs diffused through nature, and blends with the mysterious of natural grandeurs wherever found—with the mysterious of the starry heavens, with the mysterious of music, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... silliness. I do like good-looking people, I must say. But what does it matter whether a brown person is handsome or homely, when you come to think of it? Besides, we can have another dragoman, too, for ornament, if we run across a very ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Haiti, when first discovered by the Spaniards, had a similar genealogical story, which Peter Martyr relates with various excuses for its silliness and exclamations at its absurdity. Perhaps the fault lay less in its lack of meaning than in his want of insight. It was to the effect that men lived in caves, and were destroyed by the parching rays of the sun, and were destitute of means to prolong ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... freedom. Suffering is the instant and obvious sign of some outrage done to human nature; without this natural recoil, actual or imminent, no morality would have any sanction, and no precept could be imperative. What silliness to command me to pursue pleasure or to avoid it, if in any case everything would be well! Save for some shadow of dire repentance looming in the distance, I am deeply free to walk as I will. The choice of pleasure for a principle of morals ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana |
