"Inane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a spruce partridge to Gray Wolf, but just as he was about to spring upon his feathered prey the soft chatter of a porcupine a few yards away brought him to a sudden stop. Few things could make Kazan drop his tail. But that inane and incoherent prattle of the little spiked beast sent him off at double-quick with his tail between his legs. As man abhors and evades the creeping serpent, so Kazan would hereafter evade this little creature of the forests that never in animal history ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... determined never to marry; and I suppose has formed this determination purposely that he may spend all he can obtain, without being teased by any qualms of conscience. For the destructive system of individual property involves a thousand absurdities; and the proud but inane successor of a Sydney or a Verulam, instead of knowing how difficult the subject of identity itself is, instead of perceiving that man is nothing but a continuity, or succession of single thoughts, and is therefore in ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... penetrating into the innermost secrets of nature, by the aid of the principles of unity (among all kinds of which teleological unity is the highest), while it ought not to attempt to soar above the sphere of experience, beyond which there lies nought for us but the void inane. The critical examination, in our Transcendental Analytic, of all the propositions which professed to extend cognition beyond the sphere of experience, completely demonstrated that they can only conduct us to a possible experience. If we were not distrustful ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... to his convictions as a woman-hater and genuinely despising Hilma both as a girl and as an inferior, the idea of her worried him. Most of all, he was angry with himself because of his inane sheepishness when she was about. He at first had told himself that he was a fool not to be able to ignore her existence as hitherto, and then that he was a greater fool not to take advantage of his position. Certainly he had not the remotest idea of any affection, but Hilma was ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... internal, grounds. It is not quoted by Stobaeus, or any of the ancients, before the fourteenth century. And its style is not Plutarch's; it has many words foreign to Plutarch: it has "nescio quid novum ac peregrinum, ab illa Plutarchea copia et gravitate diversum leve et inane." Certainly its matter is superior ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... blurt out the fact that she was not my niece at all; that I had no authority over her in any way. But what would be the use? It would lead only to explanations and I did not wish to make explanations. I wanted to get through with the whole inane business and be ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Ut in aequore summo Umbra viri visa est, visam fera saevit in umbram. Utque Iovis praepes, vacuo cum vidit in arvo Praebentem Phoebo liventia terga draconem, 715 Occupat aversum, neu saeva retorqueat ora, Squamigeris avidos figit cervicibus ungues, Sic celeri missus praeceps per inane volatu Terga ferae pressit dextroque frementis in armo Inachides ferrum curvo tenus abdidit ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... man thought it so, to be sure," said Peter; "he fretted and fumed a good deal, and kicked against the pricks. Here, there, now, anon, he would enjoy his brief little vision of her—then she would vanish into the deep inane. So, in the end—he had to take it out in something—he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it into the character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long delightful ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... pictorial sequence. All the big papers have from one to half a dozen of these sequences, each by a different artist. Bud Fisher with "Mutt and Jeff" comes first in popularity, I believe, and then there are his rivals and his imitators. Nothing more inane than some of these series could be invented; and yet they persist and could not, I am told, be dropped by any editor ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... superior rebuff, Helen came to the inane Lily Pearl's support in a manner she knew would hit loyal Polly's ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of mind as well as nobility of character. But at best, the height they reach is little loftier than that of the pattern woman of the regular religious novel. The reader cannot help picturing for all of them the same dreary and rather inane future. He is as sure, as if their career had been actually unrolled before his eyes, of the part they will perform in life. They will all become leading members of Dorcas societies; they will find perpetual delight in carrying to the poor bundles of tracts ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... trying to forget our tired limbs in a discussion of literary tastes and standards, our workmates had been relieving the treadmill tedium of the long afternoon by various expedients. The quartet at the table immediately in front of us had been making inane doggerel rhymes upon the names of their workmates, telling riddles, and exchanging nasty stories with great gusto and frequent fits of wild laughter. At another table the forthcoming ball of the "Moonlight Maids" was under hot discussion, and at a ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... betake myself,—to books, "the immortal children" of "the understanding, courage, and abilities" of the wise and good,—ay! and to inane, drivelling, doting books, the bastard progeny of vanity and ignorance,—books over which one dawdles in an amusing dream and pleasant spasm of amazement, and which teach us wisdom as tipsy Helots taught the Spartan boys sobriety. Montaigne ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the benefit of all; it would be necessary to do so unless the individuals were not only perfect, but also absolutely of one mind on all subjects relating to their welfare. Can the imagination picture existence more inane? ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... he answered, and felt that the remark was as inane as if he had quoted it from a play. After a moment, as she seemed to be waiting for something, he continued with greater assurance, "I dare say they have a quality that the older generation missed. It isn't just commonness. The modern spirit means, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... spiritual difficulty presented by this prevalent spirit of national pride—sufficiently stubborn still, however inane a conceit it may seem on sober reflection—if this animus of factional insubordination could be overcome or in some passable measure be conciliated or abated, there is much to be said in favor of such a plan of peaceable submission to an extraneous and arbitrary authority, and therefore also ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... miles on his journey to Lyons, she had prevailed upon her husband to draw his first cheque upon his house to the tune of L.500, and to prolong their holiday by visiting in succession the south of France, Switzerland, and Italy. The fool, after an inane resistance, consented; his cheque was converted to money—the horses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... is removed with it. He began seriously to doubt, not his constancy to Wanda, but his inconstancy to Helene. Suddenly she opened her eyes and caught his glance. He withdrew it at once, and in the embarrassment of the moment made some inane remark upon the beauty of the day. Helene rose with deliberation, put one white hand to the well-brushed head, trim and shining as a raven's wing, and with the utmost tranquillity answered "yes." Certainly she had the most irritating way in the world of pronouncing ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... eheu! inane monumentum, In ipsis Leviniae ripis, Quas primis infans vagitibus personuit, Versiculisque jam fere moriturus illustravit[987], ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... a remarkably good musician. If she wanted an orchestra, she would have wanted at least sixty, and probably more than a hundred. Perhaps they do these things with more limited resources in Heaven? Such an incongruity as this, and the inane dilution of the writing (which of course does not appear at its worst in the selected passages) make a genuine George Eliot control hard to predicate, and yet this control, like virtually every other one, is an individuality, and is less unlike George ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... of the God-breathed spirit air, Pass through my soul, and make it strong to love; Wither with gracious cold what demons dare Shoot from my hell into my world above; Let them drop down, like leaves the sun doth sear, And flutter far into the inane and bare, Leaving my ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... portraits of rakehelly old colonials in wigs, chokers, and tight-fitting smalls, and lolloping ladies with very low necks and sixteen petticoats, but where scandalized church-goers have been known to truss up a little plaster copy of the inane Greek Slave in a pocket-handkerchief, by way ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... development to allow of a less vivid or a more expansive delineation. Fiction, to judge from a multitude of recent specimens, seems at present on the decline, with some threatenings of a precipitate descent into the inane. History, on the other hand, is only at the outset of its career. Its highest achievements are in all probability reserved for a still distant future, when loftier points of view shall have been attained, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... The pictorial glass of Germany is absolutely detestable. We are beginning to weave possible carpets in England, but only because we have returned to the method and spirit of the East. Our rugs and carpets of twenty years ago, with their solemn depressing truths, their inane worship of Nature, their sordid reproductions of visible objects, have become, even to the Philistine, a source of laughter. A cultured Mahomedan once remarked to us, "You Christians are so occupied in misinterpreting the fourth commandment that you have never thought ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... is this mania for picking up girls—just to walk about the streets with them. It's so inane. It's ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... cultus, Immorare paululum memoriae TOBIAE SMOLLET M.D. Viri iis virtutibus Quas in homine et cive Et laudes, et imiteris, ..... Postquam mira... Se......... .... Tali tantoque viro, suo patrueli, ...... Hanc columnam, Amoris eheul inane monumentum, In ipsis Leviniae ripis, Quas primis infans vagitibus personuit, Versiculisque jam fere moriturus illustravit, Ponendam ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... stared at him for a long moment, then gave an inane giggle. He stepped back and flicked Joe Mauser a salute. "Very well, captain. As a matter of routine, I shall report this use of an aircraft for reconnaissance purposes, and undoubtedly a commission will meet to investigate the propriety of the ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... if you could tell me where my hotel is, officer?" Oliver began. "What hotel?" said the policeman uninterestedly. Oliver noticed with an inane distinctness that he had started to swirl his nightstick as a large blue cat might switch its tail. He wondered if it would be tactful to ask him if he had ever been a drum major. Then he realized that the policeman had ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... material phenomena was the mumbling toothless gibber of his shrill protesting; the glassy look of idiocy from his fatigued eyes; and the inane smile and impotent frown that alternated on his features. He was a horrible and offensive old man. He was Time's obscene victim. Edwin was revolted by the spectacle of the younger men baiting him. He was astonished that they were so ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... declared that everything was one whole, and that it was a god, everlasting, eternal, never born and never dying, but round in his shape! Parmenides thought that it was fire that moved the earth. Leucippus believed it to be "plenum et inane." What "full and empty" may mean I cannot tell; but Democritus could, for he believed in it—though in other matters he went a little farther! Empedocles sticks to the old four elements. Heraclitus is ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... to the same class of inane sensationalists that the Cubists do; they would defy in verse what ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... are in the mass diabolically cruel, and their cruelty is directed especially against men. I know. I have walked up to a college building to pay a call, while thirty girls, seated on the steps, played, sang, and whistled an inane marching tune, with the rhythm of which my steps could not but keep time. I have been the only man in a dining-room full of college girls. A hundred of them put down their knives and forks with a clatter as I entered, and a hundred ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Nothing foolish or nervous or hysterical about her. And then, subsequently, when he had met her on her own ground, she had endeavoured to put him at his ease. Funny that, but he appreciated it, nevertheless. And she could talk. She didn't giggle and ask inane questions. Nor did she treat him as some sort of a natural curiosity, who might be expected to do something shocking but entertaining at any moment. She was sensible as—well—as ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... Boasting does not always involve a mischievous lie, but only where it is contrary to the love of God or our neighbor, either in itself or in its cause. That a man boast, through mere pleasure in boasting, is an inane thing to do, as the Philosopher remarks (Ethic. iv, 7): wherefore it amounts to a jocose lie. Unless perchance he were to prefer this to the love of God, so as to contemn God's commandments for the sake of boasting: for then it would ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... found that a "taste" for shirt-tags had been created by this exciting bit of experience, and other men, who had been loudly laughing and cheering over the discomfiture of Chickering and his inane friends, found themselves suddenly on the ground, with wicked-looking knives flashing before their eyes, and their shirts being mutilated by ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... whose shadows were lengthening in the setting sun. The men, lighting matches on the seats of their trousers, began to smoke. The women chattered and laughed and threw themselves backward in paroxysms of inane hilarity and noisy outbursts of delight. Germinie alone did not speak or laugh. She did not listen or look. Her eyes, beneath their lowered lids, were fixed upon the toes of her boots. So engrossed in thought was she that you would have said she was totally oblivious to time and place. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... 1898, however, he has doubled about, or, perhaps more aptly, performed a journalistic somersault—having written a diffuse biography and other works dealing with Rizal. He is strong in unassorted facts, but his comments, when not inane and wearisome, approach a maudlin wail over "spilt milk," so the above is given ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... still they are less chained each to each,—they have more independence, both the woman and the man, and occupations and the solace without can be so easily obtained! Madame de Ventadour, in retiring from the mere frivolities of society—from crowded rooms, and the inane talk and hollow smiles of mere acquaintanceship—became more sensible of the pleasures that her refined and elegant intellect could derive from art and talent, and the communion of friendship. She drew around her the most cultivated minds ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... patiently. For that great dome of silence, his brain, repository of so many state-secrets, is still a redoubtable instrument: its wit and its magician's cunning have not yet lapsed into the dull inane of senile decay. Though fallen from power, after a bad beating at the polls, there is no knowing but that he may rise again, and hold once more in those tired old hands, shiny with rheumatic gout, and now twitching ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... tendency to lose themselves among the mere minutiae of erudition, and thus to confuse the unimportant and the important; to their habit of rising at times into the clouds rather than above the clouds, and of there disporting themselves in regions "close-bordering on the impalpable inane;" to their too conspicuous want of order, system, perspective. The dramatic machinery of "Sartor Resartus" is therefore turned to a third service. It is made the vehicle of much good-humoured satire upon these ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... behind Horace—I wondered a little at his not being first—and with many astonished and inane ejaculations, such as people always make on startling occasions, we made our way back into the house to hot blankets and toddies. But I slept ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... quite dare to assume the responsibility of expounding this faith to you, dear reader, with all my might. And this faith teaches that you must not let yourself be cheated, and must demand wares for your money. That is - good, righteous, solid wares. We will not let some inane gaieties, some paltry and miserable pleasures, some tinsel be passed off on us as the real golden happiness. This one tries to coax you with tempting food and drink, another with the pleasures of being rich and mighty, still others with the comfort of a good ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... inane and unanswerable argument Benjamin made no reply, and from that time on a chasm began to widen between them. He wondered what possible fascination she had ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling's face was like a dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr. Sheldon—will do anything, everything, to save her! To save her! O my God, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... men in Alpine travel-books write as men never write elsewhere? What is the origin of a style unique in literature, which misses both the sublime and the ridiculous, and constantly hops from tall-talk to a mirth feeble and inane? Why is it that the senior tutor, who is so hard on a bit of bad Latin, plunges at the sight of an Alp into English inconceivable, hideous? Why does page after page look as if it had been dredged with French words through a pepper-castor? Why is the sunrise ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... buffeting; and in my brain Dark hurrying shapes beset my soul. In vain I struggled; as a fevered dreamer might; Or some spent, breathless swimmer, in despite Of desperate stroke, thrust headlong to the main. The waking nightmare, monstrous and inane, Whirled, rushed, and huddled in ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... imbibition, to explain why the caulicle ascends and the radical descends. Shall physical or chemical forces explain why the animalcule digs into the hard clay? I bow profoundly, without understanding or even trying to understand. The question is far above, our inane means. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... office are always a trifle ponderous when conversing with ladies. Young lieutenants—or, at all events, officers not above the rank of captain—are far more successful at the game. How they contrive to be so God only knows. Let them but make the most inane of remarks, and at once the maiden by their side will be rocking with laughter; whereas, should a State Councillor enter into conversation with a damsel, and remark that the Russian Empire is one of vast extent, or utter a compliment which he has elaborated not without ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... corners of his mouth to droop as if he were playing the part of pantaloon on the stage; disarranged his hair yet more wildly; put out his tongue at his own image in the mirror; croaked a string of inane invectives against himself; and finally, like a naughty child, blew the leaves of his manuscript from the table ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... 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 was made up of interminable recitative, in the midst of which an occasional chorus—introduced in conformity with supposed classical practice—must have come as a most refreshing relief; for choruses they could write. It was dramatic in so far that ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... really dramatic moments of our lives it is always the inane that first suggests itself. It was so likely that Macdonald ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... figures of men and women which are also found. These usually have little blue beads for eyes, and are of the quaintest and naivest appearance conceivable. Here we have an elderly man with a long pointed beard, there two women with inane smiles upon their countenances, here another woman, of better work this time, with a child slung across her shoulder. This figure, which is in the British Museum, must be very late, as prehistoric Egyptian antiquities go. It is almost as good in style as the early Ist Dynasty ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... six carboys of sulfuric acid, all to be delivered the next morning at the cellar door of the shunned house in Benefit Street. After that I tried to sleep; and failing, passed the hours in reading and in the composition of inane verses to counteract ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... voice reeled off the catalogue of inane remarks with a comfortable purring complacency that held out no hope of an early abandoning of the topic. Francesca sat and wondered why the innocent acceptance of a cutlet and a glass of indifferent claret should lay one ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... quo sospite solo, Libertas patriae salva fuisse tuae: Te moriente, novos accepit Scotia cives, Accepitque novos, te moriente, deos. Illa nequit superesse tibi, tu non potes illi, Ergo Caledoniae nomen inane, vale. Tuque vale, gentis priscae fortissime ductor, Ultime Scotorum, ac ultime ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... and nobody else has seen anything of him." And so Mr. Harrison, inwardly anathematizing the rest of the company, was compelled to go through a long series of handshakings, and finally to be drawn into a group of young persons whose conversation seemed to him the most inane he had ever heard ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... trash about "my former triumphs, unrivalled mastery as a pianist," etc., and this is utterly sickening to me—like so much stale, lukewarm champagne. Committee gentlemen and others should verily feel somewhat ashamed of their inane platitudes, in thus unwarrantably speaking to my discredit by reminding me of a standpoint I occupied years ago and have long since passed.—Only one Musical Association can boast of forming an honorable exception to this since my departure from Germany, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Great God! wilt thou leave me all alone here upon earth? O God! for which of my sins dost thou punish me in my children? For mercy's sake, call me home before she also leaves me, who is the joy of my life. And I can do nothing to turn aside this fatality—stupid inane old man that I am! And this Jacques de Boiscoran—if he were guilty, after all? Ah the wretch! I would hang him with my ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... picture of domesticity. The reason for Annabel's presence was that the tenor singer of the Unitarian choir was accustomed to pass the house at that hour. Sinclair stayed on simply because he suspected that his wife wished him indoors. He read aloud inane items of village news from the weekly paper, and only the veiled mockery of his eyes betrayed the fact that he was not the most devoted and the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... gum trees enclosed for her one immense cell and she had become utterly weary of her mental and her spiritual incarceration. Oh! for the sting of love's strong emotion to break the monotony. The most sordid sights and sounds of London streets, the most inane babble of a fashionable crowd would be more stimulating to her brain, sweeter in her ears than the arid expanse, the weird bush noises—howl of dingoes, wail of curlews, lowing of cattle—that a year ago had ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the triad of Fire, Wind, and Sun.[11] Not much weight is to be laid on the theological speculations of the time as indicative of primitive conceptions, although they may occasionally hit true. For out of the number of inane fancies it is reasonable to suppose that some might coincide with historic facts. Thus the All-gods of the Rig Veda, by implication, are of later origin than the other gods, and this, very likely, was the case; but it is a mere guess on the part of the priest. The Catapatha, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... "nectar of gods;" why the "holy of Holies" cannot be defiled; when the divine office of sex is prostituted; why all sex relations may not be eternal yet moral; the mistaken teaching of the church regarding sex, and the result; inane ideas of Paradise; an appalling prospect of heaven; perfect sex-union the incentive to aspiration; Humanity progresses in spite of fear; prophecy literally true; the true business of business; the final test; ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... musicians are trying to compass the inane. You are trying to duplicate your dreams, dreams without a hint of the sun. The painter at least copies or interprets real life; while the composer dips his finger in the air, making endless sound-scrolls—noises with ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... The dreadful sense of helplessness, the crushing weight of necessity, seemed to choke me. The smooth white walls, the smooth white ceiling, seemed squeezing in closer and closer on me, and yet dilating into vast inane infinities, just as the merest knot of mould will transform itself, as one watches it, and nothing else, into enormous cliffs, long slopes of moor, and spurs of mountain-range. Oh, those smooth white walls and ceilings! ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... between Hermione and Artois, with an occasional word from Delarey—generally interrogative—and was confined to generalities. But this could not continue long. Hermione was an enthusiastic talker and seldom discussed banalities. From every circle where she found herself the inane was speedily banished; pale topics—the spectres that haunt the dull and are cherished by them—were whipped away to limbo, and some subject full-blooded, alive with either serious or comical possibilities, was very soon upon the carpet. By chance Artois ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the children too? You sentimental ass, Arthur!" Clarges laughed. It was a funny laugh, a kind of inane ripple that nevertheless tickled everybody who heard it. "But it's too smoky here. Come up stairs to the drawing room. There's a jolly big drawing room with a piano, and we can say what we want to, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... again. Fear no more for the tyrant hoar as he rushes to battle Armoured in ice, and darts lance after lance at your hearts, Fear not his flaming bolts as they hurtle with horrible rattle Out of the lurid inane fulminant over the plain. Fear not his wizardry white that circles and circles and settles Stealthily hour by hour, feathery flower upon flower, Over the spell-bound sleeper, till last the pitiless petals Darkly in icy death stifle ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... afraid he was no believer in it." And so it comes that his letters to Madame von Stein leave one only amazed with the more sorrowful admiration that the unrivaled genius of the civilized world in its most civilized age found perfect satisfaction in the inane routine of the life of a court dignitary ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... conversion, on any account. Settle the hero down in the ministry, to which he dedicates talents that you may call as splendid as you please; make your fashionable conversation of your worldly people slightly blackguardly, and that of your pets very inane, with spots of religion coming out very strong now and then, and you will have more readers than Dickens, Bulwer, or Thackeray. Well-meaning mothers will put the book without fear into the hands of their daughters. It is considered harmless Sunday reading for those ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... powers as to make their consultations very tedious. Young Ned Rutledge is a perfect bob-o-lincoln,—a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock; excessively vain, excessively weak, and excessively variable and unsteady, jejune, inane, and puerile." Sharp words these! This session of Congress resulted in little else than the interchange of opinions between Northern and Southern statesmen. It was a mere advisory body, useful, however, in preparing the way for a union ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... often thought in England. He seemed different—almost, in fact, a stranger—though she could not exactly tell where the change in him began. His laughter jarred upon her. Some of the things he said appeared almost inane, and others were tinged with a self-confidence that did not become him. It seemed to her that he was shallow and lacking in comprehension. Once she found herself comparing him with another man. She broke off that train of thought abruptly, and once more endeavored to find ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Which thou must traverse with a sea-bird's flight, Whose rest is on the bosom of the storm. Ay! 'tis a fearful plunge! Now think of Death— There is an angel merciful and strong, Hovering ever o'er the weary world, That foldeth in his arms the weak, whose feet Totter upon the brink of the Inane, And, like a mother, wafts them from Earth's strife Into the bosom of eternal rest; Is he not merciful who spares so long The guilty for repentance, and the pure Transplants in all their purity to heaven? Death harms not aught that's lovely, that ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... political, read the speeches of some of our members of Parliament. Only read them, I wish no man so ill an to inflict upon him the torture of hearing them—read them, I say, and you will have taken the very highest degree in the order of inane flippancy. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... waited for you to tell me—that's very certain," Miriam returned. "It's in the papers that you've got a high appointment, but I don't read the papers unless there's something in them about myself. Next week I shall devour them and think them, no doubt, inane. It was Basil told me this afternoon of your promotion—he had seen it announced somewhere, I'm delighted if it gives you more money and more advantages, but don't expect me to be glad that you're going away ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... in the other the motto Mort m'est vie; while two curly objects, which did duty for tears, filled up the lower corners. The books of Henri III., even when they are absolutely worthless as literature, sell for high prices; and an inane treatise on theology, decorated with his sacred emblems, lately brought about 120 pounds ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... "playing 'possum" on the part of our opossum, the trick would seem to be particularly inane. The truth of the matter is, what is attributed to an unusual brilliancy on the part of the creature is positively unusual witlessness. The animal has an exceedingly small brain, as compared with that of ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... at him. This sudden reversion to an easy every-day plane had brought Sansome's first mood again to the surface. In this atmosphere of orderly tete-a-tete he was again the society man. Nan breathed freer. He murmured something inane and ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... "if they only knew how awfully ridiculous they look, standing up in dress-coats and white ties, pouring forth inane love-ditties that nobody wants to hear, they wouldn't do it. Only a woman looks pretty ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... "Do make some attempt to subdue that inane wit. I fancy you'll feel rather cheap hearing that that thousand dollars is the first payment on something I ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... inarticulate and envious. He envies me because I am clever enough to laugh at my madness. However, I will consider him later, in his various guises, for of all the Mallares, dumb though he is and ludicrous with inane tears, ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... thought or feeling with that vigour which once gave it life and truth. It was a period of religious and metaphysical delirium, when everything became everything, when Maya and Sophia, Mitra and Christ, Viraf and Isaiah, Belus, Zarvan, and Kronos were mixed up in one jumbled system of inane speculation, from which at last the East was delivered by the positive doctrines of Mohammed, the West by the pure Christianity of the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... sister in the Coffinkey atmosphere, and there was nothing to mar the peculiar dignified innocence and perfect unconsciousness of her sweet maidenly bloom. She never guessed that every man, and every woman too, was admiring her, except the strong-minded one who saw in her the true inane Raffaelesque Madonna on whom George Eliot is ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reading at first. In most of the amateur shows, the players never do anything else but read the parts. They read, crossing back and forth whenever the coach thinks they ought to cross, and it doesn't mean a thing. I watched that very thing in an amateur show not so long ago, and it was inane. Nobody should move from one place on the stage to another without a reason for moving. There is a reason for every inflection of the voice. A person with common sense will read a part intelligently, but only a person with a dramatic ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... than any writer that ever lived with equally brilliant gifts in other ways; and thin is the very last word that describes this admirable master. If one seeks to measure how far removed the great classic moralists are from thinness, let him turn from La Bruyere to the inane subtleties and meaningless conundrums, not worth answering, that do duty for analysis of character in some modern American literature. We feel that La Bruyere, though retiring, studious, meditative, and self-contained, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... contingent of Little White Cows, a kind of bodyguard, stood at a respectful distance beyond, intent upon his every movement. The Master never stirred. He sat there to be looked at—accustomed to homage almost divine; beatifically inane. Like the Christians of old, he wore no hat. The head was nearly bald. A long cloak, glistening with grease stains, swathed his limbs and portly belly, on which one suspected multitudinous wrinkles of fat. Two filmy lidless eyes, bulging on a level with his forehead, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the ladies have a singularly pretty way of saying the most biting things in a smooth and unconcerned fashion when they find a dunce beginning to talk platitudes or to patronize his partner; but the middle generation are unspeakably inane; and the worst is that they regard their inanity as a decided sign of distinction. A grave man who adds a sense of humour to his gravity may find a sort of melancholy entertainment if he listens to a pair of thorough-paced "Society" ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... it is fussy and inflated; a full blown specimen of the pompously inane. How can Burnside venture to say that after the repulse, during three days he expected the enemy to leave his stronghold and attack him—Burnside? The rebels never did anything to justify such a supposition. They are neither idiots nor madmen, and only from a McClellan, or some ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... happy, Joyce?" It was an inane question, but like some inane questions it touched a ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... been thrown down the central light-well at him a few days before. The invention of the pocket recorder, which put a half-hour's conversation on a half-inch disk, had done more to slow down business and promote inane correspondence than anything since the earlier inventions of shorthand, typewriters and pretty stenographers. Finally, he cleared the machine, dumping the whole mess into a basket and carrying it out to ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... man can acquire merit de condigno. And yet they bid us doubt whether there be a habit present. How, therefore, do they know whether they acquire merit de congruo or de condigno [in full, or half]? But this whole matter was fabricated by idle men [But, good God! these are mere inane ideas and dreams of idle, wretched, inexperienced men who do not much reduce the Bible to practise], who did not know how the remission of sins occurs, and how, in the judgment of God and terrors of conscience, trust in works is driven out of us. Secure hypocrites always judge ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... which he had not hitherto had an opportunity of studying. He looked with a naturalist's interest at their grimacing faces, in which he discerned traces of their occupations and appetites; he listened also to their inane chatter, just as he might have tried to catch the meaning of a cat's mew or a dog's bark. At this period he was occupied with comparative natural history, applying to the human race the observations which he had ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... he turned to me with an inane smile which occupied all his face. 'Good evening,' he said, in a baronial drawl. 'Miss Cayley, I gathah? I asked the skippah's leave to set next yah. We ought to be friends—rathah. I think yah know my poor deah ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... dull, and his mind is dense, And his lack of saving wit complete; But most amazingly immense Is his inane self-confidence And his innate conceit. But every Glug, and great King Splosh Bowed to Sir Stodge, the fuddled Swank, The muddled Swank of Gosh— The engineering, peeping, peering, Sneering Swank ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... a frozen silence, excepting for his inane laughter. He made a few more irritating remarks which he seemed to think were very funny, and then he disappeared inside his tank and prepared to follow us. We had gone ahead a couple of hundred yards when we heard bombs exploding, and looking back we saw the tank standing still, with fireworks ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... a portion of it, was again at work, playing an inane melody, and upon the small stage two remarkably well-developed and aquiline-featured women of mature age, dressed as very young children in white socks, short skirts which displayed frilled drawers, and muslin bonnets adorned with floating blue and pink ribbons, swayed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... if ashamed to "play their fantastic tricks" before the god of nature, when so forcibly reminded of his presence; and more than once on these occasions I have been surprised to find how much intellect lurked behind the inane mask of fashion. But in America the effect of fine scenery upon this class of persons is different, for it is exactly when amongst it, that the most strenuous efforts at elegant nonchalance are perceptible among the young exquisites of the western ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... ill-mannered and vulgar, is a direct proof of the dulness and poverty of thought that one meets with everywhere. In Germany it seems as though it were planned that no one should think for noise; take the inane drumming that goes on as an instance. Finally, as far as the literature treated of in this chapter is concerned, I have only one work to recommend, but it is an excellent one: I mean a poetical epistle in terzo rimo by the famous painter Bronzino, entitled "De' Romori: ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Compare your mob, whether of gentlemen or plebeians, to those of Germany, Italy—even England—and I own, in spite of my national prepossessions, that the comparison is infinitely in your favour. The country gentlemen, the lawyer, the petit maitre of England, are proverbially inane and ill-informed. With you, the classes of society that answer to those respective grades, have much information in literature, and often not a little in science. In like manner, your tradesmen, your mechanics, your servants, are, beyond all measure, of larger, better cultivated, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Penny had a smile of his own, a weak inane sickly smile that irritated instead of pleasing you, and made you always feel as if you would like to punch his head for being such a fool, when all the time he was not a fool at all, but a thoroughly good-hearted, brave, and clever ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... well-bred sort of way in their eagerness to get into the saloon. They were mostly silent, as is the way of the English among strangers, but a few, here and there, who seemed to have already made each other's acquaintance, passed the usual inane remarks about the absurdly inconvenient arrangements generally of the ship. Some half a dozen stewards were showing the passengers to their places at table, as they passed in through the doorways; and upon my entrance I was at once pounced upon by one of the aforesaid ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient," said Clovis, "but it seems I ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... little life it was—feeble beyond expression, and ugly with the ugliness of savagery. She wriggled and screwed up her skinny features with inane ferocity. A motherless wallaby would have submitted to human solace and ministrations with daintier mien; but the whole household thrilled with excitement. Could the spluttering spark of life be made to glow? ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Quae tunc documenta futuri? Quae voces avium? quanti per inane volatus? Quis vatum discursus erat? Tibi corniger Ammon, Et dudum taciti rupere silentia Delphi. Te Persae cecinere Magi, te sensit Etruscus Augur, et inspectis Babylonius horruit astris; Chaldaei stupuere senes, Cumanaque rursus ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... relations plunged! Some philosophers have declared that truth lies at the bottom of a well;—the well in which the truth in regard to these matters lies would seem to stretch far enough down—reaching, in fact, almost to the kingdom of the Inane. The beautiful simplicity of Bible truths has often become so perverted—so overloaded by the vain works (and words) of man's device—as barely to escape total extinction. Witness 'repentance'; in what a farrago of endless absurdities and palpable contradictions has ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness: they will look round for poetry, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... never be quite willing to admit that this country is enlightened until we cease the inane and parsimonious policy of trying to drive all the really strong men and women out of the teaching profession by putting them on the payroll at one-half the rate, or less, than what the same brains and energy can command elsewhere. In this ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard |
