"Stupid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pamphlet also displays his characteristic ignorance, or stupid disregard to truth, when he says that the Journal ever charged Young with receiving pay in three capacities, during the extra session of 1815. It never made the charge as it respected that, or any other year;—but it so happens that during the ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... but of giving him tit for tat and of paying him out in his own coin; does not care a straw about destroying his happiness, sends everything to the devil, and talks a lot of bosh which she certainly does not believe. And then, because there is nothing so stupid and so obstinate in the whole world as lovers, neither he nor she will take the first steps, and own to having been in the wrong, and regret having gone too far; but both wait and watch and do not even write ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... bewildered fashion. Allowing for the baby's portmanteau to have gone astray, what, she asked, had become of the clothes he must have been wearing? Aristide entered upon a picturesque and realistic explanation. The landlady was stout, she was stupid, she could not grasp ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... I gave you the opportunity. You failed to profit by it. You got drunk the first night you arrived. Kenneth Traynor was a temperate man. Is it no wonder you excited wonder and talk? Then you were stupid under questioning and gave equivocal answers. Your explanation to Parker about the diamonds was more than unfortunate; it was idiotic. His suspicions were at once aroused. He may yet give us trouble before we have time to get rid of the stones. Finding the wife eluded you, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... myself to compete with him, and by hewing nearly two feet of pavement for his one. And on this occasion my aunt, his wife, who had been no stranger to his previous complaints, was informed that her "stupid nephew" was to turn out ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... "No," she said with her old calm decision, and moved away. Four years ago she would have supplemented her refusal by the words, "You are stupid. You tease me," Now she contented herself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... amazed and utterly at a loss, and said, "Two angels? What? Mam not know; what?" He looked at me with a laugh of wonder; pointed to my head and the wooden table, and replied—his usual way of calling me stupid— "Doll mam! Two small boys, dead, Portugal." My brother had lost two babes in Portugal; and thus exquisitely, thus in all the beauty of true sublimity, had the untaught deaf and dumb boy ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... artistic advice, and called her his "gallery." But there are wives and wives, and however deeply our humanity may sympathise with poor Minna Planer, our love for evolution can only rejoice that she was not permitted to tie her husband down to the narrow-souled ideals of the good-hearted, stupid little housewife she was. Wagner understood her far better than she understood him. He sympathised with her even in her resistance to his career. To the last it made him indignant to hear her ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... they got on pretty well, till they came to a river, when the ox would not cross through the water. Then Atoukama called to Quanqua to drive the ox across, but all she could get out of him was, 'QUAN? QUA? Quan? qua?' At last she said, 'Oh! you stupid fellow, you're no good; stop here and mind the ox while I go and get help to drive him across.' So off she went to fetch Ananzi. As soon as Atoukama was gone away, Quanqua killed the ox, and hid it all away, where ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... but I remain as stupid as ever; for still I fail to comprehend how this knowing what you know and do not know is the same as the ...
— Charmides • Plato
... get over his amazement at the incredible ignorance, the instinctive aversion for art, the type of ideas, the terror of words, peculiar to Catholics. Why was this? For after all there was no reason why believers should be more ignorant and stupid than any other folks. Indeed, the contrary ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... were every whit as foolish themselves. One word further would I say of them here: namely, this single remark, that, from 1300 to 1600, and yet later, but one kind of justice may be seen. Barring a small interlude in the Parliament of Paris, the same stupid savagery prevails everywhere, at all hours. Even great parts are of no use here. As soon as witchcraft comes into question, the fine-natured De Lancre, a Bordeaux magistrate and forward politician under Henry IV., sinks back to ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... than even he had been accustomed to, he gently raised his hand to his face and touched it. The touch was painful, so he desisted. Then he arose, remounted his steed, which stood close to him, looking stupid after the concussion, and followed the hunt, which by that time was ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... they must do, were France Quixotic enough to undertake to support them. We, I hope, shall be left free to avail ourselves of the advantages of neutrality; and yet, much I fear, the English, or rather their stupid King, will force us out of it. For thus I reason. By forcing us into the war against them, they will be engaged in an expensive land war, as well as a sea war. Common sense dictates, therefore, that they should let us remain neuter: ergo they will not let us remain neuter. I ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... the yacht and all the stupid folks on it; so she wanders out to windward of the worst smells, plants herself on the flattest rock she can find, and prepares to read. That's her pose when she looks up and discovers this male party with the sun kissed locks and the dreamy eyes standin' ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... not out of place, for the proposal market would be less active, were it not for "hints." But these are seldom given in words—unless a man happens to be particularly stupid. ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... or two Miss Anthony's heart smote her and she wrote again: "I have blown my bugle blast and I know I have wounded your dear souls, but I can not see the plan a bit prettier than I did at first. I may be very stupid or supersensitive. If it were to honor Mrs. Stanton, I would be willing to charge for tickets." And then a few days later: "Have I killed you outright? I can not tell you how much I have suffered because I can not see this as you do, but I would rather never have a mention of my birthday ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... avenue there was an old arch and a clock tower, with a stupid, bewildering clock, which had only one hand—and which jumped straight from one hour to the next—and was therefore always in extremes. Through this arch you walked straight into the ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... to see the great wrong she had ignorantly done to him. The youth she had blindly taken to gratify her green passion and to become the father of her only child! She had ruined him, as far as any one human being can ruin another, and now she knew it. She had been the stupid means of providing him with a feast of folly, and then had abandoned him when he behaved badly. So she wrote him gently, as one who at last comprehended that mercy and forgiveness are due all those whom we harm upon our road ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... "Well, isn't it stupid of a man to try to quarrel with his best friend when he won't be seeing her again for three ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... "Flirt," the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl's engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really worthy ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... "Stupid goose," said the old woman, "why, the oven door is quite large enough for me; just look, I could get in myself." As she spoke she stepped forward and pretended to put her ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... conclusion at which you are aiming, advance the desired conclusion,—although it does not in the least follow,—as though it had been proved, and proclaim it in a tone of triumph. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily succeed. It is akin to the fallacy ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... believe that a man could be so stupid? He never knew of my existence, this big, red booby. He never knew that I existed until—until his 'dream' had fled—with me! In a week we were in Paris, that dream-girl and I—in a month we had quarrelled. I always end these matters with a quarrel; it makes the complete ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... he not strike at the very root of the matter by exposing those stupid plagiarists who were attempting to play off upon the intelligence of the Roman world a clumsy imitation of the far-famed Buddha? It was the very kind of thing that the enemies of Christianity wanted. Why should the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... what the theme of conversation would be, she felt a thrill of terror as the good woman came in, knitting in hand, and announced her intention of sitting through the chapel exercises. She was not going to prayer meeting that night, she said, for Dr. Foster was absent, and they were always stupid when he was away. She could not understand all Mr.—— said, his words were so learned, while the man who talked so long, and never came to the point, was insufferable in hot weather, so she remained away, and came to see her friend, who, she supposed, knew that she had a governor ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... called to preside had consisted thus far of very heterogeneous and discordant materials. Vast numbers of the people were of the humblest and most degraded condition, consisting of ignorant peasants, some stupid, others turbulent and ungovernable; and of refugees from justice, such as thieves, robbers, and outlaws of every degree. But then, on the other hand, there were many persons of standing and respectability. The sons of families of wealth and influence in Alba had, in many cases, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... for receiving a knowledge of the animal have not been wanting; traders having for one hundred years frequented this river, and specimens, such as have been brought here within a year, could not have been exhibited without having attracted the attention of the most stupid." ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... that a minister is of opinion that you know more of music than of state. My friend! the quarrels of ingenious men are generally far less reasonable and just, less placable and moderate, than those of the stupid and ignorant. We ought to blush at this: and we should blush yet more deeply if we bring them in as parties to our differences. Let us conquer by kindness; which we cannot do ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... well, there was not so much of this stupid humbugging-us-about system as there is now, but we were not kept so clean. The Scots-greys were frequently on the march on the clothes ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... stupid! I forgot," said Servadac, with the slightest possible shrug of the shoulders; "we ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Oakley's devotion; it had got somehow to make amends to him, even if he never was to know of it, for this last unfair stroke of destiny. Luttrell walked across London, dwelling upon the qualities of individual men in the company which was his command—how this man was quick, and that man stupid, and that other inclined to swank, and a fourth had a gift for reading maps, and a fifth would make a real marksman; and so he woke up to find himself before the bookstall in the station at Waterloo. Then he remembered the visit he had promised, but there was no longer any time. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... come to a bad end. Howsoever, he was a wonderful chap to track and ride; none could beat him at that; he was nearly as good as Warrigal in the bush. He was as cunning as a pet dingo, and would look as stupid before any one he didn't know, or thought was too respectable, as if he was half an idiot. But no one ever stirred within twenty or thirty miles of where he lived without our hearing about it. Father fished him out, having paid him pretty well ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... need of further delay," she said. "No one cared to see 'Lena married. Weddings were stupid things, anyway, and her mother could just as well go ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... it]. Not at all. Your Majesty is very good. I have been very awkward; but I did not intend it. I am rather stupid, I ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... the stupid Gouverneur Faulkner must very soon sign that paper that sends the many strong mules to carry food to the soldiers of France fighting in the trenches?" I asked of her as I made her comfortable in ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... are compelled to think. When they find themselves face to face with a greater and more enduring strength than their own, they will renounce their idol. But they are a brave people, a faithful people, and a stupid people, so that they will need rough proofs. They cannot be driven from their position by a little paper shot. In their present mood, if they hear an appeal to pity, sensibility, and sympathy, they take it for a cry of weakness. I am reminded of what I once heard said by a genial and ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... looking for something. He ultimately came across an old rusty battle-axe, of great size, and, setting off after the others, he arrived at the scene of strife just as the combatants were closing with each other. Duncan Macrae (for such was his name), from his stupid and ungainly appearance, was taken little notice of, and was wandering about in an aimless, vacant, half-idiotic manner. Hector Roy, Alexander's third son, and progenitor of the Gairloch Mackenzies, observing him, asked why he was not taking part in the fight, and supporting his chief ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... is too much to do. If I go out that stupid girl will burn the cake," and she pointed to a Kafir intombi (young girl), who, arrayed in a blue smock, a sweet smile, and a feather stuck in her wool, was vigorously employed in staring at the flies ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... ships, they raised such a commotion in the sea that we discharged all our artillery to drive them away. We soon afterwards came to an island named Ascension, where we saw many birds about the size of ducks, which were so stupid that we took them with our hands, yet immediately afterwards they shewed wonderful fierceness. In that island we saw no outer living creatures besides these birds, which seemed as if they had never seen mankind before, and there were prodigious quantities ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Sirdars? I can't smoke anything else and no one sells them out here. Our landlady has one eye that looks up the chimney and another that goes cellar wards and Carlton says that she always regards him obliquely—never mind, she is a good stupid soul and I can forgive a landlady anything but perspicacity. I don't see how our intimacy has escaped her,—to me it looks like the first foreign sticker on an American five dollar ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... touched—drunk! I could have struck the man for uttering the word, with her lying—poor suffering angel—so white, and still, and helpless before him. As it was, I gave him a look, but he was too stupid to understand it, and went droning on, saying the same thing over and over again in the same words. And yet the story of how they found her was, like all the sad stories I have ever heard told in real life, so very, very short. They had just seen her lying along ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... way with the technical objection that the Conference was called to discuss Conscription alone and that no other topic must be permitted to go further. Could stupid malignancy or blind ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... of the Gods.—The average intelligent citizen probably has views midway between the stupid rabble and the daring philosophers. To him the gods of Greece stand out in full divinity, honored and worshipped because they are protectors of the good, avengers of the evil, and guardians of the moral law. They ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... he had a wond'rous wise look when he was born, and so he named him Solomon, thinking that if indeed he turned out to be wise the name would fit him nicely, whereas, should he be mistaken, and the boy grow up stupid, his name could ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... children, we lost. The cry that it would "interfere with private practice" defeated us. The fact was easily demonstrated that not only was ophthalmia rampant in the schools with its contagion, but that the pupils were made both near-sighted and stupid by the want of proper arrangement of their seats and of themselves in their classrooms. But self-interest prevailed. However, nothing is ever settled till it is settled right. I have before me the results of an examination of thirty-six ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... cloak which they wore on the side on which the wind comes when walking or sitting. They lived chiefly on shell-fish, and in search of them wandered from place to place. They were considered as among the most dull and stupid of the human race. No wonder, indeed, considering the few objects on which their minds could be expanded. A farther acquaintance with these tribes has shown that they have minds as capable of receiving good impressions as other human beings, and that they are not destitute ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Soldier Boy, whose adventures in the army were so much enjoyed. We have only to repeat that there are few better stories for boys than these of Mr. Adams'. Always bright and even sparkling with animation, the story never drags; there are no stupid tasks or tiresome descriptions; the boys whose characters are drawn are real boys, impulsive, with superabundant animal life, and the heroes are manly, generous, ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... remarked Cola, "that this stupid place can strike even a stranger as being delightful, since there is no one to see but fisherfolk, who can talk of nothing but fish, and there isn't a thing to do but watch the boats go and come. For my part, I am so tired of it all that I wish something ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... to preach. I remember well, ten years ago, when I was a curate (which in Scotland we call an assistant) myself, what advices I used to receive (quite unsought by me) from well-meaning, but densely stupid old ladies. I did not think the advices worth much, even then; and now, by longer experience, I can discern that they were utterly idiotic. Yet they were given with entire confidence. No thought ever entered the heads of these well-meaning, but stupid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... intelligent insects, and would soon cease to visit flowers which did not supply them with food. Flies, however, are more stupid, and are often deceived. Thus in our lovely little Parnassia, five of the ten stamens have ceased to produce pollen, but are prolonged into fingers, each terminating in a shining yellow knob, which ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... of imposing proportions. But for his eyes no turfman would have looked at him twice. They were large, clear, and unusually intelligent; they redeemed his homely face. Without them he would have been called a stupid horse. ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... momentary appearance as to deny that the world exists when you stop thinking about it. You feel that your intellect has wider scope and has discovered many a thing that goes on behind the scenes, many a secret that would escape a stupid and gaping observation. It is the fool that looks to look and stops at the barely visible: you not only look ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... very magnanimous and somewhat stupid for Abe Storms to volunteer to go down in his coat of armor and scoop the oysters into a huge basket, for the very parties who had tried so hard to drown him when similarly engaged the day before. Nothing, it would seem, could be more absurd, ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... thanks!" she exclaimed. "How stupid of me to have left it there. Thank you again. My precious bag! I am so glad you have found it." She took the bag eagerly from him. "I am afraid I have been a nuisance, and disturbed you to no purpose. You must forgive my mistake. But now I will not ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... so stupid! I think I could learn it—it seems only to hold this thing so,"—here he bent forward, and placed his hand upon the shuttle, so as to touch the fingers of the girl,—"and then put it between the threads in this manner; ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... which I liked, there was a set-off for this: it was the absence of those stupid trade-regulations which in England, and on the continent of Europe, hamper so annoyingly the movement of commerce, and complicate so vexatiously the relations between employers and employed. Few of these relics of feudal-age policy exist in the United States: a master takes as many apprentices ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... although differences caused by the moulding influence of intelligence will probably be here discovered. But among individual dogs and horses we find all degrees of intelligence from absolute stupidity to high intelligence. And many mammals are slandered grievously by man. The pig is not stupid, far from it. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... but I have no recollection now of doing so, while I distinctly remember rehearsing the allegories and fables of the 'Gesta Romanorum', a book which seems to have been in my hands about the same time or a little later. I had a delight in that stupid collection of monkish legends which I cannot account for now, and which persisted in spite of the nightmare confusion it made of my ancient Greeks and Romans. They were not at all the ancient Greeks and Romans of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... disposed to do all the talking, though he occasionally appealed to his companions to approve of what he said. It was evident that he was the leading spirit of the party, and that he controlled them. He was rather a bright fellow, while the others were somewhat heavy and stupid in their understanding. The bottles were again handed to the guests, both of whom went through the form of drinking without taking a ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... ways, and loved God's creatures as did St. Francis d'Assisi, to whom every creature of God was dear, from Sister Swallow to Brother Wolf. So he learned, as he grew older, to love men and women and little children, even although they might be ugly, or stupid, or bad-tempered, or even wicked, and this sympathy cleansed away many a little fault of pride and self-conceit and impatience and hot temper, and in the end of the days made a man of John Carmichael. The dumb animals had an instinct about this young fellow, and would make ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... know. I feel stupid about tackling the bush again; and what can I do with Jeanie? I wish I was dead. I've half a mind to go and shoot that brute of a woman and then myself. But then, poor Jeanie! poor little Jeanie! I can't stand it, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... exclaimed impatiently. "Why do you keep staring so? Are you as stupid as you choose to ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... illustrations of this fact. One day, in the midst of a Council of State, Napoleon grossly insults Beugnot, treating him as one might an unmannerly valet. The effect produced, he goes up to him and says, "Well, stupid, have you found your head again?" Whereupon Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, and the little man raising his hand, takes the tall one by the ear, "an intoxicating sign of favour," writes Beugnot, "the familiar gesture of ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... had received an invitation letter to dine with a great lord; while others as proud as peacocks of the honour, yet not very sure as to their being up to the trade of behaving themselves at the tables of the great, were mostly dung stupid with not knowing what to think. A council meeting or two was held in the gloamings, to take such a serious business into consideration; some expressing their fears and inward down-sinking, while others cheered ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... clearing the snow from the horses' hoofs. The driver, stupid or dazed, sat on the box, helpless as a parrot on ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... d'Aldrigger's principal, but he did not venture to remonstrate with his pearl of a Wilhelmine. His was the most ingenious unintelligent tenderness in the world. A good man, but a stupid one! 'What will become of them when I am gone?' he said, as he lay dying; and when he was left alone for a moment with Wirth, his old man-servant, he struggled for breath to bid him take care of his mistress and her two daughters, as if the one reasonable being ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... for hours at a stretch in a clump of dead grass or berry bushes, till the flock comes near enough for a rush. Then she hurls herself among them, and in the confusion seizes one by the neck, throws it by a quick twist across her shoulders, and is gone before the stupid hens find out what it ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... have some breakfast," I said, and he chattered again. "Come and have some breakfast," I shouted; and then to myself: "How stupid I am! He ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... family. Now you see why I can understand the psychology of saying 'no' to a proposal. This stripling, who was at least five years my junior, proposed to me out of sheer gratitude. I actually succeeded in drumming quadratic equations into his stupid head, and he offered me his hand by ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... in the money while he looked on in stupid terror. When he left the table, all made way for him to pass; the cards were shuffled, ...
— The Queen Of Spades - 1901 • Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin
... the full penalty of her stupid acquiescence in the rule of Disraeli and Salisbury; and it will cost her yet far more than she paid for the results of Tory infamy and Whig senility in the "Alabama" business, for she has enemies to deal with who are far less generous and far ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... BERGAMIN. How stupid! But I know now what has turned your silly head: you come here to read! [SYLVETTE starts as she hears this. PERCINET also shows signs of fear as his father pulls the book from the youth's pocket.] Plays! ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... chickeree," sang one bird to another. "What a stupid girl that is! I could tell her which way to go. Why, there's the mark of his big foot on the moss close by. Why doesn't she see it ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... told you no, man, and I must put a stop to this stupid idolatry, which will ruin my child, and do you no good. Give her back to ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cheeks and her lips, as Roland did. He never said to her, "You are fit to be a duchess or a queen; you sing like a nightingale and charm my soul out of me, and you have hands and feet like a fairy." Poor Tris! He was stupid and silent. He could only look and sigh, or, if he did manage to speak, he was sure to plunge into such final questions as, "Denas, will you marry me? When will you marry me?" Or to tell her of his stone cottage, and his fine ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... perfection," may be found the key for all the extraordinary and apparently stupid prohibitions and restrictions placed by the mother-country on colonial wool manufacture. The growth of the woollen industry in any colony was regarded at once by England with jealous eyes. Wool was the pet industry and principal staple of Great Britain; and well ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... that alter cases. With us he would be free to act on his own devising, for we should make him commander of the forces. Against us he is only a subordinate, controlled by some stupid major-general." ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... up on the bridge together, where they could talk freely. The man at the wheel was a thick-set, rather stupid-looking native from Niue (Savage Island), who took no notice of their remarks, or at least appeared not to do so. But Huka was not such a fool ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... caught some of Hampstead's levelling ideas and encourages the young man. It was all Kingsbury's fault from the first. He began the world wrong, and now he cannot get himself right again. A radical aristocrat is a contradiction in terms. It is very well that there should be Radicals. It would be a stupid do-nothing world without them. But a man can't be oil and vinegar at the same time." This was the expression made by Lord Persiflage of his general ideas on politics in reference to George Roden and his connection with the ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... elaborately educated. After having been for some time after the death of Louis XIII. the favorite, the confidant, the first man, in short, at the court, he had been obliged to yield his place to Mazarin and so became the second in influence and favor; and eventually, as he was stupid enough to be vexed at this change of position, the queen had had him arrested and sent to Vincennes in charge of Guitant, who made his appearance in these pages in the beginning of this history and whom we shall see again. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he said, apologetically. "How stupid of me! I hope that you'll accept my warmest congratulations and be very, very happy. I can't tell you how pleased I am. But for the life of me I can't see why it ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... have sought about for shells and a few have been brought me from the Cataract, but of snails I can learn no tidings nor have I ever seen one, neither can I discover that there are any shells in the Nile mud. At the first Cataract they are found sticking to the rocks. The people here are very stupid about natural objects that are of no use to them. Like with the French small birds are all sparrows, and wild flowers there are none, and only about five varieties of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... at that moment because he made her suffer. Love her! She knew he loved her. He really belonged to her. This about not loving her, physically, bodily, was a mere perversity on his part, because he knew she loved him. He was stupid like a child. He belonged to her. His soul wanted her. She guessed somebody had been influencing him. She felt upon him the hardness, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... distinctions. I've been talking about the boy's people and his bringing up and the way he acts, whereupon you fly off on a tangent and coolly conclude things about the boy himself. It is not only unkind, but stupid." ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... was a great success. In dumb show, the speaker he referred to begged for mercy. This only delighted the audience still more, and when the dull speaker finished it was admitted that, for once, he had escaped being stupid or commonplace. He had also forced upon the next speaker the necessity of removing the unpleasant effects of the jokes made at his expense, a task that ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... Charles's long letter is so stupid, so gloomy, so loving, and so little to the purpose, that I take an editor's privilege, and omit it altogether. Of course he was coming home again, as soon as the Samarang ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... tried to explain his subsequent actions; perhaps he had had a stupid evening. He merely yawned and addressed the burglar with all possible respect. "Do you imagine I'll permit any guest of mine to go away hungry? If you'll wait till I dress, we'll stroll over to a restaurant in the next ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... fellow townsman, whom we presume must know you well, that you are destitute of feeling; your unexampled effrontery in the publick transaction which has unhappily brought you into notice, added to the consummate assurance evidenced in the stupid composition to which you have tacked your name, are strong circumstances in favour of this position But is your modesty truly impregnable? cannot the weapon of stern rebuke arouse your sensibility? must ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... blockhead,—you have no management," replied the first voice. "I will arrange the matter without your stupid interference." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... listened and sympathised with all her heart and soul, and understood why such a shot was a good one, and why such another failed, and was absorbed in the interest of the attempt to recover a wounded bird when the retriever was stupid, long after the intruder had made her exit, and they might have returned to matters touching her more closely, though regarded by Gerald as hardly equal in importance to roe deer, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... for its treatment of him, although some of the happiest years of his life had been spent there. "The Spaniards are a stupid, ungrateful set of ruffians," he afterwards wrote, "and are utterly incapable of appreciating generosity or forbearance." He piled up invective upon the unfortunate country. It was "the chosen land of the two fiends—assassination ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... things, but there are rare occasions, moments of supernatural understanding or suffering (which are two words for one and the same thing), when we see life in all its worm-like meanness, and death in its plain, stupid loathsomeness. Two days out of this year live like fire in my mind. I went to my uncle Richard's funeral. There was cold meat and sherry on the table; a dreadful servant asked me if I would go up to the corpse-room. (Mark the expression.) I went. It lay swollen and featureless, and ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... every moment knocked against the framework of a wagon-cover. Even a jolly young Irishman of Plaster Cove, whose nature it is to sleep under whatever discouragement, is beaten by these circumstances. He wishes he had his fiddle along. We never know what men are on casual acquaintance. This rather stupid-looking fellow is a devotee of music, and knows how to coax the sweetness out of the unwilling violin. Sometimes he goes miles and miles on winter nights to draw the seductive bow for the Cape Breton dancers, and there is enthusiasm in his voice, as he relates exploits of fiddling ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the immediate reason that there was no one except a stupid young soldier servant to speak to. But he was not anxious for the opportunities of which his severe arrest deprived him. He would have been uncommunicative from dread of ridicule. He was aware that the episode, so grave ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... often, at length has failed. But will this final failure bring to reason the hotheads of Sofia? After the cruel disappointment they received at the hands of Rumania, the Bulgarian politicians must understand that whatever is won by war by war only is given back. No one is so stupid as to give them willingly ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... that matters. It's all in the clothes and the sillier things they talk about. Why, I'd rather hear old Adam Doolittle talk than that stupid Judge Grayson, who dined with us the other night, and never mentioned anything but stocks. If I've got to hear about a single subject I'd rather it would be crops than stocks—they seem more ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... practice of allowing the manufacture of armaments to remain in the hands of private companies; that it is very tempting to see in the great Armament Firms the principal if not the only cause of modern war. Examiners of German militarism, most of them stupid enough to quote Nietzsche, may be pardoned for emphasising the political influence of Krupp; and since every great Power has a more or less efficiently organised Krupp of its own, it would be permissible to suggest that war would be already obsolete but for the intensive cultivation it receives ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... progressive. Books will never make a soldier, but Wolfe, as a military student, had the advantage of actual experience of war. Whenever he could find a teacher, he studied mathematics, zealously though apparently not with delight. "I have read the mathematics till I am grown perfectly stupid, and have algebraically worked away the little portion of understanding that was allowed to me. They have not even left me the qualities of a coxcomb for I can neither laugh nor sing nor talk an hour upon nothing. The latter of these is a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... hand she worshipped would tremble suddenly, as though waking to life within her own. But that pride was gone, and from its disappearance there had been but one step to the most utter degradation of soul to which a woman can descend, and from that again but one step more to a resolution almost stupid in its hardened obstinacy. But as though to show how completely she was dominated by the man whom she could not win even her last determination had yielded under the slightest pressure from his will. She had left her house beside him with the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... you afterwards. She has been dead two or three hundred years; it was her gold, or her people's, and those are her footprints in the dust. How stupid you are not to understand! Never mind the hateful stuff; come ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... that well-known stupid physical force which used to be the basis of strength of the Russian Empire. Its ruthlessness, its carelessness of life, however innocent, terrorized, and, we used to think, won respect. We know better now, especially those of us who were eye-witnesses of the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... common sense; he has a desire for accomplishment and achievement. To such a man, the mere pulling of cords, or the swinging about of his arms and legs, the bending of his back, just for the sake of exercise, seems a trifle stupid. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... But there are further curious particulars in connection with this claim. You must know, they are a family of singular characteristics, humorists, sometimes developing their queer traits into something like insanity; though oftener, I must say, spending stupid hereditary lives here on their estates, rusting out and dying without leaving any biography whatever about them. And yet there has always been one very queer thing about this generally very commonplace family. It is that each father, on his death-bed, has had an interview with ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the intrigue against Sparta. He can dupe stupid people like the Thebans, or the Peloponnesians; warning therefore is necessary. To the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... Hoddan indignantly. "I'll raise it somehow. If they're too stupid to save money— ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... is," said Staniford, dropping his teasing tone. "It's stupid. And I suppose it's pretty lonesome at South Bradfield ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... discriminating community, who are never enslaved, or misled, by whim, caprice, or fashion. It has been said, but it seems too monstrous for belief, that, formerly, persons were actually to be found so extremely indolent, or stupid, or timid, as never to think for themselves; but who followed with the crowd, like a swarm of bees, to the brazen tinkle of a mere name! Happily, the minds of the present age are far too active, enlightened, independent, and fearless, for degradation so unworthy. In ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... too delicate, too modest; she had too few arts, too little coquetry, too much charity. Lighting a cigar some day while he summed up his situation, her husband had probably decided she was incurably stupid. It was the same taste, in essence, our young man moralised, as the taste for M. Gerome and M. Baudry in painting and for M. Gustave Flaubert and M. Charles Baudelaire in literature. The Count was a pagan and his wife a Christian, ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... other. But he was a little vexed, for he was a young man with great capacity for pleasure, and it pleased him that morning to be with his friend. The thought of two ladies waiting lunch did not deter him; stupid women, why shouldn't they wait? Why should they interfere with their betters? With his ear on the ground he listened to Rickie's departing steps, and thought, "He wastes a lot of time keeping engagements. Why will he be pleasant to fools?" And then he thought, "Why has ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... stupid donkey, Nino. Supposing I obtain for you an engagement to read literature with the Contessina di Lira, will you not be a professor? If you prefer singing—" But Nino comprehended in a flash the whole scope of the proposal, and ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... "How stupid of me not to have thought of that!" exclaimed Mrs. Holden. "You know it will be just two weeks now till we go up to the lake for all the summer. Why didn't I think to have you plant stuff in our back garden? ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... sometimes seen in Petersburg society a woman who has even yet not been forgotten. Princess R——. She had a well-educated, well-bred, but rather stupid husband, and no children. She used suddenly to go abroad, and suddenly return to Russia, and led an eccentric life in general. She had the reputation of being a frivolous coquette, abandoned herself eagerly to every sort of pleasure, danced to exhaustion, laughed and jested with young men, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... clean and your necktie just so. Neatness is a "without-which- not;" but there must be more—a boy must work hard, be polite, honest, full of force, bright, quick, frank, good-natured. The "Old Man" may keep to sweep the floor a lazy, shiftless, stupid, silly, grouchy "stiff"; but when he wants some one to go on the road he looks for a live manly man. When you get in stock it is up to you; for eyes are on you, eyes just as anxious to see your good qualities as you are to ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... very much put out. I heard him say to himself over and over again, "Stupid boy! stupid boy! no cloth put on, and I dare say the water was cold, too; boys are no good;" but Joe was a good ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... did, Sally. Forgive me! I was stupid besides unkind for saying so. But how shall we manage it? Won't the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Nicodemus. Very shortly after this conversation they made their appearance, not only to Jesus, but to Peter and James and John on the holy mount in glory. How had they gotten there? I will tell you just what I think our Lord meant. He meant to teach that stupid, materialistic Nicodemus that people do not go to heaven by merely ascending, like as one would ascend or go up from a lower room in a building to a higher one. He meant to teach him that heaven must be in the man, inwrought into his character ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... am sorry that, amongst all the verses you have sent me, you should have forgotten what you commend the most, Les trois exclamations. I hope you will bring them with you. Voltaire's are intolerably stupid, and not above the level of officers in garrison. Some of M. de Pezay's are very pretty, though there is too much of them; and in truth I had seen them before. Those on Madame de la Vali'ere pretty too, but one is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... she gave him an excellent dinner; after which, she made him so comfortable, what with an easy-chair and complimentary converse, that, when Jasper rose late to return to his lodging, he said, "After all, if I had been ugly and stupid, and of a weakly constitution, I should have been of a very domestic ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... swarthy, clad in robes diagonally striped, which left visible arms muscled and gnarled as trunks of oaks. Their thick pouting lips, the gold rings which they wore through the partition of their nostrils, their great teeth sharp as the fangs of wolves, the expression of stupid servility on their faces, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... I had an inspiration. I turned down the inside pocket of my coat; and there, stitched into it, was the label of my tailor's with my name written on it. I had often wondered why tailors did this; obviously they know how stupid guards can be. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... For he now raved enormous folly, Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves, 615 'Twould make George Colman melancholy To have heard him, like a male Molly, Chanting those stupid staves. ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley |
