"Imbecile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tendency is to raise the earnings of those who do something or produce something. It is not good to know that a dustman makes more money than hundreds of hard-worked and well-educated men, for this is a grotesque state of things brought about by imbecile Government officials. Neither do I quite like to know that a lady whose education occupied nine years of her life is offered less wages than a good housemaid. But I do assuredly like to hear how the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... do this the more willingly because, as these arguments are at the present time most in vogue, an exposure of their fallacies may perhaps deter our popular apologists of the future from drawing upon themselves the silent contempt of every reader whose intellect is not either prejudiced or imbecile. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... position which would just have suited one of those Indian mystics who sit perfectly still for twenty years, contemplating the Infinite, but it reduced Sam to an almost imbecile state of boredom. He tried counting sheep. He tried going over his past life in his mind from the earliest moment he could recollect, and thought he had never encountered a duller series of episodes. He found a temporary ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... sheep of the Comedie. Some may indeed say that this phrase is unfortunate, that Balzac's sheep have more qualities of the mutton than innocence. It is not quite to be denied. But David is very far indeed from being a good imbecile, like Cesar Birotteau, or a man intoxicated out of common-sense by a passion respectable in itself, like Goriot. His sacrifice of his mania in time is something—nay, it is very much; and his disinterested devotion to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... philosophic ideas, and may be forced to put on a System of Thought, as men put on a mackintosh. But his true education is what he makes of these things. If he hears of Theodoric with a yawn, we say—the college-folk—He must be imbecile. No, not imbecile! he may become a successful toreador, or snake-charmer, which things are out of our line! And a man may be an upright citizen, a good husband, and a sincerely religious man, who has never heard of Francesca, nor Fra Angelico, nor ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... clearness to make it possible to count the votes and predict the verdict. I remember vividly in this regard a case that occurred many years ago. Three men, a peasant and his two sons, were accused of having killed an imbecile who was supposed to have boarded in their house. The jury unanimously declared them guiltless, really because of failure, in spite of much effort, to find the body of the victim. Later a new witness appeared, the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... inherited was unfortunately too vast and too well-invested by his overfond and madly foolish father for the son to run through it entirely. A very few years left him an imbecile in body and mind, to become the prey of a parcel of sharks who, dressing in purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day, held him in a state of abject slavery and fear. One day, aboard his own yacht, off Naples, they married him to a notorious woman. Under the guardianship of his ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... money on condition that you marry before your twenty-fifth birthday? Is that it, Mr. Carden? An uncle? An imbecile ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... was gnawed with doubts and conjectures. In an imbecile frame of mind, he came to the I Hung court. Lin Tai-y was, at the moment, sitting with Hsi Jen, and chatting with her. As soon as Pao-y entered his quarters, he addressed himself to Hsi Jen, with a long sigh. "I was very wrong ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... rushing off to die alone amid the rigors of the polar regions, went down to talk to him. At first Rovinski refused to make any answers to the questions put to him, but at last, apparently enraged by the imputation that he must be a weak-minded, almost idiotic, man to behave himself in such an imbecile fashion, he suddenly ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... a fluted pilaster and pouted while he kept watch upon Laura's every movement. His other shoulder stole the bloom from many a lovely cheek that brushed him in the surging crush, but he noted it not. He was too busy cursing himself inwardly for being an egotistical imbecile. An hour ago he had thought to take this country lass under his protection and show her "life" and enjoy her wonder and delight—and here she was, immersed in the marvel up to her eyes, and just a trifle more at ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... went by, and Bridget returned with a confused tale, which, as it had been gathered by an imbecile from a deaf gardener, was not easy to understand. Meanwhile the shoutings went on and the fire at the Abbey burnt ever more fiercely, so that the nuns thought that their last hour had come, and knelt down to pray ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... coarse and cowardly and imbecile brutality of those bundles of iron, launched in full flight against the lace-work, so delicate, that had risen confidently in the air for centuries, and which so many battles, invasions, scourges have never dared ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... its part in the making of laws, the administration of affairs, and the regulation of relations in society. It sees, indeed, that necessity rules in all the affairs of man. It knows that where any man, or any number or race of men, are so imbecile of intellect, so degraded, so incapable of self-control, so inferior in the scale of humanity, as to be unfit to be intrusted with the highest prerogatives of citizenship, the great law of necessity, for the peace and safety of the community and country, requires them to remain under the control ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... ingredients were lacking to our family stores, the idea of julep was dismissed as a vain dream, and its place supplied by iced Congress water, a liquid which my cousin characterized, in a hasty aside to me, as being a drink fit only for imbecile infants of a ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... men in power at Paris had as yet shown no organizing capacity. The administration of the War Department by "papa" Pache had been a masterpiece of imbecile knavery which infuriated Dumouriez and his half-starving troops. We have heard much of the blunders of British Ministers in this war; but even at their worst they never sank to the depths revealed in the correspondence of Dumouriez with Pache. In truth, both ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the owner of the covert in which the poison had been picked up should be held to be responsible. In this instance the condition of ownership was unfortunate. The Duke himself was old, feeble, and almost imbecile. He had never been eminent as a sportsman; but, in a not energetic manner, he had endeavoured to do his duty by the country. His heir, Plantagenet Palliser, was simply a statesman, who, as regarded himself, had never a day to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... we have indicated, our watering-place has none. There are a few old used-up boatmen who creep about in the sunlight with the help of sticks, and there is a poor imbecile shoemaker who wanders his lonely life away among the rocks, as if he were looking for his reason - which he will never find. Sojourners in neighbouring watering-places come occasionally in flys to stare at us, and drive away again as if they thought us very dull; Italian boys come, Punch comes, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the road a face glided past the carriage at the level of the wheels as we drove slowly by. The imbecile face was red, and the bullet head with close-cropped hair seemed to lie alone, its chin in the dust. The body was lost in the bushes growing thick along the bottom of ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Uncle Ben's imbecile reply did not trouble Johnny. He had ears now only for the superior intellect before ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... which he excited, that saved the nation when he took command at Washington. I know of nothing that made me more indignant than the folly of some ladies who, among his soldiers on the Potomac, decried and denounced him as an imbecile. What treachery can be worse than the attempt to destroy the confidence of the soldiers in their leader, when their lives depend upon his judgment and skill, and there can be only dejection and despair when that judgment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... coaxed Leah to come take a ride. She come ready enough. She didn't have much fun, anyway, except sitting with him in the office such times as he was lookin' over his accounts and reckonin' his money. She liked that. She always liked to handle money. That proved her a Sands, even if she was imbecile! ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... maxims was, "The truest wisdom is a resolute determination." His life, beyond most others, vividly showed what a powerful and unscrupulous will could accomplish. He threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies. "There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Devil's Disciple, the horrible old woman who declares that she has hardened her heart to hate her children, because the heart of man is desperately wicked, the old ghoul who has made one of her children an imbecile and the other an outcast. Such types do occur in small societies drunk with the dismal wine of Puritan determinism. It is possible that there were among Irish Calvinists people who denied that charity was a Christian virtue. It is possible that ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... give up their population,—only the blind, the sick, and the imbecile being left to guard the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... folly and vice; the rank and fame of the individual, no doubt, increased the fascination of his failings; but however bright and wonderful may be the coruscations of his talent, while under the influence of wine, his frame is debilitated, tottering, and imbecile, when the stimulus of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... obeyed. Neither she nor her sisters could understand why they had been brought over to tea with Mrs. Cresson of whose queer half-imbecile ways they were all terrified. Their father had gone off in a great hurry—because of the telegram which had come. And Fred had bicycled down to Latchford to see somebody about a gardener's place. And now there was no one left but Liza and Mrs. Cresson—of ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... length and breadth of this great-hearted land. Father and sons are all away, restoring the Bosche to his proper place in the animal kingdom. We have seen no young or middle-aged man out of uniform since we entered this district, save an occasional imbecile or cripple.) ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... home. It takes its root in conventionality, the curse of all individuality and progress. Parents, brought up to be the slaves of custom, carry on the imbecile traditions that have been handed down to them from former generations, without stopping to consider whether they are rational or foolish. It is good enough for the majority of people that the imbecile things they do were done by their forefathers before ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... considerations. But what is to be done when our existence as a nation is at stake, and when we are opposed by a remorseless foe which would gladly ruin us irretrievably? There is no halting half-way. It was these endless scruples which interfered with the prevention of the war under the imbecile or traitorous Buchanan; it is lingering scruple and timidity which still inspires in thousands of cowardly hearts a dislike to face the grim ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... lives her own life to-day," Beulah cried, still excitedly. "Every woman is living the life of some man, who has the legal right to treat her as an imbecile." ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... delusions are necessary to keep us going—so did I and, as I believed, Leonora, imagine that the whole world ought to be arranged so as to ensure the keeping alive of heart patients. You have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become—how imbecile, in view of that engrossment, appear the ways of princes, of republics, of municipalities. A rough bit of road beneath the motor tyres, a couple of succeeding "thank'ee-marms" with their quick jolts would be enough to set me grumbling to Leonora against the Prince or the ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... his great fight with his sister's lover, Sir Accolon. Even here he never becomes the complaisant wittol, which late and rather ignoble works like the Cokwold's Daunce[57] represent him as being: and he never exhibits the slightest approach to the outbursts of almost imbecile ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... came to see me. I imagine he was in a very divided state of mind! He had so dreadfully wanted to be an intellectual, to be able to rail at the base imbecile public in exquisitely select Bloomsbury coteries, he had so resolutely determined to be a martyr, to sacrifice himself on the altar of pure art, and somehow Mr. T.S. Eliot and martyrdom were as far off as ever. After all, he had given ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... bridge, and the voice of Gazza cried out that the stupid key was at the imbecile club-house, whither he was now going for it, and not to be alarmed. Their voices answered reassuringly, and Gazza was heard growing ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... not realise the intense importance of inculcating in every private soldier the necessity and the desire of outing the other fellow. Horrible, you say; revolting. Of course it's horrible, my good man; of course it's revolting; but what the devil do you think this war is—minding a creche for imbecile children? You bring in a crowd of men whose sole qualification in August 1914 to be considered soldiers was an intense and national love of games. You pit them against a machine perfect in technique, in which every ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Who comes imbecile to the world 'mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, error, wrath ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... illegitimate, must defend itself when attacked; but the strange thing is that where the people are held heroic in their victory over the nobility, power is called murderous in its duel with the people. If it succumbs after its appeal to force, power is then called imbecile. The present government is attempting to save itself by two laws from the same evil Charles X. tried to escape by two ordinances; is it not a bitter derision? Is craft permissible in the hands of power against ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... The representation of the half-witted Job—a character upon which the author clearly labored hard—neither arouses interest nor touches the heart. It is, indeed, impossible to feel much sympathy with one particular imbecile, no matter how patriotic, in a story where most of the actors are represented ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... meadows after all so broad, that did not metaphysics 'teach man his tether,' they would seem illimitable. The book of nature is not spread before us, turning leaf after leaf at every sunrise, with new delineations on every page, to be stared at with vacant inanity, or criticized with imbecile verbosity. The rivulet does not tinkle and the sky does not look blue that people may feed the ear alone with the one, or satisfy the eye alone with the other; the nerves which carry the sensation to the brain, flutter with the news, and knock at the house of mind for explanation. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it would be for the general good, John," said McNabbs, "you should not hesitate to take the command of the vessel. When we get to Auckland the drunken imbecile can resume his command, and then he is at liberty to wreck himself, if that ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... his head sadly. "I'm afraid I should have said, Mr. Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately, an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we were ever able ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... over; wet and slippery, and aching in every muscle. These next few minutes seemed longer than all the hours. I found that to put the old strain on the rod made me blind with pain. There was no fun, no excitement, no thrill now. As I labored I could not help marveling at the strange, imbecile pursuits of mankind. Here I was in an agony, absolutely useless. Why did I keep it up? I could not give up, and ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... succeeds his father, as the last King of France. He is youthful, uneducated, imbecile. He is wedded to a giddy superficial queen. Both are infidels and incapable of any intelligent acts of government. With imbecility and credulity on the throne, corruption continues to prevail among high and low. Instead of individual thrift and general prosperity, poverty and famine prevail ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... invited to occupy the Yugoslav throne. The first of these remarks proved conclusively, said a number of Belgrade papers, that Radi['c] was a knave and by the second he had demonstrated that he was an imbecile. And my friend Mr. Leiper of the Morning Post speculated as to whether he was more likely to end his days in a lunatic asylum or a prison. But Radi['c] was caring about none of these things; his birthday happened at about this time and some 30,000 of his ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... with their clamors, indignant at their animosity, scandalized at their cabals, and filled with disdain at their obstinate ignorance. Yet nothing is more natural than these outbreaks; ignorance has always been the mother of devotion. To be a devotee has always been synonymous to having an imbecile confidence in priests. It is to receive all impulsions from them; it is to think and act only according to them; it is blindly to adopt their passions and prejudices; it is faithfully to fulfil ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... elsewhere has so immemorially plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory negligence, was saddening him, while I was off in my train without a pang for the owner and with only an agreeable pathos for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Church and the Pope, that she had refused to obey the Church Militant because she believed the Church Militant to be Messire Cauchon and his assessors. In short, it was necessary to represent her as almost an imbecile. In ecclesiastical procedure this expedient was frequently adopted. And there was yet another reason, a very strong one, for passing her off as an innocent, a damsel devoid of intelligence. This second trial, like the first, had been instituted with a political motive; its object was to make known ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... "An imbecile without friends and twelve bajocchi in his pocket," he muttered savagely. "Perhaps the night without food will restore his senses. Come, fool!" and he roughly pushed me into a dark little chamber adjoining. "Here, Valeria, ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... very beginning the Italian opera was what it is now, frivolous, insincere, imbecile. Its sole function was, and always has been, to help idlers of the upper classes to while away their evenings. The absurd notion of a Platonic music was rivalled by the absurdity of the composition. The inane dialogue was made up of interminable recitative, in the midst of which an ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... wasting away,—like a candle burnt down to the socket, flitting and flaring alternately; at one time almost imbecile, at others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe—I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor old man, now on the brink of ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... desired to please anyone else, a performing monkey. My pleasures were stolen or I was snubbed for taking them. I was not taught and was called a fool. My hand was against everybody's. How it was that with my high spirits and vivid imagination I did not grow up a moral imbecile full of perverted instincts I do not know. I describe myself as a docile child, but I was full of temptations to be otherwise. There were times when I was silent before people, but if I had had a knife in my hand I could have stuck it into them. If it had been desired to make me ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... this really is the wild man from Borneo begins to lose his zest for it and to answer snappishly and sarcastically. An infinite supply of courtesy would, of course, be a priceless asset to him, but does not this work both ways? What right have people to bother other people with perfectly foolish and imbecile questions? Is there any one who cannot sympathize with a "sucker-sore" attendant? And with the people who are stationed about for the purpose of answering questions almost anywhere? There are not many of us who at one time and another have not had the feeling that we were on the ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... have spread the story, with shrug and smirk, That the artist ne'er does a stroke of work; And so let him suffer, the imbecile! Be you silent! 'Tis you, I think, When the Cigale pierces the vine to drink, Drive her away, her drink to steal; And when she is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... intellect. The brains of many eminent men have been found to be 8 to 12 ounces above the average weight, but there are notable exceptions. The brains of idiots are small; indeed, any weight under a certain size, about 30 ounces, seems to be invariably associated with an imbecile mind. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... only to a judicious board of directors, examinations for admissions and for advancements will be rigid and impartial, the administration will be vigilant and firm, the reckless who will not and the imbecile who cannot acquire a good education, will be dismissed for more congenial pursuits, the rich and the poor will be upon an equality, and only ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... I want—without your telling me! You overstep your privileges, Mason! I'm not an imbecile, to be ignored, set aside, overruled! I won't stand it! Mr. Stone, you ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... stages of refractoriness are sprawling about on this strip of floor; they make noises all the time. Half a dozen imbecile-looking old women crowd in through the low door, and stare and exchange observations. Three young men with nothing particular to do lounge at the far end of the platform near the goats. A bright girl, with more jewellery on than is usual ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... child, in consequence of his pale and melancholy countenance, and apparently miserable condition. I observed that no one took any notice of him; and that he was allowed to wander about the great straggling workhouse, among the insane, the idiotic, and the imbecile, without the slightest attention being paid to his going and coming; in short, he lived the wretched life of ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... me, but misfortune overtook him. I shall see his face no more." Sitting in his new feebleness and despair, supporting his head between his hands, with blank eyes and lips that moved uncertainly, he looked so much like a hopelessly imbecile old man, that his owners were contented to be rid of him, and allowed a Genoese merchant, who had compassion on him as an Italian, to take him on board his galley. In a voyage of many months in the Archipelago and along the seaboard ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... convict, an imbecile, nor one known to be a drug fiend or an habitual drunkard, is eligible for the post of an executor. If an executor be appointed against his will, the law does not ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... in French, to persuade the officer not to hold that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... this week I was every day inspecting schools and asylums, the imbecile asylums at Caterham, Leavesden, and many others; and my smallpox wharves were also giving me much trouble, as Rotherhithe and the other places showed strong objections to them, which I was, however, able ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... some of the images formed by his imagination as though they were real, as stated above in the First Part (Q. 84, A. 8, ad 2). Wherefore what a man does while he sleeps and is deprived of reason's judgment, is not imputed to him as a sin, as neither are the actions of a maniac or an imbecile. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... would be with the ghost of my great-grandfather's uncle. Thank Providence, all this troublesome, mischievous, Lucifer machinery of love and marriage is shut out of heaven, where we shall be as the angels are. Ah, Salome! I fear you are a giddy young idiot, and that I am a blind old imbecile, and I wish from the bottom of my heart you had ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... "That is just the thing: 'obey, obey.' Well, I will. I will be a stick, a dolt. I will be as unlike what God intended me to be as possible. I will be just what your father and Aunt Hester and you want me to be. I will let them think for me and save my soul. I am too much an imbecile to attempt to work out my own salvation. No, Elizabeth, I will not play ball any more. I can imagine the horrified commotion it caused among the angels when they looked down and saw me pitching. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... appeal to chroniclers! A patriotic and imbecile effort is made by the Englishman to represent Percy as captured, indeed, but released without ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... go all holts and dropped backwards, trusting to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I heard a little fizz and sputter from below. At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the breeze blow under my hat. For about six seconds I stood there like an imbecile, grinning amiably. Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle Jim ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... prophetic soul of the chief was unhappily assured that Crailey would offer himself as escort to her home, and find acceptance. But why not? Was it Crailey who had publicly called his fellow-man fool, idiot, imbecile, at the top of his lungs, only to find himself the proven numskull of the universe! Tom stood for a moment staring after the vanishing pair, while over his face stole the strangest expression that ever man saw ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... writing my eulogium for the Academy; I will admit it was unpardonably imbecile, but I told it her. If you had been there—and seen her, ravishingly pretty and little, a baby in years and mind—and heard her talking like a book, with so much of schoolroom propriety in her manner, with such an innocent despair in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Dolt! Imbecile! Ass! I'll apply for a guardian. Fix you out this time!" He whipped out fountain pen and checkbook. "National Trust Company (guess I've got enough there). Pay to J.C. Mendenhall & Co.—how much ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... But all has not been told. A private firm has prevailed upon the imbecile old farmers from the western and interior counties to give them the right to build a private freight railroad through many of the principal streets of the Quaker City. This road will run through several school-house yards, and the time-tables are to be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... She was alone with Lady Ingleton in the latter's sitting-room, which was filled with curious Oriental things, with flowers, and with little dogs of the Pekinese breed, who lay about in various attitudes of contentment, looking serenely imbecile, and as if they were in danger of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the water-proof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. Wet, drenched through, and ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... in number, only four at most were normally endowed, the remainder were either stupid or slightly imbecile. This agrees with the experience of previous writers. Study of her cases showed that there was report of previous mendacity, four had been liars from childhood. She found in them the combination of the general habit ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... believe that the grain which had been sold for supplying the departments below the Loire, is shipped at Paimboeuf and taken out of the kingdom from there to be sold abroad." In the suburbs of Rouen they imagine that grain is purposely "engulfed in the swamps, ponds, and clay-pits." At Laon, imbecile and Jacobin committees attribute the dearness of provisions to the avidity of the rich and the malevolence of the aristocrats according to them, "jealous millionaires grow rich at the expense of the people. They know the popular strength," and, not daring to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... one of those truly unfortunate cases which, so far as present knowledge goes, cannot be guarded against. Eunice, age 31, mentally 2, is a low-grade imbecile. There is not in the whole family, for generations back, a single case of feeble-mindedness, nor of disease that would undermine the nervous organization. Close scrutiny does not reveal a single assignable ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... there now," my friend remarked. "This fellow Merryweather is a bank director and personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone. Here we are, and they are waiting ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... him—how could life ever be fine for a man who let the prizes, the treasures, slip from his fingers, without an attempt to clutch them? It was so now that he saw the whole of the affair—blame of Marie Ivanovna there was none, only of his own weakness, his imbecile, idiotic weakness. In that last conversation with her why could he not have said that he refused to let her go, held to her, dominated her, as a strong man would have done? No, without a word, except a cry of impotent childish rage, he had submitted.... So, all his life ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... worthy companion of the beautiful St. Barbara of the church of Santa Maria Formosa. It is well to look at her, for we are coming to those days when such saints as these were no longer painted; but in their places whole tribes of figures with faces twisted into every trick of sentimental devotion, imbecile piety, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... kind of phantasm that frequents places where prehistoric man or beast has been interred; Planetians, i.e. spirits inimical to dwellers on this earth that inhabit various of the other planets; and earthbound spirits of such dead human beings as were mad, imbecile, cruel and vicious, together with the phantasms of vicious and mad beasts, and beasts of ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... wildly, and at intervals making a dash downward, until their wings almost swept the nose of the opossum. The latter, however, appeared to take all this very coolly; and evidently did not care for the imbecile efforts of the birds to frighten her off, but continued her survey without paying any attention to their manoeuvres. On looking upward, we discovered the object of her search—the nest of the orioles—which was hanging like ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... was placed before his lordship for signature. It was with some difficulty that he was made to understand that he was to sign it. The old gentleman appeared much more imbecile than when I last saw him. I thanked him, folded up the letter, and put it in my pocket. At last he looked at me, and a sudden flash of recollection appeared to come across ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the meadow to the other for the sole purpose apparently of cropping a half dozen indifferent mouthfuls. The rest of the time they roosted under trees, one hind leg relaxed, their eyes half closed, their ears wabbling, the pictures of imbecile content. We were very ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... succeed, as we have said, they advance civilization. To begin with the farthest East, all such strength as the Chinese Empire has to-day is due to the Tartar cross in its blood; that is, it results from the conquest of imbecile China by Northern Tartar tribes. One or two more such invasions, followed by colonization of Northern emigrants, would have made China a much stronger power this day than she is, and a nation of higher grade. The history ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... long since died, at the age of eighty years. Miantunnomah had been taken prisoner by the Mohegans, and had been executed upon the plain of Norwich. Ninigret, who was now sovereign chief of the Narragansets, was old, infirm, and imbecile. His character illustrates the saying of Napoleon, that "better is it to have an army of deer led by a lion, than an army of ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... straight-forward statement of policy. He is the brains of the combination, and has put forward Mayence and the Count Palatine as the moving spirits, although it is well known that the former is but his tool and the latter is moved by ambition to have his imbecile son ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... been alarmed by the indifference of his sentinels. He thought it imbecile to employ men like Nuddle to corrupt the men within, while the guards admitted any wanderer from without. He was making a last attempt to convert Nuddle to industry for Mamise's sake, trying to pluck this dingy brand ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... individuality. I no longer cried in my bed at night, but lay awake enraptured at the profundity of my thoughts. After years of unquestioning humility I enjoyed a prolonged debauch of intellectual pride, and I marvelled at the little boy of yesterday who had wept because he could not be an imbecile. It was the apotheosis of the ugly duckling, and I saw my swan's plumage reflected in the placid faces of the boys around me, as in the vacant waters of a pool. As yet I did not dream of a moulting season, still less that a day would come ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the Government in London could seriously believe that a Stuart in arms was in the island. There were other and minor elements of success, too, to be noted in the great game that the Stuart prince {210} was playing. The Ministry was unpopular: the head of that Ministry was the imbecile Duke of Newcastle, perhaps the most contemptible statesman who has ever made high office ridiculous. The King was away in Hanover. England was in the toils of a foreign war, and her prestige had lately suffered heavily from the sudden defeat at Fontenoy. There were very few troops ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... "Oh, they were imbecile!" added Lady Garnett; "try the Moselle, my dear, and leave that terrible sweet stuff to Mary. Yes, I was glad to come away from Lucerne. Everything is very bad now except my Constant's vol-au-vent, which you don't seem to have tried; but lovers are the worst of all. Though I like that ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... "Woman imbecile and pig-like!" said Madame Defarge, frowning. "I take no answer from you. I demand to see her. Either tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me go to her!" This, with an angry explanatory ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... not; no woman cares to describe herself in plain words as an idiot; but of late you have favoured me with a good many imbecile remarks, which all seem to tend one way. You are hurt and wounded when I am decently civil to the women I meet in society. Is that sensible or reasonable, in a woman of your age ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... compact. Besides, he fails to meet those conditions upon which the vigorous development of individual life and character depends. Indolence is no friend either to physical, mental or moral development. The body becomes imbecile, the spirit supine and sentimental, the morals vitiated, and the mind sinks into complete puerility. Activity is a law of all life, and the condition of its healthy development and maturity. Without it we resort to jejune amusement, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... it that I give up?" he mumbled wearily. "Besides, there grows from my forearm a blade. If I shall find myself indisposed to quit this world alone.... Listen to the singing of that imbecile." ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... to think that it was an unselfish desire to spare my companions anxiety that made me keep my discovery to myself. But I am afraid that my reticence was due far more to the fact that I shrank from letting the Nugget discover my imbecile carelessness. Even in times of peril one retains one's human weaknesses; and I felt that I could not face his comments. If he had permitted a certain note of querulousness to creep into his conversation already, the imagination recoiled from the thought ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... having descended to him from his father and grandfather, was also the most firmly secured. But both Otto and his ancient ally, the bishop Hatto, had found the system they had hitherto pursued, of reigning in the name of an imbecile monarch, so greatly conducive to their interest that they were disinclined to abandon it. Otto was a man who mistook the prudence inculcated by private interest for wisdom, and his mind, narrow as the limits of his dukedom, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... boy," said my father after Bloch had gone, "your friend is out of his mind. Why, he couldn't even tell me what the weather was like. As if there could be anything more interesting! He is an imbecile." ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a silent fool—like an imbecile, he said to himself, glowering malignantly. He was madly in love, and he was furiously jealous. What business had this ginger-whiskered young lordling interloping here? And how disgustingly self-assured and at home he was! He tried ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... merry! The sundown is near— And Error is shivering And shrinking with fear. Power unmolested For centuries, vested In impotent sinew and imbecile brain, Altars that rested On mummeries ilested, Tatters to ruin and not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... to give to the world an account of the forcible deportation of King Mataafa from Samoa to the Marshall Islands, where he was kept in exile six years. The Germans had shoved him aside to make room for Malieto, an imbecile and a German figurehead. I was there again when Mataafa, at the end of those six years, returned to Samoa, to the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Augustus might ravage and ruin the countries which he had undertaken to defend. This danger became a reality when in the year 395 the able and valiant Theodosius died, leaving the empire to be divided between his imbecile sons Arcadius and Honorius, the former taking the eastern and the latter the western portion, and each under the control of a minister who bitterly hated the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Monsieur Kerstall's father is very old, and he has ceased to paint it is a long time. They have said that he is even a little imbecile, that he does not remember himself of the most common events of his life. But there are some others who say that his memory has not altogether failed, and that he is still enough harshly critical towards ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... much removed from recklessness as from irresolution,—this power fades in mental age into that pausing, comparing, generalizing, indecisive intelligence, which, however wise and valuable it may be in those matters where success is not the prize of speed, is imbecile in those conjunctures of affairs where events match faster than the mind can syllogize, and to think and act a moment too late is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the imbecile cowardice of his subjects had enabled the Fellatahs to establish themselves in Yarriba, to entrench themselves in its fortified towns, and to obtain the recognition of their independence, until they became sufficiently ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the operations of this southern campaign as far as it was in his power. But he was interfered with by the pragmatical, imbecile, and conceited Congress. Had Greene been appointed to take command of the southern army, according to Washington's desire, instead of Gates, he would soon have assembled around him that "permanent, compact, and well-organized body ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... was stated, remained an entire blank. Imbecile, vacant, drivelling—she appeared almost unconscious of former existence; and of those subjects which formerly engrossed her attention, and excited her feelings, there were scarcely any on which she now evinced any emotion. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... she covered him up again, but she felt her laugh to be a trifle hysterical. She hated the doctor to think her an imbecile, yet for some reason her identification of the man with the creature of her dream now struck her as extremely funny. She wanted to laugh and laugh; it took all her resolution to restrain herself.... Of course, the whole thing was clear now. Psycho-analysis explained ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... musical nor inspiring, but Billy had somehow adopted the ditty and made it his own, so far as eternally singing it could do so, and his comrades had found it not unpleasant; for the voice of Billy was youthful, and had a melodious smoothness that atoned for much in the way of imbecile words ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... Imbecile! Why did he go to-day? Are there not six other days in this cursed week? Who is there to drum? Nobody. Nobody knows how in Paradise. Seigneur, Dieu! ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I've done nothing unsuitable so far. But anyway, it won't do to ask her now. They say they make one say one's prayers. I only hope they won't make me! That'll be too imbecile. And what stuff it is she's reading! but she has a good accent. Landau—Bezzubov— what's he Bezzubov for?" All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw was uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled his whiskers to cover the yawn, and shook himself together. But soon after he ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... drawers, against the wished-for but never actually realized day of glory when we should meet another collector who wouldn't have—something that we had. So far as it was for anything and not mere imbecile ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... otherwise, in the disastrous Turk Countries; but, though willing enough, was never much of a soldier: as to Neipperg, among his own men especially, the one cry is, He ought to go about his business out of Austrian Armies, as an imbecile and even a traitor. "Is it conceivable that Friedrich could have beaten us, in that manner, except by buying Neipperg in the first place? Neipperg and the generality of them, in that luckless Silesian Business? Glogau ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Meer Jaffier was, of course, displeasing to the imbecile Emperor of India, and a large army was sent to dethrone him. The nabob appealed, in his necessity, to his allies, the English, and, with the powerful assistance of the Europeans, the forces of the successor of the great Aurungzebe were signally routed. But the great sums he was obliged to bestow ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... that Lord de Versely did not neglect your interests. The de Versely property he could not leave you, but he did what he could in your favour. This will was signed, sealed, and attested, and is now in my possession; and as the old lady is very shakey, and something approaching to imbecile, I considered that in a short time I should have to congratulate you upon your succession to this fine property, which is a clear 8,000 pounds ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... "Imbecile!" screamed the lady; "the flat belongs to me—Colette Aubray. And your presence may ruin me—I expect a visitor on most important business! He has not my self-control; if he finds you here he will most certainly send you a challenge. He is ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the family outlook of the British royal house was not a very bright one. The old king, George III., was lingering on in deep seclusion, a very pathetic figure, blind and imbecile. His son the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., had not done honour to his position, nor brought happiness to any connected with him. Most of the other princes were elderly men and childless; and the Prince-Regent's only daughter, the Princess Charlotte, on whom ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... never took eyes from his face—that face so facile in the display of feeling or emotion. The voice also had a lilt of health and vitality which rang on the ears of age pleasantly. As he listened he thought of his eldest son, partly imbecile, all but a lusus naturae, separated from his wife immediately after marriage, through whom there could never be succession—he thought of him, and for the millionth time in his life winced in impotent disdain. He thought ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... them as splendid as jewelled Mrs. Potiphar, and her palace, thirty feet front. Where were their heads, and their hearts, and their arms? How looks this craven despondency, before the stern virtues of the ages we call dark? When a man is so voluntarily imbecile as to regret he is not rich, if that is what he wants, before he has struck a blow for wealth; or so dastardly as to renounce the prospect of love, because, sitting sighing, in velvet dressing-gown and slippers, he does not ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various |
