"Fool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a slave and a fool whisky can make of a man!" he thought. Then he remembered Dennie's anxiety of the morning. "There must be some cause for his prejudice against this strange hermit woman when he is drunk. Bond Saxon is not a man to hate anybody ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... He is drawing in his horns. I will put on a bold face, and if he is fool enough to be afraid of me, I will pay him back somewhat. (To VALERE) Do you know, Mr. Grinner, that I am not exactly in a laughing humour, and that if you provoke me too much, I shall make you laugh after another fashion. (JACQUES pushes VALERE to the ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... Arabic:—"Allah Akbar, the camels! Allah Akbar, the camels! Good, good! Allah Akbar, the camels!" They went off (or rather pretended to go) to seize the merchant's camels. These gone, the merchants of Ghat set all upon Haj Ibrahim, "What a fool you are! Why not give the long fellow a couple of dollars? If you won't, we shall give the Sheikh the money ourselves." One of them turned to me, "Why, Christian, what is a couple of dollars to Haj Ibrahim? That's the value?" (putting his hand to his nose.) The reader ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... dirt. . . . Seeing, then, that no advance is made, and that the desire is to make me hurry matters, and not conduct them orderly, I have thrice spoken thereof to the queen, who does nothing but make a fool of me, and tell everybody the opposite of what I told her; in such sort that my friends find fault with me, and I know not how to bring her to book, for when I say to her, 'Madame, it is reported that I said so-and-so to you,' though it was she herself who ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of things as you describe, Villiers," he aid, "what a useless unit I am! A Poet!—who wants me in this age of Sale and Barter? ... Is not a producer of poems always considered more or less of a fool nowadays, no matter how much his works may be in fashion for the moment? I am sure, in spite of the success of 'Nourhalma,' that the era of poetry has passed; and, moreover, it certainly seems to have given ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, "and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... necessary to the great ends of peace, security, and law. Such was Mark's theory. As for the modern crotchet that men yielded no natural right to government, but were to receive all and return nothing, the governor, in plain language, was not fool enough to believe it. He was perfectly aware that when a man gives authority to society to compel him to attend court as a witness, for instance, he yields just so much of his natural rights to society, as might be necessary to empower him to stay away, if he saw fit; and, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... my mind needed to be 'brought back.' Only my body was in the hospital, and the real me, as Mr. Talmadge said, was back in the cabin, helping Donald operate on Lou, all over again. I cried like a little fool—the first time I have done it here—but my tears weren't for the poor baby on the operating table. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... "Thou art a fool, Berwine," said the old lady, sternly; "thinkest thou I will bring anger and misfortune on my house, by suffering this girl to leave it without rendering the usual homage to the Red-Finger? Go to—let the room be made ready—small preparation may serve, if she cherish not the Norman nicety about ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... said, raising her arms and setting her hands on my shoulders, "I have never forgotten that I was a fool. Yes, once, for a few moments yesterday. I shall remember at Paris what a fool I was, and I shan't forget it when I come back. Only I wish it didn't break one's heart to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... highroad, "that you shall, Little Claus." So as soon as he reached home he took the largest sack he could find and went over to Little Claus. "You have played me another trick," said he. "First, I killed all my horses, and then my old grandmother, and it is all your fault; but you shall not make a fool of me any more." So he laid hold of Little Claus round the body, and pushed him into the sack, which he took on his shoulders, saying, "Now I'm going to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... fool would get drunk over a glass of whiskey offered in fun," said Steptoe harshly, yet evidently quite as ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... is safe enough," he growled testily, "and so is my chain. Any one who steals from me will have to be pretty smart. I guess if this man had laid hands on my watch I'd have known it. Can't fool me." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... for that. And then I allowed she'd, like enough, marry Tom Kimberly, and that'd change her and it'd all come out all right. All the time I was hoping and trying to save both her and you. I been nigh about crazy, Colonel. And all the time, of course, I was only a damn fool cowpuncher, ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... Jackey Fidget because he was a naughty boy and would not sit still, Polly Giddybrains, for losing her needle and thread paper, and, Lord bless me! my ma'am was so cross, that she was going to put the nasty fool's cap on my head, only for miscalling the first word in my lesson."—"In short she was such a notorious telltale, that she was soon dignified by her school fellows with the honourable appellation of Dolly Cagmag. As she advanced ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... fellows," he remarked, as he carried an armful of the stuff he had been gathering to the spot where Max had already commenced to erect the sides of the squatty shelter by driving stakes into the ground, "is that I hope we haven't come all the way up here on a reg'lar fool's errand. It'd cost Mrs. Hopewell a pretty good sum, and be a real disappointment to her, if after all we didn't find that good-for-nothing nephew of hers, Roland Chase. Honest to goodness now, I'm a little inclined to believe he'll be leading us a wild-goose Chase, ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... are that seem most wise in love, How wise they are that are but fools in love! Before I was a lover, I had reason To judge of matters, censure of all sorts, Nay, I had wit to call a lover fool, And look into his folly with bright eyes. But now intruding love dwells in my brain, And franticly hath shoulder'd reason thence: I am not old, and yet, alas! I doat; I have not lost my sight, and yet am blind; No bondman, yet have lost my liberty; No natural fool, and yet I want my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... sell,—keep or give away, It is a richer—yet a poorer thing! Priceless to him that owns and prizes it; Worthless when own'd, not priz'd; which makes the man That covets it, obtains it, and discards it,— A fool, if not a villain. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... true. Her own emotion was as great as his. Tears started to her own eyes, and in her sadness she leaned on his arm and wept. Whereupon Zac's tears fell in spite of him, and he began to call himself a darned fool, and her a dear little pet; till the scolding of himself and the soothing of Margot became so hopelessly intermingled that he called her a darned old pet, and himself a dear little fool. Whereupon Margot burst into ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... my dear. But I do know that the stage came on through, with no attempt at a hold-up, and I guessed that our little ruse didn't fool anybody. When I got the empty strong box from the bank I knew pretty well ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... in the situation, suddenly broke out, "How long was this fool of a girl going to keep them hanging on in this hole?" The Count, courteous as ever, observed that one could not demand so painful a sacrifice of any woman—the offer must come from her. Monsieur Carre-Lamadon remarked that if—as there was every reason to believe—the French made ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... fool of stubborn will, But prudent, cautious, still— Who, since his work was good, Would do it ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the scenes,[A] being shock'd at his unmanly behaviour, was warm enough to say, that no man but a fool or a bully could be capable of insulting an audience or a woman in so monstrous a manner. The former valiant gentleman, to whose ear the words were soon brought by his spies, whom he had plac'd behind the scenes to observe how the action was taken there, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... except one of his shoes. He was a perfect blackguard, for although he was in a most dangerous state he did not refrain from cursing his eyes, which happened, as it was, to be both gone, and saying what a fool he must have been. He was that night conveyed to Brussels Hospital with the rest of the many wounded, and died in ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... git a good breath when us heared Marster tell him to do somepin, 'cause us knowed what he was meanin' to do. He didn't go right ahead and mind Marster lak he had allus been used to doin'. Marster called to him again, and den dat fool Nigger cut loose and he evermore did cuss Marster out. Lordy, Chile, Marster jus' fairly tuk de hide off dat Nigger's back. When he tried to talk to dat old slave 'bout it de old man laughed and said: ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... about?... He hasn't an acre of ground; he is acting as representative of his brother. He bawls: "No, you shall not impose on me! no, you shan't drive me to that! give the plans here! give me the surveyor's plans, the Judas's plans here!" "But what is your claim, then?" "Oh, you think I'm a fool! Indeed! do you suppose I am going to lay bare my claim to you offhand? No, let me have the plans here—that's what I want!" And he himself is banging his fist on the plans all the time. Then he mortally offended Marfa Dmitrievna. She shrieks ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... you to be a fool," said Sweyn, losing patience. "Another, who was not your brother, might believe you to be a knave, and guess that you had transformed White Fell into a Were-Wolf because she smiled more readily on me ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... as his money went, found some gleams of authority and comfortable flattery in the Rhenish provinces: at length, in 1263, money and patience being both probably out, he quitted Germany for the second and last time; came home to Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire here, [Gough's Camden, i.339.] more fool than he went. Till his death (A.D. 1271), he continued to call himself, and was by many persons called, Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire;—needed a German clerk or two at Berkhamstead, we can suppose: but never went back; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... a damned fool if I were you," I once overheard him say to a certain young man who was suffering from an attack of what Carl ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... fashion's fool, Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool, Not proud, nor servile;—be one Poet's praise, That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways: 335 That Flatt'ry, ev'n to Kings, he held a shame, And thought a Lie in verse or prose ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... a word and said: "Why paceth the fool up and down our hall, doing nothing, even as the Ravens flap croaking about the crags, abiding the war-mote and the clash of ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... he can do nothing, and is not fool enough to throw away hundreds of lives; besides, he must know that his mother and children are ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Thou knowest thyself to be strong and endued with prowess, so thou shalt rightly estimate thy strength today in thy encounter with me. Until that, I will not slay these (thy brothers). Let them sleep comfortably. But I will, as thou art a fool and the utterer of evil speeches, slay thee first. After drinking thy blood, I will slay these also, and then last of all, this (sister of mine) that hath ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... as heartily at the absurd results obtained as any spectator. Up to this time, too, I had no means of ascertaining whether the apparent results were genuine. I might be the dupe of cunning people who were conspiring to fool me, for, in these early stages, there seems to be no way of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... up," promised Mr. Horton, passing the potato to Sunny Boy. "I'll have to come and show you both where I had my garden and teach Sunny how to fool the wise fish." ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... Racey. "'We?' You didn't have a thing to do with that agreement. I made it. It was my fool fault we worked all ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... fool as you in all my days," replied Tom, as he stared savagely into Dennis's mild blue eyes. "You'd hurt yerself rockin' a baby's cradle, you would. 'Bout time you quit men's ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... that. Sometimes they say the same word over and over again, many times. It was that way when I went out on the battlefield to help Captain Herrick. As I ran along, stumbling over the dead and wounded, I heard these voices crying out: 'Fool! Fool! Don't do it! You mustn't do it! You're a coward! You know you're a coward! You're going to be killed! You're a little fool to ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... "She didn't fool me," announced Jerry Macy, who had joined them just in time to hear Muriel's remark. "I knew she was coming, but I kept still because I wanted ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... spurious version, I will translate it first for Miss Bloxam's benefit; a lady cannot be supposed to know the meaning of 'Loquaces si sapiat vitet.' Listen," continued Cottrell: "the Latin is a comprehensive language, remember,—'Si,' if; 'sapiat,' you are not a fool; 'vitet,' have nothing to say to; 'loquaces,' ladies' commissions. A wickedly cynical saying to have broidered on one's case, even if you have found ladies' commissions troublesome and productive of much inconvenience. But, dear ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... those who amid the mists of error saw the light of Truth, and strove to tell men of her graces and perfections. The vulgar crowd heeded not the message, and despised the messengers. They could see no difference between the philosopher's robe and the fool's motley, the Saint's glory and Satan's hoof. But with eager eyes and beating hearts the toilers after Truth ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... community just 'cause I was fool enough to tumble down and crack my leg? Me, an old woodman, that'd ought to have some sense. An' Eunice! Why, 'twould scare Eunice out of a year's growth to see me fetched home 'stead of walkin' there on my own pins. Half a loaf's better'n no loaf, an' one leg's better'n none. As ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... that. Do you suppose that I believed you fool enough to kiss a girl on the open road when you had every opportunity of kissing her at home? I know, too, that you have never kissed her at all; or, ostensibly at any rate, done anything that ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... fool, don't you know she's got a living body? And how should she be up there, without coming through the door, or in at the window, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... family joys. Romance in her eyes was the exaltation of woman out of reach, and Maura's communications inclined her to glorify Kalliope as a heroine, molested by a very inconvenient person, 'Spighted by a fool, spighted and angered both,' as she ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Just before reaching the lines, however, he stopped short. Long-Hair, who was close behind him, took hold of his shoulder and led him back to the starting place. The big Indian's arm must have given him pain when he thus used it, but he did not wince. "Fool—kill dead!" he repeated two or three times, holding his tomahawk on high with threatening motions and frequent repetitions of his one echo from the profanity of civilization. He was beginning to draw his mouth ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... thought only;" he exclaimed, "of making me stupid, and of stifling all my powers. I was a younger son. I coped with my brother. They feared the consequences; they annihilated me. I was taught only to play and to hunt, and they have succeeded in making me a fool and an ass, incapable of anything, the laughing-stock and disdain of everybody." Madame de Saint-Simon was overpowered with compassion, and did everything to calm M. de Berry. Their strange tete-a-tete lasted nearly two ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... "What a fool I am!" was his mental commentary: "just as if it was any thing to me." And he turned, and walked to the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had said to Brenton, midway in their conversation of the day before. "No; it's not a chastisement of Providence. I have too much respect for Providence to lay off on it the result of some infernal fool's careless use of explosives. Providence, as a rule, doesn't go out gunning with black powder. Its ways ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the villainous Lisbeth, "a person to whom he is bound by the most sacred ties—his wife—wrote yesterday to tell him so. He wants to be off. Oh, he will be a great fool to give up ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... fool to find fault with him," said Abbie to herself. "How can I expect him to see any thing in me, more than I can see myself in the looking-glass? And then, he loves Sophie, and perhaps he thinks I'd rob her; the Lord knows I only coveted the luxury of giving away my own, and seeing them happy ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... "property"—the chairman assuring the audience that it could speak. Fugitive slaves, at that time, were not so plentiful as now; and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being a "brand new fact"—the first one out. Up to that time, a colored man was deemed a fool who confessed himself a runaway slave, not only because of the danger to which he exposed himself of being retaken, but because it was a confession of a very low origin! Some of my colored friends ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... felt quite sure that there had been a mistake about Ben Stanley, which was the reason that he mentioned his name. He is sorry that he has made a fool of himself by writing. Having had so much to do with invitations during the two last years, he was not altogether unnaturally mortified to find himself not invited there.[31] Stanley is not a man to whom Lord Melbourne is very partial, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... his mother. Antonio becomes the protege of the Borghese, returns to Rome, receives an education, and is raised into the high and cultivated ranks of society. He is put under the learned discipline of Habbas Dahdah—an excellent name, we confess, for a fool—in whose person, we presume, he takes a sly revenge upon his late rector of Slagelse. But he has not been fortunate in the invention of parallel absurdities in his Italian pedagogue to those which he may have remembered of some German prototype. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... man in quest of a religion, if he does not discover something new, he might as well stay at home: nothing near the present standard can take. Two requisites are necessary to found a religion, capacity, and singularity: no fool ever succeeded. If his talents are not above mediocrity, he will not be able to draw the crowd; and if his doctrines are not singular, the crowd will not ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... modes of attack. The men who once exposed wrong-doing by shouting it before the wrong-doer's door, now expose it by representing its various forms. The comic poets denounce not only the thief, the fool, the miser, but the advocates of war, the flatterers of the populace, the sophists who set up Whirligig[42] in the place of Zeus, the thin-blooded tragedian in league with the sophists, who preaches against the flesh. Where facts ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?' In my dying moments I had forgotten what I had so often preached—'Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.' In a moment my life lay before me like a valley or an open page. All along its paths and waysides I saw the little seeds of word and deed that I had sown extending ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... myself, said I, were I capable of such poor artifices as these. I must be a fool to use them, as well as a mean creature; for have I not had experience enough, that my friends are incapable of being moved in much more affecting instances?—But you'll see how I shall ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... mean, Simon," shouted his master, "what fool's game are you after! Nice way you're attending to my orders. What are you ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... I am writing most precious nonsense. Two or three of our labourers yesterday immediately set to work and got most excessively drunk in honour of the arrival of Master Charles. Who then shall gainsay if Master Charles himself chooses to make himself a fool. Good-bye. God bless you! I hope you are as happy, but much wiser, than your most sincere ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... men can keep matters like this from their wives? I can tell you we all admire, very much, the manner in which you saved Lieutenant Gordon from having to leave the service. He is a favourite with us all and, though he seems to have made a great fool of himself, we should all be sorry if he had ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... without cause. One man, on his way to Canada, was killed because they did not like his looks, "he was so sour;" another, because he was "old and good for nothing." One of their own number, who was suffering greatly from the effects of the scalding soap, was derided and mocked as a "fool who had let a squaw whip him;" while on the other hand the energy and spirit manifested by Goodwife Bradley in her defence was a constant theme of admiration, and gained her so much respect among her captors ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... snarl of pain seemed to bring her to her senses. She picked the creature up and stroked it. The bird in the cage broke into a mad little melody. How morbid she was growing! She had been depressed by her ridiculous dinner and Lucretius had been most unpleasant. He was such a fool, too, in his idea of love. The brevity of the heated hours was the flame's best fuel. Venus the Plunderer seemed to smile, and there quickened within her the desire for excitement, for the exercise of power, for the obliterating ecstasies of a fresh amour. She had not had a lover since she accepted ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... purity of your intentions. Seeing you lie, steal, and kill, I had said to you, "You are liars, robbers, and murderers;" but truly, in spite of Citizen Felix Pyat, who is a coward, and Citizen Miot, who is a fool; in spite of Milliere, who shot refractaires, and Philippe, whose trade shall be nameless; in spite of Dacosta, who amused himself with telling the Jesuits at the Conciergerie, "Mind, you are to be shot in an hour," and then an hour afterwards ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... man in Hellas!" "But an effeminate puppy!" "Of the noble house of Alcmaeon!" "The family's accursed!" "A great god helps him—even Eros." "Ay—the fool married for mere love. He needs help. His father ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... afternoon. 'I miss you at every turn. Your keen intelligence and ready sympathy were invaluable to me. Now where am I? In the cart. I evolved a slightly bright thought on life just now. There was nobody to tell it to except the new man. I told it him, and the fool gaped. I tell you, Comrade Jackson, I feel like some lion that has been robbed of its cub. I feel as Marshall would feel if they took Snelgrove away from him, or as Peace might if he awoke one morning to find Plenty gone. Comrade Rossiter ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... conflict. The Republicans desired a new constitution and disestablishment. The old constitutional and religious debates were opened and fiercely fought out in pamphlet, press, sermon, and political oration. Noah Webster replied to the "Extent and Power of Political Delusion" by "A Rod for the Fool's Back." John Leland published his famous Hartford speech as "A Blow at the Root, a fashionable Fast-Day Sermon," and his "High Flying Churchman," as contributions in behalf of civil and religious liberty. Abraham Bishop took up ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... me still insist upon it to the tradesman to keep company with tradesmen; let the fool run on in his own way; let the talkative green-apron rattle in his own way; let the manufacturer and his factor squabble and brangle; the grave self-conceited puppy, who was born a boy, and will die before he is a man, chatter and say ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... more request will sure suffice: From carving any rude device Refrain! and oh let no one see Your name on post, or bridge or tree. Such were the act of fool, whose name We fear can ne'er ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... city now "belonged to the King of the Almoravides;" and he said that if the Cid would serve that King he would do his best to help him that he might win his love. When the Cid read this letter he saw that Abeniaf was a fool, for he had sent to reproach him for the death of his Lord, and the answer which he had returned was concerning another matter; and he then knew that Abeniaf was not a man to keep the power which ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... the wise seem few. Oh foolishest fond folly of a heart Divided, neither here nor there at rest! That hankers after Heaven, but clings to earth; That neither here nor there knows thorough mirth, Half-choosing, wholly missing, the good part:— Oh fool among ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... lives upon the revelation of two thousand years ago! Fool—this world lives as your body lives by the beating of its heart—upon the revelation and the effort of each instant of its life. And to-day or to-morrow the great Revealer might send to some lonely thinker in his garret a new word that would scatter ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... "Fool!" cried Heselrigge, driven from his assumed temper by her steady denial. "What? is it easier for these dainty limbs to be hacked to pieces by my soldiers' axes? Is it easier for that fair bosom to be trodden underfoot by my horse's hoofs, and for that ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... "What a fool I've been! I've made a mess of the whole business now," he cried as he ran frantically to the ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... fairly estimate the effect. But in many cases of delusional insanity the cause is hidden; neither pulse nor other medical test betrays it. Whether the mind is sane or not is then to be found out from the man's words and actions; and these may be affected for a purpose: he may play the fool ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... you that he'd be here to the depot?" he demanded. "All right, then he'll be here, don't you fret. I presume likely that everlastin' mare of his has eat herself sick again; eh, Doc? By godfreys domino, the way they pet and stuff that fool horse is a sin and a shame. It ain't Lote's fault so much as 'tis his wife's—she's responsible. Don't you fret, Bub, the cap'n'll be here for you some time to-night. If he said he'll come he'll come, even if he has to ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... raised his face to her with a certain doggedness, as though challenging her to detect in it aught but honesty. "I may be several kinds of a fool," he said, "but I am in earnest. I'm no great catch, but I'll marry you if you'll have me. I'll protect you, and I'll be good to you. I can't promise to make you happy, of course, but—anyway, I ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the direction of Nancy. But the result had not been defined. I thought I could guess, however, that these battles had not been decisive, but that they had cost both sides dear. I was tempted to rejoice, fool that I was, to think that the first great victories would not be won before I joined my regiment. I had not yet been able to console myself for the ill-fortune that prevented me from starting with the squadrons of the first line. And yet I had to submit ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... Others, however, were disappointed. An old man from Laurens was indignant. He said "the Third Regiment would never get anything. That he had been naked and barefooted for two months, and when a chance was offered to clothe and shoe himself some d——n fool had to countermand the order." Ere many days his ambition and lust for a ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... I was a penniless miner in California," he reflected, gleefully. "Fortune was hard upon me then, but now I am at the top of the heap. All my own good management, too. Tom Butler—no, Browning—is no fool, if I do ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... they did, Andy. They made me carry all the things for 'em, and made me cut the wood and wash the dishes and everything. I was a big fool to leave home, where I might have had a ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... The child orders the old woman. But you shall know, Lysander, that I won't allow myself to be mocked like a fool. That impudent Mopsus is your freed-woman's child, and served this house for high wages, but he shall leave it this very day, so surely as I hope to live until the vintage. He or I! If you wish to keep him, I'll go to Agrigentum and live ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thus you plan? Seduce my child, and make my house a scene Of vile dispute—What is it that you mean? George, are you dumb? do learn to know your friends, And think a while on whom your bread depends. What! not a word? be thankful I am cool - But, sir, beware, nor longer play the fool. Come! brother, come! what is it that you seek By this rebellion?—Speak, you villain, speak! Weeping! I warrant—sorrow makes you dumb: I'll ope your mouth, impostor! if I come: Let me approach—I'll shake you from the bed, You stubborn dog—Oh God! my Brother's dead!" Timid was Isaac, and in all ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... insisted that he was not mentally responsible,—that he was only a poor fool who had killed without knowing what he was doing; and she argued that if she could forgive him, others could more easily do the same. There was a consultation; and the relatives decided so to arrange matters that Madame could have her ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... him wistfully, recognizing the truth that he never could understand the sort of feeling that led her into making, as he considered, such a fool of herself. Miss Davis gazed at her kindly and pityingly, thinking of how many hard blows she would get in the future, in return for acts like that which had so puzzled Mark. And she resolved that another time ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... all sorts and sizes of cars pass to and fro, and most of them stopped at his door, for gas or for water or oil, or perhaps merely to inquire inanely if they were on the right road to Needles or to Los Angeles, as the case might be. Any fool, thought Casey, would know without asking, since there was no other road, and since the one road was signed conscientiously every mile or two. But he always grinned good-naturedly and told them what they wanted him to tell them, and if they shifted money into his palm for any reason whatever ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Lizzie marries with Mr. Joe McMahon and I goes with her to he house near by and he say he larn me to plow. Miss Lizzie say, 'Now, Julia, you knows how to plow and don't make no fool of yourself and act like you ain't never seed no plow afore.' Us make a corn crop and goes on 'bout same ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... baronet. This was but one of many instances in which I found among our Transatlantic friends a deep idolatry of rank and titles. In talking of their own political institutions, he declared their last two Presidents to have been—the one a fool, and the other a knave,—Polk the fool, and Tyler the knave. He entertained an insane and cruel prejudice against those whose skin was not exactly of the same colour with his own, and "thanked God" that he had no African ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... minor misfortunes of life. Its application was universal. No other method of discipline had yet been dreamed by the advanced thinkers and rulers of the world. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was accepted as the Word of God and only a fool could doubt it. The rod was the emblem of authority for child, pupil, apprentice and soldier. The negro slave as a workman got less of it than any other class. It was the rule of a Southern master never to use the rod on a slave except for crime if it could be avoided. To flog ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... four of us wanders across the field and, sure enough, there was this silly-looking object lying there. It was about eighteen or twenty feet across, and two feet thick, and I nearly made a fool of myself. I almost screamed when I saw six straight razors crawling out of a hole in ...
— See? • Edward G. Robles
... shall need, I fancy, is a suit-case a-piece with the plainest things we own. Even that 'fancy' hunter's suit I bought is ridiculous. The Judge uses the oldest sort of things—'regular rags,' Molly says; and I—I may be a fool but I don't like to look like one! Do it, Mamma, to please me. And let's put our 'society' manners into the trunks with the clothes. Let's live, for these few weeks, as if we were real poor—as poor as Dolly or Miss Greatorex. I don't believe ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... I could not conquer nature, I submitted entirely to her, and she made as great a fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever: under pretence of giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me to suffer the company of my little ones, during eight hours; and I doubt not whether, in that time, I did not undergo more than ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... seriously 'compromised' the prospects of the only son and heir of a wealthy merchant of the metropolis, from whom she obtained some ten thousand dollars worth of 'tokens' and 'souvenirs.' But, owing to the exertions and worldly acumen of the young fool's papa, she has been obliged to leave New York, and has within the last few days been ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... I never think it's safe to let you dine with her without me. She always takes advantage of my absence to be horrid about me, and then you will defend me, although I've implored you not to heaps of times, and then you quarrel. If, this time, she says I'm frivolous and worldly and an utter fool and very deep, you must agree with every word. I'm so fond of her, she's such a dear thing, it's too bad to worry her by contradicting her, and she has such a vile temper! Telephone and invite yourself—a pressing invitation, and give her my very ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... themselves,—perhaps never know they wear it, though it kills them,—there is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere,—somewhere,—love is in store for them,—the universe must not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... spoken to the landlord in the public-house suspect? How strange they had all looked! What a silly fool she had been to change so much of the silver, instead of sticking to the gold! Yet she had thought the ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... same, namely, the doctrine of the gods as the terminus and ideal, and the insistence on the gulf separating man from them. We are tempted to say that, had Socrates turned with hostile intent against a religion which thus played into his hands, the more fool he. But this is putting the problem the wrong way up—Socrates never stood critically outside popular belief and traditional religious thought speculating as to whether he should use it or reject it. No, his thought grew out of it as from the bosom of the earth. Hence its ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... he sprang toward me and threw his arms about my neck, and for a brief moment as I held my boy close to me the tears welled to my eyes and I was like to have choked after the manner of some maudlin fool—but I do not regret it, nor am I ashamed. A long life has taught me that a man may seem weak where women and children are concerned and yet be anything but a weakling in the sterner avenues ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... husband and that this must be so. It's simply delicious! The present betrothed condition is perhaps better than marriage. Here you have what is called la nature et la verite, ha-ha! I've talked to her twice, she is far from a fool. Sometimes she steals a look at me that positively scorches me. Her face is like Raphael's Madonna. You know, the Sistine Madonna's face has something fantastic in it, the face of mournful religious ecstasy. Haven't you noticed it? Well, she's something ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thirty years of age, and having lost all he possessed at dice in the city of Acon[2] he set off from thence, in the middle of winter, wearing nothing but a shirt of sacking, a pair of shoes, and a hairy cap; and, being shaven like a fool, he uttered an uncouth noise, as if he had been dumb, and wandered about through many countries in search of food. At length, through fatigue, and change of air and diet, he fell grievously sick in Chaldea, insomuch that he was weary of his life. Being compelled to remain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... Babington House for the two days previous to his Cambridge career was in itself most indiscreet. The angry father would not take upon himself to forbid it, but was worked up by it to perilous jealousy. He did not scruple to declare aloud that old Humphrey Babington was a thick-headed fool; nor did Humphrey Babington, who, with his ten or twelve thousand a-year, was considerably involved, scruple to say that he hated such cheese-paring ways. John Caldigate felt more distaste to the cheese-paring ways than he did to his uncle's ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... she said. "That then was a king, upon whose breath the lives of peoples hung like a poised feather. Well, let him go! Earth can spare him, and Death is but the richer by a weary fool. 'Tis done, and well done! Would that to-morrow's task were also done—and that Helen lay as Pharaoh lies. So—rinse the cup—and now to sleep—if sleep will come. Ah, where hath sleep flown of late? To-morrow they'll find him dead. Well, what of it? So do kings ofttimes die. There, I will ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... ye mix up with all the follies which ye do and say during your lives; for all your lives long, whenever you hear of an absurdity, or commit one, you are in the habit of saying, 'Juan de la Encina could not have acted more like a fool;' or, 'that is one of the follies of Juan de la Encina.' I would have you know that all you men, when you say or do foolish things, are Juan de la Encina; for this appellation of Encina, seems wide enough to cover all ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... you, Doctor, not to interfere between me and my servants!" And he felt a fool at the same moment ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... whiteness;—but fine and delicate, playing over the whole face like a ripple sent up from the depths of the soul within. Who was he? What does the lamb mean? How should the legend be interpreted? We cannot answer these questions. He may have been the court-fool of Ferrara; and his genius, the spiritual essence of the man, may have inclined him to laugh at all things. That at least is the value he now has for us. He is the portrait of perpetual irony, the spirit of the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the facts into account, and if you have joys which shrivel up at the touch of this thought, then the sooner you get rid of such joys the better. If your gladness depends upon your forcibly shutting your eyes to what is inevitably certain to come about, do you not think that you are living in a fool's paradise that you had better get out of as soon as possible? There is the fact. Will you be a wise and brave man and front it, and settle how you are going to deal with it, or will you let it hang there on your horizon, a thunder-cloud that you do not like to look at, and that you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... again. But you never were a selfish fool, like me. Yes, I am glad Mr. Brown is coming; and I think I will stay at Greenfield while he is here. Then he ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... work at her, every fool judge of her, and thousands pass her by and see nothing; and she has her joy in them all, and in them ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... very approachable, genial, free from presumption or pretentiousness, and, though many people did not suspect it, she was fundamentally good-natured, soft-hearted, and kindly disposed.... Qualities rare—and the more precious for their rarity—precisely in persons of her sort! 'A fool of a woman!' a wit said of her: 'but she'll get into heaven, not a doubt of it! Because she forgives everything, and everything will be forgiven her.' It was said of her too that when she disappeared from a town, she always left as many creditors behind as persons she had befriended. A soft ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... did not care to do anything else. But some eight dear, affectionate lady-friends explained the situation at length to her in case she should miss the cream of it. Mrs. Bremmil listened quietly, and thanked them for their good offices. She was not as clever as Mrs. Hauksbee, but she was no fool. She kept her own counsel, and did not speak to Bremmil of what she had heard. This is worth remembering. Speaking to, or crying over, a husband never did ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... one to open before them a fool's paradise. He recognized the evil, weakness and brutality in the world summed up in the fact that men generally were living on quite a different basis from that which He set forth. His was not the advice to shut their eyes to the actual situation and pretend that it was what ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... "I'm a blasted old fool for goin' to meetin' and gittin' all riled up so. Here, I haven't had a comfortable doze today, and I shall be kickin' around all night with nothin' runnin' in my head but 'Except ye be convarted, except ye be convarted'; I wish I had as good a chance of bein' convarted as ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... lie—you'll know it because there's no purpose in it, and there's the rogue's lie,—and as we're neither fools nor rogues we'll class them both as—otherwise; then there's the lie of pride, and, as that goes along with the fool's lie, we'll throw it out with the—otherwise—and the coward's lie also goes with the otherwise." Larry shook his fingers as if he tossed the four lies off from their tips, and began again. "Now. Here's the friend's lie—a man ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the old pawnbroker, Mordecai! How she looked! How she stamped the floor with her dainty foot when I hinted at the fact that my maternal grandfather was neither duke nor lord! How she hushed my 'impertinence,' as she styled it, with such invectives as 'fool, idiot, plebeian'! Heigho! But I felt that it was unmanly in me to provoke mother so, and ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... "Fool that I was!" cried the Frenchman. "Had I kept my presence of mind in Steinberg's hut our position would not be so desperate. It was my salute that caused all ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... know him, "my name is Martin; I am seventeen years old, and from the Upper Pyrenees."—"you are a Frenchman, then?"—"yes, Monsieur." —"Ah, you are a miserable' Frenchman. Disarm this man, and hang him!"— "Yes, you fool, I am French," repeated the conscript; "and Vive l'Empereur!" His Majesty was much amused; the conscript was undeceived, congratulated, and hastened to rejoin his comrades, with the promise of a reward,—a promise which the Emperor ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fool," said I between my teeth, "do you think you can play alley-taw and cat's-cradle with a ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... though the desire in these proportions is so rare as to seem incredible—as they wanted to let her hear. Her wish to hear was a temptation to egotism; those who disliked egotism in themselves had to fight the temptation, and seldom won. She did not believe—no one but a fool (and she was not that) could have believed—all the many things that were told her; the many things that must always, while pity and the need to be pitied endure, be told to the pitiful; but she seldom said so. She merely looked at the teller with her long and lovely ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... should come to this between those two, but Westover rebelled against the event with a sense of its unfitness for which he could not give himself any valid reason; and in the end he accused himself of being a fool. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the fool going to ring for ever? Put out those damnable lights, too. Put them out. Are the devils of hell ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... with whimpering irony. "Let Jane do all the nasty things first. I think it's very hard. You fancy that Jane is a fool; but ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... said all the Doctors sitting in the Divinity School, Not this man, but Sir Robert'—now Sir Robert was a fool." ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... good a performer on the stage as he is in private life, he ought to have done well. But on Mrs. Killenhall we found ten thousand pounds in Bank of England notes, and one or two letters from Cortelyon, which she was a fool for keeping, for they clearly prove that she was an accessory. And on Cortelyon we'd a big find! That diamond that Ashton used to carry about, the other ring that Ashton was wearing when he was murdered, and—perhaps most important ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... baptized at the fountain of religion. And instead of glooming life, it because it is the power of love. "God is love." It is simple as the story of love in the human heart. "The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein." All can easily learn how to love God. Ask the Saviour, and he will say, "Love thy Father." This is the burden of the glorious sermon of His life. If we love the Father, it must be in Christ. He has ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... whether to go on or not, when I became aware of a voice behind me. I looked round and saw one of our Corporals shouting and gesticulating. I turned back and rejoined the others, though not before I had been called a "bloody fool" and threatened with arrest ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... Concord during this interval to carry on his studies under the minister of the town. Here he found it pretty dull, though Emerson and Thoreau were there. But he did not then care for either one of them. In one of his letters he said, "I feel like a fool. I must go down and see Emerson and if he doesn't make me feel more like one, it won't be for want of sympathy. He is a good-natured man in spite of ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... spruce, just frae the washin' tubs, A fool came neist; but life has rubs; Foul were the roads, and fu' the dubs, And jaupit a' was he: He danced up, squintin' through a glass, And grinn'd, i' faith, a bonnie lass! He thought to win, wi' front ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... was offering me for sale"—"We always suppose," said another, "the broker has a right to sell the person he offers us"—"I never heard of such a question being asked," said a third; "a man would be thought a fool, who should put such a question."—He hoped the House would see the practical utility of this logic. It was the key-stone, which held the building together. By means of it, slave-captains might traverse the whole coast of Africa, and ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... so fur," says he, "Fills the bill, and mebbe she Might shy off and bust my hope If I should pitch the poppin' rope. Mebbe she'd git hot an' say That it was a silly play Askin' her to make a tie." "She would be a fool," says I. ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... young girl, eagerly leading him along the corridor. "This way. I must talk with thee before thou seest Don Juan; that is why I ran to intercept thee, and not as that fool Antonio would signify, to shame thee. Wast ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... "You can't fool him," answered Mr. Kennedy, with a shake of the head. "He'd smell it a rod away, and that would make him madder than ever. The best way is to make him open his mouth and throw the pill back as far ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... thus, a week of unbroken quiet, flawless as the unchanging blue of a summer sky; not a cloud in sight, not a suspicion of coming disturbance and unrest. It could not go on like this for ever. To imagine it was to fall asleep in a fool's paradise, lulled into false serenity by the absence of portents so often shrouded and unseen until they break ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... be a kindness to the lad's people—but the young fool is scarcely worth it, and it's not your affair," ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... cannot provoke even the semblance of a smile. The countenance is grave, the eyes suffused, and the few utterances are made in the piping voice of a wailing infant. An irritable temper is often the first symptom of approaching fever. At such times a man feels very much like a fool, if he does not act like one. Nothing is right, nothing pleases the fever- stricken victim. He is peevish, prone to find fault and to contradict, and think himself insulted, and is exactly what an Irish naval surgeon before ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... is my native town, and I came from New York here to live five years ago. I've seen what your emancipation has done for the black, and I say to you, my friend, honest I don't know a fool ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... is a fool or crazy," the Duke exclaimed; "and thrice so to make a Stanley his confidant. Methought he would have got a little wisdom lately by association with ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... stupidity; partly (though he hardly knows this) because it weakens his satisfaction with himself, and disturbs his faith that egoism is the right and proper thing; partly because, the world being such a fool, goodness is popular and prospers. But he, a man ten times as able as Cassio or even Othello, does not greatly prosper. Somehow, for all the stupidity of these open and generous people, they get on better than the 'fellow of some soul' And this, though he is not particularly eager ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... their custom, play the fool, and fable that Noah for centuries denied himself a wife because he knew that God would destroy the world by the flood. If, therefore, Noah had married, like all the other patriarchs, in the earlier part of his life—that ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... followed me just as Bowser the Hound follows him. I guess there isn't much going on that Reddy's eyes, ears and nose don't tell him. But it is Reddy's quick wits that the rest of us fear most. We never know what new trick he will try. Lots of enemies are easy to fool, but Reddy isn't one of them. Sometimes I think he knows more about me than I know about myself. I guess it is just pure luck that he hasn't caught me with some of ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... indignity and dishonour that they could show to their Corps." Garcilasso concludes: "I informed myself very perfectly from those chiefs and nobles who were present and eye-witnesses of the unparalleled piece of madness of that rash and hair-brained fool; and heard them tell this story to my mother and parents with tears in their eyes." There are many versions of the tragedy. [4] They all agree that a Spaniard murdered ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... thinking of, when I helped you on in your youth? What an old fool I have been! We oak-trees used to be lords in the land; and now, year after year, I have had to see my brothers all around perish in the struggle against you. I myself am almost done for; and not one of my acorns has sprouted, thanks to your shade. But, before I die, I should like to know what ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... therefore, carefully guards against any impropriety of the kind, and is always condemned as guilty of a fault, when he puts the language of a worthy man into the mouth of a ruffian, or that of a wife man into the mouth of a fool:—if, moreover, the artist who painted the sacrifice of Iphigenia, [Footnote: Agamemnon, one of the Grecian chiefs, having by accident slain a deer belonging to Diana, the Goddess was so enraged ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "Don't be a fool, Hecklemeir," she interrupted, and taking the book from his hands, she whipped through the pages, got the address she sought, and went out onto the narrow landing and down the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post |
