"Ass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saloom, and the friends and familiars came and seated themselves, each in his rank and degree. Presently, in walked Abu Nowas and was about to take his usual seat, when the Caliph cried to Masrur, the sworder, and bade him strip the poet of his clothes and bind an ass's packsaddle on his back and a halter about his head and a crupper under his rump and lead him round to all the lodgings of the slave-girls, —And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... The Somali ass is generally speaking a miserable animal. Lieut. Speke, however, reports that on the windward coast it is not to be despised. At Harar I found a tolerable breed, superior in appearance but inferior in size to the thoroughbred ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... talked to your father," he said, "I was in a position to marry, and I told him I wanted to marry you. What he said to that was: 'Don't be an ass!' Then I told him he was unintelligent—and I told him why. First, because he could not see that a man might want to marry his daughter in spite of her money; and second, because he couldn't see that her money wouldn't make up to a man for ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... very hard in the wind's, answers unexpectedly and ominously, that She need be. Upon this the lazy gentleman instantly falls very low in the popular estimation, and the passengers, with looks of defiance, whisper to each other that he is an ass, and an impostor, and clearly don't know ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... God's faithful ministers, to understand every part of divine revelation, be neither surprised nor disheartened at the want of comprehension, far less attempt to reduce it to human reason, as many have done to their ruin. The Scripture says, 'Vain man would be wise, though born like the wild ass's colt.' 'The wisdom of this world is foolishness ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... help work it! Scandalous, how few of the right sort there are about! And as for the Asylums Committee, if we really can't legally co-opt women to it, as our clerk says"—he looked again at a letter in his hand—"the law is an ass!—a double-dyed ass. I swear I won't visit those poor things on the women's side again. It's women's work—let them do it. The questions I have to ask are enough to make an old gamp ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him breathe since his birth. He knew of course that the sunset vapours on the marsh were unhealthy: everybody on the farm had a touch of the ague, and it was a saying in the village that no one lived at Pontesordo who could buy an ass to carry him away; but that Donna Laura, in skirting the place on a clear morning of frost, should show such fear of infection, gave a sinister emphasis to the ill-repute ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... stock-still with ears thrown back and front legs thrown forward. As I can't get out and pull, I'm at the mercy of Hosea. And he knows it. Since the mount of Balaam, there was never such an intelligent idiot of an ass. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... interpreted William, "there isn't pig nor ass, sheep nor duck, belongin' to him that isn't heart-scalded with the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... He was very angry and bitter, and as he lived in AEgina, whence he could still see the Acropolis and temple of Pallas Athene, he exclaimed, "Goddess, what favourites thou halt chosen—the owl, the ass, and the Athenians;" but in these days of joy a ship was sent by the State to bring him home, and fifty talents ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that solemnly demanded of grown men and women in the twentieth century that they should sit and listen with reverential awe to a prehistoric edition of "Grimm's Fairy Stories," including Noah and his ark, the adventures of Samson and Delilah, the conversations between Balaam and his ass, and culminating in what if it were not so appallingly wicked an idea would be the most comical of them all: the conception of an elaborately organized Hell, into which the God of the Christians plunged his creatures for all eternity! Of what use was ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Harleston thought, as he went down the corridor to Carpenter's office. "I shall enjoy watching Spencer make all kinds of an ass of him. 'You impressible chaps!—not dangerous to me!' Oh, Lord, the patronizing bumptiousness of the man!... Have you anything for me, Carpenter?" he asked, as he entered the ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... the witch. 'Why should you imagine that there are princesses here flying about in the shape of white doves? But if you will have a princess, you can get one such as we have them.' She then came to him, dragging a shaggy little grey ass with long ears. 'Will you have this?' said she; 'you can't get ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... nothing but colour. They've no conscience. If they swear a thing to you one moment, they break it the next. They can't help doing it. You don't ask a gilt weathercock to keep faith with anything but the wind, do you? It's an ass that trusts a fair woman at all, or has anything to do with the confounded set. Cleopatra was fair; so was Delilah; so is the Devil's wife. Reach ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is a complete ass. How a man like that has the nerve to sit down at a bridge table, I don't know. I wouldn't mind if the man had any idea—even the faintest idea—of how to play. But he hasn't any. Three times I signalled to him to throw the lead into my hand and he wouldn't: I knew that our only ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... cankerous end was here. This people which the world had once loved and honoured was now bred a beast of burden, a domesticated race, saddled and trained to bear upon its back the House of Hohenzollern as the ass bore Balaam. But the German ass wore the blinders that science ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... If antique times admired Silenus old That oft appeared set on his lazy ass, How would they wonder if they had behold Such sights as from the myrtle high did pass? Thence came a lady fair with locks of gold, That like in shape, in face and beauty was To sweet Armide; Rinaldo thinks he spies Her gestures, smiles, and glances ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... down as Fitch spoke. "I'm glad Tom stopped me from making an ass of myself. I can see your side of it." Maybe that was the curse of the professional intellectual, an ability to see everybody's side of everything. He thought for a moment. "What else did you do, beside ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... fought 'em in trooper, we've fought 'em in dock, and drunk with 'em in betweens, When they called us the seasick scull'ry-maids, an' we called 'em the Ass Marines; But, when we was down for a double fatigue, from Woolwich to Bernardmyo, We sent for the Jollies—'Er Majesty's Jollies—soldier an' sailor too! They think for 'emselves, an' they steal for 'emselves, and they ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... the words, I came to a full stop and held up the lantern to his face. He stood before me, brilliantly illuminated on the background of impenetrable night and falling snow, stricken to stone between his double burden like an ass between two panniers, and gaping at me like a blunderbuss. I had never seen a face so predestined to be astonished, or so susceptible of rendering the emotion of surprise; and it tempted me as an open piano ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... little beach there were three curraghs in which the island-men went over the sea; they were turned bottom up and heavy stones were placed upon them to prevent their being carried away by the high winds. The seal noted them as he rested upon the flat rock. He noted too a little ass that was standing beyond the curraghs, sheltering himself where ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... Mery, and all my friends when you told me my fault lay in my too great kindness? Shipley has judged me at last to be a hypocrite. To avenge you, I, bonnet on head and whip in hand—that whip which was never used but on a horse—this time to be disgraced by falling on the back of an ASS.... The spirit of my Irish ancestors (I being three-quarter Irish and Spanish and Scotch) took possession of my hand; and, on the most approved Tom Sayers principles, I took his, on which—thanks to some rings I had—I made a cutting ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Sapsea, a pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit at their wine, expecting a third guest. Mr. Sapsea reads his absurd epitaph for his late wife, who is buried in a "Monument," a vault of some sort in the Cathedral churchyard. To them enter Durdles, a man never sober, yet trusted with the key of the crypt, "as contractor ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... shall he be brought forward? Shall it be as first we met at the table of Lucullus, whereto he was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and anarchical opinions regarding the Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks of waiting dinner for him. He will come and depart at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punctualities nor burdening others by exacting them. The festivities of the afternoon are far on when a commotion is heard in the hall as if some dog or other stray ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... "Are you a pig, an ass, a fool? Ask the old one—the duenna. It ought to be a great deal; it ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... wiser Coxcombs. What, they wou'd have me train my Nephew up, a hopeful Youth, to keep a Merchant's Book, or send him to chop Logick in an University, and have him returned an arrant learned Ass, to simper, and look demure, and start at Oaths and Wenches, whilst I fell his Woods, and grant Leases: And lastly, to make good what I have cozen'd him of, force him to marry Mrs. Crump, the ill-favour'd Daughter of some Right Worshipful.—A Pox ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... but that NEVARRE THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT! I say it was a gift by a Spanish Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel, and not for the cheat and the swindle! I say that this mine was worked by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the cheat and swindler. I say that if they have struck the hoss in the mine, they have struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss that have no bridle worth five thousand dollar in his mouth, but a hoss to rear, and a hoss that cannot be struck out ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... supplied names; in definiteness and cruelty nothing could exceed the practice of serfage under the Saxons. "The slave," says Green, "became part of the live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... to associate with their former companions; I knew the apparent difficulties and the disadvantages of this new mode of life. On the other hand, I was convinced that, so far as I was concerned, without trying to lay down a rule for any other man, I would be an ass if I didn't quit it immediately, while I was well and all right, instead of waiting until I had to quit on a doctor's orders, or got to that ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who pats his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussie, je joue de la flute"—a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... asleep In Jerusalem, 10 Young and old lay fast asleep In crowded Bethlehem: Saint and Angel, ox and ass, Kept a watch together, Before the Christmas daybreak In the ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... early stages I am persuaded there was no malice. He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling air ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that she would have very great ground of complaint if she were left for a day unnecessarily in doubt as to this matter. Why had he rashly spoken those hasty words to her in his love, betraying himself into all manner of scrapes, as a schoolboy might do, or such a one as Johnny Eames? What an ass he had been not to have remembered himself and to have been collected,—not to have bethought himself on the occasion of all that might be due to Adolphus Crosbie! And then the idea came upon him whether he had not altogether made himself an ass in this matter. And as he gave ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... legend an enchanted ass comes into the kitchen of a great house every night, and washes the dishes and scours the tins, so that the servants lead an easy life of it. After a while in their exuberant gratitude they offer him any present for which he may feel ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... hound upon the bone will pounce He prowling finds, and not mistrustful pass; He asks not whom it did belong to once, The prophet’s camel or the sinner’s ass. ...
— Little Engel - a ballad with a series of epigrams from the Persian - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... ardour to the acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease. It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the purpose of insinuating the imbecility of slumber that the Romans decorated the heads of their beds with the head of an ass? We leave to the gentlemen who form the academy of inscriptions the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Jeffery.—Is there a justice in Lancashire has so much skill in witches as I have? Nay, I'll speak a proud word; you shall turn me loose against any Witch-finder in Europe. I'd make an ass of Hopkins ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... an ass, by all means," he said, "if it will relieve your feelings;—but in justice to me, let me know why you do so! What is my offence? I give you a piece of commonplace information concerning the movements of the Court this afternoon, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... book, and candle,—candle, book, and bell,— Forward and backward, to curse Faustus to hell! Anon you shall hear a hog grunt, a calf bleat, and an ass bray, Because it ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... need for formality," he said, and felt like an ass. But none of the girls seemed to notice. Agreement with his idea ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... some of the royal pets: Flora and Alma, two horses fourteen hands high, presented to the Queen by Victor Emmanuel. Jenny, a white donkey, twenty-five years of age, which has been with the Queen since it was a foal. Tewfik, a white Egyptian ass, bought in Cairo by Lord Wolseley. Two Shetland ponies—one, The Skewbald, three feet six inches high; another, a dark brown mare like a miniature cart-horse. The royal herd of fifty cows in milk, chiefly shorthorns ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... went home, where he saddled the thin ass and hung across its back two large panniers. When it grew dark he softly drove the beast through the yard and led it out into the desert. For about an hour he walked, and in imagination saw himself in possession of all the glories the talisman would bring him. He had not noticed that ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Conditioning, Women's Division, cautioned sharply from the seat behind him. "Watch what you're doing, you ass!" ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... to the kingdom of heaven; that the Messias was not to be a conquering prince, but a suffering one; that he was not to come with horses of war, and chariots of war, but was to be meek and lowly, riding on an ass. By this means, he got the common and necessary foundation for a new revelation, which is to be built and founded on a ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... in on us two or three days ago. "That darn Sinn Feiner is the limit," said he; "lifted my best moke off me last night while I was up at the batteries. He'd pinch BALAAM'S ass." We murmured condolences, but Monk waived them aside. "Oh, it's quite all right. I wasn't born yesterday, or the day before for that matter. I'll make that merry Fenian weep tears of blood before I've finished. Just ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... Stonor, like a wooden man. He dreaded that she meant to go on and enlarge on his riding tricks. In his modesty he now regarded that he had made an awful ass of himself the day before. But she ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... green eyes! Only the idealism of a German would attempt to use this thorough-bred woman as a model for a picture of virginity. The poor fellow really is an almost bigger donkey than I am. Our misfortune is that our Titania has discovered our ass's ears too soon. ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... toothpick, but he looked as if he was made of steel wire. We soon struck up a conversation, and his "Cockney" sure did sound funny to me; he was one of the sappers, and when he found that I had left the Infantry to join them he was disgusted. "Well," said he, "you are a bloomin' ass. Why, blime me, mite, this here's the worst bleedin' job in the Army; a man digs till the sweat rolls off, and all he gets for it is a bleedin' shilling, and he has to give six-pence of that to the old woman; blime, it doesn't leave ye enough for bacca, and all the fellas think ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... been a howling young ass!" he told himself, his contempt suddenly swerving upon himself. "A conceited fool and a snob! Lordy, lordy, why didn't somebody tell me—and kick me? A ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... changes in the rights of property inheritance, as shall render her economically independent. Existing marriage is a pernicious survival of the patriarchal age. The "patriarch's" wife was significantly reckoned in the same category with a man's "ox" and his "ass," which any other male was forbidden "to covet." The wife was the husband's—her owner's private property—and the curse of this dependence and the old ferocious potestas and manus, from which the Roman wife ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... ants. I'd been taking snaps of the grave, and I was burbling away like an ass about how important this was and how it was positive proof of sapience, and he was insisting that we get back to camp at once. He called the other jeep and told Mallin to get to camp immediately, and Mallin and Ruth and Juan were there when we got in. As soon as Kellogg told them what ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... pig's flesh join in the sacrifice, and consume the meat together after the fashion of the rice at Jagannath's temple, which all castes may eat together without becoming impure. These Beldars use asses for the transport of their bricks and stones, and on the Diwali day they place a lamp before the ass and pay reverence to it. They say that at their marriages a bride-price of Rs. 100 or Rs. 200 must always be paid, but they are allowed to give one or two donkeys and value them at Rs. 50 apiece. They make grindstones (chakki), combs for straightening the threads ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... And here young Lawton has the impudence to begin to preach to me on Knype platform, and to tell me I'm wise in going! He's the President of the local Law Society, you know! No end of a President! And hasn't even got gumption enough to keep his father's practice together! Stupid ass! Well, I let him have it, and straight! He's no worse than the rest. They've got no brains in this district. And they're so narrow—narrow isn't the word! Thick-headed's the word. Stupid! Mean!... Mean!... What did it matter to them? I kept ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... for me to come in here like this, Colonel Dodd. I understand it. I'm a poor man and a stranger in this city. Just consider me a voice—call me Balaam's ass if you want to. But I've come up from the tenement-house districts where the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... to do the journey across London by himself, I met him at Liverpool Street. He came up in a crate; the world must have seemed very small to him on the way. "Hallo, old ass," I said to him through the bars, and in the little space they gave him he wriggled his body with delight. "Thank Heaven there's one of 'em ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... object, and by sheer persistence attained it. In the eyes of Bursley people he was a very decent fellow, a steady fellow, a confirmed bachelor, a close un, a knowing customer, a curmudgeon, an excellent clerk, a narrow-minded ass, a good Wesleyan, a thrifty individual, and an intelligent burgess—according to the point of view. The lifelong operation of rigorous habit had sunk him into a groove as deep as the canon of some American river. His ideas on every subject were eternally and immutably fixed, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... he mused, picking up a novel and selecting a comfortable angle in the Morris, "I should be sorely tempted to call any other man a silly ass. Leddy Lightfinger—it would be a fine joke if my singer turned out ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Brod mit Thraenen ass, Wer nie die kummervollen Naechte Auf seinen Bette weinend sass, Er kennt Euch ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... by the afternoon, they must expect to get on very softly."—Mem. A white driver is always addressed as Senor, and I have occasionally heard such monologues as the following:—"Senor, why do you drive me this way? Curse you, Senor! You don't know anything, Senor! You are the greatest ass I ever encountered." The coachman takes it all coolly enough; the "Senor" spares his dignity, and he keeps his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the spiritual bodies spake unto the Cat [Footnote: i.e., R[a] as the slayer of the serpent of darkness, the head of which be cuts off with a knife. (See above, p. 63). The usual reading is "which the Ass spake to the Cat;" the Ass being Osiris and the cat R[a].] in the house of Hapt-re. I have testified in the presence of Hra-f-ha-f, and he hath given [his] decision. I have seen the things over which the Persea ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... wild asses that roam the plain, the wildest wild ass that roams the plain is indubitably the one that lifts his voice and heel against that socialism known as "public ownership of public utilities," on the ground of "principle." There may be honest, and in some degree intelligent, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... to be only one post a day here; but Mrs. Anderson tells me that by walking up to Orton village I might find letters awaiting to-morrow's morning delivery. I was ass enough to go over this afternoon, and of course ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... the sword," shouted Sir Simon, "and unfortunately the sword is out of date nowadays, or I would challenge him upon the spot; but, my boy, you have the pen, and you can use it, and a jolly sight better than the silly ass who wrote that article. Will you answer him ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... cut my eye out," said Meehawl, "and go about as wall-eyed as Lorcan O'Nualain's ass: I would that. Did you ever see his ass, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... not gone far when she met an old man who seemed to be a hermit, but was in reality a magician, coming along upon an ass. He was of venerable aspect, and seemed worn out with age and mortifications; yet, when he beheld the exquisite face before him, and heard the lady explain how it was she needed his assistance, even he, old as he really was, began to fancy himself a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... morning in reference to nothing visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived the remark of all brutal abruptness. "It's as if you had taken the trouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass—besides his being the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably tiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of his health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him privileges ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... better say I am looking like a humbug and a fool. I have just been punishing that child—sending her to bed supperless. Now call me the ass that I am." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... place in the next act, Aaron. Only we artists who have sold our souls have a right to the price of our shame. You should dine upon a crust, you know. A genius without his crust, huh! A devil without his tail, or an ass without ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... got smashed when those drawers fell out in the last gale. I had been getting some dry things to change, when I heard the cry: 'All hands on deck!' and made one jump of it, without even pushing them in properly. Ass! When I came back and saw the broken glass and the mess, ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... need," said Tilda; "first-along, any'ow." She fell silent for a space. "That Mortimer," she conceded, "isn' quite the ass that 'e looks. This 'as got to take time, after all." She paused a moment in thought, and then broke out, "Oh, Arthur Miles, the trouble you're layin' on me—First, to be a mother—an' that's not 'ard. But, on top o' ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is! Well, I should never have discovered that. What a mind that devil Moliere has!" said La Fontaine. Then, striking his forehead, "Oh, thou wilt never be aught but an ass, Jean ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... knocked at the door, which was opened by Morgiana, a clever slave, full of devices to conquer difficulties. When he came into the court and unloaded the ass, he took Morgiana aside, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... thundering shout, Rolling among reduplicating rocks, Pealed o'er the hills, and up the mountain vales. The wild ass starting in the forest glade Ran to the covert; the affrighted wolf Skulked through the thicket to a closer brake; The sluggish bear, awakened in his den, Roused up and answered with a sullen growl, Low-breathed and long; and at the uproar ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... sake don't let her make me out a goody-goody. I haven't got this far into life without making moral mistakes, some of them huge. But in this thing—I say it only to you—I'm making none. I'm neither a marrying man, a villain, nor an ass." ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... couldn't see before morning. So I picked some bananas and chicos, and made a dinner of them; then I lighted a fire under the tree, to smoke and read Virgil by,—in fact, spent the evening over my notes. That editor was a pukkah ass! It must have been pretty late before I stretched ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... demons who inhabit hell. Then he beheld himself cast up to earth, His spirit entering a filthy dog; Feeding on things all foul and horrible— Consumed by cold. A month thus passed away. His spirit changed its dwelling, and he saw Himself an ass; and after that an ox, A cow, a goat, a sheep, a bird, a worm. So day by day he saw his spirit change Its outward shape. A multitude of forms— Some moving, others rooted to the ground— Received his ...
— Mârkandeya Purâna, Books VII., VIII. • Rev. B. Hale Wortham
... could likewise breed for spirituality, humanity's chances, I believe, would be bettered by as much again or more. But how is this to be done? Science must somehow find out. To leave it to nature is treason to the mind. Man may be an ass on the whole, but nature is even more of an ass, especially when it stands for human nature minus its saving grace of imaginative, will-directed intelligence. So let us hope that one day people will marry intelligently, and that the best marriages will be the richest in offspring. I believe ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Lord Mayor! One of them didn't know his name, and didn't want to know it; another wasn't certain whether he was a tallow-chandler or a button-maker; a third, who had met with him somewhere, described him as a damned ass; a fourth said, 'Oh, don't be hard on him; he's only a vulgar old Cockney, without an h in his whole composition.' A chorus of general agreement followed, as the dinner-hour approached: 'What a bore!' I whispered to my friend, 'Why do ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... better chance for a cure in the one case than in the other, insomuch indeed as, in the first, we have merely functional derangement; in the second, organic change. I always maintain there is no interest about insane people, except to the man of science; and even he very soon gets to that "ass's bridge," on the other side of which Nature, as the genius of occult things, stands with a satirical smile on her face, as she sees the proud savans toppling over into the Lethe of sheer ignorance, and getting drowned for their insane curiosity. In the asylum in France, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... a fellow who wasn't seedy wouldn't have made an ass of himself over riding the Cresta," ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... defensive, therefore, reduced to: and this to a heart, for so many years waging offensive war, (not valuing whom the opponent,) what a reduction! now comparing himself to the superannuated lion in the fable, kicked in the jaws, and laid sprawling, by the spurning heel of an ignoble ass! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... answered his brother meekly, "but it is. Aymer, don't be an ass, old fellow—Max won't ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... and the lady shut up in a glass box The fable of the ass, the ox, and the labourer The fable of the dog and the cock The story of the merchant and genius The history of the first old man and the bitch The story of the second old man and the two black dogs The story of the fisherman The story of the Grecian king, and the physician ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... comforts and luxuries, as well as for necessities. He grasps not only the produces of his own and his neighbor's field and vineyard, but demands what lies across continents and seas. Instead of the ship, the camel, and the ass, we now have the ocean freighter or liner, and the flying train of cars: new forces, oil, steam, electricity, and water-power, do the carrying work of man. And hence trade has become Trade, and each trader is involved in the comfort, success, and prosperity of many others. A single commercial transaction ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... outrageously careless! What right had you to expose us to this danger? Ass that I was ass, ass that I was! I wanted to speak of it, and my cursed delicacy prevented me. What right had you ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... sayings:—such phenomena are observed to follow upon the omission of the article,—the insertion of an expletive,—the change of a single letter. Thus [Greek: palin], thrust in where it has no business, makes it appear that our Saviour promised to return the ass on which He rode in triumph into Jerusalem[96]. By writing [Greek: o] for [Greek: o], many critics have transferred some words from the lips of Christ to those of His Evangelist, and made Him say what He never could have dreamed ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... storm raisers is universally prevalent amongst the Italian peasantry, and especially in mountainous districts. A Danish botanist, journeying alone upon an ass through the mountains of Abruzzi, was involved in several perilous adventures by this superstitious terror of the peasantry. They had for some time seen him collecting plants amongst the unfrequented cliffs and ravines, and watched his proceedings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... in brown, leaning against the pillar! He is a painter, and a man of genius; but the greatest ass existing!' ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Yorkshire farmer's lament for his dead mare, exhibits that affection for faithful animals which we meet with in Cowper, Burns, and other poets of the Romantic Revival. In the sincerity of its emotion it is poles apart from the studied sentimentality of the famous lament over the dead ass in Sterne's Sentimental Journey; indeed, in spirit it is much nearer to Burns's "Death of Poor Mailie," though Browne is wholly lacking in that delicate humour which Burns possesses, and which overtakes the tenderness of the poem as the lights and ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... perhaps for no definite reason at all, she said nothing to her husband, on his return from Toledo, of her encounter with the agreeable Mr. Murrill. Anyway, he arrived in no very affable state of mind. As a matter of fact he was most terrifically out of temper. Somebody or other—presumably some ass of a practical joker, he figured, or possibly a person with a grudge against him who had curious methods of taking vengeance—had lured him into taking a hot, dusty, tiresome and entirely useless trip. There was no business conference on out at Toledo; no need for his ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... O! that was an attractive virtue, a powerful conserving virtue, that went out of his mouth. We heard him, say they, and we never heard any speak like him, not so much for the pomp and majesty of his style, for he came low, sitting on an ass, and was as condescending in his manner of speech as in his other behaviour, but because "he taught with authority." There was a divine virtue in his preaching. Some sparkles of a divine Spirit and power in his discourses broke out ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... not be pacified; and walked out, calling himself an ass and a blinkard for having demeaned himself to such a company, forgetting that he had ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... high and stiff enough to stand alone. They had been sent to him year after year, by his old mother in Austria. There was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace; there were the three kings, gorgeously appareled, and the ox and the ass and the shepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a group of angels, singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the black slaves of the three kings. Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... chump evidently doesn't like me interfering. Silly old pompous ass!" Nevertheless his attitude towards the huffy landlord, if scornful, was ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to you," Varick said as he rose. "The fact is I'm not used to having much money to look after, and I don't want to make an ass of myself—" He smiled, and Waythorn could not help noticing that there was something pleasant about his smile. "It feels uncommonly queer to have enough cash to pay one's bills. I'd have sold my soul for it ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the marchings in the sun, the tyrannies of discipline, and the everlasting menace of the cross! And after all this misery they have given you a necklace of honour, as they hang a girdle of bells round the breast of an ass to deafen it on its journey, and prevent it from feeling fatigue. A man like you, braver than Pyrrhus! If only you had wished it! Ah! how happy will you be in large cool halls, with the sound of lyres, lying on ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!" ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a higher logic to put us in training for the laws of creation. How does the step forward from one species to a higher species of an existing genus take place? The ass is not the parent of the horse; no fish begets a bird. But the concurrence of new conditions necessitates a new object in which these conditions meet and flower. When the hour is struck in onward nature, announcing that ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... the lawyer; "it means that I am going to take all this trouble on myself, and hinder you making a bigger ass of yours. I'll apologize to the pair of them for ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the other of them will have heard something—if not from me, from some friends. The park here is very beautiful, the lord of the manor very excellent, and I am as well as I am permitted to be. Not one proper musical idea. I am out of my groove; I am like, for instance, an ass at a masked ball, a chanterelle [first, i.e., highest string] of a violin on a double bass— astonished, amazed, lulled to sleep as if I were hearing a trait [a run or a phrase] of Bodiot [FOOTNOTE: That is, Charles Nicolas Baudiot (1773-1849), ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the sabbath, answered and said to the multitude, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore, come and be healed, and not on the day of the sabbath. 15 But the Lord answered him, and said, Ye hypocrites, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? 16 And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... set his foot on dry land again he felt hungry. At once a table stood before him, covered with a fine and plenteous meal. He ate and drank. After he had gone on a while, he felt weary. And there stood an ass, waiting for him, on which he mounted. After he had ridden for a while, the ass's gait seemed too uneven, and along came a wagon, into which he climbed. But the wagon shook him up too, greatly, and he thought: "If I only had a litter! That would suit me better." No more had he thought ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... further, she was cruelly beaten with a whip, when, suddenly starting up, she walked for four or five hours; she then made an attempt to run away, but, from weakness, fell to the ground. Though unable to rise, the whip was a second time applied, when Kafa ordered that she should be placed on an ass. Unable to sit on it, she was carried afterwards on a ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... back to the prison with the Moor. But on the 7th of April following, the Moor was again taken out and escorted in the company of two thieves towards the Campo dei Fiori. The three condemned men were preceded by a constable, who rode backwards on an ass, and held in his hand a long pole, on the end of which were hung, still bleeding, the amputated limbs of a poor Jew who had suffered torture and death for some trifling crime. When the procession reached ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wild ass, Equus kiang, indicates his close relationship to the horse, and "kiang" is what he is called by the people of Tibet. The wild ass is as large as an average mule, with well-developed ears, and a sharp sense of hearing; his tail is tufted at the end, and he is reddish-brown in ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... as much by fasts as age, And on an ass was mounted, slow and sure; His visage warranted that never sage Had conscience more precise or passing pure. Though in his arteries time had stilled the rage Of blood, and spake him feeble and demure, At sight of the delighted damsel, he Was ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... moustache and got up too. He was in for it now. Absurd, fantastic situation. Well, whatever happened he could only drift—drift, and look like an ass to Lady Caroline, the most absolute as well as deceitful ass—an ass who was also a reptile, for she might well think he had been mocking her out in the garden when he said, no doubt in a shaking voice—fool and ass—that he had come because he couldn't help ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... of becoming one of "the good men." These transmigrations of the soul were rather numerous. The human soul did not always pass directly from the body of a man into the body of another man. It occasionally entered into the bodies of animals, like the ox and the ass. The Cathari were wont to tell the story of "a good Christian," one of "the Perfected," who remembered, in a previous existence as a horse, having lost his shoe in a certain place between two stones, as he was running swiftly under his master's ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... foliage.[FN24] O dear my son, bow thy head before thine inferior and soften thine utterance and be courteous and tread in the paths of piety, and shun impudence and louden not thy voice whenas thou speakest or laughest; for, were a house to be builded by volume of sound, the ass would edify many a mansion every day.[FN25] O dear my son, the transport of stones with a man of wisdom is better than the drinking of wine with one blamed for folly. O dear my son, rather pour out thy wine upon the tombs ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... child Christ was so clean that ox and ass worshipped him.] e{n}ne wat[gh] her blye barne burnyst so clene, at boe e ox & e asse hym hered at-ones; ay knewe hy{m} by his clannes for ky{n}g of nature, For non so clene of such a clos com neu{er} er e{n}ne; 1088 ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... already has been by permitting such a visit in the daytime? Strike me everlasting dumb if he hasn't had more than enough already! Does he want the responsibility? Does he wish the British to say afterward that it was all the maharajah's doing? No, you ass! At the conference be agreed solely on condition that the commissioner sahib should sign the letter and relieve his highness of all blame in case of a verdict of madness. And it was decided to send an American, lest ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the Aristocrat 'I thought you were coming to that next. Take our landed property, do—I wish you joy of it! What with all your Communistic legislation and bad harvests, and backing good things that don't come off—like an ass as I was—by Jove, I feel disposed to quit the whole business and compete for a Mandarin's Button in China. It's the only country for a British Aristocracy to live comfortably in and be properly appreciated, and you can't come sneaking about ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... pretty large order. Look here, now," said French, sitting up, "you look like a sensible fellow, and open to advice. Don't be an ass and throw yourself away. I know these people well. In a generation or two something may be done with them. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, you know. Give it up. Take up a ranch and go cattle raising. That is my advice. I know them. You can't ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... ached all the rest of the afternoon. About five o'clock Mr. Thoburn stopped in long enough to say: "What's this I hear about Carter making an ass ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Though I have been well abused, yet I have had so much praise, that I have become a gourmand, both as to capacity and taste; and I really did not think that mortal man could have tickled my palate in the exquisite manner with which you have done the job. So I am an old ass, and nothing more need be said about this. I agree entirely with all your reservations about accepting the doctrine, and you might have gone further with further safety and truth. Of course I do not wholly agree about sterility. I hate beyond all things ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... five-and-twenty men from our parish, and the squire, he was in a proper rage with being rated to pay ship money, so—as I had fallen out with my master, mine host of the 'Griffin,' more fool I—I went with the young gentleman, and a proper ass I was ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Still more unchristian are the injunctions to run ahead of one's fellows, on landing, in order to get the best quarters at the inn, and first turn at the dinner provided; and above all, at Port Jaffa, to secure the best ass, "for ye shall paye no more for the best ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... in questioning surprise. "Well, what?" He caught the meaning of his friend. "Try not to be an ass, Gordon. Of course she knows the ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... quietly, "but that is rather running wild; a donkey and an ass are the same thing, Stevey, my lad. If the captain says a few things to cut your comb a little, they will do you good; and I am as certain as that I am sitting here that he will end by saying, 'There, my boy, then, that's an end of it. Let it be ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... with a little laugh. "I am a first class ass. I fear I was blowing like a fog horn. But when you touch Canada ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... afterwards became. The small fry of authors and translators were hardly fitted to call out his full strength, but his vivisection of them taught him the value of certain structural principles. "To one dissection of the fore quarter of an ass," says Haydon in his diary, "I owe my information." Yet even in his earliest criticisms we are struck with the same penetration and steadiness of judgment, the same firm grasp of the essential and permanent, that were afterwards ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the monk. He could feel again her grip on his arm. Had she known that the black figure was Janet and sought to restrain him lest he catch her? Obvious! And he had ascribed that action to timidity or even—blatant ass!—to fear for his safety. Fear! As if October Copley knew the meaning of the word either for herself or any one else! "Afraid for his safety?" His cheeks were red as he spared a mirthless laugh ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... an your devils come not away quickly, you shall have me asleep presently: zounds, I could eat myself for anger, to think I have been such an ass all this while, to stand gaping after the devil's ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... lesson of a hard life lived unto others and a hard death died unto himself, century after century it was the monk who taught and helped the barbarian of every land to turn the desolate freedom of the wild ass into a smiling homestead and the savage Africa of his own heart into at least a better place. The marvel is that he could at the same time find room or energy to make his monastery also a laboratory, a library, and a ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... get the better in all cases when a man will but give it fair play—I began to stand convicted in my own mind, as an ass before the interview, for having expected too much—an ass during the interview, for having failed to extract the lady's real purpose—and an especial ass, now that it was over, for thinking so much about it. But I can think ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott |
