"Imbecile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his perversity, and especially indignant that he professed to be ignorant of my sex, I retorted in no measured terms, "Besotted Being! You think yourself the perfection of existence, while you are in reality the most imperfect and imbecile. You profess to see, whereas you can see nothing but a Point! You plume yourself on inferring the existence of a Straight Line; but I CAN SEE Straight Lines, and infer the existence of Angles, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... hardly have done for my assistant to appear in school in the morning with a black eye, and for all the children to know that her drunken father had been beating her. Now he is gone that objection is at an end. She and her mother, who has been as bad as the father, but is now, I believe, almost imbecile, could live in the little cottage ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... their side the claim of seniority, the number of royal children left by Maria, and, above all, the fact that Ivan was the elder of the two surviving sons; but unluckily for them, Ivan was notoriously imbecile ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... among his most valuable possessions, were unknown to him. It may well be doubted whether he was aware that Sicily was an island, that Christopher Columbus had discovered America, or that the English were not Mahometans. In his youth, however, though too imbecile for study or for business, he was not incapable of being amused. He shot, hawked and hunted. He enjoyed with the delight of a true Spaniard two delightful spectacles, a horse with its bowels gored out, and a Jew writhing in the fire. The time came when ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with its high walls, bars, and bolts. I had a little talk with the sister in charge of the porter's lodge, and she took me into the church, pointing to the high iron rails barring off the cloistered nuns, with that imbecile self-satisfaction as much inseparable from her calling as her ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... going to be a fine turmoil if you run to Teddy with an account of every little mild flirtation you happen to have. Of all the imbeciles, the most imbecile is the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... interests—as to the general policy of other nations. All rivalry to the American planters from those of the West Indies, was removed by emancipation; as, under freedom, the cultivation of cotton was nearly abandoned. Mehemet Ali had become imbecile, and the indolent Egyptians neglected its culture. The South Americans, after achieving their independence, were more readily enlisted in military forays, than in the art of agriculture, and they produced little cotton for export. The emancipation of their slaves, instead of increasing ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... failure! Drop into the greenroom then and you will find an astonishing change has taken place. The Star will take you into a corner and assert that, she "always knew the thing could not go, it was too imbecile, with such a company, it was folly to expect anything else." The author will abuse the Star and the management. The whole troupe is frankly disconcerted, like people aroused out of a hypnotic sleep, wondering what they had seen ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... had died in the midst of his triumphs. Two months later, imbecile Charles VI., of France, passed away also, and Henry VI., of England, was proclaimed king of both nations; while at the same time the dauphin was hailed King of France by his few followers. But his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I heard a little fizz and sputter from below. At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the breeze blow under my hat. For about six seconds I stood there like an imbecile, grinning amiably. Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... receives it. Doorin' the several years I spends in their s'ciety I never once detects Jerry in any look or word of kindness to Tom. Jerry bites him an' kicks him an' cusses him out constant; he never tol'rates Tom closter than twenty foot onless at times when he orders Tom to curry him. Shore, the imbecile Tom submits. On sech o'casions when Jerry issues a summons to go over him, usin' his upper teeth for a comb an' bresh, Tom is never so happy. Which he digs an' delves at Jerry's ribs that a-way like ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... his eunuch brother, who was the only one besides his master and himself to know that the dancer had been Zulannah, in the grip of such terror and physical pain as to be almost imbecile, though a look of cunning had shone for a moment in his bloodshot eyes when Qatim had inadvertently let drop a hint as to the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... any "sweet" speech. The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake. With another woman, a totally different one, he might have feared the recall possibly even some imbecile "offer." So, in having to say that he had indeed forgotten, he was conscious rather of a loss than of a gain; he already saw an interest in the matter of her mention. "I try to think—but I give it up. Yet I remember the ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... Rebel legions, gave the malcontents of the North, and political tricksters, a coveted opportunity to rail against the Administration, and to weaken, as far as their influence could be felt, the confidence which had been reposed in it. The President was represented as an imbecile, utterly devoid of statesmanship. The army was berated with no measured terms. Every reverse of fortune was attributed to a want of brains and heart in the heads of departments. The Republic had certainly ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... met the monstrous mother in The Devil's Disciple, the horrible old woman who declares that she has hardened her heart to hate her children, because the heart of man is desperately wicked, the old ghoul who has made one of her children an imbecile and the other an outcast. Such types do occur in small societies drunk with the dismal wine of Puritan determinism. It is possible that there were among Irish Calvinists people who denied that charity was a Christian virtue. It is possible that among Puritans ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... change during his confinement. Had his own wife seen him at that moment it is doubtful whether she would have recognized her lord. Could it be possible that that frail, tottering, wasted form, and that blanched, sunken-eyed, imbecile-looking countenance were all that were left of the once formidable Robert Gourlay? The sight was one which might have moved his bitterest enemy to tears. His clothing, a world too wide for so shrunken a tenant, hung sloppy and slovenly ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... dutiful" petition to the king was moved, but met with strong opposition. John Adams condemned it as an imbecile measure, calculated to embarrass the proceedings of Congress. He was for prompt and vigorous action. Other members concurred with him. Indeed, the measure itself seemed but a mere form, intended to reconcile the half-scrupulous; for subsequently, when it was carried, Congress, in face ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... maxims was, "The truest wisdom is a resolute determination." His life, beyond most others, vividly showed what a powerful and unscrupulous will could accomplish. He threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies. "There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... of Flint attached to his name. He was a wiry, gnarled, heavy-browed, iron-jawed fellow of about sixty, with deep-set eyes aglow with sinister and greedy instincts. His wife, older than he, and as deaf apparently as the door of a dungeon, wore a simpering, imbecile look of wonderment, it seemed to me, at the presence of such unusual and abundant cheer. The young people who lodged with Jackson were really a very frank, honest, good-looking couple, though not then appearing to advantage—the countenance of Henry Rogers being flushed and inflamed with drink, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... wiping the sweat from his forehead. He wondered for an instant if she really looked troubled, or if he only imagined it. There was no doubt about how Vincent looked, as though he thought Mr. Welles, exulting over a blow with a mattock, an old imbecile in his dotage. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... enlightened Temple alone, who nevertheless appears to have treated him as though he were what the world took him for; and that Francis, who saw these underlined manuscripts, and yet persisted in the conventional view of Boswell, was not a Mid-Victorian prig but a common imbecile. It is true that he has been stupid enough to mangle and emasculate the letters that he was employed to publish; an officious prude unquestionably he was, but no ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the thing that he had supposed to be his imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution to hunt him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed from head to foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him. Without any figure of speech, he staggered under it. But there is no greater mistake ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... he returned, bitterly. "That is just the thing: 'obey, obey.' Well, I will. I will be a stick, a dolt. I will be as unlike what God intended me to be as possible. I will be just what your father and Aunt Hester and you want me to be. I will let them think for me and save my soul. I am too much an imbecile to attempt to work out my own salvation. No, Elizabeth, I will not play ball any more. I can imagine the horrified commotion it caused among the angels when they looked down and saw me pitching. When I get ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, "that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and consummate blockheads! But it's no matter; he should not shut up ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... this is an imbecile way of talking. I dare say I shall tear up my letter in the morning. No, I shall not. It belongs to you, for it is just what your loving old Dorry is ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... jumps without looking, nor commits himself rashly, nor loses the wind out of his sails. He is so overwhelmingly superior (sometimes he is a woman!) that in his presence you are a child of wrath, a hopeless imbecile, and a black sheep all in one, and yet—how you hate him and how you long to see some brave young David come along and hit him with a sling shot! Such a man as he, is fitted to bring the average human to the ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... wretch, or rather the imbecile," said Donadieu, "he took us for pirates, and wanted to sink us—as if we needed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... unknown danger. Catharine, whose depraved yet imperious spirit was guiding with such consummate duplicity all this enginery of intrigue, hourly administered the stimulus of her own stern will to sustain the faltering purpose of her equally depraved but fickle-minded and imbecile son. ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... undivided sovereignty. There were in the West Maximian, the old colleague of Diocletian, who had resigned with him, but who had reassumed the purple; his son, Maxentius, elevated by the Roman Senate and the Praetorian Guard,—a dissolute and imbecile young man, who reigned over Italy; and Constantine, who possessed Gaul and Britain. In the East were Galerius, who had married the daughter of Diocletian, and who was a general of considerable ability; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... was chatting ponderously at his end of the table, and Mrs. Langton was being interested at hers by an account the judge's lady was giving of a protege of hers, an imbecile, who made his living by calling neighbours who had to be ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... three-quarters of an hour of this imbecile scene, Grant put the pencil in his pocket, but kept the note-book open in his hand, and walking round the mad professor, planted himself directly in ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... conversation; but when one wholly and utterly incompetent to do so lays down the law on such subjects he or she becomes a bore. But if the young person who does not know how to talk treats these questions interrogatively, ten chances to one, unless she is seated next an imbecile, she will get some very good and light small-talk out of her next neighbor. She may give a modest personal opinion, or narrate her own sensations at the opera, if she can do so without egotism, and she should always show a desire to be answered. If music and literature fail, let ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... are in the nature of monopolies. There I see a wide field for State enterprise. But when we are told to exalt and admire a philosophy which destroys individualism and seeks to replace it absolutely by collectivism, I say that is a monstrous and imbecile conception, which can find no real acceptance in the brains and hearts—and the hearts are as trustworthy as the brains—in the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... possibility that Matthew in his wild days lodged somewhere Clerkenwell way. He has a dim idea that he has heard his grandfather speak of St. John's-gate, Clerkenwell, in connection with Matthew Haygarth; but, as my ancient's grandfather seems to have been almost imbecile at the time he made such ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... intelligently intent upon the scenery. Then he broke out suddenly into a tirade against the world. "But I am bored by this jostling unreasonable world. At the bottom of my heart I am bitterly resentful to-day. This is a world of fools and brutes in which we live, a world of idiotic traditions, imbecile limitations, cowardice, habit, greed and mean cruelty. It is a slum of a world, a congested district, an insanitary jumble of souls and bodies. Every good thing, every sweet desire is thwarted—every one. I have to lead the life of a ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... itself to an imaginary dullness in others; as people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor, and those who are in the prime of life raise their voice and talk artificially to seniors, hastily conceiving them to be deaf and rather imbecile. Gwendolen, with all her cleverness and purpose to be agreeable, could not escape that form of stupidity: it followed in her mind, unreflectingly, that because Mrs. Arrowpoint was ridiculous she was also likely to be wanting in penetration, and she went through her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... long fore-finger and saying, "Tut, tut! I shall consider being very harsh, if you commit these outrages three more times.." To shake your fist at all, and then to shake your finger, seemed to Roosevelt almost imbecile. Cut off from serving the cause of American patriotism in any public capacity, Roosevelt struggled to take his part by writing. Every month in the Outlook, and subsequently in the Metropolitan Magazine, he gave vent to his pent-up indignation. The very titles ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the Princess Elizabeth, makes pitiful allusion to the incident, begging her to remember what he must have suffered before he said this; also reminding her how children may be taught to utter words they do not comprehend. His lesson, no doubt, had been learned by cruel tortures; and, rendered half imbecile, it was recited when the time came. None but his keeper was ever permitted to see the boy. His condition, final illness, and death are shrouded in mystery. In June, 1794, eight months after his mother's execution, it was announced that he was dead. It would ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... whose privileges it consecrates, to the wealthy whom it protects, and to the entire nation, to which it assures all the liberty desired by a people methodical and slow in character, and who, absorbed in their commercial interests, do not like being perpetually worried about the imbecile George III. or public affairs. Vainly have the friends of reform protested their attachment to the Constitution. Vainly they declare that they desire to demand nothing, to obtain nothing, save in lawful ways. They are persistently disbelieved. Payne ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... go with you, Charlotte," she begged me with tears in her eyes. "I must get her away from this attractive but undesirable young man! That absurd uncle who didn't want his name to die out must have been a lunatic or an imbecile. Why shouldn't such a vulgar name become extinct? And to think that my exquisite Dorothea—whose figure and eyelashes have been remarked by royalty—to think that she should be expected to graft herself on to that family tree of all others! To think that she may take that name herself ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... But all has not been told. A private firm has prevailed upon the imbecile old farmers from the western and interior counties to give them the right to build a private freight railroad through many of the principal streets of the Quaker City. This road will run through several school-house yards, and the time-tables ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... the emperor was poisoned against Stilicho, the sole remaining bulwark of his power. He had sought to tie the hands of Alaric with gifts of power and gold, and was accused of treason by his enemies. The weak Honorius gave way, and Stilicho was slain. His friends shared his fate, and the cowardly imbecile who ruled Rome cut down the only ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... now," my friend remarked. "This fellow Merryweather is a bank director and personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone. Here we are, and they are waiting ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Confusion of Tongues," we can trace the tension. As soon as Gaius, surnamed Caligula, came to the imperial chair, the opportunity of the anti-Semites returned. Gaius, after reigning well a few months, fell ill, was seized with madness, and proved how much evil can be done in a short space by an imbecile autocrat. Flaccus, the governor of Egypt, who had hitherto ruled fairly, hoping to ingratiate himself by misrule, allowed himself to be led by worthless minions, who, from motives of private greed, desired a riot at Alexandria; he was won over by the anti-Semites and gave ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... made me awfully wild, especially as George burst out laughing. I could not see anything to laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more. I never saw a man laugh so much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roared the louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George's, which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for the first time, and I began to laugh. And ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... were filled with denunciations and abuse of the prince, some of the sheets asserting, by way of explanation of his conduct, that he was mentally unbalanced, his mother having been an acknowledged lunatic, and his brother. Prince Alexander, an imbecile. Nothing can be further from the truth. It cannot be denied that he has a few harmless and kindly eccentricities which would attract no attention whatever in an ordinary septuagenarian, but which excite comment merely ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... collapses due to demoralisation by indulgences following security and abundance. In the time of our Founders the signs of a world-wide epoch of prosperity and relaxation were plentiful. Both sexes drifted towards sexual excesses, the men towards sentimental extravagances, imbecile devotions, and the complication and refinement of physical indulgences; the women towards those expansions and differentiations of feeling that find expression in music and costly and distinguished dress. Both sexes became unstable and promiscuous. The whole world seemed disposed to do exactly ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... because she was rich, Jimmie. She wanted me not; and she married a wealthy fool and the imbecile made her happy. I could almost forgive her for not loving me, for I was a mate on a steamboat, but to let that fool make her happy—it was too much and I cast her out of my mind. But when is your wedding to take place? In the sweet ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... glimpses that have nothing whatever in common with the truth as we know it from observation. Very often the errors implied by such names are flagrant; sometimes the allusions are ridiculous, grotesque, or merely imbecile. So long as they have a decent sound, how infinitely preferable are locutions in which etymology finds nothing to dissect! Of such would be the word fullo, were it not that it already has a meaning which immediately occurs to the mind. This Latin expression means a fuller; ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... to extreme old age and to continue my story with the years, I, an old man of seventy, shall be found dreaming dreams just as impossible and childish as those I am dreaming now. I shall be dreaming of some lovely Maria who loves me, the toothless old man, as she might love a Mazeppa; of some imbecile son who, through some extraordinary chance, has suddenly become a minister of state; of my suddenly receiving a windfall of a million of roubles. I am sure that there exists no human being, no human age, to whom or to which that gracious, consolatory ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... much more to the point to have them all under lock and key. England must be brought into line. The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches. And they have the political power still, if they only had the sense to use it for ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... my hotel perfectly furious, holding in his hand the principal newspaper of Pittsburg, in which our illustrator, who turned out to be a journalist, had written an article giving at full length an account of the dress rehearsal of Froufrou! "In the play of Froufrou," wrote this delightful imbecile, "there is only one scene of any importance, and that is the one between the two sisters. Madame Sarah Bernhardt did not impress me greatly, and as to the artistes of the Comedie Francaise, I considered they were mediocre. The costumes ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... enfeebled in intellect by the loss of his child, was prevailed on by Miss Goodwin and her family to adopt her as his daughter, and by a series of the most artful and selfish manoeuvres they succeeded in getting the poor imbecile and besotted old man to make a will in her favor; and the consequence was that he left her twelve hundred a year, both to her and her issue, should she marry and have any; but in case she should have no issue, then, after her death, it ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and with his recent lunch commencing to operate on the system, so as to render exhaustion no longer a pain, but a pleasure, Peter lay on that knoll, high up the mountain-side, in close proximity to the clouds, dreaming and thinking about nothing; that is to say, about everything or anything in an imbecile sort of way: in other words, wandering in his mind disjointedly over the varied regions of memory and imagination; too tired to originate an idea; too indifferent to resist one when it arose; too weak to follow it out; and utterly indifferent as to whether ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... damnable outrage!" McElwin shouted, making straight for Lyman. "I mean you, sir," he cried, shaking his fist at Lyman. "You, sir. You try to bunco me and now you conspire with an imbecile to humble me into the dust. I mean you, sir. You have married my daughter. That fool is an ordained preacher, and your sockless legislature did away with ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... things, must yield the possession of the harvest to new competitors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday that is ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... well-spring of pleasure, a new baby, has leaped up in the midst of your wilderness of exile, the demonstration, if any, with which your servants will receive the glad tidings, will depend wholly on the "denomination of the imbecile offspring," as our eleemosynary widow, Mrs. Diana Theodosia Comfort Green, would call it. If it happen to be only a girl, there will be a trace of pity in the silent salaam with which the grim durwan salutes you as you roll into your palkee ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... old father; old mother; bedridden 15-year-old boy; water head; simple; old mother feeds it mouth to mouth[14]; "Die kind, leeraart, het ik nou al lang afgege aan de Heere Jesus!" (This child, Pastor, I have given to the Lord Jesus long ago.") She dotes on this imbecile, poor mother. Such a simple, homely, gladsome, believing old heart. "Ik ben velen een wonder geweest" ("I am a wonder unto many"); me certainly; daughter with sick girlie; "De Heere het haar ver ons terug gege" ("The Lord has given her back to ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... upon the meeting. It was unanimously resolved, that a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator, imploring his assistance, and the favour of a speech; and the deputation should also wait on two or three other imbecile old women, not resident in the parish, and entreat their attendance. The application was successful, the meeting was held; the orator (an Irishman) came. He talked of green isles—other shores—vast Atlantic—bosom of the deep—Christian charity—blood and extermination—mercy in hearts—arms ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... dead! but that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'Twere imbecile hewing out roads to a wall, And when Italy's made, for what end is it done If ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot
... distant cousin Darley Absworthy, both Members of Parliament, useful men, though gouty, who had sown in their time a fine crop of wild oats, and advocated the advantage of doing so, seeing that they did not fancy themselves the worse for it. He found one with an imbecile son and the other with consumptive daughters. "So much," he wrote in the Note-book, "for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time in inquiring for Kabba Rega, whom I insisted upon seeing. After a short delay he appeared, in company of some of his bonosoora. He was in a beastly state of intoxication, and, after reeling about with a spear in his hand, he commenced a most imbecile attempt at warlike gestures. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... us that Louis Riel, simply by his influence, could bring those men from peace to war, to tell us that they had no grievances, to tell us that they were brought into a state of rebellion either through pure malice or through imbecile adherence to an adventurer, is an insult to the intelligence of the people at large, and an unjust aspersion on the people ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... could not endure the unendurable at all. He was savage when he thought of it. That was her life and she would never get away from it. She, who was born for the wild open air and for youth and strength and freedom, would be shut up in that house and tied to that half-paralyzed, half-imbecile old man forever. It was damnable. And he, Rowcliffe, could have prevented it if he had only known. And if Mary had not ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... vigorous and superior intellect. The brains of many eminent men have been found to be 8 to 12 ounces above the average weight, but there are notable exceptions. The brains of idiots are small; indeed, any weight under a certain size, about 30 ounces, seems to be invariably associated with an imbecile mind. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... astonishment. Then a terrible possibility dawned upon him. A cold perspiration broke out all over him. Oh, god of love, was this his precious Jennie? Had he made an irrevocable ass of himself over this lump of ancient human flesh? A hue of brilliant scarlet suffused his countenance. Oh, what an imbecile, a simple, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... give up their population,—only the blind, the sick, and the imbecile being left to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... very nearly the destruction of his life. When at last he emerged from the anguish and confusion of her folly, her extravagance, her rage, her despair, and her devotion, he was left alone with endless memories of intermingled farce and tragedy, and an only son, who was an imbecile. But there was something else that he owed to Lady Caroline. While she whirled with Byron in a hectic frenzy of love and fashion, he had stayed at home in an indulgence bordering on cynicism, and occupied his solitude ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... of the Republic. I walked through the streets, and the crackers and flags amused me like a child. Still it is very foolish to be merry on a fixed date, by a Government decree. The populace, an imbecile flock of sheep, now steadily patient, and now in ferocious revolt. Say to it: "Amuse yourself," and it amuses itself. Say to it: "Go and fight with your neighbor," and it goes and fights. Say to it: "Vote for the Emperor," and it votes for the Emperor, and then ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... before his lordship for signature. It was with some difficulty that he was made to understand that he was to sign it. The old gentleman appeared much more imbecile than when I last saw him. I thanked him, folded up the letter, and put it in my pocket. At last he looked at me, and a sudden flash of recollection appeared to ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the Man in the Street is a better judge of literature than the Critic—the man who knows little than the man who knows more—wears (to my mind, at least) a slightly imbecile air on the face of it. It also appears to me that people are either confusing thought or misusing language when they confer the title of "supreme critic" on the last person to be persuaded. And, again, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... superior technique for its transmission. At the same time, the individual brain is unstable, fluctuating in normal persons between 1,100 and 1,500 grams in weight, while the extremes of variation are represented, on the one side, by the imbecile with 300 grams, and the man of genius with 2,000 on the other. It is therefore perfectly true that by artificial selection—Mr. Galton's "eugenism"—a larger average brain could be created, and also a higher average of natural intelligence, whether this be absolutely dependent on ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... principal officers under his command, and endeavored to prepare their minds for the revolution which he contemplated by representing to them that neither of the princes who had been proclaimed were fit to reign. John, he said, was almost an imbecile, on account of the numerous and hopeless bodily infirmities to which he was subject. Peter was yet a mere boy; and then, besides, even when he should become a man, he would very likely be subject ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... and philosophic ideas, and may be forced to put on a System of Thought, as men put on a mackintosh. But his true education is what he makes of these things. If he hears of Theodoric with a yawn, we say—the college-folk—He must be imbecile. No, not imbecile! he may become a successful toreador, or snake-charmer, which things are out of our line! And a man may be an upright citizen, a good husband, and a sincerely religious man, who has never heard of Francesca, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the best view of God I ever had! There are two kinds of sermons I never want to preach—the one that presents God so kind, so indulgent, so lenient, so imbecile that men may do what they will against Him, and fracture His every law, and put the cry of their impertinence and rebellion under His throne, and while they are spitting in His face and stabbing at His heart, He takes them up in His arms and kisses their infuriated brow ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Montague, unaccompanied by any estate wherewith to support the dignity of his rank. Montague turned against him, and Edward, fearing for his life, fled to Holland. Warwick became master of England, and this time the King-maker drew Henry from the Tower and placed him once more on the throne, imbecile as he now was. ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... be done when our existence as a nation is at stake, and when we are opposed by a remorseless foe which would gladly ruin us irretrievably? There is no halting half-way. It was these endless scruples which interfered with the prevention of the war under the imbecile or traitorous Buchanan; it is lingering scruple and timidity which still inspires in thousands of cowardly hearts a dislike to face the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... often with a smile so childlike as to be almost silly in expression. Father Ignatius loved the silent smile, and a word from him was always sure to bring it; but it angered Father Francis Xavier more than many a more repulsive thing would have done. It seemed so utterly imbecile and babyish to him, he had got so far away from innocence and smiles and childhood himself, that the sight of them irritated him. The young Indian girl had a long and almost unpronounceable name. Pere Ignace had baptized her Marie, and the new name had ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... impress the Martian with the "infallibility" of the Church. The only great spiritual power that could have interposed to prevent the outbreak of the World War was the papacy. Pope Pius X had his Nuncio admonish the Austrian emperor, but he failed even to get an audition from that old imbecile. The next Pope, Benedict XV, was under the influence of a majority of pro-German cardinals. He strove to remain neutral. He attempted to solace the Belgians with words, but he did not reprove the murderous invaders. He protested ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... ambitious projects. At the time of the visit of the Landers, they were effectually in the heart of the kingdom, they had entrenched themselves in strong walled towns, and had recently forced from Mansolah a declaration of their independence, whilst this negligent and imbecile monarch beheld them gnawing away the very sinews of his strength, without making the slightest exertion to apply a remedy for the evil, or prevent their future aggrandizement. Independently of Raka, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... treasures were hid, and when he consented to take them to the place where he had concealed his possessions, they found a few broken earthen dishes, and a little bit of money, about as much as a poor imbecile might be supposed to possess. Thereupon the disappointed fiends ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... imbecile young man who, by the absurd law of hereditary descent, was the destined heir to the throne of more than twenty millions of people. The king was anxious to obtain for his son a bride whose alliance would strengthen him ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... has been tortured to find epithets sufficiently strong to paint him in description. Imagination has been exhausted in her efforts to deck him with revolting and inhuman attributes. Tyrant, despot, usurper; destroyer of the liberties of his country; rash, ignorant, imbecile; endangering the public peace with all foreign nations; destroying domestic prosperity at home; ruining all industry, all commerce, all manufactures; annihilating confidence between man and man; delivering up the streets of populous cities to ...
— Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the Senate on the Expunging Resolution • Thomas Hart Benton
... Brun, with some scorn, the signature of the Marseilles notary. "An imbecile, your Jean Jacques—an imbecile, like his great and mischievous namesake. He does not say of what malady your second cousin died, or what income the property ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... said with a horrible laugh, "you look surprised. You did not expect me? You thought that my imbecile ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... preach a sermon to the beautiful Stella Monck on the same text? Ralph Dacre's death was quite as much of a mystery. And the kindly gossips are every bit as busy with Captain Monck's reputation as with His Excellency's. But I suppose her devotion to that wretched little imbecile baby of hers renders ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... to the feeling of superiority. From that classical imbecile who burnt down the Temple of Diana to the crop of young girls who invent tales of white slavery in order to stand in the public eye as conspicuous victims, notoriety has been mistaken for fame by those ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... hop with rage. They say, 'What! do you drink THIS?' Then, when we tell them that all their water supply comes from this lake, they grin like a dog and go about the city, —I mean depart on their imbecile way. But these people are all dressed up. Oh, Momus and Comus! There are girls on board! ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... drilled, for this the Law was administered and the prisons did their duty, for this the millions toiled and perished in suffering, in order that a few of us should build palaces we never finished, make billiard-rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round irrational estates, scorch about the world in motor-cars, devise flying-machines, play golf and a dozen such foolish games of ball, crowd into chattering dinner parties, gamble and make our lives one vast, dismal spectacle ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... say no more. As the great Cardinal once observed to his chief of police, "Je te verrai souffle d'abord," so I reply to those who wish me to reveal the secret of my success. Mr. J. knows it not, and no single member of the imbecile, anserous, asinine, cow-hocked, spavin-brained, venomous, hugger-mugger purveyors of puddling balderdash who follow him has the least conception of my glorious system. But I am willing to teach, though I have nothing to learn. For six halfpenny stamps those who desire to know, shall receive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... a woman sold herself to a man for the social status of a wife and the right to be supported and pensioned in old age out of his income. That's the advanced view—our view. Besides, if you had married me, I might have turned out a drunkard, a criminal, an imbecile, a horror to you; and you couldn't have released yourself. Too big a risk, you see. That's the rational view—our view. Accordingly, you reserved the right to leave me at any time if you found our companionship incompatible with—what was the expression you used?—with ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... himself, a blithering imbecile, so pleased was he at chumming thus with the captain. The little airs he put on and the painful striving to assume the easy carriage of a man born to a dignified place in life would have been sickening had they not been ludicrous. He quite ignored my presence, though ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... tangle of fantastic dreams in which the haunting figure of her waking thoughts, the hermit of Scarthey, appeared to her in varied shapes; as an awe-inspiring, saintly ascetic with long, white hair; as a young, beautiful, imprisoned prince; even as a ragged imbecile staring vacantly at a lantern, somewhere in ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... he laughed. "That's easy. You've got brains, Nance, and the most imbecile thing you could do just now, when your foot is already on the ladder, would be just this—to get off in order to pick up a trinket out of the mud, when there's a fortune up at the top waiting for you. Clever people don't do asinine things. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... down to talk to him. At first Rovinski refused to make any answers to the questions put to him, but at last, apparently enraged by the imputation that he must be a weak-minded, almost idiotic, man to behave himself in such an imbecile fashion, ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... her own life to-day," Beulah cried, still excitedly. "Every woman is living the life of some man, who has the legal right to treat her as an imbecile." ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Young David ends as a dotard—Solomon as worse. Glorious Alexander must die, half of fever, half of drunkenness, as the fool dieth. Charles the Fifth, having thrown all away but his follies, ends in a convent, a superstitious imbecile; Napoleon squabbles to the last with Sir Hudson Lowe about champagne. It must be so; and the glory must be God's alone. For in great men, and great times, there is nothing good or vital but what is of God, and not of man's self; and when He taketh away that divine breath they die, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... against the future, party on party, dances on suppers and suppers on plays; to dine every evening at some place where they hadn't dined before; to meet lots of nice amusing people with demobilised minds who wouldn't talk to him about the war; to let himself go in bursts of exquisitely imbecile laughter; never to be quiet for an hour, never to be alone with himself, never to be ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... into whose hands my imbecile curiosity had put the clew was growing greater every minute. It seemed as if Olivia could not be safe now, day or night; yet what protection could I or Tardif ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... reckless severity, and still more throughout the Court, for the fearless manner in which he spoke to the King of the malversation and peculations of the minister and all the Court favourites who were not in his interest. He thwarted the imbecile old minister, Roshun-od Dowlah, in everything; and never lost an opportunity of turning him into ridicule, and showing his ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... for supplying the departments below the Loire, is shipped at Paimboeuf and taken out of the kingdom from there to be sold abroad." In the suburbs of Rouen they imagine that grain is purposely "engulfed in the swamps, ponds, and clay-pits." At Laon, imbecile and Jacobin committees attribute the dearness of provisions to the avidity of the rich and the malevolence of the aristocrats according to them, "jealous millionaires grow rich at the expense of the people. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was in the island. There were other and minor elements of success, too, to be noted in the great game that the Stuart prince {210} was playing. The Ministry was unpopular: the head of that Ministry was the imbecile Duke of Newcastle, perhaps the most contemptible statesman who has ever made high office ridiculous. The King was away in Hanover. England was in the toils of a foreign war, and her prestige had lately suffered heavily from the sudden defeat at Fontenoy. There were very few troops in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... placed her affections upon a youth who had distinguished himself by no valiant deeds in war, nor by industry or dexterity in the chase. His name had never reached the surrounding nations. His own nation knew him not, unless as a weak and imbecile man. He was poor in everything which constitutes the riches of Indian life. Who had heard the twanging of Karkapaha's bow in the retreat of the bear, or who had beheld the war-paint on his cheek or brow? Where were the scalps or the prisoners ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... admiration. It was universally regarded as a most addle-pated, imbecile affair from beginning to end. One of the girls who worked at the hotel in the village "got into trouble," as our vernacular runs, and as she came originally from our district and had gone to school there, everyone knew her and was talking about the scandal. Old Ma'am Warren was ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... them. I do not believe she cared particularly for them; but she is good natured, and the ranch is large, and they are rather amusing. At the time of my first visit the original pair had multiplied. Gazing on that yardful of imbecile-looking canines, my admiration for Noah's wisdom increased; he certainly needed no more than a pair to restock the earth. Redmond claimed there were twenty-two of them, though nobody else pretended to have been able to disentangle ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... I said before, I don't know where you are disporting yourself, beyond some hurried remark about Paris which you dropped in our hurried interview in one of the "brilliant flashes of silence" between those imbecile screams and yells and stamping, which even the natural enthusiasm at the prospect of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... he suddenly, as if answering the voices which whispered in his soul; "that would be an imbecile, miserable resort, and, moreover, we would not obtain our object; ho would not be humiliated, but a martyr's crown would be added to his laurels. When, however, ho is completely humbled, when, to this great ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Italian opera was what it is now, frivolous, insincere, imbecile. Its sole function was, and always has been, to help idlers of the upper classes to while away their evenings. The absurd notion of a Platonic music was rivalled by the absurdity of the composition. The inane dialogue ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight |
