"Idiot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Right, you unplumbable old idiot! Do you think you can come into this cave and hide anything from me under that transparent face of yours? The minute you came in and hemmed and hawed, and said as you had nothing to do you guessed you'd have a go with the firesticks—I knew. What ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the prospects of Christianity had not already decided the question for him, so far from receiving credit for political sagacity, as he ever has done, he would deserve rather to be considered an absolute idiot! ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... imagine my feelings. I went hot all over. "Shar," of course, not "Shah." How ever could I have been such an idiot as to have thought it was "Shah"? S-h-a-h obviously spelt shash, not shar. How nearly I had exposed my appalling ignorance to my fellows! "Vote for the—"; I blushed again, hardly able to think of it. And oh! how thankful I was now that everybody else had been too busy to read my poster. ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... What are clothes for, idiot of a woman! To put on, to wear. I shall habit myself as a gentleman. Faith—it is ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... a poor, senseless idiot like Johnny Gibson. He comes here for broken victuals constantly, you know, and your mamma ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... yourself to this lady in such an insolent fashion? Take care what you are about, sir, or I may find it very necessary to teach you a lesson in good manners. What do you want? Why do you stand there staring at me like an idiot? If you have anything to say, please say it at once, and ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... feelings. You are altogether too much taken up with your own. Be as much so as you please; I have always respected your right. Only when I have kept myself in durance on purpose to leave you an open field, don't, by way of thanking me, come and call me an idiot." ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... my feelings toward the lady. I may say that I love her truly and deeply. But there is something in the current that runs through my veins that cries out against any form of the calculable. I do not know what I want; but I know that I want it. I'm talking like an idiot, I suppose, but I'm sure of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the Vestale herself of piracy; and that, I well knew, would be carrying my suspicions to the uttermost extremity of idiotic absurdity. I had, in short—so I finally decided—discovered a mare's nest, and upon the strength of it had been upon the very verge of proclaiming myself a hopeless idiot and making myself the perpetual laughing-stock of the whole ship. I congratulated myself most heartily upon having paused in time, and resolved very determinedly that I would not further dwell upon the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... beautiful set, with real rhododendrons. Sir Roger de Coverley takes tea i'fackins with the Parson, and the Stalwart Farmer passes the sugar to the Man from Town, who is gazing out wistfully towards the Village Green, where the Village Beauty foots it featly with the Village Idiot. The last Act passes in the Drawing-Boom of "Bo tree" House, where the Archdeacon's Daughter touches her tinkling guitar ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... gutter. Then, instead of puttin' the reins over the horse's head proper, he left them on the hook, an' with both hands an' all his might holds the beast short by them in front of its jaw, like as it was the wildest bull from the Bogongs. The idiot! Supposin' the beast was flash an' pulled away from him, where would I be without the reins? That about finished me, I was sick of it, as I could not have believed any man, even out of a asylum, could be so simple about puttin' ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... ghostly garret,—with the "Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house, and in front of it the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of them was an idiot from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... in the room afterwards, his heart went hot and faint, and he panted, remembering the one that had come. He had been forced to say, "For my girl." He was much too done even to want to cry. His mouth hung slightly open, like an idiot's. He felt vacant, and wasted. So, he wandered at his work, painfully, and very slowly and clumsily, fumbling blindly with the brushes, and finding it difficult, when he sat down, to summon the energy to move again. His limbs, his jaw, were slack and nerveless. ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... this job as I ever got. He snarled and growled at me. He told the managing editor that he was an ignoramus and the M.E., believe it or not, took it, took it like a little lamb, Jimmy. Dije ever hear anybody call the M.E. an idiot and ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... if I heeded, I should be annihilated. When he says 'My good little sister,' I know he means 'You little idiot;' so if I did not think of something else, what might not be the consequence? Why, he said ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... child haps to be got Which after proves an idiot When folk perceive it thriveth not, The fault therein to smother, Some silly, doting, brainless calf That understands things by the half, Say that the Fairy left this oaf And took away ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... plaintively, "why will you run such risks? Even Mr. Cullen isn't an absolute idiot, you know, and there might have been ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... father. An artifice then occurred to him which promised to be of ultimate advantage. He afterwards told Afrasiyab that the offspring of Ferangis, thrown by him into the wilderness to perish, had been found by a peasant and brought up, but that he understood the boy was little better than an idiot. Afrasiyab, upon this information, desired that he might be sent for, and in the meantime Piran took especial care to instruct Kai-khosrau how he should act; which was to seem in all respects insane, and he accordingly appeared before ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... at me, and here was I, who was a year her senior and twice her size, sitting like an idiot, red to the ears. In faith, the larger a man is, the more the women seem tempted to torment him; but on me she presently took pity, and as the fiddles tuned up in the great ballroom, she led the way thither and permitted me to tread a minuet with her. ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... another, the expressions of his scorn and his self-scorn. "They have no idea of what good faith is, except as something that brings down the house when they register a noble vow. But I don't blame him; I blame myself. What an ass, what an idiot, I was! Why, he could have told me not to believe in his promises; he is a perfectly honest man, and would have done it, if I had appealed to him. He didn't expect me to believe in them, and from the wary way I talked, I don't suppose he ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... outs of the whole disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the narrator was in the very middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his business. He stopped him ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... idiot!" shouted Ted, as my eldest sister began to laugh hysterically, and the youngest, made a terrified ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... place at all. That donkey of a driver has brought us to the Metropole and not the Metropolitan. I might have known Dad wouldn't put up at such a third-rate tavern as this! Now, you idiot, we'll get in again and you take us where you were bid! and there, it's likely, you'll make the acquaintance of Mr. Daniel Ford in a way you don't like! Get in, Dorothy—Alfy! We can't stand ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... entered the office there came across the yard a loud and impatient voice. "Here, Bill, confound you, come and take this horse. Don't you hear me, you idiot? You infernal niggers are getting to be so no-account that the last one of you ought to be driven off the place. Trot, confound you. Here, take this horse to the stable and feed him. Where is the Major? In the office? The devil ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... beaten and tied to a bench, and Bishop Snow himself castrated him with a bowie knife. In this condition he was left to crawl to some haystacks, where he lay until discovered "The young man regained his health," says Lee, "but has been an idiot or quiet lunatic ever since, and is well known by hundreds of Mormons or Gentiles in Utah."* And the Bishop married the girl. Lee gives Young credit for being very "mad" when he learned of this incident, but the Bishop ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... asked wrathfully. "When I say do a thing, can't it be done? I declare it's bad enough to live with a pack of idiots without havin' 'em, one an' all, act as if I was the idiot!" ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... in the hall, but she turned and spoke through the doorway. "I've only asked you not to be an idiot. I merely beg, for all our sakes, that if something precious is flung down at your feet you'll have the common sense to stoop ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... reporter's way of telling a story, and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned his INNOCENTS ABROAD to the book-agent with the remark that "the man who could shed tears over the tomb of Adam must be an idiot." But Mark Twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string of trophies. The SATURDAY REVIEW, in its number of October 8th, reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in England, and reviews it seriously. We can imagine ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws. A child (who may turn out an idiot) is born by the action of even more complex laws, and I can see no reason why a man, or other animal, may not have been aboriginally produced by other laws, and that all these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event and consequence. But ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... if you put your mind to it. You tell me you're going about the country with her speaking at meetings—that you're one of her helpers and advisers. That is—you've got an A1 chance with her. If you don't use it, you're a blithering idiot." ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... imagine how I was such an idiot as to do it," mourned Leonard. "I just seemed to ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... said, and do you know that pink-headed Scotchman put it down in the book and carried it to my lady. And when she read it, she was in a great rage, to be sure, and sent for me and wanted to know what I meant by such a message. Then I told her I meant no offence by it, and that I didn't think the idiot would put it down, but that I was too old to change my ways, and that if her ladyship wasn't willing that I should keep on in them, she would have to dismiss me. And then I curtsied and left her; and my lord, when he heard of it, got a new piper. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... but reason, no. These are not the eyes of an imbecile or an idiot, but they are the eyes of a child. It is possible that when she fully recovers we may find her mind a perfect blank—a virgin page on which the story of her new life will have ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... understand," repeated the Princess impatiently. "I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom misunderstood ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... endeavors to prove that Caspar Hauser was the son of the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden; another is a book by Daumer, which he devotes entirely to the explosion of all theories that have ever been advanced; and a third, by Dr. Eschricht, contends that Caspar was at first an idiot and afterwards an impostor. Before considering these different theories, let us recall the principal incidents of his life. These have, indeed, been placed within the reach of the English reader by ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... in the afternoon with the Prince and Princess of Wales to see Munkacsy's "Christ," an enormously overrated picture, in which the chief figure was that of an Austrian village idiot, not a Christ, but the half-revolutionist, half-idiot that Christ was to the Jews who crucified Him, and who formed the crowd in the picture. If that was what the man wanted to paint, he had succeeded, but that probably was not what ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... that vast assembly who did not feel that there was a mysterious and unexplored side of the case, which neither the prosecution nor the defence had chosen to approach. Why had Cocoleu been mentioned only once, and then quite incidentally? He was an idiot, to be sure; but it was nevertheless through his evidence alone that suspicions had been aroused against M. de Boiscoran. Why had he not been summoned either by the prosecution or by ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... sighed aloud, "Well, I'm hanged if I see where the fun of this is." The Baron may be wrong, and the humour of this book, which seems to him to consist in weak imitations of American fun, and in conversations garnished with such phrases as "bally idiot," "bally tent," "doing a mouch," "boss the job," "put a pipe in his mouth, and spread himself over a chair," "land him with a frying-pan," "fat-headed chunk," "who the thunder" and so forth—a style the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... keenness is against him. He is there to be plundered; it is his mission in life to lose, or how could the bookmakers maintain their mansions and carriages? It matters little what the backer's capital may be at starting, he will lose it all if he is idiot enough to go on to the end, for he is fighting against unscrupulous legions. One well-known bookmaker coolly announced in 1888 that he had written off three hundred thousand pounds of bad debts. Consider what a man's genuine business must be like when he can jauntily allude ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... towards the 'Rest' and the money is just pouring out for expenses and directors' fees. There's barely enough left over to keep up the sham of dividends. You know it as well as I do. I've been an ass and an idiot, but I'm done with living a lie. Judge Hildreth, I came to tell you that if you don't do the square thing by these people who have ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... all gone, and I have not got over the interview yet. His remarks on the design, conception, and the drawing were equally clear and decisive. He more than hinted that I was a hopeless idiot, that the time he had given me was altogether wasted, that I had mistaken my avocation, and that if the Germans knocked me on the head it would be no loss either to myself or to society in general. It is true that after ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... a born idiot!" he exclaimed, drawing a bottle from the pocket of his coat with his disengaged hand. "There's whisky here. I was taking it home to the missis for her rheumatism. ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this island controlled by the Department of Public Charities and Corrections, are the "Nurseries," the "Infant Hospital," and the "Idiot Asylum." ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... nor the half of it; how could I? I've been an idiot. I see it now—I've been an idiot. I met them this morning, and sung out hello to them just as I would to anybody. I didn't mean to be ill-mannered, but I didn't know the half of this that you've been telling. I've been an ass. Yes, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Just make that idiot stand where he is for a moment," she said, "till I get him photographed. I wouldn't miss him for pounds. He's ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... such circumstances, quite thrilled me, and wild and savage though the singer was, the song appealed to me more than any other song has ever done. It looked as if he might be a ne'er-do-weel or an idiot whom his friends could afford to experiment with before taking the risk of coming over themselves, but his song was no doubt a farewell to his friends, whom he possibly never expected ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... that brother of hers, idiot as by nature he might be, and heir to unnumbered epithets, would so far forget what she had done for him, as to drag her through the mud for nothing: and so she told Caroline again ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his lips as though he were speaking, but no sound issued from them. He gibbered like an idiot. My heart thumped against my ribs, and, I do not know why, I ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... "Idiot!" exclaimed the doctor, who for the nonce was not capable of more than such spasmodic attempts ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... on me, I can't help it. Bless me! umbrellas everywhere! And here you mean to turn me over to the mercies of that solemn idiot, Edsall. I should have been better ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a size too big for a boy like you to be fighting alone. I was a blind idiot to leave you behind me. Thank the good Lord you got off without a scratch. When I think of what might have come to you——! The next time I'll no go grazing without you, Don. But who would have thought of a bear venturing into these ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... could have been blessed with such love as this, and who could have cast it away from him, can have been nothing but an idiot. On that ground—though I dared not confess it ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... idiot, Jake!" said Bunny in hot discomfiture. Jake's hand grasped his shoulder. "Sit down, and bring yourself to my level for a minute! Maybe I am a blithering idiot, maybe I'm not. But I could take you by the heels and dip you in the horse-pond round the corner if I felt that way. So you'd better keep ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... will take this half of a broken sixpence back: it was given in happier times. If ever he should marry, he will know that one far away prays for his happiness. And if—if these unwomanly tears—And suddenly the crass idiot discovers that she is laughing at him, and that she has secured him and bound him as completely as a fly fifty times wound round by a spider. The crash of applause that accompanied the lowering of the curtain ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... window-pane that he might see more clearly. "Ay, that he is by the driving! So he squanders money along the king's highway, the triple idiot! gorging every man he meets with gold for the pleasure of arriving—where? Ah, yes, where but a debtor's gaol, if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Criminal Law is an excellent treatise of Criminalison; we, too, want a refonte of our criminal law. What is called civilisation has gorged our society with an infinity of malpractices unknown to our ruder but better fathers; and we suffer from the bane of modern civilisation, that idiot charity towards the refuse of mankind, coupled to a perfect indifference for the honest people they assail or bring to ruin. To that endemic disease of the mind no penal statute can afford a remedy. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... — N. absence of intellect, want of intellect &c 450; imbecility &c 499. brutality, brute force. instinct, brute instinct, stimulus-response loop, conditioned response, instinctive reaction, Pavlovian response. mimicry, aping (imitation) 19. moron, imbecile, idiot; fool &c 501; dumb animal; vegetable, brain dead. Adj. unendowed with reason, void of reason; thoughtless; vegetative; moronic [Sarc.], idiotic [Sarc.], brainless [Sarc.]. Adv. instinctively, like Pavlov's dog; vegetatively. V. mimic, ape (imitate) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... inexplicable riddle; and I, for my part, would venture to say that in that case, the men who answer the question, 'Is life worth living?' with a distinct negative, are wise. It is a tale told by an idiot, 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,' unless the light of 'the things not seen' flashes and flares in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... sat mute, and looked as blank as an idiot. In all this description of hers I was struck by the resemblance between her vision and mine; but I was dreaming of some one else. She looked at me a moment, and took her hand away. She seemed hurt, and I thought I saw her wiping her eyes. I could ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... the old hunter, "you'd better come back to camp an' we'll see what we c'n do to improve them delicate attentions you've received. An' don't be quite the same kind of an idiot again." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... kept hidden in her pocket? Yes, it was the gloves. And then there was the canary. Mrs. Leadbatter had suspected he was leaving her for a reason. She had put two and two together, she had questioned Mary Ann, and the ingenuous little idiot had naively told her he was going to take her with him. It didn't really matter, of course; he didn't suppose Mrs. Leadbatter could exercise any control over Mary Ann, but it was horrible to be discussed by her and Rosie; and then there was that meddlesome ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... 'You idiot, don't you know they shrink in the washing,' which satisfied the grumbler. And that always seemed to me the strangest part of ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... "Idiot! Would you have me believe that iron falls from the sky? I say that you have struck me, you foolish, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... novel—like so many others, never finished. Late I sat into the night, toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap Voces Fidelium on the fire before he goes, so clear does he appear to me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and the late night; so ridiculous a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "You idiot!" she exploded. "They don't believe you are a PC any more than I do!" She was sure sensitive ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... Stick to it, friend Madhavya. I will humour the king a moment. (Aloud.) Your Majesty, he is a chattering idiot. Your Majesty may judge by his own case whether hunting is an ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... admit that this is the correct explanation in many instances, as in those figured by Prof. Meyer, in which there are several minute points, or the whole margin is sinuous. I have myself seen, through the kindness of Dr. L. Down, the ear of a microcephalous idiot, on which there is a projection on the outside of the helix, and not on the inward folded edge, so that this point can have no relation to a former apex of the ear. Nevertheless in some cases, my original view, that the points are vestiges of the tips of formerly erect and pointed ears, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... of the Gods: the time, in or about the year 39 B.C.:—and thence try to envisage the world as Those do who guide but are not involved in the heats and dusts of it. The Western World; in which Rome, caput mundi, was the only thing that counted. Caput mundi; but a kind of idiot head at that: inchoate, without co-ordination; maggots scampering through what might have been the brain; the life fled, and that great rebellion of the many lives which we call decay having taken its place. And yet, it was no true ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... be a true woman you have only to be pretty and an idiot, and to be a true man you have only to be brutal and ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... station with them. As luck would have it, however, I knew the inspector, and I managed to convince him that I was telling the truth, or I doubt whether they would have let me go. I suppose," I added, a little doubtfully, "that you fellows must think me a perfect idiot for bringing the child here, but upon my word I don't know what else I could have done. I simply couldn't leave her there, or in ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... speaker end only in proving himself prince of fools. Even a fool will sometimes hit the mark. There is some truth in all men who are not compelled to suppress their souls and speak other men's thoughts. The finger even of the idiot may point to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... For any single person, the relation of his actual education to its infinite possibilities can only be approximately determined, and it can be considered as only relatively finished on any one side. Education is impossible to him who is born an idiot, since the want of the power of generalizing and of ideality of conscious personality leaves to such an unfortunate only the possibility ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... the questioner with a superior smile. "I live at Wayland Hall. Our crowd live there, too. It's the best house on the campus, and hard to get into. It has two drawbacks; an idiot of a manager, and dear Miss Bean and her crowd. We have made complaint against the manager and she may have to go. She's a hateful old fossil and shows partiality. We can't do much about this crowd of which I've been telling you, ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... finest senses of his art with him, and least of all the artist who works for the theatre,—for here loneliness is lacking; everything perfect does not suffer a witness.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} In the theatre one becomes mob, herd, woman, Pharisee, electing cattle, patron, idiot—Wagnerite: there, the most personal conscience is bound to submit to the levelling charm of the great multitude, there the neighbour rules, there ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... was dark in the thickets. The agitation of the wind and the branches excited me, made me bound about like an idiot, and howl in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... young idiot!" he broke out at length in impotent rage. "This is not the first trouble in which ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... in the afternoon, by pretending to start a coach at five o'clock in the morning, was an imposition "tolerable" only in Dogberry's sense of the word—it was "not to be endured." And then, the downright absurdity of the undertaking! for admitting that the proprietors might prevail on some poor idiot to act as coachman, where were they to entrap a dozen mad people for passengers? We often experience an irresistible impulse to interfere, in some matter, simply because it happens to be no business of ours; and the case in question being, clearly, no affair of mine, I resolved to inquire into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... slyly crept to the king's side and whispered in his ear, "Hear no word of any babbling fool. This Roland, though my stepson, is a babbling idiot. He thinks only of battle and his own glory. So brave and strong is he that he can protect himself and cares nothing for kinsmen or friends. Marsilius promises everything we could demand or secure, and what shall it profit ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... their bleeding carcasses upon the floor. At any hour of the day or night Catharine, hidden in her chamber, could hear the yapping of the curs, the squeak of rats, and the word of command given by her half-idiot husband. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the size of him. You'd think he hadn't any more nerves than a bit of granite. Yet he's got a skin as sensitive as a girl's. See how he quivers if I run the curry comb too harshly over him. The idiot I got him from didn't know what was the matter with him. He'd bought him for a reliable horse, and there he was, kicking and stamping whenever the boy went near him. 'Your boy's got too heavy a hand, Deacon Jones,' said I, when he described the horse's actions to me. 'You may depend upon it, a four-legged ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... reputation too much ever to write a line of music after his death. Besides who would have believed me? Which one of you believes in his secret heart of hearts one word I have spoken to-night? It is difficult to make the world acknowledge that you are not an idiot; very difficult to shake its belief that Chopin was not a god. Alas! there are no more gods. You say I am a poet, yet how may a man be a poet if godless? I know that there is no God, yet I am unhappy longing after Him. I awake at the dawn and cry for God as children ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... answered coherently when Lady Tressidy addressed me, and talked without openly making an idiot of myself to Sir Walter. But I remember nothing of the conversation between the second and third acts, save the few words spoken by Miss Cunningham, and an invitation from Lady Tressidy to call on one of her ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... over my luggage I found this diary. I gave it to my room steward and told him to throw it overboard. Then it occurred to me that it would be my luck that it would be picked up and published as the mental meanderings of an idiot, so I called him back and took it ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... the capacity for a political idea bigger than their own diminutive measurement, the newspaper and magazine hacks who live on abuse of everybody who has a high ideal, all joined in the whoop and chase after Douglas of the fourth district, branded him as a fakir, an idiot, a senseless dreamer, an egotist, a demagogue, a party traitor, a knocker, and every other objectionable kind of disturber of the peace, meaning by "peace," the peace of those who are let alone by reformers to rob the ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... Nesselrode, Great Britain, France, and All the Russias, have announced to the world that the kingdom of Greece is bankrupt. The Morning Chronicle, at a time when it was regarded as a semi-official authority on foreign affairs, declared and certified that the king of Greece was an idiot. Verily! the battle of Navarino has proved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... people. In the small hours of Sunday morning, when the camp was astir in the darkness, a rifle-shot rang out quite close to me. I could hear the bullet going up like a rocket until the sound was lost. It was the usual thing—some idiot charging his magazine, and forgetting to close the cut-off—with the result that when he snapped his trigger the gun went off. Any good result of our discomfortable regulation as to fires and lights is quite cancelled by such an act, which proves much more certainly than fires can ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... called himself an idiot for thinking of these things at the present time. Primarily he was a man-hunter out on important duty, and here was duty right at hand, a thousand miles south of Black Roger Audemard, the wholesale murderer he was after. He would have sworn on his life that Black Roger had ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... idiot," Brinnaria hurled at her, "you never could stand a flogging, you'd die of it most likely. To a certainty you'd be ill, and have to be sent off to be nursed and kept away for a month or more to recover. I won't have Causidiena worried with any such performances. And as sure as ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... 'He has a greater esteem for Aldus and Elzevir than for Virgil and Horace.' It is very doubtful whether Addison (who wrote this particular Tatler) really had Thomas Rawlinson in mind, whom he describes as 'a learned idiot.' Swift has declared that some know books as they do lords; learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance. But neither description is applicable to Rawlinson, who, for all that, may have known much more about Aldus or the Elzevirs ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... "Take that idiot further back!" roared the voice of the man in command of the troop. "He does naught but frighten ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... Don Quixote, "if your highnesses would order them to turn out this idiot, for he will talk a heap ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... without taking his eyes from the man coming down the trail. It was usually some good-natured idiot, with a predisposition to gabbling, that made most of the ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... encouraged by her parents to study so much that her brain gave way, and she is now an idiot. This is a sad result, but the parents must find some consolation in the thought that they have made their ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... remainder of the day he began to wonder if he had not been a fatuous idiot. Anna did her work with the thoroughness of her German blood plus her American training. She came back minus her hat, and with her eyes carefully powdered, and not once during the morning was he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for a simpleton, to feed him like that he's probably not tasted solid food for days. The reaction is too much, of course. He's been playing on his nerve for the last ten minutes, and I, like an idiot, thought it ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... and spoiling the child. But thy growth in all things bears out in what I answered him. I said: 'The boys of our house, my lord, take that pride in it that they learn of their own free will what many an earl's son must be driven to with rods.' He took me. His own son is little better than an idiot, and naught but the rod to blame for ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... to trust any heathens to cook my meat. I'll take some eggs and some of that—what was it the idiot ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... wounded. Some of these, however, were helpless persons, who were wantonly murdered in their houses by English soldiers, their brains dashed out, and their bodies hacked and stabbed. Women in childbirth were not exempt from the brutal fury of the flower of the British army; and an idiot boy was deliberately shot as he sat on a fence, vacantly staring at the passing rout. All, or most of the towns in the neighborhood of Boston contributed their able-bodied men to the American force during the day; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... corpses of those they loved. Seventeen bodies were, before ten o'clock, carried to the desolated dwelling of their families; and when old Thomas Pull, the betheral, went to ring the bell for public worship, such was the universal sorrow of the town, that Nanse Donsie, an idiot natural, ran up the street to stop him, crying, in the voice of a pardonable desperation, "Wha, in sic a time, can praise ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... said his brother. "How disgusting! Idiot of a woman, nothing else.... I wanted to go straight to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... dark rings under her eyes, and I tried to look as disagreeable as possible. But you women are too smart for an old fellow like me. She simply cuddled up to me as I sat in the only armchair in Sweetapple Cove and put her arm around my neck, and I could only grumble a little like a decrepit idiot. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... something in a rather surly fashion, whereupon the gentleman, who had not yet spoken, leaned forward, and said angrily, "You told us you knew this neighbourhood. You are an idiot!" ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... is not the blind control of nature necessary for the former also? Our age believes it is and, ever disparaging the conscious world, attaches steadily greater consequence to the unconscious. "It is the unintelligent me," writes Dr. O. W. Holmes, "stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing a thousand times before he can do it and then never knows how he does it, that at last does it well. We have to educate ourselves through the pretentious claims of intellect into the humble accuracy of instinct; and ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... requirement of the business host or hostess and after that, intelligence. Some business houses make the mistake of putting back of the reception desk a girl who has proved herself too dull-witted to serve anywhere else. The smiling idiot with which this country (and others) so abounds may be harmless and even useful if she is kept busy behind the lines, but, placed out where she is a buffer between the house and the outside world, she is a positive affliction. She may be pleasant enough, but the caller ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... very clothes off her back; that there was no trouble she would not take for others; that she did not get on well with her husband, who drank, and was altogether bad and vile; that she had a great sorrow—an only child, an idiot, to whom she was devoted, and who would some day be the Duke of Towers; that she was highly accomplished, a great linguist, a great musician, and about the most popular woman in ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... "You blamed idiot!" snapped the lawyer, "why don't you thank Clyde? She started the old chief on the warpath after ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of those around him. He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he receives." His face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad taste in his mouth. "That's how we found him out, Mr. Malone," he said. "It's rather startling to look at a blithering idiot and have him suddenly repeat the very ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... the stove, and as he lay down some of the golden acorns fell out of his pocket. So bright were they, they shone like sunbeams in the room. In spite of the fool's entreaties the brothers picked them up and gave them to their father, who hastened to present them to the king, telling him that his idiot son had gathered them in the wood. The king immediately sent a detachment of his guards to the forest to find the oak which bore golden acorns. But their efforts were fruitless, for, though they hunted in every nook and corner of the forest, ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... good, the intention pure, the occupation of Rome by the Austrians being imminent and the French intervention the only means (with the exception of a European war) of saving Rome from the hoof of the Absolutists. At the same time if Pius IX. is the obstinate idiot he seems to be, good and tenderhearted man as he surely is, and if the old abuses are to be restored, why Austria might as well have done her own dirty work and saved French hands from the disgrace of it. It makes us two very angry. Robert especially is furious. We ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... liberal man ever has; he had no relations—what nature gave him without his consent he had a right to disclaim, I think he argued. But I can swear to these words, with which he concluded—'My father is an idiot, my mother a brute, and my sister may go to ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... slow; The rippled silence from the still leaves drips. They think I am an idiot, they speak low; — I feel faint kisses creeping ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... an idiot, Monty," he snapped. "That is, more of an idiot than you can help. Don't mind him, Gertrude; he has an amazing ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... out to meet him; but alas! like many other fickle men, he had met and married another. It was his wife who accompanied him homewards. Martha could not bear the terrible calamity of her blighted love. She became crazy—almost an idiot. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... foundations—and in its place there rose up, not hate, but pitiless, immeasurable contempt. A stern disdain of myself also awoke in me, as I remembered the unreasoning joy with which, I had hastened—as I thought—home, full of eager anticipation and Romeo-like ardor. An idiot leaping merrily to his death over a mountain chasm was not more fool than I! But the dream was over—the delusion of my life was passed. I was strong to avenge—I would be swift to accomplish. So, darkly musing for an hour or more, I decided on the course ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the life about me. Noises of wood and metal, clattering of wheels, banging of implements, jangling of bells—all such things are bad enough, but worse still is the clamorous human voice. Nothing on earth is more irritating to me than a bellow or scream of idiot mirth, nothing more hateful than a shout or yell of brutal anger. Were it possible, I would never again hear the utterance of a human tongue, save from those few who are dear ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... name of which they take in vain. No! La litterature est une chose qui touche a toutes choses; but if we are to shut our eyes to all the "things" which evoke it, it becomes what it is to so many, whose education has been in name predominantly literary, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... coming into his province. The Greeks fell into the prefect's humour, and during the stay of Agrippa in Alexandria they lampooned him in songs and ballads, of which the raillery was not of the most delicate kind. They mocked him by leading about the streets a poor idiot dressed up with a paper crown and a reed for a sceptre, in ridicule of his rather doubtful right to ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... been said, it follows that the death penalty as a punishment even for the worst crimes is morally untenable; for either the culprit is really irredeemable, that is to say, he is an irresponsible moral idiot, in which case an asylum for the insane is the proper place for him; or he is not irredeemable, in which case the chance of reformation should not be taken from him by cutting off his life. The death penalty is the last lingering ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... declared. "It was a bit dreary down there at first. None of my lot were sent south, and a familiar face means a good deal when you've got your lungs full of that rotten gas and are feeling like nothing on earth. I wonder where that idiot Sandy is. I told him to be here a quarter of an hour before you others—thought we might have had a quiet chat first. Will you stand by the girls for a moment, Lutchester, while I have a look ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... are not for you in this world. And if your father weren't the gentleman he is he would have made a big row about those people being asked to your party: it was an insult, too deep for my powers of description. Those women treat your father as though he were a halfway idiot—a fool to be thrust around when it pleases them, and to be the object of simpering tears when they want to play the pathetic in speaking of your mother to people. They are detestable, contemptible. And Jack Holton's turning up at Amzi's ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... replied Nur, "I might know a good deal and yet be an idiot. But I possess the knowledge of how to learn some of the innumerable things I do not know, and that is the reason I am so justly famous for ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... the British intellect. Take the foreman of an English car-manufactory, tell him that you will supply him a wheel about as durable as a wheel with a steel tire at less than half the cost, and he will laugh at you for an impudent idiot. But they use our wheels. The "chilling" of iron, when poured into a mould partly iron-faced, is very singular: as the melted metal hardens against the metallic boundary, its granulation changes to a certain depth, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... would that explain his absence one little bit?" demanded Davy. "You don't think, now, I hope, our chum is such an idiot that he'd start to take a little cruise out there on that rough water all by himself? Bumpus ain't quite so much in love with sailing as all that, let me ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... designedly to come near each other, and enacted the gravest and most formal of genuflexions, courtesies, and bows, when they accidentally DID meet. And just at the close of the second day, as the elegant Major Van Zandt was feeling himself fast becoming a drivelling idiot and an awkward country booby, the arrival of a courier from headquarters saved that gentleman his ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... cause, mainly from a deeper. It was a far-away look, which a common glance would have taken to indicate that he was "not all there." In a lowland parish he would have been regarded as little better than a gifted idiot; in the mountains he was looked upon as a seer, one in communion with higher powers. Whether his people were of this opinion from being all fools together, and therefore unable to know a fool, or the lowland ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... than the last, and then, treading softly, was about to return to the workshop when the girl stirred and muttered in her sleep. At first she was unintelligible, then he distinctly caught the words "idiot" and "blockhead." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... I had regarded as the Prince of Lovers. But he paled into the most prosaic young man before the newly illuminated Paragot, and as for Miranda I sent her packing from her throne in my heart and Joanna reigned in her stead. Little idiot that I was, I set to dreaming of Joanna. You may not like the name, but to me it held and ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... madness, since it furnishes their bountiful pens with means to show the greatness of their wisdom. But if any of these good natured gentlemen critics call me such names, as: "simpleton," "a fool and don't know it," "an idiot making an ass of himself," which exquisite expressions I have selected from the sayings of critics at this day, I would have them beware, since if I am old, my heart is none the less given to mischief, and I have a rare knack for cracking the pates ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... devised butting matches between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, who put a final stop to this diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, and played the nurse with it to such perfection, that Charlie felt obliged to applaud ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... put his metaphysics, his bamboo manuscript, into the boat with him, and as he floated down the Ganges, said to himself, 'If I live, this will live; if I die, it will not be heard of.' What is fame to this feeling? The babbling of an idiot! He brought the work home with him and twice had it stereotyped. The first sketch he allowed was obscure, but the improved copy he thought could not fail to strike. It did not succeed. The world, as Goldsmith said of himself, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... "I can not find words to thank you. I am like an idiot. And to think that only a little while ago I suspected you of being tired of me, and regretting your benefits toward me! What an animal I am! I measure others by myself. Well! can you forgive me? If I do not express myself well, I feel ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... times before; but they say this time it is really the case; if so, we are still only at the beginning of our work, as we shall most likely have something to do in the Punjab. The government, it is said, have guaranteed the succession of Runjet's son, who is little better than a natural idiot. The chiefs of the Sikhs, who are very warlike people, and have often licked the Afghans, say they will not consent to be ruled by such a person,—thereon hangs the matter. A large force has been gradually concentrating ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... mass!" [not yet obsolete] cried Jennet in burning wrath, resorting to her strongest language, "but I'm no more an idiot nor thee, my well-spoken dame,—nay, nor a savage nother. And afore I set up to dress thy hure again, thou may ask me o' thy bended knees—nor I'll none do't then, ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... lieutenant, with a sigh of relief; "give way, my lads." Then to Mark: "The captain must be uneasy about us, or he would never show that light. It's like letting the slaver know. Bah! what an idiot I am. That's not our light. Pull, my lads, pull! That must have been shown by the ship ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... certainly. But it also seems to make Mark out an absolute idiot. Just suppose for a moment that, for urgent reasons which neither of you know anything about, he had wished to get rid of his brother. Would he have done it like that? Just killed him and then run away? Why, that's practically suicide—suicide ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... interruption, in those fine romances with which his imagination teemed. One day when he was in a deep reverie, a friend entered hastily: "Don't disturb me," cried the poet; "I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another who is an idiot." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her name?—Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... perpetual division and redivision for progress, an unhappy civil service clerk, like Chazelle for instance, is forced to dine for twenty-two sous a meal, struggles with his tailor and bootmaker, gets into debt, and is an absolute nothing; worse than that, he becomes an idiot! Come, gentlemen, now's the time to make a stand! Let us all give in our resignations! Fleury, Chazelle, fling yourselves into other employments and become the great men you ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Billsbury. It says:—"Mr. PATTLE has prolonged his stay in Billsbury for some time. Can it all be politics? I say nothing. But others have been heard to whisper nothings which are sweet. What price bonnets?" I suppose the idiot means to hint that there's something between me and Miss PENFOLD? Hope MARY won't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... there? and are told, to your fresh astonishment and disgust, that that is only where the servants sweep the litter. But crouching behind the litter, in the darkest corner, something moves. You go up to it, in spite of the entreaties of your guide, and find an aged idiot gibbering ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and our sturdy British good sense laughs at him. Who has not laughed (I have myself) at Honorable Nahum Dodge, Honorable Zeno Scudder, Honorable Hiram Boake, and the rest? A score of such queer names and titles I have smiled at in America. And, mutato nomine? I meet a born idiot, who is a peer and born legislator. This drivelling noodle and his descendants through life are your natural superiors and mine—your and my children's superiors. I read of an alderman kneeling and knighted at court: I see a gold-stick waddling backwards before Majesty in a procession, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to be haunted—on All Hallow E'en, for instance—it's awfully gruesome and creepy at night when the wind moans and the owls screech. And then, the next morning, one wonders how one could have been such an idiot. Other things are often like that. You think the world's coming to an end—and then it doesn't, you know. It goes on just the same. You are rather surprised at first, but you soon get used to it. I suppose that is what is meant by losing ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... chatters on like an idiot, I have to watch three months' work go snip, snip on the floor. Then I have to pay for it. At home I get the same routine. Pop looks at my Ivy-League disguise and says, "Why, you may look ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... "No. He's an idiot. Always was a crank and an unsociable cuss when a boy, and he's worse now he's grown up. Oh, I know Forbes, all right; and I haven't got no use for ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... wife, "you know perfectly well you're a bigger idiot about that child than I am! ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... explained the little man proudly. "Helps tap the unused eighty per cent. The pre-symptomatic memory is unaffected, due to automatic cerebral lapse in case of overload. I'm afraid it won't do much more than cube his present IQ, and an intelligent idiot is still an ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... Venetia the Austrian seaplanes are making the same sort of idiot raid on lighted places that the Zeppelins have been making over England. These raids do no effective military work. What conceivable military advantage can there be in dropping bombs into a marketing crowd? It is a sort of anti-Teutonic propaganda by the Central ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... "Oh, you idiot!" Alix laughed. "I don't mind being rich at all, I like it. I don't want to live in the city, or join women's clubs, and all that, but I like having my own check-book—truly, I do! As for all the silver and portraits and rugs and things, why, we may ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... to finish this; but how can a headless man perform an intelligent function? I have been bully-ragged all day by the builder, by his foreman, by the architect, by the tapestry devil who is to upholster the furniture, by the idiot who is putting down the carpets, by the scoundrel who is setting up the billiard-table (and has left the balls in New York), by the wildcat who is sodding the ground and finishing the driveway (after the sun went down), by a book agent, whose body is in the back yard and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
