"Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... massacre. But being defeated on the banks of the Boyn by king William, July 1, 1691. he set off to France never to return. Here he continued till 1700, or by some 1701, that he took a strange disease, which they were pleased to call a lethargy, wherein he became quite stupid and senseless, and so died at St. Germains in that situation, after he had lived ten years a fugitive exile. He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, &c.—History of popery under James, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... I'm not so stupid as to think of a poor man, Bless you! he has a title and an estate too. If I get him I shall make a ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... think the only Improvement beyond this, would be that which the late Duke of Buckingham mentioned to a stupid Pretender to Poetry, as the Project of a Dutch Mechanick, viz. a Mill to make Verses. This being the most compendious Method of all which have yet been proposed, may deserve the Thoughts of our modern Virtuosi who are employed in new Discoveries ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... at the tavern-keeper with an air of stupid astonishment for some moments, unable to comprehend his meaning. It was evident to his mind that Mr. Graves had suddenly become crazed about something. This idea produced a feeling of alarm, and he was ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... above all by promises. Promises cost less than presents, and are worth more. No one gives as much as he who gives hopes. It is not necessary for the man we choose to be of brilliant intellect. I would even prefer him to be of no great ability. Stupid people show an inimitable grace in roguery. Be guided by me, gentlemen, and overthrow the Republic by the agency of a Republican. Let us be prudent. But prudence does not exclude energy. If you need me you will find me at ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Shipley; you mustn't go to sleep out here; it isn't quite heaven yet, and you will take cold. Honestly, girls, isn't it a sort of wonderment to you how the people up there can employ their time? In spite of me I cannot help feeling that it must be rather stupid; think of never being able to lie ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... himself ... none of the girls in Ballyards bore the slightest resemblance to her. Sometimes, indeed, he thought that this beautiful girl was like Lady Castlederry ... only Lady Castlederry, somehow, although she was so very lovely, had a cold stupid look in her eyes, and he was very certain that this beautiful girl had ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... told a friend of his, that he had, however, learned one thing from all this talk about Tiedge and his Urania; which was, that the saints, as well as the nobility, constitute an aristocracy. He said he found stupid women, who were proud because they believed in Immortality with Tiedge, and had to submit himself to not a few mysterious catechizings and tea-table lectures on this point; and that he cut them short by saying, that he had no objection ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "Discovery" days. Possibly the early date accounted for the absence of Emperors; however, half a dozen eggs were collected, and three of these found their way home to England. Wilson picked up rounded pieces of ice at the rookery which the stupid Emperors had been cherishing, fondly imagining they were eggs; evidently the maternal instinct of the ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... pause; then the young man said, frankly, "Cousin Elsie, I'm afraid I'm very stupid, but it's a fact that I never have been quite able to understand exactly what it is to be a Christian, or ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... it made him as dangerous as any stupid anarchist who toils by candle-light over his crude bombs. For by it he taught the great mass of citizenship who still retained their simple ideals of reason and respect that there existed a social caste, worshipers of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... for a certain strange, new hope, defining in its turn some new and weighty motive of action, which lay in deaths so tragic for the "Christian superstition." Something of them he had heard indeed already. They had seemed to him but one savagery the more, savagery self-provoked, in a cruel and stupid world. ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... clam to the bottom and draw it up gently. You'll get the knack of it in five minutes. It's all knack. There isn't anything else so stupid as ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... heart given over to oppression of an alien soldiery and unable to co-operate with their own long days to come; and across the face of the somber picture was drawn the track of the blood of hundreds of brave men; sacrificed needlessly, the people said—and in a manner stupid, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... nevertheless, his calumniators have dared to say that he rejoiced at an event, which, even considered apart from its political relations, caused him to lose a conquest which had cost him so much, and France so much blood and expense. Other miserable wretches, still more stupid and more infamous, have even gone so far as to fabricate and spread abroad the report that the First Consul had himself ordered the assassination of his companion in arms, whom he had placed in his own position at the head of the army in Egypt. To these ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... fancy yourselves men of pleasure; you fancy yourselves men of fashion; you fancy yourselves men of taste; in fancy, in taste, in opinion, in philosophy, the newspaper legislates for you; it is there you get your jokes and your thoughts, and your facts and your wisdom—poor Pall Mall dullards. Stupid slaves of the press, on that ground which you at present occupy, there were men of wit and pleasure and fashion, some five-and-twenty ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... will not! It's stupid of you not to know this is serious. You could be dismissed from school for what ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... Chinese Communist diplomat in Berne, Switzerland, happened to see it and, one night at a dinner party, he said mockingly: "This stupid American general in Jerusalem is obviously ignorant of the world. Otherwise, he would realize that no nation on earth loves gambling so much as the Chinese. Anyone who knows the Orient will tell ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... and after following us a little way slink back to their own quarter again. Each alley and street of the city has its pack of dogs, and none venture on the domain of their neighbors. During the day they sleep, lying about the streets so stupid that they will hardly move; in fact, horses and donkeys step over them, and pedestrians wisely let them alone. After dark they prowl about, and are the only scavengers of the city, all garbage being thrown into the streets. The dogs of Pera have experienced, I suppose, the civilizing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... proceed, hoping that as the latter was also a man, he, too, might feel inclined to smoke or dine, and show some mercy on the rest. But the public prosecutor showed mercy neither to himself nor to any one else. He was very stupid by nature, but, besides this, he had had the misfortune of finishing school with a gold medal and of receiving a reward for his essay on "Servitude" when studying Roman Law at the University, and was therefore self-confident and self-satisfied in the highest degree ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... set their eyes upon an objective and immediately all intelligence, logic, good advice, unsolvable problems, and insurmountable obstacles go completely by the boards. The characters we refer to are obviously just plain stupid. What they want to do, just can't be done. The objectives they have in mind are unachievable and anyone with an ounce of brains can tell them so and give them good reasons. They are usually pretty sad cases and often land in the funny house. But then again, some of ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... his "cash boys," were of a radically different sort. But with the attainment of High School and Mr. Hilton the world changed. For the first time since his mother's death Tom met a congenial spirit. Mr. Hilton was gay, he was humorous, he noticed important things which other people were too stupid to notice or to appreciate. He was forever having amusing misadventures; and before long he took Tom off with him for week-end walks, and they had amusing misadventures together. No one else existed for Tom, and anything he suggested became law. In this way Tom ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... thinking a good deal about him. I have been wondering if, in his phenomenal way, he is not a final expression of the national genius,—the stupid contempt for the rights of others; the tacit denial of the rights of any people who are at English mercy; the assumption that the courtesies and decencies of life are for ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... ladies, only of dress or scandal; so that in the long hours, when they were left to their own discretion, after having examined and appraised each other's finery, many an absent neighbour's character was torn to pieces, merely for want of something to say or to do in the stupid circle. But now the dreadful circle is no more; the chairs, which formerly could only take that form, at which the firmest nerves must ever tremble, are allowed to stand, or turn in any way which may suit the convenience ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... long time, and the Twins were beginning to feel quite sleepy, when Hawk-Eye spoke. What he said made them sit up and listen with all their ears. Of course neither Hawk-Eye nor Limberleg thought for a moment that the Twins were awake or listening. Grown people are often very stupid about such things! Anyway, they were awake, and they did listen, and this is what ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Allyn returned fiercely. "He is a coward, too, and never goes for our crowd; but takes boys like Jamie Lyman, stupid, shabby little milksops that don't dare stand up to him. It isn't their fault that they are dunces, and he ought to know it. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... Mississippi, he makes the following interesting extract from the journal of Mr. Doty, a gentleman who accompanied the expedition:— "The Indians of the upper country consider those of the Fond-du-Lac as very stupid and dull, being but little given to war. They count the Sioux their enemies, but have heretofore made ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... fence-post with a scrambling knot of the reins that would have brought down Blue Bonnet's wrath upon her hapless head, Kitty hastened across the close-cropped meadow. It seemed to her they trudged miles, taking turns carrying the lamb, before they reached the little shack. A stupid young fellow, half-asleep, lay sprawled in ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... true enough, Harry, and it is very kind and considerate of you to think of it; but who will we get? The women here are very ignorant and stupid." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... daughter were induced to come on board, while the others went out in the canoe fishing. Before they came on board I shewed them our goats and sheep that were on shore, which they viewed for a moment with a kind of stupid insensibility. After this I conducted them to the brow; but before the chief set his foot upon it to come into the ship, he took a small green branch in his hand, with which he struck the ship's side several times, repeating a speech or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... was raly stupid wid love: there was not a bit of fun left in him. He was good for nothin' an airth bud sittin' under bushes, smokin' tobacky, and sighin' till you'd wonder how in the world he got wind for ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... said the bitter mother. "It was only a stupid, hare-brained fancy then, but now it is something worse. You're the first to whom I have admitted it," she continued, with illogical indignation, "because ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Yet, in spite of the latter inconvenience, she eats and drinks too much every day, and tosses off a glass of maraschino with a trembling pudgy hand, every finger of which twinkles with a dozen, at least, of old rings. She has a story about every one of those rings, and a stupid one too. But there is always something pleasant, I think, in stupid family stories: they are good-hearted people who ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... manners of an irresistibly fascinating woman, who, despite her sixteen years of age, looked as though she might be quite twenty. He stammered out a few halting and stumbling words of thanks for her kindly welcome of him, feeling all the time that he would have liked to kick himself for his stupid gaucherie; and then turned to receive the greeting of Senora Montijo. This lady was simply an older edition of her lovely daughter, with a more composed and stately manner, and her welcome to Jack was cordiality itself; and presently they ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... element of pleasure through many generations. I have not sought any recognition from the world in this matter, and even the mention of it became so intolerable to me that I eschewed all writing about it, in the face of the most stupid and misleading statements, till Mr Sidney Colvin wrote and asked me to set down my account of the matter in my own words. This I did, as it would have been really rude to refuse a request so graciously made, and the reader has it in the Academy of 10th March 1900. Nevertheless, Mr Gosse's ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... emphasizes gain to a few rather than benefits to the party as a whole, then it is time for honest men to abandon their party. Integrity is above party. The slogan, "My party right or wrong" is not only stupid but treasonable. Let the citizen be eager to coperate with his fellows for the advancement of common political views, but let the corrupt ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... of this immediately, and heartily, and recollected the only epigram he knew by rote, one which he had heard in conversation two or three months before this time. It was made upon a tall, stupid man, who had challenged another to make an epigram extempore ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... me for a dog, sir," said Colonel Ashton, turning fiercely upon him, "or something more brutally stupid, to endure this insult in my father's house? Let me go, Bucklaw! He shall account to me, or, by Heavens I will stab him ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... "'How stupid of me not to have mended it! said Melchior; but he had not mended it, and so there was nothing for it but to go to bed; and to bed ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... brought to the gray of the hills; In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills; In the startled wild beasts that bore oft, each with eye sidling still Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill {330} That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe: E'en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers: And the little brooks witnessing murmured, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... two of four, and two of three sheets each, containing in all two hundred and seventeen stanzas, octave measure. But I will permit no curtailments.... You shan't make canticles of my cantos. The poem will please, if it is lively; if it is stupid, it will fail; but I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing. If you please, you may publish anonymously; it will perhaps be better; but I will battle my way against them ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the Poor are old, cumbrous, unequal, as stupid as those who administer them. Forth steps the Reformer, and cries out—"Clear this wrack away! Get rid of your antiquated Bumbledom, your parochial and non-parochial distinctions, your complicated map of local authorities; re-distribute the kingdom on some more ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... When a stupid jury returns an obviously wrong verdict the judge must feel himself in an awkward position; but in such cases—if they ever occur now—a good precedent has been set by Mr. Justice Maule who, when in that predicament, addressed ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... to look at us without stopping their hubble-bubbling; and all about us, where nothing else was, a line of motley humanity—Greek, Turk, Egyptian, Nubian, Abyssinian, under hats, caps, tarbouches, turbans, hats Persian and ecclesiastical, and no hats at all—half circled us with mute and mostly stupid admiration. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... do with the system afterwards adopted towards me, but it was presently clear that private tutors, natural history, science, and the modern languages, were the appliances by which the defects of my organization were to be remedied. I was very stupid about machines, so I was to be greatly occupied with them; I had no memory for classification, so it was particularly necessary that I should study systematic zoology and botany; I was hungry for human deeds and humane motions, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... passion that Jason Bolt moved uncomfortably on his chair, reproaching himself with having been wanting in tact. There were good and sufficient reasons why Varr should react to the mention of the girl's name like a bull to a red rag, and here he had been stupid enough actually to praise the young woman whom the tanner had referred to contemptuously as Graham's lanky daughter. He opened his mouth with intent to change the subject, but an ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... which is to heal Ireland's wounds, it must be granted, and the voice of reason and right must rise above the stupid clamor which says that it cannot, must not, shall not be granted! Such expressions were common in inflammatory pamphlets which flooded the country on the eve of Catholic Emancipation, in 1829; and possibly ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... and victrolas if we had a more harmonious society. We really don't like each other much better than Alaskan dogs. Now what is the reason for that? Are we afraid of them stealing from us—our houses, sweethearts, or dollars? Or are we so stupid that we don't know each other, never get under the skin to find out what kind of a fellow this neighbor is? Certainly we are self- centered and we wonder that people don't like us when we don't try to find what is likable about them—and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... only," says the registrar at the gate, roughly. "The other cannot go through," he says, pointing to de Vaudrey, who tries to look as stupid and uncomprehending ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... faith is so great a blessing, that we seldom find it granted a second time to those, who, by imitating the ingratitude of the Jews, have drawn upon themselves the like terrible chastisement. St. Vedast found the infidels stupid and obstinate; yet persevered, till by his patience, meekness, charity, and prayers, he triumphed over bigoted superstition and lust, and planted throughout that country the faith and holy maxims of Christ. The great ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Holland House to meet Kean. He is worth meeting; and I hope, by getting into good society, he will be prevented from falling like Cooke. He is greater now on the stage, and off he should never be less. There is a stupid and under-rating criticism upon him in one of the newspapers. I thought that, last night, though great, he rather under-acted more than the first time. This may be the effect of these cavils; but I hope ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... abstract truthfulness. When a bad writer is inexact, even if he can look back on half a century of years, we charge him with incompetence and not with dishonesty. And why not extend the same allowance to imperfect speakers? Let a stockbroker be dead stupid about poetry, or a poet inexact in the details of business, and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cultured peasantry of this fair province. Non-co-operationists have come to the conclusion that they must not be deceived by the reforms that tinker with the problem of India's distress and humiliation. Nor must they be impatient and angry. We must not in our impatient anger resort, to stupid violence. We freely admit that we must take our due share of the blame for the existing state. It is not so much the British guns that are responsible fur our subjection, as our voluntary co-operation. Our non-participation ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... art of writing fiction as a science. He has wit, humor, charm, and lightness of touch, and ardently strives after philosophy and intellectuality—qualities that are rarely found in fiction. It may well be said of M. Bourget that he is innocent of the creation of a single stupid character. The men and women we read of in Bourget's novels are so intellectual that their wills never interfere ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... as illegal, seditious, heretical, idolatrous, or treasonable, I must, like every other subject, be content to take my chance of their being able to find a jury sufficiently facile or sufficiently stupid to carry out their behests against me. But they did not choose that course at first. They did not summon me as a principal, but they subpoenaed me as a witness—as a crown witness—against some of my dearest, personal, and public friends. The attorney-general, whose word I most fully ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... to decorate themselves even lavishly with ornaments rudely fashioned in this rare metal. Yet they seemed to know little of its value, and to care less for it than for fuss and feathers. Either they were a singularly stupid race, simpler even than the child of ordinary intelligence, or they scorned the allurements of a metal that so few are ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... they seemed to have got quite lost among the hills. At every stage of ten or twelve English miles they changed horses and drivers. The drivers on this particular stage were more stupid than usual, or Fred Temple was not so bright. Be that as it may, about midnight they arrived at a gloomy, savage place, lying deep among the hills, with two or three wooden huts, so poor-looking ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... M. WHITNEY,—Dear Sir—I have been absent for a day or two from the city, and did not receive your note until to-day. I enclose a note for publication—oblige me by letting it appear to-morrow. I cannot imagine how so stupid an error could have occured as the erroneous date of Kemp's discharge by Gen. Washington. But the error almost corrects itself—as Kemp's letter of July 2d, speaks of the battle of Monmouth on the 28th. I do not know whether the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... dissipated classes. Betwixt the fumes of the brandy which he so freely drank and the folly of the melodramatic parts which he was wont to act, his brain became saturated with a passion for notoriety, which grew into the very mania of egotism. His crime was as stupid as it was barbarous; and even from his own point of view his achievement was actually worse than a failure. As an act of revenge against a man whom he hated, he accomplished nothing, for he did not inflict upon Mr. Lincoln ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... understanding, and her little advances of friendliness, her little appeals for sympathy, all glanced from the unconscious armor of his youthful innocence and reserve. She was forced to put him down after many weeks as merely stupid, and she sighed when she saw the hope of comradeship in her hard lot fade out and give way to a feeling bordering ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... with both elbows on the table, crouched over the newspaper, incoherent pictures of the past coursing through his mind, which was still dazed and stupid from the drink ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... such as never had a chance of being anything but wrong-doers. And it will not matter whether it was from original constitution or from unhappy training that these poor creatures never had that chance. I was lately quite astonished to learn that some sincere, but stupid American divines have fallen foul of the eloquent author of "Elsie Venner," and accused him of fearful heresy, because he declared his confident belief that "God would never make a man with a crooked spine and then punish him for not standing upright." Why, that statement of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... a TUTTI of battering rams, on our sheet- iron roof; the wind passing high overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us full, so that all the huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung their hands, and brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the shed like things stupid. The sea and the flagship lying on the jaws of the bay vanished in sheer rain. All day it lasted; I locked up my papers in the iron box, in case it was a hurricane, and the house might go. We went to bed with mighty uncertain feelings; far more than on shipboard, where you have only drowning ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Friend, The next day I felt almost as sailors must do after a violent storm over-night, that has subsided towards daybreak. The morning was a dull and stupid calm, and I found she was unwell, in consequence of what had happened. In the evening I grew more uneasy, and determined on going into the country for a week or two. I gathered up the fragments of the locket ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... in her comfortless room, and lay wondering over the waking nightmare of the past hours. Everything seemed so different in the morning. There was no thrill of excitement now, nothing to make her blood run quickly. She only felt flat, dull, stupid, and disinclined to move. How strange and unlike himself Emile had been. She had lost her nerve, raved, and threatened to run away, and he had neither sneered nor abused her. Her hand, still wrapped in stained linen, had now begun to burn and smart considerably, and was proof ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... wearing the garb of innocence; the ass in the lion's skin a quack trying to terrify, by assuming the appearance of a forest monarch (does the writer, writhing under merited castigation, mean to sneer at critics in this character? We laugh at the impertinent comparison); the ox, a stupid commonplace; the only innocent being in the writer's (stolen) apologue is a fool—the idiotic lamb, who does not know his own mother!" And then the critic, if in a virtuous mood, may indulge in some fine writing regarding the holy beauteousness of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... poor devil of a dwarf stealing along the slippery rocks of the river bed, a creature with energy enough to make him strong of body and fierce of passion, but with a brutish narrowness of intelligence and selfishness of imagination: too stupid to see that his own welfare can only be compassed as part of the welfare of the world, too full of brute force not to grab vigorously at his own gain. Such dwarfs are quite common in London. He comes ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... thank you for stopping me: for I am hoarse as well as stupid: I consider the foregoing only as the greater stars or constellations in the bibliographical hemisphere. Others were less observed from their supposed comparative insignificancy; although, if you had attended the auctions, you would have found in them ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... think this a stupid letter, perhaps, and not interesting. Just reflect on my surroundings. Besides, the interest will accumulate a good while before you get the missive. And I don't know how you ever are to get it, for there is no post-office near here, and on the Isthmus the mails are as uncertain as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... Harrigan turned in stupid amazement upon the Scotchman. The latter had dropped into his chair again and now looked ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... the fact that ten thousand persons have been thus proclaimed on ten thousand different occasions, and that my own name has often been so proclaimed before. But, in Heaven's name, Aeschines, are you so perverse and stupid, that you cannot grasp the fact that the recipient of the crown feels the same pride wherever the crown is proclaimed, and that it is for the benefit of those who confer it that the proclamation is made in the theatre? For those who hear are stimulated to do good service to the State, and commend ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... so commonly in the world, that I am persuaded that none of my readers but must have remarked that there is a certain settled and stupid obstinacy in some tempers which renders them capable of persevering in any act, how wicked and villainous soever, without either reluctancy at the time of its commission, or a capacity of humbling themselves so far as to acknowledge and ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... stupid of me! I remember now where it is!" She drew the tiny bag on its cord out of the neck of her blouse. "She put it in here, so I wouldn't lose it." Her relief was great and thoroughly genuine. "Whee," she sighed, "just ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... and then no more until the contest," Jack announced placatingly, when he spied a lone bull standing just before a thicket of chaparral and staring at them with stupid resentment that his siesta had been disturbed. "A kiss for luck, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... this Manner the Heathens once worshipped their Bacchus. But I wonder, if this is their Way of worshipping, that St. Antony is not enraged at this Sort of Men that are more stupid than Hogs themselves. What Sort of a Pastor have you? A dumb one, or a ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... a brilliancy that is sometimes false. He is tricked out in paste for diamonds, now and then, like a vain, provincial beauty at a ball. "A clever man would frequently be much at a loss," he says, "in stupid company." One has seen this embarrassment of a wit in a company of dullards. It is Rochefoucauld's own position in this world of men and women. We are all, in the mass, dullards compared with his cleverness, and so he fails to understand ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... aroused. Did Ali think he was a stupid as all that? "If you'd take a look in there now you'd believe me," ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... indeed,' burst forth my companion, overjoyed at my verification of his theory, 'it does indeed; why, it is as plain as a pike-staff. Let us proceed at once; come, throw away all those stupid ideas about the Typees, and hurrah for the lovely valley of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... apples, nuts, and goose galore I chattered, like a stupid, And thought of shooting coneys, more Than being shot ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and exclaiming, "G—— d——! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... her sincerity, and buoyant, healthy enjoyment of life. She was teaching in a girls' school, and was very happy. Other women had always left the heavy man on the road, so to speak, marking him as stupid. But Alice Johnston was keener or kinder than most young women: she perceived beneath the large body a will, an intelligence, a character, merely inhibited in their envelope of large bones and solid flesh, with an entire absence of nervous system. He was silent before the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... One of his first thoughts was that a gang of desperate robbers had seized him. The next idea was, that he never met four more stupid-looking men in Mertonville, nor anywhere else. He resolved that he would not tell his name, to have it printed in the Inquirer, and ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... to clean her floor. The man thought he'd get benzine instead; and just as he got into the house, the fire from his pipe dropped into it, and the whole shanty was in a blaze before the poor woman knew what had happened. The stupid fool that was to blame got off, but the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... said the old yaze (daddy) "Ozaka looks just like Kioto; and as for 'the great ocean' those stupid maids talked about, I don't see any at all, unless they mean that strip of river that looks for all the world like the Yodo. I don't believe there ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... why I can understand the psychology of saying 'no' to a proposal. This stripling, who was at least five years my junior, proposed to me out of sheer gratitude. I actually succeeded in drumming quadratic equations into his stupid head, and he offered me his hand by the way ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... so far from such endeavours, that there hath been a stupid submission to our rulers and great ones, breaking down and ruining the whole work of reformation, razing the bulwarks thereof, rescinding the laws in favour of the same, and not only breaking but burning the covenants for preserving it, enacting the ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... a woman doing anything in the least useful. Do you realise that if anything in the world can save this stupid old ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... But sometimes, when I'm stupid, I simply can't bear it. It makes me feel as if I'd done something. Last night I got it into ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... was that, stealing, rippling, across the square? The bandmaster knew nothing of the tale of Tannhauser, but was wishing that he had violins at his beck, instead of stupid flutes and reeds. And Taffy had never heard so much as the name of Tannhauser. Of the meaning of the music he knew nothing—nothing beyond its wonder and terror. But afterward he made a ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... length, exhausted by his exertions—to say nothing of his having previously had more exercise than usual—he waddled away to his well-known rug, absolutely declined all invitations either to work or play, and lay there watching the company through his half-shut eyes, in a state of stupid repose, which those who had just watched his effervescence did not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... The stupid anecdote of the egg was a mere trifling invention, in fact a trick, and it is surprising that intelligent men have for so many years thoughtlessly been believing and repeating such nonsense. For my ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... returned the lady; "how stupid I am! However, I knew you were an inmate or a member of the Legislature the moment I looked at you. But how was I to know? It is ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... George Sand changed it to that of Indiana) is a typical woman, strong and weak, tired even by the weight of the air, but capable of holding up the sky; timid in everyday life, but daring in days of battle; shrewd and clever in seizing the loose threads of ordinary life, but silly and stupid in distinguishing her own interests when it is a question of her happiness; caring little for the world at large, but allowing herself to be duped by one man; not troubling much about her own dignity, but watching over that of the object ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... official religion and consequently in a common doom. Androcles is a humanitarian naturalist, whose views surprise everybody. Lavinia, a clever and fearless freethinker, shocks the Pauline Ferrovius, who is comparatively stupid and conscience ridden. Spintho, the blackguardly debauchee, is presented as one of the typical Christians of that period on the authority of St. Augustine, who seems to have come to the conclusion at one period of his development that ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... sweetness of which, Tmolus bids Pan to hold his reeds in submission to the lyre; and the judgment and decision of the sacred mountain pleases them all. Yet it is blamed, and is called unjust by the voice of Midas alone. But the Delian {God} does not allow his stupid ears to retain their human shape: but draws them out to a {great} length, and he fills them with grey hairs, and makes them unsteady at the lower part, and gives them the power of moving. The rest {of his body} is that of a man; in one part ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... all struck stupid. It frightens me to see him. If he would only speak, or cry, or fly out against the murderer—but he just sits there as if ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... pearl-fishery attracted their avarice; and as Britain was viewed in the light of a distinct and insulated world, the conquest scarcely formed any exception to the general system of continental measures. After a war of about forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most dissolute, and terminated by the most timid of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island submitted to the Roman yoke. The various tribes of Britons possessed valor without conduct, and the love of freedom without the spirit of union. They took ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the vital organs were decayed, nor had he the skill to support them by the chemical preparations of his predecessor; his only remedy was to let blood, which he drew so plentifully that the patient fell into a lethargy, and our medicaster was yet so stupid as to mistake this lethargy for a real state of health. The provinces, abandoned to the rapine of the superintendents, were stifled, as it were, under the pressure of their heavy misfortunes, and the efforts they made ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... stupid!" said Calhoun angrily. "Somebody's always urging the police to use panic-gas in case of public tumult. But it's too dangerous. Nobody knows what one man will do in a panic. Take a hundred or two or three and panic them all, and there's ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... Among the Indians upon these several reservations there exist the most marked differences in natural traits and disposition and in their progress toward civilization. While some are lazy, vicious, and stupid, others are industrious, peaceful, and intelligent; while a portion of them are self-supporting and independent, and have so far advanced in civilization that they make their own laws, administered through officers of their own choice, and educate their children in schools of their own establishment ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of "Macbeth," though attacked and derided and put to shame in many quarters, is as clear to me as the sunlight itself. To me it seems as stupid to quarrel with the conception as to deny the nose on one's face. But the carrying out of the conception was unequal. Henry's imagination was ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... great peril when he least suspected it. Once he lay for some time in the edge of a dark forest of water-weeds, only an inch from a lumpish, stupid-looking creature, half covered with mud, that was clinging to one of the stems. The animal appeared so dull and unintelligent that the young Trout paid little attention to him until another baby came up and approached a trifle closer. Then, quick as a flash, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... it. I simply happen to find myself on top, and I stay there and enjoy the view. [Seats himself at table.] As a matter of fact, Gerald, one of the things I intend to do with this world is to clean it up. Don't imagine that I will tolerate such stupid waste as we have at present... everybody trying to cheat everybody else, and nobody to keep the streets clean. It's as if a dozen mere should go out into a field to catch a horse, and spend all their time in trying to keep each other from catching it. ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... folly of pride to its highest pitch. In his Memoirs, he declared that the public (of course excluding himself) were an infamous tag-rag-and-bob-tail. The people of Paris, he protested, were more stupid and a hundred times more ferocious, in their caperings and revolutionary grimaces, than the baboons and orang-outangs of Borneo. Balzac at times adopted and expressed similar opinions. Gozlan relates that one day the owner of Les Jardies ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... shack of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl—glanced for a moment only; and carelessly he dropped it ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... knew little about their remote neighbors and often were quite willing to convert their ignorance into prejudice: The dweller in the uplands and the resident on the coast were wont to view each other with disfavor. The one was thought heavy and stupid, the other frivolous and lazy. Native Spaniards regarded the Creoles, or American born, as persons who had degenerated more or less by their contact with the aborigines and the wilderness. For their part, the Creoles looked upon the Spaniards as upstarts and intruders, whose sole ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... waited her approach, perplexed as to the cause of it; and was so unprepared for the box on the ear she dealt him, that it almost threw him down. Her ankle was instantly in Abdiel's sharp teeth. She gave a frightful screech, and Clare, coming to himself, though still stupid from her blow and his own surprise, called off the dog. The woman limped raging to the house, and Clare thought it prudent to go his way. He talked severely to Abdiel as they went; but though the dog could understand much, I doubt if he understood that lecture. For Abdiel was one ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... his vote, except on one condition,—"Would her Grace give him a kiss?" The request was granted. This was one of the votes which swelled the number of two hundred and thirty-five above Sir Cecil Wray, and Fox stood second on the poll. Of course much stupid poetry was written ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... how he had met the tiger, and how to save the bullocks he had promised the milch cow in exchange. At this the wife began to cry, saying, 'A likely story, indeed!—saving your stupid old bullocks at the expense of my beautiful cow! Where will the children get milk? and how can I cook my ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... till he knew all their ways, and loved God's creatures as did St. Francis d'Assisi, to whom every creature of God was dear, from Sister Swallow to Brother Wolf. So he learned, as he grew older, to love men and women and little children, even although they might be ugly, or stupid, or bad-tempered, or even wicked, and this sympathy cleansed away many a little fault of pride and self-conceit and impatience and hot temper, and in the end of the days made a man of John Carmichael. The dumb ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... the fly, small as he is, is too large to work his way out through the flap, or too bewildered or stupid to find the opening, or too exhausted after his futile efforts to get out through the overhead route to persevere, or too weak with hunger in case of long detention in a pistillate trap where no pollen ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... wheel of fire. Men, it was supposed, could sell themselves to the Evil One for a term of years, but they easily managed to elude the fulfilment of the contract, for there was usually a loop-hole by which they escaped from the clutches of the stupid Devil. For instance, a man disposes of his soul for riches, pleasures, and supernatural knowledge and power, which he is to enjoy for a long number of years, and in the contract it is stipulated that the agreement holds good if the man is buried either in ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... feeling, and made Strange melodies, scornful, but sweeter than strings whereon sorrow has played To enrapture the hearing of mirth when his garland of blossom and green Turns to lead on the anguished forehead—"you don't understand what I mean"? Well, of course I knew you were stupid—you always were stupid at school— Now don't say you weren't—but I'm hanged if I thought you were quite such a fool! You don't see the point of all this? I was talking of sickness and death— In that poem I made years ago, I said this—"Love, the flower-time whose breath Smells sweet through ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the haciendado with an air of vexation, "out of six servants which I counted yesterday I have not one to place at your service, except my mayor-domo here, for I cannot reckon upon those stupid Indian peons. The mayor-domo will ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... and that she begged to inform me that she had another servant at my disposal (otra criada mi disposicin), I returned for answer, that I was greatly obliged, but had just hired a recamerera (chambermaid). At this the man, stupid as he was, opened his great eyes with a slight expression of wonder. Fortunately, as he was turning away, I bethought me of inquiring of the Seora's health, and his reply, that "she and the baby were coming on very well," brought the truth suddenly before me, that the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... exclaimed Annie, in a tone of glee, as she entered, "do leave that stupid girl and come with me; I have some charming intelligence to communicate. And it really is no use boring yourself with Lilla; she will never play, try as hard ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar |
