"Stupidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... placing them in the same class with those men whom we call stupid, for the latter are stupid only from deficient education, and I rather like them. I have met with some of them—very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools. They are like eyes veiled with the cataract, which, if the disease could be removed, would be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... forget?" said Sarah; "and you will see one day whether you were a fool to tell me." She said to herself, despairingly, that the stupidity of mankind was almost past praying for. As the doctor opened the door for Sarah, Lady Mary ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... labourers engaged upon their honourable employment on the land. We had a maid named Vashti, and she was quite shy about mentioning it at her first interview with my wife. In all country neighbourhoods there is a special place with the unenviable reputation of stupidity; such was "Yabberton" (Ebrington, on the Cotswolds), and Vashti was somewhat reluctant to admit that it was her "natif," as a birthplace is called in the district. Among the traditions of Yabberton it is related that the farmers, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... talk of Grivet and old Michaud. The latter always related the same tales of robbery and murder, while Grivet spoke at the same time about his clerks, his chiefs, and his administration, until the young man sought refuge beside Olivier and Suzanne, whose stupidity seemed less wearisome. But he soon ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... confidence in his powers of making himself understood. It was still a fixed conviction of his that in cases of necessity any intelligent man could make his wants known to intelligent foreigners. If not, there is stupidity somewhere. Had he not done so in ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... to thee, teach thy descendants to seek the golden mean, and say with Gellert—"The boy Fritz needs nothing;—his stupidity will insure his success, Examine our wealthy and titled lords, what are their abilities and honours, then inquire how they were attained, and, if thou canst, discover in what ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... is the highest wisdom (Brahma Gnana), and it gives immediate entrance into the heaven of beatification or of absorption. And the only sin which such a man, and which this system of thought, recognizes is the sin of ignorance (Avidia); that is, the folly, or stupidity, of thinking that one's soul is separate from the divine Soul. To know, under these mundane conditions of delusion (Maya), and while under the tyranny of passion and of action (Karma), that I am, after all, identical with the divine Spirit, and that the thought of a separate existence ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... was not there, the play could not commence. They would spend the evening searching for her and the statue would not be opened. What would they do about the play? The house was sold out and the people would come to see the performance and there would be none. All on account of her stupidity in wedging herself inside of the statue. Sahwah called herself severe names as she languished in her prison. Fortunately there were enough holes in the thing to supply plenty of ventilation, otherwise it might have gone hard with her. The cramped ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... K., of the Navigation Board, for promotion.... I am told he entirely neglects his duty. Pole readily admits his hopeless stupidity and unfitness ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... said they, "have purchased estates, finery of all kinds, and been as rich and noble as many who now despise us. One or two millions would have been as easy said as five hundred pounds; that sum would obtain a marquisate for my father, and baronies for each of us. What extraordinary stupidity our ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... government" affirm? What is the lesson of every netherward extension of the suffrage? What do we mean by permitting it to "broaden slowly down" to lower and lower intelligences and moralities?—what but that stupidity and vice, equally with virtue and wisdom, are entitled to a voice in political affairs, a finger in the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... But one wearies from day to day of caring nothing, fearing nothing, liking nothing, hating nothing, being nothing, doing nothing—yes, I teach and sometimes get red in the face with impatience at their stupidity. But don't think I ever scold or fly into a passion. If I spoke warmly, as warmly as I sometimes used to do at Roe-Head, they would think me mad. Nobody ever gets into a passion here. Such a thing is not known. The phlegm that ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... George's dictatorial air—one rarely seen in him. "Yes—brutal, I know, Teackle, and perhaps a little ill-mannered, this interfering with another man's hospitality, but if you knew how Kate has suffered over this same stupidity you would say I was right. Talbot never thinks—never cares. Because he's got a head as steady as a town clock and can put away a bottle of port without winking an eyelid, he believes anybody else can do the same. I tell you this sort of thing has ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... want Alfred it will be now or never and—quick. I know now that she loves him, and she ought to have her chance if I don't want him. The way she idolises and idealises him is a marvel of womanly stupidity. ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... handsome does," said the housekeeper, smiling; "and, to be sure, I never could make out that Her Majesty was altogether handsome in her doings; though perhaps that's the fault of my stupidity." ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... that he turned over his white brothers to the mercies of half-Indian, half-negro, savages, who were not allies of Great Britain, and in whose quarrels she had no interest. And Salmon did this, knowing there could be but one end. If he did not know it, his stupidity equalled what now appears to be heartless indifference. So far as to secure pardon for all except the leader and one faithful follower, Colonel Rudler of the famous Phalanx, Salmon did use his authority, and he offered, if Walker would ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... ought to say that he has kept to it. The successful termination of the Lancashire strike is due entirely to his efforts. The prolongation of the Sheffield strike is in no way his fault. The blind stupidity of the masters was too much even for him. The position has developed very much as I feared it might. You cannot make employers see reason by Act of Parliament. Mr. Foley kept his word. He has been on the side of the men throughout this struggle. He has used ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Much of what he told and said to me was told and said in the confidence of friendship. I have set down only a few odd fragments to show those who care to know what sort of a man he was. Lies and lives will be written of him; plenty of both. Enough should be said to defeat the malice and stupidity of detractors. Those who want to know what he was in himself should read the poems. The poems are the man speaking. They are so like him that to read them is ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... have been looking over the lists of the House of Lords, by which the majority against the Bill cannot be rated less than twelve; and when one looks at the names of which it consists, I fear that it displays such an array of bigotry and stupidity that one can scarcely hope to make material impression upon it. The only hope is that some of them may stay away. I trust that you will ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... that but for your own confounded stupidity, I should have been at Kilgobbin Castle ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... temporal administration of the kingdom of Charlemagne, it had not succeeded to the apostolic benediction, which appertained to none but the posterity of the said Charlemagne, and that, the line of Capet being some of them possessed by a spirit of giddiness and stupidity, and others heretic and excommunicated, the time had come for restoring the crown to the true heirs," that is to say, to the house of Lorraine, which claimed to be issue of Charlemagne. This case ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... not know what passes in a soldier's mind; I grew up in the field, and a man like me troubles himself little about a million men." The Austrian statesman further reported the French emperor to have characterized his second marriage as a piece of stupidity, and to have charged ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... if any one had dared to breathe a word against his father in his presence, Splinterin' Andra's son would soon have shown himself worthy of his sire's appellation; nevertheless, partly from love of fun and partly through a good-natured stupidity, he proved a veritable thorn in the flesh to his unhappy father. So old Andrew was looking forward to the visit of his pastor with the hope that his example and admonition would have a steadying effect ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... a great deal to think about of late. Affairs at the mines had been troublesome, as usual, and he had been often irritated by the stupidity of the men who were in authority over him. He began to feel, moreover, that an almost impalpable barrier had sprung up between himself and his nearest friend. When he came to face the matter, he was obliged to acknowledge to himself that there were ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... uncles, a special attitude of mind may be allowed. They treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as to the needs of the flesh, but after that with indifference (an indifference, as I recognise, the result of a certain stupidity), and therewith the commonplace conviction that your child is merely animal. At a very early age I remember realising in a quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that stupidity, and its tremendous influence in the world; while ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... was crowded with people curiously dressed; they all looked down on me as they came abreast, and their faces had a sort of strange roughness. I saw them as clearly as all that—a coarseness, it was—a kind of cruel stupidity. Several of them seemed to be pock-marked, too. It struck me; I wondered how a coach-load of such people had been gathered together; and I might have wondered longer; but one of them laughed, a great neighing guffaw of a laugh, as the coachman ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... at the document, the proof of his cruelty, his injustice, his stupidity! She must make sure that there was no mistake! Olga Vseslavovna went up to the window, and taking advantage of the last ray of the gray day, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... soon attracted the attention of the tavern-politicians. They crowded round him, eying him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip started in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "Whether he was Federal or Democrat?" Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... native simplicity and nobleness of soul. Both sinned and were sinned against. Leibnitz did unhandsome things, but he was sorely tried. His heart told him that the right of the quarrel was on his side, and the general stupidity would not see it. The general malice, rejoicing in aspersion of a noble name, would not see it. The Royal Society would not see it,—nor France, until long after Leibnitz's death. Sir David Brewster's account of the matter, according to the German authorities, Gerhardt, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Oh! yes, a vast improvement," she repeated. "My friend was quite right. I tell you it's an awful handicap to have a name which gives you away socially. The man, the husband, I mean, may be the best of the good. Still, it's difficult to forgive him for labelling you with some stupidity like that. There's no getting away from it. You feel like a bottle of pickles, or boot-polish, or a tin of insecticide whenever a servant announces you. Everybody knows where you do—and don't—come in. But, to go on, I am barely three—only I fancy you are the sort of person ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... than his "too-proud-to-fight" dictum, in which he announced that the warring world must plan for a "peace without victory" if it would hope to end the war at all. "Peace without victory" would mean, of course, a peace favorable to Germany. But the Germans, with characteristic stupidity, instead of using even a specious courtesy towards the President who had been long-suffering in their favor, immediately sent out their "Once-a-week-to-Falmouth" order. Perhaps they thought that Mr. Wilson would consent ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... was not fitted to arrest the explosion of general merriment. It struck all as so whimsical, and so ridiculous, that the wild laughter even attacked the sergeants of the Parloi-aux-Bourgeois, a sort of pikemen, whose stupidity was part of their uniform. Quasimodo alone preserved his seriousness, for the good reason that he understood nothing of what was going on around him. The judge, more and more irritated, thought it his duty to continue in the same tone, hoping thereby to strike the accused with a terror which should ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... mortally offended one morning by De Grey's refusing to translate his whole lesson for him. He went over to Archer, who, considering him as a partisan deserting from the enemy, received him with open arms, and translated his whole lesson without expressing MUCH contempt for his stupidity. From this moment Fisher forgot all De Grey's former kindness, and considered only how he could in his turn mortify the person whom he felt to be ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... guarantee of the perfection of its work, as long as it follows them with fidelity and certainty! This apotheosis of genius, dreamed of with open eyes by men whose chatter will remain forever barren, would warrant a belief in the innate stupidity of the majority of mortals, if it were not a striking proof of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... can continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastened upon the world is as fatuous as the dreamers in Russia. What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to get it, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... and natural," said Drake. "I don't care a ha'p'orth about the morality of these things—not I—but I am dead sick of their stupidity." ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... going. It never knows what to do with itself. It hasn't got no employment for its mind, and is always in a state of vacancy. Like them Polar bears in the wild-beast shows as is constantly a-nodding their heads from side to side, it never CAN be quiet. Which is entirely owing to its uncommon stupidity.' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... at backgammon was, if such a thing could be, worse. It seemed as if it was impossible to give satisfaction here. The general not only played his own game, but insisted upon playing that of his adversary; and was by turns angry at her stupidity in missing an advantage through want of skill, asking, "What could be the possible interest or pleasure of playing with such a mere child?" and vexed, if the plan he pointed out ended in his own discomfiture, for he could not bear ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... wholly in the world of spirit, any more than we ought to live wholly in the world of matter, for our nature is double, and no portion of it should be atrophied. Extreme mysticism is as falsifying of our nature as is extreme worldliness. The stupidity and charlatanism of modern spiritualism is the rebellion of men and women against the materialism of present conception of life. Where natural expression of a need is checked, it breaks out in a disordered form, just ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... v. 22, 23.) As it was procured by deceit, he was anxious to conceal the means used in getting it; but if the Israelitish servants, like our slaves, could "own nothing, nor acquire any thing," to embark in such an enterprise would have been consummate stupidity. The fact of having in his possession two talents of silver, would of itself convict him of theft[B]. But since the possession and use of property by servants, was common under the Mosaic system, he might have it, and invest or use it, without attracting ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... had any opportunity of judging for myself, except the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, a perpetual and never satisfied curiosity seems to be the leading habit of their minds: here, however, wonder is rarely expressed, curiosity seldom apparent—yet their indifference is not stupidity, or their simplicity cunning. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... have disarmed ridicule, but somehow or another this amiable man came to be regarded as the type of a dull author, and his name passed into a proverb for stupidity, so much so that when Dryden in 1682 was casting about how best to give pain to Shadwell, he devised the plan of his famous satire, "MacFlecknoe," where in biting verse he describes Flecknoe (who was happily dead) ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... which keep us in a state of perpetual inconstancy and instability." Every day may be seen children, who, to a certain age—display a great deal of ingenuity, a strong aptitude for the sciences, who finish by falling into stupidity. Others may be observed, who, during their infancy, have shown dispositions but little favourable to improvement, yet develope themselves in the end, and astonish us by an exhibition of those qualities of which we hardly ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... There a pitiful stupidity took the place of the intelligent recognition he had momentarily displayed, and he resumed that fruitless ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... not in them. Thus, by an inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody met with. With an easy condescension, and kind forbearance towards our stupidity—which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime—would he forth-with, by the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as daylight. The merchants valued him not less than we, his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect; it was a law of nature with ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... especial hatred for the M'pongwe, and both they and the M'pongwe have this account of the one tribe driving the other off the mainland. Then the Bubis {295}—as the inhabitants on Fernando Po are called, from a confusion arising in the minds of the sailors calling at Fernando Po, between their stupidity and their word Babi stranger, which they use as a word of greeting—these Bubis are undoubtedly a very early African race. Their culture, though presenting some remarkable points, is on the whole exceedingly low. They never wear clothes unless ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... necessary than daring. With absurdly insufficient means he all but conquered Spain for Charles of Austria, and would have succeeded in doing so altogether had he not, from first to last, been thwarted and hampered by jealousy, malignity, stupidity, and irresolution on the part of the king, his courtiers, and the generals who should have been the earl's assistants, but who were his rivals, detractors, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... let him go when you had caught him? It was just like your stupidity. We have not a scrap of bread in the house, and now, I ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... him up as a martyr in the least, but I think that, situated as we are, it is ridiculous to defy this man as you do, from morning till night." She took a cigarette from the mantel-piece, lighted it, and replied: "But I do not defy him, quite the contrary; only, he irritates me by his stupidity ... and I treat him as he deserves." Limousin continued impatiently: "What you are doing is very foolish! However, all women are alike. Look here: he is an excellent, kind fellow, stupidly confiding and good, who never interferes with us, who does not ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is precious. We are parting for ever, if stupidity commands, if your Grandmother's antiquated convictions separate us. I leave here a week from now. As you know the document assuring my freedom has arrived. Let us be together, and not ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... intellectual light re-emerge. "Do you imply that we Germans are stupid, Uncle Ernst?" exclaimed a haughty and magnificent nephew. Uncle Ernst replied, "To my mind. You use the intellect, but you no longer care about it. That I call stupidity." As the haughty nephew did not follow, he continued, "You only care about the' things that you can use, and therefore arrange them in the following order: Money, supremely useful; intellect, rather useful; ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... ambition; too noble for the dirt of avarice, and even too gentle for the rage of pleasure; formed indeed for, and highly susceptible of enjoyment and rapture; but that enjoyment, alas! almost wholly at the mercy of the caprice, malevolence, stupidity, or wickedness of an animal at all times comparatively unfeeling, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... blunder on in our official stupidity and blindness?" interrupted the commissioner, a faint smile breaking the gravity of his face. "We certainly gave ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... district was peopled with boers or farmers of that nation, stolid, prosperous, and entirely uncontrolled by public opinion. They had treated the unfortunate Hottentots as slaves, with all the cruelty of stupidity, and imported Malays and Negroes to work in the same manner; and they had shown, even when under their native state, a sort of grim turbulence that made them very hard to deal with. When in 1834 the British Government emancipated their slaves, and ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... tents, yet of all sacrifices to public opinion none can be more easily pardoned than that by which a man, already spiritually useful to the world, should restrict the field of his chief usefulness to perform services more apparent, and possess a livelihood that neither stupidity nor malice could call in question. Like all sacrifices to public opinion and mere external decency, this would certainly be wrong; for the soul should rest contented with its own approval and indissuadably pursue its own calling. Yet, so grave and delicate is the question, that a man may well hesitate ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or to send our note of introduction by post and await an invitation to pass the summer. At all events, the anecdote proved very pleasing to our Edinburgh acquaintances. I hardly know whether, if they should visit America, they would enjoy tales of their own stupidity as hugely as they did the tales of ours, but they really were very appreciative in this particular, and it is but justice to ourselves to say that we gave ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... our way as we walked along, allowing us to shove them over rather than move. We literally also took their eggs from under them, without their attempting to make any defence. This apathy, as we called it, we thought arose from stupidity, but the doctor examined one of them, and showed us how weak its legs were, while its feet were adapted only for swimming. Its wings, however, were very long and powerful. Therefore, had it been up in ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing stupidity. I could indeed make up things for myself did I only know what Charlie did not know that he knew. But since the doors were shut behind me I could only wait his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him in good temper. One minute's want of guard might spoil ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... advantages, our moral standard is as false as the drawing upon a Chinese plate. We have no true moral perspective. Our ideas of right and wrong are confused and imperfect, and in danger of becoming corrupt. We laugh at the stupidity of the poor Chinaman in his attempts after beauty in art, while in morals we are quite as stupid as he. Believing ourselves wise, we are fools. It is very hard to escape being unduly influenced by the opinions of society; but the more earnestly we seek true excellence ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... I can do, Billy; but I'm bound to do something. My whole family appear to have gone mad over that old horse. I can't help their stupidity; but maybe I can help you out a very little. Whatever I do, remember what I said, only a few days ago, that I'd like the chance to fight for you, to show that I'm a ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... a man must really be weak in his intellect to work for men that stuff themselves with millions, and to serve them so faithfully for such low wages. And now here he gives me another proof of his stupidity! Yes, men deserve what they get. It is your own doing whether you get a crown on your forehead or a bullet through your head; whether you are a millionaire or a porter, justice is always done you. I cannot help it, my dear ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... that deafness is incurable. Stupidity, inattention, and slowness to grasp a situation accompany difficulty of hearing and should cause the teacher to examine the ears. No ear trouble is negligible. Children and parents should be taught that the normal ear is intended to hear for us, not to divert ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... compelled to submit to the search. He cursed his stupidity in not throwing away the worthless pocketbook, but this he had neglected to do, and, of course, it was very significant evidence against him. Not only was this found, but the variety of keys ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... I am the most unfortunate man at a time-table that ever was born. I do not think it can be stupidity; for if it were mere stupidity, I should occasionally, now and then when I was feeling well, not make a mistake. ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... an old wax doll, in which a transverse slit does duty for a mouth, and whose deficiency in the article of nose is counterbalanced by great glassy eyes guiltless of a single atom of expression. Marvellous indeed was Monsieur Boulederouloue's stolidity in all things, and not less notable his stupidity in all but one; that one thing, however, was his business as maitre d'hotel, in which he was unsurpassed, unrivalled. If you told him that there had been no kings of France before Louis the Fourteenth, ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... humiliated. What would Felicity have felt, had she been present to witness the scene? How it might have affected her toward her husband, whether it would have aroused her to champion him the more, or whether it would have moved her to scorn of his stupidity in allowing himself to be put aside, Leigh could only guess; but his own instinct was to make common cause with ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... and if I'd wanted advice I should have gone to mother. You men go blundering off with half an idea in your heads, and never see your stupidity till you have made a mess that can't be mended; we women don't work so, but save people's feelings, and are called hypocrites for our pains. I never meant to tell you, but I will now, to show you how I've been serving you, while you've been harming ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... footsteps walks youth, youth that is shamelessly, barbarously scorned, merely because it is young, scorned by stupidity and degeneration. I have seen this for many years. I know nothing more despicable than your school education and your school-education standards. Whether you have a catechism or a compass by which to guide your life is all the same; come here, my friend, and I will give you a compass ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... by the stupidity of the crowd, sitting very still and erect, had upon her face that expression of bored contempt with which aristocrats in the French Revolution are said to have gone to the guillotine. Then that was shouted in her ear ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... by which great souls and scoundrels look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were, plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever of the world and its ways, who lived between the mass and the confessional, chiefly occupied in dealing the ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... help thinking that the King of Poland, the Empress of Russia, and the King of Prussia, 's'entendent comme larrons en foire', though the former must not appear in it upon account of the stupidity, ignorance, and bigotry of his Poles. I have a great opinion of the cogency of the controversial arguments of the Russian troops, in favor of the Dissidents: I am sure I wish them success; for I would ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the little things on this earth a little New Yorker is the smallest. I've met ignorance in the South, sullen pigheadedness in New England; I've measured the boundless cheek of the West, my native heath; but for self-satisfied stupidity, for littleness in the world of morals, I have seen nothing on earth, or under it, quite so small as a well-to-do New Yorker. He has little brains, or culture, and only the rudiments of common sense, but, being ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... learned a good deal over nips of brandy with the work-people, and something more by questioning Petit-Claud and feigning stupidity; and at length he felt convinced that the Cointets were the real movers behind Metivier; they were plotting to ruin Sechard's printing establishment, and to lure him (Sechard) on to pay his son's debts by holding out the discovery as a bait. The old man of the people ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... that can not be determined before Hilary Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment on that. The other may be flimsy and superficial. And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray re-send it me, as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Albums, I have become a byword of infamy all over the kingdom. I have sicken'd decent women for asking me to write in Albums. There be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tastes—she loved many things he did, he found—and she was so eager to hear and to learn their meaning. He grew to feel a sort of pride and the pleasure of a teacher when directing an extremely intelligent child. There were no barriers of stupidity into whatever regions the subjects might wander. They spent an hour of pure joy investigating each other's thoughts. And both knew they ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... felt this desire growing stronger within him, asking himself whether, every time one was cracking, so as to be on the point of falling, he could pass beneath it without being touched. It was a piece of stupidity he confessed; but everyone has these moments of insanity, and these temptations towards ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in an arm-chair, beating his cane against his shoes, without saying a word; he never gave an opinion upon any subject; but when once, in the course of the year, he did speak, he could express himself in terms sufficiently noble. Sometimes when he spoke one would say he was stupidity itself; at another time he would deliver himself with astonishing sense. At one time you would think he was the best Prince in the world; at another he would do all he could to give people pain. Nobody seemed to be so ill with him but he would take the trouble ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Polter opened the cage. But once outside, the enlarging drug would give us our chance to fight our way upward. My trembling fingers sought the black vial in my belt. It was not there! My mind flung back: in that tunnel, something had dropped and I had kicked it! Accursed chance! My accursed, heedless stupidity! ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... never before faced a grizzly. I heard Big Pete's voice calling to me to drop behind the rock, but I only stood there with a dogged stupidity, trying to aim my gun at a mark which seemed to me as big almost ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... of my eloquence, died a natural death on my way home. "There are too many of the poor things in this world, and the female market is overstocked. They are invading telegraph offices, and treading on the heels of business men, but sheer pride and stupidity prevent them from trying to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... have common sense, since I had been in town above a fortnight, and had made no steps towards commencing an amour. My friend pleaded for me, that my stay was uncertain, and she believed that was the cause of my seeming stupidity; and this was all she could find to say in my justification. But one of the pleasantest adventures I ever met with in my life was last night, and it will give you a just idea in what a delicate manner the belles passions are managed in this country. ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... beautiful, is not necessarily a sign of evil; it may only indicate stupidity or undevelopment: the beauty is not perceived. But blame is often present in prolonged undevelopment. Surely no one habitually obeying his conscience would long be left without a visit from some ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... course not." She looked at him, unsmiling: "It was the acquired habit of indifference in me which you mistook for—I think you mistook it for stupidity. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... mouth as well as in the finest scarlet broadcloth and gold epaulets. Their intelligence, their good cause, their sore extremity, made them learn to be soldiers more quickly than seemed possible to English officers who knew the sturdy stupidity of the English peasant of whom the British regiments were composed. And while the Yankees (as they began to be called) were learning how to march and countermarch, and do whatever else the system of the British regulars called for, they also knew, by inheritance, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... had been harshest that no one could be kinder if he saw a girl really trying, or more patient with well meaning stupidity, but some things fretted him, and he was as apt to correct a girl in her grammar as in her table service. Out of work hours, if he met any of them, he recognized them with deferential politeness; but he shunned occasions of encounter with them as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of so much exhaustion and peril that all our arrangements as to occupation, recreation, and sleep, are made with reference to a sick, and as we sometimes fear, a dying man, whose state is much aggravated by the maltreatment and stupidity of a dilapidated Scotch doctor, who must be at least eighty, and whose intellects are obfuscated by years of whiskey drinking. Two of the gentlemen not only show the utmost tenderness as nurses, but possess a skill and experience which are invaluable. They never leave him by night, and scarcely ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... slumbered again since the chastening experiences of the Boer War. Since then the national spirit, hampered though it is by the traditions of party government and a legacy of intellectual and social heaviness, has been in uneasy and ineffectual revolt against deadness, against stupidity and slackness, against waste and hypocrisy in every department of life. We have come to see more and more clearly how little we can hope for from politicians, societies and organised movements in these essential things. It is this that has invested the energy and manhood, the untried ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... lose the chances and let them be snapped up by littler men. He seemed to waste himself, right and left, prodigally. But it wasn't that, it wasn't waste. It was all as much a part of him as his music. He detested the stupidity of wealth and poverty, he rebelled against laws that aren't laws, but only interests enforced by authority, he fought against the sheer deadness of prejudice. How he hated all that! And why not? You see, Vera, he was sensitive to it not only as a thinker, but as a musician, too. It ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... statements are well founded, I have obtained some details which will show the probable profits of coffee in Mysore. For obvious reasons I withhold the names of the estates. I have said that the investment is a permanent one, and by this I mean that, unless ruined by profound and incredible stupidity, a well shaded coffee estate in Mysore will last as long as the world will, or at any rate as long as the inhabitants of it choose to drink coffee, and in confirmation of this opinion, I may mention that ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... amuses me yet in Chrysothemis? This, that she is false to me with my freedman Theokles, and thinks that I do not notice it. Once I loved her, but now she amuses me with her lying and stupidity. Come with me to her. Should she begin to flirt with thee, and write letters on the table with her fingers steeped in wine, know that ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... stupidity. "Last night, sire, I slept at the caserne, at the invitation of my friend, Lieutenant Genet, whom you ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... institute strict rules of discipline among such a miscellaneous collection of web-footed gentry. But Mr. Stetson, assisted by Mr. Bachelder, the second mate, was equal to the task. Indeed he was in his element while directing the labors of the men, blackguarding this one for his stupidity, anathematizing that one for his indolence, and shaking his fist at another, and menacing him with rough treatment for his short ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... (4) then, said (5) God, (4) The fault was not Who thus My (6) saints devour! that they devoured These (7) crimes have they not understood, saints, but that they Nor thought upon My power! were stupid. Qu: Whether stupidity makes men devour saints, or devouring saints makes a man stupid? I believe the latter, because they may be apt to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... to mention a midwife! You deserve an earnest teaching, eh? You should be proud of the fact that all the noble and brilliant men we have mentioned were prematurely suffocated, worn out, and crushed through you, through your barbarism? You think without shame of Lessing, who, on account of your stupidity, perished in battle against your ludicrous gods and idols, the evils of your theatres, your learned men, and your theologians, without once daring to lift himself to the height of that immortal flight for which he was brought into the world. And what are ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... perish in the ruins of a place they had so gallantly defended, and allowed them four-and-twenty hours to consider on the resolution they should take. Syburg continued deaf to his remonstrances; and, with an obstinacy that savoured more of stupidity than of valour, determined to stand the explosion. When the sentinels that were posted on the side of the hill gave notice, by a preconcerted signal, that fire was set to the mine, the governor ordered the guard to retire, and walked out to the parade accompanied ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... understand the crass stupidity which blocked up exquisite Norman windows, covered carved capitals with a thick coat of cement, closed many of the arches with wooden partitions, planted a cumbrous pulpit and reading-desk immediately under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... sticks over their shoulders, marching behind a troup of gazelles or a flock of fat geese: it was easy to foretell the fate of their unfortunate charges. Elsewhere it is an ox who brings up before his master a cat who has cheated him, and his proverbial stupidity would incline us to think that he will end by being punished himself for the misdeeds of which he had accused the other. Puss's sly and artful expression, the ass-headed and important-looking judge, with the wand and costume of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... co-operation is, I regret to say, denied me. I have nothing in common with the clumsy rank and file of my profession, who convict themselves, before recorders and magistrates, of the worst of all offenses—incurable stupidity in the exercise of their own vocation. Such as you see me, I stand entirely alone. After years of successful self-dependence, the penalties of celebrity are beginning to attach to me. On my way ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... advanced no farther with her than on the first day of their acquaintance. There was something compact and immovable about Flossie. In those five years he had never known her change or modify an opinion of people or of things. And yet Flossie was not stupid, or if she were her stupidity was a force; it had an invincible impetus and sweep, dragging the dead weight of character behind it. It was beginning to terrify him. In fact he was becoming painfully sensitive to everything she said or did. Her little tongue was neither sharp nor hard, and yet it hurt him every ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... surprised, remained silent for a second, looking steadfully at the prisoner. Pre Milon maintained his impassive demeanor, his air of rustic stupidity, with downcast eyes, as if he were talking to his cure. There was only one thing that could reveal his internal agitation, the way in which he slowly swallowed his saliva with a visible effort, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... defence of my own course. I am aware there can be none. I can only plead that I had already been vexed not a little by his unjust accusations of stupidity, and dismiss with as few words as possible an incident that will ever seem to me quite too indecently criminal. Briefly, then, with my well-intended "Best not lower yourself, sir," Mr. Belknap-Jackson forgot himself and I forgot myself. It will be recalled that I was in front ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... doctor's face looked hard. Was it, he seemed to be turning over in his mind, that she loved him a little in the depths of her heart? That was an irritating trait of feminine stupidity. But one intelligent glance at her calm face rendered that supposition impossible. She was merely largely human, with a sense of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a gryphon, is identical with that of Teos; the coinage is noted for the beauty and variety of its reverse types. The town seems to have declined in importance after the middle of the 4th century. The air of Abdera was proverbial as causing stupidity; but among its citizens was the philosopher Democritus. The ruins of the town may still be seen on Cape Balastra; they cover seven small hills, and extend from an eastern to a western harbour; on the S.W. hills are the remains of the medieval settlement ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the true style of Oriental despotism; but Isabella trembled in silence while she followed her father through rough paths, now winding by the side of the river, now ascending the cliffs which serve for its banks. A single servant, selected perhaps for his stupidity, was the only person who attended them. From her father's silence, Isabella little doubted that he had chosen this distant and sequestered scene to resume the argument which they had so frequently maintained upon the subject of Sir Frederick's ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... intelligence, he sets but small store upon his own existence. Freedom, in fact, came to him before he was ready for it; and, hampered as he has been by petty departmental tyranny, governmental neglect, and a natural stupidity, he has made very small progress toward a mental independence. All that he has learnt to do is to hate his tyrants. When famine urges him, he goes blindly, helplessly, dumbly, and tries to take by force that which ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... his head as he made his successive signals, the misconceptions of the juniors, and the consequent fiasco. It must be said, however, that, granting the facts as they seem certainly to have occurred, no misunderstanding, no technical verbal allegation, can justify a military stupidity so great as that of which he complained. There are occasions in which not only is literal disobedience permissible, but literal obedience, flying in the face of the evident ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... the spread of conscious science, but of that unconscious science which we call common sense. What hope have we of laying down exact laws for its growth, in a world wherein it has been ignored, insulted, crushed, a thousand times, sometimes in whole nations and for whole generations, by the stupidity, tyranny, greed, caprice of a single ruler; or if not so, yet by the mere superstition, laziness, sensuality, anarchy of the mob? How, again, are we to arrive at any exact laws of the increase of population, in a ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... and a nation, to gain flesh, and another to be swollen with putrid humors. Not that multitude ever ought to be inconsistent with virtue. Two men should be wiser than one, and two thousand than two; nor do I know another so gross fallacy in the records of human stupidity as that excuse for neglect of crime by greatness of cities. As if the first purpose of congregation were not to devise laws and repress crimes! As if bees and wasps could live honestly in flocks— men, only in separate ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... being completely insensible to mere appearance. The former is only drawn forth by the immediate presence of an object in the senses, and the second is reduced to a quiescent state only by referring conceptions to the facts of experience. In short, stupidity cannot rise above reality, nor the intelligence descend below truth. Thus, in as far as the want of reality and attachment to the real are only the consequence of a want and a defect, indifference to the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... revolutionary hopes for the proletariat, his denunciation of war, his arraignment of so-called "Law" and "Order," his indictment of conventional Morality, his onslaughts on outworn Institutions, his invectives against Hypocrisy and Stupidity, are not by any means the blind Utopian rhetoric that some have called them. That crafty slur upon brave new thought which we know so well—that "how-can-you-take-him-seriously" attitude of the "status-quo" rascals—must not mislead us ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... your slave could explain that; there's no riddle, everything's as plain as day! This boar made his first bow as the last course of yesterday's dinner and was dismissed by the guests, so today he comes back as a freedman!" I damned my stupidity and refrained from asking any more questions for fear I might leave the impression that I had never dined among decent people before. While we were speaking, a handsome boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, passed grapes around, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... judging rightly that the sounds he had heard and magnified were only caused by some innocent little animal which did not smell in the least like a wolf. So he trotted slowly back, making sounds suggestive of mutterings against his own stupidity, and dropped quietly ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... singular powers of winning men to appeasing French discontent. As early as May, 1848, he saw how the land lay—that French Canada was fundamentally conservative, and that discontent was mainly a consequence of sheer stupidity and error on the part of England. "Who will venture to say," he asked, "that the last hand which waves the British flag on American ground may not be that of ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... exculpation of his conduct, alleged his expectation of an insurrection of the citizens in case of a bombardment. Magdeburg contained at that time three thousand unarmed citizens. It is not known whether Kleist had been bribed, or whether he was simply infected with the cowardice and stupidity by which the elder generals of that period were distinguished; it is, however, certain that among the numerous younger officers serving under his command not one raised the slightest opposition to this ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... this circuitous way you see I have reached my present subject, which is, Ogres. You fancy they are dead or only fictitious characters—mythical representatives of strength, cruelty, stupidity, and lust for blood? Though they had seven-leagued boots, you remember all sorts of little whipping-snapping Tom Thumbs used to elude and outrun them. They were so stupid that they gave into the most shallow ambuscades and artifices: witness that well-known ogre, who, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... best of these relics of ancient wit—or witlessness, rather—it is often difficult to decide whether a particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to place the story of the men of Cumae, who were expecting shortly to be visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they filled it afresh, and placed an ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... John. She is merely a clever American journalist, who thinks she has done a very good piece of work indeed, and who, through the stupidity of one man, has ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... our opponent were to say that in other things nobility is understood to be the goodness therefore, but in man is understood as the forgetfulness of his low estate, one would like to answer not with words but with the knife to such stupidity as would give goodness to the cause of nobility in other things, but in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... then. Every one knew Dicksie Dunning in the high country. This was Dicksie Dunning of the great Crawling Stone ranch, most widely known of all the mountain ranches. While his stupidity in not guessing her identity before overwhelmed him, he resolved to exhaust the last effort to ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... perpetual prevarication; a humane man, he has had to condone every atrocity; an independent man, he must cringe before his master; a peaceful man, he must submit to the continuation of insensate slaughter; a highly gifted intellectual, he has had to pursue a policy of insane stupidity. Twenty-five years ago a professor of the University of Munich, Dr. Quidde, compared the Kaiser to Caligula. The analogy between William and Caligula or Nero points to another analogy, that between Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... satirists of the world, Butler's saeva indignatio was aroused by the daily conflicts between reason and stupidity, between candor and disingenuousness, with all their mutations of hypocrisy, guile, deceit, and sham. In "Erewhon" it was human unreason, as a clever youth sees it, that he was attacking. We remember vividly the beautiful Erewhonians, who knew disease to be sin, but believed vice to be only ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... a few words the history of Bodard,—he became a poor man, having failed for fourteen millions after the bankruptcy of the Prince de Guemenee. The stupidity he showed in not anticipating that "serenissime disaster," to use the expression of Lebrun Pindare, was the reason why no notice was taken of his misfortunes. He died, like Bourvalais, Bouret, and so ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... says!" exclaimed Nanteuil, sincerely impressed. And she added thoughtfully: "At any rate, doctor, one thing is certain. It is that stupidity often prevents one from doing stupid things. I have noticed that many a time. Whether you take men or women, those are not the most stupid who act the most stupidly. For example, there are intelligent women who are ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France |
