"Silly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Silly girl!" snapped Renaud. "There is no nursing for you in this case. Assuredly, Mlle. Pauline, you do not enter the house, I cannot allow it. Besides, mademoiselle, you return home too late. If you remained at Clairville longer, and had the place cleaned ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... least bad of these is by Lancre, a man of some wit, whose evident connection with some young witches gave him something to say. The accounts of the Jesuit Del Rio and the Dominican Michaelis are the absurd productions of two credulous and silly pedants. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... was well rewarded; from thence a very respectable tour of about 30 miles in every direction may be accomplished. Walcheren and Lillo (the celebrated fort which prevented our ascending the Scheld) were visible without any difficulty, with Cadsand and all the well-known names of that silly expedition,[90] rendered apparently more silly by seeing how impossible it would have been to have taken Antwerp unless by a regular siege, which might have been of endless duration; we might have bombarded the basons in which the men-of-war were deposited, and with about as ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... you talk like a gutter-snipe to a gentleman old enough to be your grandfather? Or, damme, have you and Goodfellow been coming to blows? By the nose of you and the state of your shirt a man would say you've come from a street fight; and by your talk, that your head was knocked silly." ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... cause to make a pitiful defence of poor poetry, which, from almost the highest estimation of learning, is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children; so have I need to bring some more available proofs, since the former is by no man barred of his deserved credit, whereas the silly latter hath had even the names of philosophers used to the defacing of it, with great danger of civil war among ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... utterances of the wretched drudge. Bullied into silence by the brutal schoolmaster, Smike limped away with a vacant smile, when we heard the female scoundrel in the dimity night-jacket saying,—"I'll tell you what, Squeers, I think that young chap's turning silly." ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... worship in her face, with the bright tears, trembling on her cheeks. And Paul thought he had never seen a fairer thing; but wishing to dry the tears, he made a little merry song, like the song of gnats that dance up and down in the sun, and love their silly play—so ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... saw, was trusting. Not credulous, silly trusting, but thoughtful trusting, accepting such facts as were definitely known. Faith was trusting. And faith without works was dead simply because there could be no faith without works. There was no such thing as belief that did not result ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in that silly way, Elma; of course it matters. She says too that you are to be publicly exposed at Middleton School to-morrow, and your conduct—I must say I could not make out what she was talking about; I don't see that you did anything very wrong—but your conduct is ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... of that!" answered Pelle, taking his arm to help him up the hill. "The children are quite silly ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath. "That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he was ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... And—"Don't be a silly," the boy would say. "If you go and get yourself drowned, in any stupid way like that, Carette, I'll never speak to you again ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... number of silly stories. At one moment you said you had come from Italy. Then you said that you had hired a motor-car and the driver had attacked you in the night. Afterwards you believed yourself to be in some office, and talked about ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... running in the direction of Potchefstroom. In the farmhouse were only two young girls, the elder a charming golden-haired fairy with tender eyes of cornflower blue. And her smile!—it was enough to make one say all kinds of silly things just for the pleasure of seeing her ripe lips part, revealing her wholesome, even little teeth! No wonder I delayed my departure! I left at last, however—not without the loaf of bread—and made for the camp. I had not gone far before ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... dream I have is being compelled to go back to the lecture platform. In it I am always getting up before an audience, with nothing to say, trying to be funny, trying to make the audience laugh, realizing I am only making silly jokes. Then the audience realizes it, and pretty soon they commence to get up and leave. That dream always ends by my standing there in the semi-darkness talking to an ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Leonard, approaching his wife with an air of good humour, told her he was sorry for their foolish dispute the last night; but he was now convinced of his error. She answered, smiling, she believed she owed his condescension to his complacence; that she was ashamed to think a word had passed on so silly an occasion, especially as she was satisfyed she had been mistaken. A little contention followed, but with the utmost good-will to each other, and was concluded by her asserting that Paul had thoroughly convinced her she had been in the wrong. Upon which they both ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... and silly dispatch went over the wires to the effect that during the trial of A. W. Howie for homicide (in which the jury consisted of six women and six men) the men and women were kept locked up together all night for four nights. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... "Silly goose! nothing is the matter," answered his friend, "only you are a little grander than you thought you were: you are promoted to be an officer—a lieutenant, in fact; so now you can assist ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... enough of me through the newspapers to vouchsafe that. You are rich, and it is your chief misery. Listen! Whether you believe it or not, you are very unhappy. Let me read your horoscope. Your club life bores you; you are tired of our silly theatres; no longer do you care for Wagner's music. You are deracinated; you are unpatriotic. For that there is no excuse. The arts are for you deadly. I am sure you are a lover of literature. Yet what a curse it has been for you! When you ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... CHARLES. Because your silly schemes miscarry, you come here to turn rogue and assassin! Murder, boy, do you know the meaning of that word? You may have slumbered in peace after cropping a few poppy-heads, but to have a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... note I should strike if I were you," his mother responded, "only with a little different accent. What would Captain Carey's eldest son like to do for his only cousin, a little girl younger than himself,—a girl who had a very silly, unwise, unhappy mother for the first five years of her life, and who is now practically fatherless, for ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Silly. I'm as capable as any of you. And, even if I couldn't look out for myself, I know that you will be at my side." She pursed her lips and tossed back her ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... "How silly you are, my dear Juliette!" expostulated Mademoiselle Aurelie, the elderly lady, an old friend in straitened circumstances, who had seen her come ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... once from Phoebe ... twisted and childish, but at least more fundamental than the silly stories about storks and rabbits that brought babies down chimneys, or hid them in hollow stumps ... about benevolent doctors, who, when desired by the mothers and fathers, brought additions ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... lives are in safety. They are not liable to be impressed for soldiers, and forced to cut one another's Christian throats, as in the wars of their own countries. If some of the religious mad bigots, who now tease us with their silly petitions, have in a fit of blind zeal freed their slaves, it was not generosity, it was not humanity, that moved them to the action; it was from the conscious burthen of a load of sins, and a hope, from the supposed merits of so good a work, to be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Commander-in-Chief." Therefore, a Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of despair on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... speak in that silly way, or I shall be angry with you. Vayate! you may take away the wine. We can come again when ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... who passed on quite unconcerned without taking any notice of her prey. For an instant Downy could scarce credit her own eyes when she saw her enemy pass on; but fearing that if puss should return, she should not again escape so miraculously, she darted away as she hoped unseen, but, silly little thing! she had better have laid where she was, for the kitten beheld her as she ran, and sprung upon her. Poor Downy felt her claws, but exerting all her speed, she flew to the hedge—this friendly hedge which had so often been her refuge, ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... woeful Damian, That languisheth for love, as ye shall hear; Therefore I speak to him in this manneare. I say. "O silly Damian, alas! Answer to this demand, as in this case, How shalt thou to thy lady, freshe May, Telle thy woe? She will alway say nay; Eke if thou speak, she will thy woe bewray; * *betray God be thine help, I can no better say. This sicke Damian in Venus' fire So burned that he died for ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb, yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound," and chap. vii. 8, 11. "Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people, Ephraim is a cake not turned, Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart, they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria," 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... nibbled, and contemplated my late experiences; nibbled, and was almost persuaded to be a Christian,—that is, to forswear thenceforth and forever all company which I could not afford to keep, all appearances which were not honest, all foolish pride, and silly ambition, and moral cowardice;—as I did after I had ridden in a certain carriage I have mentioned, and which I am coming to now as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... is a silly thing, and I have always regretted allowing the man to publish it. He certainly called upon me and asked me a lot of questions, after which he went away and wrote that article. Ever since then I have felt like a conceited ass, who ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... the moon is made of green cheese; take for granted, grasp the shadow for the substance; catch at straws, grasp at straws. impose upon &c. (deceive) 545. Adj. credulous, gullible; easily deceived &c. 545; simple, green, soft, childish, silly, stupid; easily convinced; over-credulous, over confident, over trustful; infatuated, superstitious; confiding &c. (believing) 484. Phr. the wish the father to the thought; credo quia impossibile [Lat][Tertullian]; all is not gold that glitters; no es oro todo lo ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... baby of me here," she told herself, "they treat me like a silly child. It's a wonder that they don't send a nurse-maid with me to my classes. It's a wonder"—she was growing vehement—"that they give me credit for enough sense to wear rubbers when it's raining! I," again she glanced at the watch, "I haven't ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... "What you think of—that silly and vulgar idea of the beating and the fright—is what would occur to any one. You have not an ounce of brains, Remedios; to solve a serious question you can think of nothing better than a piece of folly like that. I have thought of a means more worthy of noble-minded and ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... with the express intention of asking her to marry him, another young gentleman. He had a light moustache and a fancy waistcoat, both of which looked new. He was young, rich, handsome, and sufficiently silly to make any woman wish to take charge of him, and her father had told him to "go in and win, my boy, there's no one I'd like better, sir," a very good heartener for a slightly dubious youth, even though he may consider ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... begged, patting her relative between the shoulders. "What's the good o' goin' on like that just because a silly ass ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... devote his life to literature, which circumstances largely prevented; while Clough was eager to take a more active part in life, not being content with the uneventful career of a poet, irk'd (l. 40). Annoyed; worried. keep (l. 43). Here used in the sense of remain, silly (l. 45). Harmless; senseless. The word has ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... silly wandering through all branches of science, silly brooding at the burning oil-lamp! In your wildness you see with four eyes—a horrible setback and disregard for everything decent. And in the pursuit of this senseless and purposeless learning you think ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... guns, except Giles and some beater men, only that Tom's was single-barrelled? Then there were others whom I need not describe, stretching to left and right, and worst of all, perhaps, there was Giles's great black dog, a silly-looking beast which always seemed to have its mouth open and its tongue hanging out, and to be wagging a big tail like the fox's, only black and ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... happened that I've known to 'appen to sailormen afore. At Sydney 'e got silly on another gal, and started walking out with her, and afore he knew wot he was about he'd promised to marry ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... day, after its happy but meaningless triviality, the throng and mixed perfumery and silly courteous gestures, his blessed solitude! Oh solitude, that noble peace of the mind! He loved the throng and multitude of the day: he loved people: but sometimes he suspected that he loved them as God does—at a judicious distance. From his rather haphazard religious training, strange ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... of this nonsensical twaddle. It was the silly custom of the Bridgeboro Record to make heroes of the town and county officials, and soberly to print the rubbish which they uttered for the pleasure of seeing ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... word on behalf of a now utterly forgotten novel. I had a letter from the authoress thanking me, but alas! the illusion vanished. I was tempted by this one novel to look into others which I found she had written, and I discovered that they were altogether silly. The attraction of the one of which I thought so highly, was due not to any real merit which it possessed, but to something I had put into it. It was dead, but it had served as a wall to re-echo ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... of it was that, often, when they had done these seemingly silly things, the boat would start. So they were rather superstitious about it, and they did carry a tin of talcum powder with them, much to ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... Annie, you little silly—you aren't scared of me. Now don't let on you are. What you doing—trying to kid me? There, ain't that a splendid plant? I believe I'll take back a couple shovelfuls this rich wood earth to put in under it. It'll never know it's ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the face of it, and, besides, silly braggadocio, if not actually malicious. And even if it were malicious, Code thanked Heaven that the race had not been sailed, and that he had been spared the exhibition of Nat's malice. He had ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... abandoned, left in the ground for ever. And each coal owner sells his coal in his own pettifogging manner... But you know of these things. You know too how we trail the coal all over the country, spoiling it as we trail it, until at last we get it into the silly coal scuttles beside the silly, wasteful, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... "Don't be silly!" she laughed. "Princesses are not brought up at Madame Richard's, without relations or friends to visit them, and no ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... can do a turn of any sort, let the women have it. All the fun they get. Be an ass, like the rest of us. Maskee how silly! Mind you, it's all ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... felt it my duty to inform Miss Walton of her cousin's death and called on her at noon. Miss Walton's parents and Ed's were not intimate when the two were children; some silly misunderstanding in regard to a division of old Colonel Phelps's property after he died. As it turned out they might have spared themselves the quarrel, for a later will was afterwards found leaving his entire estate to churches and ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... public buildings we destroyed and burnt as we reshaped our plan of habitation, our theater sheds, our banks, and inconvenient business warrens, our factories (these in the first year of all), and all the "unmeaning repetition" of silly little sham Gothic churches and meeting-houses, mean looking shells of stone and mortar without love, invention, or any beauty at all in them, that men had thrust into the face of their sweated ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... ancient of eighty—in brief, the ideal citizen of Christendom. The present plan surely fails to produce a satisfactory crop of such ideal citizens. On the one hand its impossible prohibitions cause a multitude of lamentable revolts, often ending in a silly sort of running amok. On the other hand they fill the Y. M. C. A.'s with scared poltroons full of indescribably disgusting Freudian suppressions. Neither group supplies many ideal citizens. Neither promotes the sort of public morality that ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... robberies that had taken place between the countries. Then said the peasants sons, "If our king has lost most people, his sheriffs will make it even with the lives of twelve men when they come from the south after Yule; and ye little know, ye silly fools, why ye are kept here." Thorod took notice of these words, and many made jest about it, and scoffed at them and their king. When the ale began to talk out of the hearts of the Jamtalanders, what Thorod had before long suspected became evident. The day after Thorod and his comrade took all ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... "I'm being silly!" He drew his hand back to throw the ornament into the chest. Then, he felt himself stopped. An irresistible compulsion seized him, and he dazedly secured the amulet about his neck. Feeling sick and weak, he tucked it into his garments. ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... all this don't signify that I forgive you in the least for coming between her and me. I'm willing to call a truce because falling out is horrid inconvenient, and looks silly. But your intrusive existence has turned love's young dream into a farce, and this suggestion of yours can only make things worse. I never bargained for being a sort of Siamese twin, but that's how it comes out. The unfortunate girl will never be able to think of one of us without the other. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... man, "and silly you must remain, but that does not much matter, for the others are as silly ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... be off, and don't jaw any more!" answered Archer— "asking such silly questions, as if you did not know better than ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... 'Away,' quoth he, 'with this silly fool! In prison fast let her lie: For she is come of the English blood, And for ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... my eyes. They are—queer, perhaps. And my hair, which I also hide under the cap. The poor soldiers ascribe all sorts of—of virtues to them. Magic qualities, which, of course, is silly. And ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... to change their skin. The third time she hinted vaguely that there was "another." The star of Abinger Vennard was now blazing in the firmament, and she had conceived a platonic admiration for him. The truth is that Miss Claudia, with all her cleverness, was very young and—dare I say it?—rather silly. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... from a sharp fit of goose, such as attacks many boys who, because matters do not go exactly as they like at home, consider that they are ill-used, and long for what they call their freedom—a freedom which is really slavery, inasmuch as they make themselves the bond-servants of their silly fancies, and it takes some time to win ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... must be made the subject of gossip because of the foolishness of two young men," he said doggedly, returning to his argument. "They will say that it is because of my daughter that you fight; and the friendship of years must be set aside while two hot-heads vent their silly spite—" ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... rule; and that they have only to organize to come into their heritage. These sycophants, who, as Aristotle of old pointed out, bear the greatest resemblance to the court favourite of the tyrant, ask the people to believe the silly paradox that the united wisdom of the whole people is greater than that of the wisest part. The truth is that no people is fit to exercise equal political rights which is not sensible enough to choose the wisest part to carry on the government, providing only they have control over ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be,—and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and we would not stay ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... another. She did not look merry indeed. Neeld knew his ignorance of feminine things, and made guesses with proper diffidence; but he certainly fancied she had been crying—or very near it—not so long ago. Yet the daughter of William Iver was sensible and not given to silly tears. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... be very silly of you. I should lose a day, that's all. Whereas you would lose all the days that remain to you to live. But no, the hiding-place is too good. A fellow doesn't invent a thing like that for fun. Come on, Sebastiani. You shall ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... this unexpected scent. And his companion's own suggestion was right to his hand, and, as it seemed, again quite providential! He laughed, with a quick color, which, however, appeared to help his lie, as he replied half hysterically, "You're right, old man, I own up, it's mine! It's d—d silly, I know—but then, we're all fools where women are concerned—and I wouldn't have lost that slipper ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... like bright bits spinning about a common centre. She looked up at the wide sky and it was borne in upon her that the universe was mighty and wonderful and infinite; she looked into her own heart and saw where she had been small and silly and finite. She saw that the snow-covered ridges stretching endlessly were like a concrete symbol of that infinity which extended above and about her; that they were clothed in beauty. She knew that when ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... good solid crime, among any tribe anywhere. Moreover, the Ajumba wanted meat, and the Fans, they said, offered them human. I saw no human meat at Egaja, but the Ajumba seem to think the Fans eat nothing else, which is a silly prejudice of theirs, because the Fans do. I think in this case the Ajumba thought a lot of smoked flesh offered was human. It may have been; it was in neat pieces; and again, as the Captain of the late s.s. Sparrow would say, "it mayn't." But the Ajumba have a horror of cannibalism, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... why you ask such silly questions," retorted the Lefthandiron. "What do we sit on? Why, you might just as well ask a dog what he barks with, or a lion what he eats his breakfast with—and that would be as stupid as ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... probably, like many other ladies, she looked upon this affair of the singing-bird as a freak that must end—and then perhaps his Grace, who was a charming young man, would return to his senses. There also was her sister, a long, fair girl, who looked sentimental, but was only silly. There was a little French actress, like a highly finished miniature; and a Spanish danseuse, tall, dusky, and lithe, glancing like a lynx, and graceful as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all right, what I say," the American lady went on. "But"—and she lost interest in Mary—"aren't we silly? Miss Wardrobe had better come in here, where there's only one place, and my daughter and I'll take a compartment together, as the car seems ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in her innocent glee— "What a fool of yourself with the whistle you'd make! For only consider how silly 'twould be To sit there and whistle for ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... see the works I made up a sort of story for myself, about the works being new ones, and the firm not being able to get them finished in time for Richard to start work, so that we had him hanging about the house all to ourselves. That was silly. Of course. But I am silly about him. I suppose I will soon ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Mlle. Silly, the daily papers inform us, has been engaged for the Grand Opera House in opera bouffe, and will make her debut about the middle of September. The lady should not be confounded with any of our New York "girls of the period" who bear, (or ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... "Oh, how silly you are!" she cried then, beginning with a laugh and ending with a strange catch in her throat. "Why, you're only just out ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... of individual Harpagons, but of the indifference of virtuous young gentlemen to the condition of the city they live in, provided they live at the west end of it on money earned by someone else's labor. The notion that prostitution is created by the wickedness of Mrs Warren is as silly as the notion—prevalent, nevertheless, to some extent in Temperance circles—that drunkenness is created by the wickedness of the publican. Mrs Warren is not a whit a worse woman than the reputable daughter who cannot endure her. Her indifference to the ultimate social consequences ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... intended to be a rascal," said Rosey, earnestly, "and you couldn't be a fool, except in heeding what a silly girl says. I only meant if you had taken me into your confidence it would have ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... honourable name of citizen which was formerly the right of the members of the Gallic cities, have degraded the idea till it has no longer any sort of meaning. A man who recently wrote a number of silly criticisms on the "Nouvelle Heloise" added to his signature the title "Citizen of Paimboeuf," and he thought it a capital joke.] No, sir, that modest bearing, that timid glance, that hesitating manner, proclaim only a slave adorned with ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... child, of course. I believe in children praying—well, women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant. I don't hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his silly troubles. It seems such cheek. Anyhow, this morning I—I have never done any harm to any God's creature knowingly—I prayed. A sudden impulse—I went flop on my knees; so you ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the truth which Epameinondas is said in later times to have uttered about his own table, when he said that "such a dinner has no room for treachery." He saw that such a house as that has no place for luxury and expense, and that there is no man so silly and tasteless as to bring couches with silver feet, purple hangings, or golden goblets into a simple peasant's house, but that he would be forced to make his furniture match the house, and his clothes match his furniture, and so on. In consequence of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... 1722, there arose a conscientious objector to boiled coffee in the person of Humphrey Broadbent, a coffee merchant who wrote a treatise on the True Way of Preparing and Making Coffee[375], in which he condemned the "silly" practise of making coffee by "boiling an ounce of the powder in a quart of water," then common in the London coffee houses, and urging the infusion method. He favored ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... even a swallow to be chased—he barked twice (the humbug!) for sign that he understood thoroughly, and at once fell to new capers by way of changing the subject. Tilda became severe. "Look here, Godolphus," she explained, "this is biz-strict biz. You may wag your silly Irish tail, but that don't take me in. Understand? . . . Well, the first thing you 'ave to do is take ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "You silly boy! I forbid you ever to write or talk of yourself in such a way again. You are not a cripple; and if you had ever had a mother or a sister, you would know how little women think of such things. How many more assurances do you expect ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... high spirits. Mahmoud was noted, too, for his ability to answer intelligently all reasonable inquiries and for his great patience in replying to many questions, that must have appeared to him very silly. Each day on the boat while we were all seated at dinner, Mahmoud came into the dining saloon and announced the program for the following days, always beginning: "Ladies and gentlemen, if you please," and closing with, "Monument ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... "I'll be with you in a second, Brady. I'm going your way, and I don't care which way you're going. My car's outside." Re-entering the room, Mr. Dodge walked up to Anne and actually shook her as a parent would shake a child. "Don't be silly about it, Anne. You've got to accept the house. He ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Poor little silly! Don't you know that if you go on like that, you will grow into a perfect donkey and that you'll be the laughingstock ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... thing rest! Besides, Sir," said Eloise, with a more gracious air, and forgetting her wicked temper, "you don't know the relief I feel! how free I am! no more figures! such a sad weight off me that I could fly! You would be silly to be such a Don Quixote as you threaten; it would do nobody any good, and would prove the ruin of all these poor creatures for whom you are now responsible. Don't you see?" said Eloise, taking a step nearer, and positively smiling upon him. "It isn't now just as you like,—you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... minister, on his way to martyrdom, to speak as a man in earnest, to express himself with some degree of dignity, and to eschew trivial and ridiculous comparisons. But, when treating of a grave subject, what can be more silly or indecorous than such language as the following—"Ye are raised on high by the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, and ye are drawn by the rope, which is the Holy Ghost, and your pulley is your faith." [422:1] Well may the Christian reader exclaim, with indignation, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... played upon the countenance of the chancellor as he replied—"Such friendship, my lord, as is consistent with perpetual strife—open and concealed—shall, if it please you, subsist between us. Pardon me, but we prate a silly jargon when we talk of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... him, for instead of making off to leeward, as he might easily do, he rushes up to windward with the intention of passing ahead of the wagon, and sometimes passes so near the front oxen that one may get a shot at the silly thing. I have seen this stupidity of his taken advantage of when he was feeding in a valley open at both ends. A number of men would commence running as if to cut off his retreat from the end through ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... "It's a silly, worryin' hen I am," she laughed. (But, oh, her laugh was a tragic thing, for while her lips curved in a smile her ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... silly?" said Felicity. "I really can never look Billy Robinson in the face when I meet him. I'm always sure he's laughing at ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... those who escaped the slaughter threw themselves into the river, where they perished. Tallard, being surrounded, was taken near a mill behind the village of Sonderen, together with the marquis de Montperouz, general of horse, the major-generals de Seppeville, de Silly, de la Valiere, and many other officers of distinction. While these occurrences passed on the loft wing, Marsin's quarters at the village of Oberklau, in the centre, were attacked by ten battalions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... silly, neurotic and, of course, wealthy women were to be initiated into the mysteries of the mock saint's religion. Grichka had no use for those whose pockets were not well lined, for he was accumulating vast sums from those weak, fascinated females who ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... castle-builders are rather nearer the state of insanity than of reverie; they reason well upon false principles; their airy fabrics are often both in good taste and in good proportion; nothing is wanting to them but a foundation. On the contrary, nothing can be more silly than the reveries of silly people; they are not only defective in consistency, but they want all the unities; they are not extravagant, but they are stupid; they consist usually of a listless reiteration of uninteresting ideas; ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... "But that's just a silly story; there never was anything like Merlin. No wonder you couldn't find out about it. You were looking for something that doesn't exist, just like all these old cranks that sit around drinking brandy and mooning about what Merlin's going to do for them, and ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... of a man who was silly enough to tell the secrets of his Government, as regarded the intended injustice of the Brazilian Ministry towards me—in spite of stipulations thrice ratified by the Emperor's own hand. But in confiding them to Lieutenant Shepherd, the Envoy's want of common honesty, no less than of common ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... and you. You would have thrown up the stall in disgust." Would that he had! That was Mark's wish now,—his futile wish. In what a slough of despond had he come to wallow in consequence of his folly on that night at Gatherum Castle! He had then done a silly thing, and was he now to rue it by almost total ruin? He was sickened also with all these lies. His very soul was dismayed by the dirt through which he was forced to wade. He had become unconsciously connected ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... "Make friends with them and sooner or later they'll let it slip out without meaning to. That is if they know anything about a lost village. And truly, Professor, we always thought that was just a lot of silly talk about there being an ancient Indian town near here. I've never seen it and I've never seen anyone else who ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... it was for myself, you silly thing. Are you not myself? and the part of myself I love the best?" And her supple wrist was round his neck in ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade |
