"Brained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quarrel with Nelson. Also, he had been drinking in the St. Louis House, so that it was John Barleycorn who led him to the sandspit in quest of his old shirt. Few words started the fray. He locked with Nelson in the cockpit of the Reindeer, and in the mix-up barely escaped being brained by an iron bar wielded by irate French Frank—irate because a two-handed man had attacked a one-handed man. (If the Reindeer still floats, the dent of the iron bar remains in the hard-wood rail of ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... only covered with a roof and having no wall whatever, to shut it in, the hare-brained dance was displayed in the face of the peaceful night and of the firmament powdered ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... for a long geological time on the earth, yet there is good evidence that he has been here for a hundred thousand years or more. It seems pretty clear that he has changed little in his body in all these thousands of generations. The earliest remains show us a large-brained creature, who used tools and probably had already made a servant of fire, which so admirably aids him in ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... efforts are made in Congress, and out of it, in the Cabinet, in the White House, by Union men,—Seward imagines he leads them,—by the weak-brained, and by traitors, to save slavery, if not all, at least a part of it. Every concession made by the President to the enemies of slavery has only one aim; it is to mollify their urgent demands by throwing to them small ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... well enough to have gone back to the city and, in fact, his father was writing for him. But he couldn't leave Beckwiths', apparently. At any rate he stayed on and met Nelly every day and cursed himself for a cad and a cur and a weak-brained idiot. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and I honestly believe the last time in her life, that other pretty blond, but woolly-brained, young woman rose to the occasion—God bless her—and answered stoutly, "No, Clara never ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... the airmen are busy venturing through fog and puffs of exploding shells to get one small fact of information. We used to regard the looping of the loop of the Germans overhead as a hare-brained piece of impudent defiance to our infantry fire. Now we know its means ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the bane of all my hopes. That hot-brained, head-long warrior, has the charms Of youth, and somewhat of a lucky rashness, To please a woman yet more fool than he. That thoughtless sex is caught by outward form. And empty noise, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... self-respect. He was glad to get rid of his children, and Lady Kelsey was only too happy to provide for them. Heaven only knows how he's lived during the last two years. He's still occupied with a variety of crack-brained schemes, and he's been to me more than once for money ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... comprehension. His mind had no more real depth than a looking-glass with a crack in it, and its images were disjointed and confused. There are many such men, but few possess unlimited means of carrying their crack-brained fancies ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... agitated, striking hard but in the dark, and most of their blows going wide. Commissioners and inspectors have appeared menacingly at prison gates, loudly heralded, equipped with plenipotentiary powers; and the gates have been thrown wide by smiling wardens and sympathetic guards—tender hearted, big brained, gentle mannered people, their mouths overflowing with honeyed words and bland assurances, their clubs and steel bracelets snugly stowed away in unobtrusive pockets—who have personally and assiduously conducted ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... "Altogether we've had a nice upset. Mother's ill in bed to-day. It was this way: Of course I spoke a bit sharply to those scatter-brained girls, and they answered me back in a way it makes my blood boil to think about. Women-folk are all a bit crazy. That's the opinion I've been forced to, sir, and if I had my days over again, I'd never so ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Losely, shifting his hold from the top of his switch to the centre, and bringing the murderous weight of the lead down on the palm of his other hand, "that, if his eye had quitted mine for a moment, I think I must have brained ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at French and German watering-places. Once came a rumor that she was going to make a grand marriage in England; then we heard that the gentleman had thought better of it and left her to keep afloat as she could. She was a terribly scatter-brained creature. She pretends to be a great lady, but I consider that old Filomena, my washer-woman, is in essentials a greater one. But certainly, after all, she has been fortunate. She embarked at last on a lawsuit about some property, with ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... sentimental dreamer, a hair-brained enthusiast. It is the foolish utterances of men like him that place the bomb and the knife in the hand of ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... landlady. What then, with his name ripe enough to drop from the tree of life, remains to Wiggins, but to subside into Smith? What hope was there for the well-known swindler, the posted pickpocket, the callous-hearted, slug-brained Tory? None: he was hooted, pelted at; all men stopped the nose at his approach. He was voted a nuisance, and turned forth into the world, with all his vices, like ulcers, upon him. Well, Tory adopts the inevitable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... protection. "I can't imagine," said Lawrence, "that your aunt would ever think of such a thing as doing me a harm, or how those little shoes would prevent her, if she wanted to, but I suppose Aunt Patsy is crack-brained on some subjects, and so I thought it best to humor ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... him learn'd, But wanting tact and ready speech he failed. The rest were pettifoggers—scurrilous rogues Who plied the village justice with their lies, And garbled law to suit the case in hand— Mean, querulous, small-brained delvers in the mire Of men's misfortunes—crafty, cunning knaves, Versed in chicane and trickery that schemed To keep the evil passions of weak men In petty wars, and plied their tongues profane With cunning words to argue honest fools Into their spider-meshes to be fleeced. I laid my case before ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... even the most versatile may suddenly find themselves stripped of ideas, ignominiously reduced to the obvious topic. To us, instead of being a mere prelude to more serious matters, or the last resort of a feeble intellect, it was the all-engrossing theme. The man with the latest hare-brained theory of the causation of the wind was accorded a full hearing. The lightning calculator who estimated the annual tonnage of drift-snow sweeping off Adelie Land was received as a futurist and thinker. Discussion was always free, and the subject was never ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... than other men of wealth, was opposed to what he deemed a crack-brained idea—that of maintaining a parity between gold and silver by law. Confiscation was his word for it—the confiscation of the wealth of the few for the benefit of the many. Most of all was he opposed to it because he feared that ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Harkness was a hare-brained, irresponsible person, incapable of steadiness in thought or action, too weak to cherish actual hatred, too changeable to nurse a lasting grudge. It is with such frail instruments that prankish fate delights to work, and, although ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, Self-called George Sand! whose soul amid the lions Of thy tumultuous senses moans defiance, And answers roar for roar, as spirits can,— I would some wild, miraculous thunder ran Above the applauding circus, in appliance Of thine own ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... serious, sometimes pleasant, sometimes to listen to others, and sometimes to speak himself what may benefit or divert the company, if the meeting is intended for any good use or purpose. For if the victuals be not good, men may let them alone, or if the wine be bad, men may use water; but for a weak-brained, impertinent, unmannerly, shallow fellow-commoner there is no cure; he mars all the mirth and music, and spoils the best entertainment in the world. And it will be no easy business to lay aside a sullen temper; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... women huddled above the deck. {87} On pretence of gathering berries, six sailors were landed with fourteen women. Two watched their chance and dashed for liberty in the hills. On the way back to the ship, one woman was brained to death by a sailor, Gorelin; seeing which, the others on board the jolly-boat took advantage of the confusion, sprang overboard, and suicided. But there were still a dozen hostages on the ship. These might relate the crime of their companions' murder. It was ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... weak-minded, to say no more. A very selfish man in fact, and the thought of Jenny having a home of her own away from him, though to any decent father a right and proper thing to happen, got Joshua Owlet in a rage, and I had to exercise unbounded patience. He was a small-brained man, and that sort ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... most abound, did one ever read of more monstrous, palpable folly? In any country, save this, would a poet who chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to a dove, and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and the little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a "gracious answer" to his nonsense? Would he ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... troubles to his cousin, and to induce her, if he could induce no one else, to advise his immediate marriage. It was the first time he had been really engaged, and his affection had not only stood three months' absence, but had so much elevated his shatter-brained though frank and honest temperament, that Albinia conceived a high opinion of 'Emily,' and did her best to persuade him to be patient, and wait ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bowed down with remorse last time I saw him," said Will, regarding Tom with eyes full of fun, for Will was a boy as well as a bookworm, and relished a joke as well as scatter-brained Tom. ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... the fern-hole, was in a fern thicket next the clover field. It was small and damp, and useless except as a last retreat. It also was the work of a woodchuck, a well-meaning, friendly neighbor, but a hare-brained youngster whose skin in the form of a whip-lash was now developing higher horse-power in ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... a large stone, and throwing it at his opponent's head, felled him to the earth. But the battle did not last long. The band most distant from us gave way and were routed, leaving eighteen of their comrades dead upon the field. These the victors brained as they lay; and putting some of their brains on leaves, went off with them, we were afterwards informed, to their temples to present them to their gods as an earnest of the human victims who were soon ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... ajar, and a more repulsive, deformed wretch I never laid eyes upon. His left arm hung withered by his side; at his girdle he swung a bunch of keys, with any one of which a strong man might have brained an ox. Every evil passion which curses the race of men had left its imprint upon his lowering countenance. Yet for a moment, when his gaze rested upon the girl, it was as though some spark of her loveliness drove the villainy from his face. He was ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... with well-bred people; but she was incessantly apologising, and fussing, and fretting inwardly and outwardly, and directing and calling to her servants—striving to make a butler who was deaf, a boy who was hare-brained, do the business of five accomplished footmen of PARTS and FIGURE. The mistress of the house called ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... for once," said Fairy easily. "This is the first time, and we must do something extra. Babbie is all the rage at school, and the girls are frantic with jealousy because I have cut everybody else out. To be honest about it, I can't understand it myself. Babbie's such a giddy scatter-brained youngster, you'd ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... more, father; the dog overtook her, and held her till we came; she was red with blood, and we knocked her down; Oswy here brained her with his club." ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... as a stigma on many to whom it might be seriously applied. Neither were examples wanting of the most absurd and apparently dishonoring nicknames being elsewhere adopted by powerful political parties. "Long live the Gueux!" was the toast given and tumultuously drunk by this mad-brained company; and Brederode, setting no bounds to the boisterous excitement which followed, procured immediately, and slung across his shoulders, a wallet such as was worn by pilgrims and beggars; drank to the health of all present, in a wooden ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... overvalue; but the excellent comedy of The Spanish Curate is not impaired by the fact that Dryden chose to adapt it after his own fashion in The Spanish Friar. In Wit Without Money, though it is as usual amusing, the stage preference for a "roaring boy," a senseless crack-brained spendthrift, appears perhaps a little too strongly. The Beggar's Bush is interesting because of its early indications of cant language, connecting it with Brome's Jovial Crew, and with Dekker's thieves' ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... we won't discuss it," said he. "I simply wish you to know that both of us have appreciated your friendship for Van. He is a scatter-brained young dog, but he is all we have, and we believe in time he is going to make good. Eh, son?" Despite the words he smiled down at the ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... and large-brained, gentle and strong, presented an address on the social question not easily forgotten, and seldom to the present ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... is most assuredly incredible that seven millions of Anglo-Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons of the purest strain—English, Lowland Scottish, and North Irish—should have been beguiled by silver tongues of a few ambitious or hare-brained demagogues. The latter undoubtedly had a share in bringing matters to a crisis. But the South was ripe for revolution long before the presidential election. The forces which were at work needed no ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... me, 'Walter Skinner, scour the country.' Nay, the king said naught to me on the matter. 'Twas his favorite, Sir Thomas De Lany, that bade me watch the castle from the tree; and there might I be now in comfort, if this hare-brained youth had not run away. He should have stayed at the castle till the coming of Robert Sadler and the troop. My face had not been thus lacerated had the youth known his duty and ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... citizen who would appeal in vain to the law and could do nothing without it, and who would probably let the erring lady return to his home at the trifling price of a sound beating when Stradella was tired of her. That would have been bad enough, in all conscience; but this time the hare-brained singer had done much worse, even from a worldly point of view; and looking at it from another, Cucurullo thought that the irreparable nature of the deed made it more wicked, besides the fact that all the persons concerned might ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... when the French quitted Vilna, the Russians were glad enough to seek its shelter, Kutusoff creeping in with forty thousand men, all that remained to him of two hundred thousand. He could not carry on the pursuit, but sent forward a handful of Cossacks to harry the hare-brained few who called themselves the rearguard. He was an old man, nearly worn out, with only three months more to live—but ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... which may profitably be applied to a cross life are uncommon and innumerable. It is not given to all men to be light-brained, light-limbed, light-fingered. A courage which shall face an enemy under the starlight, or beneath the shadow of a wall, which shall track its prey to a well-defended lair, is far rarer than a law-abiding cowardice. The recklessness ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... purport of her speech struck home; the seemingly soft-brained weakness that had forbidden the rape and pillage of the schooner stood in part explained. And as the light filtered through thick skulls and shone upon all but atrophied brains, a deep muttering swelled into the embryo of a throaty cheer that needed but one look of encouragement ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... dissemination of the vilest literature in the cheapest printed forms, the attainability, by the poorest, of the noblest productions of literary genius. Or if in congratulating yourself upon the marvellous progress of Scientific Inventions, hailing from the keen-brained West, you could condone the degradation of the English language in the mouths of Shakespeare's countrymen and countrywomen by the use of American slang phrases, common, vulgar, coarse, alternating with choice expressions culled from the vocabulary ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... him, and don't all the cartoonists lampoon him, and don't all of us who write news from down here in Washington give him the worst of it in our despatches?... And what's the result? Mallard takes on flesh and every red-mouthed agitator in the country and every mushy-brained peace fanatic and every secret German sympathiser trails at his heels, repeating what he says. I'd like to know what the press of America hasn't done to put ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... was black in the face, I asked Mr. Antwerp at least to put the young man on the second trick, so that in a measure I could have him under my eye. But no, nothing but the third trick would satisfy him, so on the third trick the rattle-brained ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Uncle Toby" and "Corporal Trim," and had realized the full potentialities of humour contained in the contrast between the two brothers Shandy. The very work of sharpening and deepening the outlines of this humorous antithesis, while it made the crack-brained philosopher more and more of a burlesque unreality, continually added new touches of life and nature to the lineaments of the simple-minded soldier; and it was by this curious and half-accidental process that there came to be added to the gallery of English fiction one of the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the trampling and talking of the crowd, there were noises not a few. Dennis and I were together, for Alister had business to do, but he had given us leave to gratify our curiosity, adding a kindly warning to me to take care of myself, and keep "that feather-brained laddie," Dennis, out of danger's way. We had no difficulty in reaching the point of interest, for, ludicrous to say, the fire was in Water Street; that is, it was in the street running parallel with the river and the wharves, ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... on the walls, and there are yellow stains where others hung. Where are they? for I think I heard a man say he bought them on account of their handsome frames, from that crack-brained officer at Cucumber Lake; and he shut his eye, and looked knowing and whispered, 'Something wrong there, had to sell out of the army; some queer story about another wife still living; don't know particulars.' Poor Dechamps, you are guiltless ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a good way off in the pits belonging to the prince, came up now very much out of humour to Edward. "Another run over here to no purpose!" he cried peevishly: "I wanted to speak to the young shatter-brained jackanapes; and now I hear from the smelting-lads down in the town, that he has just been scampering through it, and not a soul can tell ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... a winter campaign in search of the now scattered and despondent Indians. The oratory of Red Dog had borne its fruit. Four truculent bands had joined in the outbreak at the agency and lost their leader, half a score of mad-brained young warriors, scores of their best war ponies, but, what was of most consequence, had burned up the whole store of agency provisions and, with their squaws and children, were now lurking among the trackless Bad Lands ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... group. Very slight in build, not tall, clean-shaven, with a high forehead and sensitive lips, young Henry Martyn seemed a stripling beside the flaming Arab. Yet Sabat, with all his sound and fury, was no match for the swift-witted, clear-brained young Englishman. Henry Martyn was a chaplain in the army of the East India Company, which ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... monstrous outline crossed and recrossed the apse behind the High Altar, as the sacristan moved about; once a hand, as of a giant, remained poised for an instant somewhere on the wall beside the throne. It seemed to the priest, tired and clear-brained as he was, as if he sat in some place of expectation—some great cavern where mysteries moved and passed in preparation for a climax. All was hushed and confused, yet alive; and the dark waves would break presently in the glory of the ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... it was one vast, unbroken chamber, so clear and transparent were the walls of the winding corridors, but after I had nearly brained myself a couple of times by attempting to pass through solid vitreous ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... matter for a man to contribute, if he gave 1s. 3d. out of his wages to relieve five wounded men of his own fraternity; but at the same time to be assured that if he is hurt or maimed he shall have the same relief, is a thing so rational that hardly anything but a hare-brained follow, that thinks of nothing, would omit entering ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... he encountered a huge peon. whom he seized and flung bodily over the iron guard of a samon tree, where the man hung, yelling dismally. Two other peons, who had seized the athlete around the knees, were all but brained by a stoneware gin bottle in the hands of Sherwen. Meanwhile, Mr. Brewster was performing prodigies with a niblick which he had extracted, at full run, from a bag opportunely resting against the hat-rack. Almost before they knew it, the rescue party had broken the ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of them, in the neighbouring waters of the Donau. But for honest Lockwood's faithful search after his master, there had no doubt been an end of Esmond here, and of this his story. The marauders were out rifling the bodies as they lay on the field, and Jack had brained one of these gentry with the club-end of his musket, who had eased Esmond of his hat and periwig, his purse, and fine silver-mounted pistols which the dowager gave him, and was fumbling in his pockets for further treasure, when Jack Lockwood came up and put ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk, that she is!" exclaimed the housekeeper, as she saw them depart, "to set up to be sae muckle better than ither folk, the auld besom, and to bring sae muckle distress on a douce quiet family! If it hadna been that I am mair than half a gentlewoman by my station, I wad hae tried my ten ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the evening is pleasant, and I think I need some air. That crack-brained, red-haired fellow of yours will watch you while I am gone, and for mercy's sake be careful with those candles. Nay, nay; you must have no fire, you must go cold. After what you said to me, I can think of naught but fire. It is for this night ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... quaking heart, but as firm a footstep as he could command, Toad set forth cautiously on what seemed to be a most hare-brained and hazardous undertaking; but he was soon agreeably surprised to find how easy everything was made for him, and a little humbled at the thought that both his popularity, and the sex that seemed to inspire it, were really ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... boy," thought Robinette, "a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, hare-brained youngster. They can't have poisoned his nature yet, and I'm sure he has a good heart. If he were at the head of affairs at Stoke Revel instead of his grandmother, I wonder what would be done in the matter of my poor old nurse?" Robinette stood in ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... years from now no one will know how the farmers and brickmasons, grocers and merchants, managed their affairs in our own times. We shall be obliged to accept the sensational accounts left by a few wild-eyed, virus-brained socialists. ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... before, true men in every official station,—men who are clean, conscientious, frank, and upright; men who, while strictly honorable and pure in life and action, are also broad-minded, tolerant, and large-brained; men unswayed by partisanship or bigotry; statesmen rather than politicians; and, above all, men that are in ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... finally summoned to General Johnston's tent, it was to consult over a plan of movement, and it was noticed that Toombs was the only brigadier in counsel. General Johnston subsequently remarked that Toombs was the biggest brained man in the Confederacy. The boldness and clearness of the impetuous Georgian had captured the grim hero of Manassas, who forgave the affront in the face of the overmastering ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... played by Pequita), travels from city to city earning a scant livelihood by his own playing and his daughter's dancing. Chance or fate leads them to throw in their fortunes with a band of enthusiastic adventurers, who, headed by a young hare-brained patriot, elected as their leader, have determined to storm the Vatican, and demand the person of the Pope, that they may convey him to America, there to convene an assemblage of all true Christians (or 'New Christians'), and found a new ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... A stone's throw from the inn, and the thatch-roofed school, and the red painted church! He must have put up a hard fight, Stan. Three huge dark brown beasts, as big as cows' yearlings, were found brained. The body of big Stan had disappeared in the stomachs of the rest of the pack. The high leather boots and the hand that still gripped the handle of the sledgehammer were the only remains of the man. There was no blood, either. It had been lapped dry. That stirred the village. Not even enough to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and to substitute for it one of demoniac birth. Accordingly Fuh-sang, being of like age, was moulded to its counterpart, and an attendant gnome was despatched with her secretly to make the change. Becoming overwhelmed with the fumes of rice-spirit, until then unknown to his simple taste, this clay-brained earth-pig left the two she-children alone for a space while he slept. Discovering each other to be the creature of another part, they battled together and tore from one another the signs of recognition. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... empty-brained, he sat down on the chair which Christine had just left. Like her, he let his head fall into his hands. When he raised it, the tears were streaming down his young cheeks, real, heavy tears like those which jealous children shed, tears that wept for a sorrow which was in no way fanciful, but ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... Blessington her love life had not yet commenced; and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage—a marriage with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and having no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction in social triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish hand. But, after all, in a woman ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... me as a hare-brained nephew," said Curtis. "As for my aunt, poor lady, she must think me the most extraordinary human being she has ever set eyes on. What ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... do the next time the damnable Boer rises to fight. The old British pioneer may have whelped a few million good fighting stock in his time, but this class of animal is no lion's whelp; it is a thing all mouth and no manners, a shallow-brained, cowardly creature, always howling about the Boer, but too discreet to go out and fight him, though ready at all times to malign him, to ridicule him as a farmer or a fighter, and it is a perfect bear's feast to this hybrid ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... and against, so I shall deal with each reformer's idea in the order of its importance. Before beginning, I must say that I differ from all the purveyors of the cheaper sort of sentiment; I differ from many ladies and gentlemen who talk about abstractions; and I differ most of all from the feather-brained persons who set up as authorities after they have paid flying visits in cabs to ugly neighbourhoods. When a specialist like Miss Octavia Hill speaks, we hear her with respect; but Miss Hill is not a sentimentalist; she is a keen, cool woman who has put her emotions ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... other loudly, "do maintain the good sense and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned William against the crack-brained fantasies of the muddy Scotchman, who hath hid such little wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is like one drop of Gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. Solomon his wisdom would not suffice to say what the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a jolly Scottish lassie. She rolled her r's when she spoke, and was a trifle matter-of-fact and practical, but was evidently the dependable anchor of the rest of the scatter-brained crew, the one who made the most sensible suggestions, and to whom—though they teased her a little and called her "Grannie"—they all turned in the end for help and advice. Jess was slightly out of her element in a southern setting. Her appropriate background was moorland ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Pizarro had embarked in a hair-brained enterprise for the conquest of Peru, on the western coast of South America. Very slowly he had forced his way along, towards that vast empire, encountering innumerable difficulties, and enduring frightful sufferings, until ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... that way, Brenda's way," he said. "She's scatter-brained; you can't get round that. Going off after the dance in that idiotic ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... for the world this autumn. She calls it The Encounter (ARNOLD), and it is all about the struggle between "the Nietzschean attitude of mind in Germany," as exemplified in an egotistical, crack-brained genius named Ludwig Wehlitz, and the ideals of civilized Christianity exemplified in several other more agreeable persons. You will own that this is at least a propos. The whole thing is, of course, quite charmingly told. All the characters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... first made their appearance before the walls, Champagny was unwilling to grant them admittance. The addle-brained Oberstein had confessed to him the enormous blunder which he had committed in his midnight treaty, and at the same time ingenuously confessed his intention of sending it to the winds. The enemy had extorted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... if stung. "I beg you won't do anything of the sort!" he said with vehemence. "I don't want your good wishes. I would rather be without them. I may be a hare-brained fool. I won't deny it. But as for you—you are a blackguard—the worst sort of blackguard! I hope I shall ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... de sunny shed Was mighty proud of his pethy head, So he nuver pondered or studied or trained, An' now he's ol' an' rattle-brained. An' he ain't by 'isself in dat, in dat— An' he ain't by 'isself ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... a violet I'd think it a shame To be always so simple and modest and tame, To be hidden away like a hermit or nun While the hare-brained pink roses can dance in the sun! But consider the naughty wild ways of the rose— There must be respectable flowers, ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar
... I was called away immediately after I had performed that crazy operation on your friend. I have spent the intervening four years in India, China, Tibet, Siberia, the South Seas, and God knows where not. But wasn't that a most absurd, hare-brained experiment that I tried on your friend! Still, it was all that could have been done. I have dropped all that nonsense long ago. It is better, for more reasons than one, to let them die at once. Poor fellow! he bore it so bravely! Did he suffer ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... his student days, and later, being retained at the university, Yarchenko had led the most wanton and crack-brained life. In all the taverns, cabarets, and other places of amusement his small, fat, roundish little figure, his rosy cheeks, puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and the shining, humid kindly eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech and shrill ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... employer's humor to befriend and defend him in private, but to his face assume, with the most delicate irony, that this marvel among men was always late, forgetful, rattle-brained, and credulous. And it was Levy's gift to play up to this assumption, to hang on his employer's words with breathless anxiety, to relax into a paternal smile when safe, and to support his omelets and his delays with oaths and circumlocutions ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... like an Edison or a Roosevelt, seem to be constructed after the manner of a searchlight. All their energy may be turned in one direction and all the rest of the world disregarded. Others are what we call scatter- brained. They are unable to attend completely to any one thing. They respond constantly to stimulation in the environment and to ideas which seem to "pop ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... action, like other minds, within the limits of its personal sympathies, though these sympathies in him were keener, quicker, and more general than in other men of genius. He was a great-hearted, broad-brained person, but still a person, and not what Coleridge calls him, an "omnipresent creativeness." Whatever he could sympathize with, he could embody and vitally represent; but his sympathies, though wide, were far from being universal, and when he was indifferent or hostile, the dramatist ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Sancho Panza, who, with the most contemptible qualities, contrives to keep a strong hold on our interest by the kindness of his nature and his shrewd understanding. He is far too shrewd a person, indeed, to make it natural for him to have followed so crack-brained a master unless bribed by the promise of a substantial recompense. He is a personification, as it were, of the popular wisdom—a "bundle of proverbs," as his master somewhere styles him; and proverbs are the most compact form ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... among the hell-hounds that growl in the kennel of justice; but we made a shift to collect a little money in the family amongst us, with which to keep us together; my brother and I took a neighbouring farm. My brother wanted my hare-brained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness; but in good sense, and every sober qualification, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... The months preceding his departure were like a hateful dream. It had been a dearly cherished hope that, after breathing his native air for a few weeks, he would return the same frank, clear-eyed, clear-brained man that had won his way, even among strangers, after the wreck and ruin of the war. To him their thoughts had turned daily, in the hope of release from toil that was often torture, and from anxieties that filled every waking ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... pause, seeing that his efforts met with no response. 'D—-n that child! You used to have some pluck, Horner.' Horner shook his head and made no answer, but his very silence was a point gained. He no longer protested nor raised any objection to his companion's hare-brained scheme. The thing was feasible, and ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... had preserved her letters of the old school-days. She had burnt his. But she had not burnt the letters of Mr. Morsfield; and she cared nothing for that man. Assuredly she merited the stigma branding women as crack-brained. Yet she was not one of the fools; she could govern a household, and she liked work, she had the capacity for devotedness. So, therefore, she was a woman perverted by her position, and she shook her bonds in revolt from marriage. Imagining a fall down some suddenly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Orleans and gave lessons to Dolores Bastida and made love to her on the sly and got her to run away with him—poor silly thing. When I think it all over I seem to piece things out and see how Mercedes came to be what she is. Her mother was just as sweet and loving as she could be, but scatter-brained and hot-tempered. And Pavelek was a mighty mean man and a mighty bad man, too, a queer, tricky, sly sort of man; but geniusy, with very attractive manners. Mercedes has got his eyes and his way of laughing; she shows her teeth just like he used to do when he laughed. Well, he took Dolores ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the Rosary Church, and within a hundred yards of the Grotto, there is this little room, filled with keen-eyed doctors from every school of faith and science, who have only to present their cards and be made free of all that Lourdes has to show. They are keen-brained as well as keen-eyed. I heard one of them say quietly that if the Mother of God, as it appeared, cured incurable cases, it was hard to deny to her the power of curing curable cases also. It does not prove, that is to say, that a cure is not miraculous, if it might have been cured ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... arose out of the covers of the island, and some twenty savages, horrible in their paint and the other devices of Indian ingenuity, rushed forward, eager to secure the coveted scalps. Arrowhead was foremost, and it was his tomahawk that brained the insensible Jennie; and her reeking hair was hanging at his girdle as a trophy in less than two minutes after she had quitted the blockhouse. His companions were equally active, and M'Nab and his soldiers no longer ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... will remark a deficiency of spectres and enchantments, and complain that the whole is rather dull. Cultivated free-thinkers, again, well knowing that no ghosts or elves exist in this country, will smile at the crack-brained dreamer, with his spelling-book prose and doggerel verse, and dismiss him good-naturedly as a German Lake poet." "In these works," says Heine, "there reigns a mysterious intenseness, a peculiar sympathy with ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was one of that crazy-brained quality, to whom it is a misfortune to be fortunate. The least dram of success would intoxicate and make him fool hardy. He could never bring himself to believe, as he used to say, that "lord Cornwallis would dare to ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Of a hare-brained half-mad fellow who ran a great risk of being put to death by being hanged on a gibbet in order to injure and annoy the Bailly, justices, and other notables of the city of Troyes in Champagne by whom he was mortally hated, as will appear ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... and of every party, if I failed to take advantage of it, and thus to present to the envious world the proud spectacle of an Englishman honoured by the great French nation. I will narrate the matter as briefly as is consistent with my respect for accuracy, and with my contempt for the tapioca-brained nincompoops who snarl, and chatter, and cackle at me in the organ of Mr. J. Last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... warned to handle them with tact and to suffer no straggling on the part of his troopers; and advised to place himself in the hands of Mr. Bearsley for all that related to the purchase of the cattle. Let it be admitted at once that had Sir Robert Craufurd been acquainted with Mr. Butler's feather-brained, irresponsible nature, he would have selected any officer rather than our lieutenant to command that expedition. But the Irish Dragoons had only lately come to Pinhel, and the general ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... rumor that a great battle was approaching ran through the ranks, and they said that all that had passed was only a trial to see how the recruits would act under fire. One may imagine the reflections of a thoughtful man under such circumstances, among such hare-brained fellows as Furst, Zebede, and Klipfel, who seemed to rejoice at the prospect, as if it could bring them aught else than bullet-wounds or sabre-cuts. All night long I thought of Catharine, and prayed God to preserve my life and my hands, which are so needful ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... relation to external things. The faculties of the various species are very different, but the happiness of each depends on the harmony there may be between its particular faculties and its particular circumstances. For instance, place the small-brained sheep or ox in a good pasture, and it fully enjoys this harmony of relation; but man, having many more faculties, cannot be thus contented. Besides having a sufficiency of food and bodily comfort, he must have entertainment for his intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... Philopoemen, considering those light-armed men would be easily repelled, went first to the king's officers to make them sensible what the occasion required. But they not minding what he said, but slighting him as a hare-brained fellow, (as indeed he was not yet of any repute sufficient to give credit to a proposal of such importance,) he charged with his own citizens, and at the first encounter disordered, and soon after put the troops to flight with great slaughter. Then, to encourage the king's army ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the time George was dressed he had put his position into these words—these feather-brained, corky, preposterous words: "By gum!" said George, brushing his hair, "by gum! I'm in ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... nothing of the measures proposed against the others; his own conscience will no doubt tell him that his failure is one of the causes of my no longer desiring any messages from him. I have other means of gaining information, as I have one of the medical students who follow that cracked-brained fellow, John de Troyes, in my pay. Hitherto I have not employed him largely, but shall now, if need be, avail myself of his services. But I do not think that I shall have any occasion to do so. After the demand by the Parisians for so many nobles and gentlemen to be arrested, it will be ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... have been done for a comparatively small amount, some hare-brained Socialists suggested that the town should buy the Gas Works, but the project was wrecked by the inhabitants, upon whom the mere mention of the word Socialist had the same effect that the sight of a red rag is popularly supposed to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Billy—dear hot-headed impulsive young Billy; and Ronald, knowing it, feels guilty also. Poor little Billy, who was as a son to Michael! There was no mistaking the emotion in his face just now, when I merely laid my hand on his. Oh, impetuous scatter-brained boy!... Dear heavens! I wish he wouldn't hand me ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... You needn't jump, and look as though the house was on fire. It's the solemn truth, and I never dreamed that he cared for Rachel until he married her. Mind you, he never pretended to love me. It is every bit one-sided, and I don't care if it is. I am glad that a frivolous, shallow-minded, rattle-brained thing like me had sense enough to fall in love with the most glorious man that ever came into her life. I shouldn't have made him half as good a wife as Rachel does—I really feel as if they were made for each other—but ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... Strong-hearted and strong-brained, Donal had yet stood absorbed as if he too were out of the body, and knew nothing more of this earth. There is something more terrible in a presence that is not a presence than in a vision of the bodiless; that is, a present ghost is not so terrible as an absent one, a present but deserted ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Webb was deeply moved, and fortunately he talked long enough to give his brother time to regain his self-control. Webb did congratulate him in a way that was entirely satisfactory, and then bundled him out of the room in the most summary manner, saying, "Because you are a hare-brained lover, you shouldn't keep sane people awake any longer." It were hard to say, however, who was the less sane that night, Webb or Burt. The former threw open his window, and gazed at the moonlit mountains in long, deep ecstasy. Unlike ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... manifested in Scotland against the proposed measure that it was abandoned. The relief act excited discontent in England, and protestant fanatics, encouraged by the success of their party in Scotland, agitated for its repeal. A protestant association was formed, a crack-brained member of parliament, Lord George Gordon, was made president, and a petition for the repeal of the act was signed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... (Rom 14:23; Heb 11:6). This now puts him more out; this is a taking of his gods away from him. This is to strip him of his raiment, such as it is, and to turn him naked into the presence of God. This, I say, puts him out and out. These wild-brained fellows, quote he, are never content, they find fault with us as to our state; they find fault with us as to our works, our best works. They blame us because we are sinners, and they find fault ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and with his glass Thurstane could distinguish the horizontal lines of building. The trail made straight for the pueblos, but it was almost impassable to wagons, and progress was very slow. It was all the slower because of the weakness of the mules, which throughout all this hair-brained journey had been severely worked, and of ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... as these ancestral ones. They probably embodied the traditionary peculiarities of their whole line of progenitors, derived through an unbroken succession of eggs; or else this individual Chanticleer and his two wives had grown to be humorists, and a little crack-brained withal, on account of their solitary way of life, and out of sympathy for Hepzibah, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... just estimate of the labors of the socialist schools, it would be necessary to make a bold and straightforward inquiry into the object of their studies, and to discern, in the midst of mad-brained and guilty dreams, whatever flashes of light might disclose some prophetic vision of the future. This is no task of ours. It is enough for us to remark that in France, as also in the other countries of Europe, the negation of God discovers itself in this order of ideas. It discovers ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... said the shipbroker, with a half-indulgent, half-humorous glance. "Anything to get rid of you. It's a crack-brained scheme, and could only originate with a young man whose affections have weakened ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... weren't readers anyway—they were publishers. He had almost forgotten that. Inciters to violence, instigators of strife, polluters of the mind ... Good Lord, he was beginning to sound like crack-brained ex-Senator Arnold! ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... have provided a worthy theatre, one which should suggest to a poet a worthy theme. There, alas! is my great lack—I have no poet. How wastefully on those who need them not are the most precious gifts bestowed! My uncle and godfather, Cardinal Ippolito—the saints rest his soul!—was a dull-brained barbarian and yet he had attached to his service that pearl of poets Ariosto, whom he had neither the intelligence to appreciate nor the justice to reward. What think you was Ariosto's meed for dedicating to his patron the Orlando Furioso? He was made governor ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... 'Alas, the affection cherished by your weeping selves that are overwhelmed with grief for your deceased child has been lessened by that light-brained vulture. Even this must be the case, since in consequence of his well-applied words fraught with tranquillity and capable of producing conviction, there that one goes back to the town, casting off affection that is so difficult ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... set his beard against their boyish frolickings, and often held forth like an oracle concerning the vanity thereof. Indeed, at times he was wont to talk philosophy to his ancient companions—the old sheet-anchor-men around him—as well as to the hare-brained tenants of the fore-top, and the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... indifferent, others he had known only socially. Yet others had withdrawn themselves from him more and more of late. He had attributed it to their envy or their folly. He suddenly thought of old Dr. Templeton. He had always ignored that old man as a sort of crack-brained creature who had not been able to keep up with the world, and had been left stranded, doing the work that properly belonged to the unsuccessful. Curiously enough, he was the one to whom the unhappy man now turned. Besides, he was ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears, and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hair-brained vein of homefelt truth! What choice venom! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters! How we skimmed the cream of criticism! How we picked out the marrow of authors! Need I go over the names? They were but the old, everlasting set —Milton ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... that rang over the valley, shrill above the thunder of hoofs, the shriek and scream of terrified squaws, the shouts of astonished braves. Away like the wind went the streaming swarm of ponies, in mad flight for the north! Away like scatter-brained rabbits, darting hither and thither in the firelight, rushing madly to shelter, leaping from the "bench" to the sandy bottom below, scurrying in wild panic anywhere, everywhere, went warriors, women, and children; for, close ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... your point of view," he said, roughly, then struck his palm with closed fist. "What an idiot I was to begin all this—to think I could win with no weapons and no aid except a half-mad fisherman, an addle-brained ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... and by showing that the dreaded British regulars were not invincible. No foe would, at Saratoga or Monmouth, see the backs of the men who had covered the redcoats' retreat from the field of Braddock's death, scaled the abatis of Louisburg, or brained Dieskau's regulars on the parapet of Fort ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Pasquale was a shallow-brained, clownish fellow, and after saddling up, as he led the coyote into the open to mount, he imitated a drunken vaquero. Tipsily admonishing the horse in Spanish to behave himself, he vaulted into the saddle and clouted his mount over the head with ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... that night he seemed; But at his desk he had the look And air of one who wisely schemed, And hostage from the future took In trained thought and lore of book. Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he Shall Freedom's young apostles be, Who, following in War's bloody trail, Shall every lingering wrong assail; All chains from limb and spirit strike, Uplift the black and white alike; Scatter before their swift advance The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... together, P. Sybarite crouched, quivered, jumped for glory and the Saints—and all but brained himself on that impish and trickish grating. Clutching it and kicking footloose, he was stunned by the wonder of many brilliant new-born constellations swirling round his poor head to the thunderous music of the spheres, as rendered by the ash-can which, displaced ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... came slowly up the path, rang the bell, chattered to the servant, left cards, and retired. Without much trouble I could have brained them with the brassie-spoon as they passed beneath me. But some odd impulse of chivalry restrained me. It is blunders like these that have wrecked the plans of the greatest generals. Just as they opened the gate who should appear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... a citizen of the best and freest country on earth to be making common cause with a lot of crack-brained theorists who would replace constitutional government by the "Lion's Mouth" and the "Council of Ten"—a world ruled by a secret terror. But it seemed all right at the time. What was my life or any one man's life to the progress of civilization? It ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of Raffaello. [1] I had invited them without restraint or ceremony to the place of our meeting, and they were all laughing and joking, as is natural when a crowd of men come together to make merry on so great a festival. It chanced that a light-brained swaggering young fellow passed by; he was a soldier of Rienzo da Ceri, who, when he heard the noise that we were making, gave vent to a string of opprobrious sarcasms upon the folk of Florence. [2] I, who was the host of those great ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... your forty years' work shows some. Your Mrs. Buchanan is what I call a finished product of a wife. I'll never do it in the world. I can get up and talk a jury into seeing things my way, but I get cross-brained when I go to put things to Phoebe. That reminds me, that case on old Jim Cross for getting tangled up with some fussy hens in Latimer's hen-house week before last is called for to-day at twelve sharp. I'm due to put the old body through and pay the fine and costs; only the third time this ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... could answer only to ideas which a cultured man was scarcely supposed to harbor in his mind. "Magic," a synonym for jugglery; "Sorcery," an equivalent for crass ignorance; and "Occultism," the sorry relic of crack-brained, medieval Fire-philosophers, of the Jacob Boehmes and the St. Martins, are expressions believed more than amply sufficient to cover the whole field of "thimble-rigging." They are terms of contempt, and used generally only in reference to the dross and residues of the Dark Ages and its preceding ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... good swimmer, into a lake; but, like a blockhead, never perceived that I should get stunned by the shelving of the rock, and consequently drowned. And for what, truly? Why to prove to a vapouring, crack-brained French Count, that he was a coward; because perhaps he had not learned to swim! When I look back I have absolutely no patience ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... one of the Selkirk settlers of 1812—no doubt of some Scotch gillie or shepherd. Such a person, in England, would have no claim whatever to the intimate society of Elizabeth Merton. Yet here she was alone, really without protection—for what use was this young, scatter-brained brother?—herself only twenty-seven, and so charming? so much prettier than she had ever seemed to be at home. It was a dangerous situation—a situation to which she ought not to have been exposed. Delaine had ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you are a crack-brained jackanapes, with your damned fantastics!" bellowed Mac, angry in his turn. "What do you mean,—you, who are a perfect little saint in your life,—what do you mean by thrusting all these foul heresies at me, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... that balcony. Gazing with hollow eyes, he tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but solitude. To the mortmain ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... his native country, had been a hairdresser, then a soldier in Prussia, and then had come to Russia to be "outchitel," without very well knowing the meaning of this word.[3] He was a good creature, but wonderfully absent and hare-brained. His greatest weakness was a love of the fair sex. Neither, as he said himself, was he averse to the bottle, that is, as we say in Russia, that his passion was drink. But, as in our house the wine only appeared at table, and then only in liqueur glasses, and as on these ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... extravagances of wickedness and debaucheries; there are so many sober extravagances, and so many grave sedate ways for a tradesman's ruin, and they are so much more dangerous than those hair-brained desperate ways of gaming and debauchery, that I think it is the best service I can do the tradesmen to lay before them those sunk rocks (as the seamen call them), those secret dangers in the first place, that they may know how to avoid them; ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... hindered men to run with the herd—even to have friends. It wasted time and strength. And these people were no good anyhow. Howard was one of these dissipated duffers who later on would settle down as a miraculously respectable and incapable G.P. The rest were vague, rattle-brained eccentrics who would fizzle out, no one would know how ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... heat: but heat's no stuff to split a stone Like this black boulder—this flint heart of mine: the Book— That dealt the crashing blow! Sirs, here's the fist that shook His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just-lugged bear! You had brained me with a feather: at once I grew aware Christmas was meant for me. A burden at your back, Good Master Christmas? Nay,—yours was that Joseph's sack, —Or whose it was,—which held the cup,—compared with mine! Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine, Adultery ... nay, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... were walking downstairs for a look at the other floors of the big tailor shop when the noon whistle blew. R-r-rip—slam—bang! A torrent of rattle-brained boys came tearing pell mell down the stairs like a waterfall over a dam. Most of them came pelting down three steps at a jump, but on one of the landings somebody stumbled, and the yelling boys piled up in a squirming, ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... mine," old Izan grumbled, "'tis the brat of a scatter-brained woman—Kate, wife to Howel the mason. She came screeching at me saying the babe was a changeling I had left in place of her child of two years, and I should care for it. I have no mind for the tending of babes at my time of life, but I could not let the creature starve. Natheless ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... this long interval, Balboa had not been idle. A singular change had taken place in his character. He had entered upon the adventure in his famous barrel on Encisco's ship as a reckless, improvident, roisterous, careless, hare-brained scapegrace. Responsibility and opportunity had sobered and elevated him. While he had lost none of his dash and daring and brilliancy, yet he had become a wise, a prudent and a most successful captain. Judged by the high standard of the modern times, Balboa was {35} cruel and ruthless enough ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... SSE, however, would not risk a tenth-piece of the company's money on such a bird-brained scheme. Himself a Gunther First, he believed implicitly that Firsts were in fact tops in Gunther ability; that these few self-styled "Operators" and "Prime Operators" were either charlatans or self-deluded crackpots. Since he could not feel that so-called "Operator Field," ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... a giddy mood, as she is eminently to-night, she would make no scruple of laughing at that mild, pensive Queen, or that melancholy King. She is not actuated by malevolence, but sheer, heedless folly. To a feather-brained school-girl ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... that particular memorandum into the fire. But as for Palmerston, he never even gave one so much as a chance to read him a memorandum, he positively seemed to dislike discussion; and, before one knew where one was, without any warning whatever, he would plunge into some hare-brained, violent project, which, as likely as not, would logically involve a European war. Closely connected, too, with this cautious, painstaking reasonableness of Albert's, was his desire to examine questions thoroughly from every point of view, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... of revenues and the sale of offices and appointments, which the Philippine government always confides to private persons. Thus, at the time of the events here narrated, Capitan Tiago was a happy man in so far as it is possible for a narrow-brained individual to be happy in such a land: he was rich, and at peace with God, the government, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... thing! Of course she must marry. Since it had been plain to him that she would never listen to his own suit, this great-hearted and clear-brained man had done his best to stifle in himself all small or grasping impulses. But this fellow—with his inferior temper and morale—alack! why are the clever women ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a fortune-hunter. I should have thought that he was a young beggar who wished to get hold of the girl he fancies, and that's all. Still, you know him best, and I dare say you are right. Anyway, for your own peculiar and crack-brained reasons, you don't want this business, and I say at once you can't want it less than I do. Do you suppose that I wish to see my only child, who will have half a million of money and might be a countess, or half a dozen ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Their names would carry in the journals. He perceived that he was thirsty and he drank, one after the other, three glasses of water; then he began to walk again. He felt himself full of energy. By showing himself hot-brained, resolute in all things, by exacting rigorous, dangerous conditions, and by claiming a serious duel, a very serious one, his adversary would doubtless ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... head, and you, Lionel, looking as pale and thin as if you had gone through a long illness. I told your father when we heard of your going that you ought to be brought back and whipped; but the earl talked him over into writing to Captain Francis to tell him that he approved of this mad brained business, and a nice ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said, "I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death itself." In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of an hour's time. "He answered, 'He must confess it was a rash action in him to kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... brand-new automobile for his personal convenience. The old auto had broken down. The manufacturer shrugged his shoulders. The mystery was that it had lasted as long as it did. He had expected it to explode the first day. The idea had originally been that of the junior partner, a scatter-brained youth whom at times they humoured. Meanwhile, there being no beplacarded and beflagged automobile, there could be no advertisement; therefore they had no further use ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Parliament at Westminster, or of the King's Council at Oxford or wherever he happened to be. They were published sometimes twice and even three times a week. The political pamphlets were bitter and scurrilous attacks by each party against the other, or the hare-brained prophecies of so-called astrologers, such as William Lilly, George Wharton, and John Gadbury. These two classes formed more than half the printed literature of those unhappy times, and the remainder of the output of the press was ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... waters, and a free life under vertical suns—India, the Spanish Main, the ports of the Mediterranean. He talked so much of going to sea that his father saw that his shop was not the place for this large-brained boy ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... sixteenth century. The great men of the eighteenth century, however, devoted themselves almost exclusively to science; and the artists of the time were too insincere, too intent upon pleasing shallow-brained and frivolous courtiers, to produce much that was worth while. Great numbers of plays were written, it is true, but they were hopelessly dull imitations of classic models. Imitative and uninspired likewise ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... thoughts of terror on a morning like this, with Lys in the saddle beside me, no matter what had happened or might happen was impossible. Moreover, Mome came sneaking after us. I asked Tregunc to catch him, for I was afraid he might be brained by our horses' hoofs if he followed, but the wily puppy dodged and bolted after Lys, who was trotting along the highroad. "Never mind," I thought; "if he's hit he'll live, for he has no ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... people become like philosophers. In the meantime, it is the height of moral and political folly to act as if that day had arrived or else could be ushered in by morning. Spinoza had nothing but contempt for facile-tongued, feather-brained Utopians. He loved humanity too sincerely to mislead humanity or himself that way. And so we find in Spinoza's Ethics as in his Tractatus two systems of morals—one for the many who are called, and one for the few who ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza |
