"Fool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he spluttered. "Have you gone mad, Burton? What's come to you since the morning? Have you changed into a blithering fool, ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not to do this or that. Sometimes they say the same word over and over again, many times. It was that way when I went out on the battlefield to help Captain Herrick. As I ran along, stumbling over the dead and wounded, I heard these voices crying out: 'Fool! Fool! Don't do it! You mustn't do it! You're a coward! You know you're a coward! You're going to be killed! You're a little fool ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... to write," said the inkstand. "It was a hit at you for your conceit. Strange that you cannot see that people make a fool of you! I gave you that hit pretty cleverly. I confess, though, it was ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... humane; never to scold, or storm, or bully; and to avoid like a pestilence such brutality as that of the Saturday Review when it said that something or another was "eminently worthy of a great nation," and to disparage it "eminently worthy of a great fool." He laid it down as a "precious truth" that one's effectiveness depends upon "the power of persuasion, of charm; that without this all fury, energy, reasoning power, acquirement, are thrown away and only ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... obtained a letter of introduction from Governor Gerry to Madison, to whom he offered to divulge the whole conspiracy, of which he had been the head and soul, for a certain sum of money. Madison gave him $50,000, and the swindler embarked for France. There is but little doubt that Henry made a fool of the Governor of Canada, and completely overreached the President. The publication of the correspondence, however, increased the hatred both against the Federalists and the English nation." [The object President Madison had in view.] (Headley's ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... watched, from the ship a boat pushed out, and then landed on the sand of the Cove a wonderful company in cocked hats of gold lace, plush breeches of red, and shoes with diamond buckles. The leader of them was a little man with a vast cocked hat and a splendid sword all studded with jewels. The fool, peering over the hedge, saw him give orders to his men, and then walk, alone, up the little winding path, to the cliff-top. Straight up the path he came, then right past the fool himself, standing at last upon the ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... wanted to marry me; he knew it all, and took the hundred pounds and said it would make no difference. He'd love you just the same, he said, and never throw it up to me; and that's why I married Joe. Oh, what a fool I was, to be sure! But it can't be helped now, and it's no use saying more about it. Now go to bed, Fan, and forget all I've said ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... purpose; so thou hast caused the sacred prince to go forth once and not return again! No questioning the joy you feel! Having done ill you now enjoy the fruit; better far to dwell with an enemy of wisdom, than work with one who, while a fool, professes friendship. Openly professing sweetness and light, inwardly a scheming and destructive enemy. And now this royal and kingly house, in one short morn is crushed and ruined! All these fair and ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... a night as this—! Why, but a moment since you swore it was too cold! Besides, at the last tavern that we visited that fool of a Barton took my sword in jest. (Darkly.) He thought 'twas a rare bit of nonsense; but 'tis one I'll make him pay for! I'll not go roaming without ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... Didn't she know that a schooner was not a circus ring? If she were such a fool Poleski should have taught her better before bringing her ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan' still long enough for a man to hit him. I (hic !) I can't 'ford to fool away any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... way. "Do you deny that you haven't been instrumental in upsetting the whole college with those fool elections?" ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... me that you could have got yourself skeered like this, Master Will, I should have told him he was a fool. But there, you couldn't help it, I s'pose. It was that diving as ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... it all, going out without your hat and standing there like a silly fool cleaning that bit of paper. I wonder what the lightermen ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... of his esteem of me. Thence, and did the same to Sir H. Bennet, who did the like to me very fully, and did give me all his letters lately come from hence for me to read, which I returned in the afternoon to him. Thence to Mrs. Martin, who, though her husband is gone away, as he writes, like a fool into France, yet is as simple and wanton as ever she was, with much I made myself merry and away. So to my Lord Peterborough's; where Povy, Creed, Williamson, Auditor Beale, and myself, and mighty merry to see how plainly my Lord and Povy did abuse one another about ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... member of the Supreme Court of Charcas, had never been before in Paraguay, and therefore resolved to treat the Bishop (as Don Gregorio had done) with every respect due to his station. The Bishop wanted nothing better, and saw at once he had another fool to deal with. Therefore he made no secret of his intention of not complying with the citation of the court at Charcas, and set himself at once to preach against the Jesuits, and stir up popular resentment against them. Unluckily, proof was wanting of the crimes he alleged they had committed, so he ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... doing so was by doing his work as a clerk in the Post Office. Everybody admitted that it would not be becoming that a Duke should be a clerk in the Post Office. It would be so unbecoming, he declared, that he doubted whether any man could be found brave enough to go through the world with such a fool's cap on his head. At any rate he had no such courage. Moreover, no Englishman, as he had been told, could at his own will and pleasure call himself by a foreign title. It was his pleasure to be an Englishman. He had always been an Englishman. As an inhabitant ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... and well- read, and I had even forgotten my Latin, one may say, completely. As to appearance' (the doctor looked himself over with a smile) 'I am nothing to boast of there either. But God Almighty did not make me a fool; I don't take black for white; I know a thing or two; I could see very clearly, for instance, that Alexandra Andreevna—that was her name—did not feel love for me, but had a friendly, so to say, inclination—a respect ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... he opened deprecatory palms. "Hard to say.... I'm afraid I should prove a fatuous fool in George's esteem equally with old Hajj. I'm sure that, like him, the sunset of my Day would see me proscribed, a price ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... man, in a rage, upbraided her with being a blinded fool, and asked her whether she did not know that the world was finite and limited, whilst what the convent ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to keep out of the hands of this Fool the quarrel of the great saints and of the great blasphemers. He will do to religion what he will do to art; mix up all the colours on your palette into the colour of mud: and then say that only the purified eyes ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... conceded that there was the same right and reason to employ it against Kentucky's neutrality as against South Carolina's secession. But for the neutrality-mongers to say this—were they generously striving to fool themselves also? And, then, in hearing, as they had been for weeks, of the morning and evening guns of "Camp Dick Robinson," to speak of the Confederates having "first set foot upon our soil." Is it an unfair construction of such conduct, to suppose that the men guilty of ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... wonder of her look all day. He began to ponder whether he had been right in persistently putting her out of his life as he had done. Bits of her own sentences came to him with new meaning and he wondered after all if he had not been a fool. Perhaps he might have won her. Perhaps God had really sent her to him to be his life companion, and he had been ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... la Peyrade, "I am certain now she has not left Paris, and is not avoiding me. Most probably, she wants to break utterly with the Thuilliers, and so has invented this journey. Fool that I am! no doubt there's a letter waiting for me at home, explaining ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the chauffeur rejoined. "If a man works with a plow instead of a screwdriver, it doesn't follow that his mind is as vacant as a cow that stands stockstill in the middle of the road to show you that you can't fool her into thinking that radiators are ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... you—I've said that—I liked you from the first. But I was straight enough. Liked you, of course—but I had no idea, not the slightest.... Thought it fun to play the fool, flirt just a bit. But it was you, ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... right? Of course I would not be guided by anything he might say; but still it may be well that Mr Harding should see the bishop. It would be foolish to let the thing slip through our fingers because Mrs Bold is determined to make a fool ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of a scrub cow when separated from her calf. They gave him jobs for himself, which he accomplished fairly well, aided by a stock horse of superhuman intelligence, which naturally knew far more of the work than its rider could hope to do. Bob confided to Tommy that never had he felt so complete a fool as when he rode forth for the first time to cut out a bullock alone under the eyes of ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... must not dwell on that happy hour, much as I would love to. We who are older may laugh at "Love's young dream," and grow cynical about its transitory nature. We may say that lovers live in a fool's paradise, and that the dream of lovers ends in the tragedies of later years. Still, there's nothing sweeter or purer on God's green earth than the love of a clean-minded honest lad for the maid he has chosen from all others. It keeps the world ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... met) drew his picture twice: the first the King has; the other is yet in the custody of his (Cooper's) widowe; but he (Cowper) gave it indeed to me (and I promised I would give it to the archives at Oxon), but I, like a fool, did not take possession of it, for something of the garment was not quite finished, and he died, I being ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... 'cause I was fool enough to tumble down and crack my leg? Me, an old woodman, that'd ought to have some sense. An' Eunice! Why, 'twould scare Eunice out of a year's growth to see me fetched home 'stead of walkin' there on my own pins. Half a loaf's better'n no ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... brother Zeke, narrow and cold, the event might have been different. But Zeke was there to keep his "sense of duty" strong. And that he might nerve himself and hide and put down any tendency to be a "soft-hearted fool"—a tendency that threatened to grow as he looked at the girl—the child—he assumed the roughest manner he ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... younger sister of the too-youthful Lady Anne. When Lady Anne rejoined her sister and their bosom friend, Miss Seymour, after the disconcerting interview with Carleton, she explained her tears by saying they were due to her having been 'obliged to refuse the best man on earth.' 'The more fool you!' answered the younger sister, Lady Maria, then just eighteen, 'I only wish he had given me the chance!' There, for the time, the matter ended. Carleton went back to his official duties in furtherance ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... father. I think the woman is neither of God nor Satan; but that she speaks of her own heart, and of Dr. Bocking's. I believe they are a couple of knaves—clever knaves, I will grant, though perhaps the woman is something of a fool too; for she deceives persons as wise even as Mr. Carleton here by speaking of shrift and the like; and so she does the priests' will, and hopes to get gain for them and herself. I am not alone in thinking this—there are many in ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... into his head. She appeared to be frankly and unfeignedly interested in the gambols of the porpoises, laughing heartily from time to time; and altogether seemed so absolutely happy and free from care that Leslie, while he could have kicked himself for being such a fool, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Don't be a confounded fool. This can be arranged. We can't give over the wine this year, but at least we can improve the ginger beer. Let all the ginger beer be extracted from ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the father, after he was gone—"maybe that fool of a boy is sarry for his behavior. It's many a day since I knew him to go to mass of his own accord. It's a good sign, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the rock upon which all our dreams were wrecked. My father would but reply sourly to any question I might venture that my fair Jeanette was the ward of a friend who, on his death-bed, had bequeathed her to his clemency—the fool!" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... a tone that rasped his very soul, "I am nobody's fool. I may not know much about bookkeeping and accounting, but I can add—and two and two, when the same man but different women compose each two, do not make four, according to my arithmetic, but three, from which,"—she finished almost hysterically ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... that she has got such a son, and she will send up into heaven another prayer for you, which I would rather have than all the gold of Ophir. Now, go back to your store, and do all your duties most faithfully and punctually without lying. If your employer is not a fool, he will like you the better for it, and prize you the more, for he will at once see that he has got one clerk on whose truthfulness he can depend. But if the man is as silly as he is unconscientious, he will probably dismiss you before long. After that, ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... leapt upon the fleetest steed and rode until my fever cooled; and then—when I had thee once more, I could not keep from thee longer; I resolved upon this plan that I might be with thee, and ride by thy side. And thou dost murder me outright. Thou dost kill me, Kate! I was a fool to undertake it, I know; but I thought of two whole days I should be separated from thee and felt I could not bear to wait. Thy words, Kate, were so sweet. Kate, come to me once more and see how loving I can be. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... nervous sort which is thrown off its balance by the slightest shock. His frame trembled as he put on his overcoat and hat; and, when he looked in the mirror, he noticed that his face was paler than usual, and his eyes were glassy. "Pooh! what a sensitive fool I am!" said he. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Fadlallah wept with joy; and, returning to the city, announced his approaching marriage to his friends. According to custom, they expressed civil surprise to his face; but, when his back was turned, they whispered that he was an old fool, and had been the dupe ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... matter. To lose Graham's business was unthinkable, to keep out of this troublesome temperance campaign seemed impossible. One moment he felt he must come out right boldly for the cause, the next he called himself a fool, for letting such a doubtful thing stand in the way of his ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... delivered privately to her. Let any young wife of less than a year's disenchantment put herself in Mrs. Truscott's place and say what she would have done. Of course, dear madam, I hear you say, vous autres, "She needn't have made such a fool of herself! She might have explained or—something!" I quite agree with you. That is what all of us think who have survived the delirium of the honeymoon, that mielle de la lune-acy which all of us must encounter as our ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... you will find to your cost. You fool, you would have it and you have got it. Who asked you to cross my path? If you had left me alone I would not ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he answerde, that he was gret Lord y now, and wel in pees, and hadde y nowghe of worldly ricchesse: and therfore he wolde wisshe non other thing, but the body of that faire lady, to have it at his wille. And sche answerde him, that he knew not what he asked; and seyde, that he was a fool, to desire that he myghte not have; for sche seyde, that he scholde not aske, but erthely thing: for sche was non erthely thing, but a gostly thing. And the kyng seyde, that he ne wolde asken non other thing. And the lady answerde, sythe that I may not withdrawe zou ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... wasn't a 'fool thing' when Mary and Nancy Ellen, and the older girls wanted to go. You even let Mary ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "Ah yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them. No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... together of men and women for the purpose of eating, this clatter of knives and forks, is barbarous. What can be more horrible than to see and hear a person talking with his mouth full? But Landor has strange notions, has he not, Giallo? In fact Padrone is a fool if we may believe what folks say. Once, while walking near my villa at Fiesole, I overheard quite a flattering remark about myself, made by one contadino to another. My beloved countrymen had evidently been the subject of conversation, and, as the two fellows approached my grounds, one of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... sensitive idiots—the ruthless adventurer—the ogre with a future. That was a parrot cry, Miss Moorsom. I don't think that the greatest fool of them all ever dared hint such a stupid thing of me that I killed men for nothing. No, I had noticed this man in a hotel. He had come from up country I was told, and was doing nothing. I saw him sitting ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... suppose. Every hour convinced me that the two understood each other, not merely from the little asides and confidences they kept exchanging, but even more so from the way Miss Cullen would take his lordship down occasionally. Yet, like a fool, the more I saw to confirm my first diagnosis, the more I found myself dwelling on the dimples at the corners of Miss Cullen's mouth, the bewitching uplift of her upper lip, the runaway curls about her neck, and the curves and color of ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... This fool here has kept the knowledge from me until this very moment, and I have only just managed to drag the information from him. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... diverted from the main issue—the bridegroom's face had fascinated me. The self-conscious male is always at a disadvantage during grotesquely splendid buffooneries of this kind; and never, in all my life, have I seen a man looking such a sorry fool as this individual, never; especially during the perambulation, when his absurd crown was supported on his head, from behind, by the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... "Art thou a fool, Pierre?" said his mother, sharply. "Thou'rt ready enough with excuses, I'll warrant, for thy own purposes: invent one now. It matters not, so that thou bring her here." And Pierre, reassured by this maternal carte blanche ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... after a man dies I could act intelligently." He shot an ugly look at Graylock: "I don't know about you, either. You're a rat. But you might fool me at that. You might be repentant. And in that case you'd get away—if it's true that the eleventh hour is not too late.... If it's true that Christ is merciful.... So I'll take no chances of a getaway. You might fool me—one way or another—if ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... strongest manner the pain which he had felt at seeing sentiments attributed to him by Fyshe Palmer, in his speech at the Bedford meeting, which he never entertained, and which if he had, he trusts he never should have been fool enough ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... and to answer which he must commit himself irrevocably and publicly to more than he was prepared for. Every one is familiar with the proverbial distribution of parts in the asking and the answering of questions; but when the asker is no fool, but one of the sharpest-witted of mankind, asking with little consideration for the condition or the wishes of the answerer, with great power to force the answer he wants, and with no great tenderness ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... either. It's generally the way when friends fall out. It seems also that Brutus thinks that Cassius refused to lend him a few quid to pay his legions, and, you know, it's an unpardonable crime for one mate to refuse another a few quid when he's in a hole; but it seems that the messenger was but a fool who brought Cassius's answer back. It is generally the messenger who is to blame, when friends make it up after a quarrel that was all their own fault. Messengers had an uncomfortable time in those days, as witness the case of the base slave who had ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... get up there and watch the fool women cry for their men." It was none other than Father Le Claire's form before me, but this man's voice was never that soft French tone of the good man's—low and musical, matching his kindly eyes and sweet smile. As the three slipped ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Whenever the man of humour meddles with these things, he is astonished to find that in all the great feelings of their nature the mass of mankind always think and act aright; that they are ready enough to laugh, but that they are quite as ready to drive away, with indignation and contempt, the light fool who comes with the feather of wit to crumble the bulwarks of truth, and to beat down the Temples of God. We count over the pious spirits of the world, the beautiful writers, the great statesmen, all who have invented subtlely, who have thought deeply, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Conversation, to which Advantages he had a Shape and Manner peculiarly graceful. Mr. Triplett, who is a Woman's Man, seem'd to hear me with Patience enough commend the Qualities of his Mind: He never heard indeed but that he was a very honest Man, and no Fool; but for a fine Gentleman, he must ask Pardon. Upon no other Foundation than this, Mr. Triplett took occasion to give the Gentleman's Pedigree, by what Methods some part of the Estate was acquired, how much it was beholden to a Marriage for the present Circumstances of it: After all, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... hunted like a partridge on the mountains. May God deliver him, and confound his enemies!—Zoons, Mark Everard, I can fool it no longer. Do you not remember, that at the Lincoln's-Inn gambols—though you did not mingle much in them, I think—I used always to play as well as any of them when it came to the action, but they could never get me to rehearse conformably. It's the same ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... she said; "for the last half-hour we have talked of nothing but food. I couldn't look at the pink after-glow of the sunset because it reminded me of strawberry fool, and Lord Lindfield nearly burst into tears because there was a cloud shaped like a fish. And we had no tea, you see, because we were missing ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... course of our voyage together did I allow the Kentucky Giant to suppose I was speculating on his stature, or the Bearded Lady to surmise that I wished to peep under the handkerchief which muffled the lower part of her face. "And the more fool you," says some cynic. (Faugh, those cynics, I hate 'em!) Don't you know, sir, that a man of genius is pleased to have his genius recognized; that a beauty likes to be admired; that an actor likes to be applauded; that stout old Wellington himself was pleased, and smiled when the people ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as a fool," the plans of God came to being defeated by human enterprise is illustrated by unquestioned facts. The fact of medieval exploration, colonization, and even evangelization in North America seems now to have emerged from the region of fanciful conjecture into that of history. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Walker hearn Dave talkin' dis kine er fool-talk, en w'en he seed how Dave wuz 'mencin' ter git behine in his wuk, en w'en he ax' de niggers en dey tole 'im how Dave be'n gwine on, he 'lowed he reckon' he'd punish' Dave ernuff, en it mou't do mo' harm dan good fer ter ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... It takes a stiff emetic to get all that money off a fellow's stomach; and it's like parting with a tooth to give up a bank-note. Of course you're ill, but that's no sign of innocence, and I'm no fool. You had better give the thing ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... said, and more too, Amelie. Listen! The Intendant has made love to me with pointed gallantry that could have no other meaning but that he honorably sought my hand. He has made me talked of and hated by my own sex, who envied his preference of me. I was living in the most gorgeous of fool's paradises, when a bird brought to my ear the astounding news that a woman, beautiful as Diana, had been found in the forest of Beaumanoir by some Hurons of Lorette, who were out hunting with the Intendant. She was accompanied by a few Indians ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... came to the conclusion that the writer of Mandeville's relation was a profound liar, and that he was the Liege Professor of Medicine, John of Burgundy or a la Barbe. He adds: "If, in the matter of literary honesty, John a Beard was a bit of a knave, he was very certainly no fool." ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a safe and prosperous voyage. Even the Hermit peered cautiously out from his cave, and waved an adieu with one claw. But his crafty eyes had a wistful expression as though he said to himself, "My what a fool I was to ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... I said, "but it'll come off. Do you happen to remember a story of Tolstoi's called Ivan the Fool'?" ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... familiar with the history of that age comes to the chapter with a previous indignation, knowing what sort of proof he has to expect. This indignation is not likely to be mitigated by what he will there find. Because some one madman, fool, or scoundrel makes a monstrous proposal—which dies of itself unsupported, and is in violent contrast to all the acts and the temper of those times, —this is to sully the character of the parliament and three-fourths ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... good hut for himself. For some time the black man said nothing, at last he muttered, "Ay, ay, white fellow think it best that-a-way. Black fellow think it best that-a-way." A white man rudely answered, "Then black fellow is a fool." Upon hearing this, the black fellow, quite affronted, got up, and folding his blanket round him, walked out of the hut. How much pride there is in the heart of man! Even a savage thinks a great deal of his own wisdom, and cannot bear to be ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... well! I've lost my place because I was a fool, and worse than a fool! That Grand View business is all over town. More than one fellow has said 'Grand View' to me and snickered. It's got around worse than the thing was, too! Gus Morey told me he heard we'd started to steal the best horse and buggy in Conover's stables ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... other sports besides those for men," answered Gerald, colouring indignantly: "my taste is confined to amusements in which he is but a fool who seeks companionship; and if you could read character better, my wise brother, you would know that the bold rover is ever less idle and more ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when he had done laughing, in a perfectly natural voice. "I have seen some frightened fools before, but never a fool so frightened. Tell me, honest blockhead, did you ever hear such a name ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... thankfully, in its sense of two hundred years, the compliment paid to Balzac; but I would add that personally he seems to me to have shown greater wings of mind than any artist that ever lived. I am aware that this last statement will make many cry "fool" and hiss "Shakespeare!" But I am not putting forward these criticisms axiomatically, but only as the expressions of an individual taste, and interesting so far as they reveal to the reader the different developments and the progress of my mind. It might ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... been rarely drubbed and roundly basted, and my poor back and sides are most womanishly tender. I go abroad no more without Excalibur." He tapped his sword hilt as he spoke. Huguette glared fiercely up at him. "Will it teach you not to play the fool again?" asked, with a vicious ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... were ill, if you had a headache, because you seemed so dull and so unlike yourself? And did that person time after time return to the charge, till you would have liked to poison him? There is nothing more disagreeable, and few things more mischievous, than a well-meaning, meddling fool. And where there was no special intention, good or bad, towards yourself, you have known people make you uncomfortable through the simple exhibition to you, and pressure upon you, of their own inherent disagreeableness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... reason, Stupid!" he said to the moth, as it flew away. "A man goes and gets a girl to care for him, and then he goes and plays some fool trick—like as not this chap had his sheet tied—and leaves her alone the rest of her life. Just look at this sweet old angel, will you? it's a shame. No, sir, no woman in mine, ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... pay great attention to what I am going to say to you. This little fool of a Nisida persists in wanting me to speak to her father. I made her believe that I was going away this evening to fetch my papers. There is no time to lose. They know you very well at the fisherman's. You will pour this liquid into their wine; your life will answer for your not ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thinking nothing about Hart's nephew—till he let off a yell and sung out: "That's the man held the coach up! Get a bead on him with your guns!" And he got his own gun out—and like enough would a-done some fool thing with it if Santa Fe Charley, who was right by him, hadn't smacked him and jerked it out of ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... supporter of decency and law, come before us as the only alternatives for our choice; the antithesis is never resolved; and, though in the end the cynic is destroyed by a coup de theatre, the fool in all his foolishness still confronts us ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... his villa at Ostia. But the Emperor Caligula, having duly enjoyed the profits derived from his favourite's extortions, hurled anathema and the full weight of his displeasure on the man who had been not only fool enough to be found out, but who had compromised the popularity of the Caesar in the eyes of the people and of the army. Twenty-four hours later the imperial decree went forth that the disgraced censor must end his days in any ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... it. Do you think I'm a fool? It will keep me from starving. But I want something else in life than to be ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the sketch, and, wrapping the cord once (or twice if it be long enough) round the arms, pretty tightly, pass the longest end in between the arms as shown in the figure, and tie quite tightly. If you are quick in tying the common "tom-fool's knot," well known to every sailor, it is still better for the purpose. Put the prisoner's hands one within each loop, then draw tightly the running ends, and knot ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... given some account. He had heard that I was on the camp-ground in pursuit of religion, and had come to find me out. "Daniel," he said, addressing me by my Christian name, "what are you doing here? Don't make a fool of yourself." To which I answered, that I had got to be just such a fool as I had long wanted to be; and I took him by the arm, and endeavored to prevail upon him to kneel down and allow us to pray ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... for you it will mean the dulness of a long engagement, and the anomalous position of an engaged girl without her rightful protector. It will mean that your position in society will be quite different—that half the world will pity you, while the other half thinks you—well, a fool ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... "What kind of a fool stunt is this?" growled Tom, who, with his comrades, had been in the thick of the fight. "We had it all over those fellows, even if they were two or three times as many, and here we are retreating, when we ought to ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... called you, because you have come into my house and practiced a continuous and protracted deceit. You have abused the freedom granted you as a guest to try to win my daughter away from everything worth holding to and everything she has been taught. I was a blind fool. I was a watchman fallen asleep at the gate—a sentry unfaithful at his post." The voice of the minister settled into a clearer coherence as he went on in deep bitterness. "You say I have accused you sternly. I am also accusing myself sternly—but now the scales have fallen ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... jokers, Anne turned around and directed a glance toward her favorites, which announced that she delivered up the coadjutor to their tender mercies. Immediately the wits of the court plunged into satire. Nogent-Beautin, the fool of the court, exclaimed that "the queen was very happy to have the succor of religion at such a moment." This caused a universal burst of laughter. The Count de Villeroy said that "he did not know how any fear could be entertained for ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... what sweetness I have to gall to hear the remarks of some of my neighbors. When we heard at first that he was dead, one of my townsmen observed that 'he dieth as the fool dieth,' which, for an instant, suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said, disparagingly, that he threw his life away because he resisted the Government. Which way have they thrown ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... Fool, In Power of others, never in my own, Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than Half: O dark! dark! dark! amid the Blaze of Noon: Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a lot this minute," said Priscilla, "for a pair of glasses. I can't think why I was such a fool as not to take ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... must be making of him, if he had been their dupe since the first day? Was it possible to make a fool of a man, of a worthy man, because his father had left him a little money? Why could one not see these things in people's souls, how was it that nothing revealed to upright hearts the deceits of infamous hearts, how was it that voices ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... anything about his half-formed plans to the minister or Mrs Hume, as he came home fully intending to do. So he turned homeward on the last afternoon; and as he walked he was saying to himself, with indignant contempt of his indecision, that after all he must be a poor creature, a fool, though he had never been in the way of ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... looking at her for a moment, and then said—"Lurine, I think you are a little fool. They owe you ever so much more than that. However, I must have the things," and he gave her back the paper with the caution—"Be sure you let no one see that, and be very certain that you get the right things." He walked with her as far as the corner ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... friend and colleague, Mr. Tom Hammond, the originator and late editor of 'The Courier,' was in the very act of explaining the wonderful, expected return of Christ (expected by him though scoffed at by myself) when he was 'caught up' from my very presence, and then I knew what a fool I had been to neglect God and ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... impulse which led the red caps to make a wreck of this grand old historical building. "Pull down the nest," they said, "and the birds will not come back." But I shudder when I think what "the red fool-fury of the Seine" has done and is believed capable of doing. I think nothing has so profoundly impressed me as the story of the precautions taken to preserve the Venus of Milo from the brutal hands of the mob. A little more violent access of fury, a little ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... needn't have worried a bit, for the bogey-man isn't a likely rival of any one. In fact, he isn't a man at all, but a System—just as impersonal as if he wrote his name, "Base Censor, Inc." Also, he is pretty well-nigh fool-proof and puncture-proof—which again removes him from consideration as ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces |
