"Imbecile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people that weren't there—of the commandant who was getting an impossible temper, and they explained that the more imbecile he got the harsher he got; and the General that made unexpected inspections with the idea of kicking all the soft-jobbers out, but who'd been laid up for eight days, very ill—'he's certainly going to die; his condition no longer gives ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... that I can only describe, with your permission, as hoggish. He could hardly speak. I had him at my mercy. Neither tact nor wariness was required for the moment. I stripped him to his skin; he only laughed like an imbecile. His eyes had a horrid squint in them; he was hideous. I found five francs in one of his pockets, but neither in his clothes nor on his person did ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... no doubt a fool, and his daughter imbecile. Do not contradict me. All young girls are imbecile. As for the father, if he were not a fool would he wish to buy Megalia? Megalia, my God! The world is full of things desirable to buy; ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... demand, in order to induce him to retire; the next he talks of defending the fort to the last. We can get him to give no orders, to decide on nothing, and the other officials are equally impotent and imbecile." ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... faces like an idiot. She was obliged to explain to her, to repeat two or three times things that Germinie had always grasped on the merest hint. She asked herself, when she saw how slow and torpid she was, if somebody had not exchanged her maid for another.—"Why, you're getting to be a perfect imbecile!" she would sometimes say to her testily. She remembered the time when Germinie was so useful about finding dates, writing an address on a card, telling her what day they had put in the wood or broached the cask of wine,—all of which were things that her old brain could not remember. Now Germinie ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... restaurant, one evening, Joe Tallant, the mining secretary, one of our liveliest members, was observed to be awkward and distrait during dinner, forgetting even to offer the usual gratuity to the Italian waiter who handed him his hat, although he stared at him with an imbecile smile. As we chanced to leave the restaurant together, I was rallying him upon his abstraction, when to my surprise he said gravely: "Look here, one of two things has got to happen: either we must change our restaurant or I'm going ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. "I was an imbecile," she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with bitterness; "Arcadia," she laughed. "I thought it was different here, that you were different; that feeling in my heart—but it's gone now, dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... virtue, their spiritual consolations, and their hope of heaven. Nothing could be more untrue. The fact is that Nietzsche had no interest whatever in the delusions of the plain people—that is, intrinsically. It seemed to him of small moment what they believed, so long as it was safely imbecile. What he stood against was not their beliefs, but the elevation of those beliefs, by any sort of democratic process, to the dignity of a state philosophy—what he feared most was the pollution and crippling of the ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... on a stool, bowed his powerful neck whose nape was red, and with his hands stitched the air, ludicrous, sublimely imbecile and comprehensible. ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... sickliness, fat, slow, and silly in the countenance. Her forehead, much too large and too prominent, suggested water on the brain, and beneath that waxen cupola her face, noticeably too small and ending in a point like the nose of a mouse, made some people fear she would become, sooner or later, imbecile. Her eyes, which were light blue, and her lips, always fixed in a smile, did not contradict that idea. On the solemn occasion of her marriage she had the manner, air, and attitude of a person condemned to death, whose only desire is ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... and we show them the lake and tell 'em to help themselves. It makes them hop with rage. They say, 'What! do you drink THIS?' Then, when we tell them that all their water supply comes from this lake, they grin like a dog and go about the city, —I mean depart on their imbecile way. But these people are all dressed up. Oh, Momus and Comus! There are girls on board! Come ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... now appropriated to the purposes originally intended; he also had several bridges constructed, and embellished Paris with many edifices that were both useful and ornamental. But all his efforts were paralysed in the following reign of Charles VI, justly called the Simple, partly mad, partly imbecile, and coming to the throne at twelve years of age, every misfortune that might have been expected from a country surrounded by foreign enemies without, and torn by intestine broils within, happened in the fullest force. The ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... never yet contended that the right should be absolutely universal. No one has ever been sufficiently visionary to hold that all persons of every age, degree, and character, should be entitled to vote in all elections of all public officers. Idiots, infants, minors, and persons insane or utterly imbecile, have been, without scruple, denied the right as not having the sound judgment and discretion fit for its exercise. In many countries, persons guilty of crimes have also been denied the right as a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Friedrich. Gets hold of Prussia, which hitherto, you observe, has always been spoken of as a separate country from Brandenburg. March 11, 1605—"squeezed his way into the actual guardianship of Preussen and its imbecile Duke, which ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'T were imbecile hewing out roads to a wall. And when Italy's made, for what end is it done If we ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... ethical and philosophic ideas, and may be forced to put on a System of Thought, as men put on a mackintosh. But his true education is what he makes of these things. If he hears of Theodoric with a yawn, we say—the college-folk—He must be imbecile. No, not imbecile! he may become a successful toreador, or snake-charmer, which things are out of our line! And a man may be an upright citizen, a good husband, and a sincerely religious man, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... handsome chauffeur who had run away with an heiress. 'Once a great scientist had invented a new kind of underwear, and had endeavoured to make it a gift to humanity; and here was a man who had seized upon it and made millions out of it! Here was a "trance medium," who had got a fortune out of an imbecile old manufacturer; here was a great newspaper proprietor, who published advertisements of assignations at a dollar a line; here was a cigar manufacturer, whose smug face was upon every billboard—he had begun as a tin manufacturer, and to avoid ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... recognised the situation, smiled an imbecile smile, and sank back again on his pillow ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... more than if they had been written in a foreign tongue. He was determined, however, and began again, only to find that what he read had not really penetrated to his mind. "Well," said he to himself, "it appears that I am becoming imbecile!" But a sudden inspiration reassured him as to how he should fill the two hours that must elapse before dinner-time. He had a hot bath prepared, and there he remained stretched out, relaxed and soothed by the warm ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... in after years of dreaming. But it seems, ex abundanti, to yield this moral—viz., that as, in England, the idiot and the half-wit are held to be under the guardianship of chancery, so the man making love, who is often but a variety of the same imbecile class, ought to be made a ward of the General Post-Office, whose severe course of timing and periodical interruption might intercept many a foolish declaration, such as lays a solid ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... parsimoniously verified are alike inconsistent with the precepts of innate rectitude and the practice of external policy: let it not then be conjectured that because we are unassuming, we are imbecile; that forbearance is any indication of despondency, or humility of demerit. He that is the most assured of success will make the fewest appeals to favour, and where nothing is claimed that is undue, nothing that is due will be withheld. A swelling opening ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... Catharine, whose depraved yet imperious spirit was guiding with such consummate duplicity all this enginery of intrigue, hourly administered the stimulus of her own stern will to sustain the faltering purpose of her equally depraved but fickle-minded and imbecile son. ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... scandal? [Then with a harsh laugh.] Oh, you mean the imbecile busy-bodies will call me an unnatural father. Well, let them! I suppose I ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... gracious and forgive her, and his graciousnees and forgiveness would help to reinstate him. He would need, she reflected, a lot of reinstating. Barbara considered that, in the matter of punishment, he had had enough. Mrs. Levitt, with her "You old imbecile!" had done to him all, and more than all, that justice could require; there was a point of humiliation beyond which no human creature should be asked to suffer. To be caught making love to Mrs. Levitt and being called an old imbecile! ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... occasional passages of his pamphlets, we see that he could be pithy enough when he chose to descend from his Latinized abstractions to good concrete English; but that is only when he becomes excited. His face when in repose, we are told, appeared to be almost imbecile; he was constantly sunk in reveries, from which he was only roused by a challenge to conversation. In his writings, for the most part, we seem to be listening to the reverie rather than the talk; we are overhearing a soliloquy in his study, not a vigorous discussion over the twentieth ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... set fire to houses in different quarters of the city. Growing bolder at the sight of their own violence, they broke open the prisons, and thus obtained a re-enforcement of hundreds of desperadoes, ripe for any wickedness. The troops were paralyzed by Louis's imbecile order to avoid bloodshed, and in the same proportion the rioters were encouraged by their inaction and evident helplessness. They attacked the great armory, and equipped themselves with its contents, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... gave vent to a groan. She never had been a girl herself—she had been a woman at ten; and she complimented Isabel upon being little better than an imbecile. "Put it inside my frock!" she uttered in a torrent of scorn. "And you eighteen years of age! I fancied you left off 'frocks' when you left the nursery. For ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... failure! Drop into the greenroom then and you will find an astonishing change has taken place. The Star will take you into a corner and assert that, she "always knew the thing could not go, it was too imbecile, with such a company, it was folly to expect anything else." The author will abuse the Star and the management. The whole troupe is frankly disconcerted, like people aroused out of a hypnotic sleep, wondering what they had seen in ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... weather-stained garments, on which mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to Nature; it is impiety to Heaven; it is breaking Heaven's great ordinance. Toil, I repeat toil—either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... exploded that destroyed the garage. Bonnot was then captured, fighting to the last. The police reported the finding of Bonnot's will, in which he says: "I am a celebrated man.... Ought I to regret what I have done? Yes, perhaps; but I must live my life. So much the worse for idiotic and imbecile society.... I am not more guilty," he continues, "than the sweaters who exploit poor devils."[12] His final thought, it is said, was for his accomplices, both of whom were women, one his mistress, the other the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... matter whether it is a man or a woman. We must do something with our hands. We have got to. Papa told the Signora he should strike her at once unless she put down the red parasol and was silent. What did she do, the imbecile? She stuck out her face like this,"—he thrust his face forward with the right cheek turned towards Artois—"and said, 'Strike me! strike me!' Papa obeyed her. Poom! Poom! He gave her a smack on each cheek before every one. 'You want education!' he said to her. 'And I shall give it you.' ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... soul is, in part, its own God—its own Creator.' Just below, the critic says:—'After all these contradictory propoundings concerning God we would remind him of what he lays down on page 23—'of this Godhead in itself he alone is not imbecile—he alone is not impious who propounds nothing. A man who thus conclusively convicts himself of imbecility and impiety needs no further refutation.' Now the sentence, as I wrote it, and as I find it printed ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... engagements against the future, party on party, dances on suppers and suppers on plays; to dine every evening at some place where they hadn't dined before; to meet lots of nice amusing people with demobilised minds who wouldn't talk to him about the war; to let himself go in bursts of exquisitely imbecile laughter; never to be quiet for an hour, never to be alone with himself, never to be long ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... his head sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr. Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately, an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we were able ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... daughter's imprudence, had spread through the city, losing nothing in the telling. And Nathalie's open stubbornness and rebellion confirmed it only too clearly. To her mother's mind, Nathalie was behaving in an imbecile fashion. Suppose she had acted in such a way, when, as Mademoiselle Blashkov of Moscow, she had been besieged by a handsome, impecunious young officer; and, instead of throwing him over for the wealthy young Count ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... only strove to do a good action, and, according to custom, I was punished for it. I heard it said that that little imbecile La Brede borrowed money from his little sister to lavish it upon that Sarah. This was so unnatural that you may believe it first disgusted, and then irritated me. One day at the club I could not resist saying, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... dear girl," put in M. Meydieu, "your godfather is right. You had better marry the miller who proposed, or that imbecile of a Spanish tanner who lost his brainless head for the sake of your pretty eyes. You will never do anything on the stage! ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... police. It was a vicious suggestion. Other bricks and missiles followed, while the crowd surged forward. Suddenly the line of patrolmen opened to let through a squad of mounted police, who charged the mob.... It was a thing requiring courage, but a thing ordered by an imbecile. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... homeward; and, in the bosom of his natural protectors, he sought for peace he could not gain elsewhere. Here he remained, the slave of fear, the conscience-stricken, diseased in body—almost spent; and here he would have died, had not Providence directed the impotent mind of the imbecile to the spot, and willed it otherwise. I have narrated, as shortly as I might, the history of my earliest college friend, as I received it from his brother's lips. There remain but a few words to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... fallen landmarks, the dead lay huddled on the snow. Sometimes D'Arragon and Barlasch found the remains of a fire, where, amid the ashes, the chains and rings showed that a gun-carriage had been burnt. The trees were cut and scored where, as a forlorn hope, some poor imbecile had stripped the bark with the thought that it might burn. Nearly every fire had its grim guardian; for the wounds of the injured nearly always mortified when the flesh was melted by the warmth. Once or twice, with their ragged feet in the ashes, a whole company ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... and looked out at the stiffly embanked river and the formal gardens which lay beyond it. When he turned round, Madame de Cintre had risen; she stood there silent and passive. "You are not frank," said Newman; "you are not honest. Instead of saying that you are imbecile, you should say that other people are wicked. Your mother and your brother have been false and cruel; they have been so to me, and I am sure they have been so to you. Why do you try to shield them? Why do ...
— The American • Henry James
... have been such an imbecile as to trust the fellow when his very name, Archidemides, fairly bawled out that I'd be damned easy, if I did ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... column, for years of devotion. Now Edward, of course, was going to relate his adventure; but the journal told it so gloriously, he hesitated to say, "I did all that." He just sat and stared, and wondered, and blushed, and grinned like an imbecile. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the professors are responsible only to a judicious board of directors, examinations for admissions and for advancements will be rigid and impartial, the administration will be vigilant and firm, the reckless who will not and the imbecile who cannot acquire a good education, will be dismissed for more congenial pursuits, the rich and the poor will be upon an equality, and only desert ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... minutes seemed longer than all the hours. I found that to put the old strain on the rod made me blind with pain. There was no fun, no excitement, no thrill now. As I labored I could not help marveling at the strange, imbecile pursuits of mankind. Here I was in an agony, absolutely useless. Why did I keep it up? I could not give up, and ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... was one which would be seen through easily enough by a person of your intelligence (or, if I may say so without violating modesty, of my own), but which to the ordinary imbecile would have the persuasiveness of what is marvellous and incredible. He contrived various methods of undoing the seals, read the questions, answered them as seemed good, and then folded, sealed, and returned them, to the great astonishment of the recipients. And then it was, 'How could ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... bed-chamber can shelter what would be a horror in a court of justice; a conscience at peace in its own darkness will shudder in the gaslight of public opinion. It is marvellous that what we call the public, a mere imbecile as to judgment, should yet possess the Godlike power of awakening the individual conscience—and that with its own large dullness of conscience! Truly the relation of the world to its maker cannot primarily ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... dispelled. Shrieking and scolding hysterically, flicking his long tail in spasmodic jerks, and calling the dead solitudes to witness that the imbecile intruder had uncovered one of his treasure-heaps, the angry squirrel ran up and down the trunk for at least two minutes. Then, his feelings somewhat relieved by this violent outburst, he set himself to gathering the scattered nuts and bestowing them ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... justice to the biggest sensation that had come in its way for years, and the appearance of the paper created the most profound amazement throughout the town and district. Gable was described as a cunning scoundrel whose affectations of almost imbecile simplicity might easily have deceived intelligences less keen than those at the service of the Mercury, and neither Messrs. Billson and Hogan nor Master Mathieson hinted that their assailants were anything less than grown men of the largest ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... bar is called, which still intervened between them and the sound. To add to the sufferings of the troops, the supply of fresh water gave out. Much of that with which the transports had been provided by dishonest or imbecile contractors, had been put up in old oil casks, which imparted to it a taste and odor far from agreeable. But even of such wretched stuff as this, there was at length ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... broke out suddenly into a tirade against the world. "But I am bored by this jostling unreasonable world. At the bottom of my heart I am bitterly resentful to-day. This is a world of fools and brutes in which we live, a world of idiotic traditions, imbecile limitations, cowardice, habit, greed and mean cruelty. It is a slum of a world, a congested district, an insanitary jumble of souls and bodies. Every good thing, every sweet desire is thwarted—every one. I have to lead the life of a slum missionary, a sanitary inspector, an underpaid ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... days of their thraldom were coming to an end, and that their enfranchisement was near at hand. That friend of the people, Mr. Turnbull, had a clause in his breeches-pocket which he would either force down the unwilling throat of Mr. Mildmay, or else drive the imbecile Premier from office by carrying it in his teeth. Loughton, as Loughton, must be destroyed, but it should be born again in a better birth as a part of a real electoral district, sending a real member, chosen by a real constituency, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... said to him, "you imagine that we ought not to believe but what is a fundamental article, and that credulity is common only to the imbecile. You are mistaken: men of good ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... and I noticed this child, in consequence of his pale and melancholy countenance, and apparently miserable condition. I observed that no one took any notice of him; and that he was allowed to wander about the great straggling workhouse, among the insane, the idiotic, and the imbecile, without the slightest attention being paid to his going and coming; in short, he lived the wretched life of ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the cabman of London and his brother of Paris, if there be enough affinity between them to justify this term of relationship. The one drives his horse, the other seems to be driven by his. In London the driver of an omnibus has the air of a gentleman managing a four-in-hand: in Paris the imbecile who holds the reins looks like a workman who has been hired by the day to do a job that he doesn't understand. So pronounced is this antipathy—for it is more than indifference—of the genuine man of the people toward all things pertaining to the horse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... excited by what imbecile economists call "small farming,"—a political blunder to which we owe such mistakes as sending French money to Germany to buy horses which our own land had ceased to breed; a blunder which before long will reduce the raising ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... North, and political tricksters, a coveted opportunity to rail against the Administration, and to weaken, as far as their influence could be felt, the confidence which had been reposed in it. The President was represented as an imbecile, utterly devoid of statesmanship. The army was berated with no measured terms. Every reverse of fortune was attributed to a want of brains and heart in the heads of departments. The Republic had certainly ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... treaty; but quite ineffectually. They had for their only ally, Lord Granville at Paris, and nothing can exceed the contempt with which the Palmerstonians treat this little knot of dissentients, at least the two elder ones, who (they say) are become quite imbecile, and they wonder Lord Granville does not resign. Palmerston, in fact, appears to exercise an absolute despotism at the Foreign Office, and deals with all our vast and complicated questions of diplomacy according to his own views ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... power at Paris had as yet shown no organizing capacity. The administration of the War Department by "papa" Pache had been a masterpiece of imbecile knavery which infuriated Dumouriez and his half-starving troops. We have heard much of the blunders of British Ministers in this war; but even at their worst they never sank to the depths revealed in the correspondence of Dumouriez with Pache. In truth, both Powers ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... weeks, after the autumn.... Yes, my dear sir, I at once accept your honourable proposals with pleasure. Indeed, for myself, I desire nothing better! I will go on turning sour; I will go on giving music lessons and growing imbecile in this hole of a town.... You will fiddle away, turn women's heads, travel, be rich, famous and happy—and every four or six weeks I may hope to be taken for one night to some shabby room where you entertain your women of the street.... It ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... couple of buccaneers whom he was now exercising for the first time as might have been expected, and it was brought to abrupt conclusion by the sudden charge of two of them from the rear. Being coupled, they mowed his legs from under him as irresistibly as chain shot and being puppies, and of an imbecile friendliness they remained to lick his face and generally make merry over him as he struggled ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... moral imbecility of slight degree is very frequently found among prostitutes. It would be plausible, doubtless, to say that every woman who gives her virginity in exchange for an inadequate return is an imbecile. If she gives herself for love, she has, at the worst, made a foolish mistake, such as the young and inexperienced may at any time make. But if she deliberately proposes to sell herself, and does so for nothing or next to nothing, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... heard about that princely boy seemed to agree with what he remembered of him in bygone years. He and not the gentle and half-imbecile king would be the real monarch of the realm; and who better fitted to ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... disguised as wild men, their garments of pitched flax caught fire. Four were burnt, and the shock brought back the king's madness. He became subject to fits of insanity of longer or shorter duration, and in their intervals he seems to have been almost imbecile. No provision had then been made for the contingency of a mad king. The condition of the country became worse than ever, and power was grasped at by whoever could obtain it. Of the king's three uncles, the ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him—pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The poor old imbecile! Why, this child was a firebrand, a wrecker, if ever he had seen one; and the worst kind because she ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... to say such things. Do you suppose that Mr. Atkins would find it necessary to work as he is doing to beat a fool? And, besides, you're not complimentary to me. Should I, do you think, take such an interest in one who was an imbecile?" ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... holts and dropped backwards, trusting to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I heard a little fizz and sputter from below. At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the breeze blow under my hat. For about six seconds I stood there like an imbecile, grinning amiably. Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle Jim was making ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... to chroniclers! A patriotic and imbecile effort is made by the Englishman to represent Percy as captured, indeed, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... being to blame for it, and, while praying to God to "preserve the Constitution and the Union throughout all generations," wrung his nerveless hands in despair over his own powerlessness—as he construed the Constitution—to prevent Secession! Before writing his pitifully imbecile Message, President Buchanan had secured from his Attorney-General (Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania) an opinion, in which the latter, after touching upon certain cases in which he believed the President would be justified in using ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... and abuse of the prince, some of the sheets asserting, by way of explanation of his conduct, that he was mentally unbalanced, his mother having been an acknowledged lunatic, and his brother. Prince Alexander, an imbecile. Nothing can be further from the truth. It cannot be denied that he has a few harmless and kindly eccentricities which would attract no attention whatever in an ordinary septuagenarian, but which excite comment merely by reason of his rank as a prince ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... at hand give up their population,—only the blind, the sick, and the imbecile being left to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... any "Romish priest," how good so ever he might chance to be. Against her own inclination, but from the advice of her new friend, she occasionally received her sisters and a few former acquaintances. They went away commiserating her condition, as being semi-imbecile, semi-lunatic. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the English from "the Pale," and to carry his arms across the channel in the quarrel of Richard de la Pole, father of the famous Cardinal, and at this time a formidable pretender to the English throne. The imbecile conduct of the Scottish Regent, the Duke of Albany, destroyed this enterprise, which, however, was but the forerunner, if it was not the model, of several similar combinations. When the Earl of Bothwell took refuge ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... "with this strange, wild, terribly clever man, with his red hair and brazen nose, sometimes flashing with wit and knowledge, sometimes making the whole company, princes and servants alike, hold their peace and listen humbly to the ravings of a poor imbecile." ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and thought sourly of the rot he had read about love begetting love. He had not noticed it. It more often begot laughter, and his case was an instance of it. Helene Spenceley laughed at him—he was sure of it—and fool that he was—imbecile—it did not seem to make any difference. There was just one girl for him and always would be—he was like that and it ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... he were wondering if there was a clause in the Rule that forbade a prior to throw anything within reach at an imbecile sacristan. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... that Maddy should shrink from it at first. She did not stop to ask what was her duty, or think how much happiness her presence might give her grandparents, or how much she might cheer and amuse the weak imbecile, her uncle. She was but human, and so when Guy began to devise ways of preventing her going, she listened, while the pain at her heart grew less as her faith in Guy grew stronger. He would drive down with her to-morrow, he said, and see what could be done. Meanwhile she must dry her eyes ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... dear gazelle. But I was given a paroquet— How I did nurse him if unwell! He's imbecile, but lingers yet. He's green, with an enchanting tuft; He melts me with his small black eye: He'd look inimitable stuffed, And knows ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... counsel repaired privily to the room where Amleth was shut up with his mother, and lay flown skulking in the straw. But Amleth had his antidote for the treachery. Afraid of being overheard by some eavesdropper, he at first resorted to his usual imbecile ways, and crowed like a noisy cock, beating his arms together to mimic the flapping of wings. Then he mounted the straw and began to swing his body and jump again and again, wishing to try if aught lurked there in hiding. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... life was all beer and skittles?" he demanded defiantly, and glared at Driscoll as though he had. But getting no answer, he seemed mollified, as though this proved that the man who had said it was an imbecile. Murguia, by the way, had come to hate no truth more soulfully than the palpable shortcoming of life in the matter of beer and skittles. And now it was borne in upon him again, for the skipper announced, definitely and with an oath, that they'd have to begin ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Finance, and Foreign Affairs established in independence of the central government, there would remain no link between Hungary and the Hereditary States but the person of a titular, and, for the present time, an imbecile sovereign. Powerless and distracted, Metternich's successors looked in all directions for counsel. The Palatine argued that three courses were open to the Austrian Government. It might endeavour to crush the Hungarian movement by force of arms; for this purpose, however, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... and affords ample opportunity for a tete-a-tete. Of these opportunities I have availed myself to the fullest possible extent. And with what result, you will naturally ask? With the result, my dear, of making this man absolutely mad about me. He has become an utter imbecile. C'est tout dit. His incoherent raving would only bore you, so, like the kindhearted little person I am, I spare you this infliction. Suffice it to say that he is mine body and soul. I say nothing about his fortune, ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... It is well to look at her, for we are coming to those days when such saints as these were no longer painted; but in their places whole tribes of figures with faces twisted into every trick of sentimental devotion, imbecile piety, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... her morphia. Under the torpor of the drug her face changed; the muscles loosened, the flesh sagged, the widened, swollen mouth hung open; only the broad beautiful forehead, the beautiful calm eyebrows were the same; the face, sallow white, half imbecile, was a mask flung aside. She couldn't bear to look at it; it wasn't her mother's face; her mother had died already under the morphia. She had a shock every time she came in ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... of conversation; but when one wholly and utterly incompetent to do so lays down the law on such subjects he or she becomes a bore. But if the young person who does not know how to talk treats these questions interrogatively, ten chances to one, unless she is seated next an imbecile, she will get some very good and light small-talk out of her next neighbor. She may give a modest personal opinion, or narrate her own sensations at the opera, if she can do so without egotism, and she should always show a desire ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... attached. The effect of this blow he never thoroughly got over, but gradually became in every respect an altered man. From one of unflinching energy and firm determination, he degenerated into a desponding, weak, and vacillating imbecile; and lingered on in a mental aberration for some two years, when he died. During the period of his distraction it is not surprising that his practice rapidly declined, and ultimately became completely destroyed; hence, upon his demise, his family ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... written my books. You have not written my plays. Any statement to the contrary is an infamous falsehood. No one else, dead or alive, could ever have written anything which I have written. When I have become an imbecile, which is not likely to happen yet, as I am a vegetarian and do not read your rag, it will be time enough for other people to lay claim to my work. Nor have I ever assisted you in conducting that which you call a paper, nor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... no vulgar reminder of any "sweet" speech. The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake. With another woman, a totally different one, he might have feared the recall possibly even some imbecile "offer." So, in having to say that he had indeed forgotten, he was conscious rather of a loss than of a gain; he already saw an interest in the matter of her mention. "I try to think—but I give it up. Yet I remember ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... with great respect. She was a woman very pure and very honest. Alas, the poor soul! To-day her hair is white as the snow, and they tell me she is mad. So much the better for her if she know nothing; but I fear the mad and the imbecile know all and see all, crouching in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile—at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his golden key, admits you to ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... regard some of the images formed by his imagination as though they were real, as stated above in the First Part (Q. 84, A. 8, ad 2). Wherefore what a man does while he sleeps and is deprived of reason's judgment, is not imputed to him as a sin, as neither are the actions of a maniac or an imbecile. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... in novel for which there must always be a public as soon as it is presented to that public. And when this is said and endorsed by those who do not personally much care for the book, it is at once a sufficient testimony to the position of the author, and a vindication of the not absolutely imbecile position of those who thought that he might have written Waverley and its successors. The way in which Godwin in his later novels came down from the mountain-tops of theory and paradox just as he came down from those of Political Justice itself is interesting ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... is often seen among women, she had placed her affections upon a youth who had distinguished himself by no valiant deeds in war, nor by industry or dexterity in the chase. His name had never reached the surrounding nations. His own nation knew him not, unless as a weak and imbecile man. He was poor in everything which constitutes the riches of Indian life. Who had heard the twanging of Karkapaha's bow in the retreat of the bear, or who had beheld the war-paint on his cheek or brow? Where were the scalps or the prisoners that betokened his valour or daring? ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... you are about And Mr. Benyon strikes me as more fantastic even than yourself. I never heard of a man taking such an imbecile vow. What good ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... body to the descendants of the drunkard or the debauchee. Intellectual blemish will almost always accompany material blemish. The soul will be attacked simultaneously with the body; and it matters but little whether the victim be imbecile, mad, epileptic, possessed of criminal instincts, or only vaguely threatened with slight mental derangement: the most frightful moral penalty that a supreme justice could invent has followed actions which, as a rule, cause ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... balconies looking over the Bosporus. She was alone with Lady Ingleton in the latter's sitting-room, which was filled with curious Oriental things, with flowers, and with little dogs of the Pekinese breed, who lay about in various attitudes of contentment, looking serenely imbecile, and as if they were in danger of water ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... of impiety, libertinism, extravagance, idleness, disgraceful promotions. But the slightest allusion to the charge of poisoning threw him into convulsions. Louis the Fifteenth braved the hatred and contempt of his subjects during many years of the most odious and imbecile misgovernment. But, when a report was spread that he used human blood for his baths, he was almost driven mad by it. Surely Mr Bentham's position "that no man cares for the good opinion of those whom he has ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... needed no miracles nor prophecies to enforce the conviction that a long procession of disasters was steadily advancing. With France rent asunder by internal convulsions, with its imbecile king not even capable of commanding a petty faction among his own subjects, with Spain the dark cause of unnumbered evils, holding Italy in its grasp, firmly allied with the Pope, already having reduced and nearly absorbed France, and now, after long and patient preparation, about to hurl ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... towards all bucolic pursuits. There was certainly no active objection to the occupation of two hillsides, which gave so little promise to the prospector for gold that it was currently reported that a single prospector, called "Slinn," had once gone mad or imbecile through repeated failures. The only opposition came, incongruously enough, from the original pastoral owner of the soil, one Don Ramon Alvarado, whose claim for seven leagues of hill and valley, including the now prosperous towns of Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog, was met with simple derision ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... our superior technique for its transmission. At the same time, the individual brain is unstable, fluctuating in normal persons between 1,100 and 1,500 grams in weight, while the extremes of variation are represented, on the one side, by the imbecile with 300 grams, and the man of genius with 2,000 on the other. It is therefore perfectly true that by artificial selection—Mr. Galton's "eugenism"—a larger average brain could be created, and also ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... elucidate the argument, ought not to be admitted. Of similes, metaphors, and figures of every kind the same may be affirmed: whatever does not enlighten confuses. There are two extremes, against which we ought equally to guard: not to give a dry skeleton, bones without flesh; nor an imbecile ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... openly divulging the old incestuous ways of producing witches, by the intercourse of a mother with her son. Some sort of comedy perhaps was made out of the old materials, in the shape of a grotesque Semiramis or an imbecile Ninus. But the more serious game, which doubtless really took place, attests the existence of great profligacy in the upper walks of society: it took the form of a most ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... eunuch brother, who was the only one besides his master and himself to know that the dancer had been Zulannah, in the grip of such terror and physical pain as to be almost imbecile, though a look of cunning had shone for a moment in his bloodshot eyes when Qatim had inadvertently let drop a hint as to the accumulated ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... admiration of Jean's beauty, and it seems to have been his desire that his wife should be a nonentity, as was shown in his subsequent choice of Charlotte of Savoy. Now Jean was in feature very like her sister Isabel, Duchess of Brittany, who was a very beautiful woman, but not far from being imbecile, and Louis had never seen Jean display any superiority of intellect or taste like Margaret or Eleanor, but rather impatience of their pursuits, and he therefore might expect her to be equally simple with the other sister. However that might ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from his horrid father. But Graydon is a good boy. He couldn't long follow the impulses of his father. I dare say he could be a sinner if he tried, too. I' hate an imbecile. An imbecile to my mind is the fellow without the capacity to err intentionally. God takes care of the fellow who errs ignorantly. Give me the fellow who is bright enough to do the bad things which might admit him to purgatory in good standing, and I'll trust him to do the good ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Elizabeth, makes pitiful allusion to the incident, begging her to remember what he must have suffered before he said this; also reminding her how children may be taught to utter words they do not comprehend. His lesson, no doubt, had been learned by cruel tortures; and, rendered half imbecile, it was recited when the time came. None but his keeper was ever permitted to see the boy. His condition, final illness, and death are shrouded in mystery. In June, 1794, eight months after his mother's execution, it was announced that he was dead. It would be difficult to ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... their eyes when they thanked the Queen for her confidence and support. Lord Aberdeen means to have an interview with Lord Palmerston, and says that when he (Lord A.) came into office, Lord Palmerston and the Chronicle assailed him most bitterly as an imbecile Minister, a traitor to his country, etc., etc. He means now to show Lord P. the contrast by declaring his readiness to assist him in every way he can by his advice, that he would at all times speak to him as if he was his colleague if he ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... manoeuvres to-day availed him nothing; Jeremy held his neck in a vice, and dug his fingers well into the skin. Hamlet whined, then lay still, and, in the midst of indignant reflections against the imbecile tyrannies of man, fell, to his own ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... when I have wanted to shake hands with Virtue, I have found her shivering in a loft, persecuted by calumny, half-starving on a income or a salary of fifteen hundred francs a year, and regarded as crazy, or eccentric, or imbecile. ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... at his end of the table, and Mrs. Langton was being interested at hers by an account the judge's lady was giving of a protege of hers, an imbecile, who made his living by calling neighbours who had to ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... imbecile," he said. "He has been mentally unbalanced; and his disorder has grown on him lately. When I drove back his wrist just now the ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... at what he termed his imbecile stupidity in not knowing his own heart all these past months, and convinced, as he also was, that Alice and Calderwell cared for each other, he could see no way for him but to play the part of a man of kindliness and honor, leaving a clear field for his preferred ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... of Hours of Idleness are of little interest. The Monthly and the Critical both praised the book; the Literary Panorama, III, p. 273, said the author was no imbecile, but an ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... as he sat, having finished his own, looking out of the window at two girls in Sunday splendour kissing one of the stable boys behind a farm cart. They were all three apparently enjoying themselves very much, the girls laughing, the boy with an expression at once imbecile and beatific. They thought the master's eye could not see them there, but the master's eye saw most things. He took up his pen again and added a postscript. "If you come soon you will be able to enjoy the society of your friend Bibi. She came on Wednesday, I believe." Then, feeling ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... in a flat with fire-escapes written all over the front of it. The street in front was being repaired. It had been said by imbecile residents of the vicinity that the paving was never allowed to remain down for a sufficient time to be invalided by the tramping millions, but that it was kept perpetually stacked in little mountains through the unceasing vigilance of a virtuous and heroic city ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... one person's lifetime, yet in scarcely nine of these—nine little troubled lifetimes—what incredible things had occurred in this island of ours! How did it all come about? "Not assuredly," Valeria remarked with sudden malice, "by taking things as they stood, and making the best of them with imbecile impatience. If everyone had done that, what sort of an England should I have had stretching before my eyes at ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... there, nor with his brothers and sisters in white. He recognized his close relationship with the black man, and the bitterest name his enemies called him—worse in their minds than "fool," "clown," "imbecile" or "gorilla"—was a "Black Republican." That terrible phobia against the negro only enlisted Abraham Lincoln's sympathies the more. He appeared in court in behalf of colored people, time and again. The more bitter the hatred and oppression of others, the more they needed his sympathetic ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... "Oh, they were imbecile!" added Lady Garnett; "try the Moselle, my dear, and leave that terrible sweet stuff to Mary. Yes, I was glad to come away from Lucerne. Everything is very bad now except my Constant's vol-au-vent, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... I die doing my duty to my God and my queen? The thought never moves me: nay, to tell the truth, I pray often enough that I may be spared the miseries of imbecile old age, and that end which the old Northmen rightly called 'a cow's death' rather than a man's. But enough of this. Mr. Leigh, you have done wisely to-night. Poor Oxenham does not go on his voyage ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... favorite maxims was, "The truest wisdom is a resolute determination." His life, beyond most others, vividly showed what a powerful and unscrupulous will could accomplish. He threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies. "There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the Simplon was ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... ten months. Aurore for the time was placed in a most exceptional position for a French girl of sixteen. She was thrown absolutely on herself and her own resources, uncontrolled and unprotected, between a helpless, half imbecile invalid, and the eccentric, dogmatic pedagogue, Deschartres. Highly susceptible to influences from without, her mind, during their sudden and complete suspension, seemed as it were invited to discover ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... those who are able to labor and toil in the ordinary occupations of life and to earn a livelihood should be allowed to come. It is a high privilege to enter into American citizenship. Neither a pauper, in the strict legal sense of the word, nor an imbecile, nor one who has a defect or imperfection of body or mind which lowers him below the standard of American citizenship should be allowed to immigrate to ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... was another reason for making her appear as weak and imbecile as possible. Such a representation exalted the power of God, who through her had restored the King ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and griefs, he was probably very far from well. This would be due to the disturbing effects of his thoughts and uncontrolled emotions. When, therefore, his conscious mind gave way and he became happy in an imbecile way, he ceased to think of these disturbing things, with the result that the instinctive, animal mind was ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... you are asking too much. If you've been driving me for an extra hour through these filthy streets, that's your fault, because it seems you didn't know where to find this stupid street and imbecile house. Take your thirty kopecks and make up your mind that ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... honor. 'Come! no more of this!' Cried Charles; 'how happened it that you forgot You had a son? All shall be well, my father.' He paid off all the liabilities, And found himself without three thousand dollars Out of a fortune of at least a million. What shall we call him, imbecile or saint? His plan is now to set up as a teacher. Of such a teacher let each thrifty father Beware, or he may see his only son Turn out a poor enthusiast,—perhaps— Who knows?—an ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... a pure South Carolina Negro, with the head of a fool and the carcass of an imbecile. Being only one and twenty, he had never been a slave, not even by birth, but that made no difference to him. Grinning and greedy and idle, and a magnificent poltroon, he had been the servant of Uncle Prudent for about ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... and character of Fanny made him, however, yet more anxious than otherwise he might have been. She certainly deserved not the harsh name of imbecile or idiot, but she was different from all other children; she felt more acutely than most of her age, but she could not be taught to reason. There was something either oblique or deficient in her intellect, which justified the most melancholy apprehensions; ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ludicrous, sounded silly enough to provoke a shrug of the shoulders, sounded like one of those sentences which only an imbecile or a lunatic could utter. And yet Valenglay remained impassive. He knew that, in such circumstances as the present, the man before him was not the man to ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... succeeds his father, as the last King of France. He is youthful, uneducated, imbecile. He is wedded to a giddy superficial queen. Both are infidels and incapable of any intelligent acts of government. With imbecility and credulity on the throne, corruption continues to prevail among high and low. Instead of individual thrift ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... of policy. He is the brains of the combination, and has put forward Mayence and the Count Palatine as the moving spirits, although it is well known that the former is but his tool and the latter is moved by ambition to have his imbecile ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... who bravely held the ground, against odds of three to one, against the disciplined rebels belonging to the 2d and 9th Kentucky, and under the immediate command of Morgan! Yet these men are to bear the disgrace and receive the anathemas of the press, in order to shield some imbecile officer! ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... "Imbecile!" replied his neighbor. "It's Prince Villardo whom we saw last night in the play!" And the alcalde, in the character of giant-slayer, rose ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... disease of any kind interested him. The first physician said that he could distinguish the symptoms of approaching madness six months beforehand. "Are there any persons about the Court likely to become mad?" said the King.—"I know one who will be imbecile in less than three months," replied he. The King pressed him to tell the name. He excused himself for some time. At last he said, "It is M. de Sechelles, the Controller-General."—"You have a spite against him," said Madame, "because he would not ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... adapted to ensure prosperity to virtue, shall present itself again. It could scarcely be spoken of as being to the wishes of men,—it was so far beyond their hopes.—The government which had been exercised under the name of the old Monarchy of Spain—this government, imbecile even to dotage, whose very selfishness was destitute of vigour, had been removed; taken laboriously and foolishly by the plotting Corsican to his own bosom; in order that the world might see, more triumphantly set forth than since the beginning of things had ever been seen ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth |
