IMBECILITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Imbecility

"Imbecility" Quotes from Famous Books

... he to himself, "we reach the climax; pious imbecility can go no further. Among the subjects in sculpture in the ambulatory of the choir there is a group representing the Circumcision, Saint Joseph holding the Infant while the Virgin has a napkin ready ...

— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... it wonderfully. She receives it indeed with all the amiable imbecility of a person who doesn't understand what on earth you are talking about. Whether this reception of his little opening speech—so carefully prepared—puzzles or nettles Mr. Beauclerk there is no way of learning. He makes ...

— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... unbalanced by overwork, worry or disease, George Howe was born a fool. Being a child of honorable and respectable parentage, the playmates with whom he associated in his early youth were of that class who regarded his imbecility as a terrible affliction, were charitable and kind, never allowing others to impose upon this simple fellow, who was incapable of taking his own part. But as George Howe advanced in years he gradually threw off his stupidity, and although he never outgrew ...

— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... Goldsmith scaled the Richardson ghetto and wrote his touching and deathless verse; Fielding's saffron comedies were produced at Drury Lane; Cowper, nearly the same age as the artist, did his work and lapsed into imbecility, surviving him sixteen years; Richardson became the happy father of the English Novel; Sterne took his Sentimental Journey; Chatterton, the meteor, flashed across the literary sky; Gray mused in the churchyard and laid his head upon the lap of ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... countenance the most winning of the two. It expressed all the undisguised sincerity of her character, and it was totally free from any of the unpleasant physical accompaniments that so frequently attend mental imbecility. It is true that one accustomed to closer observations than common, might have detected the proofs of her feebleness of intellect in the language of her sometimes vacant eyes, but they were signs that attracted sympathy by their total want of guile, rather ...

— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

More quotes...