"Silly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any great sickenesse amongst them. Whereby it seemeth, that either his prelacy did much abuse him in perswading him to hopes, whereof after two or three dayes he saw no semblance: or he like a silly louer, who promiseth himselfe fauor by importuning a coy mistresse, thought by our long being before his towne, that in the end taking pity on him, they would ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... but there is always some part of the Self unmanifested; and always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve."[355] Much of the content of this larger background against which our conscious being stands out in relief is insignificant. Imperfect memories, silly jingles, inhibitive timidities, "dissolutive" phenomena of various sorts, as Myers calls them, enters into it for a large part. But in it many of the performances of genius seem also to have their ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... handkerchief, and put hand No. 2 softly on Foker's head, which was bent down kissing and weeping over hand No. 1. "Foolish boy!" she said, "it shall be loved as it deserves: who could help loving such a silly creature?" ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rough,—and silly, too, with his radical nonsense, paying a shilling a week to a nasty Union just for nothing. Still he means well, and there ain't a man who works harder for his wife and children;—that I will say of him. And if ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... self-conscious. I would not tell of it to you if I did not want you to understand how alive I am to my utter impossibilities, how resolved I am to do anything so that I may be able to serve. But never mind about silly me; let me tell you how I see ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... the corner of the house again came a black, leading a small Indian horse gaily caparisoned, and fitted with a lady's pillion, and immediately behind, Yorke, leading my own Fatima. I knew then we were about to start, and my heart began once more its silly thumpings. Yet would I not move from my seat, where I had assumed an attitude of indifference, until I suddenly heard behind me a cool and ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... and would sometimes take me out of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember, before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close together, near some dwarf apple trees, I must needs show my wit, by a silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their language as it does in ours. Whereupon, the malicious rogue, watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head, by which a dozen ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... opportunity to renew the conversation. I have seen this fancy gradually coming on, and, fool that I was, was afraid to speak for fear of making things worse. I thought it might be only a passing whim, like those which flutter twenty times through girls' silly heads before they are married, and was unwilling to treat it as of any consequence. But does Anne mean to deceive me? It is not at all like her. She never did so before. No, she has courage enough for anything, and is incapable of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... life is more or less of a farce," he went on a little bitterly. "It's a silly show. The best we can do is to hold our personality intact. It doesn't appear that integrity has much to do ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... breast." Beau Nash completes the list of the ancient heroes, dying in 1761, at the age of eighty-eight—a man of singular success in his frivolous style; made for a master of the ceremonies, the model of all sovereigns of water-drinking places; absurd and ingenious, silly and shrewd, avaricious and extravagant. He created Bath; he taught decency to "bucks," civility to card-players, care to prodigals, and caution to Irishmen! Bath has never seen his like again. In English high life, birth is every thing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... tolerable livelihood: I should say that his provincial blasphemies and his city practise bring him a clear five hundred pounds a year at the least. But is it not the wages of iniquity? He has a few followers here, but only a few. He has recently done a very silly act; for he has, all at once, converted "Voltaire Villa" into a glass house, and the whole neighborhood can now see into the wigwam, where he dwells in true Red Indian ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Lord an' His mercies, that's all over! An' from what I hears, Miss Maryllia won't be wantin' no more London folks for a goodish bit o' time, an' we'll all 'ave peace to turn round an' look at ourselves an' find out whether we're sane or silly, for the two old leddies what is stayin' on give no trouble at all, an' that Mr. Gigg don't care what he gets, so long as he can bang away on the pianner an' make Miss Cicely sing, an' I will own she do sing lovely like the angels in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... haughty, poetic, high-sounding labels to his works, and, like Charles Lamb, we sit open-mouthed at concerts trying to fill in his big sonorous frame with a picture. Your picture is not mine, and I'll swear that the young man who sits next to me with a silly chin, goggle-eyes and cocoanut-shaped head sees as in a fluttering mirror the idealized image of a strong-chinned, ox-eyed, classic-browed youth, a mixture of Napoleon at Saint Helena and Lord Byron invoking the Alps to fall upon him. Now, I loathe such ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... so glum, silly. You don't want Jews as background as well as foreground. A great Ghetto!' And ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... "No, silly! The two Stanton boys and their mother. One of them is in that 'wheeled contraption'. It's called a ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I'm silly, Lizzie," she said. "I'll stop now. Because of course they don't all get killed, or even wounded. He'd probably come out all right, and every one says the training is fine ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the center for a hub, and turn him about a number of times, as is done in "Blindman's Buff." He then walks about. The number of the space he stops upon, after repeating a silly verse to the end, is put upon his score card. If he goes outside the circle, even with one foot, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... stopped at Tadoussac on her return, and among the spectators who came down to the landing was a certain very pretty, conscious-looking, silly, bridal-faced young woman,—imaginably the belle of the season at that forlorn watering-place,—who before coming on board stood awhile attended by a following of those elderly imperial and colonial British who heavily flutter round the fair at such resorts. She had an air ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... lady gave advice And lectured little Polly, To see her stand with downcast eyes, You'd think she'd owned her folly. She did, and many a promise made; But when her aunt departed, Forgetting all, the silly maid Off to the ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... that he may be pleased, and not tell on them for doing evil things. They think, too, that the sugar sticks his lips together, so that when he wants to tell on them he can't get his mouth open! Isn't it all very silly and very sad? The shopkeepers, too, paste up a "god of riches," thinking that ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... are a silly child, my sweet Florette, and think that America is a magician. We must be patient. We do not even know all that her great president said. We are fed ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... posture on his hindquarters, his two front paws held squirrel-like over his breast. In this pose he was fully three feet tall. He probably weighed forty pounds, and in some ways he resembled one of those fat, good-natured, silly-looking dogs that go largely to stomach. But his brain was working with amazing celerity. Suddenly he gave the hard mud of the dam a single slap with his tail—and Baree sat up. Instantly he saw Beaver Tooth, and stared. Beaver Tooth stared. For a ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... As her temperament led her to share the desires she excited, she was really incapable of resisting an attack conducted with skill and ardour, and if the Duc de Vitry had not been so madly in love, which is the same as saying that he was hopelessly blind, silly, and dense to everything around him, he might have found a score of opportunities to overcome her resistance. We have already seen that she was so straitened in money matters that she had been driven to try to sell ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to be here, he could not rest. He loved each simple joy the country yields, He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep, For that a shadow lour'd on the fields, Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. Some life of men unblest He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head. He went; his piping took a troubled sound Of storms that rage outside our happy ground; He could not wait their ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... harmless critter, and he didn't know jest where he was going, nor why. He was mostly scared of things, and if you spoke to him quick he shivered first and then grinned idiotic so you wouldn't kick him, and when he talked he had a silly little giggle. He had been made that-a-way in a reform school where they took him young and tried to work the cussedness out'n him by batting him around. They worked it out, and purty nigh everything else along with it, I guess. Looney had had a pardner whose name was ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... cow worries me with its continual fog-horn, and I thought I would write to the owner (a small local dairy-farmer) to see if he could manage to find another field in which to batten this cow, where it could moo till it broke its silly tonsils for all I should care; so I indited this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... gloves did seem foolish, for it was a bitter December day when the blood had best had full swing in the veins, but he held out to me a hand pinched in a few square inches of yellow kid. The grasp was just as warm though, and I forgave that. When he threw aside his silly little overcoat and stood before me, so tall and strong, so clean-cut and faultless, from the part in his hair to the shine on his boot-tips, I ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... and repentance. She appeared as aloof from her surroundings as if she had been wafted to Arabia; and presently began to wash her face conscientiously and methodically, with the air of one who finds solitude better than the companionship of fools. Only when the judge had put his silly handkerchief into his pocket, and had strolled into the library under the pretence of hunting for a book which he had never left there, did the kitten close her eyes, lower her obdurate little head, and purr herself ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... droll extravagance with an earnest air—knaves munching up fools as horses oats.—Faith, very droll, indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about having no confidence in nature. In reality you have just as much ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... and cook their own rations. The actual facts had little to do with the predetermination of the members. Stringfellow had written in his paper, the "Squatter Sovereign," three weeks before: "We hope no one will be silly enough to suppose the Governor has power to compel us to stay at Pawnee during the entire session. We will, of course, have to 'trot' out at the bidding of his Excellency,—but we will trot him back next day ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... to the superintendency Halkett had been a ward boss in the metropolis of the State. Thinking he saw his chance, he took it, and the blow knocked Callahan silly for the moment. Afterward there was a small free-for-all buffeting match in the narrow cab in which the fireman took a hand, and during which the racing 1010 was suffered to find her way alone. When it was over, Callahan spat out ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... The silly ring of her voice and the pathless tattle changed; she talked to suit her laden look. 'You hit it. I come from Dudley. He knows the facts. I wish to serve ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... talk among the three or four Europeans here at the beginning of the rumours of a revolt of organizing a defence among Christians only. Conceive what a silly and gratuitous provocation! There was no religion in the business at all and of course the proper person to organize defence was the Maohn, and he and Mustapha and others had planned using my house as a castle and defending that in case of a visit from ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... I; I'm a poet, if I had but, etc.—Who's silly now? rogues and lasses, tinderboxes and buzzards. O Lord, I am in a high vein of silliness; methought I was speaking to dearest little MD face to face. There; so, lads, enough for to-night; to cards with the blackguards. Goodnight, my ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... be silly and sentimental, or Mr. MacKenzie will think us a pair of fools.' She looked at him gaily. 'We're both very ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... sensibility by reason of his experience in the so-called creative medium of painting. It is, as we know, brain matter that counts in a work of art, and we have dispensed once and for all with the silly notion that a work of art is made by hand. Art is first and last of all, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Darkness. To the Darpan the educated natives looked as the means of bringing the oppression of their own countrymen to the knowledge of the public and the authorities. Government found it most useful for contradicting silly rumours and promoting contentment if not loyalty. The paper gave a new development to the Bengali language as well as to the moral and political ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... called Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had another name like a human being, I'd gladly call her Miss something. I went so far as to ask her, and she stared at me in a dazed, stupid, silly way, as if I'd asked her to marry me. I suppose the fact is, she's been called Mary Ann so long and so often that she's forgotten her father's name—if she ever had any. I must do her the justice, though, to say she answers to ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... moment he of the smoked glasses was saying to himself: "So that is what happened while I lay there like a log by the roadside, is it? Well, it's hard luck; but certainly I ought to be able to turn the information furnished by that silly ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... he, "but silly. Her testimony is no more to be relied upon than that of any other ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... to us; he is a tall, dark, fine, and clever-looking man. I remember his being so much struck with my likeness to Donna Maria, which I was not aware was the case. Pray, dear Uncle, may I ask you a silly question?—is not the Queen of Spain[8] rather clever? You know her, and what do you think of her? And do you know what sort of people are about poor little Queen Isabel?[9] Poor, good Donna Maria! I feel ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... have heard poor Dick's story I don't much wish to go to a public school; but Clarendon says that's a silly prejudice, for it was the same disposition which made him unhappy at home, that prevented the school from being of service to him. Yet I am afraid that I have not principle enough to go among so many boys and do what is right. It ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... thing you might do, Master Marner," added Dolly, meditatively: "you might shut her up once i' the coal-hole. That was what I did wi' Aaron; for I was that silly wi' the youngest lad, as I could never bear to smack him. Not as I could find i' my heart to let him stay i' the coal-hole more nor a minute, but it was enough to colly him all over, so as he must be new washed and dressed, and it was as good ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... is that?' thought Val. 'What silly brutes lawyers are! Not for months! I know one thing: I'm not going to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... interposing, "I will have no swaggering here.—Nephew, it will become you best to show no haste to take offence; and you, gentlemen, will do well to remember, that if you are in an inn, still you are the inn-keeper's guests, and should spare the honour of his family.—I protest your silly broils make me as oblivious as yourself; for yonder sits my silent guest as I call him, who hath been my two days' inmate, and hath never spoken a word, save to ask for his food and his reckoning—gives no more trouble than a very peasant—pays his shot like a prince royal—looks but at the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Sunni was as angry as possible. Then he reflected that it was silly to be angry with a person who ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... themselves with inappropriate talk. Woe is me that I may not give some specimens—some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries into the rudiments of man and nature, these were so fiery and so innocent, they were so richly silly, so romantically young. But the talk, at any rate, was but a condiment; and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shied off into a corner and there during the evening he remained, gazing at the woman from "off yander," with scarcely courage enough to utter a word. Mrs. Mayfield inquired as to his church among the hills, and his countenance flared with a silly light and old Jasper ducked his head and snorted in the sleeve of his home-spun shirt. But the next morning Jim had the courage to appear at the breakfast table, still gazing; and later when Tom and his aunt went out for a walk, he followed ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... pop-cornful in Hampstead, one in Brixton, one in East Ham, and one in Islington, and London is a Pompeii in five minutes! Or was the American only bragging? Because anyhow, whom has he experimented on? I read it in the newspaper, though. London a Pompeii in five minutes. Makes the gods look silly! ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... little sprinklings of reason more than the rest, yet that they may the better manage it, even in this as well as in other things, they call me to counsel; and I give them such as is worthy of myself, to wit, that they take to them a wife—a silly thing, God wot, and foolish, yet wanton and pleasant, by which means the roughness of the masculine temper is seasoned and sweetened by her folly. For in that Plato seems to doubt under what genus he should put woman, to wit, that of rational creatures or brutes, he intended ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... of Virgil?" said Candide. "Why, I grant," replied Pococurante, "that the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his 'AEneid' are excellent; but as for his pious AEneas, his strong Cloanthus, his friendly Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any thing more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... of a world-old problem. But I wonder how much of the honest patriotism which fills the book would survive a rationalism as perverse and shallow as Mr. SWIFT applies to traditional faiths. Does he imagine they have no better defences than those which he puts into the weak mouth of silly Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... 'It's my silly nervousness, dear. I thought I remembered perfectly where the album lay. How foolish of me! I quite tremble—anyone would think we ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... possible explanation of its continued existence was that the majority of his fellow workers were devoid of the power of reasoning. If these people were not mentally deficient they would of their own accord have swept this silly system away long ago. It would not have been necessary for anyone to teach them that ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Rodzianko, to whom I spoke at the Club only a fortnight before the abdication, said that everything would turn out all right. In fact, the Court, and people around it,—were much better posted; perhaps they felt something growing instinctively, as they were too silly to crystallize their fears in some concrete conception. Maroossia was in Tsarskoye Selo not long before the old Admiral's death; they said that the danger was expected from the "Town and Country Union." But all ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Rose, The green immortal Branch arose; } And in a solitary place } S. Mark, Bow'd to His Father His blest face. } c. 1, v. 35- If this calm season pleased my Prince, Whose fulness no need could evince, Why should not I, poor silly sheep, His hours, as well as practice, keep? Not that His hand is tied to these, From whom Time holds his transient lease But mornings new creations are, When men, all night sav'd by His care, Are still reviv'd; and well He may Expect them grateful with the day. So for ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... 'That's a silly word. In a natural world there is no place for the supernatural.' He grew testy. 'Can I ever teach you, Helen, not to employ words ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... was gruff, conveying the idea that women asked silly questions, but his gruffness did not hoodwink Elsie. He had ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... sure!" snapped Cochrane. "The first settlements in America were failures until the people started to work for themselves! Look at this planet we're leaving! How many people will come to work that silly diamond mine! How many will hunt to supply them with meat? How many will farm to supply the hunters and the miners with other food? And how many others will be along to run stores and manufacture things ..." He made an impatient ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... confoundedly silly Power must have looked, eh? Should like so much to have seen his face. He booked up next day,—very proper fellow. By-the-bye, O'Malley, I rather like the little girl; she is decidedly pretty, and her foot,—did you ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was startled. "How dreadful, and how silly! But why? I thought dueling had quite gone out in all civilized countries; and in any case, why fight about me? And who should fight? Surely you are only teasing me, ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... Than twenty silly ducking observants] [W: silky] The alteration is more ingenious than the arguments by which ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... off to the nearest French window, he stood staring out morosely—staring out at the silly little rockery, with the silly little pond at the foot of it, containing the silly little boat that never sailed anywhere. He was cross with himself and even more cross with her. Why couldn't she have behaved sensibly, instead of bursting like a rain-cloud without warning? ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Patten. "Make friends with them and sooner or later they'll let it slip out without meaning to. That is if they know anything about a lost village. And truly, Professor, we always thought that was just a lot of silly talk about there being an ancient Indian town near here. I've never seen it and I've never seen anyone else who has. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... sailors, doubtless, are superstitious. But I appeal to every master mariner here, whether the superstitious men are generally the religious and godly men; whether it is not generally the most reckless and profligate men of the crew who are most afraid of sailing on a Friday, and who give way to other silly fancies which I shall not mention in this sacred place. And I appeal, too, to public experience, whether many, I may say most, of those to whom seamanship and sea-science owes most, have not ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... states-men for their generall end In politique justice make poore men offend) Enforceth my offence to make it just. 65 What shall weak dames doe, when th' whole work of Nature Hath a strong finger in each one of us? Needs must that sweep away the silly cobweb Of our still-undone labours, that layes still Our powers to it, as to the line, the stone, 70 Not to the stone, the line should be oppos'd. We cannot keepe our constant course in vertue: What is alike at all parts? every day Differs from other, every houre and minute; I, every thought ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... everyone is talking Esperanto or some other universal language, the kids will have to study English. Can't you see them grinding over the Orations of William Jennings Bryan and wondering why the dickens anyone ever wanted to talk such a silly language? That's when we get our revenge, Clint. We won't be around to see it, but ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... menaces in Africa and Australasia, and the danger of a Russian advance in Central Asia hung like a thundercloud over the whole situation. [Footnote: Sir Charles wrote to Mr. Brett on November 15th, 1884: 'I told Herbert Bismarck when he was here that it was very silly of his father to get in the way of our Egypt plans, for France would not go to war about them, and therefore, after threatening, he would have to look on and see the things he ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... a vague gesture. "Did I say that I had picked him out yet, silly? But there must be ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... things into nothing and their reparation out of nothing again. See Lucr. I. 215—264, and elsewhere. Infinite secari: through the authority of Aristotle, the doctrine of the infinite subdivisibility of matter had become so thoroughly the orthodox one that the Atom was scouted as a silly absurdity. Cf. D.F. I. 20 ne illud quidem physici credere esse minimum, Arist. Physica, I. 1 [Greek: ouk estin elachiston megethos]. The history of ancient opinion on this subject is important, ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That's what makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member—that makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that cursed pyramid—so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to myself, 'what's his leg now, but a cane—a whalebone cane. Yes,' thinks I, 'it was only ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... eyes laughing, yet as swiftly sobering again. "But it is foolish of us to waste time in such silly speeches. There is too much waiting attention. Fortunately this house is not without its secrets, for when built by my grandfather ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... to your brother, you have shewn yourself so silly, and so wise; so young, and so old; so gentle, and so obstinate; so meek, and so violent; that never was there so mixed ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... when thou wast a little naked cub. Yes, I too was born among men. I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera—the Panther—and no man's plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. Is it ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... "You silly! Of course it's you too! I remember every single thing you told me, and how terribly thrilled I was. This afternoon brought it all back. I shall never forget this, either. Not as ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Timothy's—"as light as—er—Taglioni, no fuss about it, no wanting this or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on this, staring at Mrs. Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a good deal, "no silly nervousness!" To Aunt Hester he portrayed Irene's hat. "Not one of your great flopping things, sprawling about, and catching the dust, that women are so fond of nowadays, but a neat little—" he made a circular motion of his hand, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... may possibly have culminated in some name yet more foolish than that of this little green and gold volume. If so, the rival has proved too much for the trump of Fame to carry, and has dropped unnoticed. In the present case, the title does perhaps some injustice to the book, which is not a silly one, though it contains very silly things. It seems to be written from the point of view afforded by a second-rate New-York boarding-house, and by a person who has never come in contact with any refined or well-bred people. With this allowance, it is written in the interest of good manners ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... her head and smiled. "I would not venture to do such a thing," she said, "it was a mere slip of my hand. As cousin Pao-ch'ai wished to see the silly wild goose, I was pointing it out to her, when the handkerchief inadvertently flew out ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "Don't be absurd, you silly child," Guy said, kindly. "Of course I'll go out directly, and bring him in in five minutes, to laugh at you. Now go back to your room; there's nothing on earth to be ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... a wry face. "I don't mind assisting in the boy's education, but I draw the line at the girl. She's a silly. Why, she—" His face coloured with resentment. "It sounds crazy to say, but she does, for a fact, make eyes at every ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... eminent lawyers, under the ingenious falsehoods of fictitious pedigrees. In the last century, no sooner had a lawyer of humble birth risen to distinction, than he was pestered by fabricators of false genealogies, who implored him to accept their silly romances about his ancestry. In most cases, these ridiculous applicants hoped to receive money for their dishonest representations; but not seldom it happened that they were actuated by a sincere desire to protect the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... age as weakness of will consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness, and capacity for prolonged resolution, must specially be included in the conception of "greatness", with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age—such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness In the time of Socrates, among men only of worn-out instincts, old conservative ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... asked the operative, with a sheepishly guileless air. "It was just a bit from an English musical comedy of two or three years back, I think. It's got a silly-sounding name—something like 'There's ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... itself was accompanied by more or less pointed opposition to the heedless importation of foreign views, and protests, sometimes vigorous and keen, sometimes flimsy and silly, were entered against the slavish imitation of things foreign. Endeavor was turned toward the establishment of independent ideals, and the fostering of a taste for the characteristically national in literature, as opposed to frank imitation and ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... told it, the offence she had committed seemed far greater than she had imagined. If Rosmore had deceived her! The thought burnt into her soul and sent the hot blood to her cheeks. Was she merely a silly wench, as were hundreds of others, won by a smooth tongue, stepping easily down into shame at the bidding of the first man whose words had enough flattery in them? Was there truth in what the trooper Watson had suggested? ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... thought it all foolishness, but resolved to go to their meetings until I found out all they believed. I continued to go until I began to understand a little of what they knew, not what they believed; and instead of spending my time telling others what a silly thing Christian Science is, I am now trying to find words to tell what a great and wonderful thing it is. I have been healed of so-called incurable spinal disease of ten years' standing by studying the Bible and Science and Health. Science and Health has been my only teacher, and I wish ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... work, foretells your entanglement in some silly affair growing out of a too great curiosity about other people's business. Beware of talking ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... upon as impudence; if modest, (then to be sure) he must be hypocritical; if his behaviour is grave, it is owing to a sullenness of temper; if affable, he is but little regarded; if strictly just, then cruel must be his character; but, if merciful and forbearing, then (of consequence) a silly, sheepish-headed fool! Now, I challenge all the ASS-TROLOGERS and CONJURERS, throughout the whole kingdom, to demonstrate that all the whimsey-headed opinions which different men retain of different actions, together with their being so vastly different ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... then. Man's sure to hit as hard as he can when his monkey's up; and that stick's just as heavy as you can have 'em without breaking bones. That's the sort o' stick as'll knock a man silly and give him the headache for a week, and sarve him right. If it was half-a-hounce ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... cried, "Out swords! Out swords! Kill, kill!" Seeing us start Witta laughed, and showed us it was but a great-beaked grey bird with a red tail. He sat her on his shoulder, and she called for bread and wine hoarsely, and prayed him to kiss her. Yet she was no more than a silly bird. But—ye knew this?' He ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... things as ghosts!" declared Betty, with excellent sense. "We are silly to even talk about them. Oh, there is something I want for my boat," and she pointed to a little brass lantern. "It will be just fine for going up on deck with," she proceeded. "Of course the electric lights, run by the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... interests." Honor and vital interests—could any words be more vague and indefinite? Are these not the very cases which interested nations are least competent to decide? A complete answer to that silly reservation is found in our hundred years' peace with Great Britain. As John W. Foster, that keen student of our diplomatic history, has said, "The United States can have no future dispute with England more seriously ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... sympathies are touched, they rush to the aid of the unfortunate; but when fortune smiles on others, they are somehow pained. "I do not say," he added, "this could happen to a thoughtful person; but it is no uncommon condition of a silly mind." (9) ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... pursued Jinny. "A bit silly, I think. Hoo stood an' hoo stared at us same as if we ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... appreciated my present eagerness and undertook that the periodical in question should do no less; then at the last, with his hand on the door, he said to me: "Of course you'll be all right, you know." Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: "I mean you won't be silly." ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... fashion—"but you are still the same old 'Lige Curtis! It was like you to go off and hide yourself in that idiotic way; it was like you to let the property slide in that stupid, unselfish fashion; it was like you to get real mad, and say all those mean, silly things to dad, that didn't hurt him—in your regular looney style; for rich or poor, drunk or sober, ragged or elegant, plain or handsome,—you're always ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... trunk, Nellie," replied Madge in a crestfallen manner. She was not nearly so grown-up or so sure of herself as she had been half an hour before. "I know it was silly in me not to have brought Tom's letter with me, but I was so sure that I knew just what it said. Perhaps we had better go on over to New York. Let's hurry. Perhaps that boat ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... that nebulous mass of whirling particles—the disorderly children—began to take definite form. The children seemed to begin to find their own way; in many of the objects they had at first despised as silly playthings, they began to discover a novel interest, and, as a result of this new interest, they began to act as independent individuals." Miss George's subsequent expression is: "They became extremely individual." "Thus ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... silly and vulgar idea of the beating and the fright—is what would occur to any one. You have not an ounce of brains, Remedios; to solve a serious question you can think of nothing better than a piece of folly like that. I have thought of a means more ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... fight, for a buffalo. If a traveler encounter him by daylight, he turns tail and sneaks out of sight like a scared greyhound. All the talk about his majestic roar is sheer twaddle. It takes a keen ear to distinguish the voice of the lion from that of the silly ostrich. When he is gorged he falls asleep, and a couple of natives approach him without fear. One discharges an arrow, the point of which has been anointed with a subtle poison, made of the dried entrails of a species of caterpillar, while ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... millions a-year less expenses than before, is a new doctrine in politics. We have heard much clamor of national savings and economy; but surely the true economy would be, to save the whole charge of a silly, foolish, and headstrong war; because, compared with this, all other retrenchments are baubles ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... her mother's glance and answered with a thoughtful calm; "I see no danger. I liked Kit before he went away, but our friendship was really not romantic. When father met us in Redmire Wood, a horribly silly impulse made me hide. I blush when I think about it and imagine I forgot I had grown up—Gerald and I used to hide when father was angry. Anyhow, I made Kit Askew hide and he was first to remember ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... child?" I says, "a human child?" Some folks have such a silly way of talking about their dogs—you ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... with Rodney. And that makes it all the worse! If she'd fallen in love with some other man and run off with him—well, that isn't pretty, but it's happened before and people have got away with it. But this running away on account of some silly idea that she's picked up from that votes-for-women mother of hers, running away from a man like Rodney, too, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... tears; and said one to the other, "In what is this little creature better than us, that she should be so much happier?" "Sister, said the eldest, a thought just strikes my mind; let us endeavour to detain her above a week, and perhaps the silly monster will be so enraged at her for breaking her word, that he will devour her." "Right, sister, answered the other, therefore we must shew her as much kindness as possible." After they had taken this resolution, they went ...
— Beauty and the Beast • Marie Le Prince de Beaumont
... gloomy room melancholy ideas began to take possession of their imaginations. They felt frightened. It was silly to stand talking so long, but a longing to see her kept them rooted to the spot. It was very hot—the lamp glass threw a round, moonlike patch of light upon the ceiling, but the rest of the room was drowned in steamy darkness. Under the bed a deep plate full of phenol exhaled an insipid ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... research and speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients, the direct external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly—it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back through ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... startled from repose by the shrill squeal of some unlucky brute, complaining of the torture inflicted by the sharp teeth of its ill-natured mate or vicious neighbor; or, perhaps, the flutter of fans is suspended at the obstreperous neigh by which some anxious dam recalls the silly foal that has strayed from her side; or the dissonant creaking of a cramped wheel makes doleful interludes between the verses of the hymn. Here naughty boys, escaped from the confinement of the sanctuary, are wont to lounge in the wagons during prayer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of sorrow and repentance had passed over Madeleine, and found her, at the commencement of our narrative, the victim of consumption and internal anguish, the more keen because the more secret. The outward world believed her happy; many silly maidens, in moments of vanity, deemed they could have gained heaven if they were possessed of Madeleine's wealth, her jewels, her carriages, her dresses; but were the veils that shroud the hypocrisy of human joy raised for the warning of the uninitiated, many a noble heart like Madeleine's ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... He couldn't even choose a respectable shape for his hat! Come on! She did that because I took your part and said you ought to have come—little vixen!—else she would never have sent you that silly note. It's a most improper note, I call it; most improper for such an intelligent, well-brought-up girl to write. H'm! I dare say she was annoyed that you didn't come; but she ought to have known that one can't write like that to an idiot like you, for you'd be sure ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Hooker intends to make a kind of feint against Lee. Feints are old, silly tricks, almost impossible with large armies, and therefore very seldom feints are successful. Lee is not to be caught in this way, and the less so as he has as many spies as inhabitants, in, and around Hooker's camp. To cross the river on a well selected point, and, Hooker-like, attack the ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... and carefully transpose the split infinitives, and write alternative adjectives, and take words away out of their natural place in the sentence and generally put the Queen's English—yes, the Queen's English—on the rack. And who is a penny the better for it? The silly authors get no real praise, not even in the horrible stucco villas where their clique meet on Sundays. The poor public buys the Marvel and gasps at the cleverness of the writing and despairs, and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... position," she continued. "These are very democratic days, when silly people think that all men are equal. A lady is nevertheless still a lady, and a gentleman a gentleman, though one does not often meet them. I wish you to come and ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... case, Lord John's ear, though held for ten or twelve minutes, was not screwed up. I remember when I heard the story, thirty years ago, at once asking the question, "Which ear was it he held?" That sounded almost to myself as I asked it a silly question, but, as the reply showed, it was not. Lord Arthur replied, "That is curious. It is exactly the question I asked my uncle, and he, instead of treating it as trivial, answered as if it was a matter of the first importance, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I couldn't do ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely |
