"Simpleton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no, your lesson is not done, You have not learnt it half; You'll grow a downright simpleton, And make ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... this very thing. Poor chap, he reads like anything, and I suppose he'd been overdoing it, for he actually asked me to choose between Mrs. Lascelles and himself! What could a fellow do but let the poor old simpleton go? They seem to think you can't be pals with a woman without wanting to make love to her. Such utter rot! I confess I lose my hair with them; but that doesn't excuse me in the least for ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... about the weak-minded, the untalented, etc. Kant says, rightly, that inasmuch as fools are commonly puffed-up and deserve to be degraded, the word foolishness must be applied to a "swell-headed'' simpleton, and not to a good and honest simpleton. But Kant is not here distinguishing between foolishness and simplicity, but between pretentiousness and kindly honesty, thus indicating the former as the necessary attribute of foolishness. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... fool, idiot, tomfool, wiseacre, simpleton, witling^, dizzard^, donkey, ass; ninny, ninnyhammer^; chowderhead^, chucklehead^; dolt, booby, Tom Noddy, looby^, hoddy-doddy^, noddy, nonny, noodle, nizy^, owl; goose, goosecap^; imbecile; gaby^; radoteur^, nincompoop, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... nothing of the encounter; neither as to the origin of the old man's status in his father's esteem, nor as to the cause of his father's strange emotion. He regarded the old man impatiently as an aged simpleton, probably over pious, certainly connected with the Primitive Methodists. His father had said 'There's a good lad' almost cajolingly. And this was odd; for, though nobody could be more persuasively agreeable ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the lilting, sing-song speech of Shainsa. I made no answer, gesturing him to be seated. On Wolf, formal courtesy requires a series of polite non sequiturs, and while a direct question merely borders on rudeness, a direct answer is the mark of a simpleton. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... writing, by his dictation, these official words, everyone of which was an imposition. Excited by all I had just witnessed, it was difficult for me to refrain from making the observation; but his constant reply was, "My dear fellow, you are a simpleton: you do not understand this business." And he observed, when signing the bulletin, that he would yet fill the world with admiration, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the very best quality; and I regret to say, that this announcement had the effect of reducing considerably the sum she derived from the charity of the ward, and effectually preventing the consummation of any very formidable debauch with her favourite viands. But the poor simpleton was as merry as she was innocent and harmless; and all unsuspicious of the latent grudge which had lessened her gratuity, tripped hastily off, to enjoy at least one ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... separate himself forever from his wife is a veritable simpleton. If a wife and husband think themselves fit for that union of friendship which exists between men, it is odious in the husband to make his wife feel ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... are young and silly what they sometimes repent of when they are of riper years and understandings. I sometimes think that had I not been something of a simpleton, I might at this time be a great court lady. Now, madam,' said she, again taking Belle by the hand, 'do oblige me by allowing me to plait your ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... "Simpleton!" many of my readers will exclaim. Perhaps he was; but even if you laugh at him, I think you will hardly despise him for his simple- mindedness, for who would not rather be such a one than ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... "she bought a new shirt waist. When she wore it Mrs. Nobbs asked her where she got it. Like a simpleton, she told the whole story, so pleased to have earned the money, and never dreaming but that it was her own! What did they do but make her give up the seven dollars she had left! They did let her keep the waist—she ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... accompaniment that was not musical, and thought of the other dancers. "Doubtless," he mused, "she has told this beau of hers that she has left the baby with the 'looney' Man on the Beach. Perhaps I may be offered a permanent engagement as a harmless simpleton accustomed to the care of children. Mothers may cry for me. The doctor is at Eureka. Of course, he will be there to see his untranslated goddess, and condole with her over the imbecility of the Man on the Beach." Once he carelessly asked Joe who the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... are impressed with the idea that that soldier could have been put to better use; that, in fact, he is entirely out of the line of duty. The position assigned him is unnatural, and the modern soldier-boy will be apt to conclude that nobody but a simpleton would be likely to wander about in solitary places, extemporizing in measured sentences; besides it is hard work, as I know from experience. I tried my hand at it the other day until my head ached, and this is the best I ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... revolver, Powers's Greek Slave, Hobbs's unpickable lock, Hoe's wonderful printing presses, and Bond's more wonderful spring governor,—-it began to be suspected that Brother Jonathan was not quite so much of a simpleton as had been thought. He had contributed his full share, if not to the splendor, at least to the utilities of the exhibition. In fact, the leading journal at London, with a magnanimity which did it honor, admitted ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... deadened with narcotics, rendered independent of all such things by a little skilful rubbing alone. Perhaps you object that these remedies are "very simple." Well, that would be no great harm; but if they are so simple, you are surely a simpleton if you let your poor nerves be killed with morphia, while such obvious remedies are ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... on that skunk," he had said, the malodorous epithet being his designation for Louis Laplante, "If you lay hands on that skunk, don't be a simpleton. Skin him, Sir, by the Lord, skin him! Let him play the ostrich act! Keep your own counsel and work him for all you're worth! Let him play his deceitful game! By Jove! Give the villain rope enough to hang himself! Gain your end! Afterwards forget and forgive if you like; but, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... assured herself that the intruders were her mother and an attendant, she composed herself to feigned sleep. A step approached her bed, she dared not move, she strove to calm her palpitations, which became more violent, when she heard her mother say mutteringly, "Pretty simpleton, little do you think that your game is already ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... mutilates the fish by cutting it in a wrong direction; here, an officious ignoramus tears asunder the members of a fowl as coarsely as the four horses dragged Ravillac, limb from limb; there, another simpleton notching a tongue into dissimilar slices, while a purblind coxcomb confounds the different sauces, pouring anchovy on pigeon-pie, and parsley and butter on roast-beef. All these barbarisms are unknown ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... handkerchief, advanced towards them. I own that my heart was beating tolerably quickly all the time, but I tried to look as brave as a lion. When they saw that I had laid aside my weapon, for which I had reason to suspect they thought me a great simpleton, their own courage returned, and then rushing forward, I was soon surrounded by their motley band, each man amusing himself, very much to his satisfaction though very little to mine, by thrusting the point of his sword or spear-head ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... to himself, slipping into a chair and stretching out his legs, "and it will only remain for Michael Phelan to turn up or to fail to turn up and the mystery of the escape is explained. Poor Phelan, he must be a terrific simpleton, and I suppose I am partly ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... preferred such a mean-looking little fop as Narcisse, whether she were afraid of his English home and breeding, or whether all this open coquetry were really the court manners of ladies towards gentlemen, and he had been an absolute simpleton to be flattered. Any way, she would have been a most undesirable wife, and he was well quit of her; but he did feel a certain lurking desire that, since the bonds were cut and he was no longer in danger from ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... simpletons come playing the tunes we heard long ago in our mountains.' I am this harper that roams between the hosts in battle array of hostile armies. When I think whither human wisdom leads, I am glad to be a madman and a simpleton; and I thank God that He has given me the harp to handle and not ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... "The Eternal Simpleton, you mean. In that swamp of pettiness, idiocy, and materialism, a man of your nature could not long abide. Religion—it has not yet responded to your need. And without faith your sins lose their savour. The arts—you don't know them all, the Seven Deadly Arts and ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... "Corporal Overton is a mighty fine young soldier, and a good soldier never needs to be his officer's pet; he can stand on his own merits. But what's the trouble with Overton? Is he still absurdly suspected of relieving that simpleton ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... "Little simpleton, you're the rabbit," she said. "The girls still like you, but they're used to you and they rather expect you to do something now. It's your turn to ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... Fathers, procureurs, and auditors of the Rota bought by certain presents, not relics or indulgences, but jewels and gold, the favour of being familiar with the best of these pampered cats who lived under the protection of the lords of the Council; the poor Touranian, all simpleton and innocent as he was, treasured up under his mattress the money given him by the good archbishop for writings and copying—hoping one day to have enough just to see a cardinal's lady-love, and trusting to God for the rest. He was hairless from top to toe and resembled ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... a little too much amazement escape through my surprise, for he answered with a deprecating laugh: "Yes—she's an awful simpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to have him done by a fashionable painter—ah, poor Stroud! She thought it the surest way of proclaiming his greatness—of forcing it on a purblind public. And at the moment ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... little simpleton! you ignorant little heretic!—destitute both of religion and common sense. Good Heavens, what a wife! Jealous of Mary, our Mother in Heaven! O, Holy Mary in Heaven, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... a man of talent, and a simpleton that will do your memoirs for you, in his aunt's name, for ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... have made a simpleton of your aunt Hervey yesterday: she came down from you, pleading in your favour. But when she was asked, What concession she had brought you to? she looked about her, and knew not what to answer. So your mother, when surprised into the beginning of your cunning address to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... lived far off, and she has not been able to go to church for weeks and years. But what I long after is to tell me what means all this—yonder sea, and all the stars up above. And they will call me a simpleton for marking such as these, and only want me to heed how to shoot an arrow, or give a stroke hard enough to hurt another. Do such rude doings alone, fit for a bull or a ram as meseems, go to the making ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she answered, "it wouldn't do me no good. I am too old for that. Now, get out of the way there—do, you simpleton," she added, turning to the idiot; "just let me pass—don't you see I am ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the large class of stories about simpletons, so dear to the public in all parts of the world. In the Skazkas a simpleton is known as a durak, a word which admits of a variety of explanations. Sometimes it means an idiot, sometimes a fool in the sense of a jester. In the stories of village life its signification is generally ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... very angry and said, "Eteoneus, son of Boethous, you never used to be a fool, but now you talk like a simpleton. Take their horses out, of course, and show the strangers in that they may have supper; you and I have staid often enough at other people's houses before we got back here, where heaven grant that we may rest in ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... said Etty, seeing that I was chagrined. "As easy made up as a lovers' quarrel," said Aunt Tabitha. Silly old woman! No, silly young fellow! Flora has revenged herself on me as she meant to do, for defying her power. She has turned my head; made me act like a simpleton. But "Richard's himself again," ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... as they do at this coffee house; 'tis here you see Legal the profound, Philidor the subtle, Mayot the solid; here you see the most astounding moves, and listen to the sorriest talk, for if a man be at once a wit and a great chess player, like Legal, he may also be a great chess player and a sad simpleton, like ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... cool as his own, hoped he was well and that he would not be killed in the coming struggle. The coming struggle with the Xenophon was nothing compared to his present struggle. Fernando still loved Morgianna. Five years had only added to the intensity of his love; but he had once made a simpleton of himself, and he determined not to do so again. Thus two hungry souls, thirsting for each other's love, acted the cold part of casual acquaintances. Could the veil have been lifted, could the barriers have been broken down, what ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... not rouged, were naturally red; her eyebrows, though not pencilled, were yet blue black; her face resembled a silver basin, and her eyes, juicy plums. She was sparing in her words, chary in her talk, so much so that people said that she posed as a simpleton. She was quiet in the acquittal of her duties and scrupulous as to the proper season for everything. "I practise simplicity," she ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "Don't be a simpleton, child, and bind yourself with your eyes bandaged," he abruptly and laconically said to her one day. "When Verner's Pride falls in, then ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... fortune to their love of bright colors. And although he had filled two graveyards with ruined husbands, and was preparing a third for the great number of wives whose constancy he had crushed out with the high price of his laces, no one was simpleton enough to blame him. No matter how many sins of extravagant men he might have to answer for, the purchase of seven pews in Grace Church, and the good will of Brown, would secure his redemption. Stewart was a hero whose deeds should be recorded in history, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... he says. 'We'll have another session with him before you leave. Perhaps we can get him into the house here this evenin'. My wife is pretty good at that, she jollies him along. Oh, he swallows it all; the poor simpleton don't know when he's bein' ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he muttered to himself. "I don't understand them. That man Jacks is either a simpleton or he is too ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... capable of self-help, and sometimes of self-support under the careful guidance of other. Under the generic term "idiot" may be included the "complete idiot," the imbecile, the "feeble-minded" and the "simpleton," all of whom suffer in a greater or less degree ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... many goodies were stuffed into thy already crowded valise! It wasn't for nothing that her communications have been so frequent, and contained such tender inquiries after thy health, and such pathetic injunctions to be careful of thyself!" You must be a simpleton, man, to imagine that a benevolent disposition prompted so many manifestations all of a sudden, when the past was so different. "But why not?" thought he, as his charitable heart sought for a better motive in the woman than selfishness. "Isn't there such a thing as an immediate turning from ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... are a simpleton, Corny!" exclaimed one of the men, as he came up to the palisades of the fence. "Didn't I tell you not ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the stretcher-bearer called me a —— parson. The officers in the convalescent camp, the centre camp in my charge, were all kindness in their welcome, but the sergeant-major ——. We became fast friends afterwards, but the day we first met he looked me over and decided that I was an inefficient simpleton. Without speaking a word he made his opinion plain to me. He was appallingly efficient himself and I do not think he ever altered his perfectly just opinion of me. But in the end, and long before the end, he did all he could ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... "That little simpleton Gatien has, I suppose, related to you a speech I made simply to make him confess that he adored you," said Etienne. "Your silence, during dinner the day before yesterday and throughout the evening, was enough to betray one of those indiscretions which we never commit in Paris.—What ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Your 'gift,' your genius, is yourself, and it's because it's yourself that I yearn for you. If it had been a thing you could leave behind by the easy dodge of stepping off the stage I would never have looked at you a second time. Don't talk to me as if I were a simpleton—with your own false simplifications! You were made to charm and console, to represent beauty and harmony and variety to miserable human beings; and the daily life of man is the theatre for that—not a vulgar shop with a turnstile that's open only ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... exclaimed, in a fit of rage. "Only so many scraps of paper! I couldn't raise a sou on the whole of them! And you ask me if I have any remorse. THEY are the ones who should have remorse and pity. They played me for a simpleton; and I fell into their trap. I was their latest victim, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... pay you out yet," quoth Molly, tugging at her black mane. "So our lovers are to come after us, is that it? Do you know, Madeleine," she went on, calming down, "I almost regret now that I would not listen to young Lord Dereham, simpleton though he be. He looked such a dreadful little fright that I only laughed at him.... I should have laughed at him all my life. But it would perhaps have been better than this dependence on Tanty, with her sudden whims and scampers and whisking ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... is a poor fellow, a mealy-mouthed simpleton who the minute I say anything opens his jaws like a fly-catcher. He insists that he comes of a great family, but who knows anything about these gringoes? . . . All of us, dead with hunger when we reach America, claim ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... even raise his eyes towards me. I was somewhat astonished and asked the proprietor of the baths, without appearing to be much concerned, the name of this gentleman. I laughed to myself a little at this reader of rhymes; he seemed behind the age, for a man. This person, I thought, must be a simpleton. Well, aunt, I am now infatuated about this stranger. Just fancy, his name is Sully Prudhomme! I went back and sat down beside him again so as to get a good look at him. His face has an expression of calmness and of penetration. Somebody came to look for him, and I heard his voice, which is ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... near to the wood where he had left his wife, he heard a parrot on a tree calling out his name: "Mr. Vinegar, you foolish man, you blockhead, you simpleton; you went to the fair, and laid out all your money in buying a cow. Not content with that, you changed it for bagpipes, on which you could not play, and which were not worth one- tenth of the money. You fool, you—you had no sooner got the bagpipes than you changed them for ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... celldoor as the turnkey slammed it behind him and left you to think and stew and weep in a silence accented and made more wretched by a yellow electricbulb and the stink of corrosivesublimate? Back to the cityroom, you dabbling booby, you precious simpleton, addlepated dunce, and be thankful my boundless generosity permits you to draw a weekly paycheck at all and doesnt condemn you to labor forever unrewarded in the subterranean vaults where the old ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... but the corpse; and finally the bull broke for the river and jumped in, and when they fished Uncle Laxart out he was nearly drowned, and his face looked like a pudding with raisins in it. And then he turned around, this old simpleton, and looked a long time in a dazed way at Joan where she had her face in a cushion, dying, apparently, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a little taken with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I grow older," thought Avdyeeich, with some self-contempt. "I make up my mind that Christ is coming to me, and lo! 'tis only Stepanuich clearing away the snow. Thou simpleton, thou! thou art wool-gathering!" Then Avdyeeich made ten more stitches, and then he stretched his head once more towards the window. He looked through the window again, and there he saw that Stepanuich had placed the shovel against ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... be the matter with that simpleton Dalny?" muttered the arch-plotter. "Did he, at the last moment, fail in the courage necessary to lead the Americans into the trap that I had baited ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... and slowly realised that he had been that consummate ass. The poor baby's dead hand had retained its old power to entrap a simpleton unawares. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Lucas showed her the portrait in the illustrated paper, which he had kept. She said that it was comparatively an old one, and had been taken at the Durbar in January. "Were you at the Durbar?" asked the simpleton George. Irene Wheeler looked at him. "Yes. I was in the Viceroy's house-party," she answered mildly. And then she said to Lucas that she had sat three times to photographers that week—"They won't leave me alone"—but that the proofs were none of them satisfactory. At this Laurencine ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... little simpleton!" said Marion, gaily. "What on earth is there to be frightened over? Not pine seats and lamplight, surely, and there is nothing more formidable than that ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... up to Grace and Miriam. "I'm sorry for everything," she said huskily. "I've been a ridiculous simpleton, and I don't deserve to have friends. Will you forgive me, girls? I'd like to ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... very drowsy, and had almost dropped asleep, when Ned gave me a push with his foot. He was a great tease, and he delighted in getting me to make a simpleton of myself. I tried to keep my eyes on the fire, but I could not, and just had to turn ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... perceptible only to herself; but she instantly felt that she was the greatest simpleton in the world, the most unaccountable and absurd! For a few minutes she saw nothing before her; it was all confusion. She was lost, and when she had scolded back her senses, she found the others still waiting for the carriage, and Mr Elliot (always obliging) ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... cured. I told him no, that it was incurable: and off he went to tell M. le Due de Savoie. I bethought myself they would send physicians and surgeons to dress M. de Martigues; and I argued within myself if I ought to play the simpleton, and not let myself be known for a surgeon, lest they should keep me to dress their wounded, and in the end I should be found to be the King's surgeon, and they would make me pay a big ransom. On the other hand, I feared, if ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... were away in a flash. Sargent rolled on the grass, laughing until the tears trickled down his cheeks, while Dell's chagrin left him standing like a simpleton. ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... with the belief that the way beyond this bridge up to Hartledon was private, and he might be taken up for trespassing if he attempted to follow it; so he went off that way to watch the front. If the fellow hasn't a writ in his pocket, or something worse, call me a simpleton. You are all right, sir, as long as he takes you ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... any quarrel?" asks the Sartor. "Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart—were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... picture here, but for their superstition. Leaned a lass in Sunday garb, cross ankled, against her cottage corner, whose low roof was snow-clad, and with her crantz did seem a summer flower sprouting from winter's bosom. I drew rein, and out pencil and brush to limn her for thee. But the simpleton, fearing the evil eye, or glamour, claps both hands to her face and flies panic-stricken. But indeed, they are not more superstitious than the Sevenbergen folk, which take thy father for a magician. Yet softly, sith at this moment I profit by this ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... he said so! How can you do it, Miss Garland, when I, who have enough money to buy up all the Lovedays, would gladly come to terms with ye? What a simpleton you must be, to pass me over for him! There, now you are angry because I said simpleton!—I didn't mean simpleton, I meant misguided—misguided rosebud! That's it—run off,' he continued in a raised voice, as Anne made towards the garden ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... but this is simply the folly and bad taste of a certain, and only a certain, perversion of mediaeval sentiment, the crowning instance of which is found in Guy of Warwick. Hartmann himself was no such simpleton; and (with only an infinitesimal change of a famous sentence) we may be sure that as he was a good lover so he made a good end to ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... did you tell him?" she cried. "I hate you. I'll hate you for this as long as I live. You have sent him to his death—you meddler, you simpleton! And you don't even know what you have done. You have sent him to his death, I tell you! Yes, that's what you have done, and I will never forgive you while I breathe. He has gone to warn the attorney-general, and he will be killed, too. You heard what ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... not a humorist, but I am a first-class fool—a simpleton; for up to this moment I have believed Chairman MacAlister to be a decent person whom I could allow to mix up with my friends and relatives. The exhibition he has just made of himself reveals him to be a scoundrel and a knave of the deepest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you see!" he said. "Bob is thinking of the radio here in the cave. Aren't you, Bob? I'm a simpleton not to have ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... expect no direct information from their persistent questionings; what they hoped for was unconscious betrayal by some slip of the tongue. As for young Breslin, Pringle had long since sized him up for what the Major knew him to be—a good-hearted, right-meaning simpleton. In the indifferent-seeming Anastacio, Pringle recognized ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... means of which she seemed determined, on this night, to keep anything from touching her too nearly. "How crude you men are! Because he is handsome and dances well, you reason that he must necessarily be a simpleton." ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Little Bobtail walked up to the hotel. The former had possessed himself of sufficient evidence to convict Captain Chinks of smuggling, and also of intense stupidity in employing a simpleton like Ben Chinks in such a dangerous business, though rogues and villains almost always leave ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... simpleton!" said Lingard, pityingly. "'Pon my word," he muttered to himself, "I don't believe the fellow knew. Well! well! Steady now. Pull yourself together. What's wrong there. She is a good wife ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... his office of physician permitted him to add to the friend. The doctor took all his advantage; he did not take more; and not Faith herself could see that there was any warmer feeling behind his pleasant and pleased eye and smile. But it is true Faith was a simpleton. She did not see that his pleasantness covered keen ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... for refusing his offer. A simpleton. The child of caprice, whom no time could render steadfast except in folly; into whom no counsel or example could instil an atom of common sense. He supposed my man was equally obstinate and stupid; but he would soon see of what stuff he was made. He would hurry to Baltimore, and ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... "Why, what a simpleton you must be! There is but one subject for a novel—historical, philosophical, fashionable, antiquarian, or whatever it calls itself. The whole story, after all, is about a young man and a young woman—he all that is noble, and she all that is good. Every circulating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... became able to refer to the motive of his pauper journey from his native solitudes into the thick of such a scene, it was no wonder that the zeal of superstition totally subsided amid the astounding truths he witnessed. In fact, the bewildered simpleton now regarded his dream as the merest chimera. Hastily escaping from the thoroughfare, he sought out some wretched place of repose suited to his wretched condition, and there mooned himself asleep, in self-accusations at the thought ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... him loose, son," called Landy. "The old simpleton was expectin' some weight when ye ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... speech of her. Vincent, who was treated by Maulfry as if he had been a mechanism, was a very simple machine. If Maulfry had been less summary with him she might have prevented the inevitable; but like all people with brains she thought a simpleton was an ass, and kicks your only speech with such. Vincent and Isoult, therefore, became friends as the days went on. Maulfry's cagebirds drew their heads together, and in Vincent's case, at any rate, it was not long before the blood began to beat livelier for the contact. Isoult was as simple ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily turned away from her, "you are too delightfully ridiculous. If you were not such a charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be to play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that somebody besides you has made ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... was no simpleton, hearing these words and seeing the lady's eyes sparkle, advanced towards her with open arms, saying, 'Madam, considering that I owe it to you to say that I am now alive and having regard to that from which you delivered me, it were great unmannerliness in me, did I not ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... confidently, as one who could not be deceived. "Pooh!" she said. "That was only a try-on. That was only so that he could begin his palaver! Don't tell me! I may be a simpleton, but I'm not such a simpleton as he thinks for, nor as some other folks think for, either!" (At this point Hilda had to admit that in truth her mother was not completely a simpleton. In her mother was a vein of perceptive shrewdness that occasionally cropped out ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... "You simpleton!" retorted Wetherell, with a conviction now that he was calling him the wrong name. "Give me back the locket, and you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... do a foolish thing for me, I should be a simpleton to prevent her," said Armand to himself. "She has a liking for me beyond a doubt; and as for the world, she cannot despise it more than I do. So, now for the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... for long been so debilitated by pastorals, by graceful presentation of the Arthurian legend for drawing-rooms, by idylls, not robust and Theocritean, by verse directly didactic, that a rude blast of air from the outside welter of human realities is apt to give a shock, that might well show in what simpleton's paradise we have been living. The ethics of the rectory parlour set to sweet music, the respectable aspirations of the sentimental curate married to exquisite verse, the everlasting glorification ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... II., 281, 342: "It pained me to write official statements under his dictation, of which each was an imposture." He always answered: "My dear sir, you are a simpleton—you understand nothing!"—Madame de Remusat, II., ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... up to. At first he wouldn't listen to them; he used to toss their letters over to me to read; but now he reads them himself, and answers 'em too, I fancy; he's always shut up in his room, writing. If I only knew what his plan is I could stop him fast enough—he's such a simpleton. But he's dreadfully deep too—at times I can't make him out. But I know he's told your husband everything—I knew that last night the minute I laid eyes on him. And I must find out—you must help me—I've got no one ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... compassionately. 'The little simpleton!' he thought to himself. 'If half of what they say of Lady Montbarry is true, Mrs. Ferrari and her trap have but a poor prospect before them. I wonder how it ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... little simpleton, and fancy now that you really heard what dull sleep alone was thrumming about your ears. All has been quiet and peaceful here, and no evil spirits ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... through his shop, in search of food, But nothing found, 'tis understood, To eat, except a file of steel, Of which he tried to make a meal. The file, without a spark of passion, Address'd him in the following fashion:— 'Poor simpleton! you surely bite With less of sense than appetite; For ere from me you gain One quarter of a grain, You'll break your teeth from ear to ear. Time's are the only ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Fortune the other day," said Ellen, laughing very heartily—"and she told me to hush up and not be a fool; and I told her I really wanted to know, and she said she wouldn't make herself a simpleton if she was in my place; so I thought I ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... read it "garden" or "govern," it has this fine mark of a masterful utterance, that it makes no perceptible effort to protect itself against the caviller or the simpleton; from men, for instance, who would interpret it as meaning that the only perfect government, or gardening, is none at all. Speaking from the point of view of a garden-lover, I suppose the true signification is that the best government ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... and an apron which his carriage lacked, he persuaded me that one horse was enough—at the price of two. To save time I yielded, deducting twenty-five cents only from the sum agreed on, lest I should appear too easily cheated. That sense of being ridiculed as an inexperienced simpleton, when I had merely paid my interlocutor the compliment of trusting him, never ceased to be a pain and ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... that we need more than the ability merely to distinguish a genius from a simpleton, just as a physician needs something more than the ability to distinguish an athlete from a man dying of consumption. It is necessary to have a definite and accurate diagnosis, one which will differentiate ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... "Simpleton! that is not what you were intended to say. You should have asked the cause of so singular a wish, and then I had a pretty little speech all ready ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rather to the class of simpleton-stories; and in the following, from the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles' Folk Tales of Kashmir (Truebner: 1888), we have a variant of the well-known tale of the twelve men of Gotham who went one day to fish, and, before returning home, miscounted their number, of which several analogues ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... German monarch, Henry the Fowler, at that period called King of the East Franks, as Charles of the West Franks, acquired Lotharingia by the treaty of Bonn, Charles reserving the sovereignty over the kingdom during his lifetime. In 925, A.D., however, the Simpleton having been imprisoned and deposed by his own subjects, the Fowler was recognized King, of Lotharingia. Thus the Netherlands passed out of France into Germany, remaining, still, provinces of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with dodo, which is also used, but not so often, to describe a stupid person. This bird also got its name from a word which meant "foolish." It comes from the Portuguese word doudo, which means "simpleton." ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... jumped out of the window, going through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike simplicity that he "was not scared, but was considerably agitated." It puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely unconscious that Lucrezia Borgia ever existed off the stage. He is vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to criticize, the Italians' use of their own tongue. He says they spell the name of their great painter "Vinci, but pronounce ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the picturesque phrases she had planned to speak at their first meeting had taken wings with perfidious romance, yet she would have given her dearest possession to have been able to say something really clever. "He thinks me a simpleton, of course," she thought—perfectly unconscious that Oliver was not thinking of her wits at all, but of the wonderful rose-pink of her flesh. At one and the same instant, she felt that this silence was the most marvellous ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... "You're a simpleton, Martha." Elsa turned the ring round and round on her finger. "If I had told him, he would have canceled his sailing and taken ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... you, to be bullied by the proprietor, of a "Wood and Bache," and a shelf of peppered sheepskin reprints by Philadelphia Editors. Besides, many of the profession and I know a little something of each other, and you don't think I am such a simpleton as to lose their good opinion by saying what the better heads among them would condemn as unfair and untrue? Now mark how the great plague came on the generation of drugging doctors, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that I am a simpleton to doubt that, if Germany had not attacked France, France would have attacked her, shows a much greater courage than he credits me with. That is Germany's contention, and if valid is her justification for dashing at any enemy ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Shetland pony, partly like a street-arab; but his own impression was that his wild and ferocious appearance acted as a living rebuke to young men of weaker natures. If I had to express a blunt opinion, I should say he was a dreadful simpleton. Every man likes to be attractive in some way in the springtime and hey-day of life; when the blood flushes the veins gaily and the brain is sensitive to joy, then a man glories in looking well. Why blame him? The young officer likes to show himself with his troop ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... great loose lips trembled with unformed words as he gazed his eager inquiry from one to another. Under normal circumstances it would have remained contemptuously unanswered, but in these days in Tanglefoot Cove a man, though a simpleton, was yet a man, ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... expression of mingled silliness and wisdom.—As he glanced from under his long hair, first at the bed-quilt, then at the quarrelling children, he paid close attention to all that his sister-in-law was reading aloud. Carl was not the simpleton people considered him, although his highest ambition appeared to consist in erecting dirt houses ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... Be a good girl, now. You're a little simpleton, and I a big one. 'Twas very wrong of me to say what I did. Be it forgotten, and let's hope we may ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... even if the former were more trouble. Lying, cheating, and deception is the universal rule among them; honesty and straightforwardness are unknown virtues. Anyone whom they detect telling the truth or acting honestly they consider a simpleton unfit to transact business. The missionaries and their families are at present tenting out, five miles south of the city, in a romantic little ravine called Kirk-dagheman, or the place of the forty mills; and on Saturday morning I receive a pressing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... inclination," said he, "to forbid their going to Chantilly at all. Upon my word, if I were to listen to them, they would fain make of me the same puppet they allow themselves to become in the hands of the greatest simpleton who will take the trouble of leading them." I endeavored to appease his anger, by reminding him, that he could not expect perfection from his daughters; and that, forced as they were to hear me continually spoken ill of by my enemies, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... so easily to be hoodwinked, but bade his men take the supposed spy to the sergeant's house at Hofwa, where four men were set over him as guards. The pretended simpleton seemed well-enough pleased, eating and drinking freely, talking cheerfully of country affairs with his guards, and spending his money freely, so that the sergeant grew to like ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... be deeply disappointed did you not take me at my proper valuation, but I cherish no delusions regarding the contempt with which Higgins will regard me. He will look upon me as a sort of simpleton to whom the Lord had been unkind by not making England my native land. Now, Higgins must be led to believe that I am in his own class; that is, a servant of yours. Higgins and I will gossip over the fire together, should these spring evenings prove chilly, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can't think without bias; so I cast about me for something to be glad about, and the comfort that at least we were safer with a simpleton than near a drunken Mexican came to me; so I began to view the situation with ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... hands with him when I meet him. The Moors approve my conduct and say: "Ah, Yâkob, he's a saint." Once the cunning fellow, when he noticed a lot of half-caste women anxious to see me, took hold of my head and turned me completely round to show my face to them. He has some sense, good simpleton, and is without malice; consequently a great favourite with the people. A pity all madmen were not like this poor dervish. Yet how many would be as harmless and beloved as he if they were not confined, and caged, and chained, in civilized ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... simpleton! D'you think he'd have you back after this? The first time it was my fault, he thinks; but the second! ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... justifications for her dislike. She was an orderly, busy, competent woman, the counterpart of endless millions of her sex, who liked to understand what she saw or felt, and who had no happiness in reading riddles. To her he was at times an enigma, and at times again a simpleton. In both aspects he displeased and embarrassed her. One has one's sense of property, and in him she could not put her finger on anything that was hers. We demand continuity, logic in other words, but between her son and herself there was a gulf fixed, spanned by no bridge whatever; ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... gun at him. I was out on them like a hawk, crying if they wanted to murder a poor woman's innocent bairn! Whereupon they swore down my throat that they had seen 'the auld rebel himself,' as they called the Baron. But my Davie, that some folk take for a simpleton, being in the wood, caught up the old grey cloak that his Honour had dropped to run the quicker, and came out from among the trees as we were speaking, majoring and play-acting so like his Honour that the soldier-men ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the life he knew was the dull round of the village, all the speech he knew was the talk of the cottage, that failed and collapsed at the bare outline of his least gigantic need. He knew nothing of money, this monstrous simpleton, nothing of trade, nothing of the complex pretences upon which the social fabric of the little folks was built. He needed, he needed—Whatever he needed, he ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... but I am not quite a simpleton. I have seen something of the world, and I don't think I am easily ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... wrath knew no bounds. "What do they take me to be, a knight errant of hell and a simpleton withal? I swear by every shining star that I shall probe to the bottom of this matter if it shakes the foundations of the earth," said he. He took the first train back to Almaville, his spirit crushed within him, though he bore his sorrow with an outward ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... not up to much, or else you are mighty clever at it, though you affect the air of a simpleton," said ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... autumn, what can be pleasanter than to spend a whole day on the sunny side of a barn or a wood-pile, chatting with somebody as old as one's self; or, perhaps, idling away the time with a natural-born simpleton, who knows how to be idle, because even our busy Yankees never have found out how to put him to any use? Upon my word, Miss Hepzibah, I doubt whether I've ever been so comfortable as I mean to be at my farm, which most folks ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ever a gracious, pardonable thing, because in its essentials are youth and zeal and all high, white-hot qualities whose roots strike not in the base earth. Any sage, nay, any simpleton, seeing Maxine upon the balcony, could have told her what a fool she was; but who would have told it without a pause, without a sigh for the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... took your darling child from you?" our simpleton cried out. "Oh, Rebecca, my poor dear suffering friend, I know what it is to lose a boy, and to feel for those who have lost one. But please Heaven yours will be restored to you, as a merciful merciful Providence has brought ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dear Baisemeaux," said he, "you are a simpleton. Lose this habit of reflection when I give myself the trouble ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... moment, and then answered, 'The Roman Pontiff'. 'If it be he,' said I, 'I can have nothing to do with him; I will serve no one who is an enemy of Christ.' Thereupon he drew near to me and told me not to talk so much like a simpleton; that as for Christ, it was probable that no such person ever existed, but that if He ever did, He was the greatest impostor the world ever saw. How long he continued in this way I know not, for I now considered ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow |
