"Idiotically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with impatience, to freeze our feet in the mud, to be numbed, and roasted, and torn by false hopes. We must go, on the faith of a mere indication, to a vague object, miss our end, curse our luck, improvise to ourselves elegies, dithyrambics, exclaim idiotically before inoffensive pedestrians who observe us, knock over old apple-women and their baskets, run hither and thither, stand on guard beneath a window, make a thousand suppositions. But, after all, it is a chase, a hunt; a hunt in Paris, a hunt with all its ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... playfulness somewhere expressed about her. Just now it was most definite in the look she bent upon the light and fluffy burden which she carried nestled in the inner curve of her right arm: a tiny dog with hair like cotton and a pink ribbon round his neck—an animal sated with indulgence and idiotically unaware of his ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... and his cousin swam before him in a golden mist. He felt that he was grinning idiotically, yet he could not stop. He tried to speak, but his lips seemed too swollen to form words. He put out his hand to grasp a chair, and perceived that he ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... people we were getting away from," finished Lotty. "It's quite true. It seems idiotically illogical. But I'm so happy, I'm so well, I feel so fearfully wholesome. This place—why, it makes me feel flooded ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Dinah, her voice squeaking on a note half-indignant, half-piteous. "I—I behaved so idiotically, just like a raw schoolgirl. And I hate myself ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... red-headed, and his unkempt hair and ragged beard flamed in the sun. A rope tied round his waist kept up his loose trousers, and his shirt was open, disclosing a hairy chest. Where his skin showed, it was unexpectedly white. He kept plucking at his chest, smiling idiotically. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go. But I did. I found Miss Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly animated and pretty. The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as she turned toward me might ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... just, my good chap: I'm weakly, idiotically generous. In your heart of hearts you're grateful to me. Now let's drop all this. Nothing you can say will have the slightest effect, so you may as well not say it." He stood by Val's chair, laughing down at him and gently gripping him by the shoulder. "Be a man, Val! ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... landing-stage, putting on his red glasses as he went. His horror was complete when he found there was no craft of any kind about, not even a rowboat. Alas! I had idiotically allowed the dinghy to drift away. He ran along the shore, every now and then looking anxiously through his binoculars for any sign of any kind of boat that would get him over to Glasnabinnie in time to fulfil his promise of looking after "Ron's ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... who had then passed tranquilly on. Dizzy astonishment held him, to the exclusion of any other sentiment. He might have gasped, foolish and tottering: "Why—what's the meaning of this? What's happened?" He looked at the child uncomprehendingly, idiotically. Little by little— it seemed an age, and was in fact a few seconds—he resumed his faculties, and remembered that in order to keep a conventional self-respect he must behave in such a manner as to cause Janet to believe that her revelation of the child's identity had in no way disturbed him. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... ill and moping, for, with hands folded in the sleeves of his miserable halat, and pressed to his chest, he was shivering with cold, although the morning was warm; he did not answer Meir, but opened his mouth and great, dull, dark eyes more widely, and looked idiotically at the young man. ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... the young man idiotically, and he told her the address; then cast about for a slip of paper to write it down on, racking his thimbleful of brains all the while to make out who she could be. She wasn't one of the principals in the company. They'd all ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... handkerchief, while near hovered Miss Bredd in her most brilliant and oracular attitude. She was speaking too loudly as he entered: "There is no use of worrying yourself sick about Meg, Mrs. Fridolin. She's gone for a time—that's all. When she finds out what an idiotically useless sacrifice she has made for art and is a failure as Isolde—she can no more sing the part than a sick cat—she will run home to her ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... occasion trouble was avoided. But one day Willing, a new boy, lost his corps hat. He was certain it had been there before lunch. The Corps Parade was already falling in. Seeing no other hat to fit him, he very idiotically went on without a hat at all. It would have been far better to have cut parade altogether. Clarke asked him where his hat was, but his ideas on the subject were very nebulous. The whole corps was kept waiting ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... to save you two lads, no matter how idiotically you act or talk. I like you, in spite of your ridiculous ascetic airs and your nonsensical assumption of austerity. You can't make me angry nor lose my protection, no matter how rude and chilly you are. If you two don't appreciate ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... mare had taken her determined, long, continuous stride, the road was a straight, steady descent all the way back to the village, Chu Chu had the bit between her teeth, and there was no prospect of swerving her. We could only follow hopelessly, idiotically, furiously, until Chu Chu dashed triumphantly into the Saltellos' courtyard, carrying the half-fainting Consuelo back to the arms of her assembled ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... idiotically, "I'll see you all right, sergeant. Come, Bill, fetch him over to the corn-crib and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... She did not understand how, as a result of Simon Loggerheads falling in love with her, she had fallen in love with him. And she did not care. She did not care a fig for anything. She was in love with him, and he with her, and she was idiotically joyous, and so was ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... a criminal. He is not bad. He is a fool. He has behaved idiotically, and I can never care for him in the way I used to, but I mean to give him a chance. I'm not going to jump at his first real folly to get rid ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... you are never to think of them. Goodness knows what I should do if I did not. It's all right to think of them when you are happy and they can share the happiness with you; but, when you choose to be idiotically miserable, that's the time you are not to go whining anywhere near them—understand? You only make them unhappy and make your troubles worse. Troubles! if you can't see the fun of Mrs. Chater, you must be a wretched sort of person. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... long and happily, her head on her arms; and when Scott imagined that it would be well to comfort her, she needed nothing of the kind; she ran to her own tent; and Scott went out into the world, and smiled upon it largely and idiotically. But when Faiz Ullah brought him a drink, he found it necessary to support one hand with the other, or the good whisky and soda would have been spilled abroad. There are ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... left hand to her side as though something hurt her. The tadpole youth grinned idiotically and the barber seemed anxious to ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... be only too glad to marry him. He was proud to think he could afford to be so magnanimous. Mrs. Minor settled herself to the fact that there must be no foolish dallying. Of course Irene would see. She could not be so idiotically, so ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... "whenever you see pictures of nymphs or goddesses floating in pink clouds and looking idiotically happy, you can say to yourself: 'That is just how Clara Morris felt when Edwin Booth said she had paid him a compliment.' Yes, I floated, and I'll take a solemn oath, if necessary, that the whole theater was filled with pink clouds the rest of that night, for girls are made ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... is a crestfallen memory. A crestfallen yesterday lurks in old shoes. Shoes are always crestfallen. Even the shoes of lovers waiting under the bed weep and snivel all night. But why sit naked on the floor, stark, idiotically naked on the floor with legs thrust out like a surprised illustration in La Vie Parisienne and toes curling philosophically toward a shoe?... "I'll do as I ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... appreciably impair the ensemble of the fane. Photographs and pictures of Arras Cathedral ought to be cherished by German commanders, for they have accomplished nothing more austerely picturesque, more religiously impressive, more idiotically sacrilegious, more exquisitely futile than their achievement here. And they are adding to it weekly. As a spectacle, the Cathedral of Rheims cannot compare with ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... on me at its worst, I was not meditating suicide, as I think you imagine. I am a very average specimen of humanity,—neither brave enough to defy the possibilities of eternity nor cowardly enough to shirk those of time. No, I was only trying idiotically to persuade a girl of eighteen that life was not worth living; and more futilely still, myself, that I did not wish her to live. I am afraid, that in my mind philosophy and fact have but small connection ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... audience goes to the play with a desire to be able to see and hear what passes on the stage. This happy American discovery has not yet announced itself in Europe, where in almost every theater seats are impudently sold, and idiotically bought, from which it is impossible to see and hear what passes on the stage. (A remarkable continent, Europe!) Apart from this most important point, American theaters are not, either without or within, very ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... shook so idiotically that it was impossible for a time to tell if the man's heart was beating. All at once a wave of hot fury rushed over her—fury at the cowardliness of the assault—and the vertigo passed. She laid her palm firmly over Johnny Two-Hawks' heart. Alive! He was alive! She straightened his body ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... it, though Miss Chatterton's style was more showy, Mrs. Fazakerly had played by far the better game of the two. Durant, who had regarded himself as a trump card up Mrs. Fazakerly's sleeve, perceived with a pang that he had counted for nothing in the final move. Mrs. Fazakerly had not, as he idiotically supposed, been greatly concerned with Frida Tancred's attitude toward him. She had divined nothing, imagined nothing, she had been both simpler and subtler than he knew. She had desired the removal of Frida Tancred from her path, and at the right ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... to-morrow and have it in for us," said the Gutter Pup, chortling. "But never mind, it was worth it. Did you ever see anything as idiotically solemn as Tacks Brooker? When he arrives they ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... use. She struck a wrong note. Her hands trembled and lost their grip. They stiffened, dropped from the keys. She sat and stared idiotically at the white page, at the black dots nodding on their stems, ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... neither he nor others seem to have appreciated the colour of the music-hall. It is the most delicate of all essences of pleasure, and we owe it to the free hand that is given to the limelight man. You get, perhaps, a girl in white, singing horribly or dancing idiotically, but she is dancing in white against a deep blue curtain filigreed with silver, and the whole flooded in amber light. And yet there are those who find ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Dudley, and Macartney and the others believed my story; but everything else at La Chance began to go crooked, and every one's nerves got edgy. Marcia was unpleasantly silent, except when Macartney was there, when she sat in his pocket and they talked low like lovers,—only that I was always idiotically nervous they might be talking about Paulette Brown. That was seldom enough though, for half the time Macartney never showed up, even for meals. He was working like ten men over the mine, and good, solid, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... his amazement, for Mona the dignified, Mona of the scornful eyes and the chilly smile, actually giggled—giggled like any ordinary girl, and shot him a glance that had in it pure mirth and roguish teasing, and a dash of coquetry. He sat down and giggled with her, feeling idiotically happy and for no reason under the ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... with, life without, him. The immensity of the contrast, the millions of airy miles between those two life-worlds, appalled him, for it revealed to him what mighty issues of joy and grief hung upon the almost visionary thin thread of one little life. It is ghastly to be so idiotically dependent. Yet who, at some time, is not? And those who are independent lose, by their power, their possible Paradise. But such a time of uncertainty as that which Julian must now endure is a great penalty to pay for even the greatest joy, when the joy ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... greatly agitated. He kept on walking to and fro in a small empty space surrounded by a circle of piled-up furniture, at which he hit out idiotically, at the risk of ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... the strangers bore a singular resemblance to "Christy Minstrels" in their blackened faces and attitudes that somehow made them seem less awful. In particular, Polly was impressed with the fact that even the most ferocious had a certain kindliness of eye, and showed their teeth almost idiotically. ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... sweet-meats flung into her lap between mealtimes. There was no harm in it all; they were only sweets! But at last one evening there only remained a single little wood. She swallowed it up disdainfully, as it was hardly worth the trouble opening one's mouth for. La Faloise laughed idiotically and sucked the top of his stick. His debts were crushing him; he was not worth a hundred francs a year, and he saw that he would be compelled to go back into the country and live with his maniacal uncle. But that did not matter; ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... kind and jolly self that Charlie had almost forgotten the black crow. At this check, and the barren prospect opening out beyond, he remembered it, and felt a vicious little desire to pay her back for the pin she had stuck into him under, as she idiotically supposed, an impenetrable disguise. He went away, as has been ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Rose, determined not to be offended, "I was only relieving the poor Misses Stone of a painful necessity. I am sure they have never put any dependence on me since the day I broke down—I grant you idiotically. I cannot stand the repression—suppression—whatever you like to call it. Now that there is a way out of it, I have felt like a wild beast in the school—the girls are so very tame—so much tamer than we were at Miss Burridge's—where I was not a black sheep—May will tell you if you care to ask ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... was little more than a child, then," she said to herself. "Surely I must have been born wicked. My dear father was living then; and even the thought of his love did not comfort me. I felt myself abandoned and alone in the world. How idiotically fond I must have been of Rorie. Ever so many years have come and gone, and I have not cured myself of this folly. What is there in him that ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... great deal, and not only usefully but delightfully, about different religious sects and against the most illiberal Church to which he belongs—but how could I be happy? The more he talked of what I wished to hear, the more idiotically shy I felt and the more impossible it became to me to ask one of the many questions or make one of the many remarks (foolish very likely, but what would that have signified?) ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... or six years ago, I think—maybe more; time skips along. Ann Apperthwaite's no chicken, you know." (Such was the lady's expression.) "They got engaged just after she came home from college, and of all the idiotically ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes to tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her long back being mathematically level. The other was spotted, grey and white. Beside her Oak now noticed a little calf about a day old, looking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning to the lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon, inherited instinct having as yet had little time for correction by experience. Between ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... calmed down, carried his swag to the side of the track, sat down on it and talked rationally about bush matters for a while; but presently he grew silent and began to feel his muscles and smile idiotically. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... which had never done anything of the sort except under stimulus of the horseradish which he ate in quantities off quick-lunch counters, could smart to tears at the thought of her. And over the emotions which she stirred in him, and which he could not translate, he became facetious—idiotically so. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... and called the waiter; at sight of whom my friend said he had talked himself thirsty, and asked for another glass of water. He mentioned that he had brought his car over with him: his little daughter (by the news of whose existence I felt idiotically surprised) was very keen on motoring, and they were all three starting the day after to-morrow on a little tour through France. Afterward they were going on to Switzerland "for some climbing." Did I care about motoring? If so, we might go for a spin after luncheon, to Rouen or somewhere. ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... Ethelrida's face! Did you ever see one so idiotically blissful, except when she has been kissed by ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... she had abandoned this very arm and hand to the white-haired ruffian. It rendered me gloomy and idiotically obstinate. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... or open spaces; profit which won't take the most ordinary precautions against wrapping a whole district in a cloud of sulphurous smoke; which turns beautiful rivers into filthy sewers; which condemns all but the rich to live in houses idiotically cramped and confined at the best, and at the worst in houses for whose wretchedness ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... her directly. "Oh, I was, you know. Otherwise, I guess I should have written. I was idiotically happy. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... very name of them had become a weariness to him. The whole agitation, with its dim confused scufflings against law and order, and its demonstrations idiotically recurring at the most inopportune moments, had profoundly vexed him. Years ago he had received the bland assurance of his ministers that the whole thing would soon die down and cease; but it was still going on, and was now taking to itself ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... "Why, I must be quite idiotically in love to think of letting that Book perish!" And I viciously added: ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... was thinking idiotically. Of course if everything was taken from you and sold, you would have no clothes at all, and wardrobes and drawers and closets would not matter. The realization that scarcely anything in the house had been paid for came home to her with a ghastly shock. She staggered ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... chains at Tishy's motor-wheel, found that among his former allies of the hunt things were not as they once had been, and was not pleased. Singularly enough, Judith alone was faithful found among the faithless. She declared that Larry had been brutally and idiotically treated, and that this engagement was the result, and justified all that she had been saying for many past ages. When Larry appeared at the Meet, his scalp-lock prominent among Miss Mangan's furs, Judith alone of his former intimates ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... he thinks otherwise. The sweet carelessness, the all-satisfying joy in the present that once was his, has now in his hour of need proved false, and, flying, leaves but a dull unrest in its place. He has fallen madly, gladly, idiotically in love with ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... half ran to her, white and panting, both hands outstretched: and deserting Lenox, she flew to him, anathematising her own folly in a rapid flow of French. "Take me to my tent now," she concluded, linking her arm in his. "I still feel idiotically shaky, and I am certainly no loss to my side!—Mr Bathurst"—she turned in Jeff's direction—"please forgive me. I promise I'll never ask you to lend me a polo ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... solitude of her last few hours of freedom; oblivious of the fact that her aunt, enraged and alarmed at the unseemly and most untimely absence of the morrow's bride, was idiotically wringing her hands as she ran up and down in front of the cottage; worn out and weary with despair, Leonie, in her bathing dress, had gone to sleep with the full moon shining down upon the small, pale ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Conny called Margaret's husband, Mr. Lawrence Pole. Larry, as he was known in his flourishing days when he loafed in brokers' offices, and idiotically dribbled away his own fortune and most of his wife's, rarely earned a better word than this epithet. "She ought to leave him—divorce him—get rid of such rubbish somehow," Conny continued with unwonted heat, as the tired motor chugged up the steep Westchester hillside on its way to Dudley ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... next in order Big John and Kwaque, with Daughtry (Cocky still perched on his shoulder) at stroke. On top of the dunnage, in the sternsheets, Michael gazed wistfully at the Mary Turner and continued to snarl crustily at Scraps who idiotically wanted to start a romp. The Ancient Mariner stood up at the steering sweep and gave the order, when all was ready, for the first dip of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... know, I feel too idiotically happy to say anything. I feel I want to talk poetry, or rot like that, only—only I don't quite know how ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... momentarily expecting a 'phone call, a telegram was brought to me in the ballroom, where I was sitting out some new-fangled thing everybody seemed idiotically wild over. The envelope was addressed to me all right, but I couldn't make head or tail of what was inside until suddenly it popped into my head that you'd been absent-minded and mixed Storm and me. It seemed almost too bad to be true. And worse than all, Storm was ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... all human beings thus idiotically ignore the fact that it is with screws they have to deal. It is very touching to see, as we sometimes see, people trying to make the best of awful screws. You are quite pleased if your lame horse ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... got rid of an appalling young man, whom my husband asked out of sheer pity: a schoolmaster, who'd come here for his health and inadvertently turned gambler. At first he won. He used to haunt my tea-parties, which, as we're idiotically good-natured, are often half made up of criminals and frumps. Extraordinarily congenial they are, too! The criminals are flattered to meet the frumps, and the frumps find the criminals thrilling. This ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... confess I am very happy here. Certainly there are times when one feels rather as if one had dropped off the world into space, but it doesn't take long to struggle through it. But then, of course, it is well to remember that Billy and I are rather an exceptional couple; quite absurdly, idiotically satisfied with each other's company. If it were not so our lives would be purgatory. The tragedies of these far countries are for the husbands and wives isolated from all other companionship, and having perhaps nothing in common with each other. There are few conditions worse than isolation ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... had thrown his name like a gauntlet to humanity, and humanity had stared idiotically at it and never guessed its meaning. Vespa was a good Italian name. Jack didn't know what it meant, but he supposed that it had the same meaning as the Latin. He remembered it from ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... Roy, reappearing, felt idiotically convinced that every eye was on the little spot of yellow in his button-hole that linked him publicly with the girl who wore a cluster of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... out idiotically. Handcuffs! They seemed the most incongruous things in the world for the Adventurer to have, and—She felt mechanically in his pocket, and handed them ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... cheer again, each after the manner of the character he had assumed. The ass brayed, the owl hooted, the ghost groaned. The ape leaped on the back of the throne whereon the young man still sat, and seized him by the hair, chattering idiotically after the manner of apes, and began to wag his head back and forth. In the midst of the uproar Demosthenes stepped forward and took the envelopes from the palette, and, tearing them open, began reading them aloud by the light of a candle held for him ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... ungovernable way through all my senses. So far, I just caught a glimpse of a full, rather pale, face behind the veil, and a high bosom that curved out against her cape. The thought of all the hidden beauty which I surmised lay sheltered under the cloak and veil bewildered me, making me idiotically happy without any reasonable grounds. I could not endure it any longer; I touched her with my hand, passed my fingers over her shoulder, and ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... that night. I dreamt of actors—actors glaring, actors smiting their chests, actors flinging out a handful of extended fingers, actors smiling bitterly, laughing despairingly, falling hopelessly, dying idiotically. I got up at eleven with a slight headache, read my notice in the Fiery Cross, breakfasted, and went back to my room to shave, (It's my habit to do so.) Then an odd thing happened. I could not find ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sting of accusation, had instinctively pressed itself against his pocket. Now guiltily and self-consciously it came away and he found himself idiotically echoing his accuser's words: ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... looks wonderfully; and all the vivid interests of her girlhood cropped up again. She began to study things; to go to lectures and courses of lectures; to travel every year to a new place; to see her old friends and make new ones. She never liked to keep house, but Emma was so idiotically unselfish that she never would enjoy herself as long as there was anybody at home to give ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... had conquered Le Mire; others had surrendered to her; certainly none had ever been able to resist her. There was a satisfaction in it. I walked about the lobby of the hotel till Harry returned, idiotically pleased ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... me, looking out at my Pleasant garden, and my mind went irresistibly back to the old days and then wandered on to the present. Tom was dead: I flourished, a comfortable cumberer of the earth; Jaffery was doing something idiotically desperate somewhere or the other—he was a war-correspondent by trade (as regular an employment as that of the maker of hot-cross buns), and a desperado by predilection—I had not heard from him for a year; and now Adrian—if indeed the Adrian Boldero of the review ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... to the Baron, bent over him as if to whisper something—and when I was close enough, I spat in his ear. He sprang up and stared idiotically at me. Afterwards I saw him telling Edwarda what had occurred; I saw how disgusted she was. She thought, perhaps, of her shoe that I had thrown into the water, of the cups and glasses I had so unfortunately managed to break, and of all the other breaches of good taste I had committed; ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... with masses of apparatus from the laboratory in the Lunar Apennines. He labored lovingly, fanatically. Like most spectacular discoveries, the Dabney field was basically simple. It was almost idiotically uncomplicated. In theory it was a condition of the space just outside one surface of a sheet of metal. It was like that conduction-layer on the wires of a cross-country power-cable, when electricity is transmitted in the form ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... eyes. "Of course he didn't. He was perfectly happy. He told me he had been idiotically happy. He knew I was here, because I forwarded his letters—and that was all he cared about. I was here for—when he chose. I assure you he didn't want me at all until I showed him ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... landscape, draining gargantuan rainbows at a single gulp; striding like Paul Bunyan across the land in mile-long strides and kicking over the pyramids of crystals, laughing uproariously at the sport. And Jenner, grinning idiotically, pointing a thick finger at him and repeating over and over: "Out of their jurisdiction! Nothing to fear! Nothing to ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... brought him more fame and more wealth than the government in whom he trusted will ever give him. As a commercial man, a learned man, a military man, this choice intellect would have worked in a vast centre where his precious faculties and his ardent ambition would not be idiotically and prematurely repressed. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... down into the darkness, and then, with a brief but vigorous word, he turned and forced in his door with a crash. Two bull pups which had flown at him with portentous growls and yelps of menace now gamboled idiotically about him, writhing with anticipation of caresses, and a gray and scarlet parrot, rudely awakened, launched forth upon a musical effort resembling the song of a ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... she still love me, or had the dark night brought council and a change of heart? I knew that it hadn't. We were as definitely engaged to each other as if there was no husband in the way, no children, no law, no convention, no nothing. I was idiotically happy. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... head-clerk; he understood nothing of his business as a whole; self-interest, that great motor of the mind, had failed in his case to instruct him. He was often aghast when his sister ordered some article to be sold below cost, foreseeing the end of its fashion; later he admired her idiotically for her cleverness. He reasoned neither ill nor well; he was simply incapable of reasoning at all; but he had the sense to subordinate himself to his sister, and he did so from a consideration that was outside of the business. "She is my elder," ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... him, but he probably guessed that, because before we got into the hansom even, he had begun to put me through a searching cross-examination as to the reasons for my behavior at Tryland, and Park Street, and the opera. I felt like a child with a strong man, and every moment more idiotically happy ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... there is one subject on which girls are more idiotically ignorant than on any other, it is happiness in marriage. A courtier, a lover, a man who will not let the winds of heaven visit your face too harshly, is very nice, no doubt; but he is not a husband. I want to ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... rapidly. After dinner we sat in the twilight of that old inn and discussed the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street from a point of view from which she had probably never been discussed before. I can imagine with what scorn the idiotically puffed and bepuffed magnates of the bank would have regarded us had ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... beggar!" he shouted in the ear of the sleeping Muggins, shaking him violently by the arm as he stood upon the wheel. Muggins grunted something and smiled rather idiotically. "It was only the young gentleman's play," he would have said. Bless you! he did not mind being shaken and screamed at! He slowly turned his horses and brought the fly up to the door. John walked ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... glances full of meaning on both sides, but they never led to any advances. Insensibly this man became the object of our secret admiration, though we knew no reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits, his monastic regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically mechanical labor, allowing his mind to remain neuter or to work on his own lines, seeming to us to hint at an expectation of some stroke of good luck, or at some foregone ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... saw him he was an aged man, about ninety years old. He was seated on a kind of platform. His head shook and his eyes idiotically stared without seeing us, the result of his constant use of opium. On his neck, ears, and toes, shone precious stones, and all around were spread offerings. We had to take off our shoes before we were allowed to approach ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... scrupulously removing a particle of our sympathy from the one brother to the other, to restore it again in the next chapter, that we end with a conception of them as confusing as Mr Gilbert's conception of Hamlet, who was idiotically sane with ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... building churches they can't pay for are the most detestable nonsense to me. Can't you preach and pray behind the hedges, or in a sandpit, or in a coal-hole, first? And of all manner of churches thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damnablest to me. And of all the sects and believers in any ruling spirit—Hindoos, Turks, Feather Idolaters, and Mumbo Jumbo Log and Fire Worshippers—who want churches, your modern English Evangelical ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... as Lad was scampering ahead of her, past the stables, they rounded a corner and came flush upon the same nerve-wrecked hen and her brood. Lad halted in his scamper, with a suddenness that made him skid. Then, walking as though on eggs, he made an idiotically wide circle about the feathered dam and her silly chicks. Never thereafter did he assail any of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... crept noiselessly up the companion ladder and peeped cautiously out. Arsenic still squatted where Cabot had left him, gazing idiotically off into space. At the same time a close observer might have imagined that his beady eyes twinkled with a gleam of interest as White's head appeared above ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... all began, of course, to prattle about art. That was horrible. The women especially began to talk of Ibsen, Wagner, Tolstoy, flirtatiously, politely, boredly, or idiotically. Once the conversation had started, there was no stopping it. The disease was contagious. Christophe had to listen to the ideas of bankers, brokers, and slave-dealers on art. In vain did he refuse to speak or try to turn the conversation: they insisted on talking ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... looked about me fore-and- aft. The deck was occupied by some twenty men or so, some of whom were asleep in the lee scuppers, while others, in little groups of two and three, hung over the bulwarks, staring idiotically at the white foam that swept aft from the schooner's keen cut-water; and four, who had probably assumed the duty of looking out, staggered and lurched in pairs, holding each other on their legs, to-and-fro ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... possible, the future prospects of the weather. Having come to a satisfactory conclusion on that head, he drew forth his pipe and began to fill it, when his eye fell on the two boys, who were still sitting up in their lairs, and staring idiotically at the place where the fire had been, as if the white ashes, half-burned logs, and bits of charcoal were a sight of the most novel and interesting character, that filled ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... bitter father and the distressed lovers write the letters. Elopements are attempted. They are idiotically planned, and they fail. Then we have several pages of romantic powwow and confusion dignifying nothing. Another elopement is planned; it is to take place on Sunday, when everybody is at church. But the "hero" cannot keep the secret; he tells everybody. Another author would have ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... dear Quell, watched those little, grotesque brokers on a busy day? No? Well, you will say that no lunatic grimacing beneath the horns of the moon ever made such ludicrous, such useless, gestures. And for what? Money! Money to spend as idiotically as it is garnered. The world is crazy, I tell you, crazy, to toil as it does. How much cleverer are the apes who won't talk, because, if they did, they would be forced to abandon their lovely free life, put on ugly garments, and work ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... progressive sisters who wish to have all man's rights and privileges and keep their own besides—never seem to consider their heads but from a front point of view. In consequence, as sketch No 28 hints, a head seen from the side frequently appears, if not idiotically, very ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... mathematics that I never pressed a flower he gave me? Do you imagine that Biology kills blushing in a woman? Do you think that Philosophy keeps me from crying myself to sleep when I think he doesn't care for me, or growing idiotically glad when he tells me he does? What rubbish people write upon this subject! Even Pope proved that he was only a man when ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... look of stern determination. "I have suffered much and idiotically—but I draw a line at ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... her way from Dublin to Yokohama was the spotless queen of beauty, and Dale was frenziedly, idiotically in love with her. That was all I could gather. When he had finished, which he did somewhat abruptly, he threw himself into a chair and took out his ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... "Are you idiotically in love with this Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, or do you purpose to make use of him and his kith and kin in Rome ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I had acquired to the coat-tail of a local bank manager who, though on her side, had lately distinguished himself by a public denouncement of "Women's Rights," so savagely virulent and idiotically tyrannous in principle as to suggest that his household contained representatives of the "shrieking sisterhood," who had been one too many for him. The boys who saw the joke enjoyed it very much indeed, as he strolled along ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... idiotically nothing. I'm merely sitting here on the only chair in this scantily furnished house, and trying to plan what sort of carpets, draperies and furniture to buy. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... and rage were in every impossible attitude. The steel ramrods clanked and clanged with incessant din as the men pounded them furiously into the hot rifle barrels. The flaps of the cartridge boxes were all unfastened, and bobbed idiotically with each movement. The rifles, once loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without apparent aim into the smoke or at one of the blurred and shifting forms which upon the field before the regiment had been growing ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... thing—whatever it is—no longer leaves me even for a moment. It will not stay here unless I am here, for it loves me, persistently, idiotically. It accompanied me to Paris, stayed with me there, pursued me to the lecture hall, pressed against me, caressed me while I was speaking. It has returned with me here. It is here now,"—he uttered a sharp cry,—"now, as I sit here with ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of these years is this,' said Percy, making an emphatic mark on the gravel with his stick. 'Every one else has acted, more or less, idiotically. She has gone about softening, healing, guarding, stirring up the saving part of each one's disposition. If, as she avers, you and Helen formed her, you gave a blessing to ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... As for counting the money, it was out of the question. Idiotically I began to arrange the ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... subdue his master's fears, he laughed wildly and idiotically. "Of course it is only you, Abdul. I had forgotten. I seem to forget everything . . . I thought that . . ." here his words became incoherent. "I was so tired, Abdul, and you were sitting up in the sky above the horizon . . . so ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... possible that I cared for him sometimes, idiotically, like a timid, restless, trembling, awkward, little girl, always in fear of that disturbing thing—the love of a man—that disturbing thing that is sometimes so sweet! As for him,—you know him. He was ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... lantern-jawed face looked as idiotically happy as Matson's, but he was quieter about it. Verbally, that is. It was he who had been pounding Cannon on the back, and now he was pounding ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of being talked to like a grammarschool class. Still, I humored her. "Why, then he has only one leg," I answered agreeably if idiotically. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... was inexorable, and murmured solemnly, "In one hour's time—here," he walked off towards the balloon, followed by the Executioner, who was giggling idiotically, and had to stuff a handkerchief into his mouth to prevent himself from ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... see the Doctor, sir. Oh, what an old man! He has got a white beard." And I—what would I not have given for a bit of friendly wilderness, where, unseen, I might vent my joy in some mad freak, such as idiotically biting my hand; turning a somersault, or slashing at trees, in order to allay those exciting feelings that were well-nigh uncontrollable. My heart beats fast, but I must not let my face betray my emotions, lest it shall ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... mother found him in the library, searching diligently through the volume of the encyclopedia that contained the G's. When she asked what he was looking for he laughed idiotically, and, in confusion, informed her that he was trying to find the name of the most important city in Indiana. She was glancing at the books in the case when she was startled by hearing him utter an exclamation and then lean ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... troublesome heart. Hector Copplestone, a young man newly come to the Indian Civil Service, was sent to their Punjaub station. He made Mrs. Wilder realize her own charm, he made her terribly conscious that she was older than him, he made her anxious and distracted and madly, idiotically in love with him. She forgot that there were other things in life, she put aside ambition for a stronger temptation, and she did not care ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... behaving idiotically!" he cried. "I know you'd do anything for a new sensation, but I'm not going to help. Possibly I'm old-fashioned. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna |
