"Empty-headed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years of adultery, but we can not understand the cause of her passion; for however powerful the demoniac nature of Alexander VI may have been, it must by this time have lost much of its magnetic strength. Perhaps this young and empty-headed creature, after she had once transgressed and the feeling of shame had passed, was fascinated by the spectacle of the sacred master of the world, before whom all men prostrated themselves, lying at her feet—the feet of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... stood, 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 little else to speak about, even the Prince had asked her, with ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a foreigner. He could well enter into my grief at the desertion of my poor people, for how was it with those at Walwyn, deprived of the family to whom they had been used to look, with many widows and orphans made by the war, and the Church invaded by a loud- voiced empty-headed fanatic, who had swept away all that had been carefully preserved and honoured! Should he ever see the ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... affection for her had warmed. A slight embarrassment was commingled with the knowledge, but that was the natural result of his dislike to the sentimental. He had never felt a shadow of sentiment for Audrey, who had been an extremely light, dry, empty-headed person, and he had always felt she had been adroitly thrust upon him by their united families. He had not liked her, and she had not liked him. It had been very stupidly trying. And the child had not lived an hour. He had liked Emily from the first, and ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Your Excellency may take my word for it, she is a very clever woman. My own interviews with her sufficed to convince me of that fact. And I need not tell your Excellency, that little as some of the empty-headed young gentlemen in the stalls may suspect it, talent,—not only the special talent of song but general talent,— has much to do with the power of fascination that a ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... rule, measure the full extent of their dangers? By the way in which the port of Blois, the chateau, and the town were guarded, Christophe was prepared to find spies and traps everywhere; and he therefore resolved to conceal the importance of his mission and the tension of his mind under the empty-headed and shopkeeping appearance with which he presented himself to the eyes of young Pardaillan, the officer of the guard, and ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... get where I am to-day?" she concluded dramatically, drawing up her right sleeve and pointing to the withered arm. "Because of that. It taught me a lesson when I was nothing but an empty-headed girl. That and the burn on my leg made a man of me, because it took most of the woman thing out of me. I learned to think like a man and to act like a man. I learned my job, same as a man. Yes! And beat my boss at it so he had to pay me a man's wages to keep me, and ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... easy. Comte tried to find pupils to board with him, but only one pupil came, and he was soon sent away for lack of companions. 'I would rather spend an evening,' wrote the needy enthusiast, 'in solving a difficult question, than in running after some empty-headed and consequential millionaire in search of a pupil.' A little money was earned by an occasional article in Le Producteur, in which he began to expound the philosophic ideas that were now maturing in his mind. He announced a course of lectures (1826), which it was hoped would ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... awakened by this stranger lad who despised her. Surely he was loving this foolish child simply as his duty; his belonging, as his right he might struggle hard for her, and if he gained her, be greatly disappointed; for how could Eustacie appreciate him, little empty-headed, silly thing, who would be amused and ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uneasy bed, and risen unrefreshed, he hired a horse, for he had none in town, and went for a long ride. Coming back he turned into Rotten Row. He could not tell why he did so, for such places, affected by the gay, empty-headed votaries of fashion, were little consonant to his present state. He was barely in it when a lady's horse took fright: she was riding alone, with a groom following; Lord Hartledon gave her his assistance, led her horse until the animal was calm, and rode side by ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and many other ladies perceiving, made merry together more than once, to see a man of his years and discretion in love, as if they deemed that this most delightful passion of love were only fit for empty-headed youths, and could not in men be either harboured or engendered. Master Alberto thus continuing to haunt the front of the house, it so happened that one feast-day the lady with other ladies was seated before her door, and Master Alberto's approach ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... gained her distinction in the literary and even in the dramatic world, should be consecrated to less secular employment. Her vivacity during the earlier years of their acquaintance exposed her to an occasional rebuff. "She does not gain upon me, sir; I think her empty-headed," was one of his remarks; and it was to her that he said, according to Mrs. Thrale, though Boswell reports a softened version of the remark, that she should "consider what her flattery was worth, before she choked him with it." More frequently, he seems to have repaid it in kind. "There ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... his worldly prospects, there was little to attract a girl of Violet's character toward Cuthbert Aston. He was what men technically style "a bounder!" Yet, empty-headed, arrogant, self-centered though he might be, he was a rich man's only son. In Violet's eyes that in itself condoned many flagrant defects. The Astons moved in the highest circles of the city—spite of Mrs. Aston's "flamboyant" style and her husband's demonstrative ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... one day lamenting his growing old, a pert young fellow asked him what he would give to be as young as he. "I would be content," cried Foote, "to be as foolish." Jerrold made a similar reply to an empty-headed fellow who boasted of never being seasick. "Never!" said Douglas; "then I'd almost have ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... Here is the book; here is your role: read." And I read. He did not commend; at some passages he scowled and stamped. He gave me a lesson: I diligently imitated. It was a disagreeable part—a man's—an empty-headed fop's. One could put into it neither heart nor soul: I hated it. The play—a mere trifle—ran chiefly on the efforts of a brace of rivals to gain the hand of a fair coquette. One lover was called the "Ours," a good and gallant but unpolished man, a sort of diamond in the rough; the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... gallant in the true sense of the word, but he was no empty-headed fop, paying that amount of overdue attention to the fair, which, at times, becomes a bore and ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... What do you think you want?" Valentia answered herself; "It's Foster, of course! That dull, empty-headed, commonplace, hard-up, handsome boy. You can't marry him. He's just twenty-two, and has only a miserable allowance, and is in an expensive regiment, and you, darling, will only have three hundred a year. I should ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... there began to creep into the mind of Bob Gareth-Lawless a fearsome doubt remotely hinting that she might end by becoming an awful bore in the course of time—particularly if she also ended by being less pretty. She chattered so incessantly about nothing and was such an empty-headed, extravagant little fool in her insistence on clothes—clothes—clothes—as if they were the breath of life. After watching her for about two hours one morning as she sat before her mirror directing her maid to arrange and re-arrange her hair in different styles—in ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action, my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before their eyes—dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their hearts they knew that I deserved ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... member of that same congregation, by the way, a stuffy old dame whose wealth footed up to millions, who once remarked to me in all confidence that she had no doubt the aristocracy of heaven was composed of Presbyterians. Poor, old, empty-headed prig! What could I do but assure her that I held the same comforting conviction! Well, through influential friends in Pekin I was introduced to the eminent Chinese statesman, Wang Fo, of delightful memory. Our conversation ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... are so niggardly about their children, and indifferent to their interests, that for the sake of a paltry saving, they prefer worthless teachers for their children, practising a vile economy at the expense of their children's ignorance. Apropos of this, Aristippus on one occasion rebuked an empty-headed parent neatly and wittily. For being asked how much money a parent ought to pay for his son's education, he answered, "A thousand drachmae." And he replying, "Hercules, what a price! I could buy a slave for as much;" Aristippus answered, "You shall have two slaves then, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a single glance, and instantly hated him even more than she had hated Amathel, Prince of Kesh. Also she who had not feared the empty-headed, drunken Amathel, was penetrated with a strange terror of this man whom she felt to be strong and intelligent, and whose great, greedy eyes rested on her beauty as though they could ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... not," said Father Griffen, "I'll not lose sight of this adventurer; he has the appearance of an empty-headed fool, but traitors know how to assume all guises. Alas!" continued he sadly, "this last voyage imposes upon me great obligations toward those who dwell at Devil's Cliff. Meantime, their secret is, so to speak, mine, but I have done what I could; my conscience approves. May they long enjoy the happiness ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... furniture, the subdued light, the rich colour of the magnificent china filled her really artistic nature with a sense of rejoicing. Behind all her affectations, Antonia had a soul. It had never been awakened yet. All her life hitherto poor Antonia had spent her time with the most empty-headed and frivolous people. Only art seemed great and glorious and satisfying. She loved it sincerely, and for itself alone; she had no ambitions with regard to it, ambition was not a part of her queer nature; she would ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... was not; but, then, what is the business for me? But if you had seen Kurbyev! Do not, pray, fancy him as some empty-headed chatterer. They say I was eloquent once. I was simply nothing beside him. He was a man of wonderful learning and knowledge,—an intellect, brother, a creative intellect, for business and commercial enterprises. His brain seemed seething with the boldest, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... consisting of a couple of men, four women, and five or six children of various ages. As we drew nigh, the whole party, without rising, uttered a wild scream of welcome, accompanied by that loud laughter which always seems to escape so readily from this light-hearted and empty-headed people. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... had his wits about him he must have realized it. And yet had he glimpsed that which should have been so obvious he would have been startled, somewhat shocked, and would have grieved over his friend's empty-headed daughter, holding her unmaidenly—when she was but dallying with dreams which mean so ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... brutal that when he had escaped from Mountjoy Scarborough's clutches there was nothing for him but to leave him lying in the street where, in his drunkenness, he had fallen. And now, in consequence of this, misery had fallen upon himself. Even this empty-headed fellow Baskerville, a man the poverty of whose character Harry perfectly understood, had questioned him about Mountjoy Scarborough. It could not, he thought, be possible that Baskerville could have had any reasons ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... I don't know what is the matter with them,' said Lucy. 'Gilbert is gone out—nobody knows where—and when I told Sophy who was here, she said Captain Ferrars was an empty-headed coxcomb, and she did ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a titanic contest to the blue jay, two monstrous giants fighting to the death. All the other forest people had fled away in terror, but the empty-headed blue jay, held by the terrible fascination, remained on his bough, watching with dilated eyes. He saw the great beads of sweat stand out on the face of each, he could hear the muscles strain and creak, he saw the two fall to the ground, locked fast in each other's arms, and then ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... MRS. VIDA PHILLIMORE'S boudoir. The room is furnished to please an empty-headed, pleasure-loving and fashionable woman. The furniture, the ornaments, what pictures there are, all witness to taste up-to-date. Two French windows open on to a balcony, from which the trees of Central Park can be seen. There is a table between them; a mirror, a scent bottle, &c., upon it. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... that after all I was a discovery of Dona Rita's, her own recruit. My fidelity and steadfastness had been guaranteed by her and no one else. I couldn't bear the idea of her being criticized by every empty-headed chatterer belonging to the Cause. And as, apart from that, nothing mattered much, why, then—I would get ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Bacchus, may I move thee 'gainst thy will, Or uncover what is hidden in the verdure of thy shade! Silence thou thy savage cymbals, and the Berecyntine horn; In their train Self-love still follows, dully, desperately blind, And Vain-glory, towering upwards in its empty-headed scorn, And the Faith that keeps no secrets, with a ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Mr Bitpin that he went down to the wardroom in the most wrathful mood, declaring that they were a couple of idiots and that the service was going to the devil through the Admiralty neglecting the claims of their best officers and promoting a lot of empty-headed coxcombs, who thought more of prancing about in a ballroom in patent leather pumps than of keeping their watch regularly and attending ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... then the tear, which had been no whit controlled, which indeed had now made itself master of her, came to a head, and, bursting through the floodgates of the eye, came rolling down, and in its fall, wetted her hand as it lay on her lap. "What a fool! what an idiot! what an empty-headed cowardly fool I am!" said she, springing up from ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... across and about, with an energy which showed that what Griselda lacked in her tongue she made up with her feet. Lord Dumbello, in the meantime, stood by, observant, thinking to himself that Lord Lufton was a glib-tongued, empty-headed ass, and reflecting that if his rival were to break the tendons of his leg in one of those rapid evolutions, or suddenly come by any other dreadful misfortune, such as the loss of all his property, absolute blindness, or chronic lumbago, it would only serve him right. And in that ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... drive me thereto. And I suffer my husband to go after other women, and this new thrall is especial, so that I may take my pleasure unstayed with other men whom I love not greatly. Yes, I am foolish, and empty-headed, and unclean. And all this he will see through my queenly state, and my golden gown, and my white ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... come along later, was very much like him, being severe of outline and wearing the same kind of spectacles, and not fussing much about the fripperies of dress that engross so many of our empty-headed sex and get 'em the notice of the male. Her complexion was brutally honest, which was about all her very best-wishers could say for it, but she was kind-hearted and earnest, and thought a good deal about the real or inner meaning ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... that many country folk with less active brains never fail to observe. When we find people who live in the country unversed in the ways of birds, the knowledge of flowers and trees, and the habits of the simple country folk, we need not necessarily conclude that they are dull and empty-headed; the reverse is often the case. A man absorbed in business or serious affairs may love the country and yet know little of its real life. A good deal of time must be spent in acquiring this kind of knowledge, and it is not everybody who has the time or the opportunity to do it. If we come ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... nonsense," said Janet, with an elder sisterly air. "It is not kind to encourage Jessie to think anyone can care for an empty-headed doll." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Assistant. "In respect of other women assuredly. But observe a young lady as a lover, as a bride, as a housewife, as a mother. She always stands isolated. She is always alone, and will be alone. Even the most empty-headed woman is in the same case. Each one of them excludes all others. It is her nature to do so; because of each one of them is required everything which the entire sex have to do. With a man it is altogether different. He would make ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... vulgar'ty what comin' down to cases is merely noise. It's the whiskey they drinks, most likely. They're addicted to a kind of cat-bird whiskey over thar, which sets 'em to whistlin' an' chirpin' an' twitterin' an' teeterin' up an' down on the conversational bough, to sech a seemin'ly empty-headed extent it's calc'lated to mislead the ca'mest intellects into a belief that the c'rrect way to deal with Red Dog is to build one of these yere stone corrals 'round it, call it a loonatic asylum, an' let it go ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Firmstone. He was very sure that his request to be let alone would not be heeded. Hartwell, the Eastern manager of the company, was a shallow, empty-headed man, insufferably conceited. He held the position, partly through a controlling interest in the shares, but more through the nimble use of a glib tongue that so man[oe]uvred his corporal's guard of information that it appeared ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... It is also the only defense against that deadly and destructive war of classes with which Bolshevism threatens the whole world. The spirit of Bolshevism is atheism and enmity; its method is violence and tyranny; its result would be a reign of terror under that empty-headed monster, "the dictatorship of the proletariat." God save us from that! It would be the worst possible outcome of the war in which we have offered and sacrificed so much, and in which God has given us the opportunity to make ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke
... strangely impressed though he sought to argue with himself that here was but more absurdity from an empty-headed girl who had the money and the power to unleash her extravagant desires. But since everything about him was stamped with the barbaric, even to the oblique-eyed woman staring boldly at him; since everything in the exotic atmosphere was in keeping, even to ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... empty-headed idealists who go about creating disturbances for sensible persons," was the scathing criticism he delivered the moment she ceased speaking. "You will regret this interference in my affairs. Now that you know my ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of madonnas, or sticky babies. She would monopolize the conversation, so far as she could, and direct it all the time. At the risk of utterly losing the good opinion of one of Cousin Julia's most valued friends, of appearing forward, conceited, tiresome, she would rattle on like the empty-headed society girl in certain modern plays. She would introduce utterly impersonal subjects, such as—at the moment she couldn't think of anything but prohibition, which would last about two minutes—and chatter foolishly and fast upon them, one after another. Then, if ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... still young and I have my career to make. See me for what I am. The bounty of the king and the protection of his ministers give me sufficient means of living. I have the outward bearing of a very ordinary man. I go to the soirees in Paris like any other empty-headed fop; and if I drive, the wheels of my carriage do not roll on the solid ground, absolutely indispensable in these days, of property invested in the funds. But if I am not rich, neither do I have the reliefs and consolations ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... for me, and that I have sent a freedman to look after our common interests. I felt exceedingly disturbed, and yet could not believe it; but at any rate there has been some gossip of the sort. Pray look into the whole matter, learn the truth, find out the author, and get the empty-headed idiot out of the country, if you possibly can. Valerius mentions Cn. Plancius as the origin of this gossip. I trust you thoroughly to investigate and find out what is at the bottom of it. I have good reason to believe that Pompey is most kindly disposed to me. His divorce ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... excreta camps. In some camps no latrines were dug, no supervision was exercised. The so-called Medical Staff looked on, and puffed their cigarettes and talked under their eye-glasses—the fools, the idle, empty-headed noodles. And whilst they smoked and talked twaddle, the grim, gaunt Shadow of Death chuckled in the watches of the night, thinking of the harvest that ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... chatter, they set up an opinion and gloat over it, while they lack the spirit to support it. They are all alike—non tantum ovum ovo simile—one egg is not more like another than they are. Non tali auxilio—we want no such help. We ask for bread, not for stones; we want men, not empty-headed dandies. We have both at present; but if the Emperor fails us, we shall have too many dandies and too few men—too few men like you, Don Giovanni. Instead of armed battalions we shall have polite societies for mutual assurance against political risks,—instead of the support of the ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... of youth, of any youth, not completely empty-headed, frivolous or superficial, or was this the result of a distinct inheritance of two very different and opposing personalities, of so different nationalities and with an addition of even tartar blood? I ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... and that dreadful cap which she wore at the tennis party! It was impossible not to feel sorry for her, she did look so ridiculous. I wonder her husband allows her to make such a guy of herself. What a curious little man, his great cough and that foolish shouting manner; a good-natured, empty-headed little fellow. They are a funny couple! Harold knew her husband at Oxford; they were at the same college. She took honours at Oxford; that's why she seemed out of place in a little town like Sutton. She is quite different from her husband; he couldn't pass his examinations; ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing, 'She does not gain upon me, Sir; I think her empty-headed.' He was, indeed, a stern critick upon characters and manners. Even Mrs. Thrale did not escape his friendly animadversion at times. When he and I were one day endeavouring to ascertain, article by article, how one of our friends ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... scarcely natural, therefore, that she should neglect such an opportunity as this. There was so much in Austin's life that caused her uneasiness; he seemed in such sore need of wiser counsel than his poor empty-headed little wife could give him; and Clarissa believed that she had some influence with him: that if he would be governed by the advice of any creature upon ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... asked Jesus. "Amon, do you know men so little? They see in Me the Messiah King who will conquer the Empire to-morrow. They, blind creatures, they have no idea of My Kingdom. They are pleased with words that destroy, they do not want to hear words that build up. It's an empty-headed people that can only be roused by need and oppression. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... Just is hand and glove with Robespierre now," he said. "When you left Paris more than a year ago you could afford to despise him as an empty-headed windbag; now, if you desire to remain in France, you will have to fear him as a ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... ever making was always visible. All men should ever be making efforts, no doubt; but those efforts should not be conspicuous. But yet Lucius Mason was not a bad fellow, and young Staveley showed much want of discernment when he called him empty-headed and selfish. Those epithets were by no means applicable to him. That he was not empty-headed is certain; and he was moreover capable of a ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... admiration, is one thing; loving and marrying him, is another. For the first, Vincent Dunbar answered exceedingly well; but for the second, he was wholly unfit. In spite of her little weaknesses, Frances had too much sense not to see that the young lieutenant was an empty-headed coxcomb, and not at all the man with whom she hoped to spend her years of discretion—when she arrived at them—after an ample enjoyment of the delights that youth, beauty, and wealth are calculated to procure their possessor. Her eyes were opened, in short; and the ordinary effect of this sort ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... war has disturbed me.... I thought it would further my plans. The Germans are so efficient. Their spy system, too, was excellent. The streets are full of these boys in khaki. All empty-headed young fools.... Yet I do not know.... They won the war.... ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... in the way of the progress of real womanhood. I knew that we were actually a live club, come together with a genuine aim to do real good. I can see now that we are going to accomplish something worth while. We are not going to be merely a set of empty-headed, silly women with nothing to do. Oh, I tell you that I have some great plans, now that at last we are really started out right. Now, we can outline our plans of work among women less fortunate than we ourselves. We can ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... interest in her old toys. When God gives babies to children, the children forget their other dolls, and the Princess, when the babies came, put away her other dolls, and played with the toys that came alive. And she spanked them and fondled them and scolded them with the same empty-headed vanity that she used ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... empty-headed creature with strange notions. She never laid an egg without making a great fuss ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... these was her father's apprentice, who lived in the same house. His name was Simon Tappertit—a conceited, bragging, empty-headed young man with a great opinion of his own good looks. When he looked at his thin legs, which he admired exceedingly, he could not see how it was that Dolly could help ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... be an 'owling cad; Or be gowing to the bad; Or a hoary centenarian, or empty-headed lad; Or the merest trifle mad— If there's rhino to be had, Why, a modern girl will tyke you—yes, ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... for noblemen, no doubt, and an aristocratic government will always work very well indeed for the interests of the aristocracy themselves who exercise it, and for the good order and safety, perhaps, of the rest of the community. A great many weak and empty-headed women who come out to England from the great cities in America, and see these grand equipages in London, think what a fine thing it is to have a royal government, and wish that we had one in America; but this is always on the understanding that they themselves are ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... see the crowd of young, empty-headed fortune-seeking jackanapes, who dare to aspire to your ladyship's hand ... I have asked myself whether perchance I had the right to remain silent, whilst they poured their farrago of nonsense into your ear. I love ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... the provocation; hungry hope reawakened in his heart; here was a girl—pretty, simple at least, if not honestly stupid, and plainly not averse to his attentions: it seemed to him once more as if love might here be waiting him. Had he but known the truth! for this facile and empty-headed girl had nothing more in view than a flirtation; and her heart, from the first and on to the end of her story, was engaged by another man. Burns once more commenced the celebrated process of "battering himself into a warm ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then—which I'm not—but the one thing in life which I love is sanity. And that, Dinky-Dunk, is why I love you, even though you are only a big sunburnt farmer fighting and planning and grinding away for a home for an empty-headed wife who's going to fail at everything but making you ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... and Mrs. Selldon talked to an empty-headed but loquacious man on her left, and racked her brains for something to say to the alarmingly silent author on her right. She remembered hearing that Charles Dickens would often sit silent through the whole of dinner, observing quietly ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... speed-up motto in industry. Our newspaper version of it is 'spice-up.' A conference that may change the map of Europe will be crowded off any front page any day by young Mrs. Poultney Masters making a speech in favor of giving girls night-keys, or of some empty-headed society dame being caught in a roadhouse with another lady's hubby. Spice: that's what we're looking for. Something to tickle their jaded palates. And they despise us when we break our necks or our hearts ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... than I could swallow. What did he want to poke his nose in my affairs for? Was it any concern of his which tailor I employed? The sight of this empty-headed dandified "masher" embittered me, and I reminded him rather brutally of ten shilling he had borrowed from me. But before he could reply I regretted that I had asked for it. I got ashamed and avoided meeting his eyes, and, as a lady came by just then, I stepped ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... sententious Sir Christopher Deering argues the matter at great length: but all the time we are hungering for him to say the one thing demanded by the logic of the situation: to wit: "Whatever the abstract rights and wrongs of the case, this man would be an imbecile to elope with this woman, who is an empty-headed, empty-hearted creature, incapable either of the passion or of the loathing which alone could lend any semblance of reason to a breach of social law." Similarly, in The Profligate, Sir Arthur Pinero no doubt intended us to reflect upon the question whether, in entering upon marriage, a woman ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... even then? Wasn't the lovely glow of this one evening the amazing reality of her sitting by the fire with Rookie alone for the first time in many years, and, if he fell into the enchantment of Malaysia and the mysteries of an empty-headed Tira, the last? And now here she was dreaming off on Rookie when she must, at this very instant, to seize any advantage at all, be facing Dick. She began by laughing ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... known to depraved nature. The corporation would seem either to have a charming sympathy for it, or to look upon it with that good-natured indifference so happily illustrated while eating its oysters and drinking its whiskey. An empty-headed corporation is sure always to have its hands very full, which is the case with yours at this moment. Having the people's money to waste, its own ambition to serve, and its hat to fill with political waste paper-what more ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Abercrombie, "a great many of us feel like that when we are young and hot-headed. I nearly said empty-headed. Then we read fat books about the divine right of Motherhood, Free Love and State Maternity. All very well in the abstract and fine theories to argue about, but they do not work in real life. Believe me, the older you get the more and more you ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... the saying was ascribed to Aristotle, upon seeing a tree from the limbs of which four women were hanging, "How happy men would be, if all trees bore that fruit." Women were currently represented as empty-headed, vain, fond of pleasure, frivolous, and fickle. Lawyers were also a favorite object of satire.[2145] In the Italian theater ecriteaux were hung up, on which the speeches were written and the audience ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... retriever, his long, curly back swaying slightly from the difficulty of holding himself up, and his solemn hazel eyes fixed very intently on each and all of the breakfast bowls. He was as silent and sagacious as Sarah was talkative and empty-headed. Though large, he was unassuming. Pax, the pug, on the contrary, who came up to the first joint of Darkie's leg, stood defiantly on his dignity (and his short stumps). He always placed himself in front of the bigger dog, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... you can accommodate yourself to some empty-headed society youth who hangs over your hotel-piazza chair and tells foolish fibs to ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... student, of no birth, no family, and he is younger than you are!" (These words were pronounced not without a certain spiteful pleasure.) "What earthly good can come of it? What do you see in him? He is only an empty-headed boy." ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... long, and no longer. Perhaps right now you don't feel as I do, but I can teach you to feel that way. I can give you everything—money, social position, everything that's worth having—and love. I'm not an empty-headed boy. I can make you ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... opportunely and somewhat aggressively burst into a guffaw of derisive laughter. "Miss Loomis is just one of those admirable women," said he, "that empty-headed idiots prate about. I wish other people had half her sense." A luckless way of essaying the defence of the absent, for it reflected ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... first heard of it. Why did they promote that empty-headed countryman of yours to a place for which he was quite unfit? I was not contented. But then I am more ambitious for you than you are for yourself." He sat without answering her for awhile, and she stood waiting for his ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... peculiar ones—Mme. Poussette kept the secret well. But two days ago he sent for me and told me everything; how he was properly married in the parish of Sault au Recollet to Artemise Archambault, she, the half-witted, the empty-headed—God knows whether that was the charm or what—and of the birth of the child, he told me. What could you expect from the union of two such natures? If you marry, mademoiselle, mate neither with a bad temper ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... I won't. I'm not at all interested in that addlepated, monkey-faced nincompoop. He's after my daughter, but he shall never marry her. Why, if wives could be supported for fifty cents a year, that empty-headed specimen of vacuous mentality couldn't even keep ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... debater, a clever tactician, and, above all things, an excellent man of business, was appointed Secretary at War. He became at the same time leader of the House of Commons. He was one of the managers in the unfortunate impeachment of the empty-headed High-Church preacher, Dr. Sacheverell. He resigned office with the other Whig ministers in 1710. Harley coming into power offered him a place in the new administration, which Walpole declined to accept. The Tories, reckless and ruthless ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... misuse of novel-reading by the silly, the empty-headed, and the corrupt, should not blind us to its benefits. There are those who in music, painting, and sculpture find only nutriment for sensuality and impurity. Shall we, therefore, deny to all, and banish from the world the refining ministrations of beauty in form and color and sweet sounds? As justly ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... married; he felt jovial about it; he was almost indifferent to the question of whom he had chosen. Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed highly incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less shaped to minister to Gordon's strenuous needs than the light-hearted and empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained for Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time. Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose—the prettiest of little geese, perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not a companion for a peculiarly serious man, ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... SERGEANT BULMER,—That empty-headed puppy, Mr. Matthew Sharpin, has made a mess of the case at Rutherford Street, exactly as I expected he would. Business keeps me in this town, so I write to you to set the matter straight. I inclose with this the pages of feeble scribble-scrabble ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... take thy choice between us. He hath the start of me in inches, but a moon-calf would hardly benefit by bargaining wits with him—a grinning, guzzling giant whose chief delight is singing songs in a tavern or wrestling with brawny clowns as empty-headed as himself!" ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... have been shallow enough to try to ape this poor empty-headed coachman on a little scale, making London their Zodiac. Well for them if tradesmen's bills and other trivial perplexities have not caused them to be ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. Even the Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among them, however honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may feel himself to be at bottom, but comes home from one of their coenacula with a portentous significance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... room furnished, Almayer had felt proud. In his exultation of an empty-headed quill-driver, he thought himself, by the virtue of that furniture, at the head of a serious business. He had sold himself to Lingard for these things—married the Malay girl of his adoption for the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... a girl, with deep grey eyes and wavy brown hair and a sea-shell complexion. I absently swallowed the abomination she handed me, for I was looking at her over the teacup and wondering how an exquisite-minded gentleman like Dale could forsake her for a Lola Brandt. It was not as if Maisie were an empty-headed, empty-natured little girl. She is a young person of sense, education, and character. She also adores musical comedy and a band at dinner: an excellent thing in woman—when she ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... suggestion of his own. They were poor, they must live; he had himself said that they must procure money either honestly or dishonestly; and he had fully approved of the plan she had now undertaken. You, sir—she added—were an "empty-headed fool,"—the idea of her "loving" you was absurd!—but you were wealthy; immensely wealthy; had made a will leaving her your entire property;—if you died suddenly on your wedding night, she and himself would possess Fonthill, and live ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... prosecution he was no worse than some others who had gone free. Yet he had been convicted, and she was sorry for that and had always been. He was an able and ruthless man. She hardly knew what to think. The one person she really did blame was the wretched, vain, empty-headed, ungodly Aileen Butler, who had been his seductress and was probably now to be his wife. God would punish her, no doubt. He must. So she went to church on Sundays and tried to believe, come what might, that all ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... little what so insignificant a fellow says or does," observed Morton. "The story can hardly last out the usual nine days; and if we all behave well, we can allow these empty-headed fellows to amuse themselves for that time ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... own ears when she mumbled out something about Mrs. Murry thinking she could do very much better for herself; but I asked her one question after another till I had it all out of her. It just shows one how foolish and empty-headed these girls are. I told her she was no better than a weather-cock. If you will believe me, that horrid old woman was quite another person when Alice went to see her the other night. Why, I can't think, but so she was. She told the girl how pretty ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... is, and that makes matters worse, for his grandson, Sirajuddaula, who'll probably succeed him, is no better than a tiger. He lives at Murshidabad, about one hundred miles up the river. He's a vain, peacocky, empty-headed youth, and as soon as the breath is out of his granddad's body he'll want to try his wings and take a peck or two at us. He may do it slyly, or go so far ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... no crop of any kind. There are empty fools at all ages; but "an old fool," &c., (musty as the proverb is, it is rather from neglect than over-application.) I have known men by the dozen, who in their youth were either empty-headed coxcombs or noisy sots; does my reader think that any given number of additional years has made them able statesmen, sound lawyers, or erudite divines? that because they have become honourable by a seat in Parliament, learned by courtesy, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... I was holding her with my encircling arm. She was small and soft against me. Her face, framed in the thick, black hair, smiled up at me. Small, oval face—beautiful—yet firm of chin, and stamped with the mark of its own individuality. No empty-headed beauty, this. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... emphasis, which to many people would seem out of all keeping with the subject; but I am young, and a girl, so I understood. There are many empty-headed women in whom the craving for pretty things is as strong as the masculine craving for drink and cards. Circumstances have compelled these women to wear the plainest, most useful of clothes, while every shop window shows a tantalising display of colour and beauty, and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... desk to yours, because I sit next to Mr. Malcolm, who is one of the steadiest and most respectable clerks in the office; and therefore I am not subject to so much annoyance as you will be, seated next to that empty-headed Williams, and coarse low-minded Lawson. I do not really like any of the clerks; there are none of them the sort of young men I should choose as companions. As to the duties, they are agreeable enough, and I have nothing to find fault with on ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... subtle changes that a moment of crisis can produce. The fickle, light-hearted girl had disappeared, the injured woman came to the front. There is this peculiarity about Australian girls. Outsiders consider them empty-headed and frivolous, for they have a light, lackadaisical manner of spending their lives, but lying dormant beneath is a nature with a purpose which once roused is relentless in its desire for exacting satisfaction. May Goodchild ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... institutions which are largely attended, and would produce far better results but for the halo of sanctity with which boys in every country—but particularly in half-civilized ones—are apt to invest the most flagrantly empty-headed of mothers. In Tunisia, as soon as the youngsters return home, these women quickly undo all the good work, by teaching them that what they have learnt at school is dangerous untruth, and that the Koran and native mode of life are the only ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... scrupulous and unscrupulous. Every time he went with his mother for a week to Atlantic City or New York, Mrs. Salisbury writhed in apprehension of the thousand lures that must be spread on all sides about his lumbering feet. He was just the sweet, big, simple sort to be trapped by some little empty-headed girl, some little marplot clever enough to pretend an interest in the prison problem, or the free-milk problem, or some other industrial problem in which Owen had seen fit to interest himself. And her lovely, dignified Sandy, reflected ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... and by the table sat Darkie, the black retriever, his long, curly back swaying slightly from the difficulty of holding himself up, and his solemn hazel eyes fixed very intently on each and all of the breakfast bowls. He was as silent and sagacious as Sarah was talkative and empty-headed. The expression of his face was that of King Charles I. as painted by Vandyke. Though large, he was unassuming. Pax, the pug, on the contrary, who came up to the first joint of Darkie's leg, stood defiantly on his dignity (and his short stumps). He always placed himself in front of the ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... an empty-headed idiot. Everybody has always known that. And he's put above his place in the House. But it wouldn't do ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... had declared herself to be absorbed in some tiresome complication with another man, of which it was rather difficult to follow the details. It is true that she described him as a handsome but somewhat empty-headed person whom she had last seen two thousand years ago, but probably this only meant that she thought poorly of him because he had preferred some other woman to herself, while the two thousand years were added to the tale ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... because he had the air of great distinction. Many times these two young men had been pitted against each other in legal battles. Every time Norman had won. Twice they had contended for the favor of the same lady. Each had scored once. But as Culver's victory was merely for a very light and empty-headed lady of the stage while he had won Josephine Burroughs away from Culver, the balance was ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... with whips, he lashed her priests with scorpions. He accused them of various vices. They were immoral; they were superstitious; they were vain, ignorant and empty-headed; and, instead of feeding the Church of God, they had almost starved her to death. He loathed these "honourable men, who sit in great houses, these purple men, with their beautiful mantles, their high caps, their fat stomachs." He accused them of fawning on the rich ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... self-sufficiency of style is proclaimed somewhat more speciously, the purveyor of Chelsea ware will find scant countenance in the adored Master. Nowhere can I find him preaching "Art for Art's sake," in the jejune sense of the empty-headed acolytes of the aesthetic. With him the formula was for the spectator of art; it has been misapplied to the maker of art. Pater's studies of the great pictures of the Renaissance are, if anything, rather too much taken up with their intellectual ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the north with me, having my whims and fancies, occasionally, about my child, and getting, at such times, jealous of Mrs. Clements' influence over her. I never liked Mrs. Clements. She was a poor, empty-headed, spiritless woman—what you call a born drudge—and I was now and then not averse to plaguing her by taking Anne away. Not knowing what else to do with my girl while I was nursing in Cumberland, I put her to school at Limmeridge. The lady of the manor, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... frivolous an object for the dressing-table of a serious Five Towns woman. She had always referred to it as "the" hand-mirror—as though disdaining special ownership. She had derided it once by using it in front of Louis with the mimic foolish graces of an empty-headed doll. And now she was asking for it because she wanted it; and she ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... comprehended, and was grateful to her that she did not say, "You hate, not me, but the grocer's shop; but the idea of an alliance with my father's daughter, my brother's sister." "After all the girl is a lady," he said to himself, and the thought crossed his mind: was his empty-headed young brother likely to marry a better woman than this? All the same, his duty in the matter was ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... Lady Blanchefleur, were quite incapable of making him forget the very disagreeable present. Then he tried rebuilding and newly furnishing a part of his house; but that proved even less potent to divert his thoughts than the books. Next he went into company, laughed and joked with empty-headed people, played games, sang, and amused himself in sundry ways, and came home at night, to feel more solitary and miserable than before. Then, in desperation, he sent for the barber to bleed him, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... fightin' in the rebel army, when you ought to know better,' says I. 'Now, who in thunderation am I?' 'Sufferin' Moses!' says he, 'that voice grows more like his every time he speaks. It can't be that empty-headed galoot, Dan Whitley, who never knew nothin' 'bout the rights an' wrongs of the war, an' had to go off ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and tell me that you have done so if you want to make me a little more happy than I have been this last day or two. There has been too much thinking in the heads of both of us. Be empty-headed for once when you write next: whether you write little or much, I am sure always of your full heart: but I cannot trust your brain to the same pressure: it is such a Martha to headaches and careful about so many things, and you don't bring it ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... ought to exist. He looked back over the history of art, and saw the old hideous state of affairs—saw genius perishing of starvation and misery, and men erecting monuments to it when it was dead. He saw empty-headed rich people paying fortunes for the manuscripts of poems which all the world had once rejected; he saw the seven towns contending for Homer dead, through which the living Homer begged his bread. And Thyrsis could not bring himself ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a word since the time they were discovered, but now he said very solemnly, "He's full of brains, that man! but I'd rather be more empty-headed, and less like a katyogle[3] that's been sitting on a stone all day with a dozen of undigested sandyloos[4] ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... came back, sir," she said. "Since Old Doc died, Man Douglas has been impossible. He's been culling the staff and replacing them with empty-headed fillies whose only claim to usefulness is that they can fill out a halter. Pretty soon this place ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... yet, but thinks a 'small' theatre would somehow not be a theatre, and an actor not quite an actor ... I forget in what way, but the upshot is, he bates not a jot in that rouged, wigged, padded, empty-headed, heartless tribe of grimacers that came and canted me; not I, them;—a thing he cannot understand—so, I am not the one he would have picked out to praise, had he not been loyal. I know he admires your poetry properly. God ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... She lives in the midst of a band of empty-headed men, who certainly have no particular regard for a woman's reputation. And you, in consequence of your intimacy with Madame Karpathy, rub shoulders every day with her acquaintances, and will also be taken for a light, frivolous, frail sort ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... He always was Huffle Scuffle; a noisy, pretentious, empty-headed fellow. But I oughtn't to say so before you, young man. Come, we'll go ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... manually the work of printers and papermakers; you may cut an author's hand off and he is as good an author as before. What is the result? There is more imagination in any number of a penny journal than in half-a-dozen of the Royal Academy rooms in the season. No author can live by his work and be as empty-headed as an average successful painter. Again, consider our implements of music—our pianofortes, for example. Nobody but an acrobat will voluntarily spend years at such a difficult mechanical puzzle as the keyboard, and so we have to take our impressions of Beethoven's sonatas from acrobats who vie with ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... declare that she would under no circumstances become a wife, but at the same time she was firm in her heart never to have a husband. So she followed the politician's common plan: she compromised. She allowed her hand to be sought by every empty-handed and empty-headed and hollow-hearted prince or noble in Europe, determined that each in his turn should go empty away; and so she played off princes against her own people, until the course of years had left no doubt that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... marriage has changed you a little?" asked Alice. "It usually does. It changed me from an empty-headed little fool to a woman with oh, such a tremendous desire to ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... a respectable democratic newspaper,[59] "is the politician. Of all the privileged beings who have ever governed us he is the worst. In that, however, there is nothing surprising ... he is not only amoral, but incompetent by definition. And it is this empty-headed individual who is intrusted with the task of settling problems with the very rudiments of which he is unacquainted." Another French journal[60] wrote: "In truth it is a misfortune that the leaders of the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... any of my affairs, unless I looked after them pretty sharp myself; and as for girls, the dear Lord knows they need a legion apiece to look after them. What with roystering fellows and smooth-tongued gallants, and with silly, empty-headed hussies like that Giulietta, one has much ado to keep the best of them straight. Agnes is one of the best, too,—a well-brought up, pious, obedient girl, and industrious as a bee. Happy is the husband who gets her. I would I knew a man good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... unconversant^. uninformed, uncultivated, unversed, uninstructed, untaught, uninitiated, untutored, unschooled, misguided, unenlightened; Philistine; behind the age. shallow, superficial, green, rude, empty, half-learned, illiterate; unread, uninformed, uneducated, unlearned, unlettered, unbookish; empty-headed, dizzy, wooly-headed; pedantic; in the dark; benighted, belated; blinded, blindfolded; hoodwinked; misinformed; au bout de son latin, at the end of his tether, at fault; at sea &c (uncertain) 475; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the new teacher with all the might that her pinched little twelve-year-old body could bring to bear. She saw only the snippish, opinionated, young peacock, and the self-assurance which came from the empty-headed ability to tie a ribbon well. She was so occupied with resenting the young teacher's feeling of vast superiority that she failed to understand, as did the Farnshaw child, that along with all that vainglorious assumption went a real knowledge of some ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... "An empty-headed man, or one who always doubts and argues, would be useless," he replied sharply. "You shall come ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... empty-headed, and venomous little abortion of a man, I have no words to signify my contempt. By the governors of this charity I leave thy conduct to be judged; but until they meet, thou shalt not pollute and contaminate the air of this school by thy ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... curse, according as you have developed or starved your powers of mind. It may be that you find little pleasure in your steady reading, and see no immediate results from it; never mind, read on, lest you become in middle life one of those amiable, empty-headed women who can give neither help, nor comfort, nor advice, worth the taking. How many old maids, and young maids too, tied by home duties, allowed their minds to get thin and empty: when, at last, they were set free they were silly and inconsequent; no work requiring thought and ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Nance shone forth in all the silvery light of her resplendent genius. Read the pages of the old play in unsympathetic mood and they may look musty and worm-eaten, but imagine Oldfield as the sprightly Lady Betty Modish, the elegant Wilks as Sir Charles Easy, and Cibber[A] himself in the empty-headed role of Lord Foppington, and, presto! everything is changed. The yellow leaves are white and fresh, the words stand out clear and distinct, and it takes but a slight flight of fancy to hear the dingy auditorium of Drury ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... appeared before the Tribunal; they were all alike, these empty-headed, opinionated soldiers with the brains of a sparrow in an ox's skull. This particular commander was pretty nearly as ignorant of the sieges and battles of his own campaign as the magistrates who were questioning him; both sides, prosecution and defence, were lost in ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... word. Then she was somewhat High-Church in her notions, and used to go up every Wednesday and Friday to the chapel in the hills, where Lancelot had met her, for an hour's mystic devotion, set off by a little graceful asceticism. As for Lancelot, she never thought of him but as an empty-headed fox-hunter who had met with his deserts; and the brilliant accounts which the all smoothing colonel gave at dinner of Lancelot's physical well doing and agreeable conversation only made her set him down the sooner as a twin ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... engrossed in Griffiths, he suddenly hated her. He saw now why she and Griffiths loved one another, Griffiths was stupid, oh so stupid! he had known that all along, but had shut his eyes to it, stupid and empty-headed: that charm of his concealed an utter selfishness; he was willing to sacrifice anyone to his appetites. And how inane was the life he led, lounging about bars and drinking in music halls, wandering from ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... as Mr. Landis unlaced his shoes and his wife took off her white Mennonite cap and combed her hair for the night, that mild man sputtered and stormed. All the gentle acquiescence was fallen from him. "That empty-headed doll has got our Mart just wrapped round her finger! All she can say is ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... "for I am absolutely exhausted now. It was a terrible thing to keep thinking about, and I could not have fought it out any longer! There were extenuating circumstances, I suppose. I was a spoiled little empty-headed girl; the girls all about me were reckless in everyway; I did not know the boundary-line, or dream that it mattered very much, so long as no one knew! My mother had been unhappy in my childhood, and used ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... to Shirley she had condescended to give the latter a supercilious nod. Her conversation was generally of the silly, vacuous sort, concerning chiefly new dresses or bonnets, and Shirley at once read her character—frivolous, amusement-loving, empty-headed, irresponsible—just the kind of girl to do something foolish without weighing the consequences. After chatting a few moments with Mrs. Ryder she would usually vanish, and one day, after one of these mysterious disappearances, Shirley happened to pass the library and caught sight of her and ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... speech Yussuf Dakmar laughed with great delight. 'Better late than never!' said he. 'Better to think of a wise precaution now than not at all! But oh, ye are an empty-headed crew!' he told them. 'I pity the conspiracy that had no better planning than ye would make for it without my fore thought! I thought of this long ago! I sent a message to Damascus, begging that a date be ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... is possible for a man ever to thoroughly understand a woman?" he asked, with a retrospective slowness, directed, I was sure, towards that empty-headed sweetheart ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... said. "If I were you, I should try. You will be happier—far happier than if you attempt to use her for your own ends, as a contributor to your comfort and an auxiliary to your career. I was afraid—I confess it—that you had married an aspiring, simpering and empty-headed provincial like that Mrs. George Hutchins' whom I met once, and who would sell her soul to be at my table. Well, you escaped that, and you may thank God for it. You've got ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Freda frowning perceptibly, 'such an empty-headed, insipid idiot would be dear at ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... read them wrong side upwards, or else, say there never was a fact at all. Nothing delights a true blockhead so much as to prove a negative;—to show that everybody has been wrong. Fancy the delicious sensation, to an empty-headed creature, of fancying for a moment that he has emptied everybody else's head as well as his own! nay, that, for once, his own hollow bottle of a head has had the best of other bottles, and has been first empty;—first ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... thundered Doctor Hugh. "Of all the foolish notions, that is the worst. This comes from talking foolish clatter with that empty-headed silly little chit last night. The babbling brook must have been named ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... "give me leave to say that I admire Miss Sherwood, and that I shall think it a crying shame if so beautiful and intelligent a girl is suffered to fall into the clutches of this stupid baronet who is laying siege to her—this pompous, empty-headed Sir Frederic Beaumantle." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... and sensual too. I despise him. He would never have been more than an empty-headed pleasure-seeker. With that wife he could have become anything you please. The best thing he did was his flight into everlasting obscurity, and that he owed to the simple, upright, strong-hearted woman who nourished him in his despair. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... my face in my hands. I—successful? Yes, success had been mine; but success was failure—naught else—failure, absolute and unmitigated! I had lost my wife and family, and my home had become the resort of a crew of empty-headed coxcombs. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... never recovered from it. His whole soul was wrapped up in his only son, of whose abilities he had the most extravagant estimate and hope. All the evidence goes to show that Richard Burke was one of the most presumptuous and empty-headed of human beings. "He is the most impudent and opiniative fellow I ever knew," said Wolfe Tone. Gilbert Elliot, a very different man, gives the same account. "Burke," he says, describing a dinner party ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... substantial? He poses, to be sure, as a depreciator of woman. "Just like a woman," "women's frivolity," "useless little feminine trinkets," are phrases always on his lips. But watch his caressing expression as he listens to the chatter of Cousin Thisbe, the most empty-headed little creature who ever wore glowing cheeks and bright curls. Let anybody get into trouble with his wife or sweetheart, and my uncle straightway takes up the cudgels for the lady. The merits of the case don't matter: a lady is always right, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... boys! what materials for a wife do you think you will get out of the empty-headed coquettes you are raving and tearing your hair about. Oh! yes, she is very handsome, and she dresses with exquisite taste (the result of devoting the whole of her heart, mind and soul to the subject, and never allowing her thoughts to be distracted from it by any ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... few seconds, and then shook hands. Had the boy known as much of that gentleman as the reader does, he would probably have displayed considerably more interest in his new acquaintance than he did. As it was, he would have been glad of an excuse to avoid shaking hands with either him or his empty-headed companion, Mr Pillans. He went through the ceremony as stiffly as possible, and then followed the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... gone out of my mind. Well, it's an old story: I was so bored that I got into an affair with a singer. Everyone was enthusiastic about her, the devil only knows why; to my thinking she was—what shall I say?—an ordinary, commonplace creature, like lots of others. The hussy was empty-headed, ill-tempered, greedy, and what's more, she was ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... empty-headed people, she was quick to lose her temper. "Spots indeed! I'd have you know that I haven't any spots. I'm a speckled beauty—that's what I am. And if you don't believe it you can ask ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... decline and fall? Conjecture was keen, but investigation was difficult. Father Goriot was not communicative; in the sham countess' phrase he was "a curmudgeon." Empty-headed people who babble about their own affairs because they have nothing else to occupy them, naturally conclude that if people say nothing of their doings it is because their doings will not bear being talked about; so the highly ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... there were two Officials. They were both empty-headed, and so they found themselves one day suddenly transported to an uninhabited isle, as ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... that all this refined simplicity and nobility and wit and personal dignity might possibly be no more than an exquisite artistic polish. The majority of the guests—who were somewhat empty-headed, after all, in spite of their aristocratic bearing—never guessed, in their self-satisfied composure, that much of their superiority was mere veneer, which indeed they had ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and eight years ago he had been made sergeant-major, Wegstetten getting his battery on the self-same day. Nowadays any young fool of a gunner might be made bombardier in a year, in another six months corporal, and then be set to teach others. Raw, empty-headed fellows that only thought of their own comfort, and disappeared from barracks the moment their time of service had expired, without leaving a trace behind. Chaps without the least pride or interest in the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... in such a rampaging hurry to get in—being as lazy as he's empty-headed—takes after Gwendoline in that—if he hadn't some excellent reason for wishing to take possession: and depend upon it, the reason is that he wants to get hold of something or other that's Harold's. But he sha'n't if I can help it; and, thank my stars, I'm a dour woman to reckon with. If he comes, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... beautiful face was but a transparent mask of a deformed, dwarfed, contemptible little soul was speedily made evident. The cream and a silly flirtation with her empty-headed attendant—a pallid youth who parted his hair like a girl and had not other parts worth naming—absorbed her wholly, and the exquisite symphony was no more to her than an annoying din which made it difficult to hear her companion's compliments that were as sweet, heavy, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... DICKENS, and THACKERAY, rolled into one; nor of artists who sneer at TITIAN; nor of actors who hold GARRICK to be absurdly overrated. Space would fail me, and patience you. But let me just for a brief moment call to your mind ROLAND PRETTYMAN. Upon my soul, I think ROLAND the most empty-headed fribble, the most affected coxcomb, and the most conceited noodle in the whole world. He was decently good-looking once, and he had a pretty knack of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various |
