"Brainless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come to your senses and give me my freedom ... I am going with a man of parts who knows how to give a woman the attentions she craves, and is himself glad to shake off a young chit of a wife who is too brainless to ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... death, you ecclesiastical idiot. The principal thing for you is to enjoy yourself; my sweet carcass, a thing accessory. Your pleasure will be my death, and then you'll canonise me perhaps? Ah, you have the plague, and you would give it to me. Go somewhere else, you brainless priest. Ah! touch me not," said she, seeing him about to advance, "or I will stab you ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... people is supreme. When we cease toadying to brainless nabobs, and quit imitating them as soon as we get the money, we will be on the road to reformation. As it is, most poor people are just itching to live as the rich do. The average servant-girl who gets married quits work then and there, and is quite content to live the rest of her life ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... me?" she said, still stinging under the angry waves of self-contempt. "What are you marrying me for? Because, divided, we are likely to cut small figures in our tin-trumpet world? Because, united, we can dominate the brainless? Is ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... small deposits that were meant for brains. Yet the proud fabric in the morning's sun Stands all unconscious of the mischief done; Still the red beacon pours its evening rays For the lost pilot with as full a blaze,— Nay, shines, all radiance, o'er the scattered fleet Of gulls and boobies brainless at its feet. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the land is no longer plodding, ox-like drudgery, nor is the farm a place of humdrum, brainless routine. Science offers her aid on every hand, and beauty, in numberless forms, is ever present to those who have eyes and hearts capable of recognizing it. The farmer has a literature of his own, which every year ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... who acquired science and did not practise it:—However much thou art read in theory, if thou hast no practice thou art ignorant. He is neither a sage philosopher nor an acute divine, but a beast of burden with a load of books. How can that brainless head know or comprehend whether he carries on his back a library or bundle ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... suffers In that of our best man. No, make a lottery; And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw The chance to fight with Hector: among ourselves, Give him allowance as the braver man; For that will physic the great Myrmidon, Who swells with loud applause; and make him fall His crest, if brainless Ajax come safe off: If not, we yet preserve a fair opinion, That ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... by watching her, a most contented philosopher of forty. A dingo dog could not be so contented. That young fellow, I unhesitatingly assert, must be the most brainless of his type. I suffer fools gladly, as a general rule, but if I see much of this one I shall do ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... drift of the rural population into the towns, foreseeing that it sapped the strength of England. He despised it too; his own experience telling him that a countryman might amass wealth if he had brains and used them. As for the brainless herd, they should be kept on the land at all cost, to grow strong, breed strong children, and, when the inevitable hour came, be used as ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... machinery after. It had never been made. So, you see, it was one thing to give a man tools and leave him to achieve with them a specified end, working toward the desired result as he went along; and quite another to invent a brainless device that would mechanically reach the same end. Numberless difficulties must be overcome. To manufacture watches in quantity it was imperative that the parts be interchangeable. They must not vary even an infinitesimal degree or the whole delicate organism would be ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... Spirits were not very high at the mess just then. Nearly all the women had left for the Hills, and the increasing heat was beginning to make life a burden. The younger officers did their best to be cheerful, and one of them, Bertie Oakes, a merry, brainless youngster, even proposed an impromptu dance to enliven the proceedings. But he did not find many supporters. Men were tired after the polo. Colonel Mansfield and Major Burton were deeply engrossed with some news that had been brought by Barnes of the Police, and no ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind, and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every atom of courage and will with which she ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with you, Miss Nelson?" demanded one of the teachers sharply, when Nancy had made an unusually brainless answer ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... he inflicted with some loathsome disease? Was he a plague? Had some false reputation preceded him into the community? Had he a cantankerous disposition? Was he repulsive in appearance? Was he mean, stingy? Was he stupid, ignorant, uneducated, brainless? No, personally he could not plead guilty of acquaintance with any of the above disqualifications. Among the archives of his past Ashcroft history he found some tell-tale manuscripts, the contents of which had never appealed to him until after the booby prize ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... many of her simple companions, whom she despises as weaklings, succeed from the very simplicity with which they follow the instinctive sagacity of pure and honest feeling. Colonel Rawdon Crawley, a brainless sensualist, whom Becky marries, and in some degree reforms, but who, by having an occasional twinkle of genuine sentiment in his heart, always was her superior, is drawn both with a breadth and a nicety of touch which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... rushed from the room for some air and some water. Returning refreshed, my composure resumed, I awaited the end, like a criminal doomed. With one demoiselle I essayed to converse, Whose sense I discovered was not worth a—purse. Disgusted with one so insipidly brainless, I turned from a task that was tedious and gainless, Adapted myself to my strange situation, And buried my mind in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hours baffling the inquisitor, foreseeing his wiles by intuition, evading his masked pitfalls by instinct. She was terribly afraid of him, yet more afraid of herself, afraid that she would break down and become a brainless, weeping thing. It was the sincerity of her fight against this weakness that made her so dangerous to the prosecuting attorney. He wanted to compel her to admit that her son had confessed his deed to her. She sought to avoid ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... no second invitation. Obviously, unless some brainless young fool was trying to be humorous, there was no time to spare for words. He sprang inside, and Devar cried to ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... candlesticks," said the seneschal moodily. "And yet I would that he would leave the folk alone. You cannot conceive in your mind how stubborn and brainless they are. Mules and pigs are full of reason beside them. God He knows that I have had great patience with them. It was but last week that, having to raise some money, I called up to the castle Jean Goubert, who, as all men know, has a casketful of gold pieces ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the fool who shouts "Fire!" in a throng, this brainless individual revived all the fears ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the shades of the second floor were illumined: she was up there. Doing what? Sharply then he realized what a partial life she led, the decayed middle-class associates of the boarding-house, tired, brainless, and full of small talk, the lonesome evenings, the long days. He became more agitated, and climbed the stoop, unlocked his way into the house, went up the dim, soft, red-cushioned stairs, past the milky gas-globe in the narrow hall, and knocked ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... the cookin and washin. Desdemony in fact don't have to git the water to wash her own hands with. But a low cuss named Iago, who I bleeve wants to git Otheller out of his snug government birth, now goes to work & upsets the Otheller family in most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker. (Iago allers played foul.) He thus got money enuff to carry out his onprincipled skeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by Iago. Mike was a clever ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Rastignac guided the brainless, blind creature concealed within the body. He was helped by the somatically-generated radar it employed to steer it past obstacles. When he came to the Rue des Nues, he slowed it down to a trot. There was no use tiring it out. Halfway up the gentle ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... make good matches in any one sense of the word. The struggling barrister, the clerk, the curate, the brainless masher—such are their prey; and if they make richer prizes than these, still the match cannot be called good; presently there is dis-union as the clever husband finds the pretty but nonsensical wife utterly unable ...
— How to Marry Well • Mrs. Hungerford
... Alas! and alas! Before two years were gone, poor Lord Sandston was lying one foggy November morning on Hampstead Heath, with a bullet through his heart. Shot down at the commencement of a noble and useful career by a brainless gambler—a man who did all things ill, save billiards and pistol-shooting; his beauty and his strength hurried to corruption, and his wealth to the senseless DEBAUCHEE who hounded on his murderer to insult him. But I have heard old Thornton tell, with proud tears, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... perhaps for half-a-year, can endure the strain. What, for instance, must be the sufferings of the conductor or of a member of the orchestra at a successful second-rate musical comedy; of a stage manager compelled for months, one after another, to direct a brainless farce? Of course the people lumped together in the technical term as "the front of the house" have a remedy, and after the first night or two only appear in the auditorium when the curtain is down, or, to be more accurate, just before it descends, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... thee. Thou knowest of old The weary jealousies, the bloody feuds, Which 'twixt our Cherson and her neighbour City Have raged ere I was born—nay, ere my grandsire First saw the light of heaven. Both our States Are crippled by this brainless enmity. And now the Empire, now the Scythian, threatens Destruction to our Cities, whom, united, We might defy with scorn. Seeing this weakness, Thy father, wishful, ere his race be run, To save our much-loved Cherson, sent of late Politic envoys to our former foe, And now—i' ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... it but folly to sit up night after night, until the small hours of the morning, waltzing with brainless young men?" ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... seeds of mob rule. The anonymous author of The Saints fears "Their frantic pray'r [is] a mere Decoy for Mob" (p. 4) and the author[4] of The Methodist and Mimic claims that Whitefield's preaching sends "the Brainless Mob a gadding" (p. 15). Evan Lloyd is the one anti-Methodist satirist who explores the ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... servants of the people. All authority comes from the people, and not from the aristocracy of the air. Upon these texts of scripture which I have just read rest the thrones of Europe, and these are the voices that are repeated from age to age by brainless kings ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of late afternoons over bars, exchanging that brainless but well-willed talk by which men of his sort come to know men. He sat beside roped rings to witness the best muscle of the world—and not the worst brain—revive in ten thousand men the primeval brute. He frolicked with trifling painters, bookless poets, apprentice journalists, ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... The brainless families of representative men, must of course monopolise attention, if all the rest went to eternal perdition, and what does it matter how vexedly a fellow tugs his moustache over the insipid drawl of some "powerful" man's daughter, while he eyes most ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the bad old days, didn't you?" he said lightly. "When we danced and made love at the Grafton Galleries." She flushed a little, but did not lower her eyes. "Such a serious girl you were too, Margaret; I wonder how you ever put up with a brainless ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... plainly told Their fondest dreams were not of earth, but heaven; A newly wedded couple passed that way, In the sweet zenith of their honeymoon, But little dreaming what the future held. The light and trivial fool, the brainless fop; The staid and sober priest and minister; And she who worshiped at proud fashion's shrine; The mental giant, serious and sad; The thoughtful student and philosopher; And some of intellect diminutive; ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... pretty, brainless madcap. When the abbe preached she laughed, and when he was angry with her she would give him a hug, drawing him to her heart, while he sought unconsciously to release himself from this embrace which nevertheless filled him with a sweet pleasure, awakening in his depths the sensation ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... which was fast becoming habitual, and now, at twenty-six, Edith St. Claire was pronounced by the world the most strikingly beautiful woman of her age. Poets had sung of her charms, artists had transferred them to canvas; brainless beaux, who would as soon rave about a married woman as a single one, provided it were the fashion so to do, had stamped them upon their hearts; envious females had picked them all to pieces, declaring her too tall, too black, too hoydenish to be even pretty; while little Dick and Nina ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... connection with our family have been long known to me, and I hope your person will be not less so: you will find me an excellent compound of a 'Brainless' and a 'Stanhope.'[83] I am afraid you will hardly be able to read this, for my hand is almost as bad as my character; but you will find me, as legibly ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... falcon's flight May wing thy coursers, while, exciting dense The dusty plain, they whirl thee back to Troy. While thus he spake, sublime on the right-hand 995 An eagle soar'd; confident in the sign The whole Achaian host with loud acclaim Hail'd it. Then glorious Hector thus replied. Brainless and big, what means this boast of thine, Earth-cumberer Ajax? Would I were the son 1000 As sure, for ever, of almighty Jove And Juno, and such honor might receive Henceforth as Pallas and Apollo share, As comes this day with universal wo Fraught for the Grecians, among whom ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... electrically. He missed his watch and discovered it in the abused man's pocket. And when the ordeal was over the recovered hat was found to contain guinea-pigs. The kind gentleman from the audience had been shown to be transcendently awkward, brainless, and to have a mania for petty thievery. With burning face and falling glance, he had stumbled back to his seat, where a lady who had before exhibited the public manner of wife to husband toward him, now pretended that he was an ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... here will move a further doubt, And as for York's part allege an elder right: O brainless heads that so run in and out! When length of time a state hath firmly pight, And good accord hath put all strife to flight, Were it not better such titles still to sleep Than all a realm about the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... during the next three months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such brainless inconsistency as forever to dispose of her time-honored claim to the credit of intelligence and courage. It is certain that just three months and six days after the murder of her husband she became the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... are designated the members of the Indian Civil Service by lesser mortals, such as army officers—who in return are contemptuously termed "brainless military popinjays" by ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... "Progress of Dulness," in three cantos,—an imitation, in manner, of Goldsmith's "Double Transformation." The title is happy. The decline of Miss Harriet Simper from bellehood to an autumnal marriage, in Canto III., is more tiresome than the progress of Tom Brainless from the plough-tail to the pulpit, in Canto I. The Reverend Mr. Brainless, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... you think it's a refuge for fools? Do you think any born imbecile is good enough to outwit the German Headquarters Staff? Do you think the lives of hundreds of his men—and perhaps the fate of thousands—can be entrusted to any brainless ass? An officer can't have too much brains. We're clamouring for brains. It's the healthy, brilliant-brained men like Randall that the Army's yelling for—simply yelling for," I repeated, bringing my hand down on the arm of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... devising any, even fanciful, reason for such a supposition; upon which the comment of some foolish critic is," The sharpness of the satire is said to have stung the man so much that he never forgave it. "We have heard of the sting in the tail atoning for the brainless head; but in this doggerel the tail is surely as stingless as the head is brainless. For, 1st, Ten in the Hundred could be no reproach in Shakspeare's time, any more than to call a man Three-and-a-half-per-cent. ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the underling, the tool, the servile, brainless, little fetcher-and-carrier of these men, was punished—was hanged, and upon the narrow shoulders of this pitiful scapegoat was packed the entire sin of Jefferson Davis and his ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... festive artisan. Thus he tided over a rather prolonged wait, but, when the train moved on, the inquiring rough returned to the charge. He was suspicious, and also was drunk, and obstinate with all the brainless obstinacy of intoxication. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... absurd, he told himself with conviction, that it was not worth a second thought, but this did not prevent him from thinking of it again and again. What manner of undertaker could hope to obtain business by giving away foolish handbills in the street? Really, the whole thing had the air of a brainless practical joke, yet his intellectual fairness forced him to admit that as far as the man who had given him the bill was concerned, brainlessness was out of the question, and joking improbable. There had been depths in those little bright eyes which his glance ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Cambridge, were hurried across the Channel into Life, for which they had been prepared by a course of lectures on the Dangers of Paris. There also went the confidential secretaries, the clerks and shorthand typists, in their hundreds; degreeless, brainless beings, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... instinctive reaction, Pavlovian response. mimicry, aping (imitation) 19. moron, imbecile, idiot; fool &c. 501; dumb animal; vegetable, brain- dead. Adj. unendowed with reason, void of reason; thoughtless; vegetative; moronic, idiotic, brainless [all pejorative]. Adv. instinctively, like Pavlov's dog; vegetatively. V. mimic, ape (imitate) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... when a child haps to be got Which after proves an idiot When folk perceive it thriveth not, The fault therein to smother, Some silly, doating brainless calf That understands things by the half, Say that the Fairy left this aulfe[3] And took ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... coadjutors are responsible, reek with mawkish sentimentality, inane vapidity, or vulgar buffoonery. Most of the leading characters are duplicated or triplicated. Miranda has a sister, Dorinda, who is repellently coquettish. This new creation finds a lover in another new character, a brainless youth, Hippolito, who has never before seen a woman. Caliban becomes the most sordid of clowns, and is allotted a sister, Milcha, who apes his coarse buffoonery. Ariel, too, is given a female associate, Sycorax, together ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... nation of the Natchez, and at the same time was sensible that the resentment of a slighted woman is very formidable, I returned her such an answer as might shew my great respect for her daughter, and prevent her from making the same application to some brainless Frenchman, who, by accepting the offer, might expose the French settlement to some disastrous event. I told her that her daughter was handsome, and pleased me much, as she had a good heart, and a well turned mind; but the laws we ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... me to many obnoxious things, but never till tonight have I been called a crocodile. Possibly Mr. Randolph has been reading of the crocodiles recently dissected at Paris. It has been discovered that they are almost brainless, and, being without reason, are probably animated by a violent instinct of destruction. I believe, however, that the power ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... says, "Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the field - a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, or life." And after brandy, taken in sufficient quantity, it says, "Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that your fellow-men may laugh - drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... trivial of you to talk of physical labour," said my father with some irritation. "Do try to understand, you idiot, and get it into your brainless head, that in addition to physical strength you have a divine spirit; a sacred fire, by which you are distinguished from an ass or a reptile and bringing you nigh to God. This sacred fire has been kept alight ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... I had an idea of how much she knows," he muttered. "Did I act like a brainless idiot when I was—was that way, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... toils! No brainless broils! Each moment levell'd at the mark! Our day so short Invites to sport; Be sad and ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... "One of the most refined, ingenious and humorous authors of our time." He asserts with capable judgment that Sterne's use of the borrowed passages, the additions and alterations, the individual tone which he manages to infuse into them, all preclude Sterne from being set down as a brainless copyist. Nicolai's attitude may be best illustrated by the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... creative soul, be the slave of your creature Imagination she has, for a source of strength in the future days Looking on him was listening Love the difficulty better than the woman Metaphysician's treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise Music in Italy? Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous Not much esteem for non-professional actresses Pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency Philosophy skimmed, and realistic romances deep-sounded Polished barbarism Scorned him for listening to the hesitations (hers) She felt in him ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... Bar and trains all day among the woods and meadows, with a garland on his head and a friend to set the pace; the scent of new leaves is upon them; they rejoice in the freshness of spring; over their heads the plane-tree whispers to the elm, perhaps the most glorious invitation to the brainless life that has ever ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... yields not such another man; Wonder of men he is; the player can And bookseller prove true, if they could know Only one drop, that drives in such a flow. Are they not learned beasts, the better far Their drossy exhalations a star Their brainless admirations may render; For learning in the wise sort is but lender Of men's prime notion's doctrine; their own way Of all skills' perceptible forms a key Forging to wealth, and honour-soothed sense, Never exploring truth or ...
— English Satires • Various
... you the greatest of boons, namely to open up the Rhine, and bring back prosperity to Frankfort, which you brainless, cowardly merchants have allowed to slip through your fingers, blaming now the Barons, now the Emperor, now the Electors; censuring everybody, in fact, except the real culprits ... yourselves. You speak of the money as a favor, but it is merely ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... he considered the agitation of the subject to be both impious and indelicate, and added he was surprised that a paper holding the exalted, and deservedly popular, position of The —- should have opened its columns to the brainless vapourings of 'Mother ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... thy ambidextrous part, Nor always filch. It was but yesterday, Blundering, they nearly caught thee in the fact; None of thy balls had livers, and the guests, In horror, pierced their airy emptiness. Not even the brains were there, thou brainless hound! If thou art hired among the middling class, Who pay thee freely, be thou honourable! But for this day, where now we go to cook, E'en cut the master's throat for all I care; "A word to th' wise," and show thyself ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... whether miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination: not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for "scientific conditions" in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... face of impudence; and when I have shown it to you, I will leave the rest to your own thoughts. Meanwhile I will say thus much: The man who refuses consideration and weight to a Plenary Council, brought to a conclusion in due and orderly fashion, seems to me witless, brainless, a dullard in theology, and a fool in politics. If ever the Spirit of God has shone upon the Church, then surely is the time for the sending of divine aid, when the most manifest religiousness, ripeness of judgment, science, wisdom, dignity of ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... wit, than can vouchsafe residence in the leaden gravity of any money-monger; in whose profession all serious subjects are concluded. But he that shuns trifles must shun the world; out of whose reverend heaps of substance and austerity I can and will ere long single or tumble out as brainless and passionate fooleries as ever panted in the bosom of the most ridiculous lover. Accept it, therefore, good Madam, though as a trifle, yet as a serious argument of my affection; for to be thought thankful for all free and honourable favours is a great sum of that riches ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Prebends belong to us of Regal Right; that it is our due to receive the profits of them, and our Intention to defend our selves by the Edge of the Sword, against all such, as would any way go about to disturb us in the Possession of the same; esteeming those to be Fools and Brainless, who think otherwise. For Witnesses of this History, we have the Author of the Chronicle of Bretayne, lib. 4. chap. 14. and Nicholas Gilles in the Annals of France, to whom ought to be join'd Papon. in the first Book of his ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... of face and figure is overcome as far as is possible. Thus adorned, the dull and jaded girl of the morning becomes, under the magical influence of the footlights, a dazzling sprite, and the object of the admiration of the half-grown boys and brainless men who crowd the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... not had far more champagne than was good for him. Also, the general of Monaco had brought a pack of cards with him, and was spoiling the harmony by trying to induce Prince Ping Pong Pang to find the lady. And the brainless laugh of the Mad ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... much for the pacification of the unreasonable contentions of Poland. I have to do there with brainless heads, each of which, instead of contributing to the common peace, on the contrary, throws impediments in the way of it by caprice and levity. My embassador has published a declaration adapted to open their ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... very hard for some of our friends to realize that the silly gossip and idle curiosity which so entirely fill the lives of the brainless majority on earth can have no place in the more real life of the disciple; and so they sometimes enquire whether, even without any special wish to see, a clairvoyant might not casually observe some secret which another person was trying to keep, in the same way as one's glance might casually ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... intellectual triumph. This time Oscar had not only won success but had won also the suffrages of the best. Nearly all the journalist-critics were against him and made themselves ridiculous by their brainless strictures; Truth and The Times, for example, were poisonously puritanic, but thinking people came over to his side in a body. The halo of fame was about him, and the incense of it in his nostrils made him more charming, more irresponsibly gay, more genial-witty than ever. He was as one set ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... rhythmic—through intermittent senses, is converted into motion, and the mind, yielding utterly to its environment, knows the happiness of faith, the ecstasy of compliance, the rapture of congruity. And this the dull dunces—the eyeless, earless, brainless and bloodless callosites of cavil—are pleased ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... attitude of exclusives, and would not associate with the rest. Every passion and habit of civilized, is represented in savage life. A perfect democracy, in any country and state of society, is a perfect lie, and a leveller is a brainless fool. There is also an aristocracy in crime and in virtue, in demons and in angels. The slaves are clad variously. Haj Ibrahim tried to give every one of his a blanket or barracan, more or less ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... demanded honesty, and honesty was there. The enormous majority of decent people woke from a discontented apathy and took charge. Men sprang into place naturally and served the nation. The old log-rolling, brainless, greedy public officials were thrown into the junk-heap. As if by magic the stress of the war wrung out the rinsings and the scourings and ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... If they had that brainless idea, they would do their utmost to hide it, and conceal their cards, so as to catch you afterwards.... But it ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... said Holmes. "Don't pay any attention to the other one, of course. We've nothing to do with her, and we don't want to be bothered by her. She's a silly, brainless little ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... incapacity and sloth? What a miserable position is that of a Member of Parliament, compelled to give his vote on innumerable questions of which he does not understand the rudiments, and giving it at the dictation of party chiefs who themselves are controlled by the blind and brainless mechanism of the caucus! The people are the slaves of their representatives, the representatives of their chiefs, and the chiefs of a conscienceless machine! And that is the last word of governmental science! Oh, divine spirit of man, in what chains have you bound yourself, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... steadfastly to this end, and abjures extravagant aims. The genius, on the other hand, is at bottom a monstrum per excessum; just as, conversely, the passionate, violent and unintelligent man, the brainless barbarian, is a monstrum ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... ill enough in the Court of old," saith Father, "but it doth seem me we were scantly so brainless of old time as this. I shall send a letter to my cousin of Oxenford touching Walter. He must not be suffered to ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... safe, but he felt that he would not be really safe for ages and ages. Throughout the night he was going over the list of his idiotic mistakes, upbraiding himself, cursing himself for a hundred acts of brainless folly. The plan had been sound enough: it was the accomplishment of the plan that ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... heaping the ground so thick with dead that Napoleon himself could not refrain from tears. Then Friedland, the trap into which the Russians again allowed themselves to be decoyed like a flock of brainless sparrows, the masterpiece of the Emperor's consummate strategy; our left held back as in a leash, motionless, without a sign of life, while Ney was carrying the city, street by street, and destroying the bridges, then the left hurled like a thunderbolt on the enemy's ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... chance, or of plodding patience. They will rise on one day at almost any fly (but the sniggler), however ill-presented to them. On a dozen other days no fly and no skill will avail to tempt them. The salmon is a brainless brute and the grapes ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... at this brow, furrowed with the folds of idle learning! Aim at this liberty cap, which trembles on the brainless head before every breath from the lips ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... affair was an outrage on the Negro, at the expense of innocent childhood, a brainless fabrication from start ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... fool and an ass—you ignorant, brainless, lying cub! You make me a thief before all the world by forging my name, and stealing the money for which I am responsible, and then you rate me so low that you think you'll bamboozle me by threats of suicide. You haven't the courage to shoot yourself—drunk or sober. And what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... one meets, Or clever mare he passes, He finds in all the city streets A score of brainless asses. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... mixed-marriage, but treated from a new aspect. Kudah Bux (the Gift in question) is the son of an adoring Mohamedan father; he goes to England for education in the law, and there falls in love with and marries the brainless daughter of a London landlady. He is a very human and appealing figure. The debacle that follows his return to India with so impossible a bride is told in a way that convinces. Here Mrs. PERRIN is at her best. Some of the shorter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... rather severe on the young men of the day. "I don't know what has come to them," he would remark irritably; "young men nowadays call their father 'governor,' and speak to him as though he were their equal in age. There is no respect shown to elders. A brainless young puppy will contradict a man twice his age, and there is not even the same courtesy shown to the weaker sex either. I have heard young men and young women—young ladies, I suppose I ought to say—who address each other in a 'hail-fellow-well-met' sort of manner, but what can you ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... peasants laughed at this merry jest, and they quickly followed his lead, as brainless sheep will follow the one that scrambles through a gap. Soon they were all joyously stamping and dancing in what had so lately been a pellucid pool. The water-lilies and blue forget-me-nots were trodden down, the fish that had their homes under the mossy ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... mob, brainless and heartless, cowardly, bestial, filled with the lust for blood, pushed and jammed into the narrow corridor before the cell door where the two prisoners awaited their fate. The single guard was brushed away. A dozen men wielding three railroad ties battered upon the grating of the door, swinging ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... most desired or appreciated is a good measure of character. The pre-eminence furnished by thew and muscle is most generally recognized; but, as men reach levels above the animal, other qualities take the lead. It is seen that the immaterial spirit wins the greater triumphs,—that the brainless giant, compared with the dwarf of trained intelligence, can accomplish little. The scale runs on into the moral qualities, until at last humanity has given its sanction to the Divine words, "Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... her lot. It may be that in a crowded assemblage of wealth and fashion she may see one of her masterpieces in the dress-making art, torn into shreds under the clumsy heel of a Cabinet Minister, or a Duchess may speak unkindly in her hearing of her latest devices in floral decoration. Or, some brainless nincompoop may, in his ignorance of her profession, cast aspersions on the general character and behaviour of all who keep shops. And it may be that friends, after a prolonged period of non-payment, will desert her, and speak ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... silly bird of waddling gait On a common once was bred, And brainless was his addle pate As the stubble on which he fed; Ambition-fired once on a day He took himself to flight, And in a castle all decay He nestled out of sight. "O why," said he, "should mind like mine "Midst gosling-flock be lost? "In learning I was meant to shine!" And up his ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... say 'Why, of course, Master, but why do you keep on testing me this way?' He'll ask me that about four times more, the stubborn, single-tracked, brainless skunk, and I'll really go nuts. Are you getting anywhere trying to make a Christian ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... can produce it at any time that it's wanted," Prescott made reply. "If anyone has been injured, Dodge, in health or in business, by your stupid, brainless bit of horse play and meanness, then I imagine that you'll find yourself in for a serious time of it. So now you know why we took the tires off your automobile. We knew that our campfire would show you the way to ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... that I have lived thousands of years, and exhausted every sensation. I have seen every thing, learned every thing, experienced every thing; and I am tired of every thing, and satiated and nauseated. You see me looking like a brainless hoyden, I sing, I jest, I talk slang. My gayety surprises everybody. In reality, I am literally tired to death. What I feel I could not express, there are no words to render absolute disgust. Sometimes I say to myself, 'It is stupid to be so sad. What do you need? Are you not young, handsome, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... brain is truly the organ of mind and consciousness, and to a brainless race these terms, and all other terms, would be meaningless; but no one is at liberty to assert, on the strength of that fact, that the realities underlying our use of those terms have no existence apart from terrestrial brains. Nor ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... Each had its attendant swarm of flies, and vultures soared in flocks in the air. The river was yellow with mud, and the air oppressively hot and heavy. Now and then a whiff of putrid air was blown across the deck. The three men watched the bodies drifting past, brainless skulls, eyeless sockets, floating along many of them as if they were swimming on their backs. "It is really a fine example of the power of civilization," said the stranger. "I don't approve of everything that has been done, by any means. Some of the armies have treated women rather ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... souls; and above philosophy, 'natural' or unnatural, they may find a shelter. They can show in their desperation that they are made of blood, as philosophers rather fail of doing. An insignificant brainless creature like Feltre had wits, by the aid of his religion, to help or be charitable to his fellows, particularly the sinners, in the crisis of life, surpassing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life—production, politics, and education—rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... especially those who love you and who regard your surrender as utterly shocking because it was made in a wood, or a meadow, instead of in a lawful marriage-bed. They will not be slow to punish you for your offence, so, of what good are they to you? They are stupid, cruel, brainless people. Why should you die because of ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... now reduced to a small number of ships, few of them in condition for service. Its army, once the strongest in Europe, was now but a handful of poorly equipped and half-drilled men. Its finances were in a state of frightful disorganization. The government of a brainless king, a dissolute queen, and an incapable favorite had brought Spain into a condition in which she dared not raise a hand to resist the ambitious ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... farmer in question rented a house and yard situate at the end of the field in which the young bird-fanciers had arrived, which house and yard he didn't occupy or keep any one else in. Nevertheless, like a brainless and unreasoning Briton, he persisted in maintaining on the premises a large stock of cocks, hens, and other poultry. Of course, all sorts of depredators visited the place from time to time: foxes and gipsies wrought havoc in the night; while in the daytime, I regret to have to confess ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... stubborn in continuing it, as were their foes—although no more so. Neither side can claim any superiority on the average, though each can in individual cases, as regards courage. Foolhardiness does not imply bravery. A prize-fighter who refused to use his guard would be looked upon as exceptionally brainless, not as exceptionally brave; yet such a case is almost exactly parallel to that of the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... started to behold her, for delight And exultation, and a joyance free, Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the light Of the calm smile with which she looked on me: So that I feared some brainless ecstasy, 1175 Wrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her— 'Farewell! farewell!' she said, as I drew nigh; 'At first my peace was marred by this strange stir, Now I am ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was dishes of sparklin' jelly things on the counter, that the girl said warn't much use—gone in no time; they were just meant to dress up the box. I called 'em brainless candies—just silly an' expensive, an' if you look around you'll find women can match 'em. An' along with 'em you can put the candied violets an' sugared rose leaves that only make a man out of pocket an' ain't a ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... "You brainless, mindless, contemptible idiot," Garlock sneered. "Are even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? To minds linked to your own ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... precisely the same manner, and then a footstep sounded from within, and the door was flung open. "Fools!" growled Shluker in greeting, as they stepped inside and the door was closed again. "A pair of brainless fools!" ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... the depths, aye, single-handed, there in the devil's own cauldron, where creatures in the shape of men and women, the very sight of whom would turn you sick with horror, creep like spawn through life, brainless and soulless, foul things who would murder one another for the sake of a ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... change, when one accosted the other by the question, "Who did you marry?" "Ah," said he, "I married fifty thousand dollars. I forget her other name." Such men, however, are exceptions to the rule. There are brainless creatures called men, who will marry a pretty face, though the heart and brain be uncultured, provided there be associated with her sufficient of this world's goods to gratify a mercenary ambition; but the majority, both of men and women, wisely prefer ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... in the extreme north of the Argentine Republic, where Bolivia, the Argentine, Paraguay and Brazil unite, was the place of sacrifice. Thousands of acres, white with the bones of those whom the monsters had engulfed. Brainless, devoid of intelligence, sightless, because even the sense had not become differentiated in them, yet by some infernal instinct the Earth Giants had become aware that this was their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... this thing in pantaloons and whiskers, this brainless, un-ideaed cub, whom a thousand years will not suffice to lick into a bear, longer to impose upon your good-natures? If so, we shall conclude you have lost all of that spirit so ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... side" that no earthly storm could obscure; to make all life gloomy with a horror of despair, a darkness that may verily be felt. Fools talk of Atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious thought. They, in their shallow heartlessness, their brainless stupidity, cannot even dimly imagine the anguish of the mere penumbra of the eclipse of faith, much less the horror of that great darkness in which the orphaned soul cries out into the infinite emptiness: "Is it a Devil who ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... Prince and his party had only reached Tromsoee, when they were called back on account of the war, and Renan was in a state of the most violent excitement. He said: "No punishment could be too great for that brainless scoundrel Ollivier, and the Ministry that has followed his is worse. Every thinking man could see for himself that the declaration of this war was madness. (A-t-on jamais vu pareille folie, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, c'est navrant. Nous sommes un peuple desarconne.)" In his eyes, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... hath done like Caesar. Fair and just Is his award, against these brainless creatures. 'Tis not the wholesome sharp morality, Or modest anger of a satiric spirit, That hurts or wounds the body of the state; But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant, and base Interpreter; who will distort, and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... visitors consist mainly of relays of youths, fast, foolish, and fashionable, with now and then a stray politician or journalist thrown in to give the party a soupcon of intellect. The principle of invitation is very simple. No one is asked who will not be of use in town. Any brainless little fop, any effete dandy, is sure of a welcome, provided he is known to certain circles and can help her to scramble ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... a people yet, Tho' all men else their nobler dreams forget, Confused by brainless mobs and lawless powers; Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set His Briton in blown seas and storming showers, We have a voice with which to pay the debt Of boundless love and reverence and regret To those great men who fought and kept it ours. And keep it ours, O God, from ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... me, and after a bit I told him so. Archie—my cousin, you know; he was only a boy then—was mad on card-playing at that time. And I was real worried about him. I knew he would get into a hole sooner or later, and I begged my surly Englishman to keep an eye on him. Oh, I was a fool! I was a brainless, chattering fool! And I'm not much better now, I ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... tragedy that occurs when a manly spirit is born into a woman's body. Katharina is vexed and plagued by forced submission to a father who cannot see her merit, and by jealousy of a gentle, useless sister. She, who is entirely honest, sees the brainless Bianca, whom no amount of schooling will make even passably honest, preferred before her. Lastly, she is humbled into the state of submissive wifely falsehood by a boor who cares only for his own will, her flesh, and her money. In a page and a half of melancholy ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... not, ye mournful croakers, Smoking is a dirty habit. Brainless are ye, sour non-smokers, As ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... step of their progress. They will also testify that the improvements made in farming and in the implements of agriculture have not been made by farmers themselves, but by outsiders—mechanics, and men of science—who have marvelled at the brainless stupidity which toiled on in its old track of unreasoning routine, and looked with suspicion and discouragement upon innovations. The reason why the farmer has not been foremost in improving the instruments and methods of his own business, is, that his mind has been unfitted for improvement by the ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... That is his maddest dream. I have heard him boast of it to his friends—the brainless boys who alone look up to him—I have even heard him rave of it ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... not literary herself. She was better than a poetess, she was a poem. The publisher always threw in a few realities, and some beautiful brainless creature would generally be found the nucleus of a crowd, while Clio in spectacles languished in a corner. Winifred Glamorys, however, was reputed to have a tongue that matched her eye; paralleling with ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Padre?" commented Don Jorge, coming up. "Those brainless buzzards, if they only knew it and had sense enough to unite, could strip every feather off that swaggering vulture and send him packing. Fools! And we poor Colombians, if we had the courage, could as easily throw the Church ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... pitiful that a wretched, brainless dog, when placed in a position like this, should be able to scramble out, while I, with the power of thinking given to me, with reason and some ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... at her, utterly at a loss. He did not begin to grasp what she meant. To him she was just "fickle woman" always changing her mind. He had, all his life, generalized about woman; he had never known a woman who was not rather vapid, rather brainless; he had the same idea of women as Professor Kraill had ventilated in his lectures—that they were the vehicles of the race, living for the race but getting all the fun they could out of the preliminary canter, since the race was a rather strenuous, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the ignoramus, the lethargic, the brainless, everything that savours of enthusiasm is a craze. The politician who throws himself heart and soul into a political contest is "off his head," is seized with a craze. The philanthropist who builds and endows hospitals and churches ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... But, Francos, list; a more disturbing mob, Whose crop is filled with discord and contempt, On which they daily feed, I ne'er have sized. 'Twere well to laws enact to hold in curb These brainless cubs who wield a pricking quill And words indite with vitriol for an ink, Which burns the meaning into quiv'ring brain And leaveth scars which time can ne'er efface. A son of Erin in official place Did eulogize my effort at the club; ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... attempt to steal his father's sceptre. What a pathetic sight to see the old warrior driven from his capital, and forced to flee for his life beyond the Jordan! How humiliating to witness also the alienation of his subjects, and their willingness to accept a brainless youth as his successor, after all the glorious victories he had won, and the services he had rendered to the nation! David's history reveals the sorrows and burdens of all kings and rulers. Outward grandeur and power, after all, are a poor compensation for the incessant ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... yes. There are millions of kind people in the world. It's possible to be kind and at the same time not entirely brainless." ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... of nonsense,' he yelled severely, 'is talked about men lowering themselves by marrying actresses. I was a guest at a supper-party last night at which an actress was present. And a more charming, sensible girl I never wish to meet. Not one of your silly, brainless chits who don't know the difference between lobster Newburg and canvas-back duck, and who prefer sweet champagne to dry. No, sir! Not one of your mincing, affected kind who pretend they never touch anything except a spoonful of cold consomme. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Now, however, the brainless living child that sucks, cries, moves arms and legs, and distinguishes pleasure from displeasure, has indisputably an individuality, an ego. We must, then, of necessity admit two egos in the child that has both cerebrum and spinal marrow, and that represents to himself his arm as good to taste ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... legends of disastrous dames; Will none set pen to paper for poor me? Canst write a bitter satire? Brainless people Do call them libels. Darest thou write ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... him, he was not unhappy. He occupied himself in looking after his money, and making a collection of mosaics. We never had any matrimonial disturbances. I think they are vulgar. Any woman can do as she pleases without a remonstrant word, provided she has mind enough. It is the brainless women who scold. But scolds do ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... me, I could bear it. If it would attack me, if it would try to do me some dreadful harm, I should become a man again. I should be braced to fight against it. But this gentleness, this abominable solicitude, this brainless worship of an idiot, persistent, sickly, horribly physical, I cannot endure. What does it want of me? What would it demand of me? It nestles to me. It leans against me. I feel its touch, like the touch of a feather, trembling about my heart, as if it sought to number ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... coarse and brainless, Alden. I can't imagine a boy like my Joey falling in love with a woman like that. He ought to know better. Just remember ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... California heiress—oh fabulously rich—much richer than I. With splendid bones. I gave her a dance last night and this morning she's off on my best hunter with my fiance—save the mark! He admires her, and she certainly is a nice girl, and lovely to look at, with eyes like those young mediaeval, brainless Madonnas. I'm so glad to have someone else play with him—with Alec. I dread him so. I hate, I hate to let him—kiss me. There. If you were a real man I couldn't have exploded into that. You're only the spirit of a thunder-storm, you know; I'll never see ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... carefully refutes the notion that the doctrine of justification by faith encourages Antinomianism. Liberty does not mean licence. St. Paul was quite alive to the fact that skilful opponents and brainless admirers would misrepresent his doctrine, which was also Christ's. He therefore takes great pains to show that the connection between the righteousness of Christ and the righteousness of a Christian is not arbitrary or fictitious. His argument throughout implies that man actually ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby body lay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white, dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw nothing. I think also that we saw then the profile at least of the almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the mooncalf invariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had a glimpse of a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow again; we had a ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... behind, and a whiskey-faced coachman half-asleep in a great hammercloth, be sure it belongs to some snob who has not a sentence of good English in his head. Yes! perhaps a soap-chandler, an oil-dealer, or a candy-maker. Brainless people always creep into plush-always! People of taste and learning, like me, only are entitled to liveries and crests." This Madame says, inviting her guests to take seats at her banquet-table, at the head of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... satires, say, What do you down at Pedum far away? Are you composing what will dim the shine Of Cassius' works, so delicately fine, Or sauntering, calm and healthful, through the wood, Bent on such thoughts as suit the wise and good? No brainless trunk is yours: a form to please, Wealth, wit to use it, Heaven vouchsafes you these. What could fond nurse wish more for her sweet pet Than friends, good looks, and health without a let, A shrewd clear head, a tongue to speak ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... scoundrel!" he cried. "You pettifogging lawyer—tricky to the last! How gladly you would throw over your friend to prolong your own wretched existence! Do you think you are now talking to a biased judge and a susceptible, brainless jury? Revenged on Heaton? I am revenged on him already. But part of my vengeance involves your death. Are you ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... him that his audience was so small. Tressa's confidence was no new thing; she had always believed in him—no more now than before. Conrad still clung to his megrims—phantom fears that had all but faded from Torrance's mind. As for the five hundred brainless creatures to whom his great victory should be a matter of personal pride, it meant no more to ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... she would have given worlds—had she possessed them—if she could but have dissociated herself from her brother-in-law's future altogether. Though she was an empty-headed, brainless kind of woman, she was not by nature a wicked one. Necessity had driven her into linking her fortunes with those of Sir Marmaduke. And he had been kind to her, when she was in deep distress: but for him she would probably have starved, for her beauty had gone and her career as an ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monro would take her down, 30 Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand,[244] Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand, One cell there is, conceal'd from vulgar eye, The cave of Poverty and Poetry. Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness. Hence bards, like Proteus ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... San Agustin, our contemporary writers, we say, find that the native is a creature something more than a monkey but much less than a man, an anthropoid, dull-witted, stupid, timid, dirty, cringing, grinning, ill-clothed, indolent, lazy, brainless, immoral, ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... "blithering idiots." And as he drove away to the station he congratulated himself on the fact that while his fiancee had a "touch of the tar-brush," as he expressed it, in her descent, her English bringing-up and society training under her worldly-minded but rather brainless aunt had led her to accept him as her ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... men of the old law, "Thou shalt not kill; whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of judgment: but I say unto you" of the new law, saith Christ, "that whosoever is angry with his neighbour, shall be in danger of judgment; and whosoever shall say unto his neighbour, 'Raca,' that is to say, brainless," or any other like word of rebuking, "shall be in danger of council; and whosoever shall say unto his neighbour, 'Fool,' shall be in danger of hell-fire." This card was made and spoken by Christ, as appeareth in the ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... of a rebel," said Jonathan, with marked emphasis on the word, "blown by the wind from a spike on the bridge above us. I don't know whose brainless head it may be, but it'll do for my collection." And he tossed it carelessly into the bottom of ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... others of more or less repute, the Patron of Sport sets the seal to his patronage by becoming a member of a so-called Sporting Club, at which professional pugilists batter one another in order to provide excitement for a mixed assemblage of coarse and brainless rowdies and the feeble toadies who dance attendance upon them. Here the Patron is at his best and noblest. Though he has never worn a glove in anger, nor indeed taken the smallest part in any genuine athletic exercise, he is as free with his opinions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... over the course of organic evolution, we see the unfolding of a great drama, or tragedy, in which, for millions upon millions of years the sole actors are low and all but brainless forms of life, devouring and devoured, in the old seas. We see, during other millions upon millions of years, a savage carnival of huge bestial forms upon the land, amphibian monsters and dragons of the land and air, devouring and being devoured, a riot of blood ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... in favor of a more rational, a more broad, and a more thorough training of the beginner. Time taken from that ordinarily given to the senseless, brainless working up and down of the fingers at the keyboard, and devoted to those studies such as harmony, musical history, form, and in fact, any study which will tend to widen the pupil's knowledge and increase his interest, will save much time ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... vehemence, I thought. "He wants the child and—and—well, you can see why he wants her, can't you? He is making the most desperate efforts to recover her. Max says the newspapers are full of the—the scandal. They are depicting me as a brainless, law-defying American without sense of love, honour or respect. I don't mind that, however. It is to be expected. They all describe the Count as a long-suffering, honourable, dreadfully maltreated person, and are doing what they can to help him in the prosecution of the search. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... which bases it upon a fancied grouping of women with the vile and brainless element in the country, appears to me to be at once the weakest and the meanest of all. When the United States Government invited its woman citizens to share in making the Columbian Exposition the most wondrous pageant of any age, they responded from every town and hamlet by sending of their ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson |
