"Fool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was now easily subdued, but it had soured and hardened old Governor Berkeley's spirit. Twenty-three in all were executed for participation in the movement. Charles II. remarked: "That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I for the murder ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... his narrow pedantry, his ignorance of everything but grammar and words. He exhausts the Latin vocabulary of abuse to pile up every epithet of contumely and execration on the head of his adversary. It but amounts to calling Salmasius fool and knave through a couple of hundred pages, till the exaggeration of the style defeats the orator's purpose, and we end by regarding the whole, not as a serious pleading, but as an epideictic display. Hobbes said truly that the two books ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... which ought to be made joint in every possible instance, in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people should look up to Congress as their head. And when the States get their portions they will either fool them away, or make a job of it to serve individuals. Proofs of both these practices have been furnished, and by either of them that invaluable fund is lost, which ought to pay our public debt. To sell them at vendue, is to give them to the bidders of the day, be they many or ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... you mean," said the doctor, in his quick, business-like way. "Good job I'm here. Dost, you fool, you shouldn't be in such a hurry. Why, you might have buried ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... tell! Why hadn't he already told? I object as much, if not more, to his underhand concealment of this, than I do to the fact itself. It looks very much like his making a fool of me, and of you too. You and he have been about together, and corresponding together, in a way I don't at all approve of—in a most unseemly way. You should have known how improper such conduct is. A woman can't be too careful not to be ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... which is that Richard owes me, but seems determined that I shall not have. Charles is winning more, and the quinze table is now at its height. I have set down Brooks to be the completest composition of knave and fool that ever was, to which I may add liar. You say very true, that I have been in a bank, that I have lost my money, that I want to get it back; but it is as true that I shall make no attempt to get it back till my affairs are quite in ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... a perfect fool to ask Cora. She did not fear a single Englishwoman, the powers of most of whom in her heart she despised—but Cora was of her own race, and well equipped to rival her in a question of marriage. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... "Just to fool Farmer Gale's dog and any other animal, which might try to catch me. While they were digging at my front door, I could slip out my back door ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... souls. The employment of a lover is that of a mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a prince, of a ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a blackguard, of a liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull, of a frivolous fool, of a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave. An employment from which Jesus abstained, in imitation of whom folks of great understanding likewise disdain it; it is a vocation in which a man of worth is required to spend above all things, his time, his life, his blood, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... say I have written to place everything in his hands. I am "not such a fool as" to think I can teach him! (though I am insisting upon certain arrangements of types, etc., etc., to give a literary—not Toy ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... seen Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life: then when there had been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past; wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly Till that were cancell'd; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... left his eyes. It was serious, as he knew. He had had no idea that he would have, so to speak, "funked" it so. It was partly, of course, because of Robin. He did not want to make a fool of himself before the boy. He was already beginning to realise what were the things that ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... not the fashion to be loyal now," he went on, bitterly. "Even d'Azay hath changed. He, like Lafayette and your great friend Mr. Jefferson and so many others, is all for the common people. Perhaps I am but a feather-headed fool, but it seems to me a dangerous policy, and I think, with your Shakespeare, that perhaps 'twere better 'to bear the ills we have'—how goes it? ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... it," she cried. "You're too ill to be made to think of such things. I was a fool ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and would refuse the assistance of their defenders, and wholly resign themselves to their accusers and judges. By which means it cometh to pass, that in wise men there is no place for hatred. For who but a very fool would hate the good? And to hate the wicked were against reason. For as faintness is a disease of the body, so is vice a sickness of the mind. Wherefore, since we judge those that have corporal infirmities to be rather worthy of compassion than of hatred, much more are they to ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... let the racket rip, She is going to fool you, you have lost your grip, Your brain is in a muddle and your heart is in a whirl, Come along with me, Willy, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... of the matter," said Logan, "and had no such case upon his books! That of course put me in a dreadful state of mind, but I was naturally anxious to avoid making a fool of myself and therefore I waited for some hours before mentioning my suspicions to any one. But when the morning came and no message was received I determined to communicate with Scotland Yard. The rest of the mystery it is for ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... never got the letter, and you've always kept in with them, you say, and made them think you were crazy about the girl. They pay you Betty's allowance till she's of age, don't they? They can't lay a finger on you. You're a fool to waste my time talking about a little thing like that when we ought to be planning a way to get hold of that girl before the trustees find out about it. If we don't get her fixed before she's of age we shall be in the soup as far as the property ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... grief, Felipe returned home. Ramona had been very ill when she left home. Had she died, and been buried by the lonely, sorrowing Alessandro? And was that the reason Alessandro was going away to the North, never to return? Fool that he was, to have shrunk from speaking Ramona's name to the Indians! He would return, and ask again. As soon as he had seen his mother, he would set off again, and never cease searching till he had found either Ramona or her grave. But when ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... such clothing as he thought necessary. When Mrs. Harling told him firmly that she would keep fifty dollars a year for Antonia's own use, he declared they wanted to take his sister to town and dress her up and make a fool of her. Mrs. Harling gave us a lively account of Ambrosch's behaviour throughout the interview; how he kept jumping up and putting on his cap as if he were through with the whole business, and how his mother tweaked his coat-tail ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... risk of losing my post, then I would probably try to stop them, but if stopping them meant being 'sacked,' I most certainly shouldn't. It isn't so easy to get posts nowadays—especially good paying posts like this. What do you take me for, a fool!" ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... impostor in a king's disguise. Do you not know me? does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin?" The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene; The Emperor, laughing, said, "It is strange sport To keep a madman for thy Fool at court!" And the poor, baffled Jester in disgrace Was hustled back among the populace. In solemn state the Holy Week went by, And Easter Sunday gleamed upon the sky; The presence of the Angel, with its light, Before the sun rose, made the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... is his fate on whom the public gaze Is fixed for ever to detract or praise; Repose denies her requiem to his name, And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame. The secret Enemy whose sleepless eye Stands sentinel—accuser—judge—and spy. 70 The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain, The envious who but breathe in other's pain— Behold the host! delighting to deprave, Who track the steps of Glory to the grave, Watch every fault that daring Genius owes Half to the ardour which its ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... sympathetic friend," says Robert Hall, "may be said to have doubled his mental resources." No man is wise enough to be his own counselor, for he inclineth too much to leniency toward himself. "It is a well-known rule that flattery is food for the fool." Therefore no man should be his own counselor since no one is so apt to flatter another as he is himself. A wise man never flatters himself, neither does a friend flatter. As a wise man sees his own faults and seeks to correct them, so a true friend sees the faults of his ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... here. This he be bad plabba (palaver). This he be bob! I come up for white man, you come up for black man. All white man he no be fool, 'cos he no ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... at him wistfully, recognizing the truth that he never could understand the sort of feeling that led her into making, as he considered, such a fool of herself. Miss Davis gazed at her kindly and pityingly, thinking of how many hard blows she would get in the future, in return for acts like that which had so puzzled Mark. And she resolved that another time she would ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... second commandment, and his very soul reeled in the sudden terror that they had gone from him for ever, his father looked at him as one who should say, "Woe is me that I have been the responsible means of bringing a fool into the world!" Even his mother looked at him wistfully, in a way that was like cold water running down his back, while Mr. Cameron said kindly, "Take ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... speech supposed to have been delivered by Pitt on the occasion of his being taunted by Horace Walpole on account of his youth. Pitt replied in language something like this: "It is true that I am young, yet I'll get over that; but the man who is a fool will probably ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... to the limits of the universe; to the boundaries of time and space; that shall lift you up into a new plane far beyond, outside all mean and miserable care for self. Why stand shrinking there? Give up the fool's paradise of 'This is I'; 'This is mine.' It is the great reality you are asked to grasp. Leap forward without fear. You shall find yourself in the ambrosial waters of Nirvana and sport with the Arhats who have conquered ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... calm him, as I had so often done before, and again I was the shield between Escovedo and the royal lightnings, of whose menace to blot him out the fool had no suspicion. For months things hung there, until, in January of '78, when war had been forced in earnest upon Spain by Elizabeth's support of the Low Countries, Don John won the great victory of Gemblours. This somewhat raised the King's depression, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... do, you fool! What could you do—run the engine? tend the planers? If I wanted you at all, I should keep you where ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... did I live, was I kind, was I rich, what did I have to eat, did I smoke or drink, how many shirts and trousers did I have, how many guns and what kinds, etc. The end of it was, that they either took me for a dangerous sorcerer, and withdrew in fear, or for a fool to be got the better of. In the latter case, they would run eagerly to their houses and bring out some old broken article to offer for sale. A few sarcastic remarks proved useful; but it was always ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... from papa; but I shall have one, for two reasons. In the first place, Papa Chamblard knows how to reason, and he will say to himself: 'What shall I gain by it? Instead of fooling round with little white women in Paris, he will fool round with little yellow ones at Singapore.' And then another reason, the best one, is that Papa Chamblard adores me, and he can't do without me, and the little sentimental phrase at the end of my despatch will appeal to his heart. You'll see how it will turn out. At 11.20 my telegram will leave ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... are so fool-hardy," drawled out Stephen; "I, for my part, don't see any fun in trifling with such ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... should they? I only hope he hasn't gone and made a fool of himself in any way that'll make a scandal or get him into trouble. In a way, you know, we are connections. His mother and mine were second cousins. That's really why I feel that I ought to do somethin' to find out what has happened to ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... soul hath slept, And I have shamed the nobler rule; O Master, I have whined and crept; O Spirit, I have played the fool. Like him of old upon whose head His follies hung in dark arrears, I groan and travail in my bed, And water it ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... a former actor, who knew me when I was rich—for I had a fortune, but I spent it all; I wished to amuse myself. He, knowing I was without a single sou in the world, came and promised me money enough to begin life over again. Fool that I was to believe him, for he brought me to die here like a dog! Oh! I will have my revenge on him!" At this thought the wounded man clenched his hands threateningly. "I will have my revenge," he resumed. "I know much more than he believes. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... laugh that ended in a sneer. Well, he had been a fool—that's all. He had served her purpose, had been the poor dupe upon whom she had practised her wiles, a plaything, to be lightly tossed aside for a new toy. Some day, too late perhaps, she would see her mistake, and then she would suffer, ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... able to walk in and say his say there, fearing no man; it was like a huge mirror that reflected his own independence. Yet no one ever said harder or fiercer things of his own fellow-craftsmen. His description of Charles Lamb as "a pitiful rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering tom-fool" is not an amiable one! Or take his account of Wordsworth- -how instead of a hand-shake, the poet intrusted him with "a handful of numb unresponsive fingers," and how his speech "for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution" excelled all the other speech that Carlyle had ever heard from mortals. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "This is the fool that lent out money gratis; look to him, jailer," (as to lunatic no less than criminal) the enmity, observe, having its symbolism literally carried out by being aimed straight at the heart, and finally foiled by a literal appeal to the great moral law that flesh and blood ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... "epistolary correspondence"—to Atossa—not Mr. Matthew Arnold's Persian cat but—the Persian Queen, daughter of Cyrus, wife of Cambyses and Darius, mother of Xerxes, and in more than her queenly status a sister to Jezebel. Atossa had not a wholly amiable reputation, but she was assuredly no fool: and if, to borrow a famous phrase, it had been necessary to invent letters, there is no known reason why she might not have done it. But it is perfectly certain that she did not, and no one who combines, as all true scholars should endeavour to combine, an ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... "Fool!" he thought, "I have walked into the trap like a child in arms. The whole country has been prepared against our coming, the people told to leave their houses, and the king's own hird-men set as decoys in our path. Can this be the meaning of ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... Lockwin ain't goin' to serve. If he resigns, I want it. If he catches on, all right. I want him or you to get me collector of the port. You hear me? Collector of the port. His nobs, this collector we have now—he must get out, I don't care how. But he must sherry. I can't fool with these sailors. If they see me trading with Lockwin they will swear I sell out. See? Well, I want to see Lockwin, just the same. Now, I'll tell you what I'll do: You Send Lockwin to Washington to explain the situation. Get in writing what ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... their master, Charles II.—known to remark that it was the roast beef and reading of the holy Scriptures that caused the noted sadness of the English.[377] The true-born Englishman retorted with many a jibe at the "gay, giddy, brisk, insipid fool," who thought of nothing but clothes and garnitures, despised roast beef, and called his old friends ruffians and rustics; or at the rake who "has not been come from France above three months and here he has debauch'd four women and fought five duels." The playwrights ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... step in my power is that of exhortation. . . . Swithin St. Cleeve, don't make a fool of yourself, as your father did. If your studies are to be worth anything, believe me they must be carried on without the help of a woman. Avoid her, and every one of the sex, if you mean to achieve any worthy thing. Eschew ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... yarth is the matter with you, Isaac, that you keep a grinning, and grinning, and fidgetting about all to yourself so much like a plaguy nateral born fool for?" ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... mine once a man well That war a cAcll'd TOM GOOL; Zum thawt en mazed, while withers thawt En moor a knave than fool. ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... most unlucky, under the circumstances, that I should happen to be the daughter of one peer, and be offered promiscuously as wife to the highest bidder among half a dozen others, if only I would have them. But I won't, Mr. Le Breton, I really won't. I'm not going to marry a fool, just to please my mother. Nothing on earth would induce me to marry Lord ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... "I'd be a fool," she said, "if I cared two straws what you think of me, since you can't see what I am. I'm sorry if I've broken your old hand-glass, though I didn't break it. You broke ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... terrible than anything of the same kind which I have encountered in books. The artistic uses of contrast as background and accompaniment, are well known to nature and the poets. Joy is continually worked on sorrow, sorrow on joy; riot is framed in peace, peace in riot. Lear and the Fool always go together. Trafalgar is being fought while Napoleon is sitting on horseback watching the Austrian army laying down its arms at Ulm. In Hood's poem, it is when looking on the released schoolboys at their games that Eugene Aram remembers he is a murderer. And these two poor ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... you suppose I am a fool?" burst out Strong. "Do you suppose I could have lived so long in the world, Frank Clavering, without having my eyes about me? You know I have but to speak and you are a beggar to-morrow. And I am not the only man ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... derided the idea that such a little beast could do so much harm as we seemed ready to accuse it of, although he was familiar with the destruction caused by bacteria, but then, he used to say, "bacterial work in armies of more than a million bugs at the same time and no one would be d—— fool enough to let more than one or two ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... might have put it in;" and so passed on. "What in hell is the matter with that guy?" I asked of Fritz, who stood near us with a careless air, some scorn and considerable amusement in his eyes. "The bloody fool's lost his knife," was Fritz's answer. After completing his rounds The Clever Man searched almost everyone except ourselves and Fritz, and absolutely subsided on his own paillasse muttering occasionally "if he found it" what ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the Son of the Fool and the Cripple," he mutters decisively. "They are good men, and we can always have the Gull for a help when ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... Medicine, jurisprudence too, And, to my cost, theology With ardent labour studied through, And here I stand with all my lore, Poor fool, no ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the order in the precise words of the drill book was more than my memory could compass. It was very interesting, even quite exciting; continually I racked my brain for something to do next in which I should not make a fool of myself. We got back into company formation after a while, and the captain tried the line in a skirmish advance; then abruptly he put all the corporals back into their places, and ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... by a snug commercial arrangement; that their anticipated booty had become British property in the regular course of traffic, and that all this had been effected by the very Company which had been instrumental in getting them sent on what they now stigmatized as a fool's errand. They felt as if they had been duped and made tools of, by a set of shrewd men of traffic, who had employed them to crack the nut, while they carried off the kernel. In a word, M'Dougal found himself so ungraciously received by his countrymen on board ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... answered Dickinson, "I understands yer, Ralli, and I'll do it too, never fear,"—with a scowl at Lance for Ralli's benefit. "Why, the man must be a fool—a perfect fool—not to see as it'd be ever so much easier to get things aboard now than when she's afloat. Now, you"— turning to Lance—"you just top your boom and git away back to your work at once, and don't let me see no more skulking or ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... send me to the Rue du Pot au Fer: but I know why—that I may be arrested there: I am not such a fool." ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... a fool, Jerry," they say. "You'll be sorry for this when you're sober. The Kid's ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... been to public school, My vaccination did not take. Perhaps I will grow up a fool; But that ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... butts on top of each other as before. This saves much chopping, and economizes fuel. Build a little wind break behind you and lie close to the fire. Doubtless you have heard the Indian's dictum (southern Indians express it just as the northern ones do): 'White man heap fool; make um big fire—can't git near; Injun make um little fire—git ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... Private Hinkey to a group of private soldiers. "Ferrers is just a plumb fool, and all the colonels in the world can't ever make anything else of him. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... See Palfrey's History of New England, vol. i. pp. 57-59; Mason's Reminiscences of Newport, pp. 392-407. Laing (Heimskringla, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must have intended to fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of Antiquaries at Copenhagen; "Those sly rogues of Americans," says he, "dearly love a quiet hoax;" and he can almost hear them chuckling over their joke in their club-room at Newport. I am afraid these Yankees were less rogues and more ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... yet one thing," Ram Yaksahn resumed, "and I should cover my face to tell it. But if you learn that I am a fool of fools, consider my foolishness. His blackness is strange; his strength is mighty—it took four to handle him, not two, in the beginning—and his quickness is more quick than a man can think. Also, he has a red ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... on a fine expression of contempt. "Suppose white man no got money?" he asked. "Eh! suppose he no got money—him dam fool!" And Napoleon glared upon us, his passengers, as though he wondered if either of us would venture to contradict ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... fool, Wunny? That little old image on the floor is enough to make you sick, course, it's so filthy dirty. I hope you'll scrub your hands good with soap before you touch any food for other folks to eat. What's the matter with ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... money to provide comforts in their old age; the very thought of it is distasteful to them, and as to that fellow (pointing to the man John had been conversing with), if he succeeded in passing the year without drawing his wages, some of his mates would tell him he was a fool; and thinking so himself, he would not rest until he had been paid and gone ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... District Three, Ural Division of the Russian States, was a fool. Danny O'Rourke had reached that conclusion some time before—a conclusion, however, that he was ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... & Co. Edith Kinnaird is a fiction which the most artistic mind will feel delight in perusing, yet one which the humblest will understand, and from which both may derive improvement. The heroine is neither a saint nor a fool, but a living woman; her sufferings spring from her errors, and are redeemed by her repentance: all is natural, beautiful, refreshing and noble. We rise from the perusal of such a fiction ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... the sceptr'd fool Who of conceit and selfishness is full— As a good name exceeds the best perfume, And richest balms ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... obstinate I got. I rode on after the beast, who kept letting me come nearer and nearer, and then darted off again with his loud-laughing neigh. It was this infernal neigh that made me so savage—there was something so spiteful and triumphant in it, as though the animal knew he was making a fool of me, and exulted in so doing. At last, however, I got so sick of my horse-hunt that I determined to make a last trial, and, if that failed, to turn back. The runaway had stopped near one of the islands of trees, and was grazing quite close to its edge. I thought that if I were to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... with the born gambler that he is unteachable. The fool who ruins himself at Homburg or Monte Carlo belongs to the same type as the young man above, whose identity was betrayed by a love-letter. Gamblers are always discovering some infallible system of beating the bank. The first word in La Bruyere's famous work—"Tout ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... you'd better ask me that question later on!" said Wharton, with a twist of the lip; "he's going to do his best to make a fool of himself and us to-night—we shall see! It's kind of you to wish us an Irish row!—considering that if I miss my chance to-night I shall never ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... openly, and his opinion of their being a curse to retailers was usually the first thing he told them, after be had looked at their cards. Some of them argued the matter with him. Some of the more independent members of the profession told him he was a blank fool. But those who called regularly let him say his say and then squeezed an order from him, keeping their opinion of him for use outside ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... them with my fountain pen. They fled instantly. Perhaps the little rabbit lady is glad—she may be licking the wounds of her Lancelot in their burrow a few yards away while he is telling her that he would have beaten the other fellow all right in the end if that darned fool hadn't thrown his fountain pen, while she agrees, as she works her little rabbit tongue soothingly, although privately ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... both, To pass the time when nothing else can please: And train them on to yield by subtle oath The sweet content that gives such humour ease: And then we say, when we their follies try, "To play with fools, O, what a fool ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... "That'll be enough. You will know better, next time, how to speak respectfully of a lady. While we're on the subject, I don't mind telling you that nobody told me. I'm not a fool, and I put two and two together. That's all. I'm not her brother. It wasn't my business to punish you because you played the coyote. But when you said she lied to me, ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... said abruptly. "If I see her smiling there like a queen by your side—! She did—last time. I remember." She caught at a sob and dashed her hand across her face impatiently. "Jealous fool, mean and petty, jealous fool!... Good luck, old man, to you! You're going to win. But I don't want to see the end of it all ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... unless be regards this place as a bath of youth and fashion. I fancy he has learnt enough about my health to make him think me a precarious kind of heir, and that his views are general. I hope he may not be made a fool of, otherwise it is the best thing that ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dreadful letters, that she had this terrible mania for writing letters? But if he had been so very clever and diplomatic he would somehow or another have prevented it. Oh yes, there was no doubt he was a fool, and he had without doubt been made supremely ridiculous. He was well aware that ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... which, however, is at once attended with ennui; then the reproduction of this race and its striving. In this evident disproportion between the trouble and the reward, the will to live appears to us from this point of view, if taken objectively, as a fool, or subjectively, as a delusion, seized by which everything living works with the utmost exertion of its strength for something that is of no value. But when we consider it more closely, we shall find here also that it is rather a blind pressure, a tendency entirely ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of judging and condemning the thoughts that occurred to him. He was just to his theories, and did not condemn them unheard; and so it happened that he was willing to test what would seem to most people not at all worth testing. These rather wild trials he called "fool's experiments," and enjoyed extremely. As an example I may mention that finding the cotyledons of Biophytum to be highly sensitive to vibrations of the table, he fancied that they might perceive ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... had known her. Ah! you have seen her, Noce!" he said with a mocking smile. "Finally, in spite of all her allurements and beauty, the marchioness was lost sight of amid thoughts of the six thousand crowns which this fool of a husband could not get out of his head, and she went to bed all alone. But women always have one resource left; so that the moment that the good husband made as though he would get into his bed, the marchioness cried, 'Oh, how cold I am!' 'So am I,' he replied. 'How is it that the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... for a dreamer and a fool. Actually he was neither. How was I to know that his keen penetrating brain had seen through my motive to get control of all commercial marketing of Indurate? I had laid my plans carefully, and I had expected to reap a nice harvest. Klae must have been aware of my innermost thoughts, ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... while John, though less terrific in physique, was modest and courageous to a degree. Of the sisters, Sarah had most of the looks and Christina all the merits, so that at the beginning of things both Saul and John were concentrated upon the former, who, being a little fool, preferred Saul, but, being also a little vixen, encouraged both. The brothers Spring appearing Dartmoor way, Sarah promised, in an expansive moment, to marry whichever of her suitors caught them single-handed. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... Wait around till the prettiest girl in Texas can see you pull off the big play—run the risk of havin' her trampled to death, just so's you can grin an' say, 'Pleased to meet you, ma'am.' When I call you durn fool, I realize it's ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... continued Sibylla, growing red in the face with indignation. "Didn't I hear that worthless scamp, Fritz Schmidt, a-referrin' to me and a-sayin' to Miss Midleton fer the 'servant' to bring over the butter? Betch yer life this here 'servant' ain't a-goin' to allow eddicated people to make a fool of her. First chance I get I'll give that Perfesser a ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... left the room, the Colonel told me he had himself been in England, and had seen Arthur Young (who had been frequently named by the General in our conversation); and that Mr. Young having learnt that he was in the mercantile line, and was possessed of much land, had said he thought he was a great fool to be a merchant and yet have so much land; the Colonel replied, that if Mr. Young had the same land to cultivate, it would make a great fool of him. The Colonel did me the honour to say I was the only man he ever knew to treat ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... fool?" she answered. "Do you not know that to speak disrespectfully of the ancestors of a Chinaman is unforgivable? To all appearances Prince Shan never moved from his wonderful palace in Pekin, many thousands of miles away. Yet he lifted his little finger ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all seemed, now that he looked back upon it. Eight years of fighting, hardship, and rough living, and what had they brought him? The reputation of a hard rider, a daring player at cards, a quick shot, a scorner of danger, and a bad man to fool with—that was the whole of a record hardly won. The man's eyes hardened, his lips set firmly, as this truth came crushing home. A pretty life story surely, one to be proud of, and with probably no better ending ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... faut fool, that is what you are!" The husband went on scolding her, while he counted the cash. . . . When I accept coupons, I see what is written on them. And you probably looked only at the boys' pretty faces. "You had better behave yourself in your ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... in pees, and hadde y nowghe of worldly ricchesse: and therfore he wolde wisshe non other thing, but the body of that faire lady, to have it at his wille. And sche answerde him, that he knew not what he asked; and seyde, that he was a fool, to desire that he myghte not have; for sche seyde, that he scholde not aske, but erthely thing: for sche was non erthely thing, but a gostly thing. And the kyng seyde, that he ne wolde asken non other thing. And the lady answerde, sythe that I may not withdrawe zou fro zoure lewed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... nephew his heir, a country boy; but did alter his mind upon the boy's being persuaded by another young heir, in roguery, to crow like a cock at my Lord's table, much company being there, and the boy having a great trick at doing that perfectly. My Lord bade them take away that fool from the table, and so gave over the thoughts of making him his heir, from this piece of folly. So home, and there to dinner, and after dinner abroad with my wife and girle, set them down at Unthanke's, and I to White Hall to the Council chamber, where I was summoned about ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... R., "these are quite fool questions for one of your hard-headed common sense! If I knew exactly 'what' and 'where', I'd go and find it myself—at ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... to their custom, play the fool, and fable that Noah for centuries denied himself a wife because he knew that God would destroy the world by the flood. If, therefore, Noah had married, like all the other patriarchs, in the earlier part of his ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... "Whereupon that young fool,"—Dick threw back his head and shut one eye as he shifted the page under his hand,—"being left alone with an ink-pot and what he conceived were his own notions, went and spilt them both over me in the papers. You might have engaged a grown man for the business, Nilghai. How do you think ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... young son, besides Charles, who is old enough to take care of himself; and, though I am very glad to ask a young man to dine in my house who has, as you observe, very good manners, and is neither a fool nor a coxcomb, I am not at all willing that he should become what you call an habitue, until I know something of his character and principles. And now, as the dressing-bell has rung these ten minutes, and ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... husbands have grown away from them; and it is only in subjects of a lower nature that they have a common interest. A man, in his every-day intercourse with other men, and his business calls into all kinds of places and scenes, must be a fool not to receive new ideas, not to become more intelligent on many subjects. But what can be expected of the wife, almost always at home in the isolated farm-house, in a sparsely settled community, ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... virtually say that temporal and worldly interests are to be preferred to the spiritual and the future. The language of the Epicurean is intensely egotistic. It is: "Soul, take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry;" to which God says, "Thou fool." Christianity was sent to destroy this egotism, which undermined the strength of the ancient world; and it created a practical belief in the future, and a faith in truth. Without this faith, society has ever retrograded; with it there ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... driven them out of the little paradise of the past, they are in a fair way to make the whole world into a paradise of the present. Only through training their minds could they have broken away from an outworn past. In this time of readjustment there must be many mistakes and many tragedies.[26] The fool-killer will gather a rich harvest, but if we are open-minded and eager to see the truth, each martyr will teach her sisters, and the future generations of women will conserve the values of the past and add to them new treasures and new graces ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... it is pleasure. "Pushpin as good as poetry!" seems to some the height of sarcasm. Socrates says in the Philebus, "Do we not say that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very temperance, and that the fool is pleased when he is full of foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom? And may not he be justly deemed a fool who says that these pairs ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... subordinates was to give support and to give free play to any man whose heart was in his work. In countless small matters he would let Stanton disobey him and flout him openly. ("Did Stanton tell you I was a damned fool? Then I expect I must be one, for he is almost always right and generally says what he means.") But every now and then, when he cared much about his own wish, he would step in and crush Stanton flat. Crowds of applicants to Lincoln with requests ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... with violence?" he soliloquized, as he paced to and fro. "Suppose I find him with his senora? Who will be willing to be my second? The curate? Capitan Tiago? Damn the hour in which I listened to her advice! The old toady! To oblige me to get myself tangled up, to tell lies, to make a blustering fool of myself! What will the young lady say about me? Now I'm sorry that I've been ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and he looked about him. "Where can I have been wandering to?" thought Edward; "I never fell in with any of the forest ponies before; I must, therefore, have walked in a direction quite contrary to what I usually do. I do not know where I am—the scenery is new to me. What a fool I am! It's lucky that nobody except Humphrey digs pitfalls, or I should probably have been in one by this time; and I've brought out my gun and left the dog at home. Well, I suppose I can find my way back." Edward then surveyed the whole ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... Jaybird, tee-hee-hee! I'm Mr. Jaybird; you watch me! You've got to rise 'fore break of day If you want to fool old ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... directly: with a good stove in the hall and in each of the rooms not commonly used, you would probably afford one or two open fires for those constantly occupied, and keep comfortable with less outlay for fuel than with a furnace. But you would need an accommodating fool to make your fires, and an industrious philosopher to keep them burning. In this matter of warming and ventilating the more you know the more you will wish to learn. My hope is to set you thinking and studying. Read Dr. George Derby's little book on Anthracite and Health, from which I have ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the barkeeper had performed his functions. "You see, for nigh ten years after I left Grantham Mills, I'd stuck closer'n a burr to my business, till I began to feel I knew 'most all there was to know about trainin' animals. Men do git that kind of a fool feelin' sometimes about lots of things harder than animal-trainin'. Well, nothin' would do me but I should go back to my old business of trappin' the beasts, only with one big difference. I wanted to go in fer takin' them alive, so as to sell them to menageries an' all that sort of thing. An' it ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... quitting home, that's your own choice; so don't go and pretend to fret over it. And as to sparing you, you've been spared a deal too much, and I've been a fool to do it. And just bethink you, Faith, that if we are now to make one family with my Lady Lettice and Edith, you'd best be thinking how you can spare them. My Lady Lettice is a deal newer widow than you, and she's over seventy years on her back, and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... kneel all! caps off! Old Blue Light's going to pray; Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! it's his way! Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God Lay bare thine arm—stretch forth thy rod, Amen! ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... cold and pitiless—one way of it was as bad as the other. The heavenly country dissolved into cloud and melted away, and above was nothing but empty space. No more folding of your hands, like a fool! Walk on the earth, and lift up your head, and defy Heaven and fate, as you defied the schoolmaster. Your mother has no need of you to save her—she is not anywhere any more. She is dead—dead and turned to clay; and ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Mr. Gooch. "I'll bring an action against you for assault and battery. Playing a fool game like this! Get away from ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... a fool," said one of them to the other, "and have given us this walk for nothing, as though our feet were not sore enough already. The crocodiles have that Noie, her witchcraft could not save her from them; it was a baboon's spoor you saw in ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... said Daisy. "Robert and I were right after all. We knew what your Guru was best fitted for, dear Lucia, but then of course you always know best, and you and he have been fooling us finely. But you didn't fool me. I knew when you took him away from me, what sort of a bargain you had made. Guru, indeed! He's the same class as Mrs Eddy, and I saw through her fast enough. And now what are we to do? For my part, I shall just get home, and ring up for the police, and say that ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... who marries a poor man or for love—they are the same thing—is a fool and deserves what she gets. No one thanks her for it, him least of all; because if she does love him it is only to make them miserable. She's always at him—where did he go and why did he stay so long, and no matter what he ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... weather yard-arm, to the great dissatisfaction of Mr. Brewster, (to whom you will shortly be introduced,) who often confidentially assures the skipper that the third mate would have turned out a natural fool if his parents had not providentially sent him ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fair one respond in poetry or prose?" asked the Major, eyeing his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say, "O Moses and Green Spectacles! what a fool the boy is." ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... even prudence gets to be a perverted quality, when men are living under an infatuation like that which now exists. These men live like the fool who says there ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... demanded Dernor, almost springing off his seat, "Then, by thunder, if you ain't the most noble gal in the wide creation, and I the biggest fool." ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... me—perhaps she did—but I was too poor, so her friends said, for marriage. We courted, as the saying is, in the meanwhile. It was my love for her, my wish to deserve her, that made me iron against my friend's example. I was fool enough to speak to him of Mary—to present him to her—this ended in her seduction." (Again Gawtrey paused, and breathed hard.) "I discovered the treachery—I called out the seducer-he sneered, and refused to ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fool, Langdon!" Duncan exclaimed hotly, after that pause; and he clenched his hands until his knuckles turned white under the strain, half-raising the right one, until it seemed as if he intended to strike a blow with ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... top of a column he read— Of a king with a mighty soft place in his head, Who should join in his temper the ass and the mule, The Third of his name and by far the worst fool." ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... know what else. Frankly and coldly I told him to go to the dickens. Our magazine had existed without him once upon a time, and it could go on existing without him. I was sorry to see him make such a fool of himself. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... if he modifies the area of it, the limits and the landmark; if he divides it into portions, and if he says: 'The field has no owner, since there has been no donation of it; '—if, from dread of the terrible imprecations which protect this stele and this field, he sends a fool, a deaf or blind person, a wicked wretch, an idiot, a stranger, or an ignorant one, and should cause this stele to be taken away,* and should throw it into the water, cover it with dust, mutilate it by scratching it with a stone, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... perfection of that imitation stone, a copy so exact that it extends to the setting. That shows plan—forgive me if I repeat myself—preparation, a knowledge of stones, a particular knowledge of this one. Mr. Fairbrother's steward may have had the knowledge, but he would have been a fool to have used his knowledge to secure for himself a valuable he could never have found a purchaser for in any market. But a fancier—one who has his pleasure in the mere possession of a unique and invaluable gem—ah! that is different! ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... Gildy that night as one of the hastily printed bills came into his possession, "so this is the wallet they are lookin' for, eh? Twenty thousand dollars! But I knowed it all the while. As if Jack Kimball an' his sister could fool me! But I'll bleed him—that's what I'll do. I'll make him whack up—or—or I'lltell!" and Lem chuckled to himself, while there was a dangerous ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... active, before the present. The thing had been done, twenty years earlier again, by a Scotch advocate who had deliberately turned from poetic form, though he retained poetic imagination, and who did not disdain not to make a fool of himself, as Michelet, with all his genius, did again and again. Of all the essentials of the two manners of fictitious creation—Michelet's was not fictitious, but he almost made it so, and Stendhal's was not historical, but he almost made it so likewise—Scott and Miss Austen had set the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... stand the case against her was so complete that all her bravery was gone. She felt herself a fool for having brought the ordeal on herself. She took not even self-respect with her to the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes |
