"Witless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Happiness and freedom of action are restricted to a sphere where they do not interfere with the happiness and freedom of others; the common weal becomes an essential part of individual welfare. In short, even if under the most perfect conditions "Witless will always serve his master," man aims to escape from his place in the animal kingdom, founded on the free development of the principle of non-moral evolution, and to establish a kingdom of Man governed upon the principle of moral evolution. For society not only has ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... a witless azzy!" blurted Hodge. "If a 's so great a man amongst the lords and earlses, a 'd na come back to Stratford. An' I say a 's a witless ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... with her eyelids fluttering timorously, and rose as she uttered it, but with faint and ill-supporting limbs, for during the past hour she had gone through the sharpest trial of her life, and had decided for the course of her life. Anthony was witless thereof, and was mystified by his incapability of perceiving where and how he had been deluded; but he had eaten all the muffin on the plate, and her rising proclaimed that she had no intention of making him call for another; which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sun-enkindled fire Of gorse upon the moor-top caught his eye: And that gold glow held all his heart's desire, As, like a witless, flame-bewildered fly, He blundered towards the league-wide yellow blaze, And tumbled headlong on the spikes of bloom; And rising, bruised and bleeding and adaze, Struggled through clutching spines; the dense, sweet fume Of nutty, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... slip out and arouse the village to their help. One of the women therefore essayed the journey; but was so clumsy as to attract the enemy's attention. She was seized and made to confess how the house was protected and where it was most likely to fall before a sharp assault. Being a witless wench, she told them truly, and Master Ford then bade her help them collect sticks and leaves in order that they might be able to fire the place as ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... he said. "A witless one am I, and the folly of my desire has been my undoing. Take away from me the accursed Golden Touch, and faithfully and well shall ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... Milton, like More, observed the rules of the game, which allowed practices condemned in the modern literary prize-ring. He calls Salmasius a poor grammarian, a pragmatical coxcomb, a silly little scholar, a mercenary advocate, a loggerhead, a hare-brained blunderbuss, a witless brawler, a mongrel cur; he reproaches him with the domestic tyranny put upon him by that barking she-wolf, his wife, and winds up with an elaborate comparison (not wholly unfamiliar to modern methods of controversy) between Salmasius and Judas. With his nameless opponent in the Divorce quarrel ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... corruption of base palliardize,[187] When idiots, witless, travail to be wise. Age barbarous, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the man whom Christianity demands, and this the very man whom Christianity crushes like a slug under the heel. He is bound to be a failure—bound to hope too much, be blind with faith, and give, out of charity, with the witless hand that knows not ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... was Labour his own bond slave; Hope That never set the pains against the prize; Idleness halting with his weary clog, And poor misguided Shame and witless Fear And simple Pleasure foraging ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... felt that the limit of his capacity was being reached. Mr. Slosson had become a sort of Greek chorus. He anticipated all the possible phases of drunkenness that awaited his companions. He went from silence to noisy mirth, when his unmeaning laughter rang through the house; he told long witless stories as he leaned against the bar; he became melancholy and described the loss of his wife five years before. From melancholy he passed to sullenness and seemed ready to fasten a quarrel on Yancy, but the latter deftly evaded ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... mischief, but now I will not hurt thee nor trouble thee." I wondered at this and said to her, "What then didst thou purpose to do with me, and we lovers?" Quoth she, "Thou art infatuated with me; for thou art young and witless; thy heart is free from guile and thou knowest not our perfidy and malice. Were she yet alive, she would protect thee, for she is the cause of thy preservation and hath delivered thee from destruction. And now ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... the Muses together with sweet voice in antiphonal chant replying, sing of the imperishable gifts of the Gods, and the sufferings of men, all that they endure from the hands of the undying Gods, lives witless and helpless, men unavailing to find remede for death or buckler against old age. Then the fair-tressed Graces and boon Hours, and Harmonia, and Hebe, and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, dance, holding each by the wrist the other's hand, while among ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... senses. She was violent in her efforts to throw herself in the mill pond. She was sent to the asylum and remained there three years—until she was no longer violent. Then she was brought home, still witless, but able in a mechanical way from long habit to do the things she had always done. Terry thought that this was better than hiring some one. His children had married or "run off" and left him. So the old wife went back into the treadmill. She was obsessed ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... wealth, and therefore could so victoriously justify any extravagancies that he might think proper to commit. This maxim was completely illustrated in the sequel. Wealth and despotism easily know how to engage those laws as the coadjutors of their oppression, which were perhaps at first intended [witless and miserable precaution!] for the safeguards ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... eyes, have a glimmering &c. n.; wonder whether; not know what to make of &c. (unintelligibility) 519; not pretend to take upon, not take upon one self to say. Adj. ignorant; nescient; unknowing, unaware, unacquainted, unapprised, unapprized[obs3], unwitting, unweeting|, unconscious; witless, weetless[obs3]; a stranger to; unconversant[obs3]. uninformed, uncultivated, unversed, uninstructed, untaught, uninitiated, untutored, unschooled, misguided, unenlightened; Philistine; behind the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ferried over last; so, if I had not come to terms, I would have been, as I always was in crossing rivers which we could not swim, completely in the power of the enemy. It was but rarely we could get a head man so witless as to cross a river with us, and remain on the opposite bank in a convenient position to be seized as a hostage in case ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... half betray, these curious magian hands: Faint music of thy breast has throbbed the faster, If I have touched it with my charming-wands. And yet,—the wonder any woman knows Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed Among the lilies of the White Eros.— Ere I go down among the witless Dead Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue, Lest lack of that should ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... Kaipi's knife, nodded confidently as we adjured him to use caution, and then slipped back along the track so that he could climb to the level of the one-eyed person's perch before attempting to creep upon him. We sat down to await developments. The witless one was evidently a lookout, and it was advisable to wait and see the success of Maru's expedition before we attempted ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... and complex sensation. Uncle Charles had grown so witless that he could no longer be sent out on errands and the disorder in settling in the new house left Stephen freer than he had been in Blackrock. In the beginning he contented himself with circling timidly round the neighbouring square or, at most, going half way down one of the side streets ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... their filthy rugs, and tattered rags, and were as warm as possible. The tents had many advantages over a brick house. Besides having no draughts, there was no accumulation of snow upon the tops of the tents; and so these witless people were content to endure poverty, hunger, cold, and dirt for the sake of minimising their contribution to the general good of the whole commonwealth. The poorest working man in London who does an honest week's work ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... seventh a girl. They were very poor and all had to work hard for a living, but the drudges of the family were the youngest son, Yvon, and his sister, Yvonne. Because they were gentler and more delicate than the others, they were looked upon as poor, witless creatures, and all the hardest work was given them to do. But the children comforted each other, and became but the better ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the longing to sit once more grew upon him until it became almost painful. It was this longing which occasioned Valentine's avoidance of Julian. He knew that if they were together he would yield to this foolish, witless temptation, and at any rate try to persuade Julian into an act which might be attended with misfortune, if not with disaster. And then Valentine's profound respect for Doctor Levillier, a respect which the doctor inspired without effort in every one ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sea all spread with pink and lilac and hyacinth, and upon it the ship lit up, her masts and sails glowing like a gold piece. And there was Billy, leaning over the bulwarks and waving his trumpet for "Good-bye!" Thought I, for I little dream'd to see these good fellows again, "what a witless game is this life! to seek ever in fresh conjunctions what we leave behind in a hand shake." 'Twas a cheap reflection, yet it vex'd me that as we turn'd to mount the road Delia ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... the termination less added to substantives, makes adjectives signifying want; as, worthless, witless, heartless, joyless, careless, helpless. Thus comfort, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... dignity in danger, giving each other a sympathetic, if transitory, regret—one sorry that another "should be foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack." Words which seem to exhaust man's deepest sentiment concerning death and life are put on the lips of a gilded, witless youth; and the saintly Isabella feels fire creep along her, kindling her tongue to eloquence at the suggestion of shame. In places the shadow deepens: death intrudes itself on the scene, as among other [175] ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... holy sir, none better knows than you How I have ever loved the life removed, And held in idle price to haunt assemblies, Where youth and cost and witless ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... just witless, accidentally cruel perhaps, but not malignant? Or is it wise, and merely refusing to pamper us? Is there somewhere in the immensities some responsive kindliness, some faint hope of toleration and assistance, something sensibly on our side against death and mechanical cruelty? If so, it ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... say it. I, who had been so witless as to let this come upon us! Moa's weapon prodded me. Her voice hissed at me with all the venom of a reptile enraged. "So that was your game, Gregg Haljan! And I was so graceless as to admit love ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... meager affair, just enough for comfort; it was far too small for the new style of wholesale entertainment which the plutocracy has introduced from England, where the lunacy for aimless and extravagant display rages and ravages in its full horror of witless vulgarity. Thus, the Severences from being leaders twenty years before, had shrunk into "quiet people," were saved from downright obscurity and social neglect only by the indomitable will and tireless energy of old ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... What can it mean? And that I was a maiden Queen Guarded by an Angel mild: Witless ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... the document and held it aloft, a deathly silence reigned throughout the hall, and every eye was turned angrily upon the intruders. Bull yielded not a moment for those witless minds to recover from their shock. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... should I say? Uncle Tom no longer stood between us. Isabel was my bride. There were no barriers to break down, no protests to overcome. We were both of an age and of an experience where formalities lose their significance. The goddess had descended to me and here was I a witless fool. Finally there flashed into my mind what she had said to me in Rome: "My friend, for this once be Orpheus—Orpheus was once Dionysius. Orpheus, tranquil and inspired, touched the quiet lyre surrounded by the Muses. Orpheus had been Dionysius drinking wine, beating ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... fox, a tree Some turkeys served as citadel. That villain, much provoked to see Each standing there as sentinel, Cried out, "Such witless birds At me stretch out their necks, and gobble! No, by the powers! I'll give them trouble." He verified his words. The moon, that shined full on the oak, Seem'd then to help the turkey folk. But fox, in arts of siege well versed, Ransack'd his bag of tricks accursed. He feign'd himself about ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... delightful to sit there in the crisp October air, with the brook seemingly humming tender legends of the woods, which witless men could not translate, with an uncertain breeze playing through the newly fallen maple-leaves, now turning them one by one in lazy curiosity, then of a sudden making them caper and swirl in a scarlet merry-go-round. Still, ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... I am learned, Madam," said Hugh modestly. "I am younger even than you, methinks, and far more witless. But I have heard them say that have been deep skilled, as methinks, in the ministeries [mysteries] of God, that wherein it is said that 'He mai save withouten ende,' it scarce signifieth only ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... masked ball! Indifference and pique swung Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... lived very comfortably, although without a personal income. And that is why Max with certain inherited qualities and defects rashly went to live with his supposed natural father, Jean-Jacques Rouget, a rich and witless old bachelor who was under the thumb of a superb servant-mistress, Flore Brazier, known as La Rabouilleuse. After 1816 Gilet lorded it over the household; the handsome chap had won the heart of Mlle. Brazier. Surrounded by a sort of staff, Maxence contested the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... turned her face towards her niece. It was a kindly face, but infinitely sad and lined with more cares than fall to the lot of most women of her age. The ingratitude of sons, the death of daughters, the poor troubled husband, old and witless in the King Charles ground-floor suite, weeping for his lost eyesight or sitting smiling mirthlessly over his violin, had marked her. But in spite of all she had kept the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... affair a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength—signifying nothing. . ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... his long neck again, lays his little witless head on the side again, bobs and bobs, looks and looks and looks, says quint, quint, quint, quint—"I think I'll go to roost," but is just ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Ulysses weak, though cords were strong; But happier Orpheus stood unbound, And shamed it with a sweeter song. His mode be mine. Of Heav'n I ask, May I, with heart-persuading might, Pursue the Poet's sacred task Of superseding faith by sight, Till ev'n the witless Gadarene, Preferring Christ to swine, shall know That life is sweetest when it's clean. To prouder folly let me show Earth by divine light made divine; And let the saints, who hear my word, Say, 'Lo, the clouds begin to shine About the coming of ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... contrast between "witless Gabriel and ruffling Richard." The astronomer Richard was continually baiting the great bear in the firmament, and in his lectures set up atheistical questions, which Nash maliciously adds, "as I am afraid the earth ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... a witless vanity about my friend that sat on him almost like a virtue. He made parade of his crafts less, I could see, because he thought much of them, than because he wanted to keep himself on an equality with me. In the same ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... him much of his family history. Beyond him Pickle goes on springs, cracking jokes like a little internal combustion engine. And David, now very tanned and wide awake, finishes our four. Without looking, we know the voice of each of our neighbors behind or in front, even so far as the witless stutterer some squads ahead, or the flat-voiced constant querist somewhere behind. But now when he raises his song his neighbors shut ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... am not confident that the measure will disarm the Catholic spleen.[288] And I was not entirely easy at finding myself allied to the Whigs, even in this instance, where I agree with them. This is witless prejudice, however. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... enough, upon the flank of Borrow. They are the three volumes of "Pugilistica," given me years ago by my old friend, Robert Barr, a mine in which you can never pick for half an hour without striking it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those days, the vapid witless Corinthian talk, with its ogles and its fogles, its pointless jokes, its maddening habit of italicizing a word or two in every sentence. Even these stern and desperate encounters, fit sports for the men of Albuera and Waterloo, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to our house after that. Her mourning added, I think, to her beauty, softening—or seeming to soften—the hardness of her eyes. Always she was very sweet to my mother, who by contrast beside her appeared witless and ungracious; and to me, whatever her motive, she was kindness itself; hardly ever arriving without some trifling gift or plan for affording me some childish treat. By instinct she understood exactly what I desired and liked, the books that would appeal to me as those my mother gave me never ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... our railways, let me merely remark here that we have always insisted upon one uniform gauge and everything we buy fits into and develops our existing railway system. Nothing is more indicative of the wambling sort of parent and a coterie of witless, worthless uncles than a heap of railway toys of different gauges and natures in the children's playroom. And so, having told you of the material we have, let me now tell you of one or two games (out of the innumerable ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... Look how thou diest. Look how thy eye turns pale. Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents. Hark how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out; How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth; Behold distraction, frenzy, and amazement, Like witless antics, one another meet, And all cry, ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... other, and ran through all the stages incident to literary affectation, until they assumed their worst form, and common sense breathed its last, as the 'Orphic Sayings' came; those most unmeaning and witless effusions—we cannot say of the brain, for the smallest modicum of brains would have rendered their appearance an impossibility—but of mere intellectual inanity.' The American Euphuists, being possessed of the demon of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... luckless, godless, graceless, witless child, Hast thou Drupad's virtuous daughter ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... of its inhabitants, and here, within half an hour's train travel of the Lord Mayor's Mansion and the golden vaults of the Bank of England, transpired on the sweltering night of which I write, one of the most witless and appalling tragedies of the present war. Forever memorable in the hitherto colorless calendar of Walthamstow will be this tragedy in the second ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... a pinched face. She searched for any shred of what she had known in him, but all the deadly mask of him she saw told her nothing. She began to be witless again, to wring her ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... like a witless man, I saw our couch, I saw our quiet room, Its shadows heaving by the fire-light gloom; And o'er my lips a subtle feeling ran, 10 All o'er my lips a soft and breeze-like feeling— I know not what—but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tall topers," quoth the Duke, "ye are witless, in faith, for there is no man here but is without wine, as in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... catch'd, was fain to disburse The hundred marks, which is the statute's curse, Before he 'scap'd; so't pleas'd my Destiny (Guilty of my sin of going) to think me As prone to all ill, and of good as forget- Ful, as proud, lustful, and as much in debt, As vain, as witless, and as false as they Which dwell in court, for once going that way, Therefore I suffer'd this: Towards me did run A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came; A thing which would have pos'd Adam to name: Stranger than seven antiquaries' ...
— English Satires • Various
... to use two English words to translate that single Greek one. The 'cunning' workman, thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be done; no machine, witless, and of necessary motion; yet not cunning only, but having perfect habitual skill of hand also; the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect, in connection with this passage of Pindar, Homer's three verses about getting the lines of ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... court lords, what should I mention them? than most of whom though there be nothing more indebted, more servile, more witless, more contemptible, yet they would seem as they were the most excellent of all others. And yet in this only thing no men more modest, in that they are contented to wear about them gold, jewels, purple, and those other marks of virtue ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... were scant, my offerings few, While witless wisdom fool'd my mind; But now I trim my sails anew, And trace the course I left behind. For lo! the Sire of heaven on high, By whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven, To-day through an unclouded sky His thundering steeds and car has driven. E'en now dull earth and ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... marriage of St. Catherine," observed his visiter, stepping through the casement, "I wish I could break all marriages as easily; and as to the motive, your honour, I did not like to wait quietly, and see a pistol-ball walk towards my witless pate, to convince, by its effects thereupon, the unbelieving world that Robin Hays had brains. As to the domestics, the doors were locked, and they, I do believe, (craving your pardon, sir,) too drunk to open them. As to the wall, it's somewhat straight and slippery; but what ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... "'If breeze or bird to this rough steep Your kind's first seed did bear; The breeze had better been asleep, The bird caught in a snare: [4] For you and your green twigs decoy 45 The little witless shepherd-boy To come and slumber in your bower; And, trust me, on some sultry noon, Both you and he, Heaven knows how soon! Will perish ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... quietly enough. Word of his defiance of Whitburn had gotten around among the faculty—Whitburn might have his secretary scared witless in his office, but not gossipless outside it—though it hadn't seemed to have leaked down to the students yet. Handley, the Latin professor, managed to waylay him in a hallway, a ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... thought; and finished by one of his rapid and passionate perorations upon his favorite theme—the West Indian cruelties of the Spaniards, ". . . by which great tracts and fair countries are now utterly stripped of inhabitants by heavy bondage and torments unspeakable. Oh, witless Islanders!" said he, apostrophizing the Irish, "would to Heaven that you were here to listen to me! What other fate awaits you, if this viper, which you are so ready to take into your bosom, should be warmed to life, but to groan like the Indians, slaves to the Spaniard; ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... incest born and by the chances thrown A tainted alien on a ravished throne, Gapes the foul flatteries of a fawning train, And fatuous mock'ries, which themselves disdain, A fancied monarch, but the witless sport Of adulation, and a practiced court, Vaunts to his broad realms and Timour-like proclaims Illusive titles of barbaric names, Cheats his own nature, and now generous grown,[18] Dispenses souls and empires not his own, Draws the deep purple round his ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... early Institute years it was easy, as in some places it still is, for stunt night to be no more than clowning, witless and cheap; but there is a distinct tendency to exercise the imagination ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... die were witless, When Death, who with his fatal finger taps At princely doors, as freely as he gives His summons to the serf, may at this instant Have sealed the only life that throws a shade Between ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... star, began to throe In the dusk heavens silvery, when they Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy. Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strange— 490 Eternal oaths and vows they interchange, In such wise, in such temper, so aloof Up in the winds, beneath a starry roof, So witless of their doom, that verily 'Tis well nigh past man's search their hearts to see; Whether they wept, or laugh'd, or griev'd, or toy'd— Most like with joy gone mad, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... preoccupied with trouble. "You know the setup. But both sets are missing. Both sets." He raised his head, the picture of witless agony. "I've got an idea where they are, too. I'm just waiting for ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... radiate, and what is its value? I have never been able to find out. The sober truth is that they are no more educational than so many firemen's parades or displays of sky-rockets, and that all they actually offer to the public in return for the taxes wasted upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to Congress or a state legislature in session, ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... window looking out, And the rain came down like silken strings That Swithin's day. Each gutter and spout Babbled unchecked in the busy way Of witless things: Nothing to read, nothing to see Seemed in that room for her and ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... thee how I love thee best, And all my thoughts of thee shall be confess'd And none withheld, not e'en the witless one Which late I harbor'd when the mounting sun Burst from a cloud,—the moon a mile away, As if in hiding from the lord of day,— As if, at times, the moon were like thyself, And fear'd the ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... possessing such appendice. 'Tis well known, a big nose is indicative Of a soul affable, and kind, and courteous, Liberal, brave, just like myself, and such As you can never dare to dream yourself, Rascal contemptible! For that witless face That my hand soon will come to cuff—is all As ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... silence, filled with fear, Your shuddering hoot seems some bleak grief that croons Mockery and terror; or,—beneath the moon's Cloud-hurrying glimmer,—to the startled ear, Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes, The witless wit of outcast Edgar there In the wild night; or, wan with all despair, The mirthless laughter of the Fool ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... meet at that happy rendezvous after the concert or ball. Or take the converse case, of gawky country lads, hooked in by knowing widows or other female adventurers, and the chain riveted in an unguarded moment, before their unhappy parents, or even the witless victims themselves, had dreamed that it was forging. But even this kind of publicity is not necessary. As far as we see, the registrar may, at any hour, be summoned to attend at the most private spot of his district, and there be compelled to witness and legalise the most monstrous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... sighed, and with the turkey-wing Brushed off the stove-hearth softly, and peered in The kettle of molasses, with her thin Voice wandering into song unconsciously— In purest, if most witless, sympathy.— ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... was going to do. He was much more sensitive than Maria, more shy and reluctant. But his shyness, his sensitiveness only made him more aimless and awkward, a tiresome clown, slack and uncontrolled, witless. All day long his mother shouted and shrilled and scolded at him, or hit him angrily. He did not mind, he came up like a cork, warm and roguish and curiously appealing. She loved him with a fierce protective love, grounded on pain. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... explains why I feel we must immediately take steps to tell the public what has happened, why I feel that it is necessary to put a man like Colonel Walther Mannheim in charge of the Nipe affair and keep him in charge until the matter is cleared up. Because the public is going to be scared witless if we don't ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lengthy, constituting a quarter to a third of the book, but are replete with padding, pointless babble and occasional puerile inaccuracies. They are largely attempts to explain and to moralize upon Yorick's emotions,—averbose, childish, witless commentary. The Wortregister contains fourteen pages in double columns of explanations, in general differing very little from the kind of information given in the notes. The Allgemeine Litteratur Zeitung[30] devotes a long review ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... and frost but never a shoe, and a damsel or two in cotton homespun dress made of one piece from collar to hem, and pantalettes of the same reaching to the ankles—all standing and looking the picture of witless incapacity, and making no plea against tyranny! Is that a thing worth while to turn and look back upon? If the blow fell upon ourselves or our set, that would be different; but these illiterate and lowly ones—they are—you don't ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... beautifully fluted rims are of regular and uniform height, and all are equally filled with clear, still water. A great number of these basins are said to have been destroyed by an ax in the hands of a poor witless creature for the gratification of a burst of temper, and a magnificent stalagmitic column, too heavy for one man to lift, lay detached and broken, in proof that his body did not share the feebleness of ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... boon of mightiest laughter. Certain a townsman mine I'd lief see thrown from thy gangway Hurled head over heels precipitous whelmed in the quagmire, Where the lake and the boglands are most rotten and stinking, 10 Deepest and lividest lie, the swallow of hollow voracious. Witless surely the wight whose sense is less than of boy-babe Two-year-old and a-sleep on trembling forearm of father. He though wedded to girl in greenest bloom of her youth-tide, (Bride-wife daintier bred than ever was delicate kidlet, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... at this home which might have been his, and he was restive under his brother's frolics, thinking him really too silly and witless. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... said he was well known by repute for twenty years as a witless man that journeyed without rest to all the shrines of England. The old man sits, Saxon fashion, head between fists. We Normans rest the chin on the left palm. '"Who answers for him?" said I. "If he fails in his duty, who ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... suffer it. He must divide hearts and alienate love, allowing no one to take pleasure in another. He who is illustrious, of noble birth, or has power or riches, feels bound to despise others as silly geese or witless ducks. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... against a crowd which deluges him with its expectation, and resents a scarcity of the supernatural. Mr. Sludge is not so much to blame: the people at length push the thing so far that he is obliged to cheat in self-defence. And when a man tasks his wits successfully, if it be only to mislead the witless, he has a sense of satisfaction in the effort akin to that of the rhetorician ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... a white man's conception by the midnight visitation of ladrones within a half-mile of their village, cowed, witless, they were reassured merely by the uniforms the two riders wore—the red-piped uniform of the small, scattered force of five thousand Filipinos, who, ably officered, highly trained, intrepid, have never tasted defeat: have wiped out every murderous ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... from the north, a howl of witless fear. The singers stopped in mid-note, the drummer paused, his hand uplifted. Dane darted forward in a plunge which carried him to that man. The Khatkan did not have time to rise from his knees as the barrel ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... "The witless are under the protection of God," stammered a flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. "They ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and close that I could not see beyond them. The wind blew over pleasantly and it was a curiously protected and hidden place, sheltered and quiet, with its one small crop of cider apples dropping ungathered to the ground, and unharvested there, except by hurrying black ants and sticky, witless little snails. ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... better always to aim high than to take the risk of shooting too low. It is too often the practice to spell out everything in words of one syllable so that the more witless files in the organization will be able to understand it. When that is done, it insults the intelligence of the keenest men, and nothing is added to their progress. The target should be the intellect of the upper 25 or 30 percent. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... of Olympian wrath, and when he is stirred up a little too much his patience gives way, and he has a manner of shaking his mane and sweeping round with his tail which is dangerous to his enemies and a delight and fascination to his friends. He took up the witless and unhappy Cochrane, shook him, and dropped him sprawling and mutilated, in about as limp a condition as the late Lord Wolmer—I call him late in the sense of a person politically dead—when that distinguished ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... between European powers, prepared and organized to accept the old conventions, bloody, vast, distressful encounters that may still leave the art of war essentially unmodified, but sooner or later—it may be in the improvised struggle that follows the collapse of some one of these huge, witless, fighting forces—the new sort of soldier will emerge, a sober, considerate, engineering man—no more of a gentleman than the man subordinated to him ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... converse with her; at least, not for a time. And you mustn't admit any one inside your toldo, except the witless white creature, your slave. About him it don't signify. But keep out all others, as I know you can. You ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Baal, who hold fast to what is high and good in the doctrine of political equality; in whose hearts the altar-fires of rational liberty are kept aglow, beaconing the darkness of that illimitable inane where their countrymen, inaccessible to the light, wander witless in the bogs of political unreason, alternately adoring and damning the man-made gods of their own stature. Of that bright band fueling the bale-fires of political consistency I can not profess myself a member in good standing. In view of this general recreancy and ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... sketching materials and proceed to scribble or paint, calm in the knowledge that nothing on earth is in the least likely to disturb the flow of ideas, or interrupt the laying on of a broad flat wash. Now and again, lazily, I lean back to watch the witless hoverings of a big butterfly, or sleepily listen to the increasing sound of the tom-toms and the yells of the beaters, whose voices, as those of demons of the pit, rend the peaceful air and add to ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... must always pay the price, usually a vexatious one. Bores stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and witless stories. Invented anecdotes, some of them exasperating ones, went the rounds of the press. Impostors in distant localities personated him, or claimed to be near relatives, and obtained favors, sometimes money, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... awhile with that indefinable interjection of displeasure which defies all spelling. "You talk like the witless creature that you are. Didn't I tell the lad, two years ago, Michaelmas was, that the day he could pay off the mortgage on the farm, he should have you and the farm too? And eight hundred and fifty florins oughtn't to frighten a man as has got the right spirit ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of articles to-morrow. What shall it be?" An unfortunate still stood at the corner of the street. "'Letters to a Light o' Love!' Frank must advance me something upon them.... Those stupid women! if they were not so witless they could rise to any height. If I had only been a woman! ... If I had been a woman I should have liked to have been Ninon ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... coating with which he had bedaubed the picture, and instead of a copy, restored the original in all its beauty to his holiness. Although this story is related by many writers, it is doubtless a gross libel on the fair fame of this great artist, originating with some witless wag, who thought nothing too horrible to impose upon the credulity of mankind. It is discredited by the best authors. A similar fable is related of Parrhasius. See the Olynthian Captive, vol. I. page 151 of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... were when no man did them know, Yet have from wisest ages hidden been: And later times things more unknown shall show. Why then should witless man so much misween That nothing is but that which he hath seen? What if within the moon's fair shining sphere, What if in every other star unseen, Of other worlds he happily should hear, He wonder would much more; ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... At this witless, sweet impudence the Canadian looked very sheepish—for a beaver; and all the other people laughed; but the noble historical shades of Basil's thought vanished in wounded dignity beyond recall, and left him feeling rather ashamed,—for he had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... heat, Winnowing the witless space, Without a let, What are they till they beat Against the sleepy sod, and there beget Perchance the violet! Is the One found, Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace, To make Heaven's bound; So that in Her All which it hath of sensitively good Is sought ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... pool outside—cannot you hear them, Jac Hallen?" Impatience came to his voice; in truth, I must have been staring at him witless. "Maidens out there, Jac Hallen, who are seeking handsome youths like yourself for escort. Must I speak plainly? You are not wanted ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... result in fructification, and such fruit is ostentatiously displayed. The male produces its fruit not as does the female, clinging closely and compact to the stem, but dangling dangerously from the end of the panicles—an example of witless paternal pride. This fruit of monstrous birth does not as a rule develop to average dimensions, and it is generally woodeny of texture and bitter as to flavour, but fully ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... child was but modestly addicted to her books, I wondered how many of Doctor Holmes's trenchant sayings have become a heritage in our households, detached often from their original kinship, and seeming like the rightful property of every one who utters them. It is an amusing, barefaced, witless sort of robbery, yet surely not without its compensations; for it must be a pleasant thing to reflect in old age that the general murkiness of life has been lit up here and there by sparks struck ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... came betimes, and, with his wife, witnessed the play from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely draped with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the piece—one of those singularly witless compositions which have at the least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... your talk, you withered, witless old man; it is my King that made the Heavens, it is He that gives blossom to the trees, it is He made the moon and the sun, the fields ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... city-walls AEneas doth she lead, And shows him the Sidonian wealth, the city's guarded ways; And now she falls to speech, and now amidst a word she stays. Then at the dying of the day the feast she dights again, And, witless, once again will hear the tale of Ilium's pain; And once more hangeth on the lips that tell the tale aloud. But after they were gone their ways, and the dusk moon did shroud 80 Her light in turn, and setting stars bade all to sleep away, Lone in the empty house she mourns, broods over ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... swift-footed Peleides:— "Wand'ring again is our doom, as it seems to my mind, Agamemnon! Home to escape as we may, unless death be the issue to welcome, Since not the battle alone, but the pestilence wastes the Achaians. Come, without witless delay, let some prophet or priest be consulted, Yea, or expounder of dreams, (for the dream, too, comes from Kronion,) Who may interpret the wrath unrelenting of Phoebus Apollo; Whether for forfeited vow we are plagu'd, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... returned his wife. "Once a witless fool, always a witless fool!" and giving free rein to her vexation and ill-temper she continued to upbraid her husband until his anger also was stirred, and he had wellnigh made a second bid ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... foot: you cannot hear a step For forty-year, and mistake it, though the spring's Gone out of it, and it's turned to a shuffle, it's still The same footfall. Why didn't she answer me? She chattered enough, before she went—such havers! Words tumbling from her lips in a witless jumble. Contrary, to the last, she wouldn't answer: But crept away, like a wounded pheasant, to die Alone. She's gone before me, after all— And she, so hale; while I was crutched and crippled. I haven't ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... or necro- mancy. These "ways that are vain" are the inventions of animal magnetism, which would deceive, if possible, [15] the very elect. We will charitably hope, however, that some people employ the et cetera of ignorance and self- conceit unconsciously, in their witless ventilation of false statements and claims. Misguiding the public mind and taking its money in exchange for this abuse, has become [20] too common: we will hope it is the froth of error passing off; and that Christian Science will some time appear all the clearer for the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... had hardened properly, the mold was either held over the fire, or thrust in hot water half a minute, then the candles withdrawn by help of the reeds. They were cooled a bit, to save the softened outside, then nubbed of surplus wick, and laid in a dish outside. Careless or witless molders, by laying candles still soft upon the pile, often made ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... clear and clear and large and large it grew; It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through. It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat, With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... "Witless and devoid of sense art thou," answered Laeg, "for who but an idiot would think of sweet sleep and agreeable repose in a hostile territory, much more in full view of those who look out from a foeman's dun, and ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... of England is no friend of the revolution of France. Of this we have sufficient proofs in the thanks given by that weak and witless person, the Elector of Hanover, sometimes called the King of England, to Mr. Burke for the insults heaped on it in his book, and in the malevolent comments of the English Minister, Pitt, in ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... not seen the Hunter since they had both been loaded into the Patrol flitter in the gap. Wass had come out of the valley a witless, dazed creature, still under the mental influence of whoever, or whatever, had set that trap. As far as Vye knew the Veep had not yet recovered his full senses, he might never do so. And if Hume had not dictated that confession to damn himself before the Patrol, ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... up, to abide the shock and trial, that for their profession is coming upon them. Wherefore, by and by they are offended; to wit, with their own profession, and call themselves an hundred fools, for being so heedless, so witless, and unwary, to mind God's holy things in such a time and day. (Matt. 4:16, 17; Luke 8:13) Then they bethink with themselves, how to make an honourable retreat, which they suppose they usually do, by finding fault, first with their own unadvisedness, and of the over-persuasiveness of others; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... intrenchment, and a thousand years ere that perhaps it was still grander; for learned men say that it was a British work, wrought out before the Danes had ever learned to build a ship. Whatever, however, may be argued about that, the wise and the witless do agree about one thing—the stronghold inside it had been held by Danes, while severed by the Dike from inland parts, and these Danes made a good colony of their own, and left to their descendants ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... preachers with leading the deluded multitude to slaughter at Bothwell, by prophesying a certainty of victory, and dissuading them from accepting the amnesty offered by Monmouth. "All could not avail," says Mr. Law, himself a presbyterian minister, "with McCargill, Kidd, Douglas, and other witless men amongst them, to hearken to any proposals of peace. Among others that Douglas, sitting on his horse, and preaching to the confused multitude, told them that they would come to terms with them, and like a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... press, if its influence is not exerted to promote the cause of truth." He was true to his promise. The free soul of a free, strong man spoke out in his paper. How refreshing was it, after listening to the inanities, the dull, witless vulgarity, the wearisome commonplace of journalists, who had no higher aim than to echo, with parrot-like exactness, current prejudices and falsehoods, to turn to the great and generous thoughts, the chaste and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the original language and expressions; but if so, what a world of verbiage must have been retained. The Indians are prolix, and attach value to many minutiae in the relation which not only does not help forward the denouement, but is tedious and witless to the last degree. The gems of the legends—the essential points—the invention and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... depot platform frantically waving hats and handkerchiefs and shouting good lucks and farewells, the train had pulled away, the loneliness in her heart had become too great to hide. Her escort had made smart jokes about her tears, alleging disappointment and envy. He was a poor, shallow, witless, fool who could not understand; and that he could not understand mattered, to her, not at all. She had commanded him to take her home and at her front door had thanked him and ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... foolish one, witless on whose side the gods were fighting that day, discharged yet other missiles, wavering and wide of the mark; for his wind had been taken with the first clod, and he shot wildly, as one already desperate and in ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... witless, he had been floundering forward for over an hour, and had made circle after circle without knowing, when, by chance, he set foot in ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... "Witless spoke thus even in the days of this person's remote youth—only the virtuous did not then open and close their hands suddenly in the Ways on dark nights. Is aught reported of the inner affairs of Shen Yi, a rich philosopher who dwells ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... fearless snatched at bliss so high, Witless! and yet to be of slight esteem And little worth is sometimes well, no dream Of high unrest, no awful afterglow Affrights us simple ones when that we die. Vain flickering lamps soon quenched—we but go From this brief day, this short transition, ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... golden chair the Mother sate, With folded hands, revolving things to come. To her drew Hoder near, and spake, and said:— "Mother, a child of bale thou bar'st in me! For, first, thou barest me with blinded eyes, Sightless and helpless, wandering weak in Heaven; And, after that, of ignorant witless mind Thou barest me, and unforeseeing soul; That I alone must take the branch from Lok, The foe, the accuser, whom, though Gods, we hate, And cast it at the dear-loved Balder's breast At whom the Gods in sport their weapons threw— ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... "Behold four witless brute beasts, Mistress Madge—two horses and two asses," he said. And then to old Anthony: "Open the door, Tony, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... I listened to the cold-blooded statement. The shock of it produced a beating in the head, and a sickness. And I felt foolish, as though I might do something lunatic, like giving a witless shout, or running amok with a table-knife. I touched Doe, and whispered: "I'm going to get out of this. The old fool doesn't know what ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... She is but a poor harmless body," said Kenric. "Only the witless carls and cottar folk are so simple as to believe that she has aught of evil in ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... on her side, having one white arm thrown out and resting limply on the floor, and she seemed to be in a semi-conscious condition, for although her fine eyes were widely opened, they had a glassy, witless look, and she was evidently ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... art witless or art come from afar, if thou enquirest about this land. It is not utterly unknown; many know it who dwell in the East and in the West. It is rough and unfitted for steeds, yet it is not a sorry isle, though narrow. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... not because he was not trying hard, and studying for all he was worth, that "Witless Abner," as Wittemore had come to be called, had won his nickname. He worked night and day, plunged in a maze of things he did not quite understand until long after the rest of the class had passed them. He was majoring in sociology through the advice of ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... girl of the period versed in the loose expressions of the day. She goes away; but, after an absence of five years in a country where she hears little except in a foreign tongue, she returns, and with her comes her slang. How common, how witless, her talk appears! Her slang has long since gone out of fashion. The best of English ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... sublime indifference to calumny or depreciation. Having proved in his boyhood, at Fontarabia, and in his maturity: at Muhlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage; when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense. Conscious of holding his armies in his hand, by the power of an unrivalled discipline, and the magic of a name illustrated by a hundred triumphs, he, could bear with patience and benevolence ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... without death first felt, goes through The regions of the dead?" My sapient guide Made sign that he for secret parley wish'd; Whereat their angry scorn abating, thus They spake: "Come thou alone; and let him go Who hath so hardily enter'd this realm. Alone return he by his witless way; If well he know it, let him prove. For thee, Here shalt thou tarry, who through clime so dark Hast been his escort." Now bethink thee, reader! What cheer was mine at sound of those curs'd words. I did believe I never should return. "O my lov'd guide! who ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... should understand, is meant for the world—for the world's delight, for mankind's wonder. And here unfortunate circumstances—my poverty and not my will—constrain me to stint the world of its due: to languish in this lost corner of Nowhere, like Wamba the son of Witless, the mere professed buffoon of a merer franklin. Well, my unassuageable craving to write a song is, in its essence, just a great, splendid, generous desire to indemnify the world. The world needs me—the world has me not—but the world shall have me. For the world's behoof, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,— And what am I, that I should love So ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... and fro, as though he feared the great room should contain a spy upon him. It was empty save for him and that witless body. He put his hands together with the gesture of a child and shut his ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... week; in a week, men, not in a year! There could be no wage scale at all. Labor was a thing gone by. Wealth, success, ease, luxury was at hand for the taking. What a man had dreamed for himself he now could have. He could overleap all the confining limits of his life, and even if weak, witless, ignorant or in despair, throw all that aside in one vast ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... lower foretop-gallant sail, and to my starting eyes she seemed to grow as I watched her. She was coming my way, and I have little doubt that, in the weakness of the moment and the sudden leap of hope when hope seemed dead, I laughed and cried and behaved like a witless man. I know that I prayed God, as I had never prayed in my life before, that she might keep her course and come close enough for some sharp ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... has his strength and senses and wits. If any god loved this fellow, (indicating Nicobulus) it's more than ten years, more than twenty years ago, he ought to have died. He ambles along encumbering the earth, absolutely witless and senseless already, worth about as much as ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... Two years again. Desolation of battle, and long debate, Counsels and prayers of men, And bitterness of destruction and witless hate, And the shame of lie contending with lie, Are spending themselves, and the brain That set its lonely chart four years gone by, Knowing the word fulfilled, Comes with charity and communion to bring To reckoning, To reconcile ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... and witless, that he has established a class for the acquirement of an elegant and ready style of punning, on the pure Joe-millerian principle. The very worst hands are improved in six short and mirthful lessons. As a specimen of his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... soft violence, she grasped his hands. Perhaps the moment had come. She was not afraid, but the suddenness of her extremity left her witless. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... the hot and desperate struggle for breath, sounds came from her, but no words. But she ran forward blindly, and kneeling, caught him by the knees; he could not but find pity in his heart for the witless poor wretch, who seemed to be fighting, not with regret nor for need of his pity, but with some maggot in the brain which drove her deeper into the fiery centre of the storm. Richard did what he could. A religious man himself, he pointed ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... divine Olympus. Ay, that she is a Goddess shalt thou know When to thine heart the brazen spear shall pierce Sped by my might. Patroclus' death I avenged On Hector, and Antilochus on thee Will I avenge. No weakling's friend thou hast slain! But why like witless children stand we here Babbling our parents' fame and our own deeds? Now is the hour when ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Star!" he mused, as he noticed this brilliant and singular decoration, "an emblem of the fraternity, I suppose, meaning ... what? Salvation and Immortality? Alas, they are poor, witless builders on shifting sand if they place any hope or reliance on those two empty words, signifying nothing! Do they, can they honestly believe in God, I wonder? or are they only acting the usual worn-out comedy of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... small, objectless remarks, and questions, and answers, neither witty nor quite witless; but Veronica did not refer to Gianluca, and Taquisara knew that for the present he had better let matters alone. Presently Bianca spoke across to Veronica, and the conversation became general. In the course of it, Gianluca spoke to Veronica, and she ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the clouds we'll float in my airplane boat— For Venus I am truly sorry! All the stars you sight, you witless wight, You'll see when you and Venus light! But then—I'm ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... with a softened face. I was told that Abram Handy was a widower anxious to take Temperance for a second helpmeet, and that she could not decide whether to accept or refuse him. She had confessed to mother that she was on the fence, and didn't know which way to jump. He was a poor, witless thing, she knew; but he was as good a man as ever breathed, and stood as good a chance of being saved as the wisest church-member that ever lived! Mother thought her inclined to be mistress of an establishment ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... for further words—then he gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good. Afterward I saw him several times below during the trip; but he was cold—would not look at me. Idiot, if he had not been in such a sweat to play his witless practical joke upon me, in the beginning, I would have persuaded his thoughts into some other direction, and saved him from committing that wanton ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the bill, Milk-livered murd'rers too ill-fed to kill; Mild-looking demons that a babe might daunt, Witches and ghosts most naturally gaunt; Lovers made pale by keener pangs than love's, Unspangled princesses with greasy gloves; Wits very witless—grave comedians mute, And silent sons of violin ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... did not wring his hands, as do Those witless men who dare To try to rear the changeling Hope In the cave of black Despair: He only looked upon the sun, ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... and one head. In August bears come down to an ancient and now brushy bark-peeling near by for blackberries. But the creature that most infests these backwoods is the porcupine. He is as stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his broad, blunt nose points a witless head. They are great gnawers, and will gnaw your house down if you do not look out. Of a summer evening they will walk coolly into your open door if not prevented. The most annoying animal to the camper-out in this region, and ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs |
