"Inane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dramatic moments of our lives it is always the inane that first suggests itself. It was so likely that Macdonald would have ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... caligraphist[TN-110] and sworn expert in the courts of law. Joseph Prudhomme is the synthesis of bourgeois imbecility; radiant, serene, and self-satisfied; letting fall from his fat lips "one weak, washy, everlasting flood" of puerile aphorisms and inane circumlocutions. He says, "The car of the state floats on a precipice." "This sword is the proudest day of my life."—Henri Monnier, Grandeur et D['e]cadence de ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Bailey made various inane suggestions as to the sender. Phoebe said nothing. There was a frown on her face as she watched the captain get to work on the box with chisel and hammer. It contained a beautiful doll, fully and expensively dressed, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... must march with the times. This enigmatical growth of the human mind flourishes in Calabria, but is not popular as a subject of conversation. The more old-fashioned werewolves cling to the true versipellis habits, and in that case only the pigs, the inane Calabrian pigs, are dowered with the faculty of distinguishing them in daytime, when they look like any other "Christian." There is a record, in Fiore's book, of an epidemic of lycanthropy that attacked ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... men-at-arms to inflict serious injury upon each other, or even to pick themselves up when the weight of their armor, with some aid from the clumsy blows of an antagonist, had overthrown them. Assailant and assailed were in equilibrio, and personal equilibrium could not be restored. Some such inane result may be witnessed when a pair of hostile iron-clads, out of sight of their nursing convoys, shall meet alone upon the deep; with the disagreeable difference that they will, if they go down, have a great deal farther to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Lake did not altogether agree with Mrs. Gray. Rheumatic damps rose from the water, and the mornings were chilly and uncomfortable. The inane round of dressing, eating, appearing in the veranda, taking the daily drive, and other mild etcetera, grew irksome; and, beyond all, the faces of the dear ones at home were longed for. Winifred came for a few days, and then the place brightened like a ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... portrait of Aliss Grammont had disappeared. Miss Leeds walked straight across to the coffin and stood looking down on the waxen inexpressive dignity of the dead. Sir Richmond's brows and nose had become sharper and more clear-cut than they had ever been in life and his lips had set into a faint inane smile. She stood quite still for a long time. At length ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... strongly urged Rizal's execution in 1896. Since 1898, however, he has doubled about, or, perhaps more aptly, performed a journalistic somersault—having written a diffuse biography and other works dealing with Rizal. He is strong in unassorted facts, but his comments, when not inane and wearisome, approach a maudlin wail over "spilt milk," so the above is given at ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... lifelong services. You may make up as many little bread-and-butter romances as you please, Marian; but I defy you to give me any sensible reason why Marmaduke should chain himself for ever to a little inane thing like Constance, when he can enjoy the society of a capable woman like that without ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... suppose has formed this determination purposely that he may spend all he can obtain, without being teased by any qualms of conscience. For the destructive system of individual property involves a thousand absurdities; and the proud but inane successor of a Sydney or a Verulam, instead of knowing how difficult the subject of identity itself is, instead of perceiving that man is nothing but a continuity, or succession of single thoughts, and is therefore in reality no more than ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... meditaris opus, qua luce colores{ciii:1} Percipimus, quali magnus ferit organa motu Cartesius, quali volitant primordia plexu Ex atomis, Gassende, tuis; simulacraque rerum Diffugiunt tacito vastum per inane meatu: Mutato varios mentitur lana colores Lumine; dum tales ardens habet ipse figuras Purpura, Sidonioque aliae tinxere veneno: Materiam assiduo variatam, ut Protea, motu Concipis, hinc formae patuit ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... ponderous when conversing with ladies. Young lieutenants—or, at all events, officers not above the rank of captain—are far more successful at the game. How they contrive to be so God only knows. Let them but make the most inane of remarks, and at once the maiden by their side will be rocking with laughter; whereas, should a State Councillor enter into conversation with a damsel, and remark that the Russian Empire is one of vast extent, or utter a compliment which he has elaborated not without ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... at his head, knew that there were a dozen absurd wishes in her heart, none of which could possibly ever become facts. He was so different from the self-assertive young men she knew, with their silly flirtations, their inane small-talk, their capacity for Scotch whisky and long hours. For days she had studied him as through microscopic lenses; his guilelessness was real. It just simply could not be; her ears had deceived her that memorable foggy night in London. And yet, ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... joke perpetrated upon Cousin Albert must be pretty strong or the father would stamp it as inane and without humor. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... of America" was next examined. The general air of gloom—hopeless gloom—was depressing. Such mawkish sentimentality and despair; such inane and mortifying confessions; such longings for a lover to come; such sighings over a lover departed; such cravings for "only"—"only" a grave in some dark, dank solitude. As Mrs. Dodge puts it, "Pegasus generally ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Magny such inane conversation that I swore to myself never to put foot inside the place again. The only subjects under discussion all the time were Bismarck and the Luxembourg. I was stuffed with it! For the rest I don't find it easy to ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... was found that a "taste" for shirt-tags had been created by this exciting bit of experience, and other men, who had been loudly laughing and cheering over the discomfiture of Chickering and his inane friends, found themselves suddenly on the ground, with wicked-looking knives flashing before their eyes, and their shirts being mutilated by the pressure ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... inane, incompetent creatures. You, John, with all your scientific training. I cannot expect anything else from Hale. A newspaper man lives on emotional sensations. They form his stock in trade, but you—" Harry ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... dark, profound nativity, God saw the end should be, When the world's infant horoscope He cast. Unshackled from the bright Phoebean awe, In leaf, flower, mould, and tree, Resolved into dividual liberty, Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane, Or suffered the ill peace of lethargy, Lo, the Earth eased of rule: Unsummered, granted to her own worst smart The dear wish of the fool— Disintegration, merely which man's heart For freedom ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... the place were almost enchantment enough to account for the gray-headed porters, their immobility and longevity, and I longed to draw the charm over me. But I was one of a party which had come under the inspiration of the most inane motive of travel,—the desire to see all there was to be seen; and so, after a half-hour's repose, and the usual refreshments,—preserved fruits and a glass of water, followed by coffee,—we enlisted the Hegoumenos in our party, and set out for the grotto, taking in the way Hagios Joannes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... darkness and another night of torture, despair filled her. Numb, hungry, her vitality at low ebb, she doubted her ability to weather it. Was she being punished, she wondered, for protesting against the life the Fates appeared to have mapped out for her? Was this futile inane end coming to her because since that day when she had stood looking down upon Prouty and vowed to succeed she had fought and struggled and struck back, instead of meekly acknowledging herself crushed and beaten? Had she shaken her fist at the Almighty in so ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... the egg stood upright; thus demonstrating that a thing might be wonderful, not because it was difficult or impossible, but merely because no one had ever thought of doing it before. A sufficiently inane story, and by no means certainly true; but there is enough character in this little feat, ponderous, deliberate, pompous, ostentatious, and at bottom a trick and deceitful quibble, to make it accord with the grandiloquent public manner of Columbus, and to make it ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... your last legs?" she murmured, and then wondered how she could have uttered anything so inane. Somehow, she was beginning to fear that he was not the ordinary person she had judged him to be. "You are to be discharged from the hospital to-morrow," ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... familiar with its languages, its modes of thought and feeling, its business methods, its politics, its literature, its amusements, does he increasingly realize the gulf set between an Oriental and an Occidental. The inner life of the spirit of an Oriental would be utterly inane, spiritless to the average Occidental. The "old resident" accordingly knows from long experience what the tourist only guesses from a hasty glance, that the characteristic differences distinguishing the peoples of the East and the West are racial and ineradicable. An Oriental is an Oriental, and ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... also will cease to exist amongst nations. England will either learn to reverence its heroes, and discriminate them from its sham heroes and valets and gas-lighted histories, and to prize them as the audible God's voice amid all inane jargons and temporary market-cries, and say to them with heart loyalty, 'Be ye King and Priest and Gospel and guidance for us,' or else England will continue to worship new and ever new forms of Quackhood and so, with what resiliences and reboundings matter ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... by the side of Lady Madeleine for about twenty minutes, seizing every opportunity of uttering, in the most courtly tone, inane compliments; and then trusting that he might soon have her Ladyship's opinion respecting the Austrian troop at the New House, and that Von Konigstein and his English friend would not delay letting him see them there, his Imperial Highness, followed ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... quidem ad congressum incitarit, et horum apud me copiolas elevarit, adversarii perpetuum in Scripturis exponendis ingenium, plenum fraudis, inane prudentiae. Statim haec, philosophi, tangeretis. Itaque ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... was indeed changed, so much so that her old friends who had not seen her for some time could scarcely have known her. She was no longer fat and inane. Her figure had become slim and graceful; her face had become expressive and remarkably pretty, and her manners were those of a well-bred and self-possessed lady. Gildart felt that he could no more have taken the ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... I do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling's face was like a dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr. Sheldon—will do anything, everything, to save her! ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... democratic and defended because it was democratic; and Napoleon was not feared as the last of the iron despots, but as the first of the iron democrats. What France set out to prove France has proved; not that common men are all angels, or all diplomatists, or all gentlemen (for these inane aristocratic illusions were no part of the Jacobin theory), but that common men can all be citizens and can all be soldiers; that common men can fight and can rule. There is no need to confuse the question with any ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... performed the functions of a sideboard. The chairs, ten straight-backed, and two easy by the fireplace, of which one was armless, were upholstered in saddlebag, yellow and green. In the bay of the red-curtained window was a huge terra-cotta bust of an ivy-crowned and inane Austrian female. There was a great fireplace in which a huge fire blazed cheerily, and on the broad, deep hearth stood little coloured plaster figures of stags, of gnomes, of rabbits, one ear dropping, the other ear cocked, of galloping hounds unknown to the fancy, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... frivolous, insincere, imbecile. Its sole function was, and always has been, to help idlers of the upper classes to while away their evenings. The absurd notion of a Platonic music was rivalled by the absurdity of the composition. The inane dialogue was made up of interminable recitative, in the midst of which an occasional chorus—introduced in conformity with supposed classical practice—must have come as a most refreshing relief; for choruses they could write. It was dramatic in so far that it was provided with all the ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... present. How, therefore, do they know whether they acquire merit de congruo or de condigno [in full, or half]? But this whole matter was fabricated by idle men [But, good God! these are mere inane ideas and dreams of idle, wretched, inexperienced men who do not much reduce the Bible to practise], who did not know how the remission of sins occurs, and how, in the judgment of God and terrors of conscience, trust in works is driven out of us. Secure hypocrites always ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... the adventure. I was thirty-five, and I had no more idea of marrying than I had of hanging myself. Young girls seemed to me to be inane, and I ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the north lately, I looked out into the dusk from the carriage window and beheld a bright flash of lightning, and by the gleam thereof saw a midnight maniac with his rod silhouetted against the vast inane. How few fishers nowadays, except perhaps Mr. Andrew Lang, can write their ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... provectus ovantes Cernitur Antitheus; reliquis hic altior unus Eminet, et circum vulgus despectat inane: Frons nebulis obscura latet, torvumque furorem Dissimulat, fidae tectus velamine noctis: "Persimilis turri praecelsae, aut montibus altis Antique cedro, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... desire of compensating for what had passed with Norman, led to great civilities from Dr. and Mrs. Hoxton, which nobody was at liberty to receive except Flora. Pretty, graceful, and pleasing, she was a valuable companion to a gentle little, inane lady, with more time and money than she knew what to do with; and Mrs. Hoxton, who was of a superior grade to the Stoneborough ladies in general, was such a chaperon as Flora was glad to secure. Dr. May's old loyal feelings could not help regarding her notice of his daughter as a favour ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... so, to be sure," said Peter; "he fretted and fumed a good deal, and kicked against the pricks. Here, there, now, anon, he would enjoy his brief little vision of her—then she would vanish into the deep inane. So, in the end—he had to take it out in something—he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it into the character of Pauline. In that way he was ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Love meet they who do not shove Cravings in the van of Love. Courtly dames are here to woo, Knowing love if it be true. Reverence the blossom-shoot Fervently, they are the fruit. Mark them stepping, hear them talk, Goddess, is no myth inane, You will say of those who walk In the woods of Westermain. Waters that from throat and thigh Dart the sun his arrows back; Leaves that on a woodland sigh Chat of secret things no lack; Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear, Bare or veiled they move ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of, to put anstatauxi. In that manner tiamaniere. Inability neebleco. Inaccessible neatingebla. Inaccurate neakurata. Inaction senokupo. Inactive senokupa. Inadvertence malatenteco. Inane malplena. Inanimate senviva. Inappreciable netaksebla. Inappropriate nedeca. In as much as tial ke. Inattention neatenteco. Inaudible neauxdebla. Inauspicious nefavora. Incalculable nekalkulebla. Incapable nekapabla. Incapacity nekapableco. Incarnate korpigi. Incarnation ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... much labor has been spent in trying to produce human speaking-machines. Words are built up out of letters; short words are grouped into inane sentences such as are never used; and sentences are arranged into unnatural and insipid discourse. To grasp the thin ghost of the thought, the little human spirit must reverse its instinct to reach toward the higher, and, mole-like, ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... cant. It is possible for flippant pretenders to acquire a peculiar phraseology, and use it with a painful dexterity; and it is also possible for genuine Christians to subside into a state of mind so listless or secular, that their talk on religious topics will have the inane and heartless sound of the tinkling cymbal. But as there is an experimental religion, so is it possible for those who have felt religion in its vitality to exchange their thoughts regarding it, and to relate what it—or rather, ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... I had written a prose story by request, when it was found that I had grown utterly inane over verse. It was written in the first person, and the style was modelled after De Foe's. The night before sending it off, when I had already packed it up, I was reading about the professional story-tellers of Eastern countries, who devoted their ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... beautiful Philanthropist, eulogized by Burke, and in most men's minds a sort of beatified individual. How glorious, having finished off one's affairs in Bedfordshire, or in fact finding them very dull, inane, and worthy of being quitted and got away from, to set out on a cruise, over the Jails first of Britain; then, finding that answer, over the Jails of the habitable Globe! "A voyage of discovery, a circum-navigation of charity; ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... matter of economy—adopt and enforce some rules and regulations for the benefit of all; it would be necessary to do so unless the individuals were not only perfect, but also absolutely of one mind on all subjects relating to their welfare. Can the imagination picture existence more inane? ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... well-dressed people who were jostling each other in a gentle, well-bred sort of way in their eagerness to get into the saloon. They were mostly silent, as is the way of the English among strangers, but a few, here and there, who seemed to have already made each other's acquaintance, passed the usual inane remarks about the absurdly inconvenient arrangements generally of the ship. Some half a dozen stewards were showing the passengers to their places at table, as they passed in through the doorways; and upon my entrance I was ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... tavern—suburban in those days—or house of call for City tradesmen. There he smokes half a pipe and drinks a pint of ale. In the evening at another tavern he smokes a pipe and drinks two pints of cider, winding up the inane day at his club, where he smokes three pipes before coming home at twelve to go to bed and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... the God-breathed spirit air, Pass through my soul, and make it strong to love; Wither with gracious cold what demons dare Shoot from my hell into my world above; Let them drop down, like leaves the sun doth sear, And flutter far into the inane and bare, Leaving my middle-earth calm, ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... stream of reasoning so lucid, out of depths so profound and reach conclusions so cogent, that he seemed fairly inspired. At other times he would develop a line of argument so outworn, and arrive at conclusions so inane, that I could not but look into his face closely to see if he could be really in earnest; but it always bore that same expression—forbidding the slightest suspicion that he was uttering anything save that which he believed, at ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... on the bosom of the storm. Ay! 'tis a fearful plunge! Now think of Death— There is an angel merciful and strong, Hovering ever o'er the weary world, That foldeth in his arms the weak, whose feet Totter upon the brink of the Inane, And, like a mother, wafts them from Earth's strife Into the bosom of eternal rest; Is he not merciful who spares so long The guilty for repentance, and the pure Transplants in all their purity to heaven? Death harms not aught that's lovely, that poor frame Is mere corruption, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... of the year '49 has left me nothing to tell. For me, it was the inane life of that draff of Society - the young man-about-town: the tailor's, the haberdasher's, the bootmaker's, and trinket-maker's, young man; the dancing and 'hell'-frequenting young man; the young man of the 'Cider Cellars' and Piccadilly saloons; the valiant dove-slayer, the park-lounger, the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... keep you from falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's twenty digits. While I was on it, "pinnacled dim in the intense inane," a strong wind was blowing, and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. It swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye or a cat-o'nine-tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to the guide, and he said that the spire did really swing back and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... himself how inane were these reflections, how powerless the human reason to investigate the inconceivable purposes of the Almighty; and again his thoughts turned to that journey to Dauphine which haunted ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... was concluded by an adjournment to the dining-room to play bagatelle, the most inane of games, to which the billiard-player goes with contempt, changed quickly to wrath when he cannot put the balls into absurd little holes. Mary was an adept, and took pleasure in showing James how the thing should be done. He noticed that she and the curate managed ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... of protecting themselves against renewed onslaughts by their opponents. Now such protection might be a necessary thing under the present state of an International Law which has been outraged and partly been made inane by themselves and has partly turned out not to meet the conditions of modern warfare as they result from the modern weapons of destruction. But it would be made unnecessary or its requirements be greatly reduced if the League of the Nations, such as is in principle ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... whistling the lively, lilting measures of "There's a Girl Wanted There," "the silly ass" seemed to become a thousand times sillier than ever. He set down his cup, and, turning to Anita, said with an inane sort of giggle, "I say, you know, here's a lark. Let's have a game of 'Slap Hand,' you and I—what? Know it, don't you? You try to slap my hands, and I try to slap yours, and whichever succeeds in doing it first gets ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... certain," Miriam returned. "It's in the papers that you've got a high appointment, but I don't read the papers unless there's something in them about myself. Next week I shall devour them and think them, no doubt, inane. It was Basil told me this afternoon of your promotion—he had seen it announced somewhere, I'm delighted if it gives you more money and more advantages, but don't expect me to be glad that you're going away to ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... been conscious of those instinctive standards which are called ideals, and she did not know that she was suffering for them. She often found herself sneering when she was on a street-car, or when she was brushing out her hair before her mirror, as some inane remark or too familiar ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... said Mr. Vyner at last, and comforted himself with the reflection that the most eminent K.C.'s often made inane remarks with the idea of throwing people ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... most inane occupation under the sun, so she curled up on the beach to read while the enthusiastic anglers put out in the rowboats. Gladys did not care for fishing either, so she decided to stay on shore and keep ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... "hist" had been so fierce as to be almost like a rap from a policeman's club, and there was an enforced and temporary suspension of the inane chatter. The attendant youth tried to assume the incensed and threatening look with which an ancient gallant would have laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. But some animals and men only become absurd when they try to appear ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... so sore perhaps at being dubbed "Betsy Prig;" but, being in fact almost a reprint of the "Herald," the suggestion of "Mrs. Harris"—a creature of no existence, the mere reflex of Mrs. Gamp's own inane and besodden brain—was too calmly provoking, as it was meant to be, to be borne in silence. These two journals were highly unpopular at the time; for the "Manchester School" was making headway, and Free Trade was already a powerful and significant cry. So when Punch laughed at them for two—though ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... The gum trees enclosed for her one immense cell and she had become utterly weary of her mental and her spiritual incarceration. Oh! for the sting of love's strong emotion to break the monotony. The most sordid sights and sounds of London streets, the most inane babble of a fashionable crowd would be more stimulating to her brain, sweeter in her ears than the arid expanse, the weird bush noises—howl of dingoes, wail of curlews, lowing of cattle—that a year ago had seemed ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... immorality little veiled or adorned; the most undisguised arrogance; and the coarsest neglect of all kindly feelings and attentions haughtily assumed for the sake of shining in a false and despicable refinement; even more inane and intolerable to a healthy mind than the awkward stiffness of the declared Nobodies. It has been said that vice and poverty form the most revolting combination; since I have been in England, vice and boorish rudeness seem to me to form a ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the first time that Joanna had seen her sister calm and collected while she herself was flustered—but this evening a sense of her own awkwardness helped to put her at a still greater disadvantage. She found herself making inane remarks, hesitating and stuttering—she grew sulky and silent, and at last suggested that Ellen would like to go ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... assigns special colors to the persons in the Trinity, (red, blue, and green,) and then allots to Satan a constituent of one of these, (yellow,) has drifted away from the solid anchorage of observation into the shoreless waste of the inane, if not amidst the dark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in England is the so-called comic pictorial sequence. All the big papers have from one to half a dozen of these sequences, each by a different artist. Bud Fisher with "Mutt and Jeff" comes first in popularity, I believe, and then there are his rivals and his imitators. Nothing more inane than some of these series could be invented; and yet they persist and could not, I am told, be dropped by any editor ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... inane promptitude, for I had no notion of her drift; but then she ran off in a scurry of laughter, and still puzzled I turned into my room, TO FIND, neatly hung over the end of the bed, nothing less than the dainty petticoat and silk stockings of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Hilary found that women were better listeners than men. Women are perhaps better trained; they think it more ill-mannered not to show interest. They will listen to stories about servants, or reports of the inane sayings of infants, they will hear you through, without the flicker of a yawn, but with ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about your children's diseases. They are well-bred; they drive themselves on a tight rein, and endure. They are ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... How inane and silly their conversation is! Sometimes a whim comes upon them, and one runs for a few yards; the whim takes possession of others, and they do exactly the same. One seizes another round the body and wrestles with him. Immediately the others begin to wrestle too; their ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... could tell me where my hotel is, officer?" Oliver began. "What hotel?" said the policeman uninterestedly. Oliver noticed with an inane distinctness that he had started to swirl his nightstick as a large blue cat might switch its tail. He wondered if it would be tactful to ask him if he had ever been a drum major. Then he realized that the policeman had asked him a question—courtesy ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... almost beyond example. The Reich, with a Kaiser reduced to such a pass, has its potentialities of help or of hindrance,—its thousand-fold formulas, inane mostly, yet not inane wholly, which interlace this matter everywhere, as with real threads, and with gossamer or apparent threads,—which it is essential to attend to. Wise head, that could discriminate the dead Formulas of such an imbroglio, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... more than an illusion of guilt. He is, this sly fellow, a memory, inarticulate and envious. He envies me because I am clever enough to laugh at my madness. However, I will consider him later, in his various guises, for of all the Mallares, dumb though he is and ludicrous with inane tears, he interests ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... dismissed. Ever since I had been grown up, to the great sorrow of my father, the municipal architect, I had changed my position nine times, going from one department to another, but all the departments were as like each other as drops of water; I had to sit and write, listen to inane and rude remarks, and just wait ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... looked at her; and when Jennings looked, he saw—as must anyone who lives well by playing upon human nature. He did not like her expression. She did not habitually smile; her light-heartedness, her optimism, did not show themselves in that inane way. But this seriousness of hers was of a new kind, of the kind that bespeaks sobriety and saneness of soul. And that kind of seriousness—the deep, inward gravity of a person whose days of trifling with themselves and with the facts of life, and of being trifled ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... backward, physically speaking. I was confronted with the vastitude of the universe at once, without the ingratiating introduction of the fairy tale. I had early made the not so inane decision that I would not read a book until I really wanted to. One of the rarest women in the world, having listened to my remark, said she had a book she knew I would like because it was so different, and forthwith presented me with Emerson's Essays, the first book that I have any knowledge ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... were newspaper reporters to ask his opinion on politics, or polygamy, or woman's suffrage; on heaven and hell and happiness; on the latest novel; on the war in Africa, the troubles in China; on anything under the sun, important or unimportant, interesting or inane, concerning which one might possibly hold an opinion. He was unfailing "copy" if they could but get a word with him. Anything that he might choose to say upon any subject whatever was seized upon and magnified and printed with head-lines. Sometimes opinions were invented for ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... him for a long moment, then gave an inane giggle. He stepped back and flicked Joe Mauser a salute. "Very well, captain. As a matter of routine, I shall report this use of an aircraft for reconnaissance purposes, and undoubtedly a commission will meet to investigate the propriety of ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the house she found that she had just received a package by special messenger. She tore off the outer wrapper and on the inner was written in red ink: "Danger." Murmuring some inane thing about its being her shoes, she ran with the package to her room. For a young woman who had all her life received packages of all kinds she ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... man, would not satisfy the instinctive desires of human nature, or account for the facts of material nature. It did not long answer to say, if it ever was said, that the Universe was drifting in the void inane, and neither it, nor any mind within or without it, knew of its whence, its whither, or its whereabouts; that man was drifting in the Universe, knowing little of his whereabouts, nothing of his whence or whither; that there was no Mind, no Providence, no Power, that knew any better; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... fervour and devotion pervading the book that contrasts pleasantly with the trivially inane tone some writers think fit to adopt in writing for and about children. All Sunday-school teachers and parents would do well to lay its lessons ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless supplies, will satisfy this craving, which is not to be satisfied! Hence his bitterness. Life can furnish no food fitting for him. The strength and purity of his energies have reached to an almost divine height, and roam through the Inane. Poetry, love, and such-like, are the drugs earth has to offer to high natures, as she offers to low ones debauchery. 'Tis a sign, this sourness, that he is subject to none of the empiricisms that are afloat. Now to keep him clear ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... uttered in vast London city By lion comiques without pity, Provincial towns were not belated, But showed they, too, were educated; In many a rustic, quiet retreat, Bucolics, too, would not be beat; At last It crossed the mighty main, Did Britain's latest great inane, And we out here in deep despair, Have been informed that There ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... steamed out of his little dock at a quarter before six, and bore straight down for the Patriarch, who happened to be then driving, in an inane manner, through a stagnant account of Bleeding Heart Yard. Pancks instantly made fast to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... children to read, we should be willing to go to some expense in order to provide them with what is worth reading. It is impossible for those who have not studied the subject to realize the quantity of inane trash with which many children stultify their minds. They read so much that their thought is confused and they cannot even remember the names of the books whose pages are passing before their eyes. The market is flooded with books ranging from the trivial ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... gowning, had flashed in appalling procession before her mental vision. The idea, in the face of the appalling actuality, was so rich that Bobby pursued it no further lest he spoil it, and talked about the weather and equally inane topics the rest of ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... several days. For a time I resolutely put all thought of what had occurred from my mind, but as soon as I felt able, I sat down, with the whole matter before me, as it were, and deliberately looked it in the face. I think I never felt more inane in my life than when I remembered my folly, as I now regarded it. All that saved me from utter self-abasement was the fact that it had occurred at a time when I was at such a low ebb physically, by reason of illness. I determined to try to forget it, as speedily ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient," said Clovis, "but it seems I asked too ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... phantoms, apparitions.... Alas! no ghosts, no fantastic, unearthly powers are terrible; there are no terrors in the Hoffmann world, in whatever form it appears.... What is terrible is that there is nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting and degradingly inane. Once one is soaked through and through with that knowledge, once one has tasted of that bitter, no honey more seems sweet, and even the highest, sweetest bliss, the bliss of love, of perfect nearness, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... toleration of unnecessary noise, for instance, of the clashing of doors, which is so extremely ill-mannered and vulgar, is a direct proof of the dulness and poverty of thought that one meets with everywhere. In Germany it seems as though it were planned that no one should think for noise; take the inane drumming that goes on as an instance. Finally, as far as the literature treated of in this chapter is concerned, I have only one work to recommend, but it is an excellent one: I mean a poetical epistle in terzo rimo ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and six carboys of sulfuric acid, all to be delivered the next morning at the cellar door of the shunned house in Benefit Street. After that I tried to sleep; and failing, passed the hours in reading and in the composition of inane verses to counteract ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... doctor looks at him with the greatest respect, and listens to his querulous plaint patiently. For that great dome of silence, his brain, repository of so many state-secrets, is still a redoubtable instrument: its wit and its magician's cunning have not yet lapsed into the dull inane of senile decay. Though fallen from power, after a bad beating at the polls, there is no knowing but that he may rise again, and hold once more in those tired old hands, shiny with rheumatic gout, and now twitching feebly under the discomfort of a superimposed malady, the reins of democratic and ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... chaplet of laurels. In one corner a skull and cross-bones were figured; in the other the motto Mort m'est vie; while two curly objects, which did duty for tears, filled up the lower corners. The books of Henri III., even when they are absolutely worthless as literature, sell for high prices; and an inane treatise on theology, decorated with his sacred emblems, lately brought about 120 pounds ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... nimble tongue a rest And, turning Trappist, stanched the fearsome gush Of egotistic and thrasonic slush; Or if Lord X. eschewed his daily speeches And took to canning Californian peaches; Or if egregious LYNCH could but abstain From "ruining along the illimitable inane" At Question-time, and try to render PLATO'S Republic into Erse, or grow potatoes; Or if our novelists wrote cheerful books, Instead of joining those superfluous cooks Who spoil our daily journalistic broth By lashing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... in it." And so it comes that his letters to Madame von Stein leave one only amazed with the more sorrowful admiration that the unrivaled genius of the civilized world in its most civilized age found perfect satisfaction in the inane routine of the life of a court dignitary in a petty ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... marry before conversion, on any account. Settle the hero down in the ministry, to which he dedicates talents that you may call as splendid as you please; make your fashionable conversation of your worldly people slightly blackguardly, and that of your pets very inane, with spots of religion coming out very strong now and then, and you will have more readers than Dickens, Bulwer, or Thackeray. Well-meaning mothers will put the book without fear into the hands ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... of "playing 'possum" on the part of our opossum, the trick would seem to be particularly inane. The truth of the matter is, what is attributed to an unusual brilliancy on the part of the creature is positively unusual witlessness. The animal has an exceedingly small brain, as compared with that ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... Contessa had urged him to join Marcello at once, but he had not had the least intention of doing so, and had come back to Paris as soon as he was sure that the Contessa was gone. But he had made a mistake in his calculations. He had counted on Regina for the love of excitement, display, and inane dissipation which women in her position very often develop when they find that a man will give them anything they like; and he had counted very little on her love for Marcello. Folco was still young enough to fall into one of the most common errors of youth, which is to believe most people worse ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... first Napoleon, he would have made himself sure personally as to "the last gaiter button" and all other details, but with sublime self-satisfaction and inane blindness the Second Napoleon put himself at the head of this unready army, inspired apparently with the "on to Berlin" confidence ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... superior rebuff, Helen came to the inane Lily Pearl's support in a manner she knew would hit loyal Polly's ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... partridge to Gray Wolf, but just as he was about to spring upon his feathered prey the soft chatter of a porcupine a few yards away brought him to a sudden stop. Few things could make Kazan drop his tail. But that inane and incoherent prattle of the little spiked beast sent him off at double-quick with his tail between his legs. As man abhors and evades the creeping serpent, so Kazan would hereafter evade this little creature of the forests that never in animal history has been known to lose ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... some inane misunderstanding, and sprang from my unfamiliarity with the language. For although two nations use the same words and read the same books, intercourse is not conducted by the dictionary. The business of life is not carried on by words, but in set phrases, each with a special and almost ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too good for me," said he to himself swaggeringly. No doubt about it—no, indeed, not the slightest. But—well, everybody wouldn't realize this, as yet. And it must be admitted that those mere foppish, inane nothings did produce a seeming of difference. Indeed, it must even be admitted that the way Margaret had been brought up would make it hard for her, with her sensitive, delicate nerves, to bear with him if ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Huguenot and papist agreed in this, if they could agree in nothing else. "Guisiani fratres," said Beza, "ita inter se regnum sunt partiti ut regi nihil praeter inane nomen sit relictum." Beza, ubi supra. Cardinal Santa Croce used almost the same expression: "Eo devenerat ut regi solum nomen reliquisse, alia omnia sibi sumsisse videretur." Commentarii, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Woodward shows marked advance. The book, with its delicious rhymes by Hamish Hendry, is one to treasure, as is also her "Adventures in Toy Land," designs marked by the diablerie of which she, alone of lady artists, seems to have the secret. In this the wooden, inane expression of the toys contrasts delightfully ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... fashionable—or unfashionable idiots, who are scarcely capable of a grammatical answer to a dinner invitation, (those formidably confounded he's and him's!)—think themselves privileged to join some inane laugh against a clever, but not yet famous, author, because, forsooth, one character in his novel may be an old acquaintance, or one epithet in a long poem may be weak, indelicate, tasteless, or foolish, or one philosophical fact in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... be so wanting in common sense," said the captain sternly. "What pleasure could he find in so inane a prank?" ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... face was not startled; it was not aware of him; it wore a singular expression of resolution. A very singular expression which, as it were, detained him for a moment. In order to cover his embarrassment, he made some inane remark on the weather, upon which, instead of returning another inane remark according to the tacit rules of the game, she only gave him a smile of unfathomable meaning. Nothing could have been more singular. The good-looking ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... she could from the man. Mentally upbraiding herself for her foolishness she forced a smile of greeting and in her haste to say something that would put the meeting on a commonplace basis, burst out with the inane and obvious: ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... laughed that funny, somewhat inane laugh of his, which had deceived the clever men of two countries ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... unsoldierly; it is fussy and inflated; a full blown specimen of the pompously inane. How can Burnside venture to say that after the repulse, during three days he expected the enemy to leave his stronghold and attack him—Burnside? The rebels never did anything to justify such a supposition. They are neither idiots nor madmen, and only from a McClellan, or some bright ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... for; the night, Adrien gave himself up to unaccustomed reverie. The tenor of his life had been changed. The inane senseless round of dissipation had begun to tire him; the homage and flattery cloyed on his palate. And now, with his newborn love for Constance filling his heart and mind, had come the overwhelming failure of his beloved horse, and the death of his jockey; the last causing him more pain ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... that; he could see it as he hadn't seen it hitherto. It must have given what value there was to her poor little roles in motion pictures. Now that his eye had caught it, it surprised, and to some degree disturbed, him. It was more than the show-girl's inane prettiness, or the comely wax-work face of the girl on the cover of a magazine. With due allowance for her Anglo-Saxonism and honesty, she was the type of woman to whom "things happen." Things would happen to her, Allerton surmised, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... L4,000 a year (a large income in pre-war days) and of attractive appearance, she had no lack of suitors, even though she thought modern dancing inane, and had little skill at ball-games. I have indicated her appearance by some few phrases already; but to enable you to visualize her more definitely I might be more precise. She was a tall woman rather than large built, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... training had led them to think in army corps, and they frankly and sneeringly asked us, "What could you do?" They were still in the stage where they freely applied to enemies and possible enemies the expression, "They are afraid of us." "The more enemies, the more glory," was the inane motto so popular early in the war that it was even printed on ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... "For absolute inane, insensate romanticism," said he, "I recommend you to the recently engaged. You used to have some sense. You were clever enough to refuse me and now you go and forever ruin my opinion of you by making a ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly |
