"Stupidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perception, this incapacity for enjoyment of the beautiful, is vulgarity. Vulgarity is contentment with what is common, and to be had on easy terms. The root of it is laziness. The mark of it is stupidity. ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... reflecting as he lighted it, and if his mind could have been read, it would have probably been discovered that he was wondering how it had happened that the conversation had taken this turn, and mentally cursing his own stupidity in making any remarks on the Schopenhauer. He was conscious all the time that his wife was looking rather steadily at him, and he knew that at least a conventional reply was ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... of a jury are, of course, very carefully limited by law. But even in this reduced sphere they are remarkable chiefly for their incompetence, prejudice, inattention, and stupidity. See particularly Andre Gide's Souvenirs de la Cour d'Assises, all the implied criticisms in which apply, mutatis quibusdam mutandis, with equal force to English and indeed to ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... theatre, and like to consider the poor little butterflies as creatures of a different species from their wives and daughters—a species provided by a material Providence, who supplies their other appetites. The poor little butterflies are glad, for a short time, to put up with stupidity and egoism for the sake of a temporary relief from sordid discomfort and gloom. Of course, I am not speaking of the women who, without economic pressure, lead an illicit life. There are a few of these ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... letter, alluding to the prevailing stupidity of the idea that genius and domestic happiness are incompatible, says: "We will live the real answer, will we not?... A man of genius mistreats his wife; well, take away the ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... the only objection to which is that the full statement of the apologia occupies twelve pages of Hansard and must have taken at least two hours of Parliamentary time. The original accusation was a malicious stupidity. The vindication was a confessional in which the Liberal leader told the House every item that he knew. Half the number of words would ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the belief that the body is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case of twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real man is superphysical. His intelligence or his stupidity, his genial disposition or his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are but the manifestations of himself through the body by which they are expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... only astonished," Mrs. Linley resumed, "at my own stupidity in not having discovered it before. We must be kinder than ever to the poor girl now; can't you guess why? My dear, how dull you are! Must I remind you that we have had two single men among our visitors? One of them is old and doesn't matter. But the other—I mean Sir George, of course—is ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... revisions, however, are more apt to have a topical arrangement, and to be divided into chapters, with titles, each containing a special subject and arranged, either topically, or, in some States, even so intelligent otherwise as are Pennsylvania and New Jersey, arranged with the elementary stupidity of the alphabetical system. I say, stupid; when, for instance, you have a chapter on "Corporations," no one can tell whether the legislature or compilers are going to put it under "C" for corporations, under "I" for incorporations, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... accomplished. Why I should have courted a broken evening on the exposed balcony, instead of beginning my labours in my study, remains an unrevealed mystery unless we charge it to the account of a much-abused eccentricity attributed to genius and which usually turns out to be arrant stupidity. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... is pithy, so that the surviving friends (if any can survive such a loss) remember it without fatigue; it is upon oath, so that rascals and Dr. Johnsons cannot pick holes in it. "Died through the visitation of intense stupidity, by impinging on a moonlight night against the off hind wheel of the Glasgow mail! Deodand upon the said wheel—two-pence." What a simple lapidary inscription! Nobody much in the wrong but an off-wheel; ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... their own country. This would be a commonplace, not worth uttering, in any other country; in England it is, unfortunately, far from being generally accepted Nothing sets in a stronger light the inertia and thoughtlessness, not to say stupidity, of the British character in all matters outside the domain of material and moral interests, than our neglect of the magnificent spiritual heritage which we possess in our own history and literature. ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... sigh of relief, that the zealous servant had told them with bated breath that I was a bold, bad Englishman, whereupon they had made the above preparations for receiving me. I did not fail to curse the native's stupidity, after which we sat down to a plentiful dinner. When this was over the mistress of the house made us a large bed on the floor, and soon my strange bedfellows and myself were slumbering like ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... and a much-ado-about-nothing-ness in his eye, which were proclaimed by good natured people to be indications of deep thought and profundity; while others less "flattering sweet," declared they indicated naught but want of comprehension, and the dulness of stupidity. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... interview. A quick-tempered, bright, energetic little woman, she nearly frightened me out of my wits at the first rehearsal by dancing round me on the stage in a perfect frenzy of anger at what she was pleased to call my stupidity. Then something I did suddenly pleased her, and she overwhelmed me with compliments and praise. After a time these became the order of the day, and she soon won my youthful affections. "Gross flattery," ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... different and more interesting. As she came softly around a great snow-draped boulder there was a snarl, a sharp rattle of steel, and a thud. She shrank back swiftly, just beyond reach of the claws of a big lynx. The lynx had been ahead of her in discovering the trap, and with the stupidity of his tribe had got caught in it. The inexorable steel jaws had him fast by the left fore leg. He had heard the almost soundless approach of the strange prowler, and, mad with pain and rage, had sprung to the attack without waiting to see the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... corruption beyond the printer's errours, yet he has made many emendations, if they were not made before, which his successors have received without acknowledgment, and which, if they had produced them, would have filled pages and pages with censures of the stupidity by which the faults were committed, with displays of the absurdities which they involved, with ostentatious exposition of the new reading, and self congratulations on the happiness of ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... conceivable human being could possibly be interested, may not sound attractive, but in Fairhaven it is the rule; and, oddly enough, it breeds, in practice, a sort of family feeling,—if only by entitling everybody to the condoned and matter-of-course stupidity of aunts and uncles,—which is not really ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... hated to see him lose the chances and let them be snapped up by littler men. He seemed to waste himself, right and left, prodigally. But it wasn't that, it wasn't waste. It was all as much a part of him as his music. He detested the stupidity of wealth and poverty, he rebelled against laws that aren't laws, but only interests enforced by authority, he fought against the sheer deadness of prejudice. How he hated all that! And why not? You see, Vera, he was sensitive to it not only as ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... out, the commercial progress of both countries would have been promoted, and the stupid measures which led to a second war within thirty years might have been prevented. But the wisdom of Pitt found less favour in Parliament than the dense stupidity of Lord Sheffield, who thought that to admit Americans to the carrying trade would undermine the naval power of Great Britain. Pitt's measure was defeated, and the regulation of commerce with America was left to the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... French magistrate or a German magistrate who ordered a fair translation of "Hamlet" or of "Lear" to be burnt, because of its obscenity? He would be regarded as demented. One can only understand such a judgment as an isolated fact. But in England this monstrous stupidity is the rule. Sir A. de Rutzen was not satisfied with ordering the books to be burnt and fining the bookseller; he went on to justify his ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... her again and held out his hand. "I recall my instructions, and now I'll leave you to fight it out with Archie. He can't possibly represent managerial stupidity to you as I seem to ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... closely duplicated in certain parts of London. There was a curious flatness of feature and prominence of upper jaw singularly reminiscent of the primitive Briton. Withal the girl was not unprepossessing in her coarse way. Utter stupidity and dogged courage are the outstanding characteristics of this type. But fear of the law is ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... from on high: for this also we will honour the poor Manchester Insurrection, and augur well of it. A deep unspoken sense lies in these strong men,—inconsiderable, almost stupid, as all they can articulate of it is. Amid all violent stupidity of speech, a right noble instinct of what is doable and what is not doable never forsakes them: the strong inarticulate men and workers, whom Fact patronises; of whom, in all difficulty and work whatsoever, there is good augury! This ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... more primitive, so much earlier sanctioned, abiding so originally among the instincts! Oh yes! if we are lightly esteemed it is because we are bad exponents. The ideal has dignity enough. They charge us, in their unimaginable stupidity, with failing to appreciate our lines, especially when they are Shakespeare's—with being unliterary. You might—good Heavens!—as well accuse a painter of not being a musician! Our business lies behind the words—they are our mere medium! Rosalind wasn't literary—why should I be? But don't ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... spiritual destinies don't get as much money as many ordinary grocers and certainly not enough to support their obligations with dignity. What is true of the Methodist Church is true of all the rest, in perhaps a greater degree. So with their smallness and their pettiness and their befogging stupidity I feel that they may be denying thinkers like you and me the use of their scheme and we'll have to find another for ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... appearance, would probably not have been objects of special admiration to many people on this side the water; but I belong to that infirm, decrepit, bedridden old country, England, and must acknowledge, with a blush for the stupidity of the prejudice, that it is so very long since I have seen anything old, that the lower streets of Charleston, in all their dinginess and decay, were a refreshment and a rest ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... halted again beside the pavement, and she sat there and beckoned to Newman—beckoned with the demonstrative grace of Madame Urbain de Bellegarde. Newman hesitated a moment before he obeyed her summons, during this moment he had time to curse his stupidity for letting the others escape him. He had been wondering how he could get at them; fool that he was for not stopping them then and there! What better place than beneath the very prison walls to which they ...
— The American • Henry James
... most moderate men in their justice detest. Oh, I am weary of existence! After all, one does not live long! The human life is soon done with. But no—it is long. At intervals, that we should not become too discouraged, that we may have the stupidity to consent to bear our being, and not profit by the magnificent opportunities to hang ourselves which cords and nails afford, nature puts on an air of taking a little care of man—not to-night, though. The rogue causes ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... what you admire. The lines may come before the Law question, as that cannot be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter pray re-send it me as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Annuals I have become a by-word of infamy all over the kingdom. I have sicken'd decent women for asking me to write in Albums. There be 'dark jests' abroad, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the contrary, this is the first time you have alluded to them. I am sorry they should have happened. But surely you should make a distinction between any such little oversight of mine, and the stupidity of a servant, hired to attend ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... husband living they did not discuss, for that question had evidently been settled by people "wiser than you or me," as they said, and to doubt the correctness of that decision would be to risk exposing one's stupidity and incapacity to live ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... offered a sort of passive resistance to his ideas. I had let what I did not care to welcome pass over my mind in the curious density that children adopt in order to avoid receiving impressions—blankly, dumbly, achieving by stupidity what they cannot achieve by argument. I think that I had frequently done this; that he had been brought up against a dead wall; although on other sides of my nature I had been responsive and docile. But now, in my tenth year, the imitative faculty ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... applies with equal force to all other sorts of men whatever. If it is to society as a whole that the able man owes his energy, his talents, and the products of them, it is to society as a whole that the idle man owes his idleness, the stupid man his stupidity, and the dishonest man his dishonesty; and if the able man, who produces an exceptional amount of wealth, can with justice claim no more than the average man who produces little, the man who is so idle that he shirks producing anything may with equal justice ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... stooped for an instant over the girl, and then turned fiercely round upon his father, who had reeled against the wall, and was gazing on the group with drunken stupidity. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Clark boy" aroused no interest in her. She was still more bored by their phonograph, on which they played over and over the same twenty records. She would make quick, unconvincing excuses about having to hurry away. Their slippered stupidity was a desecration of ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... with both hands resting on the ground to prop him up, eyes and mouth wide open, and breath restrained, presented the very personification of petrified stupidity. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... lord the Pheasant: A lark he is, and such a lark As never came from Noah's ark: And though he had no other notion, But building, planning, and devotion; Though 'tis a maxim you must know, "Who does no ill can have no foe;" Yet how can I express in words The strange stupidity of birds? This Lark was hated in the wood, Because he did his brethren good. At last the Nightingale comes in, To hold the doctor by the chin: We all can find out what he means, The worst of disaffected deans: Whose ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... usual; I am never past conviction; you have only to take me before the police court in the morning, and any magistrate will at once convict me of stupidity for having married a Scotchman ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... first day, on the first day, on the first day of the week, while all other days are, as to name, buried in everlasting oblivion! And shall we not take that notice thereof as to follow the Lord Jesus and the churches herein? Oh stupidity! ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to be lacking in the crowd. Everybody was against Joe, that was attested by the glum faces and silence which met her on every hand. She was amazed at their stupidity. There they stood, people who had seen Joe grow up, people who knew that a Newbolt would give his last cent and go hungry to meet an obligation; that he would wear rags to pay his debts, as Peter had done, as Joe was doing after him; that he would ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... has become time honored among public speakers, that of telling you what you already know as well as I do. This is that Mr. Prescott ought never to have been deposed from the class presidency. I move, therefore, sir, that we rectify our stupidity and blindness by making Mr. Prescott once more our president. I beg, sir, to place in nomination for the class presidency the name of Richard ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... to forget?" said Sarah; "and you will see one day whether you were a fool to tell me." She said to herself, despairingly, that the stupidity of mankind was almost past praying for. As the doctor opened the door for Sarah, Lady Mary herself walked into ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... until lately that he had one of your flats. He was very careful, very polite, timid, cautious—but very obstinate, too. He invited me to call on him at his rooms, and to bring any friends I liked. Of course, it was a stupidity on his part, but, then, what else could he do? A man who wants to cultivate relations with a homeless ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... That's fatal in a fighter. If you've got a gentle heart, it don't matter how clever you are: you can't take full advantage of your skill and use the opening when you've won it. Blades didn't punish Buckler's stupidity, or weakness just when he could have done it. So he lost, because he gave Jack time to get strong again; and when Blades in his turn went weak, Buckler got it over ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... rightly punished for my stupidity and my folly," said Penreath. "I have wronged her ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... he (the man of fashion) rises, lolls upon a sofa, skims the newspaper, and curses its stupidity. He is particularly angry if he does not find in it a paragraph which he sent to the agent of a fashionable newspaper, generally the Morning Post, who lives by procuring such sort of intelligence, containing an account of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... light of method, we must get rid of definitions which are often applied to folklore in its attributed sense. Folk-tales are not fiction or art, were not invented for amusement, are not myth in the sense of being imaginative only.[182] Customs and superstitions are not the result of ignorance and stupidity. These attributes are true only if folk-tales, customs, and superstitions are compared with the literary productions and with the science and the culture of advanced civilisation; and this comparison is exactly that which should never be undertaken, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... any purpose to abuse the authors of mere rubbish. The real lesson to be learned from such of them as may possibly have been sincere, as well as from the failure of his contemporaries to appreciate his genius—the sneers of Moore, the stupidity of Campbell, the ignorance of Wordsworth, the priggishness of Southey, or the condescending tone of Keats—is that nothing is more difficult than for lesser men or equals to pay just homage to the greatest ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... any moment render a petty trouble either a great misfortune, or a wasted life, or an eternal misery. Should Caroline begin, in her ignorance of life and the world, by inflicting upon her husband the vexations of her stupidity (re-read REVELATIONS), Adolphe, like any other man, may find a compensation in social excitement: he goes out, comes back, goes here and there, has business. But for Caroline, the question everywhere is, To love or not to love, to be or not ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... Devore didn't expect any apology; and with that he seemed better satisfied and walked off. As I stood there watching him, his stiff old back growing smaller as he went away from me, I didn't know which I blamed the more, Devore for his malignant, cold disdain of the major, or the major for his blatant stupidity. And right then and there, all of a sudden, there came to me an understanding of a thing that had been puzzling me all these weeks. Often I had wondered how the major had endured Devore's contempt. I had decided in my own mind that he must be blind to it, else ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... he thus committed. A conscientious, hard-working, friendly man he was, but one difficult to deal with; hot in his temper, impatient of all stupidities, impatient often of that which he wrongly thought to be stupidity, never owning himself to be wrong, anxious always for the truth, but often missing to see it, a man who would fret grievously for the merest trifle, and think nothing of the greatest success when it had once been gained. Such a one was Mr. Quickenham; and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... disease, especially in consequence of the work of Pasteur. It is said that science has failed because, for instance, tuberculosis persists, but tuberculosis is propagated not because of the failure of science, but because of the ignorance and stupidity of the population. To diminish the spread of tuberculosis, of typhoid fever, of dysentery, and of many other diseases, it is necessary only to follow the rules of scientific hygiene without waiting for ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... are a dense lot, but I'm hanged if even their stupidity would do a thing like that. They've ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... necessary to mention two. The one is Right Effort. A constant intellectual alertness is required. This is not only insisted upon elsewhere in countless passages, but of the three cardinal sins in Buddhism (r[a]ga, dosa, moha) the last and worst is stupidity or dullness, the others being sensuality and ill-will. Right Effort is closely connected with the seventh stage, Right Mindfulness. Two of the dialogues are devoted to this subject, and it is constantly referred to elsewhere.[12] The disciple, whatsoever he does—whether going ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... gratitude that I had not allowed my stupidity to get away. I thanked The Abbot inwardly, too, for saying the words that set me clearer. The contrast between Addison and Fichte in life, in their work, in the talk they inspired here, and in The Valley-Road Girl's two papers—held the substance of the whole matter—stumbled ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... someway a flannel shirt and a four-in-hand tie—even a khaki coloured tie, did not seem to Henry and me de rigueur. We weren't raised that way and we couldn't come to it. So we wore our tails. We noticed in France and Italy that other men wore dinner coats, and we bemoaned our stupidity in bringing our tails and leaving our dinner coats in New York. We fancied in our blindness that on the continent no one noticed the difference. But in England, there doubt disappeared. Whenever we went to ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... Malherbe who only hears of how, like a dusty workman, he cut and polished, and so fixed the new jewel of letters. In our less happy age the academic spirit is necessarily associated with a lethargic stupidity. In his it was not so. His force, by which this work was carried through, lay in a character of penetration. His face expresses it. His very keen and ready eyes, his high lifted brow, his sharp nose, ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... the military distinction was marred by moral disgrace. For destruction was pushed to the venomous length of maiming for years the orchards of the peasantry in the abandoned territory. The crime may have been no more than a characteristic expression of militarist malevolence and stupidity; but it may also have been calculated to bar the path to peace by agreement and to force on the German people the choice, as a Junker expressed it later, between victory ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... for some, which means too much to eat, too much to wear, too much material, too much materialism for others. Time FROM the "hurry and waste of life." Time FROM the "St. Vitus Dance." BUT, on the other side of the ledger, time FOR learning that "there is no safety in stupidity alone." Time FOR introspection. Time FOR reality. Time FOR expansion. Time FOR practicing the art, of living the art of living. Thoreau has been criticized for practicing his policy of expansion by living in a vacuum—but he peopled that vacuum with a race of beings and established a social ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... by. The punishments which the priests were still able to inflict were sufficient to irritate, but not sufficient to destroy. The war was between power on one side and wit on the other; and the power was under far more restraint than the wit. Orthodoxy soon became a synonym for ignorance and stupidity. It was as necessary to the character of an accomplished man that he should despise the religion of his country, as that he should know his letters. The new doctrines spread rapidly through Christendom. Paris was the capital of the whole Continent. French was everywhere the language ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... demeanor of Lady Hastings had an effect the direct reverse of that which she intended. Nor did her innuendos produce any better results, for she soon saw that they grieved and offended her husband, while her daughter showed marvellous stupidity, as she thought, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... at opposite ends of the room to construct our mysteries of blind alleys and misleading passages, then each one would be turned loose in the "irrgarten" drawn by the other. Ingo would stand at my side while I tried in obstinate stupidity to find my way through his little puzzle; his eager heart inside his sailor blouse would pound like a drum when I was nearing the dangerous places where an exit might be won. He would hold his breath so audibly, and his blue eyes would ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the sounds he had heard and magnified were only caused by some innocent little animal which did not smell in the least like a wolf. So he trotted slowly back, making sounds suggestive of mutterings against his own stupidity, and dropped quietly down once ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... congregation condescendingly rise, stare about them, and converse in whispers. The clergyman enters the reading-desk,—a young man of noble family and elegant demeanour, notorious at Cambridge for his knowledge of horse-flesh and dancers, and celebrated at Eton for his hopeless stupidity. The service commences. Mark the soft voice in which he reads, and the impressive manner in which he applies his white hand, studded with brilliants, to his perfumed hair. Observe the graceful emphasis with which he offers up the prayers for the King, the Royal Family, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... killed by too much study, and soon renewed his complaints. At last Montcalm, now sixteen and already an officer, could bear it no longer, and wrote to his father telling him that in spite of his supposed stupidity he had serious aims. 'I want to be, first, a man of honour, brave, and a good Christian. Secondly, I want to read moderately; to know as much Greek and Latin as other men; also arithmetic, history, geography, literature, and some art and science. ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... Godwin, who still figures, in advanced age, as a martyr in the cause of good letter-writing—'A bald, bushy browed, thick, hoary, hale little figure, with a very long blunt characterless nose—the whole visit the most unutterable stupidity.' Lord Althorp is 'a thick, large, broad-whiskered, farmer-looking man.' O'Connell, 'a well-doing country shopkeeper with a bottle-green frock and brown scratch wig.... I quitted them all (the House of Commons) with the highest contempt.' ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... ever saw this knocker on the door of a small attorney or bill-broker; they always patronise the other lion; a heavy ferocious-looking fellow, with a countenance expressive of savage stupidity—a sort of grand master among the knockers, and a great favourite with ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... only married man present, mourned inwardly over his own masculine stupidity. He felt sure that if his wife had been there she would have gently led Stewart's mind through these paradoxical matrimonial fancies, to dwell on another picture; a picture of marriage with a nice girl almost as pretty as Lady Hammerton, a good girl who shared his tastes, and, above all, who adored ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... personification of Courage—not only spares Una, but humbly licks her feet, and accompanies her as watch-dog when she resumes her journey. They two soon reach the house of Superstition, an old woman, whose daughter, Stupidity, loves a robber of churches. When this lover attempts to visit her secretly by night, he is slain by the lion; whereupon the two women angrily banish Una. She is therefore again wandering aimlessly in the forest when Archimago meets her in the guise of the Red Cross ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... counsel. There is no need that we should inform our superiors that through our stupidity their well-laid plans have been destroyed, and the miners acquainted with what is in store for them. Eh, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... amused us. But the more I talked, the more he looked at me with the big, big tears in his eyes. It touched my heart. I had restrained my tears for a quarter of an hour; I ended by doing as he did. When I left him he was sobbing; and I said to myself, furious at my stupidity, 'If this is the way I cheer and console him, it is hardly worth while to go and see him; I, who promised myself to make him laugh! It is astonishing how ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... circumstances, some independent of the will in spite of men's efforts, others the offspring of stupidity and ignorance, others the inevitable corollaries of false principles, and still others the result of more or less base passions has induced the decline of labor, an evil which instead of being remedied by prudence, ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... schemes something more was needed than the wit of Brent and his ally, the widow Leigh; something more, even, than his skill in shooting pigeons in flight with an air-rifle. The vacuum was supplied by the crass stupidity of the EMPEROR'S minions. Even when full credit is given to Brent for letting his bath overflow so as to flood the public salon and render it untenable, it was surely unwise of Mrs. Sanderson to offer her private parlour for the use of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... he replied, "even your slave could explain that; there's no riddle, everything's as plain as day! This boar made his first bow as the last course of yesterday's dinner and was dismissed by the guests, so today he comes back as a freedman!" I damned my stupidity and refrained from asking any more questions for fear I might leave the impression that I had never dined among decent people before. While we were speaking, a handsome boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, passed grapes around, in a little basket, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the general rehearsal the hall was overcrowded. Reissiger was guilty of the incredible stupidity of working up the public mind against the symphony and drawing attention to Beethoven's very regrettable error. Gade, on the other hand, who came to visit us from Leipzig, where he was then conducting the Gewandhaus Concerts, assured me after the general rehearsal, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... true history of your unbroken, ancient, and unsullied line! But I like this jolly fellow in the green riding jacket; he drank and hunted with the nobles, and employed the peasants to run down the tall deer with the hounds. Indeed, the ignorance, stupidity, and wretchedness of the serf were the strength of the noble, and give convincing proof ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mine sins against me—he injures, perhaps, my good name; and my natural answer is the emotion of resentment towards him and, perhaps, of actual revenge. But what I chiefly resent is my friend's stupidity and his ignorance of my real character. "I am angry," I say, with perfect sincerity, "not so much at the thing he has said of me, as at this proof of his incapacity to understand me. I thought he ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... suddenly turned the spot into a flying school often with as many as five thousand pupils in attendance. "To-day that little red barn," writes Carroll Dana Winslow, one of the Americans who went to fly for France, "stands as a monument to American stupidity, for when we allowed the Wrights to go abroad to perfect their ideas instead of aiding them to carry on their work at home we lost a golden opportunity. Now the United States which gave to the world the first practical airplane is the least advanced ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Fountain had been one of those empty girls that were so rife at the time, the sterling value of his conversation would have disgusted her, and his calm silence where there was nothing to be said (sure proof of intelligence) would have passed for stupidity with her. But she was intelligent, well used to bungling, straightforward flattery, and to smile with arch contempt at it, and very capable of appreciating the more subtle but less satirical compliment a man pays a pretty girl by talking sense to her; and, as it happened, her ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... eluded him during the downward journey to Steignton. He came on her track at the village at the junction of the roads above Ashead, and thence, confiding in the half-connivance or utter stupidity of the fair one's duenna, despatched a mounted man-servant to his coachman and footmen, stationed ten miles behind, with orders that they should drive forthwith to the great plain, and be ready at a point there for two succeeding days. That was the plot, promptly devised upon receipt ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an interest in the unhappiest period of Australian history. From its pages may be learned how long it has taken the intelligent theorist of the British Government to acquire a practical method of treating a difficult social question; how long stupidity and inhumanity may be practised with the sanction of what Major Vickers was fond of respectfully calling 'the King's regulations'; and how far English gentlemen, remote from the influence of public opinion and invested with more power ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... satirists of the world, Butler's saeva indignatio was aroused by the daily conflicts between reason and stupidity, between candor and disingenuousness, with all their mutations of hypocrisy, guile, deceit, and sham. In "Erewhon" it was human unreason, as a clever youth sees it, that he was attacking. We remember vividly the beautiful Erewhonians, who knew disease to be sin, but believed ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... nearer the sun flashed off the reptile's muddy skin, and they could see it glide round rapidly and strike two tremendous blows on the surface with its serrated tail—blows that had been probably directed at the boat, but which fell short, while in its blind stupidity it kept on thrashing the water several times after the ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... noisily and gaily around him, and nobody seemed to observe or to converse with him. He was fashionably dressed, but perhaps rather extravagantly; his face was full and heavy, expressive of sullenness and stupidity, and marked with the lines of strong vulgarity; his age might be somewhere between forty and fifty. Such as I have endeavoured to describe him, he remained motionless, his arms doggedly folded across his broad chest, and turning his sullen eyes from ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... all the southern provinces, and make a united and independent Netherland state impossible. Already in the summer of 1583, he addressed a letter full of wisdom and of warning to the authorities of Ghent, a letter in which he set fully before them the iniquity and stupidity of their proceedings, while at the same time he expressed himself with so much dexterity and caution as to avoid giving offence, by accusations which he made, as it were, hypothetically, when, in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is to throw the light directly into the Body Politic, whether the B.P. requests him to do it or not. Dr. P. confidently expects to make some most extraordinary discoveries of various diseases—of greed, foolish ambition, ossification of the heart, moral leprosy, chronic stupidity, latent idiocy, and that very common and often unsuspected complaint usually known as Humbug. (Humbugna Communis.) His fee in no case will exceed ten cents per week; and patients WILL ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... whether it would not betray, at closer range, an imperceptible wave,—but not daring to linger he went into his office, closed the door, and sat down with a sensation akin to weakness, somewhat appalled by his discovery, considerably amazed at his previous stupidity. He had thought of Janet—when she had entered his mind at all—as unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this demureness as repression. Her qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude Ditmar, had seen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... digressing into some traditional incident of Maratha history which escaped the researches of Mr. Grant Duff, an incident generally in which Maratha cunning (sagacity he calls it) triumphed over English stupidity. After the exercise comes the inevitable petition. I do not remember the subject of it—some grievance no doubt connected with hereditary rights in land—but it matters little; the whole document might as well be a Moabite stone recording the wars of Mesha with Jehoram, for not ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... walked up to the hotel. The former had possessed himself of sufficient evidence to convict Captain Chinks of smuggling, and also of intense stupidity in employing a simpleton like Ben Chinks in such a dangerous business, though rogues and villains almost always leave ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... is really a mercy to have this entire stupidity come over one at such a time. I should be crazy to feel as I did yesterday, or indeed to feel anything at all. But I inwardly vowed that my last feelings and reflections on this subject should be yours, and as I have ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... home were scarcely working as he had intended. The estimable Mrs. Widger, partly by reason of her deafness and partly of native stupidity, had only half understood his instructions about the letters. She knew she was to stamp them and she knew she was to post them, but the dates in the corners might have been runic inscriptions for any idea they conveyed to her obfuscated ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... thou conquerest, and I must yield: Stupidity can baffle the very gods. High Reason, radiant Daughter of God's Head, Wise Foundress of the system of the Universe, Conductress of the stars, who art thou, then, If, tied to th' tail o' th' wild horse Superstition, Thou ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Subs. 3. General Zeal without knowledge, obstinacy, superstition, strange devotion, stupidity, confidence, stiff defence of their tenets, mutual love and hate of other sects, belief of incredibilities, impossibilities. or Particular. Of heretics, pride, contumacy, contempt of others, wilfulness, vainglory, singularity, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Gillier had found vent in the outburst which, no doubt with plenty of amplifications, had got into the evening papers. The management at first had wished to attempt the impossible, to try to muzzle the pressmen. But their publicity agent knew better. Madame Sennier had been carried by temper into stupidity. She had made a false move. The only thing to do now was to make ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... then, that want of understanding on our part, rather than stupidity on theirs, prevents a closer understanding between ourselves and the animal creation. Though we are not able to bridge over the gulf separating speechless animals and men, we may at least take care that the dumb prayers of the 'lower brethren' never fall on wilfully ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... "Your stupidity is proverbial, Aunt Alice," Norma had laughed. She did not care where she went any more. Chris had greeted her casually, upon their meeting in October, and had studiously, if inconspicuously, ignored her. But even to see him at all was so ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... home. In this she expressed her regret and disappointment at having missed him; blamed herself for misleading him, but explained that their stay at Frejus had been prolonged from day to day far beyond her expectation. "The stupidity of the post-office was more than she could account for," said she. But, what went farthest to console Edouard, was, that after this contretemps she never ceased to invite him to come to Beaurepaire. Now, before this, though she said many kind and pretty things in her letters, she ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... contributions of science, it would be more illuminating to say that the old education inoculated the child with a predetermined educational virus. If the virus "took" the child was declared immune to the bacteria of ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity and other prevalent social complaints. If the virus did not take the schoolmaster ostentatiously washed his hands ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... advanced no farther with her than on the first day of their acquaintance. There was something compact and immovable about Flossie. In those five years he had never known her change or modify an opinion of people or of things. And yet Flossie was not stupid, or if she were her stupidity was a force; it had an invincible impetus and sweep, dragging the dead weight of character behind it. It was beginning to terrify him. In fact he was becoming painfully sensitive to everything she ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... from the upper end of the room, dragged itself on towards the middle, and expired with a sighing sound before it reached the end. The face of the speaker suited his vocal powers; it was small, mean, and of a round stupidity, without anything even in fault that could possibly command attention or even the excitement of disapprobation: the very garments of the orator seemed dull and heavy, and, like the Melancholy of Milton, had a "leaden ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... says he. "The proper place for trunks is the end of the platform. Then you can tear out of the train and find yours first and get off quickly. When you are all dragooned and drilled an ass comes off as well as anyone else. You place a premium on stupidity." ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the promenade of the Marquis had ended, Jaune came forth from the clothing store in his normal condition of shabbiness and youth. The Count was not in all respects a praiseworthy person, but among his vices was not that of stupidity. Without any very tremendous mental effort he grasped the fact that his rival had sold himself into bondage as a walking advertisement, and, knowing this, a righteous exultation filled his soul. Jaune's destiny, so far as Mademoiselle Carthame was concerned, he felt was in his power: and ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... for the boring, the trivial, the stupid; using genius for a toy, like a child banging an atomic watch on the floor. It happened with all our great discoveries and inventions: the gasoline engine, the telephone, the wireless. We've built civilizations of monumental stupidity on the wonders of nature. One race of the Galactics has a phrase they apply to people like us: 'If there is a God in Heaven He has wept for ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... they sit up to their hips in water. That no one has yet attempted to build even the simplest canoe in a country which produces a super-abundance of the finest wood for the purpose, is a striking proof of the indolence of the Spaniards, and the stupidity ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... cheeks brought me back from that inanimate state,—and I found myself in the embraces of Lady Powis, tenderly affectionate, as when in the arms of Mrs. Whitmore.—Judge not, Madam, said I, from my present stupidity, that I am so wanting in my head or heart, to be insensible of this undeserv'd goodness.—With Mr. and Mrs. Jenkings's permission, I am devoted to your Ladyship's service.—Our approbation! Miss Warley, return'd the former;—yes, ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... since the chastening experiences of the Boer War. Since then the national spirit, hampered though it is by the traditions of party government and a legacy of intellectual and social heaviness, has been in uneasy and ineffectual revolt against deadness, against stupidity and slackness, against waste and hypocrisy in every department of life. We have come to see more and more clearly how little we can hope for from politicians, societies and organised movements in these essential things. It is this that has invested ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... might guess by this time what the joke is," he went on forgivingly, seeing that she was quite overcome with her own stupidity, "but as I have to get away pretty quick now, I'll tell you. You see, Joe isn't coming right back with your aunt; he's going on to Chicago, and that may ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... of age, and himself the father of a family, we can easily imagine that language like this was more adapted to exasperate him and make him worse than to win him to his duty. He was, in fact, driven to a species of desperation by it, and he so far aroused himself from his usual indolence and stupidity as to form a plan, in connection with some of his evil advisers, to make his escape from his father's control entirely by secretly absconding from the country, and seeking a retreat under the protection of some foreign power. The manner in which he executed this scheme, and the consequences ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... can consent to dwell together. To destroy philistinism root and branch, to eradicate the ignorance which makes it possible for a man to believe that he possesses all things in their final forms, to empty a man of the stupidity and vulgarity of self-satisfaction, and to invigorate the immortal dissatisfaction of the soul with its present attainments, are the ends which culture is always seeking to accomplish. The keen lance of Matthew Arnold, flashing now in one part of the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... stupidity, I took a step towards them, arguing. They vanished headlong, when I realised for the first time that my appearance was in truth alarming. Perceiving the advantage that appearance gave me, I pursued them, promising them plagues ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... them—hatred would be too warm a feeling. They have no sensations themselves and they excite none. But one wearies from day to day of caring nothing, fearing nothing, liking nothing, hating nothing, being nothing, doing nothing—yes, I teach and sometimes get red in the face with impatience at their stupidity. But don't think I ever scold or fly into a passion. If I spoke warmly, as warmly as I sometimes used to do at Roe-Head, they would think me mad. Nobody ever gets into a passion here. Such a thing is not known. The phlegm that thickens their blood is too gluey ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... of all things temporal, finding paradox and contradiction everywhere, discovering life to be a clash of opposites, with its "way up" and its "way down," on the surface a pessimist, but at the heart of himself an optimist; and finally, beneath all the folly of history and all the sin and stupidity of human life, seeing with the eye of his spirit One Eternal Logos who steers all things toward purpose, who suffers as a Lamb slain for the flock, who reveals His Truth and Life in the sanctuary of the soul, and who through the ages is building ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... artillery. He tried the affectation of a staring stupidity. She might have seen his heart thump, and he quitted the mask ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
