"Inane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dry, shrewd, water carrier of his, Cob, rail at the 'roguish tobacco:' he would leave the stocks for worse men, and make it present whipping for either man or woman who dealt with a tobacco-pipe. But King James, in his inane 'Counterblast,' is more violent than even Cob. He argues that to use this unsavory smoke is to be guilty of a worse sin than that of drunkenness, and asks how men, who cannot go a day's journey without sending for hot coals to kindle their tobacco, can be expected to endure the privations of war. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... present. How, therefore, do they know whether they acquire merit de congruo or de condigno [in full, or half]? But this whole matter was fabricated by idle men [But, good God! these are mere inane ideas and dreams of idle, wretched, inexperienced men who do not much reduce the Bible to practise], who did not know how the remission of sins occurs, and how, in the judgment of God and terrors of conscience, trust in works is driven out of us. Secure hypocrites always judge that they acquire ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... will do no more,—they have lost the capacity for doing," said the elder girl. "They fuss and talk, but they are really inane. They make everything fit into an old, inert idea. Love is a dead idea to them. They don't come to one and love one, they come to an idea, and they say 'You are my idea,' so they embrace themselves. As if I were any ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Brard and Saint-Omer," caligraphist[TN-110] and sworn expert in the courts of law. Joseph Prudhomme is the synthesis of bourgeois imbecility; radiant, serene, and self-satisfied; letting fall from his fat lips "one weak, washy, everlasting flood" of puerile aphorisms and inane circumlocutions. He says, "The car of the state floats on a precipice." "This sword is the proudest day of my life."—Henri Monnier, Grandeur et ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... its modes of thought and feeling, its business methods, its politics, its literature, its amusements, does he increasingly realize the gulf set between an Oriental and an Occidental. The inner life of the spirit of an Oriental would be utterly inane, spiritless to the average Occidental. The "old resident" accordingly knows from long experience what the tourist only guesses from a hasty glance, that the characteristic differences distinguishing the peoples of the East and the West are racial and ineradicable. An Oriental is an Oriental, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... only, in public, to those who are innocent in idiotism, not to the more malicious clowns, who thrust their degraded motley conspicuously forth amidst the fair colors of earth, and mix their incoherent cries with the melodies of eternity, break with their inane laugh upon the silence which Creation keeps where Omnipotence passes most visibly, and scrabble over with the characters of idiocy the pages that have been written by the finger ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... sort of clucking noise, which, arguing from his previous experience, or from the analogy of the hen, he judged would have a soothing effect, and inspire confidence in the youthful mind, and running a wooden horse of peculiar hideousness backwards and forwards in a way that was little short of inane. This went on for some minutes, and then all of a sudden the lad stretched out both his little arms and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... success. When it came to Columbus he cracked the shell at one end, making a flat surface on which the egg stood upright; thus demonstrating that a thing might be wonderful, not because it was difficult or impossible, but merely because no one had ever thought of doing it before. A sufficiently inane story, and by no means certainly true; but there is enough character in this little feat, ponderous, deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and deceitful quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... wanted to stop at a shop window, and I wouldn't let you. The window contained an inane repetition display of thirty horrible prints at two and six each of Lalan's 'Triumph.'" Leighton sprang to his feet. "God! Poster lithographs at two and six! Boy, Lalan's 'Triumph' was a triumph once. He turned it into a mere success. Before the paint was dry, he let them commercialize ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... enough to make me think I'm drunk. Then I keep on until I think I'm sober. Then I know I'm drunk!" They are beginning, unfortunately for their audiences, to take themselves seriously. This is a pity, for the more spontaneous and inane they are, the more they are in their place on the vaudeville stage. There is more make-believe and hard work on the halls to-day, and I think they are none the better for it. As soon as art becomes self-conscious, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... two inane songs, entitled 'Holy be the Pilgrim's Sleep' and 'Oh Lady Fair.' For both pilgrim and lady arrangements are made for spending the night somewhere, and in each song occur ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... mere matter of display and ostentation. Many despise wealth, and contented with little take pleasure in slender diet and inexpensive living. Though some are inflamed with desire for office, many there are who hold it in so low esteem that they can imagine nothing more inane or worthless. Other things too, which seem to some admirable, very many regard as of no value. But all have the same feeling as to friendship,— alike those who devote themselves to the public service, those who take delight in learning ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... the price of margarine— Occupy the hours of leisure that he snatches from the screen; But the works of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE he dismisses as inane, And he harbours no ambition to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... or a portion of it, was again at work, playing an inane melody, and upon the small stage two remarkably well-developed and aquiline-featured women of mature age, dressed as very young children in white socks, short skirts which displayed frilled drawers, and muslin bonnets adorned with floating blue and pink ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... as she walked in front with Beatrice heard Matty's little and inane giggles, and her heart swelled ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... Polly's superior rebuff, Helen came to the inane Lily Pearl's support in a manner she knew would hit loyal ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... residence, Scamperley." By the way, what an odd phrase that same "entertaining" always sounds to my ear. When I learn that the Marquis of Mopes has been "entertaining" his friends, the Duke of Drearyshire, Count and Countess Crotchet, Viscount Inane, Sir Simon and Lady Sulkes, the Honourable Hercules Heavyhead, etc., etc., at his splendid seat, Boudoir Castle, I cannot refrain from picturing to myself the dignified host standing on his bald head for the amusement of his ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... monstrous height against a tree trunk, now suddenly falling backward and darting swiftly down a forest aisle in panic fear, only to spring forth with gigantic leaps and grotesque waxings and wanings and inane caperings at his heels as the firelight ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... tavern—suburban in those days—or house of call for City tradesmen. There he smokes half a pipe and drinks a pint of ale. In the evening at another tavern he smokes a pipe and drinks two pints of cider, winding up the inane day at his club, where he smokes three pipes before coming home at twelve to go to ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... life it was—feeble beyond expression, and ugly with the ugliness of savagery. She wriggled and screwed up her skinny features with inane ferocity. A motherless wallaby would have submitted to human solace and ministrations with daintier mien; but the whole household thrilled with excitement. Could the spluttering spark of life be made to glow? That was the all-absorbing topic for days. Gradually ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... that men of weight and high office are always a trifle ponderous when conversing with ladies. Young lieutenants—or, at all events, officers not above the rank of captain—are far more successful at the game. How they contrive to be so God only knows. Let them but make the most inane of remarks, and at once the maiden by their side will be rocking with laughter; whereas, should a State Councillor enter into conversation with a damsel, and remark that the Russian Empire is one of vast extent, or utter a compliment which he has elaborated ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... agreed in this, if they could agree in nothing else. "Guisiani fratres," said Beza, "ita inter se regnum sunt partiti ut regi nihil praeter inane nomen sit relictum." Beza, ubi supra. Cardinal Santa Croce used almost the same expression: "Eo devenerat ut regi solum nomen reliquisse, alia omnia sibi sumsisse videretur." Commentarii, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... adventure. I was thirty-five, and I had no more idea of marrying than I had of hanging myself. Young girls seemed to me to be inane, and I loved pleasure. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... at last, and comforted himself with the reflection that the most eminent K.C.'s often made inane remarks with the idea of ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... I soon made up my mind that the formula of his character was in the clearing of the inward scene by his so preordained lack of imagination. If he was serene this was still further simplifying. After that I had time to meditate on the line that divides the serene from the inane, the simple from the silly. He wasn't clever; the fonder theory quite defied our cultivation, though Mrs. Pallant tried it once or twice; but on the other hand it struck me his want of wit might be a good defensive weapon. It wasn't the sort of density that would let ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... who cherish this poem in their hearts are justly incensed whenever they come across a copy of it to which some one, a few years ago, had the effrontery to add this inane stanza:— ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... cowardice; and even of these they speak obscurely. Nothing is said of an under world. They supposed the ghosts at death floated upward naturally, true children of the mist, and dwelt forever in the air, where they spent an inane existence, indulging in sorrowful memories of the past, and, in unreal imitation of their mortal occupations, chasing boars of fog amid hills of cloud and valleys of shadow. The authority for these views is Ossian, "whose genuine strains," Dr. Good observes, "assume a higher importance ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... "crude and insincere"! "Too trivial"! or for an instant pause And doubly damn with negligent applause! Impute, in fine, the prowess of the Vicar Less to repentance than to too much liquor! Find Louis naught! de Gatinais inane! Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain, And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine! Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save— You're damned, and Bulmer's hooted ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Quae tunc documenta futuri? Quae voces avium? quanti per inane volatus? Quis vatum discursus erat? Tibi corniger Ammon, Et dudum taciti rupere silentia Delphi. Te Persae cecinere Magi, te sensit Etruscus Augur, et inspectis Babylonius horruit astris; Chaldaei stupuere senes, Cumanaque rursus Itonuit rupes, rabidae delubra Sibyllae. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... nubes abiit. Ut in aequore summo Umbra viri visa est, visam fera saevit in umbram. Utque Iovis praepes, vacuo cum vidit in arvo Praebentem Phoebo liventia terga draconem, 715 Occupat aversum, neu saeva retorqueat ora, Squamigeris avidos figit cervicibus ungues, Sic celeri missus praeceps per inane volatu Terga ferae pressit dextroque frementis in armo Inachides ferrum curvo ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... laughing. 'Possibly in your place I might plunge into the unspeakable delights of that ascetic course; it possesses the merits of novelty and originality, and it is not very expensive. Your Monna Lisa is sweet, but inane as music for the ballet; ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... foundation, having no foundation. visionary &c. (imaginary) 515; immaterial &c. 137; spectral &c. 980; dreamy; shadowy; ethereal, airy; cloud built, cloud formed; gossamery, illusory, insubstantial, unreal. vacant, vacuous; empty &c. 187; eviscerated; blank, hollow; nominal; null; inane. Phr. there's nothing in it; "an ocean of dreams without a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the players never do anything else but read the parts. They read, crossing back and forth whenever the coach thinks they ought to cross, and it doesn't mean a thing. I watched that very thing in an amateur show not so long ago, and it was inane. Nobody should move from one place on the stage to another without a reason for moving. There is a reason for every inflection of the voice. A person with common sense will read a part intelligently, but only ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... so graceful a faith the Greeks had their share; what was crude and inane in it becoming, in the atmosphere of their energetic, imaginative intelligence, refined and humanised. The oak-grove of Dodona, the seat of their most venerable oracle, did but perpetuate the fancy that the sounds of the wind in the trees may be, for certain prepared and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... and the dark tardy when he marched up the street. It was a gantlet of eyes and whispers. He felt inane to an imbecility. The whole village was eying the boss on his way to spark a stenog. His little love-affair was as clandestine as ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... something almost putrescent, which radiated from his person. A contingent of Little White Cows, a kind of bodyguard, stood at a respectful distance beyond, intent upon his every movement. The Master never stirred. He sat there to be looked at—accustomed to homage almost divine; beatifically inane. Like the Christians of old, he wore no hat. The head was nearly bald. A long cloak, glistening with grease stains, swathed his limbs and portly belly, on which one suspected multitudinous wrinkles of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... philosophy of Robespierre's pageant was so retrograde and false, its politics were still more inane. It is a monument of presumptuous infatuation that any one should feel so strongly as he did that order could only be restored on condition of coming to terms with religious use and prejudice, and then that he should dream that his Supreme Being—a mere didactic phrase, the deity of a poet's ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... descent into matter where spirit identifies itself with every form of life, and assimilates their essences. This cyclic pilgrimage it undertook, foreseeing pain, but "preferring free will to passive slavery, intellectual, self- conscious pain, and even torture, 'while myriad time shall flow,' to inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude," foreseeing pain, but knowing that out of it all would come a nobler state of life, a divinity capable of rule, a power to assist in the general evolution of nature. It is true in the experience of many that ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... faces at the boarding house table, hearing the same stale jokes or caustic remarks about Mrs. Atterson's food from Fred Crackit and the young men boarders of his class, or the grumbling of Mr. Peebles, the dyspeptic invalid, or the inane monologue ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... order for a pickax, a spade, a military gas-mask, and six carboys of sulfuric acid, all to be delivered the next morning at the cellar door of the shunned house in Benefit Street. After that I tried to sleep; and failing, passed the hours in reading and in the composition of inane verses to ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... heaven-born melodies to descend THROUGH them as though they were mere conductors of sound; or those who, feebly imitating other composers, measure out crotchets and quavers by rule and line, and flood the world with inane and perishable, and therefore useless, productions. ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... is this world," wrote Carlyle in his diary at the opening of the year 1835. Without the few great men who, like Carlyle, can lift themselves and others above it, it would be still noisier, still more inane. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... these wise statesmen, are so fond of showing their parts and powers as to make their consultations very tedious. Young Ned Rutledge is a perfect bob-o-lincoln,—a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock; excessively vain, excessively weak, and excessively variable and unsteady, jejune, inane, and puerile." Sharp words these! This session of Congress resulted in little else than the interchange of opinions between Northern and Southern statesmen. It was a mere advisory body, useful, however, in preparing the way for a union of the Colonies in the coming contest. It evidently did not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... staring down at it solemnly, for once no inane grin on the supervisor's face. And that of Ross Metaxa was more ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... judge of a horse, and, though he be over head in debt to the money-lender, must make as if to buy. That was the reason that Sahib after Sahib, rolling along in a stage-carriage, would stop and open talk. Some would even descend from their vehicles and feel the horses' legs; asking inane questions, or, through sheer ignorance of the vernacular, grossly insulting ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... unfortunate wretch who had waded to the rescue. The horse, made sadder if not wiser by blows from his master, allowed himself to be backed for a certain distance, until it was safe for me to descend and take my postponed bath. I had but time to bow and murmur more inane thanks, to receive another bow and polite murmur in return (both murmurs being drowned by the sea) when the retrograde movement of the bathing-machine parted me and my living life-preserver. He stood in the water looking after us long enough ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... it. The guileless tried to see the imaginary line of the meridian which the sophisticated pointed out to them on the water; the cream-peppermint lady went so far as to say she felt the jar as the steamer passed over it. Conjectures, witty, mathematical, or inane, were made as to the identity of to-day, if yesterday was Friday and to-morrow going ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... carried out, not without much confusion and loss of paint, in the small hours of a dark and drizzling morning. Boisterous little tugs sorted us into parties, and half lost under the massive bulwarks of the Johannes we were carried off into a black inane. If any doubt remained as to the significance of our change of cruising-grounds, dawn dispelled it. View there was none from the deck of the Dulcibella; it was only by standing on the mainboom that you could see over the embankments to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... at what door the judges came out of the court, as he was a countryman, and was curious to see their Lordships dressed in their usual every-day clothes. The request was complied with; and Will, as a stupid gazing man from the Highlands, who wished to get an inane curiosity gratified by what had nothing curious in it, was placed in a convenient place to see the Solomons pass forth on their way to their respective dwellings. They soon came; and Will's lynx eye caught, in a moment, the face of the President, whom, to his ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... regulations for the benefit of all; it would be necessary to do so unless the individuals were not only perfect, but also absolutely of one mind on all subjects relating to their welfare. Can the imagination picture existence more inane? ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... embarrassing; he apologised; but her face was not startled; it was not aware of him; it wore a singular expression of resolution. A very singular expression which, as it were, detained him for a moment. In order to cover his embarrassment, he made some inane remark on the weather, upon which, instead of returning another inane remark according to the tacit rules of the game, she only gave him a smile of unfathomable meaning. Nothing could have been more singular. The good-looking ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Biographies written of this Cromwell, written in shallow, sceptical generations that could not know or conceive of a deep, believing man, are far more obscure than Cromwell's Speeches. You look through them only into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. "Heats and jealousies," says Lord Clarendon himself: "heats and jealousies," mere crabbed whims, theories, and crotchets; these induced slow, sober, quiet Englishmen to lay down their ploughs and work; and fly into red fury of confused war against the best-conditioned of Kings! Try ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... does not always involve a mischievous lie, but only where it is contrary to the love of God or our neighbor, either in itself or in its cause. That a man boast, through mere pleasure in boasting, is an inane thing to do, as the Philosopher remarks (Ethic. iv, 7): wherefore it amounts to a jocose lie. Unless perchance he were to prefer this to the love of God, so as to contemn God's commandments for the sake of boasting: for then it would be against the charity of God, in Whom alone ought our mind ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... "hist" had been so fierce as to be almost like a rap from a policeman's club, and there was an enforced and temporary suspension of the inane chatter. The attendant youth tried to assume the incensed and threatening look with which an ancient gallant would have laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. But some animals and men only become absurd when they try to appear formidable. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... walked together, he would pour forth a stream of reasoning so lucid, out of depths so profound and reach conclusions so cogent, that he seemed fairly inspired. At other times he would develop a line of argument so outworn, and arrive at conclusions so inane, that I could not but look into his face closely to see if he could be really in earnest; but it always bore that same expression—forbidding the slightest suspicion that he was uttering anything save that which he believed, at least for ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... after sunset, the twins came rushing in. Evidently they were full of secrets—they were always a close corporation of two—and their inane giggles and breathless suppression of what they were obviously longing to impart to their mother and Aileen, told on Mrs. Caukins' already ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... has been spent in trying to produce human speaking-machines. Words are built up out of letters; short words are grouped into inane sentences such as are never used; and sentences are arranged into unnatural and insipid discourse. To grasp the thin ghost of the thought, the little human spirit must reverse its instinct to reach toward the ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... earth? O God! for which of my sins dost thou punish me in my children? For mercy's sake, call me home before she also leaves me, who is the joy of my life. And I can do nothing to turn aside this fatality—stupid inane old man that I am! And this Jacques de Boiscoran—if he were guilty, after all? Ah the wretch! I would hang him ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... into slothful satisfaction and enjoy a tasteless leisure or with inane self-deception hide his head under the shadows of his wings, like the foolish bird, which thereby hopes to escape the wrath to come. The white race, through philanthropy, has done much; but its vicarious task culminated when it developed the first generation of educated men and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... he turned to me with an inane smile which occupied all his face. 'Good evening,' he said, in a baronial drawl. 'Miss Cayley, I gathah? I asked the skippah's leave to set next yah. We ought to be friends—rathah. I think yah know my poor deah old ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of Pasquin attests, as we have said, the readiness of London audiences in 1736 to applaud an honest and humorous presentation of wicked Ministers, corrupt clergy, lawyers, and doctors, inane Laureates, and degrading public entertainments. Mrs Delany, gathering London news for Dean Swift, writes on April 22, "When I went out of Town last Autumn, the reigning madness was Farinelli; I find it now ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Scott's outdoor romances appeared, Cooper discovered his talent, and wrote The Spy and the Leather-Stocking tales. Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen began to improve or naturalize the English novel before Scott attempted it.] That Scott was influenced by this inane fashion appears plainly in some of his characters, his fine ladies especially, who pose and sentimentalize till we are mortally weary of them; but this influence passed when he discovered his real power, which was to portray men and women in vigorous ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... blackguard does. The emptiness of the person to whom it applies is very harmless. Its etymon blague (bladder, tobacco-bag), the pouch, which smoking voluptuaries use to deposit their tobacco, is perfectly symbolic of the inane, bombastic, windy, and long-winded speeches and sayings of the blagueur. Every French commercial traveller, buss-tooter, and Parisian jarvy is one. When he deports himself with modesty, and shows a gentlemanly tact ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... labant, gelidus concrevit frigore sanguis. Tum lapis ipse, viri vacuum per inane volutus, Nec spatium evasit totum, nec ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... and Garnache, scanning the youth's face with foolishly smiling eyes, noted the flush on his cheek, the odd glitter in his handsome eyes, and even caught a whiff of wine upon his breath. Alarm grew in Garnache's mind, but his face maintained its foolish vacancy, its inane smile. He bowed again and, with a wave of the hands ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... line of her lips, as they closed on each other, said all the rest; all the cruel truths about his unspeakable, inane, coarse follies, his laziness, his excesses, his lies, his deceptions, his bad faith, his truculence, his improvidence, his shameful waste and ruin of his life and hers. She doubted whether he realized ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... CHAOS next the notes melodious pass, How suns exploded from the kindling mass, 490 Waved o'er the vast inane their tresses bright, And charm'd young Nature's opening eyes with light. Next from each sun how spheres reluctant burst, And second planets issued from the first. And then to EARTH descends the moral strain, How isles, emerging from the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limbos, and in either case be ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... ordinary apparel. But nothing can be more artificial than the behavior of people together who rarely "dress up." It seems impossible to make the conversation as fine as the clothes, and so it dies in a kind of inane helplessness. Especially is this true in the country, where people have not obtained the mastery of their clothes that those who live in the city have. It is really absurd, at this stage of our civilization, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... myself,—to books, "the immortal children" of "the understanding, courage, and abilities" of the wise and good,—ay! and to inane, drivelling, doting books, the bastard progeny of vanity and ignorance,—books over which one dawdles in an amusing dream and pleasant spasm of amazement, and which teach us wisdom as tipsy Helots taught the Spartan boys sobriety. Montaigne "never travelled without books, either ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... colder northern climes. Eyes,—so potent to bewitch and to command, are a strangely neglected influence in certain forms of social intercourse. English eyes are too often dull and downcast, and wear an inane expression of hypocrisy and prudery; unless they happen to be hard and glittering and meaningless; but in southern climes, they throw out radiant invitations, laughing assurances, brilliant mockeries, melting ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... advance. The book, with its delicious rhymes by Hamish Hendry, is one to treasure, as is also her "Adventures in Toy Land," designs marked by the diablerie of which she, alone of lady artists, seems to have the secret. In this the wooden, inane expression of the toys contrasts delightfully ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... diatribes, but a stalwart man of six feet, with a comely face bespeaking solid determination in every line. And when one comes to think of it, it is not the big blustering man or woman that rules, but the quiet, apparently inane specimens that look so meek that they are held up as models of propriety and gentleness. Miss Grosvenor immediately nailed him for her meeting, and politics being the only subject discussed, he aired his particular bug. This was his disgust at the top-heaviness of the Labour party's ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Impurity malpureco. Impute alkalkuli. In en. In front antauxe. In place of, to put anstatauxi. In that manner tiamaniere. Inability neebleco. Inaccessible neatingebla. Inaccurate neakurata. Inaction senokupo. Inactive senokupa. Inadvertence malatenteco. Inane malplena. Inanimate senviva. Inappreciable netaksebla. Inappropriate nedeca. In as much as tial ke. Inattention neatenteco. Inaudible neauxdebla. Inauspicious nefavora. Incalculable nekalkulebla. Incapable nekapabla. Incapacity nekapableco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... However sweet girls may be as individuals, or in small groups, they are in the mass diabolically cruel, and their cruelty is directed especially against men. I know. I have walked up to a college building to pay a call, while thirty girls, seated on the steps, played, sang, and whistled an inane marching tune, with the rhythm of which my steps could not but keep time. I have been the only man in a dining-room full of college girls. A hundred of them put down their knives and forks with a clatter as I entered, and a hundred pairs of mischievously solemn eyes followed my every movement. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... me. I remembered that I was fasting, and that I had not a penny. To complete the measure of my misfortune, my hat was spoiled by the rain. How was I to appear in the drawing-room of a woman of fashion with an unpresentable hat? I had always cursed the inane and stupid custom that compels us to exhibit the lining of our hats, and to keep them always in our hands, but with anxious care I had so far kept mine in a precarious state of efficiency. It had been neither strikingly new, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... his convictions as a woman-hater and genuinely despising Hilma both as a girl and as an inferior, the idea of her worried him. Most of all, he was angry with himself because of his inane sheepishness when she was about. He at first had told himself that he was a fool not to be able to ignore her existence as hitherto, and then that he was a greater fool not to take advantage of his position. Certainly he had not the remotest idea ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... had prevailed upon her husband to draw his first cheque upon his house to the tune of L.500, and to prolong their holiday by visiting in succession the south of France, Switzerland, and Italy. The fool, after an inane resistance, consented; his cheque was converted to money—the horses were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the veranda rail whistling the lively, lilting measures of "There's a Girl Wanted There," "the silly ass" seemed to become a thousand times sillier than ever. He set down his cup, and, turning to Anita, said with an inane sort of giggle, "I say, you know, here's a lark. Let's have a game of 'Slap Hand,' you and I—what? Know it, don't you? You try to slap my hands, and I try to slap yours, and whichever succeeds in doing it first gets a prize. Awful fun, don't you ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... many do not. Unspeakable imbroglio of negotiations, mostly insane, welters over all the Earth; the Belleisles, the Aulic Councils, the British Georges, heaping coil upon coil: and here, notably, in that now so extremely sordid murk of wiggeries, inane diplomacies and solemn deliriums, dark now and obsolete to all creatures, steps forth one little Human Figure, with something of sanity in it: like a star, like a gleam of steel,—shearing asunder your big balloons, and letting out their diplomatic hydrogen;—salutes ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... With a perfectly splendid gift For soaring and moral uplift. For, though nobody so uniquely Can hearten The British Weekly, His readers will cheerfully spare Him to go and remain in the air, Careering along the inane In a Nicoll-plated plane With, to lend him additional fervour, Mr. G*RV*N as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... medical whites. Unnecessarily, to break the silence with any inane remark, Coffin said: "Going on vat ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... two inns face each other in Barrack Street—'The Tiger' upon one side of the way, 'The Seven Stars' upon the other; and at the moment when Henry Ironsyde's dust was reaching the bottom of his grave at Bridetown, a young man of somewhat inane countenance, clad in garments that displayed devotion to sport and indifference to taste, entered 'The Tiger's' ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... mumming deserves so much; but deserves not that loving minuteness a Menadic Insurrection did. Much more let prior, and as it were, rehearsal scenes of Federation come and go, henceforward, as they list; and, on Plains and under City-walls, innumerable regimental bands blare off into the Inane, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... you, dear reader, with all my might. And this faith teaches that you must not let yourself be cheated, and must demand wares for your money. That is - good, righteous, solid wares. We will not let some inane gaieties, some paltry and miserable pleasures, some tinsel be passed off on us as the real golden happiness. This one tries to coax you with tempting food and drink, another with the pleasures of being rich and mighty, still ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... filled with scorn for myself, I determined resolutely to crush out my senseless infatuation. I threw myself into such society as we had; I assumed an interest in that inane Miss Augusta; I read and studied far into the night; I walked until sheer fatigue gave me tranquillity; but all I gained was lost in that encounter at the arch: you remember it? When I saw her on that narrow bridge, ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... tender daughter and are laughed at as inane; Vain you face the snow, oh mirror! for it will evanescent wane, When the festival of lanterns is gone by, guard 'gainst your doom, 'Tis what time the flames will kindle, and the fire ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... yards of his walls for the reception of such a performance, is almost marvellous. It is, throughout, in the worst possible taste. The countenance of Cupid, who is sitting on the bed or couch with the vacant grin of an ideot, is that of a negro. It is dark, and of an utterly inane expression. The colouring is also too ruddy throughout. Near to this really heartless picture, is one of a woman flying; well drawn, and rather tenderly coloured. Opposite, is a picture of Venus supported in the air by a group of Cupids. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... proof of modesty, which has rarely interfered with the progress of science. But one cannot say the same of incredulity, and he that uses the word impossible outside of pure mathematics is lacking in prudence. It should be remembered that Lactantius proclaimed belief in the existence of antipodes inane, and Saint Augustine of Hippo added that in any case there could be ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... and musicians are trying to compass the inane. You are trying to duplicate your dreams, dreams without a hint of the sun. The painter at least copies or interprets real life; while the composer dips his finger in the air, making endless sound-scrolls—noises with long tails and whirligig decorations like foolish ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... airs from Heaven, or the blasts from the other region, there is not one of a more undoubtedly supernal character than yourself; so pure and still, with intents so charitable; and then vanishing too so soon into the azure Inane, as ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... of the year '49 has left me nothing to tell. For me, it was the inane life of that draff of Society - the young man-about-town: the tailor's, the haberdasher's, the bootmaker's, and trinket-maker's, young man; the dancing and 'hell'-frequenting young man; the young man of the 'Cider Cellars' and Piccadilly saloons; the valiant dove-slayer, the park-lounger, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... side, supported on an elbow. Can we doubt that he is in the right of it? And yet these simpletons, not content with their own noise, must call in professional assistance: an artist in grief, with a fine repertoire of cut-and-dried sorrows at his command, assumes the direction of this inane choir, and supplies a theme for their woful acclamations. So far, all men are fools alike: but at this point national peculiarities make their appearance. The Greeks burn their dead, the Persians bury them; ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... stared at him for a long moment, then gave an inane giggle. He stepped back and flicked Joe Mauser a salute. "Very well, captain. As a matter of routine, I shall report this use of an aircraft for reconnaissance purposes, and undoubtedly a commission will meet to investigate the propriety of ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... rapid for KEAY to follow. TIM's motion withdrawn; question put was, "that Bill be read Second Time." Now was KEAY's cue to rise and move its rejection; but KEAY failed to grasp situation; sat smiling with inane adulation at tip of his passionately polished patent-leather shoe, over which lay the fawn-coloured "spat," like dun dawn rising over languid lustrous sea. Not a second to be lost. Deputy-Chairman on his feet; if no ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... significant being the triad of Fire, Wind, and Sun.[11] Not much weight is to be laid on the theological speculations of the time as indicative of primitive conceptions, although they may occasionally hit true. For out of the number of inane fancies it is reasonable to suppose that some might coincide with historic facts. Thus the All-gods of the Rig Veda, by implication, are of later origin than the other gods, and this, very likely, was the case; but it is a mere guess on the part of the priest. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... fastened in his hat. Thus Tristran de Leonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous and joyful time of spring when everything ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... matchless Venus, that of Medici seems as inane and trifling as mere physical beauty always must by the side of beauty baptized, and made sacramental, as the symbol of that which alone is ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... them, so to speak, an atmosphere which it is sad to see imported into the theatre. They bring with them, not only their songs, which, when offensive in their wording, are sometimes made doubly dangerous by their tunefulness; not only their dances, which are usually vulgar, when they are not inane, but their style and manner and 'gags,' which are generally the most deplorable of all. The objection to music-hall artists on the stage is, not only that they take the bread out of the mouths of 'the profession,' which is a minor consideration for the public, but that they have ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... she smiled down to the colonel on one side, the general on the other, the ladies round them. Farther back still her eyes fell on all the uplifted moustaches, the light ones, the brown, the black, the dyed, the thin moustaches, the thick, the curved, and the inane, the drooping, the smartly curled. Among that melancholy and shaggy crowd a few clean-shaven faces looked like ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... witnessed the incident, tells me that on reaching the road they stopped the vehicle and celebrated the success of their inane efforts by shrieking with that unrestrained mirth which jars so painfully ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient," said Clovis, "but it seems I ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... various inane suggestions as to the sender. Phoebe said nothing. There was a frown on her face as she watched the captain get to work on the box with chisel and hammer. It contained a beautiful doll, fully and expensively dressed, and pinned ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for several days. For a time I resolutely put all thought of what had occurred from my mind, but as soon as I felt able, I sat down, with the whole matter before me, as it were, and deliberately looked it in the face. I think I never felt more inane in my life than when I remembered my folly, as I now regarded it. All that saved me from utter self-abasement was the fact that it had occurred at a time when I was at such a low ebb physically, by reason of illness. I determined to try to forget it, as speedily as possible. ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... foolish or nervous or hysterical about her. And then, subsequently, when he had met her on her own ground, she had endeavoured to put him at his ease. Funny that, but he appreciated it, nevertheless. And she could talk. She didn't giggle and ask inane questions. Nor did she treat him as some sort of a natural curiosity, who might be expected to do something shocking but entertaining at any moment. She was sensible as—well—as sensible as Sheila ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... works for the stage—romantic operas like 'Fierrabras' and 'Alfonso und Estrella,' operettas like 'Der haeusliche Krieg,' and farces like 'Die Zwillingsbrueder.' Most of them were saddled by inane libretti, and though occasionally revived by enthusiastic admirers of the composer, only prove that Schubert's talent was essentially not dramatic, however interesting his music may ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... had become utterly weary of her mental and her spiritual incarceration. Oh! for the sting of love's strong emotion to break the monotony. The most sordid sights and sounds of London streets, the most inane babble of a fashionable crowd would be more stimulating to her brain, sweeter in her ears than the arid expanse, the weird bush noises—howl of dingoes, wail of curlews, lowing of cattle—that a year ago had ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... confreres that his voyage of exploration would add largely to our knowledge of the habits and customs of the fauna of Africa, and notably of the giraffe, as coming, by the exceptional development of its neck, within closest range of his vision as he flew through the vast inane. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... said and thought it was as good as possible," replied he. "You see, it's the people in the world that make it stupid. For instance, do you suppose you and I, or anybody, would care for idling about and doing all sorts of things our better judgment tells us are inane, if it weren't that most of our fellow-beings are stupid enough to admire and envy that sort of thing, and that we are stupid enough to want to be admired and ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... to!—In which of the villages Hotham and Dickens lodged, I did not learn or inquire; nor are their copious Despatches, chronicling these sublime phenomena from day to day for behoof of St. James's, other than entirely inane to us at this time. But one thing we do learn from them: Our Crown-Prince, escaping the paternal vigilance, was secretly in consultation with Dickens, or with Hotham through Dickens; and this in the most tragic humor on his side. In such effulgences of luxury ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... fallen mythical to mankind, and as inane as that of Cambrai, is perhaps still memorable in one or two slight points. First, it has in it, as one of the Austrian Deputies, that Baron von Bentenrieder, tallest of living Diplomatists, who was pressed at one time for a Prussian soldier;—readers ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that other which is to endure everlastingly. Therefore what they say that the Church is jealous of, the more modern political systems repudiate in a mass, and whatever the disposition of these times has brought forth, is an inane and contemptible calumny. The madness of opinion it indeed repudiates; it reproves the wicked plans of sedition, and especially that habit of mind in which the beginnings of a voluntary departing from God are ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... "Mush" Wives Children One of the Minor Tragedies The "Glorious Dead" Always the Personal Note Clergymen Their Failure Work In the East-end Mysticism and the Practical Man Abraham Lincoln Reconstruction Education The Inane and Unimaginative Great Adventure Travel The Enthralling Out-of-Reach The Things which are not Dreamed of in Our Philosophy Faith Spiritualism On Reality in People Life Dreams and Reality Love of ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... seriously. No matter how riotously absurd it is, or how full of inane repetition, remember, if it is good enough to tell, it is a real story, and must be treated with respect. If you cannot feel so toward it, do not tell it. Have faith in the story, and in the attitude of the children toward it and you. If you fail in this, the immediate result ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... thought he was escorting a Press-lady)—to pay a visit to the New Wimbledon—and being nothing if not loyal, I chose the day when the shooting for the "Queen's" commenced. My escort informed me with an inane smile, that the Camp had experienced "Bisley weather;" the feebleness of which joke so annoyed me, that I am half inclined to put his name in the pillory of public print—(what a glorious expression for our own Midlothian Mouther)—but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... because it ignored questions of current policy, and it was discouraging to the Filipinos who were reminded by it of the hopeless future for their country to which time had brought no progress. But with all the faults and unworthiness of the later rulers, and the inane attempts of their parasites to distract attention from these failings, there remains undimmed the luster of Spain's early fame. The Christianizing which accompanied her flag upon the mainland and islands of the New World is its imperishable ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... a man shouldn't anyhow. But some do. I imagined Everett had, and that he'd done it with his head in his arms and his arms in the litter of the big table. I think I shook hands with him—one does inane things sometimes—but I don't know what I said. I had something like your experience—I just wasn't there for ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... to her mother's chamber. Mistress Pauncefort was there. Venetia endeavoured to assume her accustomed serenity. The waiting-woman bustled about, arranging the toilet-table, which had been for a moment discomposed, putting away a cap, folding up a shawl, and indulging in a multitude of inane observations which little harmonised with the high-strung tension of Venetia's mind. Mistress Pauncefort opened a casket with a spring lock, in which she placed some trinkets of her mistress. Venetia stood by her in silence; her eye, vacant and wandering, beheld ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Scythicos equites tunc forte subacto Celsus Aremorico, Geticum rapiebat in agmen Per terras, Averne, tuas, qui proxima quaedue Discursu, flammis, ferro, feritate, rapinis, Delebant; pacis fallentes nomen inane. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... inane, incompetent creatures. You, John, with all your scientific training. I cannot expect anything else from Hale. A newspaper man lives on emotional sensations. They form his stock in trade, but ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... conditional, experimental, from which we view the vast realm that stretches out unknown before us, and perhaps for ever unknowable; inspiring men with an elevated awe, and environing the interests and duties of their little lives with a strange sublimity. 'We emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane.... But whence? O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... guide puts his arms behind you to keep you from falling. To climb it is a noon-day nightmare, and to think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's twenty digits. While I was on it, "pinnacled dim in the intense inane," a strong wind was blowing, and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. It swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye or a cat-o'nine-tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to the guide, and he said that the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... never be quite willing to admit that this country is enlightened until we cease the inane and parsimonious policy of trying to drive all the really strong men and women out of the teaching profession by putting them on the payroll at one-half the rate, or less, than what the same brains and energy can command elsewhere. In this year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... could be lazier, emptier of head, more inane of life than her sister Martha. "She wouldn't even keep clean if it wasn't the easiest thing in the world for her to do, and a help at filling in her long idle day." Yet—Martha Galland had every comfort and most of the luxuries, was as sheltered from all the hardships as a hot-house ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... added, speaking to Desmond O'Connor, to whom he unburdened himself, "'Gifford will never learn. He believes himself to be a journalistic planet. I don't mind an ordinary honest fool that knows it is a fool, but a fool that regards its own inane folly as the final thing in wisdom is hopeless. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... ille Heracleotes utrum comprehendisset certa illa nota, qua adsentiri dicitis oportere, illudne, quod multos annos tenuisset Zenonique magistro credidisset, honestum quod esset, id bonum solum esse, an quod postea defensitavisset, honesti inane nomen esse, voluptatem esse summum bonum: qui ex illius commutata sententia docere vellet nihil ita signari in animis nostris a vero posse, quod non eodem modo possit a falso, is curavit ut quod argumentum ex ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... recessus, Naturae meditaris opus, qua luce colores{ciii:1} Percipimus, quali magnus ferit organa motu Cartesius, quali volitant primordia plexu Ex atomis, Gassende, tuis; simulacraque rerum Diffugiunt tacito vastum per inane meatu: Mutato varios mentitur lana colores Lumine; dum tales ardens habet ipse figuras Purpura, Sidonioque aliae tinxere veneno: Materiam assiduo variatam, ut Protea, motu Concipis, hinc formae patuit nascentis origo, Hinc hominum species, & vasti machina caeli:{ciii:2} Ipse creare ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... he looked much older than ever the hale old mountaineer had done, or than his real age; so worn and lined was his face, his skin tanned, his eyelids and temples puckered by burning sun, his hair and beard white as the inane of his old mare, the proud Adlerstein port entirely gone. He stooped even more without his staff than with it; and, when he yielded himself with a sigh of repose to his wife's tendance, she found that he had not merely the ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... without any claim on serious thought. It is indeed a pleasant tickling of the imagination, this leisurely enjoyment of looking over all those picturesque announcements; it is like passing along the street with its shopwindows in all their lustre and glamour. But this soft and inane pleasure has been crushed by the arrangement after to-day's fashion. Those pages on which advertising and articles are mixed helterskelter do not allow the undisturbed mood. It is as if we constantly had to alternate between lazy ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... geniality and a swaggering gait, by which he seeks to overawe the inoffensive. Though he has but a small stock of intelligence, he passes for a wit amongst his associates by dint of perpetually repeating an inane catch-word. With this, and a stamp of the foot, he will greet a friend who may meet him before lunch. Amongst his intimates such a welcome is held to be intensely humorous. He scatters the same sort of stamp and the identical remark broadcast over the loungers who congregate in front of HATCHETT's; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... regarded as a debased sort, and unfit socially to mix with those who had kept their race free from taint. The female fruitage of the mixture lost nothing by acquiring some of the Caucasian stock, but the men, in numerous cases, seemed to be inferior for the blending. In appearance they were inane, in speech laconic; they were shy in manners, and reserved, to boorishness, while in intellectual alertness they were inferior to the boisterous savage, or the shrewd, dignified white. But the woman perpetuated the shy, winning coyness of ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... close proximity to the bold colouring of "The Ambassadors"; so that its own subtle, yet reticent superiority is well-nigh shouted down by its lusty neighbour. It is a picture to be seen by itself; as it must stand by itself in the usual inane gallery of ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... beacon, to light a dangerous piece of sea, was still within the province of a public-spirited landlord. They are the days when the spread of education had not even yet begun (for weal or for woe) its levelling work; days of cruel monopolies and inane prohibitions, and ferocious penal laws, inept in the working, baleful in the result; days of keel-hauling and flogging; when the "free-trader" still swung, tarred and in chains, on conspicuous points of the coast—even as the highwayman rattled ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... she found that she had just received a package by special messenger. She tore off the outer wrapper and on the inner was written in red ink: "Danger." Murmuring some inane thing about its being her shoes, she ran with the package to her room. For a young woman who had all her life received packages of all ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... Orlando Gibbons' tune called 'Angels.' The original is a most ingenious combination of rhythms; and its masterly beauty could not be guessed from the inane form into which it is degraded in Hymns Ancient ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... have noticed one little fault about you. I will not call it fatuous, inane, and exasperating vanity or self- absorption; I will put it in the form of a parable. Sit you round attentively and listen, dispersing yourselves all in order, and do ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... beginning one looks about anxiously for the object which could produce so grotesque a smile. There is nothing, for the conversation has been as lead, but the smile does not subside; it only passes through the endless variations that succeed each other from the inane grin to the affected simper which is meant to be tender. The whole face moves perpetually, as the facial muscles of a corpse, excited by an electric current, seem to parody all the expression of living ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sick persons, with whom he was an especial favourite. I disliked him—and specially disliked his unpleasant behaviour to women. If I had been a woman, I should have spurned him for his perpetual insult of inane compliments. He was always dawdling after "the sex," which was one of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not passionate. Passion does not dawdle and compliment, nor is it nasty, as this fellow was. Passion may burn like a devouring flame; and in a few moments, like flame, may bring ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... in England. He seemed different—almost, in fact, a stranger—though she could not exactly tell where the change in him began. His laughter jarred upon her. Some of the things he said appeared almost inane, and others were tinged with a self-confidence that did not become him. It seemed to her that he was shallow and lacking in comprehension. Once she found herself comparing him with another man. She broke off that train of thought ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Legation," unostensibly as something very different? Handsome Stanislaus did duly become Lover of the Grand-Duchess; and has duly, in the course of Nature, some time ago (date uncertain to me), become discarded Lover; the question rising, What is to be done with that elegant inane creature, and his vaporous sentimentalisms and sublime sorrows and disappointments? "Let us make him King of Poland!" said the Czarina, who was always much the gentleman with her discarded Lovers (more so, I should say, than Louis Quatorze with his;—and indeed it is computed they cost her ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Plain or flat Plate of ground, the mountains are set on that to steady it. At the Last Day they shall disappear "like clouds"; the whole Earth shall go spinning, whirl itself off into wreck, and as dust and vapor vanish in the Inane. Allah withdraws his hand from it, and it ceases to be. The universal empire of Allah, presence everywhere of an unspeakable Power, a Splendor, and a Terror not to be named, as the true force, essence and reality, in all things whatsoever, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... you could tell me where my hotel is, officer?" Oliver began. "What hotel?" said the policeman uninterestedly. Oliver noticed with an inane distinctness that he had started to swirl his nightstick as a large blue cat might switch its tail. He wondered if it would be tactful to ask him if he had ever been a drum major. Then he realized that the policeman had asked him a question—courtesy ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... also found. These usually have little blue beads for eyes, and are of the quaintest and naivest appearance conceivable. Here we have an elderly man with a long pointed beard, there two women with inane smiles upon their countenances, here another woman, of better work this time, with a child slung across her shoulder. This figure, which is in the British Museum, must be very late, as prehistoric Egyptian antiquities go. It is almost as good in style ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... sake talk like a man," I said, sternly. "Do you think it is manly to use those mushy and inane forms of address? That man is neither dear nor ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... down the central light-well at him a few days before. The invention of the pocket recorder, which put a half-hour's conversation on a half-inch disk, had done more to slow down business and promote inane correspondence than anything since the earlier inventions of shorthand, typewriters and pretty stenographers. Finally, he cleared the machine, dumping the whole mess into a basket and carrying it out ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... of that renowned alphabet which spells without letters or writing or types, that may be seen or heard or felt or tasted, that is adapted to any language and to all conditions, and that performs to this day, and shall to all time, the miracle of causing the inane rattle of pieces of metal against each other to speak to even a careless listener the exact thoughts of ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... and no more use for the latter. All the literary productions that refer to the struggle over political institutions will be seen no more,—their subject-matter has ceased to be. The study of all such matters will belong to the history of civilization. The vast mass of inane productions—the evidences of a spoiled taste, often possible only through sacrifices at the altar of the author's vanity—are gone. Even speaking from the view-point of present conditions, it may be said without exaggeration that four-fifths ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... birds were not mute. But evidently the birds have not enthroned this thrush. Possibly, even, they do not share human admiration for his song. The redstart goes on jerking out his monotonous ditty; chippy irreverently mounts a perch and trills out his inane apology for a song; the vireo in yonder tree spares us not one of his never-ending platitudes. But the hermit thrush goes on with sublime indifference to the voices of common folk down below. Sometimes he is answered from afar by another of his kind, who arranges his ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... perfectly happy, Joyce?" It was an inane question, but like some inane questions it ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Commission longer casts its upas-shadow athwart the hearts of men, the great world is "growing nobler and better," I hereby tender my services to pilot them through that Perdition which does not hover indeterminate in the inane limboes of dogmatic theology, but hath a well-defined latitude and longitude; is visual, tactual,—in which untold millions of mankind writhe and shriek from the cradle ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... trying to forget our tired limbs in a discussion of literary tastes and standards, our workmates had been relieving the treadmill tedium of the long afternoon by various expedients. The quartet at the table immediately in front of us had been making inane doggerel rhymes upon the names of their workmates, telling riddles, and exchanging nasty stories with great gusto and frequent fits of wild laughter. At another table the forthcoming ball of the "Moonlight Maids" was under hot discussion, and at a very long table in front ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... high degree for most of us) the scene on which we so freely bloomed does strike me, when I reckon up, as extraordinarily unfurnished. How came it then that for the most part so simple we yet weren't more inane? This was doubtless by reason of the quantity of our inward life—ours of our father's house in especial I mean—which made an excellent, in some cases almost an incomparable, fond for a thicker civility to mix with when growing experience ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... spinning-wheel was near, but it was only too plain that 'feeble was the hand, and silly the thread.' She bent her head in its wadded black velvet hood, but excused herself from rising, as she was crippled by rheumatic pains. She had evidently once been a pretty little person, innocent and inane, and her face had become like that of a withered baby, piteous in its expression of pain and weariness, but otherwise somewhat vacant. At first, indeed, there was a look of alarm. Perhaps she expected every visitor to come with a complaint of her unlucky Peregrine, but when Mrs. ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lunches, dinners, balls, operas, theatres, card-parties, and inane jabber," he answered. "A mixture of various kinds of food which people eat recklessly with the natural results,—dyspepsia, inertia, mental vacuity, and general uselessness. A few Court 'functions,' some picture shows, and two or three great races—and—that's all. Some unfortunate ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... was indeed changed, so much so that her old friends who had not seen her for some time could scarcely have known her. She was no longer fat and inane. Her figure had become slim and graceful; her face had become expressive and remarkably pretty, and her manners were those of a well-bred and self-possessed lady. Gildart felt that he could no more have taken the liberties ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... of grimness and sombre hatred very different from the half affectionate derision which he directed against the old tyrants or humbugs of the earlier nineteenth century—the pompous Dedlock or the fatuous Nupkins, the grotesque Bumble or the inane Tigg. In those old books his very abuse was benignant; in Hard Times even his sympathy is hard. And the reason is again to be found in the political facts of the century. Dickens could be half genial with the older generation ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... proved very successful at more than one metropolitan bar, where he had paved the way for its success with gifts of flowers and a cheap ring or two; but it was utterly lost here, for its intended recipient was looking another way, and as it faded from its inventor's face there was a blank, inane expression left, ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... uplifting, Stops the white cloud on its way, As it drives with driftless drifting O'er the vacant vault of day, And in sounds of soft upbraiding Calls it down the void inane To the gilding and the shading Of the mountain and ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... has no bearing on his salvation, for nothing happens until Senta jumps into the sea, and we feel sure nothing would have happened if she had not jumped. That lesson, at any rate—a childish, inept, inane, insane one at best—is not set forth in the Dutchman. The only other possible one is that self-sacrifice is a worthy and beautiful thing in itself. In itself, I say, for Senta's self-sacrifice is purely a fad: she knows nothing of Vanderdecken save a rumour shaped into a primitive ballad. Such ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... inarticulate and envious. He envies me because I am clever enough to laugh at my madness. However, I will consider him later, in his various guises, for of all the Mallares, dumb though he is and ludicrous with inane tears, he interests me ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... holy joy because Wells had stirred up the dregs again, and more violently than ever. I rapturously reflected, "How angry this will make them!" "Them" being the whole innumerable tribe of persons, inane or chumpish (this adjective I give to the world), who don't mind froth but won't have dregs. Human nature—you get it pretty complete in "Tono-Bungay," the entire tableau! If you don't like the spectacle of man whole, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... night— Pushing and buffeting; and in my brain Dark hurrying shapes beset my soul. In vain I struggled; as a fevered dreamer might; Or some spent, breathless swimmer, in despite Of desperate stroke, thrust headlong to the main. The waking nightmare, monstrous and inane, Whirled, rushed, and huddled in its ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... forward at the end of the eighteenth century with his famous reform of the language of English poetry, the Miltonic diction was the current coin paid out by every versifier. Wordsworth revolted against this dialect as unmeaning, hollow, gaudy, and inane. His reform consisted in dropping the consecrated phraseology altogether, and reverting to the common language of ordinary life. It was necessary to do this in order to reconnect poetry with the sympathies of ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... similarly occupied. In the high, wide hall were groups of careful men and careless women, the latter very scrumptious in their imported frocks. The sight of these Parisianisms abashed Cassy no more than her appearance abashed Paliser. Etiquette, Formality, the Proper Thing, the great inane gods of the ante-bellum heavens, he had never acknowledged and now, though locally their altars remained and their worship persisted, he knew they were forever dead, blown into the dust-bin of the things that were, tossed there in derision by that ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus |
