"Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was married? What the dev—And you're actually asking me to tell her so too? Mary, are you insane? Embarrassed? What if she is embarrassed? And what do I care if—What? Sweet and pretty? Mary, don't be an idiot. Am I to improvise a wife, in my own house, because a stray girl may object to visiting a bachelor? Not if I know it. Not much." The Governor bristled with indignation. "Confound the girl, I'll—" At this point Mary, though portly, vanished like a vision of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... after them with concentrated irritation). Idiot! (The Strange Lady smiles sympathetically. He comes frowning down the room between the table and the fireplace, all his awkwardness gone now that ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... his own property were managed. But then he paid a proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education. Melrose's woods, with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser is, scientifically, only a species of idiot. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bellowing Klutchem? Don't you know that that idiot will have it all over the Street by nine o'clock to-morrow, unless he is ass enough to get scared, get out a warrant, and clap you into the Tombs before breakfast? O Colonel! How could you do a thing like this ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... understand," repeated the Princess impatiently. "I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... a blithering idiot of myself," interpolates Beauvayse. "If you'll go back and sit decently in your chair, instead of standing behind me rattlin' keys and coins in your pocket, and dropping hot cigar-ash on my head, I'll tell you how ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... crisis. I thought at first he was going to tell me that Blanche had carried out his prediction; but I presently saw that this was not where the shoe pinched; and, besides, I knew that mamma was watching her too closely. 'How can I have ever been such a dull-souled idiot?' he broke out, as soon as he had got into the room. 'I like to hear you say that,' I said, 'because it does n't seem to me that you have been at all wise.' 'You are cleverness, kindness, tact, in the most perfect form!' he went on. As a veracious historian I am bound to tell ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... eyes from the man coming down the trail. It was usually some good-natured idiot, with a predisposition to gabbling, that made most of the trouble in ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... with myself. Myself has caught up with me, God help me, and I am in its clutches. The time may come when you will try to race with self, my boy. Let me tell you, you will never win. You will tire yourself out, and make a damned idiot of yourself for nothing. I shall race again to-morrow. I never learn the lesson, but perhaps you can, you are young. Well, come along. Please be as quiet as you can when you go into the house. My sister may be asleep. She is perfectly well, ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... stick to the roads. It will sometimes happen to him to get invited—really invited—to an actual country house where genuine sport is carried on. Here, however, he will generally have brought with him his wrong gun, or his "idiot of a man" will have packed the wrong kind of cartridges, or his horse will have suddenly developed an unaccountable trick of refusing, which results in a crushed hat and a mud-stained coat for his rider. These little accidents will by no means dash his spirits, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... is it of ours?' said others. 'Let the idiot go,' and went away. But the rest gathered up stones and mud and threw at him. At last, when he was bruised and cut, the hunter crept away into the woods. And it was ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her name?—Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience, he delights in every small chicane. He is ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... nonsense, did he? I quite believe it. He's as good a chap as ever breathed, but his idiot of an uncle has stuffed his head with maggots. ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... jealousy. You do not know jealousy. Perhaps you are incapable of it. But permit me to tell you, Madame, that jealousy is one of the finest and most terrible emotions. And that is why I must speak to you. I cannot live and see you flirt so seriously with that old idiot. I cannot live." ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... will not dwell upon it. Those who saw the bride's face as she entered the carriage with her husband will never forget its expression of horror, disgust, and abject fear. A year later, the desired heir arrived, a microcephalous idiot, to whom a merciful providence allowed but eighteen months of life; and in due time, the August Prince himself was gathered to ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... I feel such raptures as since I have received this fortunate, this happy wound!—Yet why?—Is not her heart exactly what it was? It is. I should be an idiot not to perceive it is. Strange contradiction! Hopeless yet happy!—But it is a felicity of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... no!" replied Gelis. "Bonnard is an idiot!" Turning my head, I perceived that the shadow had reached the place where I was sitting. It was growing chilly, and I thought to myself what a fool I was to have remained sitting there, at the risk of getting rheumatism, just to listen to the impertinence ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... perfectly well, from men who had seen me, that I was alive, and waiting for the goods and men; but as for morality, he is evidently an idiot, and there being no law here except that of the dagger or musket, I had to sit down in great weakness, destitute of everything save a few barter cloths and beads, which I had taken the precaution to leave here in ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the golden acorns fell out of his pocket. So bright were they, they shone like sunbeams in the room. In spite of the fool's entreaties the brothers picked them up and gave them to their father, who hastened to present them to the king, telling him that his idiot son had gathered them in the wood. The king immediately sent a detachment of his guards to the forest to find the oak which bore golden acorns. But their efforts were fruitless, for, though they hunted in every nook and corner of the forest, they found not a ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... the two had met in Temple's household, and to whom he had written his Journal to Stella. During the last years of his life a brain disease, of which he had shown frequent symptoms, fastened its terrible hold upon Swift, and he became by turns an idiot and a madman. He died in 1745, and when his will was opened it was found that he had left all his property to found St. Patrick's Asylum for lunatics and incurables. It stands to-day as the most suggestive monument of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... never saw! The snow had pressed the branches down lower, hence my bumped head. Our fire was burning merrily and the heat kept the snow from in front. I scrambled out and poked up the fire; then, as it was only five o'clock, I went back to bed. And then I began to think how many kinds of idiot I was. Here I was thirty or forty miles from home, in the mountains where no one goes in the winter and where I knew the snow got to be ten or fifteen feet deep. But I could never see the good of moping, so I got up and got breakfast while Baby put her shoes on. We had our squirrels ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... wasn't it, Mrs. Gatewood? Think of it! A few days on shipboard and—and I asked her to marry me! . . . I don't blame her, after all, for letting me dangle. It was an excellent opportunity for her to study a rare species of idiot. She was justified and I am satisfied. Only, do call Jack off with a ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... son was a junior whip, had been the recipient, since the advent of the new Cabinet, of so much rejoicing over the final exclusion of "that vain old idiot, Alresford," from any further chances of muddling a public department, that Lady Selina's talk made her at once nervous and irritable. She was afraid of being indiscreet; yet she longed to put her visitor down. In her odd ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unreasonable to complain of his producing "Hamlet" in preference to Mr. Gilbert's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." Stevenson's "Macaire" may have all the literary quality that is claimed for it, although I personally think Stevenson was only making a delightful idiot of himself in it! Anyhow, it is frankly a burlesque, a skit, a satire on the real "Macaire." The Lyceum was not a burlesque house! Why should Henry have ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... ask me to do some work for them—to execute some forgeries, in fact. Of course I refused, and pretty bluntly, too, whereupon Hearn began to throw out vague hints as to what might happen if I made enemies of the gang, and to utter veiled, but quite intelligible, threats. You will say that I was an idiot not to send him packing, and threaten to hand over the whole gang to the police; but I was never a man of strong nerve, and I don't mind admitting that I was mortally afraid of that ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... eager to commit murder when I see a poor girl brought to ruin in this senseless way. Personally, it is a matter of utter indifference to me whether you marry Lida or go to the devil, but I must tell you that you are an idiot. If you had got one sound idea in your head, would you worry yourself and others so much merely because a young woman, free to pick and choose, had become the mistress of a man who was unworthy of her, and by following her sexual impulse had achieved ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... few minutes before my arrival the strange object had been found, with the boy whom I had first seen, wandering in the garden. He was apprehended for a thief, brought into the house, and not until Dr. Mayhew had been summoned, had it been suspected that the poor creature was an idiot. Commiseration then took the place of anger quickly, and all was anxiety and desire to know whence he had come, who he might be, and what his business was. He could not speak for himself, and the answers of the boy had been unsatisfactory and vague. When I entered the room, the doctor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... signifies the life of man? For ninety-nine and a half per cent. of every man's life is made up of these light nothings; and unless there is potential greatness in them, and they are of importance, then life is all 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' Small things make life; and if are small, then it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Pontefract, advancing towards his hostess, "awfully sorry, but that idiot Hendricks got a telephone message wrong, and I thought I couldn't come. So when I found out, I thought 'better late than never,' though I had dined. Please say 'better ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... lumbering idiot!" shouted Ted, as my eldest sister began to laugh hysterically, and the youngest, made a terrified dart ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... cried Serge, angrily. "You ugly old idiot, you! Whether it's men or wolves, you always would have the last bite. Come away, stupid! Come here!" he roared again, quite oblivious of the fact that even if the distance had not prevented the dog from hearing, the noise of the horses' beating hoofs would have ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... a plain idiot, Miss Edith," he said. "I was only fooling. It will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go with me to the movies, or anywhere else. We'll make it to-night, if that suits you, and I'll take a look through the neighborhood at noon and see ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... her own accord, leaving us to make friends with Wisdom if we can. Thus, cold and desolate, he had come to seek Wisdom at the banquet, and wondered if the skeleton were she. To eke out the company, the stewards had invited a distressed poet from his home in the almshouse, and a melancholy idiot from the street- corner. The latter had just the glimmering of sense that was sufficient to make him conscious of a vacancy, which the poor fellow, all his life long, had mistily sought to fill up with intelligence, ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I came to quarter myself on Madame Barbiere and her idiot son, and how I ultimately learned from the lips of the latter the strange story of his own immediate fall from reason and the dear ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... mother and watch his uncle Jonah, also felt it his duty to stay and to sit chiefly in the kitchen to give his uncle company. Young Cranch was not exactly the balancing point between the wit and the idiot,—verging slightly towards the latter type, and squinting so as to leave everything in doubt about his sentiments except that they were not of a forcible character. When Mary Garth entered the kitchen and Mr. Jonah Featherstone ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... cried Mr. Bennett, 'of course you will, and decide like a sensible man afterward, not like an idiot; but you must decide quick, for I must put you in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... capitalize a "talent"—he has chosen the complexity of media, the shining hardness of externals, repose, against the inner, invisible activity of truth. He has chosen the first creed, the easy creed, the philosophy of his fathers, among whom he found a half-idiot-genius (Nietzsche). His choice naturally leads him to glorify and to magnify all kind of dull things—stretched-out geigermusik—which in turn naturally leads him to "windmills" and "human heads on silver platters." Magnifying the dull into the colossal, produces a kind of "comfort"—the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... little donkey! Have you no brains? He doesn't care how you look. You should not care what he thinks about you. Why don't you get in a panic when Don comes alone? You were as red as a tomato half a minute ago; now you are as white as a ghost. You poor contemptible little idiot!" ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... fool to touch a cent of that money, in the first place. I was a fool to listen to your blarney, Rackliff. Just because I was idiot enough to believe in you, I made myself a thief and a liar. Oh, I've been punished for it, all right. Never knew I had a conscience that could make me squirm so much. Some nights ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... disgusted, gleams of disdainful scorn in, her shining hazel eyes. What a little painted giggling idiot the woman is—what fools most young men are! What business have married women flirting, and how much more sensible and agreeable ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... with a groan when she had finished, "how could you be such a little idiot! Oh, Lydia, Lydia, I can't tell you how you wring ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... follow the folly of the cross: it is for His glory and my confusion, and for the security of your consciences I am about to tell you what He said to me:—'Francis,' He said, 'I desire that you may be in the world a new little idiot, who shall preach by thy actions and by thy discourses the folly of the cross. Do thou and thine follow me only, and not any other manner of life.' Speak not to me therefore of any other rule, he added, for I shall ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... the head, while the more harmless and fantastic varieties are turned into priests and prophets and become the founders of the earlier religions. A somewhat similar state of affairs of course prevailed among civilized races up to within the last three-quarters of a century. The idiot and the harmless lunatic were permitted to run at large, and the latter, as court and village fools, furnished no small part of popular entertainment, since organized into vaudeville. Only the dangerous or violent maniacs were actually shut up; consequently, the number ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... me descend to Hades with a loud squeak, or shall a headless spectre arise, grinning and—beg pardon! anatomy at fault; grinning requires a head. That's the way! my genius is always checked in its soaring flight, and pulled back to earth by idiot facts." ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... anxious to know what kind of things "scavengers" might be, and when Mr. Rowles could be spared from the lock he brought a punting pole, and after a good deal of trouble fished up the bucket. He called Juliet a little idiot; and Philip remarked that girls never could do anything, especially London ones, who are always so conceited ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... that of an ignorant, green, half-frightened darky, and I presume I both appeared and acted the natural-born idiot, if I might judge from the expression upon the Spaniard's face, and the broad grin lighting up the fierce countenance of the sentry at the gangway. Yet back of this mask there was grim determination and fixed purpose, so that no article of furniture was along that broad deck which I did ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... his wife is not beautiful, or even that his stenographer or manicurist is not beautiful, is so harsh and intolerable an insult to his taste that even an enemy seldom ventures upon it. One would offend him far less by arguing that his wife is an idiot. One would relatively speaking, almost caress him by spitting into his eye. The ego of the male is simply unable to stomach such an affront. It is a weapon as discreditable as the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... idiot!' cried the dutiful son. While Done was busy over the fire, Peetree junior drove the bung into the barrel, and ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Cardigan, but, oh, my dear, I do hope you will not need so much money. I'll be put to my wit's end to get it to you without letting you know, because if your affairs go to smash, you'll be perfectly intolerable. And yet you deserve it. You're such an idiot for not loving Moira. She's an angel, and I gravely fear I'm just an interfering, mischievous, resentful little ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... idiot; yet for her I've behaved like one. Don't ask me— you mustn't know. It was all done in a day, and since then fancy my condition; fancy my work in such a torment; fancy my coming ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... from the same contamination. Should he be overcome by temptation, the voice of conscience will plead with him in such decided tones that she will be heard, and he will be ashamed of becoming the idiot thing ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... inquired through the newspapers as to "the significance" of the postage stamp when placed in certain positions on the envelope. One paper made reply that to place it anywhere but on the upper right hand corner of the envelope indicated that the sender was a first-class idiot. The answer was widely copied and the inquiries ceased. The stamp is placed there for convenience in canceling, that being done by a machine in ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... is that I've come, must I just back out? No, no, I'll move on. I'm much obliged to you for your offer. I've enough money for the present. I've about my person some forty pounds' worth of British gold, and the same amount, say, of the toughness of the heaven-sent idiot. They'll see me through together! After they're gone I shall lay my head in some English churchyard, beside some ivied tower, beneath an old gnarled ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... discernable in his keen sense of humour from the very outset. It is precisely through this that there seems hope, from the very beginning, of his proving to be made of "penetrable stuff." When, after his monstrous "Out upon merry Christmas!" he goes on to say, "If I had my will every idiot who goes about with 'merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly in his heart: he should!" one almost feels as if he were laughing in his sleeve from the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... with an exaggerated sigh. "If you will promise not to think I look like an idiot, I shall ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... genius follows the classic definition. "A genius is a man with a one-track mind; an idiot has one track less." He's a real wowser at one class of knowledge, and doesn't know spit ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... with the cheers of the crew. By the time I had exhausted the minor prophets, I was much the stronger man of the two. My opponent was wobbling around in pretty bad shape. Once he was on his knees, and while waiting, I shouted, "I want to be yer friend, Billy Creedan. Shake hands now, you idiot, and behave yourself!" ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the like of which 'eye hath not seen nor ear heard'. As soon as we reached the front of the house there was heard in the door an iron voice saying: 'So Hans from Eyrar is come now, and wishes to talk with me, the —- idiot'. Compared with other names that he gave me this might be considered as flattering. When I inquired who it was that addressed me with such words, he answered in a fierce voice, 'I was called Lucifer at first, but now I am called Devil ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... What! is it possible that the idiot does not understand when she says "You weary me"? [Aloud.] Vasantasena, your words have no place in the ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... might have done. I possessed no distinct talents, no marked vocation. If there was nothing behind and beyond all this, what an empty freak of destiny my life would have been—full, not even of sound and fury, but of dull common-place suffering: a tale told by an idiot with a ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... said the sharp girl. "Never say 'she' for a person's name. Well, if your mother saw the advertisement then you are a One Only at reduced terms, and I knew you were directly I saw you. Now, tell me. Don't blink—unless of course you're an idiot; all idiots blink. Tell me. Was that dress made for you or was it ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... clear Dr. Alexander—Since I had the pleasure of your most agreeable visit, and its accompanying conversation, I have been very unwell and hardly left the house. You mentioned the reference made by Dean Stanley (?) to the story of the semi-idiot boy and his receiving the communion with such heart-felt reality. I forgot to mention that, summer before last, two American gentlemen were announced, who talked very pleasantly before I found who they were—one a Baptist minister ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... handing the book back to George; "it is not a book that personally I would recommend to any German about to visit England; I think it would get him disliked. But I have read books published in London for the use of English travellers abroad every whit as foolish. Some educated idiot, misunderstanding seven languages, would appear to go about writing these books for the misinformation and false guidance ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the East want a guard. A missionary young lady who came up in the coupe of the diligence from Beyrout to Damascus had an unpleasant experience. A Persian, who called himself a gentleman, was inside, and kissed her all the way up. She, poor little idiot! saw no way out of the transaction, but came and threw herself on Richard's protection several days after, and there was an ugly row. She had the Persian arrested, and tried him. If anybody had tried that sort of game on with me, I should have made an example of him myself, and taken the law in ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... children who do not reach birth are but prenatal spendthrifts, ne'er-do-weels, inconsiderate innovators, the unfortunate in business, either through their own fault or that of others, or through inevitable mischances, beings who are culled out before birth instead of after; so that even the lowest idiot, the most contemptible in health or beauty, may yet reflect with pride that they were BORN. Certainly we observe that those who have had good fortune (mother and sole cause of virtue, and sole virtue in itself), ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... regretted my words. Her face stiffened. I had the impression of a steel curtain coming down and blotting out the real woman. Without a word, she turned and went swiftly up the stairs, whilst I stood like an idiot ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... "That, and my friend at Seventeenth Cluster headquarters. Incidentally, he's an idiot and a slob—turns on quadsense telemuse instead of working, drinks hopsbrau from his own sector. I can't stand him. But I did him a few favors, just in ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... those who can with due regard to just principles be entirely excluded; and these are the idiot, who never reaches maturity; the lunatic, who, becoming diseased, loses the mental and moral characteristics of maturity; and the criminal, who is coming more and more to be looked upon as partaking of the character of the idiot and the ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet
... Jeremie's an idiot!' I was not in a position to controvert this, and presently my young lady said she would sit down. I left her in her chair—I saw that she preferred it—and wandered to a distance. A few minutes later I met Jasper again, and he stopped of his own ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... the writer only,[*] not the tenderness of the idiot who will always be deceived, not the softness towards other people's troubles which cause all my misfortunes to come from my holding out my hand to weak people who are falling into disaster. In 1827 I help a working printer, and therefore in 1829 find myself crushed by fifty thousand ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of lovers who have been caressing each other the whole evening with flaming gaze fail to do it! Yes, you can bring her home in triumph, she has now nobody but you, you have one more chance, that of taking your wife by storm! But no, idiot, stupid and indifferent that you are, you ask her, "What is ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... I do wonder how I was such a hand-painted idiot all the time! I believe we shore can make a cowman out ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... simply repeating the thoughts of those around him. He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he receives." His face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad taste in his mouth. "That's how we found him out, Mr. Malone," he said. "It's rather startling to look at a blithering idiot and have him suddenly repeat the very thought ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... like to begin on me, sir," said Tad steadily. "If you feel that way I should prefer to have you do that rather than to try it on any of my companions. Stacy Brown may be indiscreet, but I'd have you understand he is no idiot." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... "Idiot! Why haven't you looked in the safe for a missing sheet? Ten chances to one they have ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... average idiot, aren't you?" said I. "Oh, yes; I've been squatting in the wet by that infernal river, too. You ought to ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... idiot. Our spies in Baghdad advised us yesterday. That's why I pretend to be with ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... make money, I say, at some sensible work? Make money for me, will you? I'll force you out to make money at some work by which there's money to be made; not the like of that idiot writing of yours, curse it. Answer me, and tell me you'll go out and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... intellectual faculties to a condition of mere irresponsibility in which the subject is capable of self-help, and sometimes of self-support under the careful guidance of other. Under the generic term "idiot" may be included the "complete idiot," the imbecile, the "feeble-minded" and the "simpleton," all of whom suffer in a greater or less degree from arrested ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... calls that love. Idiot!" cried the Professor, much disgusted. "But I would point out to you, Lucy—and I do so because of my deep affection for you, dear child—that Sir ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... blithering idiot," I roared, "do you know what you are saying? I'm not in love with anybody. My heart is—is—But never mind! Now, listen to me, Fred. This nonsense has got to cease. I won't have it. Why, she's already got a husband. She's had all she can stand in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 the bench on ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... should like to pay for my coat and waistcoat with money which a woman had earned; and I should like it the less, because things at home, in my own house, were out of order." And then again she thought of it all. "I should be an idiot to do that. Everybody would say so. What! to give up my whole career for a young man's love,—merely that I might have his arm round my waist? I to do it, who am the greatest singer of my day, and who can, if I please, be Countess of Castlewell to-morrow! That were losing the world for love, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... of the boat. "We hain't got no time to fuss nor fight duels. Push off, there, boys! Get your poles in hand and give her a reverend set! If the feller on shore is hankering for gore let him swim after us. Let go that cordelle, you cussed, lazy, flat-bellied, Hockhocking idiot! Can't you learn that a vessel won't navigate while she's tied to a tree and stuck ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... see there is no magic in the little black box. It is nothing but a child's plaything for the fat, spectacled idiot." (This part of the oration Frank did not communicate to Billy.) "You see I have smashed it. Do I fear? Do I look now like a man in terror of the white man's medicine. It is nothing. It is broken and gone ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of them. I wish that I could go with you, but I cannot get along as fast as I used to do, and my beasts are pretty well knocked up. But this is what I'll do: I'll send my lad Greensnake with you; whatever I tell him to do, he'll do, and prove as true as steel. People call him an idiot; but he's no more an idiot than I am, if a person knows how to get the sense out of him, and that's what ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... he said. "I'm on my own hook. Why, hang it all, Captain, you must see that no man of his own free will would be idiot enough to resurrect a long-forgotten niece just to ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... think me a presumptuous idiot," said Austen. "Politicians are not idealists anywhere—the very word has become a term of reproach. Undoubtedly your father desires to set things right as much as any one ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I did not go beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work run out, and went down for the night to ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... money to buy them ribbon for sashes, but Joseph had taken it from her work-basket that morning to buy cigars. One of the girls had cried, and even Grey's lips grew scarlet; her Welsh blood maddened. This woman was neither an angel nor an idiot, Paul Blecker. Then—it was such a trifle! Poor Joseph! he had been her mother's favorite, was spoiled a little. So she hurried to his chamber-door with his shaving-water, calling, "Brother!" Grey had a low, always pleasant voice, I remember; you looked in her eyes, when you heard it, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... had ever had, could not be said to have been impaired by age, for Lawrence Macdermot was not in years an old man—he was not above fifty; but a total want of energy, joined to a despairing apathy, had rendered him by this time little better than an idiot. ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... define, but by the action and effect, telling us what it works (which all men knew as well as he) but not what it is, which neither he, nor any else, doth know, but God that created it; ("For though I were perfect, yet I know not my soul," saith Job). Man, I say, that is but an idiot in the next cause of his own life, and in the cause of all actions of his life, will (notwithstanding) examine the art of God in creating the world; of God, who (saith Job) "is so excellent as we know him not"; and examine the beginning of the work, which had end before ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... A deaf and dumb idiot became intelligent and spoke during spontaneous somnambulism (Steinbach's Der Dichter ein Seher). This is a case which appears to us difficult to explain fully; indeed, if the impression of the higher vibration on that portion of the brain which presides over intelligence and thought can ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... knew, would be carrying my suspicions to the uttermost extremity of idiotic absurdity. I had, in short—so I finally decided—discovered a mare's nest, and upon the strength of it had been upon the very verge of proclaiming myself a hopeless idiot and making myself the perpetual laughing-stock of the whole ship. I congratulated myself most heartily upon having paused in time, and resolved very determinedly that I would not further dwell upon the subject, or allow myself to be again lured ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... hands. "Ah, how you say that—with what force, with what virility! If you would but say it to HER in that tone—you, her countryman! She has no one to advise her; the mother is an idiot; the father is terrible; she is in his power; it is my belief that he would kill her if she resisted him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her life while she remains in ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... complete giddiness in conditions of primitive innocence." It is hardly to be wondered at that one who exhibited such glaring and unaccountable contrasts of character was considered by some people whimsical (bizarre) and by her husband an idiot. She herself admits the possibility that he may not have been wrong. At any rate, little by little he succeeded in making her feel the superiority of reason and intelligence so thoroughly that for a long time she was ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... enjoyed her enjoyment. It seemed too good to be true, and she looked up every now and then in the midst of her feast, with a mild wonder. Away she and I bowled down the sleeping village, all overrun with sunshine, the dumb idiot man and the birds alone up, for the ostler was off to his straw. There was the S. Q. N. and her small panting friend, who had lost the cat, but had got what philosophers say is better—the chase. "Nous ne cherchons jamais ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... started in life as the cadet of a noble family. The earl, his father, like the woodman in the fairy tale, was blessed with three sons: the first was an idiot, and was destined for the Coronet; the second was a man of business, and was educated for the Commons; the third was a Roue, and was shipped ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no blood ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... is solely the magistrates, then, who should be blamed when particularly monstrous judicial errors crop up, such, for instance, as the quite recent condemnation of Dr. L—— who, prosecuted by a juge d'instruction, of excessive stupidity, on the strength of the denunciation of a half-idiot girl, who accused the doctor of having performed an illegal operation upon her for thirty francs, would have been sent to penal servitude but for an explosion of public indignation, which had for result that he was immediately set at liberty by the Chief of the State. The honourable character ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... "You idiot!" gasped the exasperated conductor. "Don't you know the old man's on, that he wanted to stop at Pee-Wee to meet the G.M. this morning, that a whole engineering outfit will be idle there for half a day, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... whether any particular demeanor shall be agreeable to him or not. And you know well that a cringing, toadying manner, which would be thoroughly disgusting to a person of sense, may be extremely agreeable and delightful to a self-conceited idiot. Was there not an idiotic monarch who was greatly pleased, when his courtiers, in speaking to him, affected to veil their eyes with their hands, as unable to bear the insufferable effulgence of his countenance? And would not a monarch of sense have been ready ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... "He's an idiot," said the doctor, "and it's sheer folly to waste more money on him. Nothing can save him from ruin," and so saying, the unhappy father walked out ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... left me ignorant that her love, which I had thought mine, had been lavished so wildly on another; left me to believe that my own suit she had fled, but in generous self-sacrifice,—for she was poor and humbly born; that—oh, vain idiot that I was!—the self-sacrifice had been too strong for a young human heart, which had broken in the struggle; left me to corrode my spring of life in remorse; clasped my hand in mocking comfort, smiled at my tears of agony—not one tear himself for his own poor ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "No, idiot. It's their big department store." Ella turned to Heyl, for whom she felt mingled awe and liking. "If this trip of hers is successful, the firm will probably send her over three or four times a year. It's a wonderful chance ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... what a Chink thinks! The fellow's an idiot. I'm worried, Professor. Lenora's gone out after Mr. Quest and the Inspector. She wasn't fit to ride a horse. I can't make out why ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but everybody knew he wasn't meant; he was being kept for the Polehampton Stakes. He only won because he got the better of little BOTHERBY, his jockey, who couldn't hold him. Why, the crowd nearly murdered him, and his master sacked him on the spot—the little idiot!" ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... or I'll go over there on the next boat and kill you, you damned idiot," shrieked Peck. "Tell him ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... you hear, you idiot?" broke in the red-headed man irritably. "You are being devilishly well paid for it, so for goodness' sake make it look real. That's it! Bully boy! Now, once more to the right, then loosen your grip so that I can push you away and make a feint of punching you off. All ready there, Marguerite? ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... one of the prisoners of war, after you have got her safe; perhaps they could make out the queer inscription. She comes of a good stock, that I am certain; for Uarda is the very living image of her mother, and as soon as she was born, she looked like the child of a great man. You smile, you idiot! Why thousands of infants have been in my hands, and if one was brought to me wrapped in rags I could tell if its parents were noble or base-born. The shape of the foot shows it—and other marks. Uarda may stay where she is, and I will ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Household Hearth; This knowing, that beside it dwells a God: Revere the Priest, the King, the Bard, the Maid, The Mother of the heroic race—five strings Sounding God's Lyre. Drive out with lance for goad That idiot God by Rome called Terminus, Who standing sleeps, and holds his reign o'er fools. The earth is God's, not Man's: that Man from Him Holds it whose valour earns it. Time shall come, It may be, when the warfare shall be past, The reign triumphant of the ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... ease under this new companionship that had thrust itself upon him; indeed, a strong mental antagonism was still uppermost in him, towards the moody creature at whose heels he followed; and if, at this moment, he had been asked to give voice to his feelings, the term "crazy idiot" would have been the first to rise ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... charge began to choke,—or pretended to. Higgins became alarmed and removed the gag. Anisty lay quiet until his face resumed its normal color and then began to abuse Higgins for a thick-headed idiot." ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... evil speaking directed against me,—which is considerable, and highly injurious to me, and done by many,—I find myself herein also very much the better. I think that what they say makes scarcely any more impression upon me than it would upon an idiot. I think at times, and nearly always, that it is just. I feel it so little that I see nothing in it that I might offer to God, as I learn by experience that my soul gains greatly thereby; on the contrary, the evil speaking seems to be a favour. And thus, the first time I go to prayer, I have no ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... to settle one's mind to," said Lionel, "to know I must be a good-for-nothing, dependent wretch all my days! As well be a woman, or an idiot at once! There, I shall never see that tree green again; no, and spring—I have seen my last of that! and I may look my last at all your faces. Johnny ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... told us in all simplicity that he had fallen into such a state that he would read the same telegraphic dispatches over and over again in different papers, as if they were new, until he felt as if he were an idiot. Who did not do just the same thing, and does not often do it still, now that the first flush of the fever is over? Another person always goes through the side streets on his way for the noon extra,—he is so afraid somebody will meet him and tell the news he wishes to read, first on the bulletin-board, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... double-barreled idiot I am," he swore, "to talk turkey to old Bissell and never connect him with Juliet. All the sheep in the world couldn't get me away from here to-night." And he ejaculated the time-worn but true old phrase that the world ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... mistaken about the Belfast people. That blundering idiot of — wanted to make himself important and get up a sort of "Home Rule" agitation in the Association, but nobody backed him and he collapsed. I am at your disposition for whatever you want me to do, as you know, and I am sure Hooker is of the same mind. We shall not be ashamed when we meet ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... idiot; don't go off in a huff. I don't like the match, I tell you frankly; but I don't want to quarrel. Is there anything I can do for you, except attending the wedding? ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... "Idiot!" she said between her teeth. "Contemptible little fool! And if General Ratoneau, a handsome and distinguished man, did you the honour of asking for your hand, would you expect me to tell him that you had not taken a fancy ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... she murmured, brokenly. "Ah! yes, yes! One who swore to love me; one who vowed to cherish me, only to forget his oath. Fool! idiot! that I was, to thus yield up my passionate love, forgetful of my birth! But did he not promise all? Were we not wed? God of the just—who sees ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... up in the air ready for a blow at the fellow's chest for approaching him so disrespectfully, but, instead, he laid his hand soothingly on the poor idiot's shoulder. ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... up your tomfoolery, you blatherin' old idiot!" she cried, in a sort of shrieking whisper, "I'll throw boilin' ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... Hume." Perhaps the finest answer to the charge that Shakspeare was an unregulated genius, full of great absurdities and great beauties, is contained in Hudson's ironical statement of it: "He has sometimes been represented as a sort of inspired and infallible idiot, who practiced a species of poetical magic without knowing what he did or why he did it; who achieved the greatest wonders of art, not by rational insight and design, but by a series of lucky accidents and lapsus naturae; who, in short, went through life stumbling ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... hill" The Thorn Goody Blake and Harry Gill Her Eyes are Wild Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman Lines written in Early Spring To my Sister Expostulation and Reply The Tables Turned The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman The Last of the Flock The Idiot Boy The Old Cumberland ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... describing, in The Friend, the custom amongst German children of making presents to their parents on Christmas Eve, (a custom which he unaccountably supposes to be peculiar to Ratzeburg,) represents the mother as 'weeping aloud for joy'—the old idiot of a father with 'tears running down his face,' &c. &c., and all for what? For a snuff-box, a pencil-case, or some article of jewellery. Now, we English agree with Kant on such maudlin display of stage sentimentality, and are prone to suspect that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... so serious as they are supposed to be. It's like being in a house that's supposed to be haunted—on All Hallow E'en, for instance—it's awfully gruesome and creepy at night when the wind moans and the owls screech. And then, the next morning, one wonders how one could have been such an idiot. Other things are often like that. You think the world's coming to an end—and then it doesn't, you know. It goes on just the same. You are rather surprised at first, but you soon get used to it. I suppose that is what is meant by ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... ship, you idiot, before you get worse off," cried the captain sternly. "Dogs can bite, and when English dogs ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... supported her shoulder, she would have fallen, but her words poured on in a fierce torrent. "You have broken my heart, and you have killed him. You knew how much I cared. You are a monster, but not an idiot. You have sacrificed a country to your one unspeakable Moloch of a god—I hope ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... of remarks one had to put up with: "I say, old chap, there's a d——d fellow in a mackintosh suit up stream; he's bagged my water"; or, "Who is that idiot who has been flogging away all the afternoon in one place? Does he think he's beating carpets, or is he ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Bangs relates, in Coffee and Repartee[355], some amusing skirmishes indulged in at the boarding-house table, between the Idiot and the guests, where coffee served the purpose of enlivening ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... ''Idiot! do you suppose a foreigner would be fool enough to amuse himself by shooting a Mexican at mid-day, in the very heart ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Grah Hamon, Idiot," said Pierre an hour afterwards, "we're going to leave Fort o' God and make for Rupert House. You've a dragging leg, you're gone in the savvy, you have to balance yourself with your hands as you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... advertisements, living on her money, adding up her profits, having rows and recriminations with her agent, carrying her shawl, spending his days in her rouge-pot. The right man for that, if she must have one, will turn up. 'Pour le mariage, non.' She isn't wholly an idiot; she really, for a woman, quite sees ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... furiously. "I was given my cue, I would not take it. You told me that it was bad enough to be your ward, that you would not on any account be closer to me. That should have been clear to me, yet, like an idiot, I hoped against hope. I took false courage from each smile of yours, each glance, each word. There! Once I leave you now, the chain between us will be broken, we shall never, with my will, meet again. ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... of out-door sports and has not yet declared himself. If the curling iron is kept hot, it is because he has looked approval when her hair was waved. If there is a box of rouge but half concealed, the girl thinks the man is a fatuous idiot ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... to give it all up, as I was idiot enough to do when I married, and for a life as dull as ditch-water! If ever a woman ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... stated Mr. Quarles, "to my mind, Judge, there ain't no manner of doubt but whut prosperity has went to his head and turned it. He acted to me like a plum' distracted idiot. A grown man with forty thousand pounds of solid money settin' on the side of a gutter eatin' jimcracks with a passel of dirty little boys! Kin you figure it out any other way, Judge—except that ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... pagan!" I cried, laughing aloud in his face. "You imaginative idiot! You superstitious ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... golden-haired Cyprian dancer. But he knows every corner of Alexandria—and then, what a memory! What an actor he would have made! Without even a change of dress, merely by a grimace, he at once becomes an old man, an idiot, or a philosopher." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "What you say is quite true! but what could I do? I was frightened, and when one is frightened, one does not stop to reason with oneself. As soon as I realized the situation, I was very sorry that I had called out, but then it was too late. You must also remember that the idiot threw himself upon me like a madman, without saying a word and looking like a lunatic. I did not even know what he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... buoyant and glittering glee, which was so entirely and beautifully given by Ellen Terry. After Peg Woffington and before Mrs. Siddons the most conspicuous Portia was Mrs. Dancer, whom Hugh Kelley, in his satirical composition of Thespis, calls a "moon-eyed idiot,"—from which barbarous bludgeon phrase the reader derives a hint as to her aspect. Some of the tones of Mrs. Dancer's voice were so tender that no one could resist them. Spranger Barry could not, for he married her, and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... mind you resist me no more. I do not care for your kisses. You were ready enough once. But that idiot of a tutor has taken my ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the station with them. As luck would have it, however, I knew the inspector, and I managed to convince him that I was telling the truth, or I doubt whether they would have let me go. I suppose," I added, a little doubtfully, "that you fellows must think me a perfect idiot for bringing the child here, but upon my word I don't know what else I could have done. I simply couldn't leave her there, or in the streets. I'm ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the remote consequences of an apparently insignificant and ridiculous event in his past, doubt of his own fitness to conduct his existence and mistrust of his best sentiments—for what the devil did he want to go to Fouche for?—he knew them all in turn. "I am an idiot, neither more nor less," he thought. "A sensitive idiot. Because I overheard two men talk in a cafe... I am an idiot afraid of lies—whereas in life it is ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... spades of wood? Who was it cut them out of the tree? None, I think, but an idiot could - Or one that loved ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... feet, but crouching as I hung to the sides. Thank God, that usually crowded thoroughfare was free from vehicles as far up as I could see, on beyond the Astor House. What could it mean? Was that divinity which 'tis said protects the drunkard and the idiot about to aid the mad rush of this love-frenzied creature to his long-lost but newly returned dear one? I heard the frantic clang of gongs, and as we shot by the World Building, I saw ahead of us two plunging automobiles filled with men. 'Twas from them ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... exclaimed Cap'n Amazon, at length goaded to speech. "Bring that chest in and take a reef in your jaw-tackle. I knew a man once't looked nigh enough like you to be your twin; and he was purt nigh a plumb idiot, too." ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Confessor, like Henry VI., was not only an invalid but almost an idiot. It is said that he was wan like an albino, and that the awe men had of him was partly that which is felt for a monster of mental deficiency. His Christian charity was of the kind that borders on anarchism, and the stories about him recall the Christian ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... popularity himself, he durst not shock what perhaps he viewed as a national prejudice. Those who have happened, like ourselves, to see the effect of passionate music and "deep-inwoven harmonics" upon the feeling of an idiot, we may conceive what we mean. Such music does not utterly revolt the idiot; on the contrary, it has a strange but a horrid fascination for him; it alarms, irritates, disturbs, makes him profoundly unhappy; and ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... was making fun of her, or if she was quite as silly as she appeared. But if Delia would only do the work and do it half-way right, Janice told herself she did not care if Delia was actually an idiot. At least the ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... the smoke when we let drive, An', before we know, 'e's 'ackin' at our 'ead; 'E's all 'ot sand an' ginger when alive, An' 'e's generally shammin' when 'e's dead. 'E's a daisy, 'e's a ducky, 'e's a lamb! 'E's a injia-rubber idiot on the spree, 'E's the on'y thing that doesn't give a damn For a Regiment o' British Infantree! So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan; You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man; An' 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air— You big ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling |
