"Idiotically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand to his brow, then clasped his temples, and with a continuous movement bowed his head, the crown of which we saw was unmutilated. After a time, he looked up at us, and seemed surprised to find himself seated in the gulley; for starting immediately, without any aid, to his feet, he laughed idiotically as some men will laugh when awakened from a nap, and setting in order his dress, and singed hair, bore no other signs of injury beyond a scratch on the left cheek, and the loss of his scarlet woollen cap. The Norwegian, however, has to thank Heaven for a ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Just now it was most definite in the look she bent upon the light and fluffy burden which she carried nestled in the inner curve of her right arm: a tiny dog with hair like cotton and a pink ribbon round his neck—an animal sated with indulgence and idiotically unaware of his privilege. He ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... kept on walking to and fro in a small empty space surrounded by a circle of piled-up furniture, at which he hit out idiotically, at the risk of ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... not a criminal. He is not bad. He is a fool. He has behaved idiotically, and I can never care for him in the way I used to, but I mean to give him a chance. I'm not going to jump at his first real folly to get rid of ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... together to-morrow and have it in for us," said the Gutter Pup, chortling. "But never mind, it was worth it. Did you ever see anything as idiotically solemn as Tacks Brooker? When he arrives they ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... sort except under stimulus of the horseradish which he ate in quantities off quick-lunch counters, could smart to tears at the thought of her. And over the emotions which she stirred in him, and which he could not translate, he became facetious—idiotically so. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Idiotically plunging at your own sex, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt?' asked Mr. Idle, in a highly ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... with a handkerchief, while near hovered Miss Bredd in her most brilliant and oracular attitude. She was speaking too loudly as he entered: "There is no use of worrying yourself sick about Meg, Mrs. Fridolin. She's gone for a time—that's all. When she finds out what an idiotically useless sacrifice she has made for art and is a failure as Isolde—she can no more sing the part than a sick cat—she will run home ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... fore-rigging, I clutched at and hung on to a belaying-pin, and looked about me fore-and- aft. The deck was occupied by some twenty men or so, some of whom were asleep in the lee scuppers, while others, in little groups of two and three, hung over the bulwarks, staring idiotically at the white foam that swept aft from the schooner's keen cut-water; and four, who had probably assumed the duty of looking out, staggered and lurched in pairs, holding each other on their legs, to-and-fro between the windlass and the fore-rigging, occasionally indulging in an ineffectual attempt ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... she had abandoned this very arm and hand to the white-haired ruffian. It rendered me gloomy and idiotically obstinate. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Ethelrida's face! Did you ever see one so idiotically blissful, except when she has been kissed by ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... history, he drove them from the country that was evidently the range of a sheep-eater. At night he found a walled-in canon, a natural corral, and the woolly scattering swarm, condensed into a solid fleece, went pouring into the gap, urged intelligently by the dog and idiotically by the man. At one side of the entrance Tampico made his fire. Some thirty feet away was ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... than a child, then," she said to herself. "Surely I must have been born wicked. My dear father was living then; and even the thought of his love did not comfort me. I felt myself abandoned and alone in the world. How idiotically fond I must have been of Rorie. Ever so many years have come and gone, and I have not cured myself of this folly. What is there in him that I should care ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... Coggs stared idiotically and protested, but after a short and painful scene, was sent off up to his bedroom, yelping like ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... had played by far the better game of the two. Durant, who had regarded himself as a trump card up Mrs. Fazakerly's sleeve, perceived with a pang that he had counted for nothing in the final move. Mrs. Fazakerly had not, as he idiotically supposed, been greatly concerned with Frida Tancred's attitude toward him. She had divined nothing, imagined nothing, she had been both simpler and subtler than he knew. She had desired the removal of Frida Tancred from her path, and at the right moment she had produced Georgie Chatterton. She ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... had acquired to the coat-tail of a local bank manager who, though on her side, had lately distinguished himself by a public denouncement of "Women's Rights," so savagely virulent and idiotically tyrannous in principle as to suggest that his household contained representatives of the "shrieking sisterhood," who had been one too many for him. The boys who saw the joke enjoyed it very much indeed, as he strolled ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... sailors were beginning to repair some of the most necessary ropes and stays that had been shot away, he pushed his way through them and took his share of the work, laughing idiotically from time to time. He had, when he saw that the galleon was sinking, taken off his doublet, the better to be able to swim, and in his shirt and trunks there was nothing to distinguish him from a Spaniard, and none suspected that he was other than he seemed to be — a ship's ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... nothing could be done; the mare had taken her determined, long, continuous stride, the road was a straight, steady descent all the way back to the village, Chu Chu had the bit between her teeth, and there was no prospect of swerving her. We could only follow hopelessly, idiotically, furiously, until Chu Chu dashed triumphantly into the Saltellos' courtyard, carrying the half-fainting Consuelo back to the arms of her assembled and ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... idiotically. "I'm sorry, but—I'm not." I have learned since that she has bright brown hair, with a loose wave in it that drops over her ears, and dark blue eyes with black lashes and—but what does it matter? One enjoys a picture as a whole: not as the sum ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Simon Loggerheads falling in love with her, she had fallen in love with him. And she did not care. She did not care a fig for anything. She was in love with him, and he with her, and she was idiotically joyous, and so was he. And that ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... resign ourselves to boil with anger, to roar with impatience, to freeze our feet in the mud, to be numbed, and roasted, and torn by false hopes. We must go, on the faith of a mere indication, to a vague object, miss our end, curse our luck, improvise to ourselves elegies, dithyrambics, exclaim idiotically before inoffensive pedestrians who observe us, knock over old apple-women and their baskets, run hither and thither, stand on guard beneath a window, make a thousand suppositions. But, after all, it is a chase, a hunt; a ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... you're behaving idiotically!" he cried. "I know you'd do anything for a new sensation, but I'm not going to help. Possibly I'm old-fashioned. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... my head feel empty," said the Koala. "But you'd think differently if a flock of Kookooburras settled on your tree, and guffawed idiotically when you wanted ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... perambulating carcasses, the living deaths—women, blasted by disease and drink till their shame brought not tuppence in the open mart; and men, in fantastic rags, wrenched by hardship and exposure out of all semblance of men, their faces in a perpetual writhe of pain, grinning idiotically, shambling like apes, dying with every step they took and each breath they drew. And there were young girls, of eighteen and twenty, with trim bodies and faces yet untouched with twist and bloat, who had ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... were getting away from," finished Lotty. "It's quite true. It seems idiotically illogical. But I'm so happy, I'm so well, I feel so fearfully wholesome. This place—why, it makes me feel flooded ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... She struck a wrong note. Her hands trembled and lost their grip. They stiffened, dropped from the keys. She sat and stared idiotically at the white page, at the black dots nodding on their stems, at the black ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Hester," pled Rose, determined not to be offended, "I was only relieving the poor Misses Stone of a painful necessity. I am sure they have never put any dependence on me since the day I broke down—I grant you idiotically. I cannot stand the repression—suppression—whatever you like to call it. Now that there is a way out of it, I have felt like a wild beast in the school—the girls are so very tame—so much tamer than we were at Miss Burridge's—where I was not a black ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... appearance, who had then passed tranquilly on. Dizzy astonishment held him, to the exclusion of any other sentiment. He might have gasped, foolish and tottering: "Why—what's the meaning of this? What's happened?" He looked at the child uncomprehendingly, idiotically. Little by little— it seemed an age, and was in fact a few seconds—he resumed his faculties, and remembered that in order to keep a conventional self-respect he must behave in such a manner as to cause Janet to believe that her revelation of the child's identity had in no way disturbed him. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... must have been my vanity. Some few men had conquered Le Mire; others had surrendered to her; certainly none had ever been able to resist her. There was a satisfaction in it. I walked about the lobby of the hotel till Harry returned, idiotically pleased ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... over; I knew I had started out with a hundred or so, and that I had considered that sufficient to see me through. Plainly, it was not sufficient; but it is a fact that I looked upon it as a joke, and went to sleep grinning idiotically at the thought of me, Ellis Carleton, heir to almost as many millions as I was years old, without the price of a breakfast in his pocket. It seemed novel and interesting, and I rather enjoyed the ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... was scampering ahead of her, past the stables, they rounded a corner and came flush upon the same nerve-wrecked hen and her brood. Lad halted in his scamper, with a suddenness that made him skid. Then, walking as though on eggs, he made an idiotically wide circle about the feathered dam and her silly chicks. Never thereafter did he assail any of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... at sight of whom my friend said he had talked himself thirsty, and asked for another glass of water. He mentioned that he had brought his car over with him: his little daughter (by the news of whose existence I felt idiotically surprised) was very keen on motoring, and they were all three starting the day after to-morrow on a little tour through France. Afterward they were going on to Switzerland "for some climbing." Did I care about motoring? If so, we might go for a spin ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... under the sting of accusation, had instinctively pressed itself against his pocket. Now guiltily and self-consciously it came away and he found himself idiotically ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... to feel dazed. As for counting the money, it was out of the question. Idiotically I began to arrange the counters in ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... carried his swag to the side of the track, sat down on it and talked rationally about bush matters for a while; but presently he grew silent and began to feel his muscles and smile idiotically. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... went on, as he walked forward, "And even when it was on me at its worst, I was not meditating suicide, as I think you imagine. I am a very average specimen of humanity,—neither brave enough to defy the possibilities of eternity nor cowardly enough to shirk those of time. No, I was only trying idiotically to persuade a girl of eighteen that life was not worth living; and more futilely still, myself, that I did not wish her to live. I am afraid, that in my mind philosophy and fact have but small connection ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... thing—whatever it is—no longer leaves me even for a moment. It will not stay here unless I am here, for it loves me, persistently, idiotically. It accompanied me to Paris, stayed with me there, pursued me to the lecture hall, pressed against me, caressed me while I was speaking. It has returned with me here. It is here now,"—he uttered a sharp cry,—"now, as ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... piled high as mountains, and Yule Larson towering above the landscape, draining gargantuan rainbows at a single gulp; striding like Paul Bunyan across the land in mile-long strides and kicking over the pyramids of crystals, laughing uproariously at the sport. And Jenner, grinning idiotically, pointing a thick finger at him and repeating over and over: "Out of their jurisdiction! Nothing to fear! Nothing to ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... called Margaret's husband, Mr. Lawrence Pole. Larry, as he was known in his flourishing days when he loafed in brokers' offices, and idiotically dribbled away his own fortune and most of his wife's, rarely earned a better word than this epithet. "She ought to leave him—divorce him—get rid of such rubbish somehow," Conny continued with unwonted heat, as the tired ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... going to save you two lads, no matter how idiotically you act or talk. I like you, in spite of your ridiculous ascetic airs and your nonsensical assumption of austerity. You can't make me angry nor lose my protection, no matter how rude and chilly you are. If you two don't appreciate the kind ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... as if her brain were in her toiling arms and hands. Moreover, she always went to sleep immediately after Harry had gone and Maria was left alone with her. She sat in her chair and breathed heavily, with her head tipped idiotically ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Bainbridge tried—in fact I know by what you say that he did try—to air his knowledge on the subject of animal heat? No doubt talked for half an hour about the effects of cold on the animal economy? Oh, he's a rapid man! You heard, sir, how idiotically he talked that day, just before I cured old man Peters? If Bainbridge had had his way, Peters' story would have been a short one. I suppose his remedy for a frozen Hili-lite would be to send him to the North Pole! Now, sir, I instantly grasped the whole idea ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... she whose counterpart had been in his dream's eye every moment of the dragging days which had been vacant of her living presence. A number of his colleagues were hanging over her almost idiotically; her face was gay and her voice came to his ears, as he turned, with the accent of her cadenced laughter running through her talk like a chime of tiny bells flitting through a ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... appreciably impair the ensemble of the fane. Photographs and pictures of Arras Cathedral ought to be cherished by German commanders, for they have accomplished nothing more austerely picturesque, more religiously impressive, more idiotically sacrilegious, more exquisitely futile than their achievement here. And they are adding to it weekly. As a spectacle, the Cathedral of Rheims cannot compare with the ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... so idiotically that it was impossible for a time to tell if the man's heart was beating. All at once a wave of hot fury rushed over her—fury at the cowardliness of the assault—and the vertigo passed. She laid her palm firmly over Johnny Two-Hawks' heart. Alive! He was alive! She straightened ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... masses of apparatus from the laboratory in the Lunar Apennines. He labored lovingly, fanatically. Like most spectacular discoveries, the Dabney field was basically simple. It was almost idiotically uncomplicated. In theory it was a condition of the space just outside one surface of a sheet of metal. It was like that conduction-layer on the wires of a cross-country power-cable, when electricity is transmitted in the form of high-frequency alterations and travels on the skins of many strands ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... is one subject on which girls are more idiotically ignorant than on any other, it is happiness in marriage. A courtier, a lover, a man who will not let the winds of heaven visit your face too harshly, is very nice, no doubt; but he is not a husband. I want to be a wife and not a fragile ornament kept in a glass case. He would as soon think of submitting ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... fit of laughing (don't you know?) and couldn't stop. Eventually I had to go away. He looked so comic and so dejected, and his use of the word Abroad (as if it were a country in itself) always makes me laugh idiotically. I haven't seen him since, and it will be difficult to ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... Roy, reappearing, felt idiotically convinced that every eye was on the little spot of yellow in his button-hole that linked him publicly with the girl who wore a cluster of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... said the other, idiotically, "I'll see you all right, sergeant. Come, Bill, fetch him over to the corn-crib and we'll give him ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... said Dinah, her voice squeaking on a note half-indignant, half-piteous. "I—I behaved so idiotically, just like a raw schoolgirl. And I hate myself ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go. But I did. I found Miss Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly animated and pretty. The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as she turned toward me might have been flattering but for my uneasiness in regard to Enriquez. I delivered his excuses as naturally ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... gardens or open spaces; profit which won't take the most ordinary precautions against wrapping a whole district in a cloud of sulphurous smoke; which turns beautiful rivers into filthy sewers; which condemns all but the rich to live in houses idiotically cramped and confined at the best, and at the worst in houses for whose ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... flung into her lap between mealtimes. There was no harm in it all; they were only sweets! But at last one evening there only remained a single little wood. She swallowed it up disdainfully, as it was hardly worth the trouble opening one's mouth for. La Faloise laughed idiotically and sucked the top of his stick. His debts were crushing him; he was not worth a hundred francs a year, and he saw that he would be compelled to go back into the country and live with his maniacal uncle. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... to her side as though something hurt her. The tadpole youth grinned idiotically and the barber seemed anxious to end ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... because I went through higher mathematics that I never pressed a flower he gave me? Do you imagine that Biology kills blushing in a woman? Do you think that Philosophy keeps me from crying myself to sleep when I think he doesn't care for me, or growing idiotically glad when he tells me he does? What rubbish people write upon this subject! Even Pope proved that he was only a man ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... hysterically. Vivienne LeMar was grossly intoxicated. This woman whom Spencer Morgan worshipped, for whom he had forsaken her, was reeling about the room, laughing idiotically, talking wildly in a thick voice. If he could but ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mother found him in the library, searching diligently through the volume of the encyclopedia that contained the G's. When she asked what he was looking for he laughed idiotically, and, in confusion, informed her that he was trying to find the name of the most important city in Indiana. She was glancing at the books in the case when she was startled by hearing him utter an exclamation and then lean to ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Baker always stuck by Em; may be she remembered how the old judge had talked once on a time about his mother's cooking. For all married men are, as I have said, idiotically cruel about that sort of thing. Yes, old Miss Baker braced Em up wonderful; brought a lot of dried catnip out west with her for the baby; taught Em how to make salt-rising bread; told her all about stewing ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... impossible attitude. The steel ramrods clanked and clanged with incessant din as the men pounded them furiously into the hot rifle barrels. The flaps of the cartridge boxes were all unfastened, and bobbed idiotically with each movement. The rifles, once loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without apparent aim into the smoke or at one of the blurred and shifting forms which upon the field before the regiment had been growing larger ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane |
