"Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... youth must have drunk from some poisoned cup, something which turned our blood into quicksilver. I must live, or I must die. I must have excitement every hour, every second, or break down. There are others too—many others. No wonder that that idiot of a man in Harley Street talked to me gravely about my heart. No excitement. A quiet life! Bah! Such wishy-washy coffee and ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an idiot," admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-of-fact voice. "But she confessed to myself only the other day that she suffered from a sense of unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her own feelings surely. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... "If MacMaine deserted his former allegiance, knowing that they had a method of rendering the action of a space drive indetectable, then he was and is a blithering idiot. And ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... told you that makes you so stupid? You played the prude—I didn't know—Oh! yes, yes, now I remember; that's what it is—What was it you said to me about the little one? I believe you didn't want anyone to touch him! Idiot!" ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... evidently without the least unamiable intent, it made us both feel very cheap. After all, it WAS absurd to ask a man if he were surprised to find the country changed after fifty or sixty years of absence. Unless he was an idiot, and unable to read at that, he must have expected ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... popular for cranks to come here and threaten me," sneered the colonel. "It was started a while ago by a shock-headed idiot from ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... means jarring the rifle off and sending its charge into you who hold the barrel. Never try such a thing, whatever you do. It's the work of an idiot, my lads. A man that does such a thing oughtn't to be trusted ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... lots to see who is to go and kill M. Thiers," cries a red-haired gamin.—"Idiot," retorts his comrade, "they have no arms!"—"Listen, and you will hear," says the first, which is capital advice, if I could but follow it. The pushing becomes intolerable, when suddenly the bald head of an unfortunate ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... in retaining this view of the matter. They say that an amoeba is as much a living being as a man is, and do not allow that a well-grown, highly educated man in robust health is more living than an idiot cripple. They say he differs from the cripple in many important respects, but not in degree of livingness. Yet, as we have seen already, even common sense by using the word "dying" admits degrees of life; that is to say, it admits ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... my back is turned) coming drunk to the door to borrow money of her! I tell you, my marriage has wrecked my prospects. It's no use talking to me of my wife's virtues. She is a millstone round my neck, with all her virtues. If I had not been a born idiot I should have waited, and married a woman who would have been of some use to me; a woman ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the window pots of geraniums. It was like being surrounded with friends. The old man could be heard moving about in the next room, and planing or hammering, and talking to himself, calling himself an idiot, or singing in a loud voice, improvising a potpourri of scraps of chants and sentimental Lieder, warlike marches, and drinking songs. Here was shelter and refuge. Jean-Christophe would sit in the great armchair by the window, with ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... peculiar mind and character of Fanny made him, however, yet more anxious than otherwise he might have been. She certainly deserved not the harsh name of imbecile or idiot, but she was different from all other children; she felt more acutely than most of her age, but she could not be taught to reason. There was something either oblique or deficient in her intellect, which justified the most melancholy apprehensions; yet often, when some disordered, incoherent, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... thousand, so far as I'm allowed to inquire just now," corrected Bobby; "and I'm ordered to go into business with that and prove that I'm not such a blithering idiot that I can't be trusted with the rest of it, ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... hire out," continued Harry, with an earnestness that would have secured the attention of any man but an idiot. ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... of his gesture, and transferred their scorching disgust to her suitor. This was too much for Luttrel's courage. "You idiot!" she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... as you and everyone else in the Belt has. A single mistake can kill out here, and the fear that it will be some fool who makes a mistake that will kill hundreds is always with us. We've learned to live with that kind of fear; we've learned to take steps to prevent any idiot from throwing the wrong switch that would shut down a power plant or open an air lock at the ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... up the tablet, found the pencil Johnny had used, and did a little poetizing herself. She could have rhymed it much better, of course, if she had condescended to give any thought whatever to the matter, which she did not. Condescension went far enough when she stooped to reprove the idiot by finishing the verse that he had failed to finish, because he had already overtaxed his ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... great beech with drooping branches that rose behind the group, was sharply unhappy, and filled with a burning jealousy of Elizabeth, who queened it there in the middle of them—so self-possessed, agreeable, and competent. How well Arthur had been getting on with her! What a tiresome, tactless idiot she, Pamela, must seem in comparison! The memory of her talk with him made her cheeks hot. So few chances of seeing him!—and when they came, she threw them away. She felt for the moment as though she hated Elizabeth. Why had her father saddled her upon them? ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Clowes—what does he here?—but for my beard, and that he'd scarce expect to meet Charles—" Fownes checked himself, scowling. "Charles Nothing, a poor son of a gun of a bond-servant. Have done with such idiot schemes, man," he admonished. "For what did you run, if 't was not to bury yourself? And now you 'd risk all for a petticoat." Taking from his pocket the razor, he threw it into the bushes that lined the road, saying as he did ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... hurry. There he remained half an hour, leaning over the rails at the top of the pit, observing the animals clumsily swaying to and fro. The behaviour of these huge beasts pleased him. He examined them with gaping mouth and rounded eyes, partaking of the joy of an idiot when he perceived them bestir themselves. At last he turned homewards, dragging his feet along, busying himself with the passers-by, with ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... was only equalled by his dread of what might happen if she gave it to him. Alternately he yearned, and shuddered, On Monday he cried, "Idiot, to be frightened by such blague!" and on Tuesday he told himself, "All the same, there may be something in it!" It was thus tortured that he paid his respects to Florozonde at the theatre on the evening after she complained to her aunt. She was in ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... came. Moreover the barge was covered. We embarked on it at 9.30 and were towed along to the river steamer "Malamir," to which we transferred our stuff without difficulty as its lower deck was nearly level with the barge. The only floater was that my new bearer (who is, I fear, an idiot) succeeded in dropping my heavy kit bag into the river, where it vanished like a stone. Fortunately that kind of thing doesn't worry me much; but while I was looking for an Arab diver to fish for it it suddenly re-appeared ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... Livingstone possesses an excellent heart, a good fortune, and an uncommon stock of modesty. His intellects are, however, far from brilliant; indeed, but for one trait in his character he would pass for an idiot,—he has had the good sense never as yet to fall in love! In fact, the farce is founded upon that identical incident of his life which occasioned him to suppose that he had taken the tender ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... a fat, frog like expression of face," Eleanor read, "that her neighbors thought her an idiot. She was found to be the victim of a severe case of ad-e-noids." As she spelled out the word, she recognized it as the one Beulah had used earlier in the day. She remembered the sudden sharp look with which the ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... about twenty in number, and not greatly distinguished from the ordinary poor of a country town in New-England; unless by there being present three idiot daughters of one poor man, whose low and narrow foreheads, sunken temples, fixed but dead and unmeaning eyes, half opened and formless mouths, indicating even to childhood the absence of that intellectual light, which in those who possess it shines through the features. Insanity also was ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... The idiot shuffled two paces out of the way and looked at us over his shoulder when we brushed past him. The glance was unseeing and staring, a fascinated glance; but he did not turn to look after us. Probably ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... already appeared, and were they ever known on a living body? Of the others who died in this room I know nothing personally; but here is death, and in twenty-four hours the fact will be plain to the perception of an idiot. What has happened is this: the London police have heard of a famous, recent German case mentioned in 'Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschraft'—an astonishing thing. A woman, who had taken morphine and barbital, was found apparently ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... ears, and the livelihood, the means of contentment and influence, would be gone from so many restless paltering spirits! So what is left them but to play upon the hopes and fears and diseased consciences of men as they best can! The idiot! To tell a man when he is hipped to COME UNTO ME! Bah! Does the fool really expect any grown man or woman to believe in his or her brain that the man who spoke those words, if ever there was a man who spoke them, can at this moment anni domini"—George liked to be correct—"1870, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... “You idiot!” I roared, seizing him by the collar with both hands and shaking him fiercely. “You fool! Do the people around here shoot ducks at night? Do they shoot water-fowl with elephant guns and fire at people ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... very devil," he said, "I defy you to make this gentleman say yes when he has once said no. He turned me away like a dog; all right. Let them laugh that win. It was that old idiot of a Rousselet and that old simpleton of a coachman of Mademoiselle de Corandeuil's who told tales about me. I could tell ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... at me, you blockhead!" exclaimed Tartlet, who added example to precept. "Put your feet out! Further out! The heel of one to the heel of the other! Open your knees, you duffer! Put back your shoulders, you idiot! Stick up ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... he mention amongst other things that Reynolds was the worst idiot on the face of ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... a howling idiot, man. Lost! how could we be lost? Why, there's the track right ahead, and pretty ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... "You idiot!" He gripped my shoulders. His eyes were gleaming, his face haggard, but his pale lips twitched ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... redeem everything: and never does the impetuosity of lovers who have been caressing each other the whole evening with flaming gaze fail to do it! Yes, you can bring her home in triumph, she has now nobody but you, you have one more chance, that of taking your wife by storm! But no, idiot, stupid and indifferent that you are, you ask ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... was right; and I don't see that we need any higher or holier strength than that; or wisdom either. I know I have not that much; and yet men set me down in their fool's books as a wise man; an independent character; strong-minded, and all that cant. The veriest idiot who obeys his own simple law of right, if it be but in wiping his shoes on a door-mat, is wiser and stronger than I. But ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... idiot," bellowed Dynamite, stepping to the top of the stairs and peering down into the darkness, out of ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... of his mouth and broke into three pieces on the gravel path. He stood rolling his eyes, the exact picture of an idiot. "Lord, what a turnip I am!" he kept saying. "Lord, what a turnip!" Then, in a somewhat groggy kind of way, he began ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... homesteads; day after day to have my ears ring with the shrieks of the dying and the captives—for they have begun now to murder every male down to the baby at the breast—and to feel myself utterly fettered, impotent, sitting here like some palsied idiot, waiting for my end! I long to rush out, and fall fighting, sword in hand: but I am their last, their only hope. The governors care nothing for our supplications. In vain have I memorialised Gennadius and Innocent, with what little eloquence my misery has not stunned in me. But there ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... something possesses that sappy little Parmlee to make one of his visitations. John Milton says that out on the road it blows so you can't stand up. It's just like that idiot Parmlee to be blown in here, and not have strength of mind enough to ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... "Hamlet" in preference to Mr. Gilbert's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." Stevenson's "Macaire" may have all the literary quality that is claimed for it, although I personally think Stevenson was only making a delightful idiot of himself in it! Anyhow, it is frankly a burlesque, a skit, a satire on the real "Macaire." The Lyceum was not a burlesque house! Why should Henry have ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... youngest son. A poor idiot, who, thirty years of age, had the appearance of an overgrown boy. The other members of the Captain's large family were all married and settled prosperously in the world. Flora felt truly ashamed of the old man's meanness, but was glad to repay his trifling services in a way suggested by ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... than the last, and then, treading softly, was about to return to the workshop when the girl stirred and muttered in her sleep. At first she was unintelligible, then he distinctly caught the words "idiot" ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Venus Annodomini that his father was coming up, and she flushed a little and said that she should be delighted to make his acquaintance. Then she looked long and thoughtfully at "Very Young" Gayerson; because she was very, very sorry for him, and he was a very, very big idiot. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... biggest idiot unhung!" he confessed, as he took her in his arms. "But when I saw that the writing was yours, I fancied your father had by threats, or in some way, induced you to change your mind, and that you really thought, in duty to him, you ought not to see me any more. Say, I'm too happy ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... lived a poor old widow woman named Hungni, who had a little idiot son called Sachuli. She used to beg every day. One day when the son had grown up, he said to his mother. "What makes women laugh?" "If you throw a tiny stone at them," answered she, "they will laugh." ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... fool, an idiot, what you will; I could not do it. I can only compare my feeling to what Livingstone says he felt when he found himself face to face with a lion. He stood staring in the lion's eyes, unable ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... "No, idiot; from this moment you belong to me, for I have bought you, and you will be more useful to me ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... said Munchausen. "I'm a little rusty in the language, and, besides, you talk like an idiot. You might as well speak of the human language as the Simian language. There are French monkeys who speak monkey French, African monkeys who talk the most barbarous kind of Zulu monkey patois, and Congo monkey slang, and so on. Let Johnson send his little Boswell out to drum up information. If ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... have an inheritance, but that the law has established a right of acquiring possession in the property of another by prescription. The passage stands thus:—"If there be a person who is not a minor," (a man ceases to be a minor at fifteen years of age,) "nor impotent, nor diseased, nor an idiot, nor so lame as not to have power to walk, nor blind, nor one who, on going before a magistrate, is found incapable of distinguishing and attending to his own concerns, and who has not given to another person power ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... art unwelcome, likewise, insolent. Also art thou a fool, but it is an arch-idiot indeed that lacketh caution. This maiden is beloved of all the Israelites. Thou art one man, and alone. It would not be safe for thee to attempt to take her without help even across that little space between Masaarah and the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the Ugly-Wuglies. They're as harmless as tame rabbits. But an idiot might be frightened, and give the whole show away. If you're an idiot, say so, and I'll go back and tell them you're afraid to walk home, and that I'll go and let your aunt know ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... finish this; but how can a headless man perform an intelligent function? I have been bully-ragged all day by the builder, by his foreman, by the architect, by the tapestry devil who is to upholster the furniture, by the idiot who is putting down the carpets, by the scoundrel who is setting up the billiard-table (and has left the balls in New York), by the wildcat who is sodding the ground and finishing the driveway (after the sun went down), by a book ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... son are represented. Thus the sons of criminals, though they have the tendencies to crime, keep out of the clutches of the law. Neither will Heredity hold good upon the plane of the intellect, for many cases may be cited where a genius and an idiot spring from the same stock. The great Cuvier, whose brain was of about the same weight, as Daniel Webster's, and whose intellect was as great, had five children who all died of paresis, the brother of Alexander the Great was an idiot, and thus we hold that another solution must ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... to have Experience how a human creature felt In after life, who bore the burthen grave Of certainly believing God had dealt For once directly with him: did not rave —A maniac, did not find his reason melt —An idiot, but went on, in peace or strife, The world's way, lived an ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... his own property were managed. But then he paid a proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education. Melrose's woods, with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser is, scientifically, only a species of idiot. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of knighthood from the King at Whitehall. In 1612 he quitted the post of Attorney-general in Ireland, and was made one of his Majesty's English serjeants at law. He married Eleanor Touchet, youngest daughter of George lord Audley, by whom he had a son, an idiot who died young, and a daughter named Lucy, married to Ferdinand lord Hastings, and afterwards Earl of Huntingdon. His lady was a woman of very extraordinary character; she had, or rather pretended to have a spirit of prophecy, and her predictions ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... to confess it, I also have been in love with her; and how! But I was too small a personage, and too poor a devil, to be worth a serious thought of Miss Brandon. As soon as she felt sure that her abominable tricks had set my head on fire, and that I had become an idiot, a madman, a stupid fool—on that very day she laughed in my face. Ah! I tell you, she played with me as if I had been a child, and then she sent me off as if I had been a lackey. And now I hate her mortally, as I loved her almost criminally. Therefore, if I can help you, in secret, without ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... grasping our hero by both hands (and uncle Rik's grasp was no joke), "you're goin' in for batteries—galvanic batteries an' wires, are you? Well, lad, I always thought you more or less of a fool, but I never thought you such a born idiot as that comes to." ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... to my feelings toward the lady. I may say that I love her truly and deeply. But there is something in the current that runs through my veins that cries out against any form of the calculable. I do not know what I want; but I know that I want it. I'm talking like an idiot, I suppose, but I'm sure ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... patience at last, and very nearly told him he was an idiot, to his face; but Fred looked so handsome and miserable, that he relented; and at last it was arranged that Fred was to take a hundred pounds of mother's money—she would have given him the whole if she could, poor dear—and take cheap rooms ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a son who was deemed an idiot. The little fellow, when nine or ten years of age, was fond of drumming, and once dropt his drum-stick into the draw-well. He knew that his carelessness would be punished by its not being searched for, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... to want then, and want till you're gray, and longer," retorted the little man. "So we might as well move on. Tummas, you idiot, gad up ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... there ever was an idiot you are one!" said Lady Eustace, throwing up her hands. "To think that I should get a pony for my cousin Frank out of one ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... near-sighted, that he was well dressed and knew something of the modern German dramatists. You also told the conductor that he wore thick glasses and a silk hat. Now, I suppose I'm all kinds of an idiot for not understanding how you know these things about a man you never saw. But I confess it candidly; I ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... ended; the Sursum corda was uttered. Juba raised himself from the ground. When the words of consecration had been said, he adored with the faithful. After the mass, his attendants came to him; he was quite changed; he was quiet, harmless, and silent: the evil spirit had gone out; but he was an idiot. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... wish to know how he is preaching, let him imagine himself conversing earnestly with an intelligent and highly gifted, but uneducated man or woman, in his own parlor, or with his younger children. Would any but an idiot keep on talking, when, with half an eye, he might discern TEDIOUS, wrought by himself, upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... valuation, as well as the village itself with all its cottages and people, in order that the castle might have its proper setting out there. There were two more things he wanted included in the bargain—a village idiot and a family ghost ("hereditary spectre," he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... idiot!' I yells to Struthers as I jammed the youngster back into the cabin. All of a sudden the gas went out of him and he broke, hanging to ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the idiot, who had of late assumed all the port of coherence; he snatched and held a part in the colloquy, so did the dignity of labor annul the realization of his infirmity, "then I'd be obleeged ter him ef—ef—ef he'd ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... believe I go to Lady Delacour's to look for a wife? Do you think I'm an idiot? Do you think I could be taken in by one of the Stanhope school?" he said to the facetious friends who rallied him on his attachment. "Do you think I don't see as plainly as any of you that Belinda Portman is a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... clothes-less, comfortable, utterly unconcerned, and unaware that he or she has lost anything by leaving Clarence and Civilisation. It is this conduct that gains for the Bubi the reputation of being a bigger idiot than ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... was only fooling him, giving him a string thirty days long. He thought I was the real goods, liked me because I was not stupid, and liked me a bit, too, I think, for myself. Of course I had not the slightest intention of joining him in a life of sordid, petty crime; but I'd have been an idiot to throw away all the good things his friendship made possible. When one is on the hot lava of hell, he cannot pick and choose his path, and so it was with me in the Erie County Pen. I had to stay in with the "push," or do hard ...
— The Road • Jack London
... the telephone]. Put me through to Lord Hungerford Highcastle... I'm his brother, idiot... That you, Blueloo? Lady here at Little Pifflington wants to speak to you. Hold the line. [To the lady.] Now, madam [he hands ...
— Augustus Does His Bit • George Bernard Shaw
... little Jew store around the corner, "but I don't know that I could have done anything else. I shall have plenty to eat and a place to sleep, and at the same time I shall be earning money to pay off that debt I owe Dave Evans. What an idiot I was to keep that money! To pay for that one act of folly and dishonesty I am compelled to waste some of the best years of my life in the army. I hope I shall get a chance to show them that I am no coward, if ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... in answer to the reiterated prayers of the trembling servitor, "Silence! and follow, idiot! That was no superhuman voice—no yell of nightly lemures, but the death-cry, if I err not more widely, of some frail mortal like ourselves. There may be time, however, yet to save him, and I so truly marked the quarter whence it ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of art, such as Leonardo's "Virgin of the Rocks," or Dostoievsky's "Idiot," is intuitively recognized as being not only entirely satisfying to the aesthetic sense but also entirely satisfying to our craving for truth and our longing for the inmost secret of goodness. Every great work of art is the concentrated essence of a man's ultimate reaction to ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... and merry enough, but I hated being laughed at! At any rate, I could see no humor in Mr. Sothern's jokes at my expense. He played my lover in "The Little Treasure," and he was always teasing me—pulling my hair, making me forget my part and look like an idiot. But for dear old Mr. Howe, who was my "father" in the same piece, I should not have enjoyed acting in it at all, but he made amends for everything. We had a scene together in which he used to cry, and I used to cry—oh, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... in a rather surly fashion, whereupon the gentleman, who had not yet spoken, leaned forward, and said angrily, "You told us you knew this neighbourhood. You are an idiot!" ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... so malignant their staring eyes, and shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr. Bessel to attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they seemed, children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden the boon of being, whose only expressions and gestures told of the envy and craving for life that was their one ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... suppose I am such a fool as to sign bills to the full amount of these claims against me, when in a few months more I can walk out of prison without paying a shilling? Gentlemen, you take Howard Walker for an idiot. I like the Fleet, and rather than pay I'll stay here for ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his division of the county. The Marquis of Trowbridge did not know him, but regarded him as an objectionable person, who did not understand the nature of the duties which devolved upon him as a country gentleman; and the Marquis himself was always spoken of by Mr. Gilmore as—an idiot. On these various grounds the squire has hitherto regarded himself as being a little in advance of other squires, and has, perhaps, given himself more credit than he has deserved for intellectuality. But he is a man with a good heart, and a pure mind, generous, desirous ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... 'Pritchard:' according to Johnson, 'in private a vulgar idiot, but who, on the stage, seemed to become ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... these activities he was haled before the tribunal. He returned, the spring out of his step and his zest for stories quite gone. Javert had successively branded him an "Idiot" a ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... Paul, my boy," said Paradine, smiling; "but you don't imagine our young friend would be quite such an idiot as not to see your game! Why, he would pitch the Stone in the gutter or stamp it to powder, rather than let you get hold ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... person had spoken of me in this manner, I should have set him down as a mischievous idiot—to be kicked perhaps, but not to be noticed in ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... We rather like him. We can tolerate the Oracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising idiot on board, and they do distress the company. The one gives copies of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch—to anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly meant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwithstanding ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will be. If I were accused of committing a crime, which I knew another had committed and not myself, should I be such an idiot as not to give that other into custody if I got the chance? If you were not in such a cold, shivery, shaky state, I would treat you to a bit of my mind, you may rely ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... threes. The second is that when you find (as you often do) three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every day you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. In these small groups devoted to a drivelling dissipation there is almost always one man who seems to have condescended to his company; one man who, while he can talk a foul triviality with his fellows, can also talk politics with a Socialist, ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... was how it had ended! Michael, the mystic, the quixotic idiot, had taken into his camp a creature sick with smallpox, and she, Millicent, had probably contracted it by her act of rashness! The desert seemed scarcely large enough to hold her anger. It stifled and ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... empty-headed idiot. Everybody has always known that. And he's put above his place in the House. But it wouldn't do ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... this fellow has to say," Brand said, "will you? and give him distinctly to understand that if he tries again to see Miss Lind, I will break his head for him. What idiot could have given him Lind's ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... had not thought she would be quite so pretty. He had not believed her eyes would be so beautiful, or their lashes so long, or the touch of her hand so pleasantly unnerving. And now, in place of asking for her name and the reason for her visit, he became an irrational idiot, explaining to her certain matters of physiology that had to do with aortas and aneurismal sacs. He had finished before the absurdity of the situation dawned upon him, and with absurdity came the humor of it. Even dying, Kent could not fail to see the funny side of a thing It struck him ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... such a favorite with his classmates. There was not a fellow in the school who had more friends. To be sure they called him "slow coach", "old tortoise", "fatty", and bestowed upon him many another gibing epithet, frankly telling him to his face that he was a big idiot. Nevertheless they did not conceal from him that he was the sort ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... the exploit well featured in design, Large in idea, and imaginative; I had not deemed the blinkered English folk So capable of view. Their fate contrived To place an idiot at the helm of it, Who marred its working, else it had been hard If things had not gone seriously for us. —But see, a lady saunters hitherward Whose gait proclaims her Madame Metternich, One that I fain would ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... anti-machinery rioters of 1812-1861, after a Leicestershire idiot, Ned Ludd, of 1780; appearing first at Nottingham, the agitation spread through Derby, Leicester, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, finally merging in the wider industrial and political agitations and riots that marked the years that followed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... idiot!" you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a savage haul, and away goes your side. You lay down the mallet and start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business, and, at the same time, he starts ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... carriage drove in, up came the swarm of idlers from the wharf, dragging themselves heavily along, laughing stupidly at the ponderous gambols and grimaces of a huge idiot boy, who, on seeing a new arrival, rolled rather than walked up from the water with his hand extended, crying out—money—money. It was all the language the poor creature possessed. He had learned to beg, and that was knowledge enough ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... is it of ours?' said others. 'Let the idiot go,' and went away. But the rest gathered up stones and mud and threw at him. At last, when he was bruised and cut, the hunter crept away into the woods. And it was evening ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... have been such an idiot!" he muttered to himself again. He found some bread and cheese in his pocket, which he ate with a good appetite. His headache had gone, and he felt much refreshed after his sleep. Then he put on his ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... trade he simply robbed me of a fine mare I had, that cost me one-an'-a-quarter. Kathleen an' me was already engaged, but when old man Galloway heard of it, he told me the jig was up an' no such double-barrel idiot as I was shu'd ever leave any of my colts in the Galloway paddock—that when he looked over his gran'-chillun's pedigree he didn't wanter see all of 'em crossin' back to the same damned fool! Oh, he was nasty. He said that my colts was dead sho' to be luffers with wheels in their heads, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... would die, or at best be paralyzed. Quick, however, had a different opinion. He said that he had seen two men in this state before from the concussion caused by the bursting of large shells near to them, and that they both recovered although one of them became an idiot. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... unmanliness and indolence of his father. The old family servant takes up the tale, and says to the youth:—'When you grow up you must be more of a man than your father.' All the world are agreed that he who minds his own business is an idiot, while a busybody is highly honoured and esteemed. The young man compares this spirit with his father's words and ways, and as he is naturally well disposed, although he has suffered from evil influences, he rests ...
— The Republic • Plato
... it was the milkman." Miss Carter turned and ran into her flat, Mary Rose at her heels. After a moment's hesitation, in which he called himself a bashful idiot, Mr. Strahan deserted his doorway for his neighbor's. On the top shelf of a cupboard like that which had been in Mrs. Bracken's kitchen Mary Rose saw a bottle of milk. She groaned. But Miss Carter gave a pull somewhere and sent it higher. There on the lower shelf, swinging ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... Mountain of the Gods: the time, in or about the year 39 B.C.:—and thence try to envisage the world as Those do who guide but are not involved in the heats and dusts of it. The Western World; in which Rome, caput mundi, was the only thing that counted. Caput mundi; but a kind of idiot head at that: inchoate, without co-ordination; maggots scampering through what might have been the brain; the life fled, and that great rebellion of the many lives which we call decay having taken its place. And yet, it was no true season ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the stock when you know we haven't a dollar put towards the 'Rest' and the money is just pouring out for expenses and directors' fees. There's barely enough left over to keep up the sham of dividends. You know it as well as I do. I've been an ass and an idiot, but I'm done with living a lie. Judge Hildreth, I came to tell you that if you don't do the square thing by these people who have trusted ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... "Idiot," cried Dorothy, with tears raining down her face, "don't you know I'd go with you if you had to grind an organ in the street, and collect the money for you in a tin cup till we got enough for a monkey? What kind of a dinky little silver-plated wedding present ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... all his dignity he is only a stupid boy, and he understands nothing about love; as long as I can remember he has hung about Elsbeth Douglas; but do you suppose he has ever once dared raise his eyes to her? She, of course, would not dream of taking such a languishing idiot. There is her cousin Leo—he is ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... story exactly in his picture of Dr. Blimmer's system of teaching. That poor babe, Paul Dombey, might as well have been fed to an insatiable ogre as to have been placed in the hands of that pompous idiot. And our country is full of little Paul Dombeys, blossoming for eternity. How much better to have let the poor little fellow play in the sands upon the beach with his sister Florence and old Glubb. But the precocious innocent must be murdered ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... though in the presence of the Evil One, so completely had the frenzy of this poor deluded idiot developed itself in this short interval. Some violent paroxysm was evidently approaching; and her object was, if possible, to procure the liberation of Egerton before her guide should be rendered either unwilling or incapable. He suddenly assumed a more calm and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... "Idiot child." The Company Commander roused himself from his gentle doze to contemplate the delinquent. Then he smiled. "Man, he's asleep; the boy's beat to ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... To see her, you would swear she had set herself the task of making an accurate count of noses in that seething mass of raw beef below her. After a minute she ventured to glance furtively at Keith, and, finding his eyes turned her way, blushed again and called herself an idiot. After that, she straightened in the saddle, and became the self-poised Miss Lansell, ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... shouted, fiercely, in a hoarse, ugly, guttural voice, "you fool! You idiot—let go! What the devil's the matter with you? What are you trying to do? Have you lost your ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... candle burning in it showed a bed, with posts reaching to the ceiling, and an ancient mahogany chest. A handful of fire burned in the deep fireplace, and before it crouched Mack, an old slave of Mr. Robinson's—a miserable idiot, with just mind enough to perform ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... to keep what I have, not risk it by grasping more. Am I not the beloved of the pope? shall I hazard his excommunication? Am I not the most powerful of the nobles? should I be more if I were king? At my age, to talk to me of such stuff!—the man's an idiot. Besides," added the old man, sinking his voice, and looking fearfully round, "if I were a king, my sons might poison me for the succession. They are good lads, Adrian, very! But such a temptation!—I would not throw it in their way; ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... word. Clear! Why, you stated it as clear as the sun to anybody but an abject idiot; but it's that confounded cocktail ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... idiot he ever met!" was on the tip of Raymonde's tongue, but she restrained herself, and, drawing her victim aside, whispered honeyed words calculated to soothe and cheer, adding some ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... trenches somewhat on his dignity? Yet the regret of maturity for its past joys amounts to nothing less than this. Such regret is regret that we cannot lie in the sunshine and play with our toes,—that we are no longer but one remove, or but few removes, from the idiot. Away with such folly! Every season of life has its distinctive and appropriate enjoyments, which bud and blossom and ripen and fall off as the season glides on to its close, to be succeeded by others better and brighter. There is no consciousness of loss, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and fantastic varieties are turned into priests and prophets and become the founders of the earlier religions. A somewhat similar state of affairs of course prevailed among civilized races up to within the last three-quarters of a century. The idiot and the harmless lunatic were permitted to run at large, and the latter, as court and village fools, furnished no small part of popular entertainment, since organized into vaudeville. Only the dangerous or violent maniacs were ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the blue shirt. Personally, when I finally emerged from the examining room, I felt that my teeth were all wrong, my eyes crossed, my heart a wreck, and that I was not only a physical ruin, but a gibbering idiot as well. That I really passed the examination successfully was no fault of the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... her; nobody went with her; she isn't visiting anybody. Good heavens, Bob, you'd make a helpless, simpering little idiot out of Ruth if you had your way. She isn't a child. She isn't an inexperienced young girl. She's capable of keeping out of silly difficulties. She can be trusted. Let her use her judgment and good sense a little. It won't hurt her a bit. It will do her good. Don't you ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... little idiot," Brinnaria hurled at her, "you never could stand a flogging, you'd die of it most likely. To a certainty you'd be ill, and have to be sent off to be nursed and kept away for a month or more to recover. I ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... I want not your pity. I am sane. Would I had been born a drivelling idiot, and remained so ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... idiot, Heathcote," cried the Jehu, as he found himself suddenly seized on either hand. "Let go, while I'm driving. Do you hear, Coote; let go, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... on for a great while, and say all manner of entertaining things. But all's gone. I am now an idiot.—Yours ever, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the depths of "apparent failure," there are ten who go under after a more or less protracted struggle, and sink contentedly to the bottom. The explanation of this is that though every child has capacity (apart, of course, from the congenital idiot and the mentally "defective"), there are many kinds of capacity which a formal examination fails to discover, and which the education that is dominated by the prize system fails to develop. The ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes |
