"Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ka menti!" (Thou art paddling!—thou liest!) vociferated Maximilien.... "And the fault is all thine. I cannot, all by myself, make the canoe to go in water like this! The fault is all thine: I told thee not to dive, thou stupid!" ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... endeavoring to analyze the subtle, uncomfortable sense of mystery which those events had left behind them. Toward morning he lost all patience with himself, and taking a novel out of his bag fixed his mind deliberately upon it; and as the story was rather stupid, it had the comfortable effect ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... wanting to see you, Clay," he said in an undertone. "It's rather stupid to ask you how you found things over there. But ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... its story because she always had in her mind a sense of the importance of this waste and desolate city field. In her childish way she got a vague notion of some great wrong that had been done about the land so that her uncle was smelly and stupid and her aunt had to take in more roomers than she liked. That was as close to the facts as she could get then—as close, it may be said, as many people ever get.... Then they went to look at houses, a more ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... a respectable custom; but a mighty stupid one. A fellow oughtn't to be labelled like one of a class. Might as well catalogue children, and done with it, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and so on through the list of Thayers. Then, when he came to years of discretion, he could pick for himself. Do you suppose ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... pretend to assert, that this is the condition in which one half of the human race should be encouraged to remain with listless inactivity and stupid acquiescence? Kind instructors! what were we created for? To remain, it may be said, innocent; they mean in a state of childhood. We might as well never have been born, unless it were necessary that we should be created to enable man ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... sounds into his respirator. Rip had him, and he knew it. "He thought even a stupid Planeteer had sense enough to obey radiation safety ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... sparkling glance, and wave of the hand, as she cantered off, contrasting with his slow bend, and immobility of feature, she could not help saying that Meta's life certainly was not too charming, with her fanciful, valetudinarian father, and that stupid, idealess brother. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... construction of Cargo Hold One. For one thing, it was huge. For another, it was heavily insulated. For a third, it was built like a tank for holding liquids. All very well and good; possibly someone wanted to carry a cargo of cold lemonade or iced tea. That would be pretty stupid, maybe, but it ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... shot silk, dear." Then she woke with a start, sorry to lose the dream; specially annoyed that she had not heard what the carman—outside with her father—had begun to say about the thing Phoebe was speaking of. She forgot what that was, and it was very stupid ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... public assemblage, and rivet all their minds-can make a jury cry quicker than any other man-can clear the worst criminal that ever committed crime-and he's good-hearted too-can draw the most astonishing comparisons to confound the minds of stupid jurors, and make them believe the d—dest nonsense that ever man invented. Yes, sir-when he makes a speech, everybody goes to hear him, for he says what he pleases, and old Judge Withers, whose will is as arbitrary as Julius Caesar's, and has got the obstinacy of Tom Boyce's mule, dar'n't attempt ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... composition which has retorted beforehand upon its actual or possible detractors. In the poem itself, and in the prefatory matter adjoined to it, Shelley takes critics very severely to task: but criticism has its discerning and temperate, as well as its 'stupid ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... between such neighbouring states as Connecticut and Massachusetts, both of them thoroughly English and Puritan, and in all their social conditions almost exactly alike, it used often to be said that there was no love lost. These unspeakably stupid and contemptible local antipathies are inherited by civilized men from that far-off time when the clan system prevailed over the face of the earth, and the hand of every clan was raised against its neighbours. They are pale and evanescent survivals from the universal primitive ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... English. Their language is so easy that most of the foreigners acquire it readily. You know how stupid I am about languages, yet I have already picked up the names of most common things. There are only twelve letters, but some of these are made to do double duty, as K is also T, and L is also R. The most northern ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... wind-thrills; In the startled wild beasts that bore oft, each with eye sidling still Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill {330} That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe: E'en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers: And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, With their obstinate, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Rosamonde. They were to have married, but Rosamonde died too soon. When she was dying, she gave him a curl of the beautiful brown hair that he used to kiss. "Au revoir, dear love," she whispered; "it will be very stupid in Heaven until you come. Remember that I am waiting for you and be faithful. If your love for me fades, you will see that curl ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the President called a hasty meeting of his Cabinet. And such a Cabinet! I wish you could have seen them, Louis, with me in the centre playing on them like an advocate before a jury. They were the most dreadful men I ever met, bourgeois and stupid and ugly to a degree. Two of them were commission-merchants, and one of them is old Dr. Gustavanni, who kept the chemist's shop in the Piazza Royale. They were quite silly with fear, and they begged me to tell them how they could avert ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... of his seeking; but he had formed a plan to carry off the Lady Eveline himself, for he was a wild rover, this same Randal; and so he came disguised as a merchant of falcons, and trained out my old stupid Raoul, and the Lady Eveline, and all of us, as if to have an hour's mirth in hawking at the heron. But he had a band of Welsh kites in readiness to pounce upon us; and but for the sudden making in of Damian to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... its own philosophy, manners and ideals, all of them cold, stiff and without spontaneity. It was an over-perfect machine which went like clockwork. The world was judged with a narrow and somewhat stupid self-confidence. The ideal dwelt in the word of Confucian writings, divorced from their true meaning, and so badly interpreted that they ceased to be understood aright. The meticulous, bureaucratic and hieratic administration of the Tartars was a perfect system of government. The machine was ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... had sat in that place now for three years neither scorched by the short hours of sunlight, nor chilled by winter's frost and snow. The wild long-haired sheep of the mountain came down to drink at noon, and timidly gazed with their stupid eyes at the immovable figure; and at evening the long-bodied, fierce-eyed wolves would steal stealthily among the rocks and come and snuff the ground about his feet, presently raising their pointed heads with a long howl of fear, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... grave complaints made about the light-hearted way in which Jerry handled his cases, and his practice fell off. He was conversing with a very stupid judge, lately elevated to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... "Io non voglio perdere gli uomini perle femminelle."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and whoever it may be who is singled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... consultations and countless reports, Marlanx removed his headquarters to the Tower. He had fondly hoped to be in the Castle long before this. His rage and disappointment over the stupid miscarriage of plans left no room for conjecture as to the actual state of his feelings. For hours he had raved like a madman. Every soldier who fell into his hands was shot down ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... stupid by drinking, or incapable of performing duty by illness; as also a ship when crank, and birds ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... which we scatter sentences of imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed, and flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or else a virtue to be embraced as St Francis embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let him be poor. If he is ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... regulating intercourse during pregnancy also reacts injuriously upon the mental capacity of the child, tending to give it a stupid, animalized look; and, there is also good reason to believe, aids in ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... at least slightly, both Mills and Blunt. To me he gave a stare of stupid surprise. He addressed ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... aside ... "Lysia! ... Lysia! ..." he shouted noisily,—then, receiving no answer, he flung himself down on the vacant couch of roses, and gathering up a handful of the crumpled flowers, kissed them passionately,—"The witch has flown!" he said, laughing again that mirthless, stupid laugh as he spoke—"She doth love to tantalize me thus! ... Tell me! what dost thou think of her? Is she not a peerless moon of womanhood? ... doth she not eclipse all known or imaginable beauty? ... Aye! ... and I will tell thee a secret,—she is mine!—mine from the dark tresses ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... had ever guessed all this, or had dreamed of accusing Margaret of romance. No one capable of testing her character had known her. In latter days she had now and again dined in Gower Street, but her sister-in-law, Mrs Tom, had declared her to be a silent, stupid old maid. As a silent, stupid old maid, the Mackenzies of Rubb and Mackenzie were disposed to regard her. But how should they treat this stupid old maid of an aunt, if it should now turn out that all the wealth of the family ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... "'Ah, you stupid thief!' says she, 'haven't I illigant nails o' my own?' and with that she gave him a dab of her claw, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... "I don't know what is the matter with my brain," she said in relieved contempt of her own confusion of mind. "Of course, it is ever so much easier. What a stupid I am not to see ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... in a few months no doubt we shall hear of little Miss H—— singing away as a prodigy, and in a few years the voice, health, and strength will all be gone, and probably the poor little life itself have been worn out of its fragile case. Stupid barbarian! After rehearsal drove to Bannisters.... In the evening, at the theater, the play was "The Provoked Husband." The house was very full; I played fairly well. I was rather tired, and Lady Townley's bones ached, for I had been taking a ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... my young friend," said Myerst. "Have your own stupid way. But I said I'd tell you the plain truth. Well, the plain truth is that I know no more of the absolute murder of your father than I know of what is going on in Timbuctoo at this moment! I do not know who killed John Maitland. ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... you mustn't go to sleep out here; it isn't quite heaven yet, and you will take cold. Honestly, girls, isn't it a sort of wonderment to you how the people up there can employ their time? In spite of me I cannot help feeling that it must be rather stupid; think of never being able to lie down and take ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... of your principles," she went on, almost angrily, "your stupid, canonical and dry-as-dust little principles, you've let your ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... laughing, "my efforts failed. I used even strategy. Held out the temptation of your delightful Creole dishes and all that. Nothing was of any avail. They were all business and I had to be all business too, the whole day long. It was horribly stupid." ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... clean dumb waiter. This unlimited supply of untrained savages, (for that is what they really are) is anything but a luxury to me. Their ignorance, dirt, and stupidity seem to me as intolerable as the unjust laws which condemn them to be ignorant, filthy, and stupid. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... terrors for me even in mixed company. But the joke was not the really serious thing about The Foundations, a play that starts (some years hence) with a mob of starving people yelling outside the house—dear, stupid, kindly Lord William Dromondy's house. Lord William was a god of an infantry captain in the great War, and his four footmen—particularly James, the first of them—though revolutionaries at heart, are ready ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... my stupid fumble very nicely, laughing merrily while saying, "If you like mountains and moonlight, Mr. Gordon, and don't mind the lack of a chaperon, get a stool for yourself, too." What was more, she offered me half of the lap-robe when ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... animals of the emigrant train could be seen rearing and plunging, while the men stood too appalled to do anything except gaze in stupid ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... stern eyes were turned another way, yet she felt that they had recognized her; but it passed on, without seeming to notice her. "Uncle Stillinghast!" thought May, while her little fluttering heart felt an icy chill pass over it; "what will Uncle Stillinghast think? Oh, how stupid I was, not to wait until they all got by, then look for the place myself. Oh dear, dear! I hope he ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... you a jolly good hiding one day. But you know I can't, you dear old thing. I'm writing this in the orchard, where the H.Q. horses live, and Jezebel is standing sleepily in the shade of her tree. She looks intensely stupid. She occasionally tries to flick away a fly with her short tail. Occasionally she sighs deeply, with that blubbery, spluttery noise that all horses make when ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... in yellow: I took her in to dinner, and I remember she loosened my clams for me so I could get them. But the only real person at the table was a girl across in white, a sublimated young woman who was as brilliant as I was stupid, who never by any chance looked directly at me, and who appeared and disappeared across the candles and orchids in a ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... conviction, though I am sure that adequate reasons can be given. Here I must be content to state this ultimate conviction as a 'theological superstition', or, as I should prefer to put it with a little more certainty, as a matter of faith. The alternative is to treat the world as a stupid, and possibly ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... fancy yourselves men of pleasure; you fancy yourselves men of fashion; you fancy yourselves men of taste; in fancy, in taste, in opinion, in philosophy, the newspaper legislates for you; it is there you get your jokes and your thoughts, and your facts and your wisdom—poor Pall Mall dullards. Stupid slaves of the press, on that ground which you at present occupy, there were men of wit and pleasure and fashion, some five-and-twenty ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the beginning, and when the physician is called the condition is dangerous. Usually the patient complains but little. There is a slight headache, low fever, no heat in the head, patient is pale most of the time, has little appetite, vomits occasionally and desires to sleep. He is nervous, stupid and lies on his side curled up with eyes away from the light. This disease appears mostly in delicate children, who are poor eaters and fond of books; usually in those inheriting poor constitutions. The mortality is very high. Parents who have thin, pale sallow children with dainty appetites, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Silas Murford, the custom-house clerk—a fat, stupid-looking old fellow whose chin rested on his shirt-front and whose middle rested on his knees, the whole of him, when seated, filling Tim's biggest chair. Tim prized this volume most, for when Silas began to talk, the sheepish look would fade ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... order to ascertain at some future time whether my figures were correct or not. When I obtained the invoices I could tell whether I had made a failure or not in the act of taking a trial balance. I was not satisfied that I was so utterly stupid as my employer made me ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... turned up, His Excellency sat in the car and reflected as he usually did at this time on the things that had happened during the day. The correspondent came to his mind and the man's stupid question, "When does Your Excellency hope for peace?" Hope? Was it credible that a man who must have some standing in his profession, else he never would have received a letter of recommendation from headquarters, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... free-thinker, a fine talker once, What turns him now a stupid silent dunce? Some god, or spirit he has lately found; Or chanced to ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... flowers; she continually visualized two figures near together, talking quietly, earnestly, confidentially. Why had she allowed Jennings to lead her astray? She might have been in that spacious room, too, if she had not been stupid. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... rich slaveholder, lived near Clarksville, Pike co., Missouri, some years since. He whipped his slave Billy, a boy fourteen years old, till he was sick and stupid; he then sent him home. Then, for his stupidity, whipped him again, and fractured his skull with an axe-helve. He buried him away in the woods; dark words were whispered, and the body was disinterred. A ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... time when I saw him coming between his two satellites. There was a faun in him—a northern faun, of course, a wild man of the woods, unrestrained, but innocent, leading two bears, one under each arm! Yes, something of that kind. Not a troll, you understand, for they are stupid and malignant." ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... was killed," he corrected. "'Murder' is a stupid, vulgar word. Yes, my dear, you are his heiress. He was your uncle, and he left you something over six million dollars. That is to say he left us ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... worn with strife, tired of stupid misunderstanding, persecution and unkind fate, came to him. And there they lived in common. The necessity of discipline and order naturally presented itself, so they made rules that governed conduct. The day was divided up into periods ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... because in many cases the task of providing for helpless children and an idle, lazy, husband, is imposed on the patient wife and mother; and, with this sudden elevation to citizenship, which the mass of stupid, ignorant negroes look upon as entitling them to great honor, I regard the future state of the negro woman, without the ballot in her hand, as deplorable. And what is said of the ignorant black man can as truthfully be said of the ignorant white man; they all regard woman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she wanted to go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think of asking anyone to take her. It was too ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... will agree with me, that it was not because the people of Salem Village were more ignorant, stupid, or weak-minded than the people of other places, that the delusion made its appearance or held its sway among them. This is a vital point to the just consideration of the subject. I do not mean justice to them so much as to ourselves and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... other matters. You reproach me very justly for my stupid oversight; I forgot to tell you which name appeared to me best for your book; the fact is, I flew off into ecstasies about the work itself, and gave you, I believe, a tirade about the "Tempest" instead of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the orientals regard us with a contempt in comparison with which our contempt for them is feeble. Our bloodiness, our newness, our lack of reverence, our land-greed, our break-neck speed and lack of appreciation of leisure make Vandals of us. On the other hand, we are very stupid about recognizing the intelligence of orientals. We have been accustomed to think that there is a great gulf between ourselves and other races; and this persists in an undefinable way after scores of Japanese have taken high rank in our schools, and after ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... chance," said he, "and the stone was well aimed, but it is not the first partridge that I have killed in this way. They are so stupid you may even run them down at times; I hope to get another before the day is over. Well, there is no fear of starving to-day, at all events," he added, as he inspected the contents of his cousin's hat; "twelve nice fresh eggs, a bird, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... past believing. It was altogether beyond him. He lay, with his eyes glued to the point round which they had gone, stupid with the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... after having lost my sails, I was accused of having the intention to give India to that country. Afterwards their Highnesses knew to the contrary. Although I know but little, I cannot conceive that any one would suppose me so stupid as not to know that though India might belong to me, yet I could not keep it without ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... few days' experience of life, the boy had already learned one great truth: that every man is exactly what he looks. The face always reveals or betrays. And in this face, wild with the wildness of storms and skies, there was nothing but the stupid innocence of one ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... "Meanwhile the stupid old hippo, who usually wanted nothing more than his grub and his bath, lumbered around looking for further trouble. He found it; he interfered between the wild asses and the zebras, and soon the whole bunch, both sides, were bombarding him with their hind feet. He squealed and groaned ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... attach too great significance to appearances. The owl, a very stupid bird, is noted for its ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... man over on the dunes compared to his, should he powerfully press them? What if Captain Billy had given his life to the doing of a duty belonging to another? The Tempter now took on a virtuous, unselfish guise. Think what the girl's life might be! Could any true love, even such stupid love as Billy might bear her, stand in the way? No; Billy would be the first to relinquish ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... something else. Public receptions are more democratic than stupid state dinners—are more in keeping with the spirit of the institutions of our country, as you would say if called upon to make a stump speech. There are a great many strangers in the city, foreigners and others, whom we can entertain at our receptions, ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... change color. He is too self-poised; besides, he is too honorable. But he saw ME. He rose immediately and came to speak to me. He shook hands. He looked at my face under my pink-lined hat. He saw it as it was; but bless him! that stupid wife of his holds him fast with his own honor. Ned Temple is a good man. Sometimes I wonder if it would not have been better if he, instead of Lyman—Well, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... had no desire to hear more. She had winced: the woman had been touched to smarting in the girl: enough. She attempted the subject once, but faintly, and his careless parrying threw her out. Clara could have bitten her tongue for that reiterated stupid slip on the name of Whitford; and because she was innocent at heart she persisted in asking herself how she could be guilty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... into a chair and was staring at Ranson with the stupid, wondering gaze of a dumb animal in pain. During the moments in which the two men eyed each other Ranson's smile disappeared. Cahill raised himself slowly as though ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... stared at the captain, his hand squeezing and unsqueezing on the whiskey bottle. "A man who can't read his own instruments?" The doctor laughed. "Perhaps you too have failed to see the point? Like that stupid general who sits out there waiting for the ...
— Test Rocket! • Jack Douglas
... Patsy mannie," cried his father quickly, coming from behind the crowd where he had been standing dazed and stupid. "Stand back there! Let me have ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... legislation they did not want, was to buy the necessary votes. Perhaps one-third of the members of the Legislature, according to Roosevelt's estimate, were purchasable. Others were timid. Others again were either stupid or honestly so convinced of the importance of "business" to the general welfare that they were blind to corporate faults. But Theodore Roosevelt was neither purchasable, nor timid, nor unable to distinguish between the legitimate ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... you feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its exasperating demand of time from the mind—time—life! Live! We only live in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive complacencies—or irritations. We have to take the air or else our thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. A thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man's day is his own—even at the best! And then come those false friends, those Thug helpers, the alkaloids ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... not be called a clever dog stealer, because he had no notion of how to preserve that which he stole. Putting aside their brutality, his methods were incredibly stupid; but when, five minutes later, he lay listening in his bed, the only reflection that his stupid mind brought him was that he had succeeded admirably. No further sound came from the walled-in yard; and it appeared ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... The same Fairy, who had assisted at the birth of little Riquet with the Tuft, was here also; and, to moderate the Queen's gladness, she declared, that this little Princess should have no wit at all, but be as stupid as she was pretty. This mortified the Queen extreamly, but some moments afterwards she had far greater sorrow; for, the second daughter she was delivered of, ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... spirit of revolt pervaded the whole nation. Men began to investigate the rights of the subject, and to scrutinize the prerogative of kings. "The Netherlanders were not so stupid," many were heard to say, with very little attempt at secrecy, "as not to know right well what was due from the subject to the sovereign, and from the king to the subject; and that, perhaps, means would yet be found ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... an elderly woman, with grave, set features, an expression of sense and firmness, but a keen dark eye that raised question of her temper. Miss Lovina Perkins was her style, being half-aunt to the unpleasant-colored baby she now tended, rolled up in a flannel shawl, and permitted to be stupid undisturbedly, since its ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Rainham penitently; "I had a stupid sort of idea that you were mixed up in the business somehow. I thought so even before I saw the sketch, because I couldn't understand whom else she could have been looking for at the dock. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... think it was the limit! As if God cared anything about people of that sort! I think that man ought to be arrested, putting notions into poor people's heads! It's just such talk as that that makes riots and things. My father says so! Getting common, stupid people all worked up about things they can't understand. ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... that a man who one moment could be so light, the next could be so dull. Soon you began to be irritated. Then you were bored. When you reached the end—if you ever reached the end—you wondered if the man was mad, or if he was merely stupid. But he was neither mad nor stupid. He was a genius, who, so far, declined to allow himself to be managed. When he became manageable, he would cease to be a genius—in the sense in which the word is here being used. Then, if he wrote at all, he would write what the plainest ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... but though a friend is allowed to be capable of affording us a far greater happiness than any or all of these, yet how few are solicitous to procure themselves a friend, or, when they have, to secure his friendship? Nay, some men are so stupid as to prefer their very slaves to their friends. How else can we account for their want of concern about the latter when either in distress or sickness, and at the same time their extreme anxiety for the recovery ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... the farmer, to prosecute his business unmolested; shielded by the same laws which protect them from the attacks of malicious libellers out of the theatre, and the insults of capricious Ignorance or stupid Malevolence within. "Reproof," says Dr. Johnson, "should not exhaust its power upon petty failings;" and "the care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. On this principle the editors will unalterably act. And, since they have ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... "bad luck" or in contempt, "a poor ignorant creature." The Lowland Scotch has donsie, "unfortunate, stupid."—Notes and Queries, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... require in the Person I am to teach, is, that he be of a docible Wit, and not too young of age; than that the Organs of Speech be rightly constituted in him; for stupid Persons are capable of no Teaching, whose Age is yet too tender; nor do they mind enough, nor know how Teaching will be for their Use and Benefit; but those whose Organs of Speech are altogether unfit, ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... much loose talk of our immunity from immediate and direct invasion from across the seas. Obviously, as long as the British Navy retains its power, no such danger exists. Even if there were no British Navy, it is not probable that any enemy would be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... consisted of fifteen cows, and they expected to remain in that desolate country two or three months, making cheese and butter. Our little saeterjenta had the heart of a poet, although her brother seemed stupid, and even liberal presents of money did not wake him up or make him interesting. I do not suppose that this child had ever been twenty miles from the humble cabin in which she was born, but the wide, wide world had been opened to her through the books she had studied at school. She could talk a little ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... stronger than most foreign critics realize. But whether it be strong or weak, one thing is certain: a power which has been supreme for two centuries will not surrender without a struggle. The Prussian Junkers may be politically stupid, but they have not lost the fighting spirit, and they will not give way to the 'mob.' Before Prussian reaction capitulates, it will play its last card and seek salvation in ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... advanced Roumanians of the plain also apply this term to their countrymen who live among the Roumanian mountains or, in Serbia, amid the heights of Po[vz]arevac and Kraina. It signifies a stupid fellow, one from ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... to use words. They're such poor things when it comes to telling about Him. He is so much more than anything that can be said about Him. His will is so wise and thoughtful and far-reaching and loving. Strange how stupid you have been in insisting so strenuously and blindly on having your own way. His plan, His thought about everything concerning you, is so superb. And He asks me to be His follower. What joy! What if the way be a bit rough; it's following ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... he had always remembered her words to him as they stood face to face in the chilly whiteness of an English bridal chamber in midwinter! "It's no use, dear, I don't want any of this sort of thing. It seems to me coarse and stupid, and I don't want the bother of a dozen babies. I married because I wanted the position of a married woman, and a nice presentable man to go about with in society. Besides, things were not satisfactory at home, and I wanted a man to keep me, and all that. But I don't see why ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... fancied this to be queerly assumed in order to inform me that he was not unaccustomed to services such as I rendered him. There was that about him. I mean to say, when he sharply rebuked me for clumsiness or cried out "Stupid!" it had a perfunctory languor, as if meant to show me he could address a servant in what he believed to be the grand manner. In this, to be sure, he was so oddly wrong that the pathos of it quite drowned what I might otherwise have felt ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... gift manifested itself in Hazlitt precociously in the study of human nature. He characterized some of his schoolmates disdainfully as "fit only for fighting like stupid dogs and cats," and at the age of twelve, while on a visit, he communicated to his father a caustic sketch of some English ladies who "require an Horace or a Shakespeare to describe them," and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... throw, and then no more until the contest," Jack announced placatingly, when he spied a lone bull standing just before a thicket of chaparral and staring at them with stupid resentment that his siesta had been disturbed. "A kiss for luck, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... their own country, but appear to have been no very worthy accession to the University of Glasgow. We know of no word of complaint against them from Smith, but they were a sore trial both to Hutcheson and to Reid. Reid says he always felt in lecturing to those "stupid Irish teagues" as St. Anthony must have felt when he preached to the fishes,[46] and Hutcheson writes a friend in the north of Ireland that his Irish students were far above taking any interest in their work, and that although he had "five or six young gentlemen from Edinburgh, men of ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... ordered a halt, and set myself to harangue them for such unsoldierly conduct. But I might as well have talked to a troop of drunken Yahoos. For, some of them grinned in my face like monkeys; others looked as stupid as asses; while the greater part chattered like magpies; each boasted what a clever fellow he was, and what mighty things he could do, yet reeling all the time, and scarcely able to sit his horse. Indeed our guide, a fat ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... "It is very stupid to argue with him. Surely he cannot expect to find my views changing on account of the duration of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... There is no argument which could more clearly demonstrate the terror of those who make use of it than this. The burlaki {260} drag their bark against the current. There cannot be found a burlak so stupid that he will refuse to pull away at his towing-rope because he alone is not able to drag the bark against the current. He who, in addition to his rights to an animal life, to eat and sleep, recognizes any sort of human ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... old boy," I said—I don't often use the language of affection—"did you never hear that all that stupid story was cleared up; that everyone knows you ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... stupid ass can't be more base Than are those guilty youth Who fill with smart a parent's heart, ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... was surprised to note that von Schoenvorts often permitted Benson to take command; but I reconciled this by the fact that Benson appeared to know more of the duties of a submarine commander than did any of the Stupid Germans. ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wringing forth a tear; but I did not think it was decreed that at my age I should really make love to a Russian serf, however charming. So off they went to the railway station, leaving me in a very dull, stupid, melancholy mood. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... the Committee of Public Safety appeared again before the magistrate, they found themselves treated with the greatest possible courtesy—in fact, rather as envoys and ambassadors than prisoners. In short, the magistrate had received his orders; and with no more to do than might come of a long stupid speech, which might have been written by Dickens in mockery, he discharged the prisoners, who went back to their meeting-place and at once began a due sitting. It was high time. For this third day the mass was fermenting indeed. There was, of course, a vast number ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... did not know the countersign, and I had to tell him so. The private soldier is sometimes zealous and often stupid, and occasionally both; and in the pause that followed my answer I heard the click of his rifle. In that second of time I remembered a story which I had heard the day before of a sentry at Modder, who, when the guard came up in the dark to relieve him, made the usual ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... little crowd of inquisitive idlers and infants that remained obstinately on the pavement hoping against hope that the afternoon's marvellous series of social phenomena was not over. She scorned the slatternly, stupid little crowd for its lack of manners. Yet she ought to have known, and she did know as well as any one, that though in Bursley itself people will pretend out of politeness that nothing unusual is afoot when ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... his art and his judgment required, for the following reason: the houses of the Uberti, Ghibellines and rebels against the people of Florence, had been pulled down and thrown to the ground, and a square had been made on the site, and the stupid obstinacy of certain men prevailed so greatly that Arnolfo could not bring it about, through whatsoever arguments he might urge thereunto, that it should be granted to him to put the Palace on a ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Whispering his "Ave Mary," as he heard The pealing vesper-bell. But still the knight, Unmindful of the sacred hour announced, Disdainful or unconscious, held his course. "Would that I also, like yon stupid wight, Could kneel and hail the Virgin and believe!" He murmured bitterly beneath his breath. "Were I a pagan, riding to contend For the Olympic wreath, O with what zeal, What fire of inspiration, would I sing The praises of the gods! How may my lyre Glorify these whose very life I ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... whom see Philo Judus. We are told in one place a few lines further on that the merman is of humankind; and in another that he is a kind of fish (Night dccccxlv). This belief in mermen, possible originating with the caricatures of the human face in the intelligent seal and stupid manatee, is universal. Al-Kazwini declares that a waterman with a tail was dried and exhibited, and that in Syria one of them was married to a woman and had by her a son "who understood the languages of both ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton |
