"Brainless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and a girl of the class Dahlia had sprung from altogether another. He could not help imagining the sort of appearance she would make there; and the thought even was a momentary clog upon his tongue. How he used to despise these people! Especially he had despised the young men as brainless cowards in regard to their views of women and conduct toward them. All that was changed. He fancied now that they, on the contrary, would despise him, if only they could be aware of the lingering sense he entertained of his being in bondage under a sacred obligation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nothing horrible about that. The rykors are but brainless flesh. They neither see, nor feel, nor hear. They can scarce move but for us. If we did not bring them food they would starve to death. They are less deserving of thought than our leather. All that they can do for themselves is to take food from a trough and put it in their mouths, but with us—look ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... would have been all right, only for that big stiff, Bunk Lander. He threatened to punch me up, and I knew he was just the sort of a brainless fellow to do it. Only for his interference, Barville would have taken the game, and we'd ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... ignoramus, the lethargic, the brainless, everything that savours of enthusiasm is a craze. The politician who throws himself heart and soul into a political contest is "off his head," is seized with a craze. The philanthropist who builds and endows hospitals and churches is "a crank," following a mere craze. The earnest ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... hours baffling the inquisitor, foreseeing his wiles by intuition, evading his masked pitfalls by instinct. She was terribly afraid of him, yet more afraid of herself, afraid that she would break down and become a brainless, weeping thing. It was the sincerity of her fight against this weakness that made her so dangerous to the prosecuting attorney. He wanted to compel her to admit that her son had confessed his deed ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Like the fool who shouts "Fire!" in a throng, this brainless individual revived all the fears of the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... permit this thing in pantaloons and whiskers, this brainless, un-ideaed cub, whom a thousand years will not suffice to lick into a bear, longer to impose upon your good-natures? If so, we shall conclude you have lost all of that spirit so ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... reckless attempt to steal his father's sceptre. What a pathetic sight to see the old warrior driven from his capital, and forced to flee for his life beyond the Jordan! How humiliating to witness also the alienation of his subjects, and their willingness to accept a brainless youth as his successor, after all the glorious victories he had won, and the services he had rendered to the nation! David's history reveals the sorrows and burdens of all kings and rulers. Outward grandeur ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... a plain man like me. Tush! that is the trader's thought all over. Have I brought no fresher feeling out of my fair village-green? Would it not be sweet to work for her, and rise in life, with her by my side? And these girls of the city, so prim and so brainless!—as well marry a painted puppet. Sibyll! Am I dement? Stark wode? What have I to do with girls and marriage? Humph! I marvel what Marmaduke still thinks of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he cried. "You brainless creature of brawn and muscle! You have heard no harm of him save that he was immensely wealthy! Listen. Bear that sentence in your mind and listen to me, listen while I tell you a story. A party of travelers was crossing ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the one and the other. For the zealot is a man who not only defends his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice, but wishes to impose upon the consciences of others, by which he falls into the very error against which he fights. The mere brainless scoffer is, on the other hand, lower than the beast of the field, since he lacks the animal's self-respect and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... far as is possible. Thus adorned, the dull and jaded girl of the morning becomes, under the magical influence of the footlights, a dazzling sprite, and the object of the admiration of the half-grown boys and brainless men who crowd the front rows of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... across the Channel into Life, for which they had been prepared by a course of lectures on the Dangers of Paris. There also went the confidential secretaries, the clerks and shorthand typists, in their hundreds; degreeless, brainless beings, but ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the shades of the second floor were illumined: she was up there. Doing what? Sharply then he realized what a partial life she led, the decayed middle-class associates of the boarding-house, tired, brainless, and full of small talk, the lonesome evenings, the long days. He became more agitated, and climbed the stoop, unlocked his way into the house, went up the dim, soft, red-cushioned stairs, past the milky gas-globe in the narrow hall, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... "But she's coarse and brainless, Alden. I can't imagine a boy like my Joey falling in love with a woman like that. He ought to know better. Just ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the table, and withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly: both removed their cloaks, and there was 'the Varens,' shining in satin and jewels,—my gifts of course,—and there was her companion in an officer's uniform; and I knew him for a young roue of a vicomte—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I despised him so absolutely. On recognising him, the fang of the snake Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for Celine sank under an extinguisher. A woman who could ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of this earth of ours have taught us, it seemed written in the book of the world's destinies that Germany was bound to win. It was not only, as we are too ready at the first glance to believe, the megalomania of an autocrat drunk with vanity, the gross vanity of some brainless buffoon; it was not the warlike impulses, the blind infatuation and egoism of a feudal caste; it was not even the impatient and deliberately fanned envy and covetousness of a too prolific race close-cramped on a dreary and ungrateful soil: it was none of these that let loose the hateful ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... as your all obedient thread Does thy bright needle's devious path pursue, So does each thought of my poor brainless head For ever ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin, They graze and wallow, breed and sleep; And oft some brainless devil enters in, And drives them to ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the people is supreme. When we cease toadying to brainless nabobs, and quit imitating them as soon as we get the money, we will be on the road to reformation. As it is, most poor people are just itching to live as the rich do. The average servant-girl who gets ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... they will, such trifles kill. Comrade, for one good deed of yours, Your history shall not help to fill The mouths of many brainless boors. It may be death absolves or cures The sin of life. 'Twere hazardous To assert so. If the sin endures, Say only, "God, who has judged him thus, Be merciful to him ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Dulness," in three cantos,—an imitation, in manner, of Goldsmith's "Double Transformation." The title is happy. The decline of Miss Harriet Simper from bellehood to an autumnal marriage, in Canto III., is more tiresome than the progress of Tom Brainless from the plough-tail to the pulpit, in Canto I. The Reverend Mr. Brainless, when called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... The principal thing for you is to enjoy yourself; my sweet carcass, a thing accessory. Your pleasure will be my death, and then you'll canonise me perhaps? Ah, you have the plague, and you would give it to me. Go somewhere else, you brainless priest. Ah! touch me not," said she, seeing him about to advance, "or I will ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... angry and disgusted at this woman. Oh, how she longed to tell her something that she would not soon forget. How she was tempted to place Jasper and Sammie side by side and compare them; the one an insignificant, brainless, useless, overdressed nincompoop; the other a strong, self-reliant, masterful man, fighting against fate with face to ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... sixteen when I married him, he was not unhappy. He occupied himself in looking after his money, and making a collection of mosaics. We never had any matrimonial disturbances. I think they are vulgar. Any woman can do as she pleases without a remonstrant word, provided she has mind enough. It is the brainless women who scold. But ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The brainless families of representative men, must of course monopolise attention, if all the rest went to eternal perdition, and what does it matter how vexedly a fellow tugs his moustache over the insipid drawl of some "powerful" man's daughter, while he ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... briefly put it, and it would be paltering with the truth to say that he had not had far more champagne than was good for him. Also, the general of Monaco had brought a pack of cards with him, and was spoiling the harmony by trying to induce Prince Ping Pong Pang to find the lady. And the brainless laugh of the Mad ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... suffrage which bases it upon a fancied grouping of women with the vile and brainless element in the country, appears to me to be at once the weakest and the meanest of all. When the United States Government invited its woman citizens to share in making the Columbian Exposition the most wondrous ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... "Man can be wise at one time, foolish at another—wise in one act, foolish in another. To take Moonlight to your tent is wise. I love her. She has brains. She is not like the young Blackfoot squaws, who wag their tongues without ceasing when they have nothing to say and never think—brainless ones!— fools! Their talk is only about each other ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... no more so. Neither side can claim any superiority on the average, though each can in individual cases, as regards courage. Foolhardiness does not imply bravery. A prize-fighter who refused to use his guard would be looked upon as exceptionally brainless, not as exceptionally brave; yet such a case is almost exactly parallel to that of the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... head in a brainless world?' said Johns. 'Here, simple Nocky, I'll do it.' He leapt off, and with much puffing climbed the post, striking a match when he reached the top, and moving the light along the arm, the lad standing and gazing at ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... meant for brains. Yet the proud fabric in the morning's sun Stands all unconscious of the mischief done; Still the red beacon pours its evening rays For the lost pilot with as full a blaze,— Nay, shines, all radiance, o'er the scattered fleet Of gulls and boobies brainless ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... opinion in the bad old days, didn't you?" he said lightly. "When we danced and made love at the Grafton Galleries." She flushed a little, but did not lower her eyes. "Such a serious girl you were too, Margaret; I wonder how you ever put up with a brainless ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... youths, fast, foolish, and fashionable, with now and then a stray politician or journalist thrown in to give the party a soupcon of intellect. The principle of invitation is very simple. No one is asked who will not be of use in town. Any brainless little fop, any effete dandy, is sure of a welcome, provided he is known to certain circles and can help her to scramble ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... would have given worlds—had she possessed them—if she could but have dissociated herself from her brother-in-law's future altogether. Though she was an empty-headed, brainless kind of woman, she was not by nature a wicked one. Necessity had driven her into linking her fortunes with those of Sir Marmaduke. And he had been kind to her, when she was in deep distress: but for him she would probably ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... vast pampas in the extreme north of the Argentine Republic, where Bolivia, the Argentine, Paraguay and Brazil unite, was the place of sacrifice. Thousands of acres, white with the bones of those whom the monsters had engulfed. Brainless, devoid of intelligence, sightless, because even the sense had not become differentiated in them, yet by some infernal instinct the Earth Giants had become aware that this was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... slave of your creature Imagination she has, for a source of strength in the future days Looking on him was listening Love the difficulty better than the woman Metaphysician's treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise Music in Italy? Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous Not much esteem for non-professional actresses Pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency Philosophy skimmed, and realistic romances deep-sounded Polished barbarism Scorned him for listening to the hesitations (hers) She felt in him a maker of ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... to think of a magter deprived of his symbiote," she said. "If his system can stand the shock, I imagine there will be nothing left except a brainless hulk. This is one series of experiments I don't care to witness. I rest secure in the knowledge that the Nyjorders will find ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... contemporary writers, we say, find that the native is a creature something more than a monkey but much less than a man, an anthropoid, dull-witted, stupid, timid, dirty, cringing, grinning, ill-clothed, indolent, lazy, brainless, ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... says, "Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the field - a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, or life." And after brandy, taken in sufficient quantity, it says, "Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that your fellow-men may laugh - drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless sounds, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... proclaimed equal strength were members of a body in keeping with them. The deep, broad chest, wide, square shoulders, heavy broad hips, combined with the tiny head seemed to indicate a perfect incarnation of brainless, brute strength. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... Thursby called "family." Mrs. Alwynn's family was not her strong point, nor was its position strengthened by her assertion (unsupported by Mrs. Markham), that she was directly descended from Queen Elizabeth. Consequently, it was trying to Mrs. Thursby—who, as every one knows, was one of the brainless Copleys of Copley—that Mrs. Alwynn, who in the lottery of marriage had drawn an honorable, should take precedence of herself. To obviate this difficulty, Mrs. Thursby, with the ingenuity of her sex, had at one time ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination: not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for "scientific conditions" in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... worked together: he the force and she the guidance. She would have supplied the things he lacked. It was to her he came for counsel, as it was. But for her he would never have taken the first step. What right had this poor brainless lump of painted flesh to share his wounds, his triumphs? What help could she give him when the time should come that he should ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... is, according to Mr. Laing, a great genius, a more than prophet of the new religion, on this point suddenly collapses into "a dreadful croaker," styling his own age "barren, brainless, soulless, faithless." [4] But the reason is, of course, that "he suffered from chronic dyspepsia" and was unable "to eat his three square meals a day." A very consistent explanation for an avowed materialist, but slightly destructive to the value of his own conclusions, being a two-edged sword. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... skipper was a lardy-da sort of a beast, and fell foul of me on account of talking to her too much—so he told the girl's mother—who was a silly, brainless sort of a woman, and thought him a perfect gentleman—I knew him to be a beast. Between the two of them they made trouble enough for me, though the old gentleman stuck to me, and didn't believe in the skipper. And anyway the girl liked me best, ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... everyone that by the nose is led, Automatons of which the world is full, Ye myriad bodies, each without a head, That dangle from a critic's brainless skull, Come, hearken to a deep discovery made, A mighty truth ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... three months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such brainless inconsistency as forever to dispose of her time-honored claim to the credit of intelligence and courage. It is certain that just three months and six days after the murder of her husband she became the wife of her husband's murderer. On February ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... 'Associate with a brainless, bumptious platform-screamer!' he screamed. 'He's worse than the hysterical Zionists. It is a territory we ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... number of ships, few of them in condition for service. Its army, once the strongest in Europe, was now but a handful of poorly equipped and half-drilled men. Its finances were in a state of frightful disorganization. The government of a brainless king, a dissolute queen, and an incapable favorite had brought Spain into a condition in which she dared not raise a hand to resist the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... due to enlargement of the cortex. Should this preponderance of the cortex over the medullary portion not occur in the human, that is, if the proportions remain like those of other animals, the brain fails to develop properly, or an entirely brainless monster is generated. The human brain, therefore, probably owes its superiority over the animal brain, to the adrenal cortex, in development anyhow. The growth of the brain cells, their number and complexity is thus ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... not literary herself. She was better than a poetess, she was a poem. The publisher always threw in a few realities, and some beautiful brainless creature would generally be found the nucleus of a crowd, while Clio in spectacles languished in a corner. Winifred Glamorys, however, was reputed to have a tongue that matched her eye; paralleling with whimsies and epigrams ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... in question rented a house and yard situate at the end of the field in which the young bird-fanciers had arrived, which house and yard he didn't occupy or keep any one else in. Nevertheless, like a brainless and unreasoning Briton, he persisted in maintaining on the premises a large stock of cocks, hens, and other poultry. Of course, all sorts of depredators visited the place from time to time: foxes and ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Returning refreshed, my composure resumed, I awaited the end, like a criminal doomed. With one demoiselle I essayed to converse, Whose sense I discovered was not worth a—purse. Disgusted with one so insipidly brainless, I turned from a task that was tedious and gainless, Adapted myself to my strange situation, And buried my ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... regal grandeur, is there a woman in the world, however disinterested, who believes that Madame de la Valliere would have liked Louis XIV. as much if Louis XIV. had been Mr. John Jones; Honoria would not have bestowed her hand on a brainless, worthless nobleman, whatever his rank or wealth. She was above that sort of ambition; but neither would she have married the best-looking and worthiest John Jones who ever bore that British appellation, if he had not occupied the social ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... noted before, that Protestantism contained the seeds of mob rule. The anonymous author of The Saints fears "Their frantic pray'r [is] a mere Decoy for Mob" (p. 4) and the author[4] of The Methodist and Mimic claims that Whitefield's preaching sends "the Brainless Mob a gadding" (p. 15). Evan Lloyd is the one anti-Methodist satirist who explores ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... much for the pacification of the unreasonable contentions of Poland. I have to do there with brainless heads, each of which, instead of contributing to the common peace, on the contrary, throws impediments in the way of it by caprice and levity. My embassador has published a declaration adapted to open their eyes. But it is to be presumed that they will rather expose themselves to the last ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Walter, evading the issue. "I suppose all New York swells do that. It's what they want me for that gets my goat." Again the knife he held was tragically upraised. "How would you like to be nursemaid to six or eight brainless little pups no bigger than rats? Not but what I like dogs. I'd like nothing better than to own a fine dog of some spirit. But those imitations! Why, before a week was out, I'd have their ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... yellow mud, to the grand pictures we see in the art galleries of today. I saw their ideas of sculpture, from a monster god with several legs, a good many noses, a great many eyes, and one little, contemptible, brainless head, to the sculpture that we have, where the marble is clothed with such personality that it seems almost impudence to touch it without an introduction. I saw all these things, and how men had gradually improved ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the knights of the olden time, storm heaven and earth because my wife has a lover. I am a philosopher. For a noble wife, who had made me happy in her love, I might perhaps feel and act differently. I, however, married a heartless fool, and it would have been mad folly to risk my life with a brainless fop for her sake." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... let the linen be stainless— Crowns of exotics are gauds for the brainless. Crowns, indeed! Here's half-a-crown; you would gain less ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... was a cad to force his society on a girl while he is still only half acquainted with the history of the Israelites. So Juggins stayed away. It was nearly two years before he was fit to propose. By the time he was fit, the girl had already married a brainless thing in patent leather boots who didn't ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... is brainless. You can make the world think what you like, son, remember that! Here we are. Would you ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... now in wind-swept bleak Japan as our sore throats we muffle, We see thy senseless pudding face and irritating shuffle; As you go slopping thro' the streets of your foul-smelling city, You're far too common to be rare, too brainless to be witty. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... death as whips, and with death for themselves set as the stake for which they gambled, they went about their attempt to drive the brainless monster before them through the solid wall of the dome building. And there followed what was probably the strangest animal act the universe has ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... abnormally big without the slightest suggestion of being either too big or awkward. He's simply magnificent. Most men of that size are just leggy and gawky: he is neither. Again, other men built as he, are usually rather brainless and weak, or probably made so much of by women that they become wrapped up in themselves, and are always expecting admiration. Alymer Hermon has the freshness of a delightful boy, with the fine face and courtly manners of a charming ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... You forget that brainless magnificence of body has been tried. Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but brain have existed and perished. The megatherium, the icthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven-league steps and hidden the day with cloud vast wings. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... living a simple and brainless life. No field-days, of course, and for this relief much thanks. We don't know in the least what is happening. Troops come and troops go, and guns go by during the night, and Red Cross waggons go hither and thither, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... twelve to fourteen. They studied because they would be called upon to recite, and recited fairly well for fear of reproof and bad marks should they be derelict. Out of school, books and bookish thoughts were cast to the four winds of heaven. Their talk was cheery chatter, as brainless as the rattle of grasshoppers in ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... then. Nearly all the women had left for the Hills, and the increasing heat was beginning to make life a burden. The younger officers did their best to be cheerful, and one of them, Bertie Oakes, a merry, brainless youngster, even proposed an impromptu dance to enliven the proceedings. But he did not find many supporters. Men were tired after the polo. Colonel Mansfield and Major Burton were deeply engrossed with some news that had been brought by Barnes ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... wit, than can vouchsafe residence in the leaden gravity of any money-monger; in whose profession all serious subjects are concluded. But he that shuns trifles must shun the world; out of whose reverend heaps of substance and austerity I can and will ere long single or tumble out as brainless and passionate fooleries as ever panted in the bosom of the most ridiculous lover. Accept it, therefore, good Madam, though as a trifle, yet as a serious argument of my affection; for to be thought thankful for all free and honourable favours is a great sum of that riches ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... to many obnoxious things, but never till tonight have I been called a crocodile. Possibly Mr. Randolph has been reading of the crocodiles recently dissected at Paris. It has been discovered that they are almost brainless, and, being without reason, are probably animated by a violent instinct of destruction. I believe, however, that the power of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... crowded assemblage of wealth and fashion she may see one of her masterpieces in the dress-making art, torn into shreds under the clumsy heel of a Cabinet Minister, or a Duchess may speak unkindly in her hearing of her latest devices in floral decoration. Or, some brainless nincompoop may, in his ignorance of her profession, cast aspersions on the general character and behaviour of all who keep shops. And it may be that friends, after a prolonged period of non-payment, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... the moral support, the cool-headed adviser, surrounded by a crowd of brainless, empty-headed young fops, who were even now repeating from mouth to mouth, and with every sign of the keenest enjoyment, a doggerel quatrain which he had just given forth. Everywhere the absurd, silly words met her: people seemed to have ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Sinner: "I suggest," runs an extract, "you come to your senses and give me my freedom ... I am going with a man of parts who knows how to give a woman the attentions she craves, and is himself glad to shake off a young chit of a wife who is too brainless ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... solemn aspect? I have glad news for thee. Thou knowest of old The weary jealousies, the bloody feuds, Which 'twixt our Cherson and her neighbour City Have raged ere I was born—nay, ere my grandsire First saw the light of heaven. Both our States Are crippled by this brainless enmity. And now the Empire, now the Scythian, threatens Destruction to our Cities, whom, united, We might defy with scorn. Seeing this weakness, Thy father, wishful, ere his race be run, To save our much-loved Cherson, sent of late Politic ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... perpendicular, vertical, plumb, erect, upright. Strange, singular, peculiar, odd, queer, quaint, outlandish. Strong, stout, robust, sturdy, stalwart, powerful. Stupid, dull, obtuse, stolid, doltish, sluggish, brainless, bovine. Succeed, prosper, thrive, flourish, triumph. Succession, sequence, series. Supernatural, preternatural, superhuman, miraculous. Suppose, surmise, conjecture, presume, imagine, fancy, guess, think, believe. Surprise, astonish, amaze, astound. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... long time he lived in clover; but gradually rumours began to reach him to the effect that he bore the reputation everywhere of a brainless ninny. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... essay on a timely subject, reviewing ably the cause and responsibility of the present war. It is especially valuable at this season of incoherent peace discussion, for it explodes very effectively that vague, brainless "neutrality" which prompts certain pro-German pacifists to cry for peace before the normal and final settlement of Europe's troubles shall have been attained by the permanent annihilation of the Prussian military machine. "Twilight," by Chester ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... instance, the twine with boys often. What coarse, awkward, unruly lumps of boisterousness youngsters mostly are at that age! I dislike boys, and more than ever when I remember myself at that stage. What an insensible, ungrateful, brainless, and ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... "the lofty rubicunded Civic Baronet shall not be 'shorn of his beams;' he claims the same honour with his brainless brothers before us-he is a scion of the same tree; Sir W*ll**m, the twin brothers of Guildhall, and these two sedate Gentlemen of stone, all boast the honour ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... charge while yet a youth. He came to England during the Protectorate, or during the first years of the Restoration. Besides the famous statues of Melancholy and Raving Madness ("great Cibber's brazen brainless brothers"), now at South Kensington, Cibber produced the bas-reliefs round the monument on Fish Street Hill. The several kings of England and the Sir Thomas Gresham executed by him for the Royal Exchange were destroyed with the building itself in 1838. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... head and a friend to set the pace; the scent of new leaves is upon them; they rejoice in the freshness of spring; over their heads the plane-tree whispers to the elm, perhaps the most glorious invitation to the brainless life that has ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... and dogs share the faculty of direction, enabling them to find their way home, a talent implying a very miracle of infallible and yet unconscious intuition, and in the strictest sense a one-sided business qualification. The goose, the sturgeon, and the almost brainless tortoise possess the same gift in a transcendent degree; the oriole builds her first nest as skilfully as the last; the young bee constructs her hexagons with an ease and a uniform success that leave no possible doubt that the exercise of her talent is generically different from a function of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... that I have lived thousands of years, and exhausted every sensation. I have seen every thing, learned every thing, experienced every thing; and I am tired of every thing, and satiated and nauseated. You see me looking like a brainless hoyden, I sing, I jest, I talk slang. My gayety surprises everybody. In reality, I am literally tired to death. What I feel I could not express, there are no words to render absolute disgust. Sometimes I say to myself, 'It is stupid ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... chance friend, the brainless Robert Redmayne, brought his niece to spend her school holiday with him and I discovered in the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl a magnificent and pagan simplicity of mind, combined with a Greek loveliness ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... "You brainless, mindless, contemptible idiot," Garlock sneered. "Are even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? To minds linked to your ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... was a manifestation, and determined to make merry. But, heigh-ho! the day of Maypoles was over and gone. From the beginning the jollity and laughter were forced, and the new era of perpetual spring festival soon became an era of brainless indecency. Even the wit of the Restoration was bitter, acid, sardonic (as Charles's own death-bed apology for being an unconscionable time a-dying). Generally it was ill-tempered, and employed to inflict pain. And there was not even wit in most ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... thunder I had an idea of how much she knows," he muttered. "Did I act like a brainless idiot when I was—was ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... progress. John Rosewarne was a patriot in his unemotional way. He hated the drift of the rural population into the towns, foreseeing that it sapped the strength of England. He despised it too; his own experience telling him that a countryman might amass wealth if he had brains and used them. As for the brainless herd, they should be kept on the land at all cost, to grow strong, breed strong children, and, when the inevitable hour came, be used as fighters to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... zeal's bonnet, so Jurymen in haste! What are the claims of comfort, health, common-sense or taste, Compared with those of brainless Noise, our new evangelist, And the tow-row, tow-row, tow-row of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... cells behind the council hall; she knew nothing of Dolores's last-minute decision that had taken them with her. She knew nothing as to who or how many were left in the camp; but she knew, she had terrible and ever-present proof in that moaning, groping, brainless thing that was Sancho, that her mistress had shown a leaning toward the strangers at the expense of her own people, and that she herself might expect no mercy if ever caught. And with the low animal cunning that served her for intellect she knew her penalty could be no greater if she struck ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... his very stringency caused a great fictional literature to blossom, despite his forbidding blue pencil. In America the sentiment of the etiolated, the brainless, the prudish, the hypocrite is the censor. (Though something might be said now about the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction.) Not that Mr. Howells is strait-laced, prudish, narrow in his views—but ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... and much more courageous, but they were neither more interesting nor less bigoted. Gay young men dazzled by operettas and races, they played lansquenet and baccarat, staked large fortunes on horses and cards, and cultivated all the pleasures enchanting to brainless fools. After a year's experience, Des Esseintes felt an overpowering weariness of this company whose debaucheries seemed to him so unrefined, facile and indiscriminate without any ardent reactions or excitement of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Block, Mr. Nicklestick and two or three other men were grouped on the after-deck early one morning decrying the brainless scheme to build a camp out there in the open. Their audience included several women, among them Mrs. Spofford, Ruth Clinton, Madame Careni-Amori, Madame Obosky, Mrs. Block and a couple of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... everybody seems to know all about it, there's no need to try to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I was a brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a remittance on condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of the name of Colorado and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they call it, at some bally ranch or farm or whatever it's called. I didn't ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... half of his body out and indulged in the raucous and meaningless yells of the festive artisan. Thus he tided over a rather prolonged wait, but, when the train moved on, the inquiring rough returned to the charge. He was suspicious, and also was drunk, and obstinate with all the brainless obstinacy of intoxication. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Apostate by the brainless rout ador'd Writhes inly from the bosom-probing glance As ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a child haps to be got Which after proves an idiot When folk perceive it thriveth not, The fault therein to smother, Some silly, doting, brainless calf That understands things by the half, Say that the Fairy left this oaf ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... woman, I should try to have some such thought as this: one man of character knows another good man is his equal; therefore as they treat each other so I would have them treat me, for then I would know that they held me, also, as an equal, and not as a doll, pretty and well dressed perhaps, but brainless, nor as a child who must not be told things too deep for ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... was an outrage on the Negro, at the expense of innocent childhood, a brainless fabrication from ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... unnecessary vehemence, I thought. "He wants the child and—and—well, you can see why he wants her, can't you? He is making the most desperate efforts to recover her. Max says the newspapers are full of the—the scandal. They are depicting me as a brainless, law-defying American without sense of love, honour or respect. I don't mind that, however. It is to be expected. They all describe the Count as a long-suffering, honourable, dreadfully maltreated person, and are doing what they can to help him in the prosecution ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the contrary, there was trouble in the very air—ominous portents of a storm whose dull, grim growling down the horizon could be heard only too clearly by those who did not wilfully close their ears, grin fatuous complacence, and bleat like brainless sheep: ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... then—was mad on card-playing at that time. And I was real worried about him. I knew he would get into a hole sooner or later, and I begged my surly Englishman to keep an eye on him. Oh, I was a fool! I was a brainless, chattering fool! And I'm not much better now, ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell |
