"Silly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Amos had foreseen was not long in coming. The Israelites flew spontaneously, like "silly doves," into the net of the Assyrians. Zechariah ben Jeroboam was overthrown after a short reign, Shallum his murderer and successor was also unable to hold his own, and was followed after the horrors of a civil war by Menahem ben Gadi ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... contrary, claim that we saved what of Columbia remains unconsumed. And without hesitation I charge General Wade Hampton with having burned his own city of Columbia, not with a malicious intent or as the manifestation of a silly 'Roman stoicism,' but from folly, and want of sense, in filling it with lint, cotton, and tinder. Our officers and men on duty worked well to extinguish the flames; but others not on duty, including the officers who had long been imprisoned there, rescued by us, may have assisted ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... it a very silly business," exclaimed Mr. Hartshorn emphatically, "for the workers in different industries to be proceeding with national movements independently of each other. A short time ago we had a national stoppage on the railways; that, as a matter of course, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... floor of the carryall, with her head in John's lap, crying and sobbing for joy that the visit was over and that she was on the way home. "If only I live to get there," she said, "I'll never, no, never, go into the country again!" which was silly enough; but we must forgive her because ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... right to go against the law? But you did go against it! Things are arranged in a certain way, and it's no use going against them! You mustn't even discuss them. But what did you do? You got some maggot into your head. A convent, indeed! Silly fool! What did the girl want? Did she want your convent? What a set of muddle-headed fools there seems to be now! Just think what's happened! You, you're neither fish nor fowl, nor good red-herring. And the girl's done for! ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... too often the simplicity of Mother Goose rather than of Chaucer. Instances of this occur in such poems as Peter Bell, the Idiot Boy, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, Simon Lee, and the Wagoner. But there are multitudes of Wordsworth's ballads and lyrics which are simple without being silly, and which, in their homeliness and clear {229} profundity, in their production of the strongest effects by the fewest strokes, are among the choicest modern examples of pure, as distinguished from decorated, art. Such are (out of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... matters together, and to set up housekeeping. But both were poor—poor as church mice; and, just for that reason, the father of Maud did not look very favourably upon the settled love-affair of his daughter. He would have been better satisfied if the silly thing, as he called her, had given her hand to one of the rich suitors, who would have given their ears to please her. Since, however, once for all, the mischief was done, he, like a good man, determined to cause his only child no heartache, and let matters get on as they might. One condition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... idea of the natural inferiority of the Negro as a silly excuse. He conceded that most of the blacks were improvident and poor, but believed that their condition was not due to deficient understanding but to their lack of education. He was very much impressed with their achievements in music.[1] So disgusting was this notion ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... He would have liked to make a theatrical bow and say something silly, too, but he only smiled, felt an awkwardness that was like shame, and waited impatiently ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... right; but I was afraid lest it should send the blood to my head. I have always had a horror of brides who looked as if they had just got up from table. Religious emotions should be too profound to be expressed by anything save pallor. It is silly to blush ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... are assigned to a Being, I have called the result 'Religion;' where the same Being acts like Zeus in Greek fable, plays silly or obscene tricks, is lustful and false, I have spoken of 'Myth.'[3] These distinctions of Myth and Religion may be, and indeed are, called arbitrary. The whole complex set of statements about the Being, good ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... day yesterday," said Mrs. Baines. And she added, "Come!" As if to say, "There's always this silly fuss with castor-oil. Don't ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... it is so,' continued Ovsyanikov. 'Fie! you spoil the boy! Well, tell him to come in.... So be it, then; for the sake of our good guest I will forgive the silly fellow.... Come, tell ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters' claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn't know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... oh! the silly, with his complaints," cried Cecily, in a sardonic and contemptuous tone; he does nothing but groan and lament, and has been for ten days shut up alone with a young woman, in a ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... silly—all this about love and marriage?" asked Mr. Wyndham, with the hesitating manner of one who knows that he shall instantly be ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... for his women is another. Tom's nerves are racked with problems: How the dickens is he to steer his car and protect his women at the same time? And if it comes to a toss-up between his women and his wounded? You've got to stow the silly things somewhere, and every one of them takes up the place of ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... ioyes of heauen, vnles you becomes a Christian: for God saith, Whosoeuer beleeueth and is baptized, shalbe saued: but he that beleeueth not, shalbe condemned. At this word he modestly smiled: but the other Moals began to clap their hands, and to deride vs. And my silly interpreter, of whom especially I should haue receiued comfort in time of need, was himself abashed and vtterly dasht out of countenance. [Sidenote: The letters of the French King.] Then, after silence made, I said vnto him, I came vnto your soune, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... Agnes' brother met Penoyer in the street, he gave him a sound caning, ordering him, under pain of a worse flogging, never again to mention his sister's name. This he was probably more willing to do, as he had already conceived a great liking for Carrie, who was silly enough to be pleased with and ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... "Oh, you silly boy! of course you fell out of that narrow bed. What possessed you to all crowd in there when there are ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... her sister, in a kind tone, "we're all silly sometimes. You'll never be guilty of the folly again, at any rate, of supposing that girls can be married, in spite of themselves, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... shack door. Macartney had never been a winter at La Chance; he had no snowshoes. Charliet had some, I didn't know where. But I had two pairs in my own room. That inexplicable suggestion told me I needed them badly, though I knew it was silly; if Macartney had Paulette he would not be marching her through the snow. All the places I had to search for her were the stable and the assay office. And yet——I backed Collins noiselessly past the room where Marcia was still pulling ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... famous statue. The expression of woe is more manly and intense; in the group as we know it, the head of the principal figure has always seemed to me to be a grimace of grief, as are the two accompanying young gentlemen with their pretty attitudes, and their little silly, open-mouthed despondency. It has always had upon me the effect of a trick, that statue, and not of a piece of true art. It would look well in the vista of a garden; it is not august enough for a temple, with all its jerks and twirls, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... making rods for her own back. And then, if our Father keep us from hurting ourselves, and won't let us have the bright knife to cut our fingers with, how we do mewl and whine, to be sure! We are just a set of silly babes, my dear—the best ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... didn't hurt her. If she's such a touch-me-not, she's no fun at all! But every-body's like that with their first baby! Silly! Fussy! Just ridiculous!" ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... he, "the coat squeezes me, that is all! Besides, it is not wise to fool away our time in silly talking. Let us ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... persuade themselves that they are wonderful persons, and that they ought to be very miserable, though they don't precisely know why. They are very conceited, and usually possess half an idea; but, with enthusiastic young ladies, and silly young gentlemen, they are very wonderful persons. The individual in question, Mr. Theodosius, had written a pamphlet containing some very weighty considerations on the expediency of doing something or other; ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... make that insinuation several times before, Fred. It is not merely silly, it is disgraceful. I keep you from church? Don't you know," she exclaimed, with a quaver of emotion, "that your refusal to go is a source of genuine grief to me, and that I just hate to go alone? Don't ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... it all foolishness, but resolved to go to their meetings until I found out all they believed. I continued to go until I began to understand a little of what they knew, not what they believed; and instead of spending my time telling others what a silly thing Christian Science is, I am now trying to find words to tell what a great and wonderful thing it is. I have been healed of so-called incurable spinal disease of ten years' standing by studying the Bible and Science and Health. Science and Health has been my only teacher, and I wish to ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... what we all learn. I am only a scholar," she said, shortly. And then she stood accused before her own truthfulness of having covered up her blush by a disclaimer that had nothing to do with it. She was conscious that she had colored like any silly girl, at she hardly knew what. She was provoked with herself, for letting the shadow of such things touch her. She hurried on, up the rough bank, before Mr. Kirkbright. When she reached the top, she turned round and faced him; this time with a ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... am a swarthy Lovel; The Gorgios say I be A witch of wondrous power; And faith they speak the truth, The silly, foolish fellows, For often I bewitch The money from ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... conclusion which at first reading piqued me extremely, and I was so unnatural as to curse the whole concern, as poor, bald, pitiful trash, in which a silly old man was saying a great deal about nothing at all. Nay, my first impression was to thrust it into the fire, the rather that it reminded me, in no very flattering manner, of the loss of the family property, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... slaughter threw themselves into the river, where they perished. Tallard, being surrounded, was taken near a mill behind the village of Sonderen, together with the marquis de Montperouz, general of horse, the major-generals de Seppeville, de Silly, de la Valiere, and many other officers of distinction. While these occurrences passed on the loft wing, Marsin's quarters at the village of Oberklau, in the centre, were attacked by ten battalions under the prince of Holsteinbeck, who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... were passing through the Sargasso Sea (named from the Portuguese word meaning "floating seaweed"). Its thick masses of drifting vegetation reassured them, for the silly legend that it could surround and embed a ship had not then found believers. Many years after it was discovered that several undercurrents met there and died down, leaving all their seaweed to linger on the calm, currentless surface. But back in 1492 the thicker ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... work, settling down with her friends in the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly chatter of idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary profession which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours always resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise strove to escape from the life which he felt was daily becoming ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... now the fit is past, I have no hesitation in declaring, that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit-door of Drury Lane Theatre, just at the hour of six, gives me ten thousand sincerer pleasures, than I could ever receive from all the flocks of silly sheep that ever whitened the plains of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... back behind her ears, which were red with shyness and modesty. She did not please me very much at first sight; I looked at her with prejudice. Chvabrine had described Marya, the Commandant's daughter, to me as being rather silly. She went and sat down in a corner, and began to sew. Still the "chtchi"[40] had been brought in. Vassilissa Igorofna, not seeing her husband come back, sent Palashka for the second time ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... wee sailed from Falmoth in the aforesaid Ship to Plimouth for convoy and there lay till the 15th January following, when wee sailed under convoy with a fleete of about 90 sail. our convoy went with us about 80 Leagues to the Westward of Silly,[2] then with about ten sail more were parted from the fleet and were making the best Emprovement of winde and weather to gaine our port till the 4th Aprill following, when wee between the houres of four and six ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... might excuse her. And if she could carry on a conversation with the other one in an ordinarily well-bred, friendly way—and confine it to the intervals between numbers—one might be able to forget her, which would be a relief. But all those silly tricks of hers—those smiles, those archings of the neck—those lengthy looks up into the eyes of ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... which they filed right and left as I chased square up to the inner door, where stood a stiff sort of person, whose clothes had grown on him—so tight were they. Surprised at my sudden approach, he first gave many nervous winks and blinks, and then added the silly airs of my Lord Spoonbill's menial, who, with hair buttered and powdered, knew but the servilities of flunkeyism. 'Is the General at home?' I demanded, adding before he had time to answer, that if ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... came here. All their ways are eloquent of condemnation of his tastes. And yet again, while his old skill fails to be understood, and his old outlook to be appreciated, he finds that the behaviour preferred in him is oftener than not a behaviour which his forefathers would have thought silly, to say the least—a finikin, fastidious behaviour, such as he would scorn to practise at home. Thus in all ways the employers most conscientiously humane are those who can least avoid, in their tastes and their whole manner of living, snubbing him and setting him down ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... immortal, and what of it? I see the death-side now as I saw the life-side then; and one has as little meaning as the other. As it has been, so it will be, now, henceforth, and for ever, in and out, in and out, without pause or stint, futile, trivial, silly, stale, tedious, monotonous, and vain!' The long pre-occupation of men with religion, philosophy, and art, seemed to me now as incomprehensible as it was ridiculous. There was nothing after all to be interested about! There was simply this! ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... being married, and having a whole week more to be silly in, I was both silly and suspicious. This was partly his fault. He was reserved, naturally and habitually; and as he didn't tell me he was tired and soul-weary, I never thought of that. Instead, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... should their contents be exploded by falling into wrong hands. Letters that should never have been written are put in evidence in court rooms every day. Many can not, under any circumstances, be excused; but often silly girls and foolish women write things that sound quite different from what, they innocently, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Other inconveniences await this silly speculation. Thus, the Colossal Man, (who was under Law from B.C. 1491 to the Christian ra,) proves to have been a marvellously precocious Infant. He wrote the Song of Moses in the year of his birth. Nay, he built pyramids,—had a Literature, Arts, and Sciences,—ages before he was born!... ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... silly little thing thou art to cry about a dream," said the woodman, smiling. "No, we are not going to quarrel as I know of. Come, Kitty, ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... to his account of the disposition of old Katie's body with deep delight. She clapped her little hands in her usual silly manner and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... so cross, that Reuben did not even like to cry, for he felt he had been very silly; so the poor little fellow stood where his brother had bade him stand, half afraid to breathe, and quite afraid of moving—lest by any noise he should again drive away the doves, and Marten should again be angry. And there we will leave ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... his bed, but also unarmed. Ah! how many men earn sudden death and yet in the mystery of Providence escape it! I have often wondered at the persistency with which habit has fixed on women the exclusive reputation of gossipers. For I say unto you, brethren, that Woman, who with empty head and silly tongue toys with her neighbor's character unto its destruction, is not more full of gossip than her brother Man, who knows better and yet cannot stand the temptation of a sick man and a safe chance to chatter about matters with which he has no business. I am afraid like the idea of original sin we ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom he remembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain was stupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one of them. If it weren't for the women, the men would not be so keen on the scent for gain. The women taught the men how to spend, created the needs for their wealth. And the social game they were instituting in Chicago was so emptily imitative, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of Elia. Those charming productions, now ranked among our dearly treasured classics, were not received at first with universal approbation. The long and justly forgotten Alaric A. Watts said of them: "Charles Lamb delivers himself with infinite pain and labour of a silly piece of trifling, every month, in this Magazine, under the signature of Elia. It is the curse of the Cockney School that, with all their desire to appear exceedingly off-hand and ready with all they have ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... position he had made. He liked to see his wife sweep along the streets in her fine robes of Indian silk, which seemed to set a great gulf between her and her neighbours. He allowed his son to copy the fopperies of the Court gallants, and even to pick up the silly French phrases which made the language at Court a mongrel mixture of bad English and vile French. All these things pleased him well, although he himself went about clad in much the same fashion as ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... straw in the whirlwind, I was seized with a childish desire to be the Duc d'Angouleme himself, to be one of these princes parading before an awed assemblage. This silly fancy of a Tourangean lad roused an ambition to which my nature and the surrounding circumstances lent dignity. Who would not envy such worship?—a magnificent repetition of which I saw a few months later, when all Paris rushed to the feet ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... "Don't be silly," his aunt rejoined sharply. Then she looked him over. "Yes, you must have some control over him, for he lets you remain in the army, though an army is one ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... which we might take, for instance, I suppose," said the Idiot, "the born idiot, the borrower, and the man who is knocked silly by the pole of ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... with Mr. Vandersee. He's on leave, you know, for private business. He cannot possibly be conducting official business now; and it's quite ridiculous to think of him as being responsible for Captain Barry's misfortune. Why—oh, Mr. Rolfe," she burst out, laughing a trifle unsteadily, "it's too silly. Mr. Vandersee is about the one man here that ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... With the insight of artists they perceived that hers was a talent which must be strictly let alone. But Parisian rumour has alleged, not merely that she was advised, but that she was actually helped in the writing by her admirers. The rumour is worse than false—it is silly. Every paragraph of the work bears the unmistakable and inimitable work of one individuality. And among the friends of Marguerite Audoux, even the most gifted, there is none who could possibly have composed any of the passages ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... too fond of turning young girls' heads," said Miss Opie, shaking her own; "'leading captive silly women,' as we read. If he attempt any foolish, trifling conversation, you should check ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... devilish," he said to Legouve, "tragic and silly at the same time? I should deserve to go to hell if ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... negro did not see straight, or he told you a lie. Molly was with me, and, as you see, her frock is pink. We were out walking. We both got on the horse. It was a silly, silly prank, and ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Opera?——What Tone! what Tone! (breaking in upon me abruptly) with what musty Questions are you going to disturb my Brains? One may easily perceive from what School you come. The Moderns, if you do not know it, acknowledge no other Tone but one[77]; they laugh, with Reason, at the silly Opinion of those who imagine there are two, as well as at those who maintain, that their being divided into Authentick and Plagal, they become Eight, (and more if there were need) and prudently leave it to everybody's Pleasure to compose as they like ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... correspondent from Williams College says, "We speak of a person whom we despise as being a nuts." This word is used in the Yorkshire dialect with the meaning of a "silly fellow." Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, remarks: "It is not applied to an idiot, but to one who has ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... tae me 'Rab, my man, I dinna ken a better plan, To ser' my turn wi'silly man An wark them ill, Than charming them to pleasure drawn ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... be getting mixed up between you, you silly boy!' said Aunt Annie, smiling, and trying to ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... of sin and strange folly for which I must always feel humiliated, and implore to be forgiven. And every generous person has long ago forgiven me and forgotten it. But in this case, if you weren't in such a silly rage, I could show you that I've done nothing wrong. Only I know you wouldn't listen now, and ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... "Oh, silly, unbelieving child!" came his voice, slightly distrait it is true, but containing sufficient of the lover's chiding tenderness to fill her ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... He started next morning; and we heard, a month or two later, that the coach was stopped the same afternoon in the plains of Perote, and Antonio was robbed not only of his money but even of his jacket and serape, and reached Mexico penniless and half-naked. He was always a silly fellow, and his last exploit ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... in the future. At present men eat without philosophy. They do not nourish themselves like reasonable beings. They do not think of such. But of what are they thinking? Most of them live in stupidity and actually those who are capable of reflection occupy their minds with silly things like controversies and poetry. Consider mankind, gentlemen, at their meals since the far-away times when they ceased their intercourse with Sylphs and Salamanders. Abandoned by the genii of the air they grew heavy and dull in ignorance ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... but with his taylor, when he is in conspiracy for the next device. He is furnished with his jests, as some wanderer with sermons, some three for all congregations, one especially against the scholar, a man to him much ridiculous, whom he knows by no other definition, but a silly fellow in black. He is a kind of walking mercer's shop, and shows you one stuff to-day and another to-morrow; an ornament to the room he comes in as the fair bed and hangings be; and it is meerly ratable accordingly, fifty or a hundred pounds as his suit is. His main ambition ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... "What a silly child I am!" thought she, taking courage. "It is really the most beautiful shrub that ever sprang out of the earth. I will pull it up by the roots, and carry it home, and plant it in my ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Mr. J. Harris Stone at their head. The people who cannot appreciate Borrow are those who will not lift their eyes from the pavement to be rapt in admiration of a glorious sunset, to whom, indeed, Borrow would appear a silly enigma, or a boor. For, when "the Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work," comes that rare time when the spirit—unconsciously worshipping—is uplifted in an ecstasy of wonder and joy, who then can but pity the dull ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... expecting; because of Anna's beauty and accomplishments, which I own might well merit a man of higher birth and fortune. But the little hussy has been so nice, and squeamish, that I began to fear she would take up her silly spend-thrift brother's whim, and determine to live single: therefore I shall not balk her, now she seems ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... regardless as to what humanitarian theories might be tested upon him. As the Arcadian Club recognized no such thing as caste, he was always admitted to our meetings, and understood just enough of our conversation to excite a silly ambition in his slow mind. His animal nature was predominant, and this led him to be deceitful. At that time, however, we all looked upon him as a proper young Arcadian, and hoped that he would develop into a second ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Then he was told, "Standing right in Urquhart's way like that! Urquhart doesn't want to be stared at by all the silly little kids in the lower-fourth." But Urquhart was, as a matter of fact, probably used ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... but the noise continues, and resounds in after ages." His doctrine of immortality is simply fame. His theory of influence is not flattering. "There are two levers for moving men,—interest and fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody. I do not even love my brothers; perhaps Joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is my elder; and Duroc, I love him too; but why?—because ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... chanst among the Khyber 'ills, The Boers knocked us silly at a mile, The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills, An' a Zulu impi dished us up in style: But all we ever got from such as they Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller; We 'eld our bloomin' own, the papers say, But man for man the Fuzzy ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and looked really in earnest. Artois felt as if he were listening to a silly boy who ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... silly laugh, gulped the rest of the liquor down, and was ordering another when Sadness came in. He came up directly to Joe and sat down beside him. "Mr. Hamilton says 'Make it two, Jack,'" he said with easy familiarity. "Well, what 's the matter, old ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... ceremonies of the Mosaic Law, because, since under the Law, the priests, at the time of ministering, were separated from their wives, the priest in the New Testament, inasmuch as he ought always to pray, ought always to practise continence. This silly comparison is presented as a proof which should compel priests to perpetual celibacy, although, indeed, in this very comparison marriage is allowed, only in the time of ministering its use is interdicted. And it is one thing to pray; another, to minister. The saints prayed ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... or in any manner connected with the family of my Lord Poddle (and he was only one of the Revolution Peers, that got his coronet for Ratting at the right moment to King William III.), than that he was the Great Mogul's Grandmother. His gentlemanly extraction was with him all a Vain Pretence and silly outward show. It did no very great Harm, however. When the French adventurer Poirier asked King Augustus the Strong to make him a Count, what said his Majesty of Warsaw and Luneville? "That I cannot do," quoth he; "but there is nothing ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... thus for the first time praised herself to him, but Hermas exclaimed, "That is a good girl! and I will not forget it. You are a wild, silly thing, but I believe that you are to be relied on by those to whom you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... But silly we, like foolish children, rest Well pleased with colour'd vellum, leaves of gold, Fair dangling ribbands, leaving what is best, On the great Writer's sense ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... night and started at 6 A.M. on a buckboard for the next place, wound around the mountainsides by the picturesque Gunnison river, and reached her destination at 5 o'clock. She found a disbeliever of equal rights in her landlady, whom she describes as "a weak, silly woman and a wretched cook and housekeeper." To be an opponent of suffrage and a poor housekeeper Miss Anthony always regarded as two unpardonable sins. The husband, however, intended to vote for it. At the next stopping-place her hostess was a cultured woman, her house ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Her eyes said, "Silly fellow, don't you know every girl wants to be the one and only love ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... caused him by Helen Armstrong's refusal has terribly distressed, and driven him to more reckless courses. He drinks deeper than ever; while in his cups he has been silly enough to let his boon companions become acquainted with his reason for thus running riot, making not much secret, either, of the mean revenge he designs for her who has rejected him. She is to be punished ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... ones. Those blinded by ophthalmia were led by the hand. Those relieved from suffering were ready to kiss his feet, or even his shoes at the door. But it was a laborious and trying position. A thousand silly questions must be answered. Nor was there any certainty that the prescriptions would be followed, even if understood; and every Nestorian, though suffering under the most alarming disease, would sooner die than touch a spoonful of ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... those of a man fresh from a distillery or from a warehouse of cotton fabrics, or even from those of many fashionable women, whose only aesthetic accomplishment is to play languidly and mechanically on an instrument, and whose only intellectual achievement is to have devoured a dozen silly novels in the course of a summer spent in alternate sleep and dalliance! Nor does familiarity always give a zest to the pleasure which arises from the creations of art or the glories of nature. The Roman beggar passes the Coliseum or St. Peter's without notice or enjoyment, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... is easy to see that Ferdinand Frog was a vain and silly fellow. He was even foolish enough to repeat Aunt Polly's remark to everybody he chanced to meet that night, and the following day ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and crimson murders—things which a decent sailor should know nothing about, so that it seemed to me that for all his manners Captain had been more of a pirate than a gentleman mariner. But to draw sense out of that boy was as hard as picking cherries off a crab-tree. One silly tale he had that he kept on drifting back to, and to hear him you would have thought that it was the only thing that happened to him in his life. "We was at anchor," he would say, "off an island called the Basket of Flowers, and the sailors had ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... are we, the people of these free American States, invited by numbers of citizens to become. Just such, do I say? A thousand times more silly than such. Our national wolf meets us with jaws that drip blood and eyes that glare hunger for more. Instead of professing sanctity and innocence, it only howls immitigable hate and steadfast resolution to devour. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... upon the ridge-pole Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, Sat with fiery eyes, and, screaming, Flapped his wings at Pau-Puk-Keewis. 205 "All are gone! the lodge is empty!" Thus it was spake Pau-Puk-Keewis, In his heart resolving mischief;— "Gone is wary Hiawatha, Gone the silly Laughing Water, 210 Gone Nokomis, the old woman, And the lodge is left unguarded!" By the neck he seized the raven, Whirled it round him like a rattle, Like a medicine-pouch he shook it, 215 Strangled Kahgahgee, the raven, From the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... been for many years a problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, how the Sacred Books of the East should, by the side of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful and true, contain so much that is not only unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... depot, aunt Madge, Prudy, and Dotty Dimple, were waiting for them. A hearty laugh went the rounds, which Fly thought was decidedly silly. Aunt Madge took the young travellers right into her arms, and hugged them in her own cordial style, as if her heart had been hungry for them for many ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... relate, this is the smallest of all the manuals, and the cheapest, and the only one in which there is not so much as an allusion to ladies' ankles. All the others have a few pages of rules and a very immoderate quantity of slang; they are all liable to the charge of being silly; whereas the only possible charge to be brought against "Newport" is that he is too sensible. But for those who hold, with ourselves, that whatever is worth doing is worth doing sensibly, there is really no other manual. That is, this is the only one which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... where I go," muttered its strange owner with what seemed an involuntary emphasis. Then as the Curator turned upon him in some surprise, he added with studied indifference: "I brought it from Switzerland when I was younger than I am now—a silly memento, but I ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... is it, master shepherd, that you do such a silly thing as this? There is a trick in breaking the cocoa-nuts on the head of the priest. The people who break the cocoa-nuts are clever jugglers. They have a store of cocoa-nuts which have been previously broken and stuck ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... slightest idea, and I do not care so that it is somewhere. They pretend that I am learned; they are mistaken, commander. I know nothing, and if I have published a few books that don't sell badly, I ought not to have done it; the public is silly for buying them. I know nothing, I tell you. I am only an ignorant man. When I have the offer of completing, or rather of going over again, my knowledge of medicine, surgery, history, geography, botany, mineralogy, conchology, geodesy, chemistry, natural philosophy, ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Dolly for the moment was mistress of nothing. Mr. Shubrick looking at her, and seeing those lovely flushes and her absolute gravity and silence, was in doubt what it might mean. He thought that perhaps nobody had ever spoken to her on such a subject before; yet Dolly was no silly girl, to be overcome by the mere strangeness of his words. Did her silence and gravity augur ill for him? or well? And then, without being in the least a coxcomb, it occurred to him that her excessive blushing told on the hopeful side of the account. He waited. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... eyes of the Goblin danced and twinkled in their caverns; a merry, careless laugh came bubbling forth as it answered, "I will not leave your shop, nor will you throw me from the window, nor yet kill me, Nick Baba. Why, you silly fellow, the sharpest tool on your bench cannot draw blood from me, and that blackened lapstone, if driven with all the force of your great arm through my seeming substance, would leave me sitting here still, not to mock, but ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr. Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand. I could see that Mr. Putney didn't ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... only one thing more I can think of," she declared, screwing up her mouth and her eyes. "But I sha'n't ask you that—it's too silly. If I imagined for a moment that you could be thinking about ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... morality, the aim of his pieces, the general impression which they are calculated to produce is sometimes extremely immoral. A pleasant anecdote is told of his having put into the mouth of Bellerophon a silly eulogium on wealth, in which he declares it to be preferable to all domestic happiness, and ends with observing, "If Aphrodite (who bore the epithet golden) be indeed glittering as gold, she well deserves the love of Mortals:" which so offended ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... was silly, dear, but it will grow quickly and I just had that feeling to be free—you ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... going to repeat all we said to each other. We were very young, and I dare say very silly. We exchanged vows, and hoped to marry when I became a commander, or perhaps, we agreed, it might not be so long; perhaps when I was a lieutenant. Many lieutenants had wives, and though, to be sure, some ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... earth, and social jeers only touched the woman. A member of all clubs, subscriber to all the absurdities generated by patriotism or party spirit ill-understood (a compliance which put him in the front rank a propos of all such matters), this loyal, brave, and very silly nobleman, whom unfortunately so many rich men resemble, would naturally desire to distinguish himself by adopting some fashionable mania. Consequently, he glorified his name principally in being the sultan of a four-footed harem, governed by an old English groom, which cost him ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... opening out of Cook Strait, Captain Furneaux sent a boat with nine men who were to go on shore and gather green stuff for food. A crowd of Maoris surrounded them, and one offered to sell a stone hatchet to a sailor, who took it; but to tease the native, in silly sailor fashion, this sailor would neither give anything for it nor hand it back. The Maori in a rage seized some bread and fish which the sailors were spreading for their lunch. The sailors closed to prevent their touching the victuals; a confused struggle took place, ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... your letter that you lend credence to certain envious and scoundrelly persons, who, since they cannot manage me or rob me, write you a lot of lies. They are a set of sharpers, and you are so silly as to believe what they say about my affairs, as though I were a baby. Get rid of them, the scandalous, envious, ill-lived rascals. As for my suffering the mismanagement you write about, I tell you that I could not be better off, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... keeping up this silly jest? My dear fellow, it is perfectly ridiculous—stupid! You had better tell me at once that you intend starving me ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... questions would settle all the enigmas of the universe. I know the answer. I am not a fool. And some day, if I am plagued too desperately, I shall give the answer myself. I shall give the name of him who mislays my pen and uses up my ink. It is so silly to think that I could use such a quantity of ink. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... along the square, was nearly empty. He found her hand and drew it through his arm. "Would you mind so very much," he said, "if those silly things were true?" He spoke as if to a child. His passion was never more clearly a single object to him, divorced from all complicating and non-essential impressions of her. "I would give all I possess ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... silly," said Tom, peeping into the room ten minutes after, "why don't you come and have your dinner? There's lots o' goodies, and mother says you're to come. What are you ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... rabbit!—along the trail and had run into the stick, which had been jabbed into the ground where he could not fail to notice it—and at the very spot where the figure in black had been standing! Apparition—pooh! If there was one thing certain about the whole silly business it was that the note had been put there by that—that creature. Simon did not profess to be versed in the lore of spooks, but he could not vision an ambassador from another world leaving behind ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... lady. 'What lady?' says she. 'Why, Mrs. Cockburn, for I think she is a virtuoso,—like myself.' 'Dear Walter,' says Aunt Jenny, 'what is a virtuoso?' 'Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will know every thing.' Now, sir, you will think this a very silly story. Pray, what age do you suppose this boy to be? Name it, now, before I tell you. 'Why, twelve or fourteen.' No such thing; he is not quite six years old. He has a lame leg, for which he was a year at Bath, and has acquired the perfect English accent, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... It was I——of course it was awfully silly and we won't go to Deauville if you don't want to. Let it be Fontainebleau by all means—though really, it does not seem important whether we do get married or don't while you love me. Love after all is what matters, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... must be admitted, that the revolution, has had the effect of completely removing from the French character that silly veneration for high rank, unaccompanied by any commanding qualities of mind, which used to form a predominant feature in it. Yet it seems doubtful whether the equivalent they have obtained is more likely to promote their happiness. They have now an equally infatuated admiration ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... silly in a girl who was almost through her freshman year at high school, but Nan brought out Beautiful Beulah and rocked her, and hugged her, and crooned over her before she went to bed. She was such ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... in a sing-song two or three times over)—"the devil who makes us dream and doubt, and who made life interesting by persuading Eve to eat the silver apple—what would life have been if she had not eaten the apple? We should all be in the silly trees of the Garden of Eden, and I should be sitting next to you" (he said to Mrs. Bergmann), "without knowing that you were beautiful; que vous etes belle et que vous etes desirable; que vous etes puissante ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... this, we must hold 'em at a distance; we must send expresses out to stop 'em short upon the road, and bring 'em on a mile or two a day, until we're properly prepared to meet 'em. Kiss me, Puss. Forgive! Why, what a silly child you are! If you had vexed and crossed me fifty times a day, instead of not at all, I'd forgive you everything, but such a supplication. Kiss me again, Puss. There! Prospective and retrospective - a clear score between us. Pile up the ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... silly," he said tersely. "I doubt whether my balance at the bank is more than a couple of ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... little thrill, as she always did, when she passed the house. Since she could remember she had cared for Graham. She did not actually know that she loved him. She told herself bravely that she was awfully fond of him, and that it was silly, because he never would amount to anything. But she had a little argument of her own, for such occasions, which said that being really fond of any one meant knowing all about them and ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and we are to get there in time for it, going by the west side of the river, and they'll bring us home. They said I should ask you to go with me, and if you would n't go for me to ask Mr. Trench to go. They are too silly for anything." ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... for in the dedication of his Ecclesiastical Polity, speaking of these questions of Church discipline which gave occasion to his great work, he says they are "in truth, for the greatest part, such silly things, that very easiness doth make them hard to be disputed of in serious manner." Hooker's great work against the impugners of the order and discipline of the Church of England was written (and this is too indistinctly seized by many who ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... husband of his companion and his friend. The sin was Leonard's; but the fault was yours. You were five years older than Leonard, and a woman of sense and experience; he but a boy by comparison. What right had you to surrender your understanding, in a matter of this kind, to a poor silly priest, fresh from his seminary, and as manifestly without a grain of common sense as he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... playing your cards and smiling over them, no matter what might be dealt you. And that is some improvement over the girl I've been, isn't it? For I've never had to struggle very hard for anything I've wanted. I want to be friends, but I'm not silly enough to think you won't tell me again that you—care. I want to be friends, but not at the price of your heart-ache and disappointment, and—why, I wonder, do I get all tangled up when I try to explain myself ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... answered without turning my head. Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, and this, although everybody was kind to me. My mother gave me novels to read and money to go to the dances. The books I scarcely glanced at, and what I did read seemed so silly to me! And the dances had lost their charm. I went once or twice, but the music did not awaken any emotion in me, and I sat dully in a corner watching, without any desire to join in. And this, when I was hardly past ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... know that you are wounded, in a hospital, and that I cannot take care of you. Since the conscripts departed, we have not had a moment's peace of mind. My mother says I am silly to weep night and day, but she weeps as much as I, and her wrath falls heavily on Pinacle, who dared not come to the market-place, because she carried ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann |
