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Silly   /sˈɪli/   Listen
Silly

adjective
(compar. sillier; superl. silliest)
1.
Ludicrous, foolish.  Synonyms: cockamamie, cockamamy, goofy, sappy, wacky, whacky, zany.  "Wore a goofy hat" , "A silly idea" , "Some wacky plan for selling more books"
2.
Lacking seriousness; given to frivolity.  Synonyms: airheaded, dizzy, empty-headed, featherbrained, giddy, light-headed, lightheaded.  "Light-headed teenagers" , "Silly giggles"
3.
Inspiring scornful pity.  Synonyms: pathetic, ridiculous.
4.
Dazed from or as if from repeated blows.  Synonyms: punch-drunk, slaphappy.  "Slaphappy with exhaustion"



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"Silly" Quotes from Famous Books



... liquor. My father never loved it, and God knows what he was trying to forget. For that's the substance of it all, to forget. When you start out to the point of forgetfulness, you must keep it up; regret comes back threefold with soberness. It seems silly and weak for a man who has been buffeted as I have, who is supposed to gather wisdom and philosophy as a snowball gathers snow as it rolls down hill, to try to drown regret and disappointment in liquor. A man never knows how weak he is till he meets the one woman and she ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... silly their conversation is! Sometimes a whim comes upon them, and one runs for a few yards; the whim takes possession of others, and they do exactly the same. One seizes another round the body and wrestles with ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... he still determined to marry, but experience had taught him greater prudence—he decided that his next advances should be made with more caution. He would shun the great belles; fortune he must have, but he would adopt one of two courses; he would either look out for some very young and very silly girl, who could be persuaded into anything, or he would try to discover some rich woman, with a plain face, who would be flattered by the attentions of the agreeable Mr. Stryker. While he was making these reflections he was introduced to Elinor, and we are sorry to say it, she appeared ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... obstacles to her ever going to Canada. The secret of her future destiny she buried in her heart, until at the end of a year, the Almighty Himself commanded her to divulge it. When she did so, the communication entailed on her only mortification and humiliation. Her director rebuked her for indulging silly fancies; the Mother Superior asserted that if God granted her request, it would be only as a punishment for her presumption; others, whose judgment she equally deferred to, pronounced the project visionary and delusive, yet her great ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... the boy will make known the girl addicted to the vice. The bloodless lips, the dull, heavy eye surrounded with dark rings, the nerveless hand, the blanched cheek, the short breath, the old, faded look, the weakened memory and silly irritability tell the story all too plainly. The same evil result follows, ending perhaps in death, or worse, in insanity. Aside from the injury the girl does herself by yielding to this habit, there ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... on the sofa. "This Lenore is a glorious woman," cried he, in ecstasy; "simple, open—none of the silly enthusiasm of your German girls about her. Sit an hour with me, as of old, Anton Wohlfart, baronial rent-receiver in a Slavonic Sahara! I say, you are in such a romantic position, that my hair still bristles ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... are crying," exclaimed Samuel, thoroughly angry, "you are not only hard-headed, but also silly, simply silly! 'Long of hair but short of sense.' To cry and cry, and not know wherefore!" With this Samuel turned towards us, and began ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... me that Benedetto, who is considered a serpent of subtlety and a giant of cunning, is really but a very commonplace, silly rascal, and altogether unworthy of the experiments that will be made on his phrenological ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... back the primitive in a big rich way. The primitive is always a new and higher beginning to the man who understands it. Not yet has the producer learned that the feeling of the crowd is patriarchal, splendid. He imagines the people want nothing but a silly lark. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... into the house, and found the old man sitting over the fire, rubbing his hands, and half-crying about 'the few poor dollars,' that he said he had had stolen from him. Father had never seen him before, but he knew he had the name of being half silly, and question him as much as he liked, he could make nothing of him. The daughter said that they had gone to bed at dark the night her father was robbed. She slept up stairs, and he down below. About ten o'clock ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle—I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith, though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... are a lot more of them. One was a silly girl named Emily. She didn't do anything but have "hair a yard long I guess" and for that she had two lovers. I am going to get a hair tonic. That's how silly men were in Chaucer's day, before they learned how to play football, ...
— The Belles of Canterbury - A Chaucer Tale Out of School • Anna Bird Stewart

... sung; and he said, "My good Cesario, when I heard that song last night, methought it did relieve my passion much. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The spinsters and the knitters when they sit in the sun, and the young maids that weave their thread with bone, chaunt this song. It is silly, yet I love it, for it tells of the innocence of love ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... sit together, All alone, in this great arm-chair:- Is it silly to mind it, darling, When Life is ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... is the young man talking about?" exclaimed Scarecrow, Nightmare and Shakejoint, one to another, with great appearance of astonishment. "A pair of flying slippers, quoth he! His heels would quickly fly higher than his head if he was silly enough to put them on. And a helmet of invisibility! How could a helmet make him invisible, unless it were big enough for him to hide under it? And an enchanted wallet! What sort of a contrivance may that be, I wonder? ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... laird's son about one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and Robert saw no reason why he should not rhyme as well as he, for the author had no more school-craft than himself. Writing of this song a few years later, he called it puerile and silly; and his verdict as a poetical one was correct. Still, considered as a song, this artless effusion possessed one merit of which he himself was probably not conscious: it was inspired by his feeling and not by his reading, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... boughte a sovereign Charm of Mother Shipton. Howbeit, on inducing her, much agaynst her Will, to open it, Nought was founde within but a wretched little Print of a Ship, with the Words, scrawled beneath it, "By Virtue of the above Sign." Father called her a silly Baggage, and sayd, he was glad, at any Rate, there was no Profanity in it; but, in Spite of Betty, and Polly, and Mother too, he is resolved to leave the House under the sole Charge of Nurse Jellycott. Indeed, there Will probably be more rather than less Work to do at Chalfont; ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... happy thoughts have been with you, my Djack. It all seems a blessed dream that we love each other. And I—oh, how could I have been so ignorant, so silly, not to know ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... some of the freaks in Blackwood's Magazine, and down comes young D'Israeli[39] to Scotland imploring Lockhart to make interest with my friends in London to remove objections, and so forth. I have no idea of telling all and sundry that my son-in-law is not a slanderer, or a silly thoughtless lad, although he was six or seven years ago engaged in some light satires. I only wrote to Heber and to Southey—the first upon the subject of the reports which had startled Murray, (the most timorous, as Byron called him, of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... Little as I know of the world, I know that—at least for one like me. It may seem weak and silly to you, but, brought up as I had been, I was morbidly sensitive. You might have meant to be kind and sympathetic and all that, and yet have hurt me cruelly. I have been out with you enough to know how I am regarded. I don't complain. I suppose it is ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... was going to say what I please, I'd begin by callin' you a silly ox an' work up to the higher pressures at leisure. I'm trying to say solely what transpired. M'rover, for once you're ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... we one of the faculty here? I see how it is, friend. You have been reading some silly book about the disease, and have frightened yourself into the belief that you have some of its symptoms. I hope you haven't been doctoring yourself, likewise. What have ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Kitty. It's a silly gaim! We common people—we were fools. We thought those big people knew what they were up to—and they didn't. Look at that chap! 'E 'ad all Germany be'ind 'im, and what 'as 'e made of it? Smeshin' and blunderin' and destroyin', and there 'e 'is! Jest a mess of blood and boots and things! Jest ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... all wise people say against it. I know I am only a little girl, and my opinion may not be worth much, but I mean to stand up for it, whatever they say. I suppose every one has a right to her own opinion, and if others don't agree with me, they needn't; but I don't like them to call me "silly" because I don't think as they do. I am willing they should have their own opinions, but I want the same privilege,—isn't that fair? I don't like such nicknames as "Tom" and "Bob," or "Mollie" and "Sallie," but like such as "Charlie" or "Hattie," and I think ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... pseudonym seems to stretch a point. However, Mr. Whitten is now acknowledged as one of the foremost experts in London topography. He is not an archaeologist, he is a humanist—in a good dry sense; not the University sense, nor the silly sense. The word "human" is a dangerous word; I am rather inclined to handle it with antiseptic precautions. When a critic who has risen high enough to be allowed to sign his reviews in a daily paper calls a new book "a great human novel," you ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... she had first asked, then coaxed, and there, as a final effort, had screamed for a half hour. Mrs. Harcourt would, as usual, have quickly agreed at once to spend the Summer as Gwen wished, but it happened that other plans already made, rendered it impossible. The silly woman offered everything that she could think of to pacify Gwen, but Gwen declared that nothing would make up to her for the refusal to go ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks

... go, with your scraps of lustful poetry. But you cant deny what I tell you. Why, do you think I would put my soul in peril by selling drink if I thought it did no good, as them silly temperance reformers make out, flying in the face of the natural tastes implanted in us all for a good purpose? Not if I was to starve for it to-morrow. But I know better. I tell you, Blanco, what ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw

... young Marchioness of Hartletop. She was in slight mourning; for her father-in-law, the late Marquis, had died no t yet quite six months since. Very beautiful she was, and one whose presence at their houses ladies and gentlemen prized alike. She never said silly things, like the Duchess, never was troublesome as to people's conduct to her, was always gracious, yet was never led away into intimacies, was without peer the best-dressed woman in London, and yet gave herself no ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... as well as my brother." I believe he means me. I like his awe. The Duke of Richmond, taking me for his son, reproached himself to Lady Caroline Fox for not wishing me joy. She is so sorry she undeceived him! Charles Townshend has turned his artillery upon his own court: he says, "Silly fellow for silly fellow, I don't see why it is not as well to be governed by my uncle with a blue riband, as by my cousin ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... scruples, but exaggerated. As he put this conclusion into words in his own mind he felt happy, as at the doing of a good action; and he resolved to be nice to every one beginning with his father, whose manias, and silly statements, and vulgar opinions, and too conspicuous mediocrity were a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... proposition an' it can't be run on no schedule, an' each feller's got to travel the way he sees with his own two eyes. If he's got the spectacles of a thousand dollar eddication he's an a'mighty lucky feller, an' I'm guessin' they'll help him dodge a whole heap o' muck holes he'd otherwise bury his silly head in. So hang on, boy. Grip them darn fool notions so they ain't got a chance. If you let go—wal, you'll get a full-sized peek into a pretty fancy sort o' hell wher' ther' ain't any sort o' chance o' dopin' your visions out ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... grown so silly' she said, trying to smile. 'I hardly even understood last night;' and the voice died away in the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... silly," replied Nellie, wiping her eyes and scrubbing her wet cheeks with startling vehemence; "anyhow I'll stop now. And thank you for taking my part, Winnie; you'll be a friend worth having, I ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... confession to make—about something a little silly. Consequently I have postponed it till now, when it is too dark for ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... money, had but one idea, when once a widow—to go abroad. Whither? To Europe, vague and fascinating spot, where she fancied she would be distinguished by her intelligence and her beauty. She was pretty, vain and silly, and that voyage in pursuit of a part to play in the Old World caused her to pass two years first in one hotel and then in another, after which she married the second son of a poor Irish peer, with the new chimera ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... and silly dispatch went over the wires to the effect that during the trial of A. W. Howie for homicide (in which the jury consisted of six women and six men) the men and women were kept locked up together all night for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... silly schemes miscarry, you come here to turn rogue and assassin! Murder, boy, do you know the meaning of that word? You may have slumbered in peace after cropping a few poppy-heads, but to have a murder ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... that a man who could be so sensible, occasionally, as myself, could have patience to even think of such old-womanish nonsense. He said that years ago, when he was a silly boy, he used to pay attention to this foolish superstition himself, and would never upon any consideration start for a trip ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... "Silly lover, if thy Lily Like her sister lilies be, Thou must woo, if thou wouldst wear her, ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... and their execution. He should have heard, he said, 'the exhortation spoken by the bell-man from the wall of St. Sepulchre's church-yard; but the noise of the officers and the mob was so great, and the silly curiosity of people climbing into the cart to take leave of the criminals made such a confused noise that I could not hear them. They are as follow: "All good people pray heartily to God for these poor sinners, who now are going to their deaths; for whom this great ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... finished, the lords in Mansoul that are Diabolonians are at it day and night, and the other are like silly doves; they want heart to be concerned with their state and to consider that ruin is at hand. Besides you may, yea, must think, when you put all things together, that there are many reasons that prevail with Diabolus to make what haste ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... go walking is a great pleasure. Promeni estas agrable, to go walking is pleasant. Cxu estas facile rigardi la plafonon? Is it easy to look at the ceiling? Estas bone sin helpi, it is well to help oneself. Paroli al si estas malsagxe, to talk to oneself is silly. ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman

... afraid you can only think me very silly, my dear," she said, with a sort of humble dignity. "I wished to consult you, but I did not like to; but as you are here, and if you don't mind my asking you—a relation can often judge best what is advantageous—which ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... I'm silly when I throw the ink-pot at him. I've gone mad when I kick him out of my shop. You speak to that young man nefer again, Rachel, my tear; you nefer look at him. Then, by-and-by, I marry you to the mos' peautiful young man with the mos' loafly moustache and whiskers. You leaf it to your ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... Toad, in great disgust. "Silly boyish amusement. I've given that up long ago. Sheer waste of time, that's what it is. It makes me downright sorry to see you fellows, who ought to know better, spending all your energies in that aimless manner. No, I've discovered the real thing, the only genuine ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... whole evening don't need to be spoiled for you just because I went and got a silly fit of blues on. You—you go get some live one like Gert and—and take her ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... said angrily. "I am going to talk plain to you. You are a fool, a downright, empty-headed silly fool. What you have destroyed in wanton carelessness would have kept the life in a man a whole day. Haven't you sense enough to see it's going to be nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a miserable cheat; there's no trust ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... not happen in court, and ninety per cent. of our woman witnesses are not to be quarrelled with. There are two occasions on which a quarrel may arise. The first, when we are trying to show a denying prisoner that her crime has already been proved and that her denials are silly, and the second, when we are trying to show a witness that she must know something although she refuses to know it, or when we want to show her the incorrectness of her conclusion, or when we want to lead ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... divide it, silly?" he replied. "I haven't a diamond to cut it, and if I crunch it with my foot it may all go to smithereens, and there will be nothing left. I'll lend it to you for a bit now and then, but you won't aim straight. ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... one way of doing it," said she. "But when there are more women like me we'll take things out of the hands of you silly men and run them ourselves. Now, young man, you've talked enough. Turn over ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... prose; and several smaller works, now collected under the general title of 'Opuscules Legales' (Minor Legal Writings). It was long supposed that he wrote the 'Tesoro' (Thesaurus), a curious medley of ignorance and superstition, much of it silly, and all of it curiously inconsistent with the acknowledged character of the enlightened King. Modern scholarship, however, discards this petty treatise from the list of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of which we might take, for instance, I suppose," said the Idiot, "the born idiot, the borrower, and the man who is knocked silly by the pole ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs

... "You silly thing," her sister answered; "you are looking at the great head-master. Mr. Scudamore is here at the bottom of the school. Between these big hinges you can see him; and he looks as young ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... love each other is in the evening,—and then Jerry has clubs and meetings, and Prudence is always sleepy. Look at Fairy and Gene. He is always at the drug store, and Fairy has nothing but parties and clubs and silly things like that to think about,—a big, grand girl like Fairy. And she is always looking covetously at other women's babies and visiting orphans' homes to see if she can find one she wants to adopt, because she hasn't one of her own. Always that sorrow behind the twinkle in her ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... do not advise you to try apple-catching, but give it as one of the few sportive games associated with Halloween. There are many foolish tricks practiced on that night, but they are intended for grown-up young men and maidens. They are most of them innocent, but very silly. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... hand, it must be admitted, that the revolution, has had the effect of completely removing from the French character that silly veneration for high rank, unaccompanied by any commanding qualities of mind, which used to form a predominant feature in it. Yet it seems doubtful whether the equivalent they have obtained is more likely to promote their happiness. They have now an equally ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... fee; and he writes to his London friend, the merchant Hanbury: "I have had a great deal of trouble from the factious disputes and violent heats of a most impudent, troublesome party here in regard to that silly fee of a pistole. Surely every thinking man will make a distinction between a fee and a tax. Poor people! I pity their ignorance and narrow, ill-natured spirits. But, my friend, consider that I could by no means give up this fee without affronting the Board of Trade and the Council ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... silly," he said, with good-humored impatience. "You'll probably not need it. If you do, you'll need it bad. And you'll pay me back ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... so silly as to faint!" said Inez, with a little tinkling laugh. "But I faint in good hands—I am so grateful to you!" she went on, warmly, ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... she exclaimed. "Why did I never think of it. With a red flag and my hair down, I'd be in all the illustrated papers. It would put up my price no end. And I'd be able to get out of this silly job of mine. I can't go on much longer. I'm getting too well known. I do believe I'll try it. The shouting's easy enough." She turned to Joan. "Are you going to ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... spoke that this explanation was correct. The dull rabbits, the sleepy Persian cats, and the silly sheep had died outright of lethodyne; the cunning, inquisitive raccoon, the quick hawk, and the active, intense-natured weasels, all most eager, wary, and alert animals, full of keenness and passion, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... been built by the last proprietor, Northmour's uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso—presented little signs of age. It was two stories in height, Italian in design, surrounded by a patch of garden in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers; and looked, with its shuttered windows, not like a house that ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... distracting her by running up and down the tree and howling, at last fell off at one of these collisions. He swam for some time beside her, and she tried to get the poor beast up on the tree, but he "acted silly" and wild, and at last she lost sight of him forever. Then she and her baby were left alone. The light which had burned for a few minutes in the deserted cabin was quenched suddenly. She could not then tell whither she was drifting. The outline of the white dunes ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... had confided her plans for a life of service to a man she barely knew, one hour after she had decided to leave him alone! Well, there was nothing to do now but make the best of it. Their talk had, as a matter of fact, shown that she had been a little silly about the charade. He had unsuspected depth. That had been made clear by his conversation about education, and it was unlikely that anyone who felt as strongly as he did could be wayward in a charade. So it might turn out all right, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... also, as it appears, a case of true love, and may end in a silly marriage. I am not pleased when men or women in my service entertain serious thoughts of love or marriage; it occupies their thoughts and interferes with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... Edith with a smile, which, sweet as it was, I thought extremely silly. I blushed with vexation, when Ernest, lifting his grave eyes from his book, asked ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... persevering in character. Laying aside his pencil, he sat down on the marble floor, put on his most seductive expression, held out his hand gently, and muttered soft encouragements— such as, "Now then, Spunkie, come here, an' don't be silly—" and the like. But "Spunkie" still stood immovable ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... atmosphere not American, but merely Yankee. I will go far beyond him in reprobating the assumption and the incivility of my countryfolk to their cousins from beyond the sea; I grill in my blood over the silly rudeness of our newspaper articles; and I do not know where to look when I find myself in company with an American and see my countrymen unbending to him as to a performing dog. But in the case of Mr. Grant White ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... very dissimilar, are, in France and Italy, produced from a redundance of it. Though those are the polite countries in Europe, women there set themselves above shame, and despise delicacy. It is laughed out of existence, as a silly and unfashionable weakness. ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... got fairly out. Littlefield, who was as reckless an Irishman as ever lived, swore he would set fire to the place; which he did, by returning through the hole we had made, and getting up into a loft, that was dry and combustible. But for this silly act, we might have escaped; and, as it was, we did get off for the rest of the night, being caught, next morning, nearly down, again, by the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Penseroso." Henceforth neither praise nor blame could turn Handel from his appointed course. He was not yet popular with the musical dilettanti, but we find no more catering to an absurd taste, no more writing of silly operatic froth. ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... night, to keep the silly sheep, Hosts of angels in their sight came down from heaven's high steep. Tidings! tidings! unto you: to you a Child is born, Purer than the drops of dew, and brighter than the morn. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... of a viper and carefully keeping them warm, nourished them into life. A Swallow, observing what she had done, said, "You silly creature! why have you hatched these vipers which, when they shall have grown, will inflict injury on all, beginning ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... public except in shop-window photographs, now simper at us fifty-two times a year, or more, and are sometimes described as "the celebrated actress," though a few of them never get beyond the dignity of a single silly line in the book of a musical hodge-podge. Miss XXX smiles at us from her 40-h.p. "bloater car" which has cost a larger sum than eight years of her salary, and the simple-minded think she must be a great star to be able to afford such a luxury, not knowing that she herself ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... await this silly speculation. Thus, the Colossal Man, (who was under Law from B.C. 1491 to the Christian ra,) proves to have been a marvellously precocious Infant. He wrote the Song of Moses in the year of his birth. Nay, he built pyramids,—had a Literature, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... definition," said the Colonel. "And humour in Vance, though fantastic, is not without subtlety. There was much real kindness in his obvious design to quiz Lionel out of that silly enthusiasm for—" ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Polly is going to do next. I never get up in the morning but I dread what may happen before night. I don't even feel safe about her after she goes to bed, since the time she went into the woods in the middle of the night to try some trick or other with a dead cat, thinking, silly child, that in that way she could cure a wart she had on her thumb. But then," Mrs. Clark always adds, "Polly is always so good-tempered when she is scolded for doing wrong, and seems really to be ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... here; if you come, come with armed men, with muskets on their shoulders and swords by their sides, for that slight weapon that you carry would avail you nothing against the enemies you are likely to meet here. Go back, I tell you, the way you came. I may seem silly and mad, and mad and silly I am, but I can sing; few can sing like me. Now listen stranger, listen to my song." She burst forth again in the same wild strains which at first ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... ask. To say that God cannot appear to men is simply silly; for it is limiting God's Almighty power. He that made man and all heaven and earth, cannot he show himself to man, if he shall so please? To say that God will not appear to man because man is so insignificant, and this earth such a paltry little speck in the heavens, is to ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... the eight-leaved typified that of the believer for the Lord. The Rose also emblemed the Virgin Mary, and from her was reflected through countless works of art and many legends, all of which are 'tenderly beautiful,' and, it may be added, generally rather silly—as, for instance, that of the holy friar Josbert of Doel, who sang daily five hymns in honor of the Virgin; in reward of which, immediately after his death, there grew from his mouth, ears, and nostrils, five roses, each marked ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... she tried to laugh it off as being too absurd. She, Laura Murdock, with her ripe experience of the world and many adventures with men—to fall in love like a silly, sentimental schoolgirl! It was too ridiculous. How the Rialto would laugh if they knew. Of course, they never would know, for there was nothing in it. The Westerner probably did not care two straws for her. He ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... three first days to me And I'll be bound to gar them die. The first it sall be wind and weet, The next it sall be snaw and sleet, The third it sall be sic a freeze, Sall gar the birds stick to the trees, But when the Borrowed Days were gone, The three silly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various

... cried Sir Patrick, "one would think he had gone for a voyage round the world. You silly child! he will be back again the day ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... two silly creatures promised marriage to each other through the trick of a young scamp. But I did not believe that it was serious, nor, indeed, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... almost harshly, as he turned to the surgeon, "what idle doubts are these? Cannot men die in their beds, of sudden death, no blood to stain their pillows, no loop-hole for crime to pass through, but we must have science itself startling us with silly terrors? As for the servant, I will answer for his innocence; his manner, his voice attest it." The surgeon drew back, abashed and humbled, and began to apologize, to qualify, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Tom, with a gun in his hand too. Did I say that they all had guns, except Giles and some beater men, only that Tom's was single-barrelled? Then there were others whom I need not describe, stretching to left and right, and worst of all, perhaps, there was Giles's great black dog, a silly-looking beast which always seemed to have its mouth open and its tongue hanging out, and to be wagging a big tail like the fox's, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... apology, dear Madam, for this egotistic detail; I know you and your sister will be interested in every circumstance of it. What signify the silly, idle gew-gaws of wealth, or the ideal trumpery of greatness! When fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... recalling step by step every incident that had occurred in their lonely walk. She was repeating to herself his facile sentences, wringing and twisting them to extract one drop to assuage the strange thirst that was growing up in her soul. She was thinking—silly Clytie!—that he had never appeared so kind before, and she was thinking—sillier Clytie!—that no one had ever before felt as she ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... "How silly I am!" she thought, taking courage: "it is really the most beautiful bush I ever saw. I will pull it up by the roots and carry it home ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... old man had me puzzled for a minute with his silly chaffing. Stupid of me, too, because we'd just been talking ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... poet, if you have a politician, if you have a moralist inaccurate, you know that these are cases which, from the narrow bounds of our weak faculties, do not perhaps admit of accuracy. But what is an inaccurate accountant good for? "Silly man, that dost not know thy own silly trade!" was once well said: but the trade here is not silly. You do not even praise an accountant for being accurate, because you have thousands of them; but you justly blame a public accountant who is guilty of a gross inaccuracy. But what end could his being ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... despotism, and be allowed to keep his new clothes for a little while. And when the procession is done, every one disrobes, gives up his character with his body, and appears, as he originally was, just like his neighbor. Some, when Chance comes round collecting the properties, are silly enough to sulk and protest, as tho they were being robbed of their own instead of only returning loans. You know the kind of thing on the stage—tragic actors shifting as the play requires from Creon to Priam, from Priam to Agamemnon; the same man, very likely, whom ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... institutions, say they, let not any man of learning come here, nor any wise man, nor any man of prudence: for these things are reckoned evil by us. But whoever is unlearned, ignorant, and silly, let him come without fear! Thus they own that they can gain only the foolish, the vulgar, the ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... how and by whom the heavens were propped up and how the sun was made and fixed in its place, but the continuation is exceedingly silly. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... stayed on for another six months. He was now in his seventeenth year—a boy no longer. One evening, as he blew up his smithy fire, the glow of it fell on the form of a woman standing just outside the window and watching him. He had no silly fears of ghosts: but the thought of the buried woman flashed across his mind and he dropped his ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Mr. Hammond what I said about his thinking me ugly. He might want to apologise to me, and that would be too humiliating. I was very childish to say such a silly thing.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... improvement. Here their lives are in safety. They are not liable to be impressed for soldiers, and forced to cut one another's Christian throats, as in the wars of their own countries. If some of the religious mad bigots, who now tease us with their silly petitions, have in a fit of blind zeal freed their slaves, it was not generosity, it was not humanity, that moved them to the action; it was from the conscious burthen of a load of sins, and a hope, from the supposed merits of so ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... silly enough to go on with what I had tried to make so plain that the wayfaring "living-out girl" could not err in taking it in. I was willing to train her in the duties of her station. I set forth, and would have specified what these were, but for a second interruption ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... tersely. "Page is silly with fear. I went over to help them ... but it's no use. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... fiendish temper, which was a grim anticipation of De Sade; he would even smile as he saw the noose tighten round the necks of the poor innocents he had beguiled to Tyburn. It was his boast that he had contrived robberies for the mere glory of dragging his silly victims to the gallows. But Moll, though she stood half-way between the robber and his prey, would have sacrificed a hundred well-earned commissions rather than see her friends and comrades strangled. Her temperament ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... excusable to anticipate the thirst of the morrow, for all through the Sunday idleness it cannot be slaked enough. It was a hot night, and the bar-room door stood open, and within, fronted by a crowd of their loudly talking, deeply drinking men-kind, those poor silly things stood drooping against the wall with their beer-pots dangling limply from their hands, and their mouths fallen open as if to catch the morsels of wit and wisdom that dropped from the tongues of their admired male companions. They did not look very bad; bad people never ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... evolved the noble army of caravanners, with Lady Grosvenor and Mr. J. Harris Stone at their head. The people who cannot appreciate Borrow are those who will not lift their eyes from the pavement to be rapt in admiration of a glorious sunset, to whom, indeed, Borrow would appear a silly enigma, or a boor. For, when "the Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work," comes that rare time when the spirit—unconsciously worshipping—is uplifted in an ecstasy of wonder and joy, who then can but pity ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... analyzed to think by analogy and by comparison, insisting that he tell you what a certain word or name or scene or experience or what not reminds him of, what it resembles, what he can compare it to, no matter how remote its connection, no matter how unrelated, how far-fetched or how silly the association may appear in his own eyes—in other words, we demand that he co-operate by suspending critical selection and judgment. Although, as I say, Freud's, Jung's, Prince's and other methods ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... To guard the village seignior's hall; For him, a shepherd, it would be A thriftier economy To keep small curs, say two or three, That would not cost him half the food, And yet for watching be as good. The fools, perhaps, forgot to tell If they would fight the wolf as well. The silly shepherd, giving heed, Cast off his dog of mastiff breed, And took three dogs to watch his cattle, Which ate far less, but fled in battle. His flock such counsel lived to rue, As doubtlessly, my friend, will ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... that Lord Chelford would see more clearly what was best for little Fairy. I am so very slow and so silly about business, and you so much my friend—I have found you so—that you might think only ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... unnecessary for me to give a formal contradiction to the silly fiction, which is assiduously circulated by fanatics who not only ought to know, but do know, that their assertions are untrue, that I have advocated the introduction of that experimental discipline which is absolutely indispensable to the professed ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... eyed her wonderingly. "You have thrown something much stronger than a man," he said—"you, a princess, that has gone to prison!—and for that silly notion of yours that ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... didn't get out and rub his hump, as a lot of gamblers do. They say he's quite a rich man, owing to that sort of silly superstition, but I can't resist him, either. And I feel it quite a feather in my cap of fascination that I've made the other one—the gloomy beggar—smile, though I've never given him a sou. He has quite a sense of humour, when you ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... sweetness 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 tranquilly ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr. Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... flaming godhead itself, or whether you guard in spirit that lost spark from it which has become entangled with your soul?—whether you really do believe the man-made law that licenses your mating; or whether you reject it as a silly superstition? To a business man, convention is merely a safe procedure which, ignored, causes disaster—he knows that whenever he ignores it—as when he drives a car bearing no license; and the ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers



Words linked to "Silly" :   small fry, colloquialism, empty-headed, shaver, frivolous, kid, lightheaded, minor, fry, tiddler, foolish, undignified, nestling, nipper, tike, child, tyke, confused, silliness, pathetic, youngster



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