"Wits" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... notice when they are required for the security of the friendly pawnbroker; to know that your life is a falsehood and a snare, and that to leave a place is to leave contempt and execration behind you,—these things constitute the burden of a woman whose husband lives by his wits. And over and above these miseries, Mrs. Paget had to endure all the variations of temper to which the schemer is subject. If the pigeons dropped readily into the snare, and if their plumage proved well worth the picking, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... horses' steps to a fashionable tavern in St. Paul's, and took possession of apartments, and as Captain Levee was well known, we were cordially greeted and well attended. The tavern was in great repute, and resorted to by all the wits and gay men of the day, and I soon found myself on intimate terms with a numerous set of dashing blades, full of life and jollity, and spending their money like princes; but it was a life of sad intemperance, and my head ached every morning from the excess of the night ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... descend from the top of the precipice equally fruitless and much more dangerous, and although they spent a long time in the attempt, and taxed their wits to the utmost, they were ultimately compelled to leave the place and continue their journey without ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... rather than with the systematic philosophers who observe conventions incomprehensible to the common mind—are each and all of them prone to follow exclusively some strange bent of thought, leading by pure reason to one of those awful conclusions which "tend to make a man lose his wits:" Tolstoy, for instance, reaching an unthinkable doctrine of self-sacrifice, Nietzsche an equally unthinkable doctrine of egoism, Ibsen, Haeckel, Mr. Shaw, Mr. McCabe—that never-to-be-forgotten Mr. McCabe—each of them by sheer force of logic ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the Captain came to eat his dinner with John. "The storm is over, Mr. Hatton," he said. "The sea has been out of her wits, like an angry woman; but," he added with a smile, "we got the better of her, and the wind has gone down. There is not breeze enough now to make the yacht ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... rapid study of his countenance. She had never entertained for a moment the supposition that his wits were unsettled, but none the less the constant recurrence of that idea in her mother's talk had subtly influenced her against her husband. It had confirmed her in thinking that his behaviour was inexcusable. And now it seemed to her that anyone might be justified ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... arrived at an inn as hungry as a dog and called for something to eat. A large dish of meat was brought which seemed to say: "Eat me, eat me!" He stuck his fork in it and turned it over, and was frightened out of his wits, for it was human flesh! He wanted to ask the meaning of such food and give the innkeeper a lecture, but just then he thought: "See much and say little;" so he remained silent. The innkeeper came, he settled his bill, and took leave. But the innkeeper stopped him and said: "Bravo, bravo! ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... superstitiously to seek out in the stars the ancient causes and menaces of the present mishaps, and in my time have been so strangely successful in it, as to make me believe that this being an amusement of sharp and volatile wits, those who have been versed in this knack of unfolding and untying riddles, are capable, in any sort of writing, to find out what they desire. But above all, that which gives them the greatest room to play in, is the obscure, ambiguous, and fantastic ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... hook or crook, they would carry the affair through. No matter how good the excuse, it was never accepted. Accidents would happen, there as elsewhere; a way to arrive in spite of them always exists, if only a man is willing to use his wits, unflagging energy, and time. Bad luck is a reality; but much of what is called bad luck is nothing but a want of careful foresight, and Thorpe could better afford to be harsh occasionally to the genuine for the sake of eliminating the false. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... strangers, and entertained each other only on the most ceremonious occasions. The Procuratore kept open house both in Venice and on the Brenta, and in his drawing-rooms the foreign traveller was welcomed as freely as in Paris or London. Here, too, were to be met the wits, musicians and literati whom a traditional morgue still excluded from many aristocratic houses. Yet in spite of his hospitality (or perhaps because of it) the Procuratore, as Odo knew, was the butt of the very poets he entertained, and the worst satirised man ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Thus he fronted the world with no better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits of a younger son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to make a very tolerable fight of it. At twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernon saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare with the world, but out of the seven who stood before him and the high places of his family ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... the gains of the arboreal apprenticeship, the stimulus of an enforced descent to terra firma, and an evolving brain and voice, we can recognise accessory factors which helped success to succeed. Perhaps the absence of great physical strength prompted reliance on wits; the prolongation of infancy would help to educate the parents in gentleness; the strengthening of the feeling of kinship would favour the evolution of family and social life—of which there are many anticipations at lower levels. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... Cheeryble, who was commissioned by the brothers to inquire how Madeline was that evening. On such occasions (and they were of very frequent occurrence), Mrs Nickleby deemed it of particular importance that she should have her wits about her; for, from certain signs and tokens which had attracted her attention, she shrewdly suspected that Mr Frank, interested as his uncles were in Madeline, came quite as much to see Kate as to inquire after her; the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the darkness of night. He was up to the neck in debts and scrapes; And when the west wind refreshingly blew, He thought it the pleasantest of escapes To sail for new worlds with nothing to do. Strolling and idling by day and by night, He liv'd by his wits, with a laugh for fate; And his wits not being extremely bright, He ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... 'l'improductivite slave.' I experienced the same relief as does a nervous patient when the physician tells him that his symptoms are common enough, and that many others suffer from the same disease. . . . I thought about that 'improductivite slave' all night. He had his wits about him who summed the thing up in these two words. There is something in us,—an incapacity to give forth all that is in us. One might say, God has given us bow and arrow, but refused us the power to string the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... foolish Wits, who imagine themselves to be wise Philosophers, and all others who are not in their perfect senses, know no difference in this case, but the wise and truly discreet well know how to distinguish betwixt that which is natural and that ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... hid its disastrous side; Dinah regarded reciprocated love as the absolution of her sin; she did not yet look beyond the walls of these rooms. Pamela, whose wits were as sharp as those of a lorette, went straight to Madame Schontz to beg the loan of some plate, telling her what had happened to Lousteau. After making the child welcome to all she had, Madame Schontz went off to her friend Malaga, that Cardot might be warned ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... pamphleteer than anything else. Other contemporaries of Hall were Thomas Dekker, whose fame as a dramatist has eclipsed his reputation as a satirist, but whose Bachelor's Banquet—pleasantly discoursing the variable humours of Women, their quickness of wits and unsearchable deceits, is a sarcastic impeachment of the gentler sex, while his Gull's Hornbook must be ranked with Nash's work as one of the most unsparing castigations of social life in London. The ...
— English Satires • Various
... the next—and the next! That clear, penetrating, searching, yet innocent and trusting eye! How will you meet them? You'll be astonished to find how often you'll be cornered by that little child—how many difficulties he will raise, that will require all your keenest wits to clear away. Oh, you must get off your clerical stilts, and drop your metaphors and musty folios, and call everything by its right name when you talk ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... rejected it with horror, but such a proposition, presented by the guest who had sat at her hearth as the friend and convive of the son upon whose arm and integrity her widowed womanhood relied for solace and protection, would have roused her maternal wits to some sure cunning which would have contravened the crime and sheltered her son from the evil influences and miserable results of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... carry all the lambs over, hoping the mothers would be drawn after them, moved by their cries. But the lambs might bleat as pitifully as they liked, the mothers never stirred. Sometimes this state of affairs would last a whole month, and the stock-keeper would be driven to his wits' end by his bleating, bellowing, neighing army. Then all of a sudden, one fine day, without rhyme or reason, a detachment would take it into their heads to make a start across, and the only difficulty now was to keep the whole herd from rushing helter-skelter after them. The wildest confusion set ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Heavens! can't they sit up a quarter of an hour, if they are so much interested?—Stay, you really hurry my slow wits—one thing more I had to say—pray, may I ask to which of the Miss Cambrays is it that you are so impatient ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... of the town and Bordin himself congratulated the young advocate. The prosecutor, uneasy at the assertion, feared that he had fallen into some trap; in fact he was really caught in a snare that was cleverly set for him by the defence and admirably played off by Gothard. The wits of the town declared that he had white-washed the affair and splashed his own cause, and had made the accused as white as the plaster itself. France is the domain of satire, which reigns supreme in our land; Frenchmen jest on a scaffold, at the Beresina, at the barricades, and ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... that we simply go out through the back window, unless Newcombe has sufficient wits about him to station one of his men there. We can, by making two trips, carry enough glycerine to shoot the well in good style, and by midnight we should be ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... good girl, beggars cannot be choosers. I have been absolutely at my wits' ends for clothes since Susan has been so thoughtless. I not only stood it, but on the way home I gave Miss Keys a hint as to the sort of things I wanted. I told her to try and smuggle into the trunk one of your aunt's rich black silks. ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... heretic to question it," said Francis. "It has made you lord of Brisetout and bailly of the Patatrac; it has given me nothing but the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my hands. May I help myself to wine? I thank you respectfully. By God's grace, you have a very ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what it means," growled Ivan Fedorovitch, under his breath; "it must have taken the united wits of fifty footmen ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... makes a man in such plight that he is weary of his life, so that he can neither rest at home nor abroad, neither up nor in bed.[14] Nay, I do know that they have been so tormented with the guilt of one sinful thought, that they have been even at their wits' end, and have hanged themselves. But now when thou comest into hell, and hast not only one or two, or an hundred sins, with the guilt of them all on thy soul and body, but all the sins that ever thou didst commit since thou camest into the world, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Winchester through the leaves, she tried to shriek a warning to Jason, and she awoke so weak with terror that she could hardly scramble to her feet. Just then the air was rent with shrill cries, she saw school-boys piling over a fence and rushing toward her hiding-place, and, her wits yet ungathered, she turned and fled in terror down the hill, nor did she stop until the cries behind her grew faint; and then she was much ashamed of herself. Nobody was in pursuit of her—it was the dream that had frightened her. She could almost step ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... this to be said for the Macaronis, that they plucked their pigeon with the most graceful negligence in the world. They might live by their wits, but they knew how to wear always the jauntiest indifference of manner. Out came the feathers with a sure hand, the while they exchanged choice bon mots and racy scandal. Hazard was the game we played and I, Kenneth Montagu, was cast for the role of the pigeon. Against these old gamesters ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... luck," said Hallblithe, and drank. Said the elder: "And I wish thee more wits; is luck all that thou mayst wish me? What luck may an ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... heart, from week to week Thou dost play at hide-and-seek; While the patient primrose sits 35 Like a beggar in the cold, Thou, a flower of wiser wits, Slip'st into thy sheltering [2] hold; Liveliest of the vernal train [3] When ye all ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... detested the butchery, he simply dared not stay his hand. Forward and upward he and his men cut their way; they encountered more and more opposition every minute, as the mutineers found time to recover their wits and secure their weapons, but his men would take no denial. Their blades, now dyed a deep red, swept through the smoky air, and their revolvers crackled and blazed merrily, as the Englishman led them forward; and presently, after a stern and stubborn five minutes' fighting, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... said he; "he is much less likely to find the bird than his brothers, and if any misfortune were to happen to him he would not know how to help himself; his wits are none of ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... whom depended the easing of the fate of the Petersburg prisoners was an old General of repute—a baron of German descent, who, as it was said of him, had outlived his wits. He had received a profusion of orders, but only wore one of them, the Order of the White Cross. He had received this order, which he greatly valued, while serving in the Caucasus, because a number of ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... particular. That is the lie. Now here is the truth. Mrs. Jenkins did go across the way to Pinkins's, because one of his little ones was suddenly taken with some baby ailment, and the poor fellow, in his wife's absence, was scared out of his few wits in consequence. He sent for the kind-hearted widow, and begged her help for Johnny. She came, nursed the young scamp like a mother, and returned at nine, with her conscience glowing under the performance of a kindly ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... can move him now...." Drew was feeding the broth between Boyd's lips, trying to ease the cough, his wits too dulled to tackle any ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... carried it about with me everywhere, in a tiny box lined with tissue-paper and cotton-wool; indeed it seems to me now that many, perhaps most people, if they had heard what nurses call "my goings-on," would have thought my wits decidedly wanting. But of course I told no one of my new fancy. I don't think at that time I could have done so. I lived in a happy dream-world of my own alone with "my pink pet," for that was the only ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... die yet awhile, if we can help it,—I said,—and I trust we can help it. But don't be afraid; if I live longest, I will see that your resting-place is kept sacred till the dandelions and buttercups blow over you. He seemed to have got his wits together by this time, and to have a vague consciousness that he might have been saying more than he meant for anybody's ears.—I have been talking a little wild, Sir, eh?—he said.—There is a great buzzing in my head with those drops of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... non-plussed, but only for an instant. Like all old maids when bested in a battle of wits by an opponent of their own sex, younger, more attractive and known to be popular with the males of their acquaintance, Miss Pickett was quick to take the high ground of a tactful consideration of circumstances which Donna ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... ancient little Wits wrote many poems in the shape of Eggs, Altars, and Axes. (MS. Note ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of sending him to England in charge of his two 'school-fellows.' He has no doubt that this design covers some villainous plot against himself, but neither does he doubt that he will succeed in defeating it; and, as we saw, he looks forward with pleasure to this conflict of wits. The idea of refusing to go appears not to occur to him. Perhaps (for here we are left to conjecture) he feels that he could not refuse unless at the same time he openly accused the King of his father's murder ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... scornful even of me; or of the moon, which is never two nights the same; or of the day, which goeth about its business and will not linger though one pierce a she-babe with a flint. But as for me, I would have none of these songs. For if I sing of such in the council, how shall I keep my wits? And if I think thereof, when at the chase, it may be that I babble it forth, and the meat hear and escape. And ere it be time to eat, I do give my mind solely to the care of my hunting-gear. And if one sing when eating, he may fall short of his just portion. And when, one hath eaten, doth ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... could gather our wits he began to speak to us, and we listened as in the old days when at least a squadron of us had loved him to the very death. A very unexpected word was the ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... giving, even small sums. What was given must be saved in some way. Few could give outright and not feel it. Incomes for the most part just covered living expenses, and expenses must be cut down, if incomes were to be stretched to build a church. So these practical people put their wits to work to see how money could be saved. Walking clubs were organized, not for vigorous cross country tramps in a search for pleasure and health, but with an earnest determination to save carfare for the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... with joy. "Eleven thousand thalers!" said he; "for a poor poet, who lives by his wits and his pen, that ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Howard, the detective, who had charge of the case, though he would not admit it even to himself, was at his wits' ends. You must remember that the burglary, through its very simplicity, was an exceedingly mysterious affair. The constable, D 21, who had stood in Adam and Eve Mews, presumably while Mr. Knopf's house was being robbed, had seen no one turn out from the cul-de-sac into the ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... will happen,— Strange things the Lord permits; But that droughty folk should be dolly Puzzles my poor old wits. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... into the channel, headed for Clemente, when he broke away. This fish did everything. I consider this battle the greatest on record. Only a man of enormous strength and endurance could have lasted so long—not to speak of the skill and wits necessary on the part of both fisherman and boatman. All fishermen fish for the big fish, though it is sport to catch any game fish, irrespective of size. But let any fisherman who has nerve see and feel a big swordfish on his line, and from that moment he ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... and glowed on thick rugs and warm-coloured carpets and soft cushions and elegant furniture; and to know that she was at home amid all these things and comforts; it was bewildering. She sat down on a low cushion on the rug, and tried to collect her wits. What was it, she had resolved to do?—to watch for duty, and to do everything to the Lord Jesus? Then, so should her enjoyment of all this be. But Matilda felt as if she were taken off her feet. So she went to praying, for she could not think. She had only two minutes for that, ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... themselves the objects of wanton and capricious treatment at his hands, and resented it according to their opportunities. Bridger, being a soldier and subordinate, had to take it out in soliloquy and swear-words, but his impetuous little helpmate—being a woman, a wife and mother, set both wits and tongue to work, and heaven help the man when woman has both to turn upon him! In refusing the room and windows that looked full-face into those of Mrs. Plume, Blakely had nettled her. In selecting the quarters occupied by Mr. and Mrs. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... these public things were the dreams of old women; or I should say, the interpretation of old women upon other people's dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their wits. Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague in London, so that the living would not be able to bury the dead; others saw apparitions in the air; and I must be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... believe in the Gods, and yet has a righteous nature, hates the wicked and dislikes and refuses to do injustice, and avoids unrighteous men, and loves the righteous. But they who besides believing that the world is devoid of Gods are intemperate, and have at the same time good memories and quick wits, are worse; although both of them are unbelievers, much less injury is done by the one than by the other. The one may talk loosely about the Gods and about sacrifices and oaths, and perhaps by laughing at other men he may make them like himself, if he ...
— Laws • Plato
... had asked a woman's natural question; but I shall always say that there never were wits quicker than Ruth Bellenden's; and hardly were the useless words out of her mouth than she drew back to the room she had left; and when I had entered it after her she closed the door and listened a little while for any sounds. When none came to trouble her she advanced a step, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... women you must please. The English are a race of fools; numbers are aristocrats in all classes and therefore too stupid to suspect craft, and those who are not are trying to appear to be, and too conceited to use their wits. You can be of enormous use to our country, Harietta, my wife," and he walked up and down the room in his excitement, his hands clasped behind him—he would have been a very handsome man but for his ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... course when it come time for their schoolin' I had to let 'em go. 'Twas then Cap'n Hosmer was going to give up this house, 'cause 'twa'n't no use a-keepin' it while they was off, but thet made me put my wits to work, and I planned a plan as I ain't seen fit to find no fault with to this day. I ups and merries John Gunter, what's been a-hangin' around a year or more, and I says, 'We'll take the house off your hands, Cap'n. I've made up a notion to keep ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... read diligentlie. but therein I find what it is to be so far from you. For as himfelf, he hath almoft put me out of my wits, his Aequanes, his sections of excentricities, librations in the diameters of Epicycles, revolutions in ellipses, have fo thoroughlie seased upon my imagination as I do not onlie ever dreame of them, but oftentimes awake lose my selfe, and power of thinkinge with to much wantinge ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... of the King and Queen for Lawrence was for a time balanced by the affection of the Prince of Wales for Hoppner; the Prince was supposed to have the best taste, and as he kept a court of his own filled with the young nobility, and all the wits of that great faction known by the name of Whig, Hoppner had the youth and beauty of the land for a time; and it cannot be denied that he was a rival in every way worthy of contending with any portrait-painter of his day. The bare list of his exhibited portraits ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... she really was. Before mid-day a reaction had set in, and she had grown so weak that the doctor was evidently alarmed. The baby disturbed, and frightened by the noise and jar, had wailed almost incessantly; and Hetty was more nearly at her wits' end than she had ever been in her life. It was piteous to see her,—usually so brisk, so authoritative, so unhesitating,—looking helplessly into the face of ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... S. Catharine, Jove changing Callisto into a bear, the Council of the Gods, Penelope weaving with her women, and other things without number, engraved on wood, and executed for the most part with the burin; by reason of which the wits of the craftsmen have become very subtle, insomuch that little figures have been engraved so well, that it would not be possible to give them greater delicacy. And who can see without marvelling the works of Francesco Marcolini of Forli? Who, besides other ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... "He's got some wits about him, after all! Good-night. Mind giving me a fair start? You used to be a hot-tempered fellow and—however, I suppose Premiers can't afford ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... His wits were dulled, too, being preoccupied—in spite of Lippity-Libby—with suspicions of Mr Pamphlett. He recognised the hand of an enemy; and though conscious of possessing few friends in the world (none, maybe—he did not care how many or how few, anyway), he ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... error, Barbara," retorted her tormentor, who, like most wits, cherished a jest more than the feelings of those she jested with; "I condescend ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Halifax vessels did round that of New England, seeking such scraps of prize money as might be left over from the ruin of American commerce and the immunities of the licensed traders. The United States officers at Charleston and Savannah were at their wits' ends to provide security with their scanty means,—more scanty even in men than in vessels; and when there came upon them the additional duty of enforcing the embargo of December, 1813, in the many quarters, and against the various subterfuges, by which evasion would be attempted, the task ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... that the poor wretch was already out of his wits with fright, starvation, and sleepiness, and had a very confused idea of where he was or ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... is turned,' says Saint- Mars. In March 1680, as we saw, Fouquet died. The prisoners, not counting Lauzun (released soon after), were now five: (1) Mattioli (mad); (2) Dubreuil (mad); (3) The monk (mad); (4) Dauger, and (5) La Riviere. These two, being employed as valets, kept their wits. On the death of Fouquet, Louvois wrote to Saint-Mars about the two valets. Lauzun must be made to believe that they had been set at liberty, but, in fact, they must be most carefully guarded IN A SINGLE CHAMBER. They were shut up in one of the dungeons of the 'Tour ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... circumstances to the office of a master in the High School of Edinburgh. Possessed of elegant and refined tastes, an enthusiastic admirer of genius, and a poet himself,[30] Mr Gray entertained at his table the more esteemed wits of the capital; he had extended the hand of hospitality to Burns, and he received with equal warmth the author of "The Forest Minstrel." In the exercise of disinterested beneficence, he was aided and encouraged by his second wife, formerly Miss ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... balloons could not be made public in France without being travestied, and without offering some comic side for the amusement of the wits of the day. Under some old coloured prints, designed with the intention of satirising such unfortunate aeronauts as had collected their money from the spectators, but had failed in inflating their balloons, is written, "The ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... give wisdom to infants and idiots; by me children grow wiser than their parents, by me beaux become politicians, and schoolboys judges of philosophy; by me sophisters debate and conclude upon the depths of knowledge; and coffee-house wits, instinct by me, can correct an author's style, and display his minutest errors, without understanding a syllable of his matter or his language; by me striplings spend their judgment, as they do their estate, before it comes into their hands. It is I who have deposed ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... "there were two men condemned at Tregarrick, that Assize; and two men put to death that morning. The first to go was a sheep-stealer. Ten minutes after, Dan'l saw Hughie his brother led forth; and stood there and watched, with the reprieve in his hand. His wits were gone, and he chit-chattered all the time about ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... satisfies physical, mental, and social wants. But it is also the principal means by which they prepare for the more serious duties of later life. It builds up health, trains the muscles and the senses, and sharpens the wits. It gives practice in team work, develops leadership, and teaches the value of "rules of the game." Every child is entitled to an abundant opportunity to play, both because of the happiness it affords him and because by ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... not? 'Tis a royal souse is Tui Tulifau. Sure it keeps my wits workin' overtime to supply him, he's that amazin' liberal with it. The whole gang of hanger-on chiefs is perpetually loaded to the guards. It's disgraceful. Are you goin' to pay them fines, Mr. Grief, or is it to ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... unrepented Deeds has Albion done? Yet spare us Heav'n! return, and spare thy own. Religion vanishes to Types, and Shade, By Wits, by fools, by her own Sons betray'd! Sure 'twas enough to give the Dev'l his due, Must such Men mingle with the Priesthood too? So stood Onias at th' Almighty's Throne, Profanely cinctur'd in a ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... influence was weakened by his departure when the season ended, for till the nineteenth century the governors, like the fish, were migratory. A tedious quarrel followed between the justices and the admirals as to the limits of their respective jurisdictions; the admirals, whose wits seem to have been sharpened by judicial practice, insisting that their own authority was derived from statute, whereas that of the justices merely rested upon an ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... have been looking into the yard," he said. "If I had known that you were watching us it would have distracted me. When I am thinking of you I cannot think of anything else, and I had need of my wits ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... advent at Hillcrest she had learned to observe and listen without comment. This was not her world, and her shrewd common-sense told her so again and again. Even the servants who moved with such easy familiarity about their talks were more at home than she. It had kept her wits busy to meet the situation. But now that she had got over her first awkwardness, she found the new order of things greatly to her liking. For the first time in her life she was moving in a world of beautiful objects, agreeable sounds, untroubled relations, and that starved side of her ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... world the sovereignty of Nadir, native of the land of Persia, and the monarch who subdues the earth." On the reverse was a short Arabic sentence, which signified "That which has happened is the best." But even the flatterer who records these particulars confesses that there were malicious wits who made free with the latter sentence, and, by the alteration of the position of one letter, made it signify "That which has happened ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... wits of that day were capable of being bored by didactic poetry, and especially by such didactic poetry as resolved itself too easily into a string of maxims, not more poetical in substance than the immortal "'Tis a sin to steal a pin." The essay—published anonymously—did not make ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... speaking in a lower tone). "A very worthy and pious man, but a poor peasant's son; and beside—you understand. A little wrong here; too much fasting and watching, I fear, good man." And the bishop touched his forehead knowingly, to signify that Fray Gerundio's wits were in ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Bolingbroke. Stray allusions and anecdotes about other men in the diaries and correspondence of the time show that he frequented the literary coffee-houses, and was gradually making an impression on the authors and wits whom he met there. Besides the two books we have mentioned, he produced some smaller things, such as an 'Essay on the Drama,' and part of an 'Abridgment of the History of England.' But although these helped to secure ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... colors; her appearance was ridiculous, but she had an interminable Teutonic pedigree, and her manners, in every presence, were easy and jovial, as became a lady whose ancestor had been cup-bearer to Frederick Barbarossa. Thirty years' observation of Roman society had sharpened her wits and given her an inexhaustible store of anecdotes, but she had beneath her crumpled bodice a deep-welling fund of Teutonic sentiment, which she communicated only to the objects of her particular favor. Rowland had a great regard for her, and she repaid it by wishing him to get married. She never ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... was born, or just when he had come to the poorhouse. Nobody knew who either of his parents had been. Nobody knew how he got his name, but there was a belief that it had a folk-lore-like origin; that generations of Overseers ago an enterprising wife of one had striven to set his feeble wits to account in minding the pauper babies, and gradually, through transmission by weak and childish minds, his task had become his name. Toggs was held to be merely a reminiscence of some particularly ludicrous stage ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... those that serve the body, though we less can be without them, as tillage, spinning, weaving, building, &c., without which we could scarce sustain life a day. But these were the works of every hand; the other of the brain only, and those the most generous and exalted wits and spirits, that cannot rest or acquiesce. The mind of man is still fed ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Bolingbroke. The Anglican Church itself was in a strange condition, when Jonathan Swift, a dean and would-be bishop, came to its defense with his "Tale of a Tub" and his ironical "Argument against the Abolition of Christianity." Among the Queen Anne wits Addison was the man of most genuine religious feeling. He is always reverent, and "the feeling infinite" stirs faintly in one or two of his hymns. But, in general, his religion is of the rationalizing type, a religion of common sense, a belief resting upon logical ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... do, Mrs. Whitney. Let it be some good trade, where he can use his wits—not a butcher, a baker, or a tailor, or anything of that sort. I should say an upholsterer, or a mill wright, or some trade where his intelligence can help him on. When the time comes I shall be glad to pay his apprentice fees for him, and perhaps, when you tell me what ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... would only had our wits about us the day we sent for the policeman to put out that feller we had running the elevator, Mawruss, we could of made quite a lot of money maybe," Abe Potash remarked to Morris Perlmutter a few days after the heavy-weight ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... to the knocker and found that the door yielded to her slight touch. It was open. For a second she had a wild thought that Miss Brennan might have been wandering in her wits—that Mrs. Wade, or Bridyeen Sweeney—she had come to calling her that in her mind—was ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... sat next me to-day; he reminded me of the old generals at Branches. We had quite a war of wits, and it ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... perchance: Pull his boots off then at once, Fetch his slippers and his cap, And warm gown his limbs to wrap. Be your constant care, good boy, What shall give your uncle joy. Max and Maurice (need I mention?) Had not any such intention. See now how they tried their wits— These bad boys—on Uncle Fritz. What kind of a bird a May- Bug was, they ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... they two were ever of the king's religion, and over-zealous professors. Of these it is said, that both younger brothers, yet of noble houses, they spent what was left them and came on trust to the court; where, upon the bare stock of their wits, they began to traffic for themselves, and prospered so well, that they got, spent, and left, more than any subjects from the Norman conquest to their own times: whereunto it hath been prettily replied, that they lived in a time of dissolution.—Of any of the former reign, it is said that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... he answered lightly, his wits striving in vain to plumb the depths and discover the nature of her purpose. "This slave of mine shall never usurp ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... unable to apply the rules of tactics in presence of an enemy: his projects will not be successfully carried out, and his defeat will be probable. If he be a man of character, he will be able to diminish the evil results of his failure, but if he lose his wits he will lose ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... with you?" asked Sam, sleepily and angrily. He was doing his best to pull his wits together, and thus overcome the effects ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... transportation to Angola on the coast of Africa. At last, however, he got rid of it for 20,000 mil-reis, which is about 6000. It was all paid to him in hard dollars; and he nearly went out o' his wits for joy. But he was brought down a peg nixt day, when he found that the same di'mond was sold for nearly twice as much as he had got for it. Howiver, he had made a pretty considerable fortin; an' he's now the richest di'mond and ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the bow and laughed. "I must have lost my wits," he said, "for I am glad that this contest will take place. There is not such another woman in Greece as my stately mother. Make no delay then. I long to see the man who can bend the bow. I would that I might bend it myself and win the right to keep her in ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... was armed only with a brace of Colts, and he was going into the heart of the wild country of the head hunters, to pit his wits against those of the wily Muda Saffir. His guides were two savage head hunting warriors of a pirate crew from whom he hoped to steal what they considered a fabulously rich treasure. Whatever sins might be laid to the door of the doctor, ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... now. When you get lit up you—you oughtn't begin to dream about those millionaire propositions, Blink. Try and keep your wits." ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... mecanique, the manner and the matter. Hence, however prosy and long drawn out be the formula, it retains the scheme of The Nights because they are a prime feature in the original. The Rawi or reciter, to whose wits the task of supplying details is left, well knows their value: the openings carefully repeat the names of the dramatic personae and thus fix them in the hearer's memory. Without the Nights no Arabian ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... scream together, and the dog, showing his teeth and uttering a low growl, caught me by the fleshy part of my leg above the zinc and held me there until his little masters and mistresses, having recovered their wits and heard my scarcely articulate explanations, called him off, and allowed me to go in peace—I might ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... complain that Gladys encouraged him in his idleness; he sometimes came in here of an evening looking quite miserable, poor fellow, and would say that his sisters and Eric were leagued against him; that but for Etta he would be at his wits' end what to do. Eric would not obey him; he simply defied his authority; he was growing more idle every day, and when he remonstrated with him, Gladys took his part. Oh dear, I am afraid they were all ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... call myself Count Poltavo—yet the good God knows that my family can give no greater justification to the claim of nobility than the indiscretions of lovely Lydia Poltavo, my grandmother, can offer. For the matter of that I might as well be prince on the balance of probability. I am living by my wits: I have cheated at cards, I have hardly stopped short of murder—I need the patronage of a strong wealthy man, and ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the climate is different. Here, if the life is dull, you can be dull too, and no great harm done. [Going off into a passionate dream] But your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colors in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... aimless chatter, Miss Jennie Whitney was using her wits. She knew a long ride was before her, and everything would be ruined if she lost her way. There was no moon or stars to give guidance, and she therefore carefully took her bearings ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... Tempest to roar. That Innocence and Beauty which did smile In Fletcher, grew on this Enchanted Isle. But Shakespear's Magick could not copied be, Within that Circle none durst walk but he. I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now That Liberty to vulgar Wits allow, Which works by Magick supernatural things: But Shakespear's Pow'r is Sacred as ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... better than the perils of his calling; the stalking of the great Plutonian ice bears; crouching in a Venusian swamp waiting for the ten-ton lizards to blow slime a hundred feet in the air and rise from their lava-hot beds; matching wits with the telepathic Uranian rock wolves, the most elusive beast in the universe; setting his sights on a Martian jet-bat so some Terran millionaire could have a new trophy for ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... deemed might be boon of love to a breast Embracing tenderly each little motive shape, The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape. For closer drawn to our mother's natural milk, As babes they learn where her motherly help is great: They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk, And need they medical ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... doubt that people should be a good deal idle in youth. For though here and there a Lord Macaulay may escape from school honours with all his wits about him, most boys pay so dear for their medals that they never afterwards have a shot in their locker, and begin the world bankrupt. And the same holds true during all the time a lad is educating himself, or suffering others to educate him.... Books are good enough ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Now when my wits returned to me I felt something move at my side, and then I saw that Earl Kenric was yet alive, and that he had but fallen from want of breath and strength. Two score and nine brave men lay dead upon the heather. In their ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... pursuing his case in his jog- trot style, "I have much to consider. This is to be hushed up if it can be. How can it be, if Sir Leicester is driven out of his wits or laid upon a death-bed? If I inflicted this shock upon him to-morrow morning, how could the immediate change in him be accounted for? What could have caused it? What could have divided you? Lady Dedlock, the wall-chalking and the street-crying would ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... that he was a person of consequence in disguise, and I could not doubt that Demetria was right. I felt excessively annoyed at myself for having failed to penetrate his disguise; for something of the old Marcos Marco style of speaking might very well have revealed his identity if I had only had my wits about me. I was also very much concerned on Demetria's account, for it seemed that I had missed finding out something for her which would have been to her advantage to know. I was ashamed to tell her of that conversation about a relation in Buenos Ayres, but secretly determined ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... horrid headache (to adopt a suggestion of GILBERT's), When too freely you've dined, or too heavily wined, or munched too many walnuts or filberts; When your brain is a maze, and creation a haze, then each queer social craze—there are many!— Gets your wits in a spool, and there isn't a fool for your thoughts would advance ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... attentats against democracy, which, in a sense, perhaps they are. For democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even half-wits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must thus be to penalize the free play of ideas. In the United States this is not only its first concern, but also its last concern. No other enterprise, not even the trade in ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... poor rats were at their wits' end Their homes and families to defend; And as a last resort They took the case ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... suspicion itself; Ariosto turns him accordingly into an actual being of that name. We speak of the flights of the poets; Ariosto makes them literally flights—flights on a hippogriff, and to the moon. The moon, it has been said, makes lunatics; he accordingly puts a man's wits into that planet. Vice deforms beauty; therefore his beautiful enchantress turns out to be an old hag. Ancient defeated empires are sounds and emptiness; therefore the Assyrian and Persian monarchies become, in his limbo of vanities, a heap of positive bladders. Youth is headstrong, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... for a moment answer. It was something entirely new to him that there was anything wrong in smuggling. He regarded it as a mere contest of wits between the coast-guard and the fishermen, and had taken a keen pleasure in ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... by one of the Millitons, who, having murdered a man, shut himself up here in terror and remorse. A further legend speaks of another Milliton who lived here with a wife whom he hated, and whom he often tried to get rid of, but her wits proved equal to his. At last, feigning reconciliation, he invited her to sup with him, and then suddenly told her that the wine she had drunk was poisoned. "Then we die together," she answered, "for I had my doubts and I mixed the contents ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... Edith, slyly, "do you know you almost scared old Hannibal out of his wits by the wonders you wrought last night or this morning in that same garden you inquire about so innocently. How can you work so ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... pay that would." The consequence was, that not long after the arrival of the latter in the Metropolis he had given up all idea of pursuing the law, to which his mother's legal connections had perhaps first attracted him, and had determined to adopt the more seductive occupation of living by his wits. At this date he was in the prime of youth. From the portrait by Hogarth representing him at a time when he was broken in health and had lost his teeth, it is difficult to reconstruct his likeness at twenty. But we may fairly assume the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... smiled. Nor was it an unpleasant smile. Perhaps, somewhere in his savage composition, he had a grain of humor; perhaps it was only the foolish smile of a man whose wits are not equal to ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Imprimis Rutherfuird's Lex Rex. 2. Wiseman's law of laws, etc. 3. The accomplish't Atturney. 4. Natalis comitis mythologiae. 5. Stephanus praeparative to his apologie for Herodote. 6. Imagines mortis et medicina animae. 7. Dom Huarto's triall of wits. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... men, those wits and other courtiers, that surrounded this prince, ate at his table, partook of his pleasures, shared his confidence, and enriched themselves by his bounty and liberality, took care not to thwart the prince's taste, and never thought of undeceiving him with respect to his errors ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... rivalry of no Lacedaemonian. They were, indeed, the most valiant and graceful robbers that the world has ever known. The Civil War encouraged their profession, and, since many of them had fought for their king, a proper hatred of Cromwell sharpened their wits. They were scholars as well as gentlemen; they tempered their sport with a merry wit; their avarice alone surpassed their courtesy; and they robbed with so perfect a regard for the proprieties that it was only the pedant and the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... breath away. That an attack had been made on the life of the Prince, and that it had been frustrated by his friend, was evident. It was also evident that accosting a Prince on the sidewalk at night without previous acquaintance was a dangerous experiment. When I recovered my wits both Alcorn and the would-be assassin had disappeared. So ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thence and take refuge in England; but at this prospect Biron answered, "There is no King of France out of France;" and Henry IV. was of Biron's opinion. At his arrival before Dieppe, he found as governor there Aymar de Chastes, a man of wits and honor, a very moderate Catholic, and very strongly in favor of the party of policists. Under Henry III. he had expressly refused to enter the League, saying to Villars, who pressed him to do so, "I ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm: She hath been a suitor to me for her brother, Cut ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of the times a large crowd was gathered in the spacious lobby of Richmond's chief hotel. Among them were the local celebrities in other things than war, Daniel, Bagby, Pegram, Randolph, and a half-dozen more, musicians, artists, poets, orators and wits. People were quite democratic, and Harry and Dalton were free to draw their chairs near the edge of the group and listen. Pegram, the humorist, gave them a glance of approval, when he noticed their uniforms, the deep tan of their ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... laugh out heartily in coming to this gem of Mill's, uttered with all Mill's solemnity: "Place-hunting is a form of ambition to which the English, considered nationally, are almost strangers." When the sincerest expression of the English mind can produce this we need to have our wits about us; and when, as just now, so much nonsense, and dangerous nonsense, is being poured abroad about the Empire, we need to pause, carefully consider all these things, and ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... quite unconscious of whom he had rescued until, in mid-stream, the shawl which had been over his wife's head and shoulders slipped and disclosed her face. Joy did not cause the Polish captain to lose his wits, but made him more careful of his precious burden. He had been in a reckless mood, courting death in fact, during the last quarter of an hour of the fight, but now he was anxious to live. It would indeed be sad, he thought, if now, when safety was almost ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... just too lovely!" said Zaidie. "Let's go and show them how we can break records. I suppose they've seen us by this time and are just wondering with all their wits what we are. I guess they'll feel pretty tired about poor Count Zeppelin's balloon when ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... a couple of feet, and on coming down upon the steep slope, staggered and nearly fell. Not that he was hit, but the bullet sent to stop him cut up the turf close to his legs, and startled him nearly out of his wits. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... I am in receipt of the kodak camera won as a prize in the recent contest, and wish to thank you most heartily for it. It is a gratification to win anything by the exercise of one's wits, and I shall highly prize the kodak and appreciate your ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 55, November 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... quality of the brain which may be assumed to have resulted in his own case from mental exercise? The question must not be misunderstood. We do not ask whether clever parents do as a rule have clever children; what we want to know is whether the successive sharpening of the wits of generations of people does, or does not, eventually result in establishing a real and cumulative asset ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... continued, "Mr. Duff makes question of his wits because he finds him carrying a poor woman's children, going to get them a bed somewhere! If Mr. Duff had run about the streets when he was a child, like Sir Gilbert, he might not, perhaps, think it so strange he should care about a ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... all upset and unstrung. That's the reason I came in here. I've got to get my wits about me again, or ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... transfixed, his patriarchal beard dripping. Many a creature, fox and wolf, and man himself, has through the centuries trembled at that sound. There was a silence during which he collected his wits, momentarily upset. Then again, faint and far away, like the ringing of a distant bell, came the sound. Miles between where he swung himself out of the creek and where he now stood the hound was coming on his trail. Tom ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... instead of going on with their Hallelujahs, as I think they should have done, took after them with great fury—slew thousands and drove thousands into the river, where they were drowned. It was a queer way to win a battle that—scaring the enemy out of their wits by shouting holy words at them. I doubt whether the plan would succeed as well in our ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... hill on the road leading to the entrance to the Home grounds, I was jogging along at a slow gait, immersed in deep thought, when suddenly I was aroused—I may say the arousement lifted me out of my saddle as well as out of my wits—by the report of a rifle, and seemingly the gunner was not fifty yards from where my contemplations ended and my accelerated transit began. My erratic namesake, with little warning, gave proof of decided dissatisfaction at the racket, and with one reckless ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... his brain jeered at him. "What will you do? She will not 'be under obligations.' Perhaps, even, she likes her strange profession; perhaps she finds the delight of battle, that you know so well, in pitting her wits against the brains of the mighty; perhaps she has a cynic soul that finds a savage joy in running down the faults of the seemingly faultless—running them to earth and taking her profit therefrom. Who ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... faulty towards me, they lose me for ever; I have forsworn being twice deceived by the same person. For God's sake do not say she has the spleen, I shall hate it worse than ever I did, nor that it is a disease of the wits, I shall think you abuse me, for then I am sure it would not be mine; but were it certain that they went together always, I dare swear there is nobody so proud of their wit as to keep it upon such terms, but would be glad after they had endured it a while to let them both go as ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... whom he had been able to confide, had, in their character of wits, rallied him upon the duke's superiority. Others, less brilliant, but more sensible, had reminded him of the king's orders prohibiting dueling. Others, again, and they the larger number, who, in virtue of charity, or national vanity, might have rendered ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... order to enable the President to bargain with Johannesburg; and, as has already been stated, such action materially detracted from the credit due to the Transvaal Government. This is their characteristic diplomacy—the fruit of generations of sharpening wits against savages; and the same is called Kaffir cunning, and is not understood at first by European people. But when all such considerations are weighed, there is still a large balance of credit due to the Boers for the manner in which they treated Dr. Jameson and his invading ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music On cold starry nights, To sup with the Queen Of ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... one's intelligence to conceive why the French fleet did not proceed to bombard the British possessions on arrival, then steal into safe obscurity and make their way back to European waters. The evasion of Nelson's scouts in any case was a matter of adroit cunning. Had a man of Nelson's nimble wits and audacious courage commanded the enemy's fleet, the islands would have been attacked and left in a dilapidated condition. Nelson's opinion was that the Spanish portion of the expedition had gone to Havana, and that the French would make for ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... the Pensioner. "You remember how he got on top of the house awhile ago and frightened us out of our wits by shouting 'Fire! fire!' down the chimney; how we ran out to see about it; how I asked him 'Where?' and says he, 'Down there in the fireplace, grandpa.' He is a chip of the old block. I used to do just so. ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... credit the gods with Simwa's good fortune since he himself does not so claim it? For my part, I think with the Arrow-Maker, that it is better for a man to thrive by his own wits, rather than by the making of medicine or the wisdom ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... House of Commons by false pretences, and had disgraced the House by being drunk there,—and, of course, he will not be saved by a verdict of insanity from the cross roads, or whatever scornful grave may be allowed to those who have killed themselves with their wits about them. Just at this moment there was a very strong feeling against Melmotte, owing perhaps as much to his having tumbled over poor Mr Beauchamp in the House of Commons as to the stories of the forgeries he had committed, and the virtue of the day vindicated ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... officers were lodged in the hotel, turning it into a scene of indescribable confusion. The food is said to be first rate, but the rooms looked dirty and uninviting, and the noise was enough to drive anyone out of his wits. How refreshing to find myself in this quiet Presbytere on the outskirts of the town, no noise except the occasional pattering of little feet and happy sound of children's voices, almost absolute quiet indeed from morning to night! My window looks upon a charming hill clothed with ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... had a traditional distrust of strong and active government, preferring King Log, on the whole, to King Stork. Inequalities and incomprehensible laws were to be seen in the course of Nature no less than in the English Constitution; and in either case a man might rely upon his wits and energy to deal with them. It might be that the defects in human government could only be remedied by employing the forces of government to cure them; but if you began to set going the administrative engine there was no saying where it might stop. Bentham ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... he thought. "Had Tierney been so clumsy and careless as to enter the flat with muddy shoes?" Something had to be done to cover an awkward pause, and give him a chance to gather his wits, so Morgan took out the package of cigarettes. After helping himself to one, he tossed the package to Marsh. Morgan noted with satisfaction that the man took one before handing the package back. Marsh ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... there is an end of all the Wit and Humour in the World. The Time was when all the honest Whore-masters in the Neighbourhood would have rose against the Cuckolds to my Rescue. If Fornication is to be scandalous, half the fine things that have been writ by most of the Wits of the last Age may be burnt by the common Hangman. Harkee, [Mr.] SPEC, do not be queer; after having done some things pretty well, don't begin to write at that rate that no Gentleman can read thee. Be true to Love, and burn your Seneca. You do not expect me to write my Name from hence, but I ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the usurer than the thief." There is no great difference, he elsewhere considers, between a money-lender and a murderer; and it must be allowed that his acts did not fall short of his words—when governor of Sardinia, by his rigorous administration of the law he drove the Roman bankers to their wits' end. The great majority of the ruling senatorial order regarded the system of the speculators with dislike, and not only conducted themselves in the provinces on the whole with more integrity and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen |
