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More "Simpleton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I hear, that helped her back to earth and started her in the simpleton life. Since then she has been going just as fast, but in the opposite direction, and we're still tryin' to keep up with her. Now I found a man who was going to buy my property, but suddenly his wife decided that they would get ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... chair and stretching out his legs, "and it will only remain for Michael Phelan to turn up or to fail to turn up and the mystery of the escape is explained. Poor Phelan, he must be a terrific simpleton, and I suppose I am ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... a mere simpleton. His blunders would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But these men attained literary eminence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. Without all ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an apron which his carriage lacked, he persuaded me that one horse was enough—at the price of two. To save time I yielded, deducting twenty-five cents only from the sum agreed on, lest I should appear too easily cheated. That sense of being ridiculed as an inexperienced simpleton, when I had merely paid my interlocutor the compliment of trusting him, never ceased to be a pain ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... confidently, as one who could not be deceived. "Pooh!" she said. "That was only a try-on. That was only so that he could begin his palaver! Don't tell me! I may be a simpleton, but I'm not such a simpleton as he thinks for, nor as some other folks think for, either!" (At this point Hilda had to admit that in truth her mother was not completely a simpleton. In her mother was a vein of perceptive ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the washing Eugenia was too indignant to reply, but when it came to the mopping, she lifted up her hands in astonishment, calling him "a fool and a simpleton." ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... our xixth and xxth Articles on the Church. The Irish Roman Catholic Bishops, methinks, must have read this with delight. What an over hasty simpleton that James II. was! Had he waited and caressed the Bishops, they would have taken the work off ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... simpleton! She is not a married woman, she is a widow; and she is left extremely well off and with everything in her hands,—that is to say, she would be very well off if there was any money. A widow is in the best position of any woman. She can do what she likes, and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Sterna solida, a dark web-footed sea-bird, common about the West Indies. Also, a simpleton; so used by Shakspeare in the Two Gentlemen ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... rather to the class of simpleton-stories; and in the following, from the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles' Folk Tales of Kashmir (Truebner: 1888), we have a variant of the well-known tale of the twelve men of Gotham who went one day to fish, and, before returning home, miscounted their number, of which several analogues are ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Ch.—Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a little taken with myself, I know it a fault, and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little simpleton, and fancy now that you really heard what dull sleep alone was thrumming about your ears. All has been quiet and peaceful here, and no evil spirits were ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... mood is near to tears; at a touch of kindness the tears come, and momentous questions are decided. What was perhaps uppermost in the girl's heart was a detestation of the man to whom she had seemed a simpleton; her thoughts pursued him, and divined the contempt with which he must be thinking of her and her pretensions. She heard steps on the sand, and Libby came round the corner of the house from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "Simpleton!" many of my readers will exclaim. Perhaps he was; but even if you laugh at him, I think you will hardly despise him for his simple- mindedness, for who would not rather be such a one ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... chimney on the land-side and establish a nest. There was a broken cart-wheel in the warehouse, which Nanking procured and drew to the roof, and when daylight broke upon the town the earliest loungers and fishermen saw the happy simpleton working like a chimney-sweep, as they thought, except that instead of brushing he was piling brush around the chimney on the cart-wheel. His mother came out and looked joy to see him back; the soldiers strolled down from the fort and the boys and women from the town. Uncle Van Swearingen ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... that we need more than the ability merely to distinguish a genius from a simpleton, just as a physician needs something more than the ability to distinguish an athlete from a man dying of consumption. It is necessary to have a definite and accurate diagnosis, one which will differentiate ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... story, the simpleton went to Troyes as he had said, and, as he desired, he was taken prisoner. The report soon spread through the town, and there was no one who did not say he ought to be hanged; even the Bailli, as soon as he saw ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Agnes called me to my mistress's room; and there I found Mr. Brympton. He was standing on the hearth; a big fair bull-necked man, with a red face and little bad-tempered blue eyes: the kind of man a young simpleton might have thought handsome, and would have been like to pay dear ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... to be Todworths. For her sake, personally, I should never have thought of committing the folly; and still less, I assure you, for that piece of perfumed and yellow-complexioned politeness, her husband. It was pride, sir, pride that ruined me. They went to Cox's Hotel, in Jermyn Street; and I, simpleton as I was, went with them,—for that was before I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... speaking to a monkey, then, instead of a man? The use, I ask you, of addressing intelligent remarks to such a corporosity? My mistress and I, simpleton. This General of yours drives us from his quarters; he begrudges the morsel we eat, the rude hut that shelters us. Enough! we go; even now I make preparation. Pull this strap for me, Pepe; at least you have strength. Ah! If I were ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... Miss Tracey, Lady Geraldine said, "Poor simpleton! she cannot help imitating all she sees us do; yet, would you believe it, she really has starts of common sense, and some tolerable ideas of her own. Spoiled by bad company! In the language of the bird-fanciers, she has a few notes nightingale, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... feel very strange at going into such a house. To you I may say how much nicer it would be to go to some place that Walter and I could have to ourselves,—as you did when you married. But I am not such a simpleton as to repine at that. So much has gone as I would have it that I only feel myself to be happier than I deserve. What I shall chiefly look forward to will be your first ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... succeeded the exclamation could not have been more piteously expressive had the loss been the Egyptian's own. Next moment her laugh might have been heard in the street below; and she said "Oh, oh, my pretty simpleton! The half-fledged birds nested in the ear of the great bust out on the Memphian sands know nearly as much ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... now we are running a good deal to murder, but he who can gravely attribute that phenomenon, or any part of it, to infliction of the death penalty, instead of virtual immunity from any penalty at all, is justly entitled to the innocent satisfaction that comes of being a simpleton. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... quoth he, with good-natured, placid, simple, and tearful stubbornness, "if you could but enter into my feelings and see the matter from beginning to end as I see it!" To confess the truth, I have since felt that I was hard-hearted to the poor simpleton, and that there was more weight in his remonstrance than I chose to be sensible of, at the time; for, like many men who have been in the habit of making playthings or tools of their imagination and sensibility, I was too rigidly tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs of real ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the Lovers of Syria 3. History of Al-Hajjaj Bin Yusuf and the Young Sayyid 4. Night Adventure of Harun Al-Rashid and the Youth Manjab a. Story of the Darwaysh and the Barber's Boy and the Greedy Sultan b. Tale of the Simpleton Husband Note Concerning the "Tirrea Bede," Night 655 5. The Loves of Al-Hayfa and Yusuf 6. The Three Princes of China 7. The Righteous Wazir Wrongfully Gaoled 8. The Cairene Youth, the Barber and the Captain 9. The Goodwife of Cairo and Her Four Gallants ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... rate, this Karl is a poor fellow, a mealy-mouthed simpleton who the minute I say anything opens his jaws like a fly-catcher. He insists that he comes of a great family, but who knows anything about these gringoes? . . . All of us, dead with hunger when we reach America, claim ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of the Plot. The ancient story of the merciless Jew is told in the Gesta Romanorum, and re-told, with delicate grace, by Giovanni Fiorentino, a fourteenth-century Italian writer, in his Il Pecorone (the simpleton), a collection of novels, or, as we should call them, short stories. The story of the three caskets is also told in the Gesta Romanorum. Other incidents in the play are taken from other sources, possibly from other plays. It is thought by some that ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... man, in fact, but just a half-taught random-looking kind of boy. I asked what he could do. To my unspeakable astonishment he told me that the place he wanted was that of foreman. I smiled, and looked on the poor creature as a simpleton. But though he seemed a little disconcerted, he was not to be abashed. He told me, that if I would give him a trial, he would let me see whether he could manage the office or not. "But how can you manage ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... a purty name to call me!—amazin' perlite, tew! Want Melissy, hey! Tribble-ation! gracious sakes alive! Well, I'll give it up now! I always knowed you was a simpleton, Tim Crane, but, I must confess, I didn't think you was quite so big a fool. Want Melissy, dew ye? If that don't beat all! What an everlastin' old calf you must be, to s'pose she'd look at you! Why, you're old enough to be her father, and more, tew; Melissy ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... there were six. Six little slackers only half alive, One got married and then there were five. Five little slackers were such a bore The fool killer got one, then there were four. Four little slackers out on a spree, Auto turned turtle, and then there were three. Three little slackers in a canoe, Simpleton rocked the boat, then there were two. Two little slackers, one was a Hun, He got imprisoned, then there was one. One little slacker, war nearly won, He got conscripted, then there were none. One little, ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... the string! You don't get quite so wet; that's all. Where's the "danger," where's the "glory," of merely stepping under a little spirt from one end of the Falls, with plenty of room to stand, and no darkness, no mystery, no nothing. Nothing but an overwhelming sense of being a cussed fool, and a simpleton, and a stupid, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... morning, because they were seen running away in the morning. They were put out of caste by the other Rajputs, and fled to the Central Provinces. The name may also be a variant of that of the Bhagore Rajputs. And another derivation is from bhora, a simpleton or timid person. Their claim to be immigrants from Central India is borne out by the fact that they still speak a corrupt form of the Malwi dialect of Rajputana, which is called after them Bhoyari, and their Bhats or genealogists come from Malwa. But they have now entirely lost their ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... ordinary mercantile transactions, a debt incurred by any branch of the establishment involves the responsibility of the whole, and can be levied for in London or Hokitika. This is the true state of the case, and any individual who would advance a doctrine contrary to it, is either a simpleton or ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... a time there was a simpleton of simpletons, and a great booby to boot, and his name ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... layer of bees on him, and not a rag of that funeral left but the corpse; and finally the bull broke for the river and jumped in, and when they fished Uncle Laxart out he was nearly drowned, and his face looked like a pudding with raisins in it. And then he turned around, this old simpleton, and looked a long time in a dazed way at Joan where she had her face in a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Croustillac, recovering his lost vivacity. "Are we in the land of dreams? Do you take the Chevalier de Croustillac for a simpleton? Do you think I am one of those weak-minded creatures who believe in the devil? I am not a goose, and I also ask twenty-four hours in which to demolish all ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... one condition which gave any value to these arrangements seemed like to fail. This obscure youth—this poor fool, who had been on the point of marrying a simpleton to whom he had made a boyish promise—was coming between him and the object of his long pursuit,—the woman who had every attraction to draw him to herself. It had been a matter of pride with Murray Bradshaw that he never lost ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... positively bleeds for you. What is the matter with your hand, that you talk of being a life-long prisoner to your room? Pray send for Paget or Erichsen, and have yourself put right at once. No doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case. Perhaps while he is dabbing with lint and lotions the real remedy is the knife. I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the despondent state of feeling which you are now suffering. If any limb of mine went wrong, I should say to the surgeon, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... one loved nobody. At the same time it is very necessary to curb all one's feelings. Phyllis, for instance, would not respect me if she thought me what she would call sentimental. And even Nell would perhaps smile at me as a simpleton if she saw me looking for particular affection. Even you, Hetty—you who think so much about love!—could I manage you at all if I did not know how ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... was that pretty young simpleton at the corner store, who giggled all the time, and made it dangerous for Wallace even to go for the mail. Then there was that family at Browns up on the hill with girls of all ages. And there were those Lindsays, for though the most dangerous one ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... to make me believe," she said, "that you are not wise about that. It isn't clever, you know, to treat me as a simpleton." ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... impressed with the idea that that soldier could have been put to better use; that, in fact, he is entirely out of the line of duty. The position assigned him is unnatural, and the modern soldier-boy will be apt to conclude that nobody but a simpleton would be likely to wander about in solitary places, extemporizing in measured sentences; besides it is hard work, as I know from experience. I tried my hand at it the other day until my head ached, and this is the best I ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... now that it was too late, she saw that she had quite overshot the mark, and given her brother-in-law a complete advantage over her designs. "And that hateful, designing cat!" as she stigmatized Mrs. Harold "had completed her defeat." She had gauged her brother-in-law as "a perfect simpleton where a woman was concerned," and never had she so miscalculated. He was easygoing when at home on leave, or off on one of his outings, as he had been when she met him in New London. Why not? When he worked he worked with every particle ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... had been a sister to the Earl of Derby, who lived at the time of which I am now writing. The earl had a son, James, who was heir to the title and to the estates of his father. The son was a dissipated, rustic clown—almost a simpleton. He had the vulgarity of a stable boy and the vices of a courtier. His associates were chosen from the ranks of gamesters, ruffians, and tavern maids. Still, he was a scion of one of the greatest families of ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... laughed at the man's ingenuousness. He contradicted his own story so unconsciously, that I began to think he was more of a simpleton ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... turning upon him). And you ought to have kept me from making such a simpleton of ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... Third, seeing his wife barren, consulted the physicians upon the case; who told him, that if the empress would drink wine she might be fruitful. But he told them, like a simpleton as he was, That he had rather his wife should be barren and sober, than be fruitful and drink wine. And the empress, being informed of the wise answer of the imperial ninny-hammer, her husband, said full as wisely, That if ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... to his lodgings, in order to decide the contest. Sir Stentor complied with this request; the dispute was renewed with various success, till, towards daylight, Ferdinand saw this noisy, raw, inexperienced simpleton, carry off all his ready cash, together with his jewels, and almost everything that was valuable about his person; and, to crown the whole, the victor at parting told him with a most intolerable sneer, that as soon as the Count should receive another remittance from Poland, he would give ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... take arter Tangle-foot? W-w—" his great loose lips trembled with unformed words as he gazed his eager inquiry from one to another. Under normal circumstances it would have remained contemptuously unanswered, but in these days in Tanglefoot Cove a man, though a simpleton, was yet a man, and ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... next door to a simpleton: he is not half-baked," retorted Mr. Hamlyn, his own temper getting up: "if I may judge by what I've seen ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... retreated, while Rachel returned to find Bessie sitting upright, anxiously watching, and she was at once drawn down to sit beside her on the bench, to listen to the excited whisper. "The miserable simpleton! Rachel, Alick was right. I thought, I little thought he would forget how things stand now, but he got back to the old strain, as if—I shall make Lord Keith go to Scotland any way now. I was so thankful to see you and Alick." She ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that so many goodies were stuffed into thy already crowded valise! It wasn't for nothing that her communications have been so frequent, and contained such tender inquiries after thy health, and such pathetic injunctions to be careful of thyself!" You must be a simpleton, man, to imagine that a benevolent disposition prompted so many manifestations all of a sudden, when the past was so different. "But why not?" thought he, as his charitable heart sought for a better ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... stood still and threw a morsel on the ground. "Hansel, why dost thou stop and look round?" said the father, "go on." "I am looking back at my little pigeon which is sitting on the roof, and wants to say good-bye to me," answered Hansel. "Simpleton!" said the woman, "that is not thy little pigeon, that is the morning sun that is shining on the chimney." Hansel, however, little by little, threw all the crumbs ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... thought the young man was a simpleton, and that he, himself, was most wise and fortunate; but the former, nothing daunted by this opinion, which he was not unconscious that the latter entertained of him, immediately hired a set of laborers, and set them to work in the field trenching, as earnestly as it was well possible for men to ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... building, in the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had loudly praised the elegance of this arrangement, and talked of the view from that balcony, but all in vain. When he had taken leave of the Bergmanns it struck him that he was a simpleton, like any man of spirit and imagination disappointed of the results of a plan which ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... that I was chagrined. "As easy made up as a lovers' quarrel," said Aunt Tabitha. Silly old woman! No, silly young fellow! Flora has revenged herself on me as she meant to do, for defying her power. She has turned my head; made me act like a simpleton. But "Richard's himself again," and ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... as in most others, I was an unpractised simpleton. In the countenance of Welbeck, there was somewhat else than sympathy with the astonishment and distress of the lady; but I could not interpret these additional tokens. When her attention was engrossed by Welbeck, her eyes were frequently vagrant or downcast; her cheeks contracted ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... thinking over that question of yours, "What did I think?"[13] But, my dear Susie, you might as well ask Gibbie Gellatly what he thought. What does it matter what any of us think? We are but simpletons, the best of us, and I am a very inconsistent and wayward simpleton. I know how to roast eggs, in the ashes, perhaps—but for the next world! Why don't you ask your squirrel what he thinks too? The great point—the one for all of us—is, not to take false words in our mouths, and to crack our nuts innocently ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... already told you that you are a simpleton, and I am quite of his opinion. D'Artagnan, you are a great man; and when you occupy Monsieur de Treville's place, I will come and ask your influence ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... better land. The recluse is ever the true prophet and seer, in this as in still higher matters. Your modest-eyed student, stealing glances of unfeigned admiration at ordinary maidens, is not such a simpleton as some suppose. His seclusion has cleared his vision. He sees on through the eons—sees things as they will or may be—regards the objects of his adoration as he will in the angelhood. Why will so many decry this admiration?—when they see that, not till ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... out loud. "Oh, you simpleton!" she said. "And you call yourself a statesman! Do you not see that if I do not tell it, you are disgraced yourself and powerless, and can do me no harm? Tell it you? When I have you all on the hip—you, the King, the queen! Not for a ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... rouged, were naturally red; her eyebrows, though not pencilled, were yet blue black; her face resembled a silver basin, and her eyes, juicy plums. She was sparing in her words, chary in her talk, so much so that people said that she posed as a simpleton. She was quiet in the acquittal of her duties and scrupulous as to the proper season for everything. "I practise simplicity," she would ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... him,' he says. 'We'll have another session with him before you leave. Perhaps we can get him into the house here this evenin'. My wife is pretty good at that, she jollies him along. Oh, he swallows it all; the poor simpleton don't know ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... desirable for her intelligence as for her physical and her strange spiritual charm: he could have wished her not to be providing yet another specimen of the phenomena of woman repeating herself so monotonously in the various worlds of London. The simpleton of fifty made in his soul an effort to be superior, and failed. "What is it that binds me to her?" he reflected, imagining himself to be on the edge of a divine mystery, and never expecting that he and Christine were the huge contrivances ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... off a gun at him. I was out on them like a hawk, crying if they wanted to murder a poor woman's innocent bairn! Whereupon they swore down my throat that they had seen 'the auld rebel himself,' as they called the Baron. But my Davie, that some folk take for a simpleton, being in the wood, caught up the old grey cloak that his Honour had dropped to run the quicker, and came out from among the trees as we were speaking, majoring and play-acting so like his Honour that the soldier-men ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... are a simpleton! D'you think he'd have you back after this? The first time it was my fault, he thinks; but the second! It ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... of it," said Annie, casting her bright eyes downwards: "love is as simple as milking, when people know how to do it. But you must not let her alone too long; that is my advice to you. What a simpleton you must have been not to tell me long ago. I would have made Lorna wild about you, long before this time, Johnny. But now you go into the parlour, dear, while I do your collop. Faith Snowe is not come, but Polly and Sally. Sally has made up her mind to conquer ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... that when we become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can't think without bias; so I cast about me for something to be glad about, and the comfort that at least we were safer with a simpleton than near a drunken Mexican came to me; so I began to view the situation ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... became ashamed of himself; he lifted his eyes and smiled like a simpleton; he cast a glance of almost dog-like tenderness at Eleanore. And then, without saying a word, without even saying good-bye to her, he hastened across the street to hide as soon as he might ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the matter with that simpleton Dalny?" muttered the arch-plotter. "Did he, at the last moment, fail in the courage necessary to lead the Americans into the trap that I had ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... girls—well, one would have supposed they had never been given feet of their own to walk with, from the trouble they were to poor Jacques. The worst of it was, that when all these good people were well over their troubles they called Jacques a simpleton for his pains, and refused to have any intercourse with him, giving him the worst side of the road and laughing at his old-fashioned staff and scrip, and even at his little dog, to which they gave many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Davis, 'do not be a simpleton. Take the money, and do not pretend to more honesty than ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... Cynthia, confuse the Boob with the Poor Fish. The Poor Fish, as an Emersonian thinker has observed, is the Boob gone wrong. The Poor Fish is the cynical, sneering simpleton who, if he did see an angel, would think it was only some one dressed up for the movies. The Poor Fish is Why ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... and took out all their fine clothes, and dressed themselves at the glass, and skipped about as if they were eager to begin dancing. But the youngest said, 'I don't know how it is, while you are so happy I feel very uneasy; I am sure some mischance will befall us.' 'You simpleton,' said the eldest, 'you are always afraid; have you forgotten how many kings' sons have already watched in vain? And as for this soldier, even if I had not given him his sleeping draught, he ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... said he, fiercely, "you are a young vagabond, and deserve to starve. Your mother should be put in the pillory for ever marrying. That's what the world says,—and what I would think, if I wasn't a consummate ass. Were you ever blessed with a view of the most unmitigated simpleton the sun ever shone upon? Look at me! Look good: I am worthy of a close inspection. Now come along, and see to what extent my folly ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... be dumb; Isoult, at least, never got speech of her. Vincent, who was treated by Maulfry as if he had been a mechanism, was a very simple machine. If Maulfry had been less summary with him she might have prevented the inevitable; but like all people with brains she thought a simpleton was an ass, and kicks your only speech with such. Vincent and Isoult, therefore, became friends as the days went on. Maulfry's cagebirds drew their heads together, and in Vincent's case, at any rate, it was not long before the blood began ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... head. "I know you are laughing at me," she said, "but I always told you I was just a silly simpleton. And—it isn't the bugs altogether. I—I like it better to be ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... was held by powerful European States which it would be madness to offend, and as the country south of that line was held by feeble States which it would be easy to conquer, no Northern or Western statesman could vote for such a measure without proving himself a rogue or a simpleton. Hence all measures of "compromise" necessarily failed during the last days of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... only kindness! I sowed good seed, and reap thistles and brambles! My charity-cake turns out miserable dough! But how could I possibly foresee that the child would be such a simpleton? What right has she to be so unnecessarily interested in my brother, who is old enough to have been her father? It is unnatural, absurd, and altogether unpardonable in Salome to be guilty of such presumptuous nonsense; and, of course, it is not in the least my fault, for the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... then an unhandy dandy mutilates the fish by cutting it in a wrong direction; here, an officious ignoramus tears asunder the members of a fowl as coarsely as the four horses dragged Ravillac, limb from limb; there, another simpleton notching a tongue into dissimilar slices, while a purblind coxcomb confounds the different sauces, pouring anchovy on pigeon-pie, and parsley and butter on roast-beef. All these barbarisms ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Cilla? I inquired at the station, but she had not been there, and on the Monday I went to London and saw the mother, who was in great distress, for she had had a letter much like mine, only more unsatisfactory, throwing out absurd hints about grandeur and prosperity—poor deluded simpleton!' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... She was an orderly, busy, competent woman, the counterpart of endless millions of her sex, who liked to understand what she saw or felt, and who had no happiness in reading riddles. To her he was at times an enigma, and at times again a simpleton. In both aspects he displeased and embarrassed her. One has one's sense of property, and in him she could not put her finger on anything that was hers. We demand continuity, logic in other words, but between her son and herself there was a gulf fixed, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... send her own brother to college, knows vastly more of those things than he does. The same exposure awaits him wherever he goes, and whenever he has the audacity to open his mouth. At sea he is a landlubber; in the country a cockney; in town a greenhorn; in science an ignoramus; in business a simpleton; in pleasure a milksop—everywhere out of his element, everywhere at sea, in the clouds, adrift, or by whatever word utter ignorance and incapacity are to be described. In society and in the work of life, he finds himself beaten by the youth whom at college he despised ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... trifle with which he had been toying and eyed it intently for a moment, as though his whole mind were absorbed in it. Then he put it down, turned, and walked slowly away. I sat staring after him like a little simpleton, puzzled, bewildered, stunned. That had been ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... narcotics, rendered independent of all such things by a little skilful rubbing alone. Perhaps you object that these remedies are "very simple." Well, that would be no great harm; but if they are so simple, you are surely a simpleton if you let your poor nerves be killed with morphia, while such obvious remedies are at hand. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... motion. He was sure he could do it, and he set to work with a resolution worthy of a nobler enterprise. When one attempt failed, he tried again, and yet again, until his friends and neighbors called him a "simpleton," and openly rebuked him for his folly. His mother began to think he never would learn any craft by which he could gain a livelihood, and she was really discouraged. He was not vicious nor indolent. He had energy ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... me to assure you, mademoiselle"—Lady Henry rose from her seat, leaning on her stick; surely no old face was ever more formidable, more withering—"that whatever ambitions you may cherish, Jacob Delafield is not altogether the simpleton you imagine. I know him better than you. He will take some time before he really makes up his mind to marry a woman of ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 'Master Jordan shook his head at this passage, and cried out, deeply moved, yet as though vexed, while a tear of motherly tenderness stole down Martha's cheek: "No! no! by no means! What is the fool thinking of? He'll want the money himself—a simpleton. Let him wait till he comes to the master-piece. What pleases me most in the story, is his contentment and his humility. He is not ashamed of his old silver watch yet. It is not everybody that could act so. There must be strong legs to support such extraordinary ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... one picture, a girl, to become a belle, a handsome creature, with a mysterious money grace, with a real beauty of hair, mouth and eyes. The envious said that circumstances served to make an imperious simpleton of her. ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... "Poor simpleton that you are!" was the reply. "Look fairly at the facts. There is every appearance that we shall gain his money. The Piedmontese, such as he is, are honest enough, but are by nature absurdly suspicious. He commands the cavalry. Well, you are a man who cannot rule your ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Sir Anthony, there sits the deliberate simpleton who wants to disgrace her family, and lavish herself on a fellow ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... they want, you little simpleton!" replied Mademoiselle Reine; "they probably want to concoct some of their ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... said Mrs Merton, "does your father eat and drink out of silver?" "I don't know, madam, what you call this; but we drink at home out of long things made of horn, just such as the cows wear upon their heads." "The child is a simpleton, I think," said Mrs Merton: "and why is that better than silver ones?" "Because," said Harry, "they never make us uneasy." "Make you uneasy, my child!" said Mrs Merton, "what do you mean?" "Why, madam, when the man threw that great thing down, which looks just like ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... course, every body would take care of themselves," interrupted Lady Cecilia, "excepting such a simpleton as Helen, who would take care of you first, mamma, of me next and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... like? Did you ever hear the clang of a celldoor as the turnkey slammed it behind him and left you to think and stew and weep in a silence accented and made more wretched by a yellow electricbulb and the stink of corrosivesublimate? Back to the cityroom, you dabbling booby, you precious simpleton, addlepated dunce, and be thankful my boundless generosity permits you to draw a weekly paycheck at all and doesnt condemn you to labor forever unrewarded in the subterranean vaults where the old files ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... sergeant, who repeated it to his next neighbor, who in his turn transmitted it to the next man, and so on from ear to ear until it reached the last man. He cashiered an officer for not standing bareheaded to receive the watchword from the sergeant. You may imagine how he succeeded. This simpleton could not understand that peasants have to be led peasant fashion, and that it is impossible to transform rustics into soldiers. Yes, I have ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... them; the Athenians made preparations to join their forces with them; Demosthenes ruled supreme in the popular assembly, and wrote letters to the Persian officers who commanded under the king in Asia, inciting them to make war upon the Macedonian, calling him child and simpleton. But as soon as Alexander had settled matters in his own country, and came in person with his army into Boeotia, down fell the courage of the Athenians, and Demosthenes was hushed; the Thebans, deserted by them, fought by themselves, and lost their ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Congress! Go—go, simpleton, and learn how many these troopers muster, and what halt they make; but stay, place my clothes near me. Now, do as I bid you, and if the dragoon officer enquire for me, make my respects, and tell him I shall be with him soon. Go, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... life. When I tried to say something my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth. I trembled from head to foot, and—oh, gracious!—he must have heard how my heart thumped. I know I must have acted like the greatest simpleton the world ever held. Wasn't it wonderful to think that he wanted to marry me? I ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... to say is, that you have such a way of turning up when you're wanted very bad, that you're just the scamp to figure in a lot of story books; I wonder whether some simpleton won't undertake to use you that way. The only trouble will be that if he invents yarns about you, he'll make a fizzle of it, and, if he tells the truth, he will hardly be believed; but," added the youth, as if the mantle of prophecy had fallen on him, "it will depend a good deal on who it ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the savings from his salary. 'Master Jordan shook his head at this passage, and cried out, deeply moved, yet as though vexed, while a tear of motherly tenderness stole down Martha's cheek: "No! no! by no means! What is the fool thinking of? He'll want the money himself—a simpleton. Let him wait till he comes to the master-piece. What pleases me most in the story, is his contentment and his humility. He is not ashamed of his old silver watch yet. It is not everybody that could act so. There must be strong legs to support such extraordinary ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... character, it turns out to be, so to speak, not so simple a trait as it at first appeared. Of course, there is a kind of simplicity which is a survival of childhood, a guileless, childish ignorance; but when a man is simple in a childish way, he is only what we call a simpleton. Christian simplicity is not a survival but an achievement, wrought out of the struggles and problems of maturer life. It is not an ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... was laid was the father of Gladys and Johnny. He picked up the remains of the journal from which Gladys had ravished a cosmetic of silken sounds. The editorial did not come under his eye, but instead it was greeted by one of those ingenious and specious puzzle problems that enthrall alike the simpleton and ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... with a wave of his hand. "Oh, I think she'll give it, dear simpleton!" He looked at Glenfernie now with genial affection. "Well, on the whole, and balancing one thing against another, I think that I ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... over father, who is so infatuated with him I believe he would scarcely be able to refuse any request he might choose to make. I wonder so talented a father should own a dolt like Rufus for a son. Silly-pated fellow! he has made love to me several times. I say made it, and truthfully; for no such simpleton as he could ever actually feel it in their bosoms. But then, no doubt, he thinks he is in love,—desperately so. I have no pity for him; nothing but contempt, and yet, should he propose for me to my father, I fear the result would be his acceptance. He has wealth and position, and I know father ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... learn, that his great qualities were great enough to compensate easily for the many things he lacked. This specially grotesque specimen of the wild West was soon seen not to be of the charlatan type; as a natural alternative he was assumed to be something of a simpleton. Many intelligent men retained this view of him throughout the years of his trial, and, only when his triumph and tragic death set going a sort of Lincoln myth, began to recollect that "I came to love and trust him even before I knew him," or the like. A single speech like ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... able to refer to the motive of his pauper journey from his native solitudes into the thick of such a scene, it was no wonder that the zeal of superstition totally subsided amid the astounding truths he witnessed. In fact, the bewildered simpleton now regarded his dream as the merest chimera. Hastily escaping from the thoroughfare, he sought out some wretched place of repose suited to his wretched condition, and there mooned himself asleep, in self-accusations at the thought of poor Nance at home, and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... here, and she is his promised wife; and Pamela is nearly thirty-two years old and looks forty; but you, Theodora—you to run away from Paris, with no one but a maid; to run away to nurse a man like Denis Oglethorpe. It actually takes away my breath. My dear, innocent little simpleton, ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "O simpleton!" laughed Sah-luma—"Thinkest thou Lysia's lake of lilies is a common grave for criminals? The body of Nir-jalis sank therein, 'tis true, . . but was there no after-means of lifting it from thence, and placing it where best such carrion should be found? Hath not the High Priestess of Nagaya ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... fault, you simpleton," answered the duke. "With your idle nonsense yesterday about escaping, you worried me so that I dreamed that I was trying to escape and broke my neck in ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... No, Mr. Credulous, it is you who are a fool, and no one but such a simpleton would ...
— St. Patrick's Day • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... "Fair? Simpleton! it's this way every day, only worse, because this is early morning, and there's only a few about yet;" and Mrs. Murphy's eyes ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... presentation of the Arthurian legend for drawing-rooms, by idylls, not robust and Theocritean, by verse directly didactic, that a rude blast of air from the outside welter of human realities is apt to give a shock, that might well show in what simpleton's paradise we have been living. The ethics of the rectory parlour set to sweet music, the respectable aspirations of the sentimental curate married to exquisite verse, the everlasting glorification of domestic sentiment in blameless princes and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... too much of that hero of opera which he was destined to become, a sulky, stagy creature, in theatrical poses and a black-plumed hat, who cannot even play the easy and perennially attractive part of desdichado so as to keep our compassion. Lucy is a simpleton so utter and complete that it is difficult even to be sorry for her, especially as Ravenswood would have made a detestable husband. The mother is meant to be and is a repulsive virago, and the father a time-serving and almost vulgar intriguer. Moreover—and all this ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less free the better we understand their cause. If the man whose actions we are considering is on a very low stage of mental development, like a child, a madman, or a simpleton—then, knowing the causes of the act and the simplicity of the character and intelligence in question, we see so large an element of necessity and so little free will that as soon as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... nothing that she was courted by every youth of rank in Constantinople—and if the old Mukaukas could but hear her laugh! There was not a sound on earth more clear, more glad than Heliodora's laugh. She was not indeed remarkable for intellect, but no one could call her a simpleton, and your very clever women were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... leaving those boys,—especially my dear Dick Bolton; but really, I need to go home and undo certain things that I left badly done. You don't half know me, Flossy Shipley. When I came here I was a regular goose. If you had known what a simpleton I was, and how hateful I had been about some things at home, you would never ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... eyes towards me. I was somewhat astonished and asked the proprietor of the baths, without appearing to be much concerned, the name of this gentleman. I laughed to myself a little at this reader of rhymes; he seemed behind the age, for a man. This person, I thought, must be a simpleton. Well, aunt, I am now infatuated about this stranger. Just fancy, his name is Sully Prudhomme! I went back and sat down beside him again so as to get a good look at him. His face has an expression of calmness and of penetration. Somebody came to look for him, and I heard his voice, which ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... his brother a look of inexpressible contempt. "I would be a simpleton if the history of heroes did not interest me," said he, "and I understand everything the good Professor Recco says—I understand it so well that I often know beforehand what his warriors and ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... running about, ringing his hands and looking for the watchman. A shoemaker was pounding riding-boots and women's shoes in motley confusion into a wooden chest with rope handles, while his wife, instead of helping him, tore her hair and shrieked: "I told you so, you fool, you simpleton, you blockhead! They'll come and rob us ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... one at home." "How!" said Mrs Merton, "does your father eat and drink out of silver?" "I don't know, madam, what you call this; but we drink at home out of long things made of horn, just such as the cows wear upon their heads." "The child is a simpleton, I think," said Mrs Merton: "and why is that better than silver ones?" "Because," said Harry, "they never make us uneasy." "Make you uneasy, my child!" said Mrs Merton, "what do you mean?" "Why, madam, when the man threw that great ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... He's a sharp man, but he is good-natured, and a useful citizen. He can handle these patents better than Benedict can, and make money enough for both of them. What could Benedict do if he had the patents in his hands? He's a simpleton. He's a nobody. Any man capable of carrying on his business would cheat ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... you, sir," she answered, "it wouldn't do me no good. I am too old for that. Now, get out of the way there—do, you simpleton," she added, turning to the idiot; "just let me pass—don't you see I am wanting to fetch ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... not ten words that he said, after all," Newson pleaded. "And how could he know that I should be such a simpleton as to believe him? 'Twas as much my ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... a fool for refusing his offer. A simpleton. The child of caprice, whom no time could render steadfast except in folly; into whom no counsel or example could instil an atom of common sense. He supposed my man was equally obstinate and stupid; but ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Aunt Fortune the other day," said Ellen, laughing very heartily—"and she told me to hush up and not be a fool; and I told her I really wanted to know, and she said she wouldn't make herself a simpleton if she was in my place; so I thought I might ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... are a young vagabond, and deserve to starve. Your mother should be put in the pillory for ever marrying. That's what the world says,—and what I would think, if I wasn't a consummate ass. Were you ever blessed with a view of the most unmitigated simpleton the sun ever shone upon? Look at me! Look good: I am worthy of a close inspection. Now come along, and see to what extent ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... hold your tongue, you little simpleton?" said the colonel, suddenly turning round at ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... cried his wares, announcing churchmen would have to pay double, aldermen cost price, housewives less, and pretty girls nothing save a kiss! The merry vender's methods of trading soon attracted so many female customers that the other butchers became angry, but, deeming Robin a mere simpleton, invited him to a banquet, where they determined to take ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... girls, whose weariness betrays their ignorance, and whose impatience exposes their ill-breeding. A polite man, however deeply interested in the subject on which he is conversing, catches at the slightest hint to have done: a look is a sufficient intimation, and if a pretty simpleton, who sits near him, seems distraite, he puts an end to his remarks, to the great regret of the reasonable part of the company, who perhaps might have gained more improvement by the continuance of such a conversation, than a week's reading would have yielded them; for it is such company ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... little too much amazement escape through my surprise, for he answered with a deprecating laugh: "Yes—she's an awful simpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to have him done by a fashionable painter—ah, poor Stroud! She thought it the surest way of proclaiming his greatness—of forcing it on a purblind public. And at the moment I was ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... fortune, and marries the maiden. A later termination separates them again; but this is simply the folly and bad taste of a certain, and only a certain, perversion of mediaeval sentiment, the crowning instance of which is found in Guy of Warwick. Hartmann himself was no such simpleton; and (with only an infinitesimal change of a famous sentence) we may be sure that as he was a good lover so he made a good ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... a great simpleton, my friend, Dorsenne," said he, seating himself more democratically in one of those open cabs called in Rome a botte. "To fear a tragical adventure for the woman who is mistress of herself to such a degree is something like casting one's ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to compel a confession. After enduring a few gentle agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... horse, or any other animal moving from it. A very common experience on the pampas, in the sheep-country, is to see a lamb start up from sleep and follow the rider, running along close to the heels of the horse. This is distressing to a merciful man, tor he cannot shake the little simpleton off, and if he rides on, no matter how fast, it will keep up him, or keep him in sight, for half a mile or a mile, and never recover its dam. The gaucho, who is not merciful, frequently saves himself all trouble and delay by knocking ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... was too agitated to mind her angry looks. She kept wiping the perspiration from her brow with her handkerchief, and speaking in broken sentences: "If we could only get there first—fool not to teach my sister her lesson before we went, she's such a simpleton!—can't you drive faster?" ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... say those things to me! I'm but a weak-minded simpleton, and I MIGHT think you meant them, and grow conceited! Hie thee away, fair maiden, and hie pretty swiftly, too. And call me not to breakfast foods until that the sun ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... was as wrong for a rich man to take advantage of a poor man, as for a strong man to attack a weak one, or a cunning man to cheat a simpleton." ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... a man of talent, and a simpleton that will do your memoirs for you, in his aunt's name, for ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... original characters were Pantaloon, a Venetian Merchant; Dottore, a Bolognese physician; Spavento, a Neapolitan braggart; Pulcinello, a wag of Apalia; Giangurgoto and Corviello, two Clowns of Cala-simpleton; and Arlechino, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Nickey Noodle, a simpleton, Who raised the cry, "A witch, a witch!" Then she was summoned to the court, Amused, or grieved, she scarce ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... amongst the sisters of the enraptured lover. Alas! enraptured no more! The rustic beauty, where could it have flown? The belle of the village was transformed into a very awkward young lady. Goddess!—She was a simpleton. Become a throne!—She could not sit upon a chair. The charm was broken. The application we need hardly make. There may be certain uncultivated men of genius on whom it is possible to practise ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Eph. "Not so you could notice it much, I guess. It's a simpleton's job up in the conning tower to-day. All he has to do is to shift the wheel a little to port, or to starboard, just so as to keep the proper interval from the 'Dad' boat. Besides, I've been up there on relief, for an hour while you slept, and Hal came down and sat ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... four sides of the building, in the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had loudly praised the elegance of this arrangement, and talked of the view from that balcony, but all in vain. When he had taken leave of the Bergmanns it struck him that he was a simpleton, like any man of spirit and imagination disappointed of the results of a plan which ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... said Hilliard, laughing as he met Eve's surprised look. "I knew what that meant. I would much rather have got out of it, but it would have seemed brutal. So I went. The poor simpleton has begun to find that marriage with one man isn't necessarily the same thing as marriage with another. In Ezra Marr she has ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... is this: whenever a simpleton puts on airs and plays the master, there are always other simpletons ready ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... I am no longer such a simpleton as to suppose that sentiment entered into your little game at all. You simply wanted to secure yourself admission to Rosmersholm—to establish yourself here. That was what I was to help you to. I ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... "Whut—w-whut ails him ter take arter Tangle-foot? W-w—" his great loose lips trembled with unformed words as he gazed his eager inquiry from one to another. Under normal circumstances it would have remained contemptuously unanswered, but in these days in Tanglefoot Cove a man, though a simpleton, was yet a man, and ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... does not separate himself forever from his wife is a veritable simpleton. If a wife and husband think themselves fit for that union of friendship which exists between men, it is odious in the husband to make his wife feel his superiority ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Rivers is next door to a simpleton: he is not half-baked," retorted Mr. Hamlyn, his own temper getting up: "if I may judge by what I've seen of him in ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... Fitzroy,(817) whom I trust you will thank me for saving, I could not convince Lord John, [Cavendish,] who, I am sorry to say, is the most obstinate, conceited young man I ever saw; George Onslow, and that old simpleton the Duke of Newcastle, who had the impudence to talk to me of character, and that we should be ruined with the public if we did not divide against the Princess. You will be impatient, and wonder I do not ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... exclaimed Valentine, laying the letter down flat on the table, and holding it there with his hand—"now look here, this is serious. You are going to bring that simpleton Laura to me, and you would like to leave her here, would you? Preposterous! She cannot live with me! Besides, I am such a fool myself, that if I was shut up with her long, I should certainly marry her. Take a little time, Val, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a simpleton to prevent her," said Armand to himself. "She has a liking for me beyond a doubt; and as for the world, she cannot despise it more than I do. So, now for ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... an absolutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an exception,—rats that nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty pilferings,—yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you (unless you happen to be a police-constable) from breaking through a crust of plausible respectability, even when you are certain that there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... into the boat, he saw the man at whose house he had procured the fire, staring like a simpleton at him. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Caloro asks me what we could do in the land of the Corahai! Aromali! I almost think that I am speaking to a lilipendi (simpleton). Are there not horses to chore? Yes, I trow there are, and better ones than in this land, and asses and mules. In the land of the Corahai you must hokkawar and chore even as you must here, or in your own country, or else you are no Caloro. Can you not join ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... as friendly now as she was at first. And young Master was impudent enough to ask me if "I had got religion." To conclude the list of my worries, I received an angry answer from Helena. "Nobody but a simpleton," she wrote, "would have contradicted me as you did. Who but you could have failed to see that papa's strange objection to let it be known which of us is the elder makes us ridiculous before other people? My ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... saw a beautiful woman with a harsh voice; and I fear the inverse proposition is equally true. Why passed I without speaking? No doubt, she deems me a yokel! Perhaps it was my very shyness she was smiling at? S'death! what a simpleton—Ho! what do I hear? A woman's voice—a cry?—of terror? There again!—a scream! the words, "Help, oh! help!" Is it she who is calling? Yes—yes it is she! By such strange sounds were my reflections interrupted. Turning my horse with a wrench, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... "You're a simpleton, Martha." Elsa turned the ring round and round on her finger. "If I had told him, he would have canceled his sailing and ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... stile, and Ralph's heart beat stronger, and a nervous tension of expectation quivered through him, bewildering his judgment. But Winsome was very clear-headed, and though the white of her eyes was as dewy and clear as a child's, she was no simpleton. She had read many men and women in her time, for it is the same in essence to rule Craig Ronald as to ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... and resisted contrary temptation I looked not again but paced rapidly for the clean atmosphere of the rough-and-honest bull train. As a companion, better for me Mr. Jenks. When my wrath cooled I felt that I might have acted the cad but I had not acted the simpleton. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... set out. He knows now what he owes to Amon. His favorite son was already at the head of the ministers of the temple at Memphis, and he has vowed to build magnificent temples and to bring splendid offerings to the Immortals. And Rameses keeps his word better than that smiling simpleton ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unnecessary to carry this analysis any further. From the runner who falls to the simpleton who is hoaxed, from a state of being hoaxed to one of absentmindedness, from absentmindedness to wild enthusiasm, from wild enthusiasm to various distortions of character and will, we have followed the line of progress along ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... Why, my dearest simpleton, did you ever hear of a woman of quality keeping accounts—unless it were some lunatic universal genius like her Grace of Newcastle, who rises in the middle of the night to scribble verses, and who might do anything preposterous. Keep accounts! Why, if you was to tell me that two ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Bobtail walked up to the hotel. The former had possessed himself of sufficient evidence to convict Captain Chinks of smuggling, and also of intense stupidity in employing a simpleton like Ben Chinks in such a dangerous business, though rogues and villains almost always leave a screw ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... Anthony, there stands the deliberate simpleton, who wants to disgrace her family and lavish herself on a ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... springing to his feet, he thundered out: "The parol shall not demur—the parol shall not demur. I have got this simpleton where I wanted him! I didn't 'spose he was fool enough to run into this trap; I set it on purpose for him: anybody else would have seen it; anything will catch him. The case can go no farther; the phrase, may it please the court, is Latin, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... envied. He can, indeed, "trust in his heart and what the world calls illusions." To him the earth is yet green and fresh, the world smiling and good-humored, friends are fast and loving, woman a very well-spring of innocent and unbought love. The world thinks him an old simpleton; but he is wiser than the world. He is not to be scared by sad proverbs, nor frightened by dark sayings. An enviable man, he sits, in the evening of life, loving and trusting his fellow-men, and, from the mere freshness of his character, having many ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... sensible child, Eveline," she said. "Now have I known many a wedding, and generally there are quite as many tears as smiles at them. I like not that, exactly, though I believe I was as great a simpleton as most, when I mar—(here the dame decorously put her handkerchief to her eyes to receive the tears which she did not shed)—when I—; but I must not think of my sorrow, when thy happiness is just commencing." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... "That little simpleton Gatien has, I suppose, related to you a speech I made simply to make him confess that he adored you," said Etienne. "Your silence, during dinner the day before yesterday and throughout the evening, was enough to betray one of those indiscretions ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... You devil!" she panted. "God will punish you! I shall spend my every breath in praying Him to punish you as you deserve. You murderer! You hound! And I like a poor simpleton was heeding your false words. I was believing you sincere in your repentance of the wrong you have done me. But now you have ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... not rouged, were naturally red; her eyebrows, though not pencilled, were yet blue black; her face resembled a silver basin, and her eyes, juicy plums. She was sparing in her words, chary in her talk, so much so that people said that she posed as a simpleton. She was quiet in the acquittal of her duties and scrupulous as to the proper season for everything. "I practise simplicity," she would say ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I find another avenger; Sigurd shall not live long to flout at me and thee! (Clenching her hands in convulsive rage.) With her—that simpleton—with her mayhap he is even now sitting alone, dallying, and laughing at us; speaking of the bitter wrong that was done me when in thy stead he bore me away; telling how he laughed over his guile as he stood in my dark bower, and ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... Contarino.—Simpleton! the same thing happens to him which happens to betrayed husbands. Everyone can see the horns except the man who carries them. And yet I confess it is full time that we should realise our projects, and prevent the ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... but we have lived far off, and she has not been able to go to church for weeks and years. But what I long after is to tell me what means all this—yonder sea, and all the stars up above. And they will call me a simpleton for marking such as these, and only want me to heed how to shoot an arrow, or give a stroke hard enough to hurt another. Do such rude doings alone, fit for a bull or a ram as meseems, go to the making of ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sceptically, confidently, as one who could not be deceived. "Pooh!" she said. "That was only a try-on. That was only so that he could begin his palaver! Don't tell me! I may be a simpleton, but I'm not such a simpleton as he thinks for, nor as some other folks think for, either!" (At this point Hilda had to admit that in truth her mother was not completely a simpleton. In her mother was a vein of perceptive shrewdness ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... received the highest honor the people can give him, yet the remembers so tenderly the old home and its associations. That's his great secret of success—he's so human—with faults like other men, but they only make him all the more beloved. He is so tolerant of all. When that poor simpleton stuffed the ballot-box—out somewhere in the Blue Mountains, a really clever piece of work too, wonderfully well done—with the false bottom—I don't see how they ever discovered it—but it is hard to deceive the enemy—there's no piece of crooked work ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... existing. Lucas showed her the portrait in the illustrated paper, which he had kept. She said that it was comparatively an old one, and had been taken at the Durbar in January. "Were you at the Durbar?" asked the simpleton George. Irene Wheeler looked at him. "Yes. I was in the Viceroy's house-party," she answered mildly. And then she said to Lucas that she had sat three times to photographers that week—"They won't leave me alone"—but that the proofs were none of them satisfactory. At this Laurencine ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... treatment is meted out to all religions and sects against a mythological background, with a freedom that would not have been possible earlier. The characters are not presented as individuals but as representatives of human types: the intellectual, the hedonist, the pious man, and the simpleton, are drawn with incomparable skill, with their merits and defects. A third famous novel is San-kuo yen-i ("The Tale of the Three Kingdoms"), by Lo Kuan-chung. Just as the European middle class read with avidity ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... own part I freely confess that, in my bachelorship, I was precisely such an over-curious simpleton as I now advise the reader not to be. My early habits had gifted me with a feminine sensibility and too exquisite refinement. I was the accomplished graduate of a dry goods store, where, by dint of ministering to the whims of fine ladies, and suiting silken ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this," she said, observing the hesitation. "Are you a simpleton, or a man of science pretending to be a simpleton for the sake of mocking ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... gracious, pardonable thing, because in its essentials are youth and zeal and all high, white-hot qualities whose roots strike not in the base earth. Any sage, nay, any simpleton, seeing Maxine upon the balcony, could have told her what a fool she was; but who would have told it without a pause, without a sigh for the divinity ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... as well as his moral qualities proceed from the depths of his own nature, and are not the result of external influences; and no educational scheme—of Pestalozzi, or of any one else—can turn a born simpleton into a man of sense. The thing is impossible! He was born a simpleton, and a simpleton ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... that he was invited to the home of Diane de Maufrigneuse, Princesse de Cadignan, who was then thirty-six, but did not look it. The famous "great coquette" told him her (so-called) "secrets," offered herself outright to this man whom she treated as a "famous simpleton," and whom she made her lover. After that day there was no doubt about the relations of the princesse and Daniel d'Arthez. The great author, whose works became very rare, appeared only during some of the winter months at the Chamber of Deputies. [A Distinguished ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... hissed the bride of Carl Walraven. "It is all her crafty scheming to attract the attention of that hoary-headed simpleton, Sir Roger Trajenna. If you are in love with her, Guy (and how you can is a mystery to me), why don't you propose ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Fool. — N. fool, idiot, tomfool, wiseacre, simpleton, witling[obs3], dizzard[obs3], donkey, ass; ninny, ninnyhammer[obs3]; chowderhead[obs3], chucklehead[obs3]; dolt, booby, Tom Noddy, looby[obs3], hoddy-doddy[obs3], noddy, nonny, noodle, nizy[obs3], owl; goose, goosecap[obs3]; imbecile; gaby[obs3]; radoteur[obs3], nincompoop, badaud[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... show how the thing is done. T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu, the mountains, stood not where they stand now, but in the south of the Chi district and north of Ho-yang. I like the tale well, and shall tell it for its naive Chinesity. The Simpleton of the North Mountain, an old man of ninety, dwelt opposite to them, and was vexed in spirit because their northern flanks blocked the way for travelers, who had to go round. So he called his family together and broached a plan.—"Let us put forth our utmost strength and clear away this obstacle," ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... there?" demanded Prince Balder, with the air of finding nothing extravagant or improbable in the sailor's yarn. The latter (a little doubting whether his interlocutor were a simpleton or a "deep one") answered, after a moment's ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... more befitting, seeing that she herself is arch-robber?" I was amazed to hear him call the princess by such name, and the proudest gentry in the land arrant robbers. "Why, pray my lord," said I, "do you consider these great noblemen worse thieves than highwaymen?" "Thou art a simpleton—think on that knave who roves the wide world over, sword in hand, and with his ravagers at his back, slaying and burning, and depriving the true possessors of their states, and afterwards expecting to be worshipped as conqueror; ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... fellow, and the devil for work. Married, and a good husband; clear eyes; spectacles, a short beard, rather stout, and not dark; never so happy as when he is examining old bones and trash of that kind. A bon garcon, mind you. And yet—Lord! what a simpleton. He could have become a millionaire if he had managed the thing properly. Too modest, perhaps—too unworldly; too foolish, or too ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... him kith Thuthanna Peathe!" With frown to make a statue thrill, The master thundered, "Hither, Will!" Like wretch o'ertaken in his track With stolen chattels on his back, Will hung his head in fear and shame, And to the awful presence came,— A great, green, bashful simpleton, The butt of all good-natured fun, With smile suppressed, and birch upraised The threatener faltered, "I'm amazed That you, my biggest pupil, should Be guilty of an act so rude— Before the whole set school to boot— What evil ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... error!" replied the man in black. "Salamanders resemble women, or, to speak precisely, nymphs, and they are perfectly beautiful! But I feel myself rather a simpleton to ask you if you're able to see this one. One has to be a philosopher to see a Salamander, and I do not think philosophers could be ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... to climb to the chimney on the land-side and establish a nest. There was a broken cart-wheel in the warehouse, which Nanking procured and drew to the roof, and when daylight broke upon the town the earliest loungers and fishermen saw the happy simpleton working like a chimney-sweep, as they thought, except that instead of brushing he was piling brush around the chimney on the cart-wheel. His mother came out and looked joy to see him back; the soldiers strolled down from the fort and the boys and women from the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... incapable of gauging power of intellect and fineness of character. But the veriest blockhead and simpleton who ever lounged in a doorway or lisped in Pall Mall can tell a fine woman when he sees her, and is probably able to find pleasure and hope in the spectacle. It is these blockheads and simpletons who thus set the mode. They fix the standard of fashionable female ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... by the story, Linda tried To get a sight of him, the simpleton; And, when she saw his face, it seemed to her Strangely familiar. Was it in a dream That she had once beheld it? Vain the attempt Of peering memory to fix the where And when of the encounter! Yet she knew That with ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... "Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and 'tis a shade you can't match by dyeing. But you are not going to refuse me now I've come all the way ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... I must talk with somebody. I can't stand around like a simpleton, and say nothing. If you will not tell me who I may talk with, please tell me who I ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... I believe, and Sir Nigel Anstruthers is the kind of man a simpleton would be obliged to submit to," Bettina had ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... you may be sure of that, you simpleton!" muttered Maitre Quennebert in his corner. "If you only knew what a mere novice you are at that game compared with the chevalier! If you only knew whom you ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... not to be for the third time a "foolish little simpleton," she summoned all her wits, forced a cheery smile to ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... boy, ye must come and kiss me for that word. Nay, fear not, ye shall kiss me for Joanna, and when we meet, I shall give it back to her, and say I stole it. And as for what ye owe me, why, dear simpleton, methinks ye were not alone in that great battle; and even if York be on the throne, it was not you that set him there. But for a good, sweet, honest heart, Dick, y' are all that; and if I could find it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and cold down the back, I asked her what she was talking about, whereupon she looked bewildered and inquired if I was a good girl, and being told that I hoped so, she said she couldn't take me in there, and then pointed to a card oh the wall which, simpleton that I was, I hadn't read before: 'A home and rescue is offered to women who desire to leave a life of misery ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... coffee-pot, and not boil over like a simpleton, since thou hast to provide coffee for ladies!" said the Assessor in jesting anger. "Here, Miss Leonore, are drops for the mother and Eva. Sister Louise, be so good as to take my whole storeroom in hand; and you, young sir," said he to Henrik, as he seized him suddenly by the arm, and gazed sharply ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... as she would have said, too sickish, and she compromised on: "He likes you, and wants to ask you whether you will marry him. And, Ellen," she continued, in the ample silence which followed, "if you don't say you will, I will have nothing more to do With such a simpleton. I have always felt that you behaved very foolishly about Mr. Bittridge, but I hoped that when you grew older you would see it as we did, and—and behave differently. And now, if, after all we've been through with you, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... young and silly what they sometimes repent of when they are of riper years and understandings. I sometimes think that had I not been something of a simpleton, I might at this time be a great court lady. Now, madam,' said she, again taking Belle by the hand, 'do oblige me by allowing me to plait ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... as possible to the high, precipitous bank, where the water was smoothest. At the head of the cordel was a merry simpleton of a Frenchman, who was constantly turning his head to grin with delight at our ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... shaking his resolution. "O my dear man," quoth he, with good-natured, placid, simple, and tearful stubbornness, "if you could but enter into my feelings and see the matter from beginning to end as I see it!" To confess the truth, I have since felt that I was hard-hearted to the poor simpleton, and that there was more weight in his remonstrance than I chose to be sensible of, at the time; for, like many men who have been in the habit of making playthings or tools of their imagination and sensibility, I was too rigidly tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there, you young rascals!" he shouted. "You ought to know better than to try a load like that, Rod, you simpleton. Two passengers at the most are all you want with that arm of yours!" He glanced about him. Helen Murray was standing near with the Perkins baby in her arms, while the little mother, free from all care for the first time in many ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... deposed that his master had given him a certain powder to mix with Brandonia's food in order to increase her flow of milk; and, later on, when confronted with the man from whom he had received the poison, he confessed all; and, simpleton as he was, admitted that for two months past his mind had been set upon the deed, and that on two previous occasions he had attempted to administer to her the noxious drug against the advice of his servant. From the first Cardan had placed his hopes of deliverance ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... slipping into a chair and stretching out his legs, "and it will only remain for Michael Phelan to turn up or to fail to turn up and the mystery of the escape is explained. Poor Phelan, he must be a terrific simpleton, and I suppose I am partly ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... man who had three sons. Johnny, the youngest, was always looked upon as the simpleton of the family, and had very little consideration or kindness ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... gambol like a child. He made me dance, and jump upon his knees; he played with me as if he were my own age, and his wife entirely spoilt me. Both required of me but one thing—to be good-humored; and in that, thank God! I never disappointed them; so they baptized me, Dimpleton (not Simpleton, neighbor!) and the cap fitted. As to gayety, they set me the example: never did I see them sad. If they uttered reproaches at all, it was the wife said to her husband: 'Stop, Cretu, you make me laugh too much!' or he said to her 'Hold your tongue, Ramonette ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... in jail. Suffering from fever—'como a sus mercedes les consta'—so he says plaintively—he had nobody to look after him in his secret cell save a sleepy-headed boy, a fellow-prisoner who was half a simpleton. Luis de Leon had fainted from lack of food, and, in the circumstances, it is not surprising that he should have asked to be allowed the companionship of a monk of his order—preferably Fray Alonso Siluente—or anybody else whom the court ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... willian, I call him. To think, at his time of life, of such a handsome and pleasant young thing as this Rose Budd; and then to try to get her by underhand means, and by making a fool of her silly old aunt. It 's wonderful what fools some old aunts be! Quite wonderful! If I was as great a simpleton as this Mrs. Budd, I'd never cross my threshhold. Yes, Stephen Spike is a prodigious willian, as his best friend must own! Well, I gave him a thump on the head that he'll not forget this v'y'ge. To think ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... information from their persistent questionings; what they hoped for was unconscious betrayal by some slip of the tongue. As for young Breslin, Pringle had long since sized him up for what the Major knew him to be—a good-hearted, right-meaning simpleton. In the indifferent-seeming Anastacio, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... like to know how the weavers are getting on with my cloth," said the Emperor to himself, after some little time had elapsed; he was, however, rather embarrassed when he remembered that a simpleton, or one unfit for his office, would be unable to see the manufacture. "To be sure," he thought, "he had nothing to risk in his own person; but yet he would prefer sending somebody else to bring him intelligence about the weavers and their work before ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... "are you playing the simpleton? If Juliet will not take your money, why should she ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ways. I know your sort, I know you, mam'selle, too well! Me, I am nobody's fool, least of all yours, young woman. What goes on under my nose, I see; and if you imagine otherwise you are a bigger simpleton that you ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the red hands, and shy, bashful manner of some young lady who at first struck him as an awkward simpleton, unattractive to the last degree, and surprisingly ridiculous. His doom was sealed. He had gone from the provinces to Paris; he had led the feverish life of Paris; and now he would have sunk back into the lifeless life of the provinces, but for a chance remark which reached ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... lively dances; and love and beauty alone seemed to preside within the joyous precincts. But suddenly a universal confusion and panic terror was spread among the company, and chiefly among the ladies. Some suspicious simpleton or mischievous wag had whispered that we had a design of secretly weighing anchor during this festivity, and sailing away with our beautiful prisoners. My friend Mendiburu, however, at length succeeded in banishing this ridiculous apprehension, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... be nothing difficult to do in this case. Gorgibus is a simpleton, a boor, who will readily believe everything you say, provided you speak to him of Hippocrates, of Galen, and that you have ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... is stuck on a body which resembles a sack of rancid engine grease. This beauty is a fairly representative specimen of our bold sportsmen. He is a deft swindler, and I have gazed with blank innocence while he rooked some courageous simpleton at tossing. The fat, rancid man can do almost as he chooses with a handful of coins, and the marvellous celerity with which sovereigns or halfpence glide between his podgy fingers is quite fascinating. On the subjects of adultery and fighting this object is great, and his foul voice resounds greasily ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... for you. What is the matter with your hand, that you talk of being a life-long prisoner to your room? Pray send for Paget or Erichsen, and have yourself put right at once. No doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case. Perhaps while he is dabbing with lint and lotions the real remedy is the knife. I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the despondent state of feeling which you are now ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... "Why, you simpleton," said Napoleon, playfully; "just look here. Melas is at Alexandria, where he has his head-quarters. He will remain there until Genoa surrenders. He has in Alexandria his magazines, his hospitals, his artillery, his reserves. ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... if all boys or girls, to whom a hazardous feat presents itself, would ask themselves the question: "Would it be a brave thing for me to do that, or would I be merely proving myself a simpleton?" ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... to reply to any observation, or whether the speaker was jesting or in earnest. And so in any event he would embellish all his facial expressions with the offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton, if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious. But as he must also be prepared to face the alternative, he never dared to allow this smile a definite expression on his features, and you would see there a perpetually ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the musician, seeing he was a simpleton, "it is a beautiful instrument, and I make so much money by it, that I cannot take anything ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... excellent young man. Thorpe noted with especial satisfaction his fine, kindly big-brother attitude toward his sister Julia—and it was impossible for him to avoid the conviction that Louisa was a simpleton not to appreciate such children. They did not often allude to their mother; when they did, it was in language the terms of which seemed more affectionate than the tone—and Thorpe said often to himself that he did not blame them. It was not so much that they had outgrown their mother's ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... explained to him that the Fathers, procureurs, and auditors of the Rota bought by certain presents, not relics or indulgences, but jewels and gold, the favour of being familiar with the best of these pampered cats who lived under the protection of the lords of the Council; the poor Touranian, all simpleton and innocent as he was, treasured up under his mattress the money given him by the good archbishop for writings and copying—hoping one day to have enough just to see a cardinal's lady-love, and trusting ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... say that she said nothing because she was afraid of irritating him. But the poor girl's dumb eloquence irritated him more than anything else would have done, and he caught himself murmuring more than once that it was a grievous pity his only child was a simpleton. His murmurs, however, were inaudible; and for a while he said nothing to any one. He would have liked to know exactly how often young Townsend came; but he had determined to ask no questions of the girl ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... say this was a very odd dream. And yet, (for I am a strange dreamer,) it is not altogether improbable that something like it may happen; as the pretty simpleton has the weakness to confide in Dorcas, whom ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... recovering his lost vivacity. "Are we in the land of dreams? Do you take the Chevalier de Croustillac for a simpleton? Do you think I am one of those weak-minded creatures who believe in the devil? I am not a goose, and I also ask twenty-four hours in which to ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... large fortune, and is a simpleton," cried Caroline, the eldest daughter. "But pray, ma'am, ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... looked up at her husband, quite dumbfounded, and he seemed rather distressed himself. However, he muttered something about her being a hot-headed simpleton and soon thinking better about it, and then betook himself to his private retreat, to hold sweet converse with his own thoughts—having first rung the bell for Griffiths, to pick up the scattered threads ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... take next the large class of stories about simpletons, so dear to the public in all parts of the world. In the Skazkas a simpleton is known as a durak, a word which admits of a variety of explanations. Sometimes it means an idiot, sometimes a fool in the sense of a jester. In the stories of village life its signification is generally that of a ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... was something to hear, and the lads, all in chorus, imitated the simpleton's laugh with a "hee, hee, hee!" which sounded very ridiculous, and the ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... go home without attracting notice. He stammered out something about quite understanding, and retreated, while Rachel returned to find Bessie sitting upright, anxiously watching, and she was at once drawn down to sit beside her on the bench, to listen to the excited whisper. "The miserable simpleton! Rachel, Alick was right. I thought, I little thought he would forget how things stand now, but he got back to the old strain, as if—I shall make Lord Keith go to Scotland any way now. I was so thankful to see you and Alick." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to add to the friend. The doctor took all his advantage; he did not take more; and not Faith herself could see that there was any warmer feeling behind his pleasant and pleased eye and smile. But it is true Faith was a simpleton. She did not see that his pleasantness covered keen scrutiny. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... forces with them; Demosthenes ruled supreme in the popular assembly, and wrote letters to the Persian officers who commanded under the king in Asia, inciting them to make war upon the Macedonian, calling him child and simpleton. But as soon as Alexander had settled matters in his own country, and came in person with his army into Boeotia, down fell the courage of the Athenians, and Demosthenes was hushed; the Thebans, deserted by them, fought ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... unconcerned with other people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to forget others on account of it. But he was fond of people: he seemed throughout his life to put implicit trust in people: yet no one ever looked on him as a simpleton or naive person. There was something about him which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards) that he did not care to be a judge of others—that he would never take it upon himself to criticize and would ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... chair-maker, and he also had too few of the good things to make life easy. But it is nothing out of the way for a simpleton to be ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand asks, 'Are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'Odd' and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, 'the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... comes near them. You get notions that every man is conspiring to tell the girl what a perfect fool you are, that they're worrying to boost you right out with her. You hate her, because you think she thinks you are a simpleton, and can't see your good points, which are so obvious to yourself. You hate yourself, you hate life, you hate the sunlight and the trees, and your food, and—and everything. And you wouldn't have things different, or stop making such ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... "You simpleton!" retorted Wetherell, with a conviction now that he was calling him the wrong name. "Give me back the locket, and you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen-out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.—Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still as of old, "what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... holding the reins and whip gracefully in hands glistening in straw-colored kid gloves—and between the two gentlemen ensued the following low-toned colloquy, which it were to be wished that every such sighing simpleton (as Titmouse must, I fear, by this time appear to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... real one. He does not care very much for the working men of the towns, the ouvriers, with their fantastic theories of universal brotherhood and peace, and he hates the depute whom the working man elects as he hates a vine fungus. A needless timidity, some fear of showing himself off as a simpleton, has kept him from having his just influence in French politics; but the war is freeing him from these shackles, and when peace comes, he will make himself known: that is, if there are ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... the Plot. The ancient story of the merciless Jew is told in the Gesta Romanorum, and re-told, with delicate grace, by Giovanni Fiorentino, a fourteenth-century Italian writer, in his Il Pecorone (the simpleton), a collection of novels, or, as we should call them, short stories. The story of the three caskets is also told in the Gesta Romanorum. Other incidents in the play are taken from other sources, possibly from other plays. It is thought by some that the ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... "but every simpleton would not be able to understand your heroism, and sooner or later you will find yourself compelled to explain it to them more energetically than would be convenient to your bodily health and the duration of your life. May I give you a friendly ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with the idea that that soldier could have been put to better use; that, in fact, he is entirely out of the line of duty. The position assigned him is unnatural, and the modern soldier-boy will be apt to conclude that nobody but a simpleton would be likely to wander about in solitary places, extemporizing in measured sentences; besides it is hard work, as I know from experience. I tried my hand at it the other day until my head ached, and this is ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... the Irishman became serious, and he looked thoughtfully into the fire a moment before answering. Disposed as he was to view everything from the sunshiny side, Mickey was not such a simpleton as to consider their incarceration in the cave a matter that could be passed off with a quirp and jest. He had explored the interior pretty thoroughly, and gained a correct idea of their situation, but as yet he saw no practical way of getting out. The plan of diving down the ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
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