"Stupidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as might be expected, to assist a heavy head, and one feather is not sufficient to enable my genius to take wing. If the public knew what dull work it is to write a novel, they would not be surprised at finding them dull reading. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Barnstaple, I am at the very bathos of stupidity. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... subside gradually as if nothing had happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all been printed in great-primer type, instead of working itself out in her features. I like to see other people muddled now and then, because my own occasional dulness is relieved by a good solid background of stupidity ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... own petticoats. I wish the Registrar-General would tell us the exact number of deaths by burning occasioned by this absurd and hideous custom. But if people will be stupid, let them take measures to protect themselves from their own stupidity—measures which every chemist knows, such as putting alum into starch, which prevents starched articles ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... faithful old Army of the Potomac, "which has had hard fighting,—terrible fighting, and little praise." He lost patience with those staying at home depreciating the army and finding fault with General Meade. He wrote: "Frankly and bluntly, I cannot appreciate such stupidity. Why not as well ask if the sun rose this morning? That battle was the greatest of the war. It was a repulse which became a disastrous defeat to General Lee." He sarcastically invited critics, "instead of staying at home to weaken the army by finding fault, to step into the ranks ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... tepid feelings. She sympathized with Galbraith on the whole. The poor man was doing his best; and the girl, queerly, didn't seem to care. She confronted him in a sort of stockish stupidity, saying her lines, when he told her to try again, with the same frightful whang he was doing his best to correct, so that he was justified, Rose felt, in accusing her of not trying, or even ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... disappointment, turned to go to the other points of view to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing emotion at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle's stairs, and the middle of the river, and from below the table rock, it was still "barren, barren all." And, provoked with my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... preservation, but all things renew, germinate and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease: all others run into this one. We call it by many names,—fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity and crime: they are all forms of old age: they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia; not newness, not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... task with the machinery of transportation was the first clear duty. Scarcely one of the gigantic abuses can be touched apart from these highways of distribution. We have but just waked up to the plain stupidity of giving away so recklessly all sorts of franchise grants, and are beginning to see the equal stupidity of parting madly with such an overwhelming part of the main and primary sources of wealth—mines, forests, ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... certain kind of restitution has been made. For example, a friend of mine sins against me—he injures, perhaps, my good name; and my natural answer is the emotion of resentment towards him and, perhaps, of actual revenge. But what I chiefly resent is my friend's stupidity and his ignorance of my real character. "I am angry," I say, with perfect sincerity, "not so much at the thing he has said of me, as at this proof of his incapacity to understand me. I thought he was my friend, ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... document, the proof of his cruelty, his injustice, his stupidity! She must make sure that there was no mistake! Olga Vseslavovna went up to the window, and taking advantage of the last ray of the gray ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... taking great pains with any forms of literature except such as would be profitable, or by those who, if they are driven to the study of Philosophy for its own sake by the admonitions and the example of others, nevertheless, on account of their stupidity, hold a place among philosophers similar to that of drones among bees. Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the finest scarlet broadcloth and gold epaulets. Their intelligence, their good cause, their sore extremity, made them learn to be soldiers more quickly than seemed possible to English officers who knew the sturdy stupidity of the English peasant of whom the British regiments were composed. And while the Yankees (as they began to be called) were learning how to march and countermarch, and do whatever else the system of the British ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... not so fortunate. All New York rang with the story, and those who had tried hardest to bring this fate upon themselves were loudest in ridiculing the Swiggs for their "stupidity;" so that, at last, parents and daughter were glad to withdraw from fashionable life, to a more retired existence, where they still remain, sadder, and decidedly wiser than when their career began. Mr. Swigg takes the matter philosophically, consoling himself with the determination ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... to consist in something assignable and describable, and not remain a pure mystery, and I promise that if he can assign any determination of it whatever which I cannot successfully refer to some specification of what in this article I have called the empirical fundamentum, I will confess my stupidity cheerfully, and will agree never to publish a line upon this ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... drawled Jean Briggerland, "after my lecture on the stupidity of the average criminal, do you imagine I should ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... comparison, in this respect, between them. Every one knows that while Walter is dull, even to stupidity, Charles has a brilliant, well-informed mind. It is only necessary to hear each converse for an hour, to decide upon their ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... is found in the case of cerebral paralysis of young children, where there is mental defect amounting to stupidity or imbecility, accompanied by extensive paralysis of the body, so that the child is not able to sit up. With the gradual improvement of the physical condition, so that the muscles become firm and the child can sit, stand, and even walk, there is a corresponding mental development; from being stupid ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... are qualities that exist in people quite independently of their gifts and graces. The ugly and stupid are perhaps more often conceited than the beautiful or the clever,—vain, it would appear, of their very ugliness and stupidity. Besides, is it any worse for a woman to be vain of her looks than of her brains?—and the advanced woman is without doubt most inordinately vain of those. Of the two, so far as they are at present developed, is there ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the kind aunt, hoping to soothe Juliet's sorrow for her awkwardness and carelessness. This sort of praise was quite new to the child. To be praised instead of reproved for her stupidity, to be met with smiles rather than sighs, was something so uncommon that Juliet almost believed that she really had done a clever and useful deed. After a few minutes she quite believed it, and held up her head, taking credit for her breakage which ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... type of self-sufficient stupidity and conceit—a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more conventional than fair—then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is Mr. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... child, I can save you a lot of trouble. It's all my fault. If I hadn't been a miracle of stupidity the necklace would never have disappeared. This point being agreed to, let us go on to the next. When did you find out ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the bright little puss when she said so; but there was a lumpish, soggy fellow accompanying her, whose nature appeared to be sufficiently unleavened to make almost any thing credible in the line of stupidity. In fact, it is one of the greatest drawbacks to the pleasure with which one travels through this beautiful country, to see what kind of human beings inhabit it. Here in the Alps, heaven above and earth beneath, tree, rock, water, light and shadow, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... far as we might make the difference—the facts having a way of being many and the truth remaining but one—he held that there would always be enough; since the truth, the true truth, was never ugly and dreadful, and we didn't and wouldn't depart from it by any cruelty or stupidity (for he wouldn't have had us stupid,) and might therefore depend on it for due abundance even of meat and drink and raiment, even of wisdom and wit and honour. It is too much to say that our so preponderantly humanised and socialised adolescence ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... or rash, or stupid will inevitably suffer the penalties of dishonesty, or rashness, or stupidity. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... these things. It is some poor character only desiring to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not 'the crackling of thorns under the pot'. Even at stupidity and pretension this Shakespeare does not laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the poor fellows only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on well ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Linley resumed, "at my own stupidity in not having discovered it before. We must be kinder than ever to the poor girl now; can't you guess why? My dear, how dull you are! Must I remind you that we have had two single men among our visitors? One of them is old and doesn't matter. But the other—I mean Sir George, of ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... the Americans, and tend to keep up that spirit of patriotism and nationality for which they are so distinguished. The excitement produced by these elections prevents the people falling into that ale-drinking stupidity, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... gratified, my female pride was dreadfully mortified by what she says of the ladies of England; in fact, she could not judge of them. They were afraid of her. They would not come out of their shells. What she called timidity, and what I am sure she longed to call stupidity, was the silence of overawed admiration, or mixed curiosity and discretion. Those who did venture, had not full possession of their powers, or in a hurry showed them in a wrong direction. She saw none of them in their natural state. She asserts that, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... bustled off, and never knew! Dear one, you have only yourself and my stupidity to thank if you marry a failure. What might I not have done if I had ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... saying a word; he never gave an opinion upon any subject; but when once, in the course of the year, he did speak, he could express himself in terms sufficiently noble. Sometimes when he spoke one would say he was stupidity itself; at another time he would deliver himself with astonishing sense. At one time you would think he was the best Prince in the world; at another he would do all he could to give people pain. Nobody seemed to be so ill with him but he would take the trouble of making ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... very clever, then very stupid; if not very wise, then a fool: whereas in fact, the man probably is a curious mixture of good and evil, strength and weakness, wisdom and folly, knowledge and ignorance, cleverness and stupidity. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... exposed; and the foolish citizens crowded all the more into the unventilated, tobacco-poisoned beer-cellars and concert-halls, and persisted in supping on heavy food and cold beer in the open air, as though on purpose to spite the over-anxious magistrates and doctors. Nor was the stupidity confined entirely to the lower classes. People who ought to have known better defied the cholera in excess of rioting, while those of another turn of mind gave way to superstitious fears, and as soon as they felt the first symptoms of the disease fled to the cold, damp churches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the Commonwealth to risk himself in wild dashes to the dead, non-psionic lands, or out into the emptiness of space. As far as risking himself on combat missions of interplanetary war— He shook his head. This was pure stupidity. ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... appallingly stupid." He paused, with an effect of still more profound exhaustion, then breathed, "He hates me, no doubt because I resent his stupidity. I resent stupidity," he repeated, giving her a glance of weak alarm, as if wondering, "Are you stupid, too?" He seemed reassured by his scrutiny of her. A coldness began to ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... repeatedly witnessed in my observing hives, and admired the sagacity of the queen in economizing her necessary work after this fashion, instead of laboriously depositing the eggs in cells where they are not wanted. What a difference between her wise management and the stupidity of a hen obstinately persisting to set upon addled eggs, or pieces of chalk, and often upon nothing ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... sheep? It is mind, Williams, the generation of knowledge and virtue, that we ought to love. This was the project of Alexander; he set out in a great undertaking to civilise mankind; he delivered the vast continent of Asia from the stupidity and degradation of the Persian monarchy: and, though he was cut off in the midst of his career, we may easily perceive the vast effects of his project. Grecian literature and cultivation, the Seleucidae, the Antiochuses, and the Ptolemies followed, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... His rapid gallop through the night air, added to the more than ordinary quantity of whiskey he had that day swallowed, was now producing its effect, and, while every feature of his countenance manifested the extreme of animal stupidity, his apprehension wandered and his voice became almost inarticulate. Without the power to acquaint his son with the purpose he had in view, and of which he himself now entertained but a very indistinct recollection, he yet strove, impelled as he was by his confusedness ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of men lying in unmarked graves in African soil to-day who ought to be alive and well, others who have been done to death by the crass ignorance, the appalling stupidity, the damnable conceit which will brook no teaching. I have seen men die like dogs, men who left comfortable homes in the old land to go forth to uphold the power and prestige of our nation's flag. I have seen them gasping out ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... assistant medico was not one of those priggish puppies who, having little professional knowledge to balance their own inherent stupidity, fancy it necessary to support their dignity by the agency of etiquettes alone. He was, on the contrary, a young man of skill, good sense, and right feelings, who cared nothing at all about his dignity when he could be of any use; or rather, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... choose the latter, then correct yourself. It is human to err, but it is stupidity to persist in error and refuse to be enlightened. If you cannot see for yourself, common sense demands that you get another to see for you. You are not supposed to know the alpha and omega of theological science, but you are bound to possess a satisfactory ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... pathos, tenderness, and moral indignation. The general wretchedness of the serfs, the indifference of their owners to their condition, the pettiness and utter meanness of village gossip, the ridiculous affectations of small-town society, the universal ignorance, stupidity, and dulness—all these are remorselessly revealed in the various bargains made by the hero. And what a hero! A man neither utterly bad nor very good; shrewd rather than intelligent; limited in every way. He is a Russian, but a universal type. No one can travel far ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... that I do not wish woman to be elegant, to dance or to sing; but I should like to see as much care devoted to her mind as to her body, and between being ignorant and savante I should like to see a road taken which would prevent annoyance from an impertinent sufficiency or from a tiresome stupidity. I should like very much to be able to say of anyone of my sex that she knows a hundred things of which she does not boast, that she has a well-balanced mind, that she speaks well, writes correctly, and knows ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... woman steeped in guilt from her infancy, had she been noted for cunning and fraudulent ingenuity, had she been known as an expert forger, you would not have convicted her on this indictment, having had before you the malice and greed of Dockwrath, the stupidity—I may almost call it idiocy, of Kenneby, and the dogged resolution to conceal the truth evinced by the woman Bolster. With strong evidence you could not have believed such a charge against so excellent a lady. With such evidence as you have had before you, you could not have believed ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... bewitched, and no one knows what might have happened if Wildrose, who had been all the time peeping out of her nest, had not lost patience at the old woman's stupidity, and cried out: 'The tripod won't stand on that hill, ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... of Mankind once only. Stranger theory of society, completely believed in by a clear, sharp and altogether human head, incapable of falsity, was seldom heard of in the world. For King: open your mouth, let the first gentleman that falls into it (a mass of Hanover stolidity, stupidity, foreign to you, heedless of you) be King: Supreme Majesty he, with hypothetical decorations, dignities, solemn appliances, high as the stars (the whole, except the money, a mendacity, and sin against Heaven): him you declare Sent-of-God, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... exclaimed, with irritation at her own stupidity. "I suppose it wouldn't take twenty minutes to drive there?" She gathered up her purse and gloves and seemed ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... disappears altogether in a metaphysical cloud. None of these subtle resolvers of ancient riddles, however, approaches grand old Donne, who said in one of his fine discourses that "the Devil himself is only concentrated stupidity." What a magnificent flash of insight! Yes, the great enemy of mankind is stupidity; and, alas, against that, as Schiller said, the gods themselves fight in vain. Yet time fights against it, and time is greater than the gods; so there is ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... the province seven years, and, in spite of his stupidity, it prospered. In 1633, Adam Roelantsen, the first school-master, arrived—for the fruitful Walloons had opened the way by this time for his labors—and in the same year a wooden church was built in the present Bridge street, and placed ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a party this afternoon and I went ashore for that purpose, carrying along with us a small present. Upon our landing he did not receive us setting, as all the other Chiefs had hitherto done, or in any manner of Form; this we attributed to his Stupidity, for such he appeared to be. However, he gave me a Hog in return for the present I made him, and this was paying us full as great a Complement. Before we took our leave we let him know that we should go to Otaha in the morning in our Boats, and would be glad to have him along with us, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... slight accident after my last letter; but it produced no bad consequences: it only made a little more care necessary. Accordingly I shall go from Choisy to Fontainebleau by water. My children are quite well. My boy will spend his time at La Muette while we are absent. It is just a piece of stupidity of the doctors, who do not like him to take so long a journey at his age, though he has two teeth and is very strong. I should be perfectly happy if I were but assured of the general tranquillity, and, above ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... hearer must have been aware that the speaker was earnestly straining after something. To those who understood, it was as if he would force his way through every stockade of prejudice, ditch of habit, rampart of indifference, moat of sin, wall of stupidity, and curtain of ignorance, until he stood face to face with the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... instead of beginning my labours in my study, remains an unrevealed mystery unless we charge it to the account of a much-abused eccentricity attributed to genius and which usually turns out to be arrant stupidity. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... remonstrating upon the general tone of the 'Times,' and inviting him to adopt some Conservative principles in the midst of his zeal for Reform. Stanley told me that his election (at Preston) was lost by the stupidity or ill-will of the returning officer, who managed the booths in such a way that Hunt's voters were enabled to vote over and over at different booths, and that he had no doubt of reducing his majority on ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... thinks me rather a grinder, and despises me for not being very deft with my hands: that's the way nowadays. From what I have read of the nineteenth century literature (and I have read a good deal), it is clear to me that this is a kind of revenge for the stupidity of that day, which despised everybody who could use his hands. But Dick, old fellow, Ne quid nimis! Don't ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... that I was a fool, lower in the scale of intelligence than even the police of the modern romancer. Novelists build mountains of stupidity out of a footprint on the sand, or from an impression of a hand on the wall. That's the way innocent men are brought to prison. It might convince an examining magistrate or the head of a detective department, but it's not proof. You writers forget that what the senses furnish is not ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... have tipped us off. There is a very fine line dividing incredible stupidity and incredible stubbornness. It's often a tough differential to make. I didn't spot it until I found them wolfing down the tetracycline capsules in my samples case. Then I began to see the implications. Those Mud-pups were stubbornly and tenaciously ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... resentment, I advise you to be cautious in writing me a second of the same tenor; for though I understand you were drunk when you did it, yet give me leave to tell you that drunkenness is no excuse for rudeness. But for your stupidity and sottishness you might have known, by attending to the public gazette, that you had your full quantity of ten thousand acres of land allowed you; that is, nine thousand and seventy-three acres in the great tract, and the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... fly!" Chris muttered, and made a grab at it. The bluebottle buzzed towards the window, swirled about, hit Chris on the nose again with remarkable stupidity, and blundered off once ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... place they had so gallantly defended, and allowed them four-and-twenty hours to consider on the resolution they should take. Syburg continued deaf to his remonstrances; and, with an obstinacy that savoured more of stupidity than of valour, determined to stand the explosion. When the sentinels that were posted on the side of the hill gave notice, by a preconcerted signal, that fire was set to the mine, the governor ordered the guard to retire, and walked out to the parade accompanied by several ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... "Benjy is partly correct; such specimens will be treated as he describes, and be stared at in blank stupidity by hundreds of fellows like himself, but they will also be examined and understood by geologists, who from their profound knowledge of the plans which our Creator seems to have had in arranging the materials of the earth, are able to point out many interesting and useful facts which ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... fellow—by the ear and was saying, "What? Lost again—smothered o' wit." (I believe it was the boy who was himself supposed to be a wandering soul, and who was thus addressed as lost.) "Now, look here, my lad," he continued, "some boys are born stupid, and thou art one of them; some achieve stupidity—that's thee again, Jim—thou wast both born stupid and hast greatly increased thy birthright—and some" (and here came a climax during which the boy's head and ear were swayed from side to side) "have stupidity thrust upon them, which, if it please the Lord, shall not be thy case, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... "thrown back" to the Sicilian ancestor, as he had. She had the Southern eyes, the Southern grace, the Southern vivacity and warmth that had made him so attractive. But Artois divined a certain stubbornness in Vere that had been lacking in the dead man, a stubbornness that took its rise not in stupidity but in a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... feel those eyes upon her. All his strength and bigness, all his manhood, huge and unaware, seemed to lie deep in them like a monster coiled up under the sea. When he looked at her he seemed to lose that heavy dumbness, that inarticulate stupidity which occasionally stirred and vexed even her good disposition; his mouth might still be shut, but his eyes were fluent—they told her not only of his manhood ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... than any other, and as I recall it now, it seems as if I could see the king's noble, melancholy face, and armed form, remembered not in picture, but in reality. All Sir Peter Lely's lewd women, and Kneller's too, were in these rooms; and the jolly old stupidity of George III. and his family, many times repeated; and pictures by Titian, Rubens, and other famous hands, intermixed with many by West, which provokingly drew the eye away from their betters. It seems to me that ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the guilty parties to go away. Moreover, these feigners were far from numerous, despite all that was related of them in the amusing stories concocted by Voltairean humourists. Apart from faith, human stupidity and ignorance, alas! were quite sufficient ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... excessive vagueness of the end. Hardly any other type of ending would have befitted a novel that treats of transition, of a landscape that dazzles and enthralls, of possibilities that founder, not through the malignance of fate, but through the stupidity of man. There is an epic swirl to the finale that reminds one of the disappearance of an ancient deity in a pillar of dust. For an uncommon man like Milkau an uncommon end was called for. Numerous questions are touched upon in the course of the ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern-politicians. They crowded round him, eying him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "Whether he was Federal or Democrat?" Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... with our rabbits, and had already carried it quite a distance, when suddenly I began to be sorry for it, and thought how its mother would grieve, upon which I took it back to the spot where I had found it and returned to the institution as fast as I could, but said nothing at first about my "stupidity," for I was ashamed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... spent at a boulevard table impressed him as the height of stupidity. He chafed under the enforced inaction of the situation. "How many more wasted hours must he endure?" ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... ability to perform the humblest office of daily life. An educated man, who can use his hands, will make an anthracite coal-fire better and quicker after half a dozen trials than a raw Irish servant after a year's experience; and many a lady charges her housemaid with stupidity and obstinacy, because she fails again and again in the performance of some oft-explained task which to the mistress seems "so simple," when there is no obstinacy in the case, and only the stupidity of a poor neglected creature who had been taught nothing till she came to this country, not even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... a fine night Alaric had declared his intention of walking home from Mrs. Val's party, and he and Charley started together. They soon parted on their roads, but not before Alaric had had time to notice Charley's perverse stupidity as ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... exploiting of anthills, and now it has no rival at that business, but it is fit for nothing else. Its awkward digging tools will not allow it to put the sole of its foot to the ground, so it has to double them under and hobble about like a Chinese lady. It has no teeth, and stupidity is the most prominent feature of its character. It has become that poor thing, a man of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... account of all that had passed, with a very sedate gravity. He informed me that he had witnessed so much ingenuity among the seals, and had known so many brutes that seemed to have the sagacity of men, and so many men who appeared to have the stupidity of brutes, that he had no difficulty whatever in believing every word I told him. He expressed his satisfaction, too, at the prospect of hearing a lecture on natural philosophy and political economy from the lips of a monkey; although ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... measured him with slow eyes. "I am not sure it is stupidity," she remarked; "some ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... one like you, Jan, for stupidity," was Sibylla's retort. "I am young and pretty, and a bride; and they are two faded ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... be too tedious. She died. She was right. And now I am here in her place. I am here with my lord, who has good manners but does not care about me, wishes me anywhere but in his house; a nephew who has no manners and a great deal of stupidity, and a niece who is much too old to be my niece, and who is too like me in face and figure for us to get on well together. Otherwise, truly, she is not like me. She is content to spend all day in a boat on the sea catching fish. Conceive it yourself, Susanne, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... This simple fellow actually believed that the English fought in scarlet. Even now he was not thoroughly convinced that they really were English. Ignorance goes hand in hand with obstinacy, and these simple old peasant folk defended their stupidity with a veritable wall of ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... steal in quietly like a shadow on the wall, sit down at table with a heart-breaking sigh, sulked with the women, and often was heard talking to himself in this fashion: "This is no sort of life. If women hold the cards, stupidity is trumps. The woman in the kitchen, the man in business," and so on. Finally the thing happened which Frau Brohl had foreseen with anxiety—Marker came with a new project, for which he wanted fifty thousand thalers. It was an entirely new idea, unheard of before; it couldn't miscarry, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... a right to sleep in peace. In private life one of the most amiable of men, and distinguished for courtesy and kindness, he was a swash-buckler in controversy. He had a trick of being in the right which his opponents found displeasing, and he was sometimes cruel in his impatience of stupidity and wrong-headedness. Scarcely any continuance in folly could have inspired most men to the retorts he occasionally made. He wrote to one unfortunate: 'Sir,—You have ventured to contradict me on a question with regard ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... have drank a little"—and I glanced at the streamlet—"but a cup of d'Arbois now, or even some white Rochecorbon, would be nectar. Confound my stupidity at losing the way! We should have been at Marcay hours ago; ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... possible advantage could ever fall to our share. However, it is certain, that all the regular seeds of party and faction among us are entirely rooted out, and if any new ones shall spring up, they must be of equivocal generation, without any seed at all; and will justly be imputed to a degree of stupidity beyond even what we have been ever charged with upon the score ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... finer mind. He left among other things two or three volumes of short fragmentary pieces on politics, religion, literature, and art. They are intelligent and elevated, but contain hardly anything to our point to-night, unless it be this,—that what is called Stupidity springs not at all from mere want of understanding, but from the fact that the free use of a man's understanding is hindered by some definite vice: Frivolity, Envy, Dissipation, Covetousness, all these darling vices ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... the kind is recorded of him. For surely, Socrates, Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed for his stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was greatly neglected by him and others in his own ...
— The Republic • Plato
... her laundry," laughed Ethel. "It went out white linen skirts and silk blouses. It came back sheets and pillow cases. You should have seen her face when she opened the package. She threw up her hands and said: 'What stupidity! Must I then appear in my classes ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... close observer, would have suspected it from the gentle countenance and rounded features which, when seen in profile, bore some slight resemblance to those of a lamb. This extreme gentleness, though noble, had something of the stupidity of the little animal. "I look like a dreamy sheep," she would say, smiling. Laurence, who talked little, seemed not so much dreamy as dormant. But, did any important circumstance arise, the hidden Judith was revealed, sublime; and circumstances had, unfortunately, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... on three occasions, the first two times more or less due to his own fault, but the third owing to the stupidity of one of the sailors. Nevertheless a third occasion couldn't be overlooked by his messmates, who made much merriment of the event. It was still funnier when he brought his final load (an exceptionally heavy one) with a set face and ardent pace, vouchsafing ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... dearth of the raw material; for maleable iron was selling in Rome at upwards of L21 per ton, at a time when the cost of bar-iron in this country was only from L6 to L7 per ton. Such insane legislation on the part of the sacerdotal Government could not be committed through ignorance or stupidity. There must be some strong reason that does not appear at first sight for this wholesale sacrifice of the interests of the country. We shall speak of this anon: meanwhile we pursue ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... take the opportunity of putting to him a second problem that puzzles me: the carelessness, nay, more, the stupidity of the Bee in the presence of the Philanthus. You would be inclined to think that the victim of persecution, learning gradually from the misfortunes suffered by her family, would show distress at the ravisher's approach and at least attempt to escape. In my cages I see nothing of the sort. Once ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... almost completed my first round of parish visits, and the experience has been a revelation to me of the mixture of pathetic narrowness, hardship, and self-denial of the people up here in the mountains. One minute I am all out of patience with their stupidity, and the next I am touched to the heart by their patience with unendurable conditions, and their generosity and kindness to each other. I hope to be able to adjust my mental equilibrium to the situation before long and to learn to understand them better; I find that a country ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... hall in no pleasant frame of mind. The whole affair had been bungled by his stupidity. He passed through the door which Hartmann presently opened at the end of the hall, and found himself in a long narrow passage, lit by a single electric lamp. Hartmann closed the door carefully behind him, ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... with that strange blend of industry, stupidity, mendacity and cunning which characterize the Prussian and all his acts. Under our noses a German solidarity was attempted here, and in part achieved. Organizations having Prussian ends in view were numerous, large, popular and ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... to her words, so that in all the country-side there was not any lad truer, gentler, braver, or more patient at labour than was Bernadou; and though some thought him mild even to foolishness, and meek even to stupidity, he was no fool; and he had a certain rough skill at music, and a rare gift at the culture of plants, and made his little home bright within the winter-time with melody, and in the summer gay ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... Shakespeare which was not prompted by a love of singularity; and there are half-a-dozen popular idols—I have not the courage to name them—a genuine attack upon whom I could witness with entire equanimity, not to say some complacency. If Johnson's blunder in this case implied sheer stupidity, one can only say that honest stupidity is a much better thing than clever insincerity or fluent repetition of second-hand dogmas. But, in fact, this dislike of 'Lycidas,' and a good many instances of critical incapacity might be added, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... common pulse—we aid one another, learn from one another, draw ever closer to one another to our mutual happiness, and find in this closeness the whole meaning of life!—and to- morrow some crazy ruler will say some stupidity, and another will answer in the same spirit, and then I must go expose myself to being murdered, and murder men—who have done me no harm—and more than that, whom I love. And this is not a remote contingency, but the very thing we are all preparing for, which ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... possibly have common sense, that I had been about town above a fortnight, and had made no steps towards commencing an amour. My friend pleaded for me that my stay was uncertain; and she believed that was the cause of my seeming stupidity and this was all she could find to say ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... amiss," she said, turning back to speak to him, as Lili drew her away, "I am not good at guessing, and I should only bother you with my stupidity." ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... lest it be forgotten; so I will say this much further: we all know what people have said about the curse of labour, and what heavy and grievous nonsense are the more part of their words thereupon; whereas indeed the real curses of craftsmen have been the curse of stupidity, and the curse of injustice from within and from without: no, I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one's hands before one doing nothing—to live like a ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... advantages, our moral standard is as false as the drawing upon a Chinese plate. We have no true moral perspective. Our ideas of right and wrong are confused and imperfect, and in danger of becoming corrupt. We laugh at the stupidity of the poor Chinaman in his attempts after beauty in art, while in morals we are quite as stupid as he. Believing ourselves wise, we are fools. It is very hard to escape being unduly influenced by the opinions of society; but the more earnestly ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... Cumnock persuaded Mr. Bowring to let him keep on. After five days' work he heard of a deaf and dumb woman who sat every afternoon at a back window of her flat overlooking the back windows of Thayer's house. He had a trying struggle with her infirmity and stupidity, but finally was rewarded. On the afternoon of the murder, in its very hour (which the police had been able to discover), she had seen a man and woman in the bathroom of the Thayer house. Both were agitated and ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... hour, and letting himself fall into their hands like a deer that tumbles into a pit," growled the old man, perceiving as usual the mote in his neighbor's eyes, while he overlooked the beam in his own; "if he is left to pay for his stupidity with his own flesh, he can blame no one ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... But argument there was on it, by persons capable and willing, more than one: and in result this surprising brand-new London moon-calf of a MATINEES was smitten through, and slit in pieces, for the fifth time,—as if that could have hurt it much! "MIT DER DUMMHEIT," sings Schiller; "Human Stupidity is stronger than the very Gods." However, in the course of these new inspections into matters long since obsolete, there did—what may truly be considered as a kind of profit by this Resuscitating of the moon-calf MATINEES upon afflicted ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... its piety in the sixteenth century, this was the period of its highest intellectual culture, especially in the drama. De Vega and Cervantes were enough of themselves to redeem Spain from any charges of intellectual stupidity. But for the Inquisition, and the Dominican monks, and the Jesuits, and the demoralization which followed the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, Spain might have rivalled Germany, France, and England in the greatness of her literature. At this time ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... were somewhere nowadays where you could flee from all this stupidity, from all this cant of governments, and this hideous reiteration of hatred, this strangling hatred ..." he would say to himself, and see himself working in the fields, copying parchments in quaint letterings, drowsing his ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... and an infinitude of meretricious uglinesses, such as, to real taste and judgment, are intolerable." Three more letters appeared in the following numbers—two for (Amateur and Professor) and one against (Inquirer) Chopin; the editor continuing to insist with as much violence as stupidity that he was right. It is pleasant to turn from this senseless opposition to the friends and admirers of the master. Of them we learn something in Davison's Essay on the Works of F. Chopin, from which I must quote ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... were proudly presented to M. le Colonel, and received affable bows from the little man, who flattered himself that he could talk English, and insisted on speaking an unknown tongue, evidently wondering at their stupidity in not understanding ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... was a sufficient justification for the use of the rack. Whoever fell into its abyss returned no more to the world. All the benefits of the laws ceased for him; the maternal care of justice no longer noticed him; beyond the pale of his former world malice and stupidity judged him according to laws which were never intended for man. The delinquent never knew his accuser, and very seldom his crime, —a flagitious, devilish artifice which constrained the unhappy victim to guess at his error, and in the delirium of the rack, or in the weariness ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "Grau's stupidity has been very annoying, to say the least," was the ungracious reply. "We came here on important business, and presented our papers—all in proper order—on demand. We had the right to expect decent treatment, as respectable American citizens engaged in humanitarian work; yet this—this—man," ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... account of this weekly festivity, which at that time was important enough to threaten to become an institution. The environs of the little town of Sceaux enjoy a reputation due to the scenery, which is considered enchanting. Perhaps it is quite ordinary, and owes its fame only to the stupidity of the Paris townsfolk, who, emerging from the stony abyss in which they are buried, would find something to admire in the flats of La Beauce. However, as the poetic shades of Aulnay, the hillsides of ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... private room of a well-known restaurant, when he heard the story of the financial trickeries of Nucingen, wittily related by Bixiou. [The Firm of Nucingen.] Finot concealed "a brutal nature under a mild exterior," and his "impertinent stupidity was flecked with wit as the bread of a laborer is flecked with garlic." [Scenes ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... every word uttered by the rosy witch over her bubbling miniature caldron. She was concocting a philtre to make a girl happy,—herself. She had confided to the warm-hearted Irishwoman that she was in love, and condemned her stupidity that it had not been love at first sight; but since it had not been, the flame was likely to burn the longer. Didn't Jenny think so? And Jenny ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... hobedy-hoy, there was a seriousness in his visage, and a much-ado-about-nothing-ness in his eye, which were proclaimed by good natured people to be indications of deep thought and profundity; while others less "flattering sweet," declared they indicated naught but want of comprehension, and the dulness of stupidity. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... foetal meningitis: genius is a form of scrofula closely allied to mania: in sleep, the brain loses blood, in intellectual excitement, attracts blood; in the illumination of the death-bed, or the delirium of drunkenness, the circulation through the brain is quickened; in torpidity, melancholy, stupidity, the circulation slackens ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... her jealousies and fears were troublesome, I think they were useful. Sometimes she had light and comfort; oftener otherwise. In her twentieth year she had a fever, and from the first she thought she should not live, complained of her stupidity of mind, impenitence and unbelief. I came home from afternoon exercise, found her so ill that her mother thought herself obliged to tell her, upon which she thanked her for her kindness, but quickly fell into great distress on being unprepared for eternity. It would break a heart of stone ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... remained silent for a second, looking steadfully at the prisoner. Pre Milon maintained his impassive demeanor, his air of rustic stupidity, with downcast eyes, as if he were talking to his cure. There was only one thing that could reveal his internal agitation, the way in which he slowly swallowed his saliva with a visible effort, as if ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Haiti or Hispaniola, is so inexplicably and inexpressibly unintelligible and absurd, partly because the original translator was unable to render the miserable sense or nonsense of the author into English, but chiefly owing to the innate stupidity and gross ignorance of the poor anchorite, that the present editor was much inclined to have expunged the whole as unsatisfactory and uninteresting: But it seemed incumbent to give the whole of this most important voyage to the public. The Editor however, has used the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Sir Charles; "I know exactly how he felt. I hope you forgive me, Miss Lorton? Can I make amends in any way for my stupidity?" ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... may rather be said to be a sign of it, for it shows an intelligence unable to grasp the wider relations of life, and concentrated on the gratification of petty and immediate desires. Thus it happens that the cunning of criminals is frequently associated with almost inconceivable stupidity.[35] ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... had had the sense to ask him, though of course he would not offer to do so, if I was content to let it alone. But I could not bring myself to make the request, and it was not till after he was gone, that I saw how fair an opportunity I had lost; and then, indeed, I deeply regretted my stupidity and my foolish pride, but it was now too late ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... into the evening papers. The management at first had wished to attempt the impossible, to try to muzzle the pressmen. But their publicity agent knew better. Madame Sennier had been carried by temper into stupidity. She had made a false move. The only thing to do now was to make ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... published by Bruno during his stay in Paris are "Il Candelajo" and "Umbrae Idearum." The former, says Levi, is a work of criticism and of demolition; in this comedy he sets in groups the principal types of hypocrisy, stupidity, and rascality, and exhibiting them in their true colours, he lashes them with ridicule. In the "Umbrae Idearum" he initiates the work of reconstruction, giving colour to his thought and sketching his ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... which was doubtless very interesting, and part of which thrilled Ferris, but none of which enlightened him as to a dog's uncanny wisdom in certain things and his blank stupidity in others. Next day Link returned the book to the library, no wiser than before, albeit with a higher appreciation of his own good luck in being the god of one ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... have taken the old pack-horse road on the fell-side. One would be safe in that fool's stupidity. You have heard ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... he has the pleasure of feeling us as funny and slangy here as people can only be who have had the best of the bargains other people are having occasion to rue. We of course don't know—that is Mother and Grandmamma don't, in any definite way (any more than I do, thanks to my careful stupidity) how exceeding small some of the material is consciously ground in the great grim, thrifty mill of industrial success; and indeed we grow about as many cheap illusions and easy comforts in the faintly ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... perpetuated inanity,—among the lettered, too!—the learned! the studious! the critical! If that was not the case, what a long neglect! Anyhow, the silence is inexplicable. It indicates one of two things,—duncelike stupidity or studious contempt. Both these surmises must be dismissed,—the first as too absurd, the second as too improbable. There can arise a third conjecture—Taste for intellectual achievements, and appreciation of literary merit, had vanished for awhile from the earth, to return after an absence ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... requests for information, I doubt if I should have spoken. I felt like the spectator who is compelled to witness a tragedy which both wounds and bores him. I was obsessed by my own ill-luck and the stupidity of the rest of mankind. I was particularly annoyed by the spasmodic hymn-singing that went on in various parts ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... for you can get it spiritually or intuitively, while I get it only intellectually, and the intuition flies where reason walks. You had a perception of the unreality of matter last night and I had nothing at all but stupidity and sleepiness. But let us go on. I am more deeply interested than I can tell, and the Bible is a new book to me. I never dreamed there were such treasures of truth in it. No matter where I read in the Bible before, I could not understand, and then I ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... time in his life sat down regularly at table. His life, lying on the river bank through long summer afternoons or sitting perfectly still for endless hours in a boat, had bred in him a dreamy detached outlook on life. He found it hard to be definite and to do definite things, but for all his stupidity the boy had a great store of patience, a heritage perhaps from his mother. In his new place the station master's wife, Sarah Shepard, a sharp-tongued, good-natured woman, who hated the town and the people among whom fate had thrown her, scolded at him all day long. She treated ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... a poor idiot, give me a halfpenny," said Martin, in a doleful voice, as he threw into his face and whole figure a look of helpless stupidity and awkwardness, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... don't want you any more, I hate you both, even my own child. Too much is too much. He was ambitious, but nothing more. Honor, honor, honor. And then he shot the poor fellow whom I never even loved and whom I had forgotten, because I didn't love him. It was all stupidity in the first place, but then came blood and murder, with me to blame. And now he sends me the child, because he cannot refuse a minister's wife anything, and before he sends the child he trains it like a parrot and teaches it the phrase, 'if I am ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... being as degraded and scurvy as his own outward self, turned to him, called him "Dutzbruder," asked him how he left them all in Berlin, stared at Ronald's blank look of non-recognition, and passed on with a muttered curse on his own stupidity in mistaking a stranger, in broad daylight, for ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... as the interest of the anecdote clearly depends on HIS stupidity—not on what happened to ME. Let us then make m "he"; x "persons whom I sent, &c."; and y "persons ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll
... undisturbed camping grounds, all these good things were provided for them, and in return they were expected to yield a large percentage of lambs and a good "clip." Even the touching patience of the poor animals beneath the shears, or amid the dust and noise of the yards, was generally despised as stupidity. ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Feeling a certain sympathy for her painful confusion of mind, I did my best to give his words an interpretation which soothed her fears. Then she begged his pardon, taking all the blame to her own stupidity, and received his grudged, unwilling kiss with a restored happiness which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... newspapers; made the press free, and did everything to promote education and industry. But although much was done, the good was greatly hindered, especially in the inland districts, by the vice, ignorance, and stupidity of many of the Roman Catholic priests, who totally neglected their duties,—which, indeed, they were incompetent to perform,—and in many instances, were no better than miscreants in disguise, teaching the ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... associated in his early youth were of that class who regarded his imbecility as a terrible affliction, were charitable and kind, never allowing others to impose upon this simple fellow, who was incapable of taking his own part. But as George Howe advanced in years he gradually threw off his stupidity, and although he never outgrew the habit of keeping his mouth open, he ceased to slobber, and acquired the habit of looking respectable. He entered school and became quite proficient in one branch of study in particular—he ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... in the pages of literature as a commentary to their doings in practical life, and vice versa. The experience thus gained will be very useful in avoiding wrong ideas, whether about yourself or about others. But if you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity—in life or in literature,—you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said, "a thousand pardons for my stupidity. I can tell you in two minutes what I want done with this thing." He held it in the flat of his hand, and looked from it to the jeweller, as ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... is resolved, for Nature pleads that he Should only rule who most resembles me. Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, Mature in dulness from his tender years; Shadwell alone of all my sons is he Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray." Mac ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... of Burgos, while the slow purgatory of being served with tickets was endured, a traveler found fault in good Saxon English as to the stupidity of such delay about trifles, and also complained of having been robbed of some small article of luggage. Another Englishman, particularly disposed to palliate matters, said there must be some mistake about it; he had been here before, and the people of Burgos were proverbially ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... extraordinary, if you came to think of it. Mrs. Wilkinson had no understanding of the art. What did it mean to her? Where did it take her? You could see she was transported, presumably to some place of chartered stupidity, of condoned oblivion, where nobody could challenge her right to ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... all (it is a shocking thing to say), I doubt whether Mr. Yeats really knows the real philosophy of the fairies. He is not simple enough; he is not stupid enough. Though I say it who should not, in good sound human stupidity I would knock Mr. Yeats out any day. The fairies like me better than Mr. Yeats; they can take me in more. And I have my doubts whether this feeling of the free, wild spirits on the crest of hill or wave is really ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... utterly wretched, she dared not even look at the man whose unheard-of stupidity had inflicted such humiliation ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... surprised at the difficulty with which I got into conversation with the man; at his stupidity, feigned or real, I could not tell which; at the dogged, suspicious reserve with which he eyed me, and asked me whether I was "one of they parts"? and whether I was a Londoner, and what I wanted on the tramp, and so on, before he seemed to think it safe to answer a single ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... one knew Dicksie Dunning in the high country. This was Dicksie Dunning of the great Crawling Stone ranch, most widely known of all the mountain ranches. While his stupidity in not guessing her identity before overwhelmed him, he resolved to exhaust the last effort ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... desperation. I am staking all I have on this venture." Then, in low-toned intensity, he added: "It hurts me to have you forced to go over and over these lines because of the stupidity of a bunch of cheap little people. Why don't you ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the experience was not one of unmixed satisfaction. These letters have contained references to the demoralized condition of the State Department under Mr. Bryan and the succeeding ones will contain more; the Carden episode portrayed the stupidity and ignorance of that Department at their worst. By commanding Carden to cease his anti-American tactics and to support the American policy the Foreign Office had performed an act of the utmost courtesy and consideration to this country. By quietly "promoting" the same minister to another ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... This it is that leads us astray. That old stargazer, with whom Aesop has made us acquainted, deserved, indeed, to fall into the well, no less for his profanity than his stupidity. Yet this same star-gazing it is that we miscall reflection. Thus, in our blank wonder at Nature, in our naked analysis of her life, expressed through long lists of genera and species and mathematical calculations, as if we were calling off the roll of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... highest wisdom (Brahma Gnana), and it gives immediate entrance into the heaven of beatification or of absorption. And the only sin which such a man, and which this system of thought, recognizes is the sin of ignorance (Avidia); that is, the folly, or stupidity, of thinking that one's soul is separate from the divine Soul. To know, under these mundane conditions of delusion (Maya), and while under the tyranny of passion and of action (Karma), that I ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... Europe, he was entrusted with a command in Portugal, against the French then occupying that country. He was much embarrassed by his own government, and the wilfulness of the people to rescue whom was his mission. The convention of Cintra arrested his successes. The stupidity of his superiors defeated his schemes of conquest. "Yet, even as things stood, the success achieved was of no ordinary character. The British soldiers had measured their swords against some of the best troops of the empire, and with signal success. The 'Sepoy General' had indisputably shown ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "This is downright stupidity," he said to Major Stuart, who was blazing away as hard as ever he could cram cartridges into the hot barrels of his gun. "You can't tell whether you are hitting the bird or not. There! Three men fired at that bird—the other two were ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... animal in a front view, the hands being laid upon each other, with thumbs extending on each side to represent the ears. In each case the thumbs are generally moved forward and back, in the manner of the quadruped, which, without much apparent reason, has been selected as the emblem of stupidity. The sign, therefore, means stupid, fool. Another mode of executing the same conception—the ears of an ass—is shown in Fig. 99, where the end of the thumb is applied to the ear or temple and the hand is wagged up and down. Whether the ancient Greeks had the same low opinion of the ass ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... was a low thing for a man to do now, wasn't it? It wasn't like a man, that, nohow. But I got even with him: I pisoned his dog." His clumsy utterance, his rude embarrassed manner, set a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks. I do not think I ever appreciated the meaning of two words until I knew Irvine—the verb, loaf, and the noun, oaf; between them, they complete his portrait. He could lounge, and wriggle, and rub himself against the wall, and grin, and be more in everybody's way than any other two ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of life, stupidity, presumption, and blindness. If I had been less simple, should I have been taken in by Jardine's propositions? Should I have accepted this furniture, this apartment? He told me that the papers he made me sign ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... heavily built man of mature middle-age, of the blond North-German type, with a facial aspect that suggested stupidity and brutality. The stupidity of his mien masked an ability and shrewdness that was distinctly above the average, and the suggestion of brutality was belied by the fact that von Kwarl was as kind-hearted a man as one could meet with in a day's ...
— When William Came • Saki
... condition, as well as infidelity to her friendship for you, whom she might well see I adored:—but alas! I little suspected the obligations she had to you, and now I know what she is, am in the utmost consternation at her ingratitude, impudence and stupidity. Heavens! added he, could she have the vanity to imagine that the genteel garb you had put her in, could raise her to such an equality, as to make me hesitate one moment if I should give the balance of merit on her side, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... is the stupidity of the whites," said Roberts, pausing to take a swig from his glass and to curse the Samoan bar-boy in affectionate terms. "If the white man would lay himself out a bit to understand the workings of the black man's mind, most of ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... to officer our ranks, and that really, besides Mr. Gladstone, who was an old man, there was only Chamberlain.... Hartington was a real man, but a man on the wrong side, and with little chance of his getting rid of his prejudices, which were those, not of stupidity, but of ignorance; with his stables and his wealth it was useless to expect him to do serious work. Bright was a great name, and had a power of stringing together a series of sound commonplaces, so put that they were as satisfactory to the ear as distinct statements of policy would ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... dripping fog, and the iron railings for which I sought seemed to have melted away. For many minutes I beat the mist with my arms like one at blind man's buff, turning sharply in circles, cursing aloud at my stupidity and crying continually for help. At last a voice answered me from the fog, and I found myself held in the circle of a ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... with this about a month, there was scarce a phaenomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by it;—it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the family.—Poor devil, he would say,—he made way for the capacity of his younger brothers.—It unriddled the observations of drivellers and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... with the actual agents. Their habit of lining their pockets at the expense of their Government, their unfulfilled pretensions, their vanity and extravagance, and, above all, their unimaginative stupidity in their estimation of men—these things were apt in the early years of the war to bewilder the man who had been so often told to fall down before the great idol of ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason |
