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More "Ass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... help work it! Scandalous, how few of the right sort there are about! And as for the Asylums Committee, if we really can't legally co-opt women to it, as our clerk says"—he looked again at a letter in his hand—"the law is an ass!—a double-dyed ass. I swear I won't visit those poor things on the women's side again. It's women's work—let them do it. The questions I have to ask are enough to make an old gamp ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him breathe since his birth. He knew of course that the sunset vapours on the marsh were unhealthy: everybody on the farm had a touch of the ague, and it was a saying in the village that no one lived at Pontesordo who could buy an ass to carry him away; but that Donna Laura, in skirting the place on a clear morning of frost, should show such fear of infection, gave a sinister emphasis to the ill-repute ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... stock-still with ears thrown back and front legs thrown forward. As I can't get out and pull, I'm at the mercy of Hosea. And he knows it. Since the mount of Balaam, there was never such an intelligent idiot of an ass. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... interpreted William, "there isn't pig nor ass, sheep nor duck, belongin' to him that isn't heart-scalded with the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... He was very angry and bitter, and as he lived in AEgina, whence he could still see the Acropolis and temple of Pallas Athene, he exclaimed, "Goddess, what favourites thou halt chosen—the owl, the ass, and the Athenians;" but in these days of joy a ship was sent by the State to bring him home, and fifty talents ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that solemnly demanded of grown men and women in the twentieth century that they should sit and listen with reverential awe to a prehistoric edition of "Grimm's Fairy Stories," including Noah and his ark, the adventures of Samson and Delilah, the conversations between Balaam and his ass, and culminating in what if it were not so appallingly wicked an idea would be the most comical of them all: the conception of an elaborately organized Hell, into which the God of the Christians plunged his creatures for all eternity! Of what use was ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Harleston thought, as he went down the corridor to Carpenter's office. "I shall enjoy watching Spencer make all kinds of an ass of him. 'You impressible chaps!—not dangerous to me!' Oh, Lord, the patronizing bumptiousness of the man!... Have you anything for me, Carpenter?" he asked, as he entered the ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... the witch. 'Why should you imagine that there are princesses here flying about in the shape of white doves? But if you will have a princess, you can get one such as we have them.' She then came to him, dragging a shaggy little grey ass with long ears. 'Will you have this?' said she; 'you can't get ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... nothing but colour. They've no conscience. If they swear a thing to you one moment, they break it the next. They can't help doing it. You don't ask a gilt weathercock to keep faith with anything but the wind, do you? It's an ass that trusts a fair woman at all, or has anything to do with the confounded set. Cleopatra was fair; so was Delilah; so is the Devil's wife. Reach ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is a complete ass. How a man like that has the nerve to sit down at a bridge table, I don't know. I wouldn't mind if the man had any idea—even the faintest idea—of how to play. But he hasn't any. Three times I signalled to him to throw the lead into my hand and he wouldn't: I knew that our only ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... cankerous end was here. This people which the world had once loved and honoured was now bred a beast of burden, a domesticated race, saddled and trained to bear upon its back the House of Hohenzollern as the ass bore Balaam. But the German ass wore the blinders that science ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... If antique times admired Silenus old That oft appeared set on his lazy ass, How would they wonder if they had behold Such sights as from the myrtle high did pass? Thence came a lady fair with locks of gold, That like in shape, in face and beauty was To sweet Armide; Rinaldo thinks he spies Her gestures, smiles, and glances ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... down as Fitch spoke. "I'm glad Tom stopped me from making an ass of myself. I can see your side of it." Maybe that was the curse of the professional intellectual, an ability to see everybody's side of everything. He thought for a moment. "What else did you do, beside ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... fought 'em in trooper, we've fought 'em in dock, and drunk with 'em in betweens, When they called us the seasick scull'ry-maids, an' we called 'em the Ass Marines; But, when we was down for a double fatigue, from Woolwich to Bernardmyo, We sent for the Jollies—'Er Majesty's Jollies—soldier an' sailor too! They think for 'emselves, an' they steal for 'emselves, and they ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... the words, I came to a full stop and held up the lantern to his face. He stood before me, brilliantly illuminated on the background of impenetrable night and falling snow, stricken to stone between his double burden like an ass between two panniers, and gaping at me like a blunderbuss. I had never seen a face so predestined to be astonished, or so susceptible of rendering the emotion of surprise; and it tempted me as an open piano ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... little beach there were three curraghs in which the island-men went over the sea; they were turned bottom up and heavy stones were placed upon them to prevent their being carried away by the high winds. The seal noted them as he rested upon the flat rock. He noted too a little ass that was standing beyond the curraghs, sheltering himself where ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... Mery, and all my friends when you told me my fault lay in my too great kindness? Shipley has judged me at last to be a hypocrite. To avenge you, I, bonnet on head and whip in hand—that whip which was never used but on a horse—this time to be disgraced by falling on the back of an ASS.... The spirit of my Irish ancestors (I being three-quarter Irish and Spanish and Scotch) took possession of my hand; and, on the most approved Tom Sayers principles, I took his, on which—thanks to some rings I had—I made a cutting ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Sapsea, a pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit at their wine, expecting a third guest. Mr. Sapsea reads his absurd epitaph for his late wife, who is buried in a "Monument," a vault of some sort in the Cathedral churchyard. To them enter Durdles, a man never sober, yet trusted with the key of the crypt, "as contractor ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... shall he be brought forward? Shall it be as first we met at the table of Lucullus, whereto he was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and anarchical opinions regarding the Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks of waiting dinner for him. He will come and depart at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punctualities nor burdening others by exacting them. The festivities of the afternoon are far on when a commotion is heard in the hall as if some dog or other stray ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... "Are you a pig, an ass, a fool? Ask the old one—the duenna. It ought to be a great deal; it ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... wiser Coxcombs. What, they wou'd have me train my Nephew up, a hopeful Youth, to keep a Merchant's Book, or send him to chop Logick in an University, and have him returned an arrant learned Ass, to simper, and look demure, and start at Oaths and Wenches, whilst I fell his Woods, and grant Leases: And lastly, to make good what I have cozen'd him of, force him to marry Mrs. Crump, the ill-favour'd Daughter of some Right Worshipful.—A Pox ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... but that NEVARRE THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT! I say it was a gift by a Spanish Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel, and not for the cheat and the swindle! I say that this mine was worked by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the cheat and swindler. I say that if they have struck the hoss in the mine, they have struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss that have no bridle worth five thousand dollar in his mouth, but a hoss to rear, and a hoss that cannot be struck out ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... supplied names; in definiteness and cruelty nothing could exceed the practice of serfage under the Saxons. "The slave," says Green, "became part of the live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... to associate with their former companions; I knew the apparent difficulties and the disadvantages of this new mode of life. On the other hand, I was convinced that, so far as I was concerned, without trying to lay down a rule for any other man, I would be an ass if I didn't quit it immediately, while I was well and all right, instead of waiting until I had to quit on a doctor's orders, or got to that ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who pats his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussie, je joue de la flute"—a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... asleep In Jerusalem, 10 Young and old lay fast asleep In crowded Bethlehem: Saint and Angel, ox and ass, Kept a watch together, Before the Christmas daybreak In the ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... early stages I am persuaded there was no malice. He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling air ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that she would have very great ground of complaint if she were left for a day unnecessarily in doubt as to this matter. Why had he rashly spoken those hasty words to her in his love, betraying himself into all manner of scrapes, as a schoolboy might do, or such a one as Johnny Eames? What an ass he had been not to have remembered himself and to have been collected,—not to have bethought himself on the occasion of all that might be due to Adolphus Crosbie! And then the idea came upon him whether he had not altogether made himself an ass in this matter. And as he gave ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... legend an enchanted ass comes into the kitchen of a great house every night, and washes the dishes and scours the tins, so that the servants lead an easy life of it. After a while in their exuberant gratitude they offer him any present for which he may feel ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... hound upon the bone will pounce He prowling finds, and not mistrustful pass; He asks not whom it did belong to once, The prophet’s camel or the sinner’s ass. ...
— Little Engel - a ballad with a series of epigrams from the Persian - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... ardour to the acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease. It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... the purpose of insinuating the imbecility of slumber that the Romans decorated the heads of their beds with the head of an ass? We leave to the gentlemen who form the academy of inscriptions the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Jeffery.—Is there a justice in Lancashire has so much skill in witches as I have? Nay, I'll speak a proud word; you shall turn me loose against any Witch-finder in Europe. I'd make an ass of Hopkins ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... an ass, by all means," he said, "if it will relieve your feelings;—but in justice to me, let me know why you do so! What is my offence? I give you a piece of commonplace information concerning the movements of the Court this afternoon, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... book, and candle,—candle, book, and bell,— Forward and backward, to curse Faustus to hell! Anon you shall hear a hog grunt, a calf bleat, and an ass bray, Because it ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... need for formality," he said, and felt like an ass. But none of the girls seemed to notice. Agreement with his idea ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... some of the royal pets: Flora and Alma, two horses fourteen hands high, presented to the Queen by Victor Emmanuel. Jenny, a white donkey, twenty-five years of age, which has been with the Queen since it was a foal. Tewfik, a white Egyptian ass, bought in Cairo by Lord Wolseley. Two Shetland ponies—one, The Skewbald, three feet six inches high; another, a dark brown mare like a miniature cart-horse. The royal herd of fifty cows in milk, chiefly shorthorns ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... went home, where he saddled the thin ass and hung across its back two large panniers. When it grew dark he softly drove the beast through the yard and led it out into the desert. For about an hour he walked, and in imagination saw himself in possession of all the glories the talisman would bring him. He had not noticed that ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Conditioning, Women's Division, cautioned sharply from the seat behind him. "Watch what you're doing, you ass!" ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... to the kingdom of heaven; that the Messias was not to be a conquering prince, but a suffering one; that he was not to come with horses of war, and chariots of war, but was to be meek and lowly, riding on an ass. By this means, he got the common and necessary foundation for a new revelation, which is to be built and founded on a ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... in on us two or three days ago. "That darn Sinn Feiner is the limit," said he; "lifted my best moke off me last night while I was up at the batteries. He'd pinch BALAAM'S ass." We murmured condolences, but Monk waived them aside. "Oh, it's quite all right. I wasn't born yesterday, or the day before for that matter. I'll make that merry Fenian weep tears of blood before I've finished. Just ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... Stonor, like a wooden man. He dreaded that she meant to go on and enlarge on his riding tricks. In his modesty he now regarded that he had made an awful ass of himself the day before. But she ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... green eyes! Only the idealism of a German would attempt to use this thorough-bred woman as a model for a picture of virginity. The poor fellow really is an almost bigger donkey than I am. Our misfortune is that our Titania has discovered our ass's ears too soon. ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... toothpick, but he looked as if he was made of steel wire. We soon struck up a conversation, and his "Cockney" sure did sound funny to me; he was one of the sappers, and when he found that I had left the Infantry to join them he was disgusted. "Well," said he, "you are a bloomin' ass. Why, blime me, mite, this here's the worst bleedin' job in the Army; a man digs till the sweat rolls off, and all he gets for it is a bleedin' shilling, and he has to give six-pence of that to the old woman; blime, it doesn't leave ye enough for bacca, and all the fellas think ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... been a howling young ass!" he told himself, his contempt suddenly swerving upon himself. "A conceited fool and a snob! Lordy, lordy, why didn't somebody tell me—and kick me? A ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... changes in the rights of property inheritance, as shall render her economically independent. Existing marriage is a pernicious survival of the patriarchal age. The "patriarch's" wife was significantly reckoned in the same category with a man's "ox" and his "ass," which any other male was forbidden "to covet." The wife was the husband's—her owner's private property—and the curse of this dependence and the old ferocious potestas and manus, from which the Roman wife ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... ants. I'd been taking snaps of the grave, and I was burbling away like an ass about how important this was and how it was positive proof of sapience, and he was insisting that we get back to camp at once. He called the other jeep and told Mallin to get to camp immediately, and Mallin and Ruth and Juan were there when we got in. As soon as Kellogg told them what ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... pig's flesh join in the sacrifice, and consume the meat together after the fashion of the rice at Jagannath's temple, which all castes may eat together without becoming impure. These Beldars use asses for the transport of their bricks and stones, and on the Diwali day they place a lamp before the ass and pay reverence to it. They say that at their marriages a bride-price of Rs. 100 or Rs. 200 must always be paid, but they are allowed to give one or two donkeys and value them at Rs. 50 apiece. They make grindstones (chakki), combs for straightening the threads ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... And here young Lawton has the impudence to begin to preach to me on Knype platform, and to tell me I'm wise in going! He's the President of the local Law Society, you know! No end of a President! And hasn't even got gumption enough to keep his father's practice together! Stupid ass! Well, I let him have it, and straight! He's no worse than the rest. They've got no brains in this district. And they're so narrow—narrow isn't the word! Thick-headed's the word. Stupid! Mean!... Mean!... What did it matter to them? I kept ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... for me to come in here like this, Colonel Dodd. I understand it. I'm a poor man and a stranger in this city. Just consider me a voice—call me Balaam's ass if you want to. But I've come up from the tenement-house districts where the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... to do the journey across London by himself, I met him at Liverpool Street. He came up in a crate; the world must have seemed very small to him on the way. "Hallo, old ass," I said to him through the bars, and in the little space they gave him he wriggled his body with delight. "Thank Heaven there's one of 'em ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... object, and by sheer persistence attained it. In the eyes of Bursley people he was a very decent fellow, a steady fellow, a confirmed bachelor, a close un, a knowing customer, a curmudgeon, an excellent clerk, a narrow-minded ass, a good Wesleyan, a thrifty individual, and an intelligent burgess—according to the point of view. The lifelong operation of rigorous habit had sunk him into a groove as deep as the canon of some American river. His ideas on every subject were eternally and immutably fixed, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... he mused, picking up a novel and selecting a comfortable angle in the Morris, "I should be sorely tempted to call any other man a silly ass. Leddy Lightfinger—it would be a fine joke if my singer turned out ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Brod mit Thraenen ass, Wer nie die kummervollen Naechte Auf seinen Bette weinend sass, Er kennt Euch ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... by the afternoon, they must expect to get on very softly."—Mem. A white driver is always addressed as Senor, and I have occasionally heard such monologues as the following:—"Senor, why do you drive me this way? Curse you, Senor! You don't know anything, Senor! You are the greatest ass I ever encountered." The coachman takes it all coolly enough; the "Senor" spares his dignity, and he keeps his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the spiritual bodies spake unto the Cat [Footnote: i.e., R[a] as the slayer of the serpent of darkness, the head of which be cuts off with a knife. (See above, p. 63). The usual reading is "which the Ass spake to the Cat;" the Ass being Osiris and the cat R[a].] in the house of Hapt-re. I have testified in the presence of Hra-f-ha-f, and he hath given [his] decision. I have seen the things over which the Persea ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... wild asses that roam the plain, the wildest wild ass that roams the plain is indubitably the one that lifts his voice and heel against that socialism known as "public ownership of public utilities," on the ground of "principle." There may be honest, and in some degree intelligent, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... to be only one post a day here; but Mrs. Anderson tells me that by walking up to Orton village I might find letters awaiting to-morrow's morning delivery. I was ass enough to go over this afternoon, and of course ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... the sword," shouted Sir Simon, "and unfortunately the sword is out of date nowadays, or I would challenge him upon the spot; but, my boy, you have the pen, and you can use it, and a jolly sight better than the silly ass who wrote that article. Will you answer him ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... cut my eye out," said Meehawl, "and go about as wall-eyed as Lorcan O'Nualain's ass: I would that. Did you ever see his ass, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... not gone far when she met an old man who seemed to be a hermit, but was in reality a magician, coming along upon an ass. He was of venerable aspect, and seemed worn out with age and mortifications; yet, when he beheld the exquisite face before him, and heard the lady explain how it was she needed his assistance, even he, old as he really was, began to fancy himself a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... morning in reference to nothing visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived the remark of all brutal abruptness. "It's as if you had taken the trouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass—besides his being the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably tiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of his health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him privileges ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... better say I am looking like a humbug and a fool. I have just been punishing that child—sending her to bed supperless. Now call me the ass that I am." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... place in the next act, Aaron. Only we artists who have sold our souls have a right to the price of our shame. You should dine upon a crust, you know. A genius without his crust, huh! A devil without his tail, or an ass without ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... got smashed when those drawers fell out in the last gale. I had been getting some dry things to change, when I heard the cry: 'All hands on deck!' and made one jump of it, without even pushing them in properly. Ass! When I came back and saw the broken glass and the mess, ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... need," said Tilda; "first-along, any'ow." She fell silent for a space. "That Mortimer," she conceded, "isn' quite the ass that 'e looks. This 'as got to take time, after all." She paused a moment in thought, and then broke out, "Oh, Arthur Miles, the trouble you're layin' on me—First, to be a mother—an' that's not 'ard. But, on top o' ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is! Well, I should never have discovered that. What a mind that devil Moliere has!" said La Fontaine. Then, striking his forehead, "Oh, thou wilt never be aught but an ass, Jean ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... knocked at the door, which was opened by Morgiana, a clever slave, full of devices to conquer difficulties. When he came into the court and unloaded the ass, he took Morgiana aside, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... thundering shout, Rolling among reduplicating rocks, Pealed o'er the hills, and up the mountain vales. The wild ass starting in the forest glade Ran to the covert; the affrighted wolf Skulked through the thicket to a closer brake; The sluggish bear, awakened in his den, Roused up and answered with a sullen growl, Low-breathed and long; and at the uproar ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... sake don't let her make me out a goody-goody. I haven't got this far into life without making moral mistakes, some of them huge. But in this thing—I say it only to you—I'm making none. I'm neither a marrying man, a villain, nor an ass." ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... couldn't see before morning. So I picked some bananas and chicos, and made a dinner of them; then I lighted a fire under the tree, to smoke and read Virgil by,—in fact, spent the evening over my notes. That editor was a pukkah ass! It must have been pretty late before I stretched ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... demons who inhabit hell. Then he beheld himself cast up to earth, His spirit entering a filthy dog; Feeding on things all foul and horrible— Consumed by cold. A month thus passed away. His spirit changed its dwelling, and he saw Himself an ass; and after that an ox, A cow, a goat, a sheep, a bird, a worm. So day by day he saw his spirit change Its outward shape. A multitude of forms— Some moving, others rooted to the ground— Received his ...
— Mârkandeya Purâna, Books VII., VIII. • Rev. B. Hale Wortham
... could likewise breed for spirituality, humanity's chances, I believe, would be bettered by as much again or more. But how is this to be done? Science must somehow find out. To leave it to nature is treason to the mind. Man may be an ass on the whole, but nature is even more of an ass, especially when it stands for human nature minus its saving grace of imaginative, will-directed intelligence. So let us hope that one day people will marry intelligently, and that the best marriages will be the richest in offspring. I believe ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Lord Mayor! One of them didn't know his name, and didn't want to know it; another wasn't certain whether he was a tallow-chandler or a button-maker; a third, who had met with him somewhere, described him as a damned ass; a fourth said, 'Oh, don't be hard on him; he's only a vulgar old Cockney, without an h in his whole composition.' A chorus of general agreement followed, as the dinner-hour approached: 'What a bore!' I whispered to my friend, 'Why do ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... better chance for a cure in the one case than in the other, insomuch indeed as, in the first, we have merely functional derangement; in the second, organic change. I always maintain there is no interest about insane people, except to the man of science; and even he very soon gets to that "ass's bridge," on the other side of which Nature, as the genius of occult things, stands with a satirical smile on her face, as she sees the proud savans toppling over into the Lethe of sheer ignorance, and getting drowned for their insane curiosity. In the asylum in France, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... a fellow who wasn't seedy wouldn't have made an ass of himself over riding the Cresta," ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... defensive, therefore, reduced to: and this to a heart, for so many years waging offensive war, (not valuing whom the opponent,) what a reduction! now comparing himself to the superannuated lion in the fable, kicked in the jaws, and laid sprawling, by the spurning heel of an ignoble ass! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... answered his brother meekly, "but it is. Aymer, don't be an ass, old fellow—Max won't ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... and the lady shut up in a glass box The fable of the ass, the ox, and the labourer The fable of the dog and the cock The story of the merchant and genius The history of the first old man and the bitch The story of the second old man and the two black dogs The story of the fisherman The story of the Grecian king, and the physician ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... comforts and luxuries, as well as for necessities. He grasps not only the produces of his own and his neighbor's field and vineyard, but demands what lies across continents and seas. Instead of the ship, the camel, and the ass, we now have the ocean freighter or liner, and the flying train of cars: new forces, oil, steam, electricity, and water-power, do the carrying work of man. And hence trade has become Trade, and each trader is involved in the comfort, success, and prosperity of many others. A single commercial transaction ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... outrageously careless! What right had you to expose us to this danger? Ass that I was ass, ass that I was! I wanted to speak of it, and my cursed delicacy prevented me. What right had you ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... sayings:—such phenomena are observed to follow upon the omission of the article,—the insertion of an expletive,—the change of a single letter. Thus [Greek: palin], thrust in where it has no business, makes it appear that our Saviour promised to return the ass on which He rode in triumph into Jerusalem[96]. By writing [Greek: o] for [Greek: o], many critics have transferred some words from the lips of Christ to those of His Evangelist, and made Him say what He never could have dreamed ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... storm raisers is universally prevalent amongst the Italian peasantry, and especially in mountainous districts. A Danish botanist, journeying alone upon an ass through the mountains of Abruzzi, was involved in several perilous adventures by this superstitious terror of the peasantry. They had for some time seen him collecting plants amongst the unfrequented cliffs and ravines, and watched his proceedings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... in brown, leaning against the pillar! He is a painter, and a man of genius; but the greatest ass existing!' ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Yorkshire farmer's lament for his dead mare, exhibits that affection for faithful animals which we meet with in Cowper, Burns, and other poets of the Romantic Revival. In the sincerity of its emotion it is poles apart from the studied sentimentality of the famous lament over the dead ass in Sterne's Sentimental Journey; indeed, in spirit it is much nearer to Burns's "Death of Poor Mailie," though Browne is wholly lacking in that delicate humour which Burns possesses, and which overtakes the tenderness of the poem as the lights and ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... perhaps for no definite reason at all, she said nothing to her husband, on his return from Toledo, of her encounter with the agreeable Mr. Murrill. Anyway, he arrived in no very affable state of mind. As a matter of fact he was most terrifically out of temper. Somebody or other—presumably some ass of a practical joker, he figured, or possibly a person with a grudge against him who had curious methods of taking vengeance—had lured him into taking a hot, dusty, tiresome and entirely useless trip. There was no business conference on out at Toledo; no need for his ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... O! that was an attractive virtue, a powerful conserving virtue, that went out of his mouth. We heard him, say they, and we never heard any speak like him, not so much for the pomp and majesty of his style, for he came low, sitting on an ass, and was as condescending in his manner of speech as in his other behaviour, but because "he taught with authority." There was a divine virtue in his preaching. Some sparkles of a divine Spirit and power in his discourses broke out ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... not be pacified; and walked out, calling himself an ass and a blinkard for having demeaned himself to such a company, forgetting that he had ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... high and stiff enough to stand alone. They had been sent to him year after year, by his old mother in Austria. There was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace; there were the three kings, gorgeously appareled, and the ox and the ass and the shepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a group of angels, singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the black slaves of the three kings. Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... chump evidently doesn't like me interfering. Silly old pompous ass!" Nevertheless his attitude towards the huffy landlord, if scornful, was ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to you," Varick said as he rose. "The fact is I'm not used to having much money to look after, and I don't want to make an ass of myself—" He smiled, and Waythorn could not help noticing that there was something pleasant about his smile. "It feels uncommonly queer to have enough cash to pay one's bills. I'd have sold my soul for it ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the marchings in the sun, the tyrannies of discipline, and the everlasting menace of the cross! And after all this misery they have given you a necklace of honour, as they hang a girdle of bells round the breast of an ass to deafen it on its journey, and prevent it from feeling fatigue. A man like you, braver than Pyrrhus! If only you had wished it! Ah! how happy will you be in large cool halls, with the sound of lyres, lying on ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!" ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a higher logic to put us in training for the laws of creation. How does the step forward from one species to a higher species of an existing genus take place? The ass is not the parent of the horse; no fish begets a bird. But the concurrence of new conditions necessitates a new object in which these conditions meet and flower. When the hour is struck in onward nature, announcing that ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... the lawyer; "it means that I am going to take all this trouble on myself, and hinder you making a bigger ass of yours. I'll apologize to the pair of them for ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the other of them will have heard something—if not from me, from some friends. The park here is very beautiful, the lord of the manor very excellent, and I am as well as I am permitted to be. Not one proper musical idea. I am out of my groove; I am like, for instance, an ass at a masked ball, a chanterelle [first, i.e., highest string] of a violin on a double bass— astonished, amazed, lulled to sleep as if I were hearing a trait [a run or a phrase] of Bodiot [FOOTNOTE: That is, Charles Nicolas Baudiot (1773-1849), ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the sabbath, answered and said to the multitude, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore, come and be healed, and not on the day of the sabbath. 15 But the Lord answered him, and said, Ye hypocrites, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? 16 And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... set his foot on dry land again he felt hungry. At once a table stood before him, covered with a fine and plenteous meal. He ate and drank. After he had gone on a while, he felt weary. And there stood an ass, waiting for him, on which he mounted. After he had ridden for a while, the ass's gait seemed too uneven, and along came a wagon, into which he climbed. But the wagon shook him up too, greatly, and he thought: "If I only had a litter! That would suit me better." No more had he thought ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... further, she was cruelly beaten with a whip, when, suddenly starting up, she walked for four or five hours; she then made an attempt to run away, but, from weakness, fell to the ground. Though unable to rise, the whip was a second time applied, when Kafa ordered that she should be placed on an ass. Unable to sit on it, she was carried afterwards on a ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... back to the prison with the Moor. But on the 7th of April following, the Moor was again taken out and escorted in the company of two thieves towards the Campo dei Fiori. The three condemned men were preceded by a constable, who rode backwards on an ass, and held in his hand a long pole, on the end of which were hung, still bleeding, the amputated limbs of a poor Jew who had suffered torture and death for some trifling crime. When the procession reached ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wild ass, Equus kiang, indicates his close relationship to the horse, and "kiang" is what he is called by the people of Tibet. The wild ass is as large as an average mule, with well-developed ears, and a sharp sense of hearing; his tail is tufted at the end, and he is reddish-brown in ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... as much by fasts as age, And on an ass was mounted, slow and sure; His visage warranted that never sage Had conscience more precise or passing pure. Though in his arteries time had stilled the rage Of blood, and spake him feeble and demure, At sight of the delighted damsel, he Was ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... moustache and got up too. He was in for it now. Absurd, fantastic situation. Well, whatever happened he could only drift—drift, and look like an ass to Lady Caroline, the most absolute as well as deceitful ass—an ass who was also a reptile, for she might well think he had been mocking her out in the garden when he said, no doubt in a shaking voice—fool and ass—that he had come because he couldn't help ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... of becoming one of "the good men." These transmigrations of the soul were rather numerous. The human soul did not always pass directly from the body of a man into the body of another man. It occasionally entered into the bodies of animals, like the ox and the ass. The Cathari were wont to tell the story of "a good Christian," one of "the Perfected," who remembered, in a previous existence as a horse, having lost his shoe in a certain place between two stones, as he was running swiftly under his master's ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... foliage.[FN24] O dear my son, bow thy head before thine inferior and soften thine utterance and be courteous and tread in the paths of piety, and shun impudence and louden not thy voice whenas thou speakest or laughest; for, were a house to be builded by volume of sound, the ass would edify many a mansion every day.[FN25] O dear my son, the transport of stones with a man of wisdom is better than the drinking of wine with one blamed for folly. O dear my son, rather pour out thy wine upon the tombs ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... child Christ was so clean that ox and ass worshipped him.] e{n}ne wat[gh] her blye barne burnyst so clene, at boe e ox & e asse hym hered at-ones; ay knewe hy{m} by his clannes for ky{n}g of nature, For non so clene of such a clos com neu{er} er e{n}ne; 1088 ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... already has been by permitting such a visit in the daytime? Strike me everlasting dumb if he hasn't had more than enough already! Does he want the responsibility? Does he wish the British to say afterward that it was all the maharajah's doing? No, you ass! At the conference be agreed solely on condition that the commissioner sahib should sign the letter and relieve his highness of all blame in case of a verdict of madness. And it was decided to send an American, lest ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the Aristocrat 'I thought you were coming to that next. Take our landed property, do—I wish you joy of it! What with all your Communistic legislation and bad harvests, and backing good things that don't come off—like an ass as I was—by Jove, I feel disposed to quit the whole business and compete for a Mandarin's Button in China. It's the only country for a British Aristocracy to live comfortably in and be properly appreciated, and you can't come sneaking about ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... pretty large order. Look here, now," said French, sitting up, "you look like a sensible fellow, and open to advice. Don't be an ass and throw yourself away. I know these people well. In a generation or two something may be done with them. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, you know. Give it up. Take up a ranch and go cattle raising. That is my advice. I know them. You can't ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... ached all the rest of the afternoon. About five o'clock Mr. Thoburn stopped in long enough to say: "What's this I hear about Carter making an ass ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Though I have been well abused, yet I have had so much praise, that I have become a gourmand, both as to capacity and taste; and I really did not think that mortal man could have tickled my palate in the exquisite manner with which you have done the job. So I am an old ass, and nothing more need be said about this. I agree entirely with all your reservations about accepting the doctrine, and you might have gone further with further safety and truth. Of course I do not wholly agree about sterility. I hate beyond all things ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... five-and-twenty men from our parish, and the squire, he was in a proper rage with being rated to pay ship money, so—as I had fallen out with my master, mine host of the 'Griffin,' more fool I—I went with the young gentleman, and a proper ass I was ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Still more unchristian are the injunctions to run ahead of one's fellows, on landing, in order to get the best quarters at the inn, and first turn at the dinner provided; and above all, at Port Jaffa, to secure the best ass, "for ye shall paye no more for the best ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... in questioning surprise. "Well, what?" He caught the meaning of his friend. "Try not to be an ass, Gordon. Of course she knows the ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... quietly, "but that is rather running wild; a donkey and an ass are the same thing, Stevey, my lad. If the captain says a few things to cut your comb a little, they will do you good; and I am as certain as that I am sitting here that he will end by saying, 'There, my boy, then, that's an end of it. Let it be ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... with a little laugh. "I am a first class ass. I fear I was blowing like a fog horn. But when you touch Canada ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... afterwards became. The small fry of authors and translators were hardly fitted to call out his full strength, but his vivisection of them taught him the value of certain structural principles. "To one dissection of the fore quarter of an ass," says Haydon in his diary, "I owe my information." Yet even in his earliest criticisms we are struck with the same penetration and steadiness of judgment, the same firm grasp of the essential and permanent, that were afterwards ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the monk. He could feel again her grip on his arm. Had she known that the black figure was Janet and sought to restrain him lest he catch her? Obvious! And he had ascribed that action to timidity or even—blatant ass!—to fear for his safety. Fear! As if October Copley knew the meaning of the word either for herself or any one else! "Afraid for his safety?" His cheeks were red as he spared a mirthless laugh ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... an your devils come not away quickly, you shall have me asleep presently: zounds, I could eat myself for anger, to think I have been such an ass all this while, to stand gaping after the devil's ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... lesson of a hard life lived unto others and a hard death died unto himself, century after century it was the monk who taught and helped the barbarian of every land to turn the desolate freedom of the wild ass into a smiling homestead and the savage Africa of his own heart into at least a better place. The marvel is that he could at the same time find room or energy to make his monastery also a laboratory, a library, and a ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... get the better in all cases when a man will but give it fair play—I began to stand convicted in my own mind, as an ass before the interview, for having expected too much—an ass during the interview, for having failed to extract the lady's real purpose—and an especial ass, now that it was over, for thinking so much about it. But I can think ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Oh! ah! yes, you know—why, that is, I didn't know she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman travelling without one!) and couldn't, in course, refuse, when she asked me ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and walked for two hours, until the approach of night and weariness made me stop short at the house of a farmer, where I had a bad supper and a bed of straw. In the morning, I bought an old overcoat, and hired an ass to journey on, and near Feltre I bought a pair of boots. In this guise I passed the hut called the Scala. There was a guard there who, much to my delight, as the reader will guess, did not even honour me by asking my name. I then ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... order to prevent their taking information to the enemy of your existence and whereabouts, if you are wishful for a "surprise packet," do not forget also to gather his wife and his daughter, his manservant and his maidservant (who also have tongues), and his ox and his ass (which may possibly serve the enemy). Of course, if they are very numerous or very far off, this is impossible; only do not then hope to surprise ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... in the title, and goes seldom so far as the dedication. He never talks of any thing but learning, and learns all from talking. Three encounters with the same men pump him, and then he only puts in or gravely says nothing. He has taken pains to be an ass, though not to be a scholar, and is at length discovered and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... philosophers of that day, can now be discussed with quiet in the old philosophic vein which characterized the great age of thought when Greek sages argued in the Gardens of Athens. This fact alone justifies a book of the present character. The bumptious and dull ass who announces "Miracles do not happen," is now seen in true perspective and he cuts a ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... the field quite like the horse. An ostrich also allows itself to be harnessed to a small carriage and to draw two children in it over the garden. Still another work of the society is to breed new species. A very beautiful animal has been bred by crossing the wild-ass of Mongolia with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Mr Stevenson travelled alone. He had been living for a time in the little town of Le Monastier, fifteen miles from Le Puy, and here, in the late autumn, he bought an ass which he called 'Modestine,' and with it, to the great interest of his simple neighbours, started on a tour in the Cevennes. The pair set forth speeded on their way by many good wishes and, in spite of a slow pace and not a few misfortunes with the baggage and the pack-saddle, the tour ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... him an insufferable ass," Ralph said, on this particular evening. "It would be difficult, as father says, to find an officer who is, as far as we are concerned, so admirably suited ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... Apuleius in The Golden Ass gives an interesting account of his induction into the mysteries of Isis: how, bidding farewell one evening to the general congregation outside, and clothed in a new linen garment, he was handed by the priest into the inner recesses of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... her donkey Balaam, partly owing to a misapprehension of Scripture narrative, and partly owing to the assurance of Charles, when in sudden misgiving she had consulted him on the point, that Balaam had been an ass. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... are generally the color of the desert. Thus, for instance, the lion, the antelope, and the wild ass are all sand-colored. "Indeed," says Canon Tristram, "in the desert, where neither trees, brushwood, nor even undulation of the surface afford the slightest protection to its foes, a modification of color which shall be assimilated to that of the surrounding country is absolutely necessary. Hence, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... "Didn't you hear me? They know about you. Personell supervisor! They think you're spying for the Eastern boys—they're starting a Mars colony too, you know. Barness is sure you're selling them info—" The man hiccupped again. "Barness is an ass, just like all the other Retreads running this place, but I'm not an ass, and you didn't fool ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... these, greater hotch-potches than the others), and the wombats. The wombat cannot jump like the kangaroo or the wallaby, and his sprightliness and activity are the sprightliness and activity of a cast-iron pig. He is slow, but I scarcely think he is quite such an ass as the kangaroo. I have even found him indulging in repartee, as you shall see. Every single movement of any part of the wombat is deliberate and well considered; it is apparently debated at great length by all the other parts, and determined upon by a formal resolution, duly proposed, seconded, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... stuffed With curses or with crusts of red-deer pie! One thing I will confess—if I must choose— Give me the Papists that can serve their God Not with your scraps, but solemn ceremonies, Organs, and singing men, and shaven crowns. Your protestant is a hypocritical ass!" ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... metaphors, Miss Josselin. I admit myself no buccaneer, but a simple ass who for once pricked ears on an ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... allows Teucer to call Hector a dog, but apologizes in a note. "This is literal from the Greek," he says, "and I have ventured it;" though he quotes Milton's "dogs of hell" to back himself with a precedent. But he cannot quite stand Homer's downright comparison of Ajax to an ass, and speaks of him in gingerly ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... went on in the kitchen at home, fraught with almost insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit. That ass, Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the purpose of discussing my prospects with my sister; and I really do believe (to this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel), that if these hands could have taken ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... three hundred men with the jawbone of an ass? It couldn't have been; it was sheer impossible,—unless they were all asleep, and even then it would ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... no such thing in rerum natura. I have come three thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of these mountains, and poke my head into every chasm, for the sole purpose of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass than thyself that the Great Carbuncle is ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was Henry, a very strange young man. He was at Cambridge and said to be very clever. He did indeed seem to lead a mysterious life of his own and paid very little attention to Maggie, asking her once whether she did not think The Golden Ass wonderful, and what did she think of Petronius; and when Maggie laughed and said that she was glad to say she never read anything, he left her in an agitated horror. Lady Rachel Seddon was very grand and splendid, and frightened Katherine. She was related to ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... waylaid him, jostled him to and fro, knocked him into the gutter, scattered his books on the street, and then officiously reported him late for school. He was clever, and, therefore, the masters called him idle; and when he did not know his lesson they made him stand in the street, with a pair of ass's ears on his head, and a placard on his back proclaiming to the public that the culprit ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... deceiving—deceiving with regard to origin, with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. An educator who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you are!"—even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what results? "Plebeianism" USQUE RECURRET. [FOOTNOTE: ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... The Dog and the Meat The Fox and the Grapes The Fox and the Crow The Ass in the Lion's Skin The Horse and the Oyster The Monkey and the Ass The Merchant and the Fool The Wolf and the Sheep The Ambitious Hippopotamus The Man and the Serpent The Appreciative Man On the Not-Altogether-Credible ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... believe that aboriginal habits are long retained under domestication. Thus with the common ass, we see signs of its original desert-life in its strong dislike to cross the smallest stream of water, and in its pleasure in rolling in the dust. The same strong dislike to cross a stream is common to the camel which has been domesticated from a very early ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... remonstrance from Rome. I may be recalled. That pig, Festiano, will be appointed in my place. The more I consider your imbecility the less am I inclined to put faith in anything you have said. How do I know that your Greek was not an addle-headed ass like yourself? Corpo di Dio! His treasure of Saba may be a piece of moon-madness akin to ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the young man fiercely. "For ever, dammit! Footling game! Blanked infernal fat-headed silly ass of a game! Nothing ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... deaf, let red lightnings blast his guilty soul, let the sea lift up her mighty waves to bury him, let the lion tear him to pieces, let dogs devour him, let the air poison him, let the next crumb of bread choke him, nay, let the dull ass spurn him ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... Hellenism, for the thinking side in man as distinguished from the acting side, the attitude of mind of Protestantism towards the Bible in no respect differs from the attitude of mind of Catholicism towards the Church. The mental habit of him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in no respect differs from the mental habit of him who imagines that a Madonna of wood or stone winked; and the one, who says that God's Church makes him believe what he believes, and the other, who says that God's Word makes ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... period of his translations fell in with the census-taking, must be numbered among the cadgers' "mokes"; nay, if Dogberry himself had encountered the officials at the moment of his pathetic lamentation, he were irrevocably written down "an ass." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... well, so that my countenance might be forever imprinted on their hearts; and they, poor devils, in a seventh heaven to have him back safe and sound in their midst, regarded and regarded, and imprinted and imprinted, till I felt like a perfect ass masquerading as a Hobson. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... say, I at length broke his leg with staff. The queen took much delight in these my mad tricks, and commanded the carcass of this sheep to be given me, and I never eat meat with more relish or better appetite. Three days afterwards I killed an ass that used to bring water to the palace, because he would not say these words and be a Mahometan. One day I handled a Jew so very roughly, that I had near killed him. On another occasion I threw many stones at a person who called me a Christian clog, but he threw them back at me with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... with a smile, as he leaned back and regarded his work with his head very much on one side, and his eyes partially closed, after the manner of knights of the brush, "I'm not offended, because I'm just as much of an ass as you are ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... debility and dyspepsia, as well as for a vermifuge. The lipad, owing to its heavy nauseous odour, is believed to keep off evil soirits. In some places, occupying the sides and hollows of ravines, are found the rose bay (Nerium Oleander), called in Persian khar-zarah, or ass-bane, the wild laburnum and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Oh, let them alone. Plenty of time for all that fuss. [He puts them both gently side by side on the settee.] Sit down and talk. Haven't I been clever? [He puts his arm round Fanny, laughing.] You thought I had made an ass of myself, didn't you? Did you get all ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... horse tribe, commencing with an early four-toed ancestor in the Eocene age, has increased in size and in perfect adaptation of feet and teeth to a life on open plains, and has reached its highest perfection in the horse, the ass, and the zebra. In birds, also, we see an advance from the imperfect tooth-billed and reptile-tailed birds of the secondary epoch, to the wonderfully developed falcons, crows, and swallows of our time. So, the ferns, lycopods, conifers, and ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to him because he's an agent," said Major Kent. "I object to him because he's a meddlesome ass, and keeps the whole place ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... reappearance, in variously-coloured pure breeds of the pigeon, of blue birds with all the marks which characterise the wild Columba livia. Similar cases were given in the case of the fowl. With the common ass, as we now know that the legs of the wild progenitor are striped, we may feel assured that the occasional appearance of such stripes in the domestic animal is a case of simple reversion. But I shall be compelled to refer again to these cases, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... fellow like the very devil? I'll tell you straight, Polson,' said De Blacquaire, in his old-mannered drawl, 'I'd have seen you damned and done for before I'd have reached out a finger to save you. And I think that you are the blamedest kind of an ass and a duffer to have pulled me out. And yet I don't know—I'm not so cursed certain ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... The stilted ass! Had he learnt that speech by heart in advance, or was he by nature a pedantic idiot who expressed himself in this set and formal manner? How came so sweet a blossom to waste her perfumes on such a prig? And what a ridiculous name ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the sun gleamed from steel head-pieces and chamfrons. The man in front, however, was plainly not in armor and his horse was strangely small. Then, as the distance was reduced, the horse became an ass and the rider ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... agreeable speaker, and had filled his mind with the learning of his age; but his fame with posterity rests upon his novel Metamorphoseon, in which he strives to correct the vices of his contemporaries. In this work a vicious young man is transformed into an ass, under which form he goes through many amusing adventures, but is at last changed to a new man through the influence of the mysteries. The story is full of episodes, the moral good, but the language shows the decline of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... their parents consider it their duty to make it as large as they can. A man would hardly feel secure of the sympathy of his family, tribe, circle of society, or rulers, for the loss of 'his ox, or his ass, or anything that is his', if it should happen to have cost him nothing; and, till he could feel secure of their sympathy for the loss, he would not feel very secure in the possession. He, therefore, or those who are interested in his welfare, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... charm of the man your closest woman-friend marries. What she can see in him you cannot for the life of you perceive, while he, on his part, secretly wonders why the woman he loves ever sought friendship with such a pompous, dull ass as you are. Love is blind, so they say. Well, so is friendship—so are relations—blind to everything except ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... will have it," said this rude man, "here it is in two words. The doctor's portrait is the likeness of an ass. As he couldn't do it himself, I wanted materials for writing his life. He referred me to the year of his birth, the year of his marriage, the year of this, that, and the other. Who cares about dates? The ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... bred in this way, viz., a first cross between the bull and terrier, especially in the neighborhood of Birmingham in the middle of England; but these dogs are no more like the Boston terrier than an ass is like a thoroughbred horse. Judge was a dark brindle, with a white stripe in face, nearly even mouthed, weighing about thirty-two pounds, and approximating more to the bull than the terrier side. He ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... readers, who believe everything they read because it is printed in a book, and swallow without winking the most colossal lying; critical and captious readers, who quarrel with the blunders or the beliefs of their author, and who cannot refrain from calling him an idiot or an ass—and perhaps even writing him down so on his own pages; admiring and receptive readers, who find fresh beauties in a favorite author every time they peruse him, and even discover beautiful swans in the stupidest geese that ever cackled along the flowery ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Bathurst used to be a good deal at the Major's before Forster came, and then after that I never met him there except on that evening before he came in here. Now you know, Miss Hannay," he went on earnestly, "what I think about you. I have not been such an ass as to suppose I ever had a chance, though you know I would lay down my life for you willingly; but I did not seem to mind Bathurst. I know he is an awfully good fellow, and would have made you very happy; but I don't feel like ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... always thus emphasising the difference between the many and the few, are "like people heavy with wine," "led by children," "knowing not whither they go;" and yet, "much learning doth not make wise;" and again, "the ass, after all, would have his thistles ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... saints of God, as Daniel saith. We, said Luther, stand outwardly in the greatest danger, by reason of treachery and treason; the Papists endeavour with money to grease and corrupt our captains and officers. An ass laden with money may do anything, as Cornelius Tacitus writeth of us Germans; we have taught them to take money; there is neither ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... to you, my dear chap," he said. "It's just a small dude part. He's simply got to be a silly ass." ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... he said, "most inartistic, but I won't re-write it. Contemptible ass! If she cares it won't matter. If she ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... down and don't make an ass of yourself," his host begged. "You're spoiling every one's enjoyment, making a ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... up to an irresistible rage and sense of frustration. The image of Rodney came before him with every circumstance of folly and indignity. That little pink-cheeked dancing-master to marry Katharine? that gibbering ass with the face of a monkey on an organ? that posing, vain, fantastical fop? with his tragedies and his comedies, his innumerable spites and prides and pettinesses? Lord! marry Rodney! She must be as great a fool as he ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the wild ass bray when he hath grass? Or loweth the ox over his fodder? Would one eat things insipid without salt? Is there taste in ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... has not a letter at the day; oo'll have it soon.... The D—— he is! married to that vengeance! Men are not to be believed. I don't think her a fool. Who would have her? Dilly will be governed like an ass; and she will govern like a lion. Is not that true, Ppt? Why, Sterne told me he left you at ombre with Leigh; and yet you never saw him. I know nothing of his wife being here: it may cost her a c—-(42) (I don't care to write that word plain). He is a little ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... court; one asked him to tea, one talked and told him everything. A week later, one seemed to have got to the end of it; the path came to a stop; there was not much in it after all, and presently he was rather an ass; he looked gloomily at one when one met him, but one was off on another chase; this idealising of people was rather a mistake; the pleasure was in the exploration, and there was very little to explore; it was better to have a comfortable set of friends with no nonsense; and ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... statesmen, artists, soldiers, who have actually worn flesh and blood, ribbons and orders, gowns and uniforms. May we not almost welcome "Free Education"? for every Englishman who can read, unless he be an Ass, is a reader the more ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... be in the least afraid, dear Florence. Remember that a central rule for comfort in life is this, "Nobody was ever written down an ass, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... without risk of setting the premises on fire, had not the quantity of wet litter and mud so greatly counterbalanced two or three bunches of straw and hay. At length my repeated cries of "Andrew Fairservice! Andrew! fool!—ass! where are you?" produced a doleful "Here," in a groaning tone, which might have been that of the Brownie itself. Guided by this sound, I advanced to the corner of a shed, where, ensconced in the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... great ass; in some respects the greatest ass I know; but he is a gentleman. Perhaps if you have anything else that you wish to say you will do me ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... perceived upon their cheeks, neck, and shoulders. These stripes were exactly of the same form as those upon a zebra; but far less distinct, and not extending to the body or limbs, as is the case with the true zebra. In general colour, and in some other respects, the animals reminded one of the ass; but their heads, necks, and the upper part of their bodies, were of darker hue, slightly tinged with reddish brown. In fact, the new-comers had points of resemblance to all four—horse, ass, gnoo, and zebra—and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... to put us in training for the laws of creation. How does the step forward from one species to a higher species of an existing genus take place? The ass is not the parent of the horse; no fish begets a bird. But the concurrence of new conditions necessitates a new object in which these conditions meet and flower. When the hour is struck in onward nature, announcing that all is ready for the birth of higher form ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... loud, accurate and suggestive "Ma-a-a-a!" from Speug relieved the feelings of the delighted school, and the unpopular prize-winner left the platform amid the chorus of the farmyard—cows, sheep, horses, dogs, cats and a triumphant ass all uniting to do him honour. It was their day, and Bulldog gave them their rights, provided they did not continue too long, and every boy believed that Bulldog had ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years?—O that he were here to write me down, an ass! but, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass:—No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow; and which is more, an officer; and, which is more, a householder; ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... he! a—" roared our hero, with a mingled feeling of exasperation and savage glee—"an ass? Why, it's a lovely slender creature, with short pretty ears and taper limbs, and a sleek, glossy coat, like—like me, Mary, dear; why, I'm an ass myself. Pray, do get me somethin' to eat. I really believe ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... ass," he said, kissing her hands. The terrible queen was a woman once more.—"Antoinette," he went on, laying his head on her feet, "you are too chastely tender to speak of our happiness ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... in the 'Southern Press' of Mrs. Eastman's 'Aunt Phillis' Cabin, or Southern Life as it is,' with the remarks of the editor. I have no comment to make on it, as that is done by itself. The editor might have saved himself being writ down an ass by the public if he had withheld his nonsense. If the two columns are a fair specimen of Mrs. Eastman's book, I pity her attempt and ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... The mule, ass, and goat enjoy the same immunity from the tsetse as man and the game. Many large tribes on the Zambesi can keep no domestic animals except the goat, in consequence of the scourge existing in their country. Our children were frequently bitten, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Thou marrow of the vine! More welcome unto me Than whips to scholars be. Thou art, and ever was, A means to mend an ass; Thou makest some to sleep, And many mo to weep, And some be glad and merry, With heigh down derry, derry. Thou makest some to stumble, And many mo to fumble, And me have pinky neyne.[143] More brave and jolly ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... to Alexander Hamilton in 1796, that the French people in general were royalists at heart, and utterly averse to the general overthrow of their institutions by the legislative mob at Paris, or, as Mirabeau comprehensively called them, 'that Wild Ass ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... /v.,n./ [PLATO] The act of exploiting a terminal which someone else has absentmindedly left logged on, to use that person's account, especially to post articles intended to make an ass ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the town of Kingston; an Act granting to His Majesty duties on licences to hawkers, pedlars, and petty chapmen, and other trading persons; L10 to be the cost of a license to a person travelling on foot; L10 for every horse, ass, mule, or other beast of burden; L5 for every other beast; L50 for a decked vessel; L40 for every boat; and for every non-resident of the province L50 a year; an Act providing a salary of L500 a year for a Provincial Agent in Great Britain, to correspond ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... people are all under the feudal system of government, the chieftainship is hereditary, and although the chief is usually the greatest ass, and the most insignificant of the tribe in appearance, the people pay a deference to him which is truly astonishing.... I feel the benefit often of your instructions, and of those I got through your kindness. Here I have an immense ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... earth's products than ever before. He reaches out a hand for comforts and luxuries, as well as for necessities. He grasps not only the produces of his own and his neighbor's field and vineyard, but demands what lies across continents and seas. Instead of the ship, the camel, and the ass, we now have the ocean freighter or liner, and the flying train of cars: new forces, oil, steam, electricity, and water-power, do the carrying work of man. And hence trade has become Trade, and each trader is involved in the comfort, success, and prosperity of ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Lord. 'I am going to perform a great miracle—that is, find a good mother among the women who are fond of bull-fights; but everything will turn out well if the ass doesn't stop. All I can do for you is that if you take it into your head to raise your husband, your ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... necessary of life, in which political warfare is reduced to a system of tactics; such a community is not easily reduced to servitude. Beasts of burden may easily be managed by a new master. But will the wild ass submit to the bonds? Will the unicorn serve and abide by the crib? Will leviathan hold out his nostrils to the book? The mythological conqueror of the East, whose enchantments reduced wild beasts to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... chair sat Lavinia, bundled up as usual, and the amiable Amanda, both flushed with constant pokings and thrashings of their steed. A venerable ass, so like an old whity-brown hair trunk as to his body, and Nick Bottom's mask as to his head, that he was a constant source of mirth to the ladies. Mild and venerable as he looked, however, he was a most incorrigible beast, and it took two immortal souls, ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... awkwardly; he felt himself flaming to the roots of his hair, unable to control his tongue or his eyes. For many days he had dreamed of this moment. Now it was here, he felt he was making an ass of himself, and that Little was grinning at him for his clumsy behavior. The amused salesman jogged his ribs and brought him back to earth. He advanced with extended hand to the smiling young Mission worker, and in an instant he was transported ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... window.] — Maybe he's stolen off to Belmullet with the boots of Michael James, and you'd have a right so to follow after him, Sara Tansey, and you the one yoked the ass cart and drove ten miles to set your eyes on the man bit the yellow lady's nostril on the ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... Saint, and Geoffrey was sorry for it a moment after he had made it. But he was weary and out of temper. Why did his wife bring such people to the house? Very shortly afterwards their guest took his leave, reflecting that Bingham was a conceited ass, and altogether too much for him. "And I don't believe that he has got a thousand a year," he reflected to himself, "and the title is his wife's. I suppose that is what he married her for. She's a much better ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... been with my Lord in the manger of the ass: I strengthened Moses through the water of Jordan; I have been in the firmament with Mary Magdalene; I have obtained the muse from the cauldron of Caridwen; I have been bard of the harp to Lleon of Lochlin. I have been on the ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... ever seen. Small in stature though this girl of Europa was—not more than five feet tall—she had the form of a goddess and the face of an angel. He was flushing to the roots of his hair. Could feel it spread. What an ass he was anyway! Anyone'd think he'd never seen a woman in all his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is sufficient for some shallow uneducated passman out of either University to get up in his pulpit and express his doubts about Noah's ark, or Balaam's ass, or Jonah and the whale, for half of London to flock to hear him, and to sit open-mouthed in rapt admiration at his superb intellect. The growth of common sense in the English Church is a thing very much to be ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... threw himself against his beast to force it close to a wall, leaving just enough room for the fleeing pair to pass, though so narrow was the space left that Frank felt his loose white robe brush against the house upon his right as they passed the ass, their horses taking the centre directly after. Then away they tore again, but only to see amongst the people in front, towering above them, the figure of a black mounted upon a camel, whose burden projected ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... story about Old Steve that will make you larf. He jined the Church last spring, and the minister said, "You must go home now, Brothern Billins, and erect a family altar in your own house," whereupon the egrejis old ass went home and built a reg'lar pulpit in his sittin room. He had the jiners in ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... cried. "You don't know what a stew I've been in. I'll switch on the light. I've been thinking of you and nothing else for the last hour. I—I was ass enough to think ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... "Don't be an ass, Mallow. You say you don't know the girl, therefore you can hardly have given her the photograph. Now the inscription shows that it was given to a woman you are in love with. You told me when you introduced me to Miss ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... to cheer and cheer again, each after the manner of the character he had assumed. The ass brayed, the owl hooted, the ghost groaned. The ape leaped on the back of the throne whereon the young man still sat, and seized him by the hair, chattering idiotically after the manner of apes, and began to wag his head back and forth. In ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... speaking of the game, Citizen Lepitre; do me the pleasure of not making yourself an ass. Now look, and see me roll it as ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... are passing and turning to stare and listen, you know, so that it's quite rowdy—saying 'Yes—that's Linford—there he is,' quite as if they were on one of those coaches seeing New York; and you feel, by Jove, I give you my word, like the solemn ass who goes up on the stage to help the fellow do his tricks, you know, when he calls for 'some kind gentleman from ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... were not as patient as a lamb, I should have kicked him out of the place a year ago. Of course, it didn't matter before you, but it might have been the colonel or the major; and, though there is a way out through my bedroom, that blundering ass must bring my boots and clothes ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Preserving The Heart Preserving The Heart Rubric Beating Back The Crocodile Beating Back The Crocodile Repulsing Serpents Against Snakes Against Serpents Driving Away Apshait Driving Back The Merti Living By Air Living By Air Driving Back Rerek Repulsing The Eater Of The Ass Abolishing The Slaughterings Abolishing The Slaughterings Air And Water Dominion Over Elements Dominion Over Elements Dominion Over Elements Preservation Of The Soul Of Drinking Water Of Drinking Water Preservation ...
— Egyptian Literature
... no more worthy of you than Beelzebub of Paradise. No matter! The daughters' of Erin must share the fate of their mother Isle, that their tears may shine in the burst of sun to follow. For personal and patriotic motives, I would have cheered her and been like a wild ass combed and groomed and tamed by the adorable creature. But her friend says there 's not a whisk of a chance for me, and I must roam the desert, kicking up, and worshipping the star I hail brightest. They know me not, who think I can't worship. Why, what were I without ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... riling," another said; "but besides that I do not think there is much to complain about him, and his making an ass of himself at other times does not affect us so long as he plays well in ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... in the head of man: we are now convinced that the true dwelling place of the soul is in the head's antipodes. Let SOLOMON himself return to the earth, and hold forth at a political meeting; SOLOMON himself would be hooted, laughed at, voted an ass, a nincompoop, if SOLOMON spoke from the platform with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... the demons or Devs of the subterranean empire of darkness and sorrow, and its stars, ruled also a chief. In Egypt the Scorpion first ruled, the sign next the Balance, and long the chief of the Winter signs; and then the Polar Bear or Ass, called Typhon, that is, deluge, on account of the rains which inundated the earth while that constellation domineered. In Persia, at a later day, it was the serpent, which, personified as Ahriman, was the Evil Principle of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... expression of Hilarion the hermit; who, in speaking of his abstinence, his watchings, flagellations, and other instrumental parts of his religion—would say—tho' with more facetiousness than became an hermit—'That they were the means he used, to make his ass (meaning his body) leave ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... "Ye muckle ass!" cried Stewart, "it's James they want; James has got to hang—Alan too, if they could catch him—but James whatever! Go near the Advocate with any such business, and you'll see! he'll find a way ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... told the Ox of a Manger And a Stall in Bethlehem, And he spoke to the Ass of a Rider, That rode ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... Pheasant Captain Rawse of Cowes fell in with us, and that gave us some thirty hands more; and with that handful, my lads, only fifty-three in all, we picked the lock of the new world! And whom did we lose but our trumpeter, who stood braying like an ass in the middle of the square, instead of taking care of his neck like a Christian? I tell you, those Spaniards are rank cowards, as all bullies are. They pray to a woman, the idolatrous rascals! and no wonder they fight ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... He heaped immeasurable shame upon his own head, because he had not secured the orchestra. He declared he had no military genius. He would bind himself an apprentice to a country carpenter, and make pigsties—he would turn usher, and the boys should bump him for an ass—he would run away. He ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... have I done? Am I an ass because I know nothing of pictures? Come, Dalton, you are harsh with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... They're always wondering whether there's anything intoxicating in the trifle!... I don't mind a boy talking in that wild way. A clever, intelligent lad ought to talk revolutionary stuff, but when a man reaches Palfrey's age and is still gabbling that silly-cleverness, then the man's an ass. There's no ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... said John; "he did not answer courteously—he said, that I was a malapert little ass, and demanded again where this young Montfort's tent was. So then I said, that if a Montfort dared to show his traitor's face in this camp, the Prince would hang him as high as Judas; for I wanted to be rid of him, Richard! it was so dreadful to see thy face, and hear thy voice talking French, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... BURROUGH,—As you describe me I can picture myself as I was 22 years ago. The portrait is correct. You think I have grown some; upon my word there was room for it. You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug, stern in air, heaving at his bit of dung, imagining that he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right.... That is what ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mare, exhibits that affection for faithful animals which we meet with in Cowper, Burns, and other poets of the Romantic Revival. In the sincerity of its emotion it is poles apart from the studied sentimentality of the famous lament over the dead ass in Sterne's Sentimental Journey; indeed, in spirit it is much nearer to Burns's "Death of Poor Mailie," though Browne is wholly lacking in that delicate humour which Burns possesses, and which overtakes the tenderness ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... "Life of Girard" could ever have been circulated about a living man. "Once upon a time an ass kicked a lion, but the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... and white. He whispered, "I think it may turn out to be murder, Gregg! No, not dead yet—Dr. Frank is trying—Don't stand there like an ass, man! Get to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... "young England" of the day, as exemplified in a very offensive specimen he had recently encountered at Mr. Wilson's. Other minor points of interest in connection with the Jacobite's Journal, are the tradition associating Hogarth with the rude woodcut headpiece (a Scotch man and woman on an ass led by a monk) which surmounted its earlier numbers, and the genial welcome given in No. 5, perhaps not without some touch of contrition, to the two first volumes, then just published, of Richardson's Clarissa. ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... his fury; some said this: "An old paddy is Dan to rob your water. Ach y fi"; and some said this: "A dirty ass is the mule." His fierce wrath was not allayed albeit Dan turned the course of the water away from his pond, and on his knees and at his labor asked God ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... them plodding On the ass! Silenus he, Old and drunken, merry, nodding, Full of years and jollity; Though he goes so swayingly, Yet he laughs and quaffs alway.— Youths and maids, enjoy to-day; Nought ye ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... added Jimmy. "Anyhow, it'll be a jolly long time before I put myself in a sweat about the mater again. I thought—I don't know what I thought, and all the time she was half asleep and having her hair brushed. She made me feel ass ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... English girl, but, if I stand in the gap between them, I shall summon up no small quantity of dormant compatriotic feeling. The contemplation of the contrast, too, may save me from both: like the logic ass with the two trusses of hay on either ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lieu of stockings; before him and his wolf-like dog shambles a flock of black sheep or less manageable goats, bleating and baaing as they are propelled toward market. After him there may come an unkempt, long-bearded farmer flogging on a pack ass or a mule attached to a clumsy cart with solid wheels, and laden with all kinds of market produce. The roadway, be it said, is not good, and all carters have their troubles; therefore, there is a deal of gesticulating and profane ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... love, or trust in God. For if the star, though it shine, is not the sun, then surely a clod of dirt cannot be the sun. Why, a praying man doth as far outstrip a non-praying man as a star outstrips a clod of earth. A non-praying man lives like a beast. "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but this man doth not know, but this man doth not consider;" Isa. i. 3. The prayerless man is therefore of no religion, except he be an Atheist, or an Epicurean. Therefore the non-praying man is numbered among the heathens, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... to Europe, Africa, Asia? That's logic, isn't it? No, no, my dear old Jack—you won't do it. You won't be an ass. Steady head, old boy! Let's look at it in a reasonable way—as men of the world. You can't bring her back, can you? ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... road still toiling as in the time of Issachar between two bundles of clothes each larger than himself, and he has also become proverbial, 'Dhobi ka gadha neh ghar ka neh ghat ka,' 'The Dhobi's donkey is always on the move'; and 'The ass has only one master (a washerman), and the washerman has only one steed (an ass).' The resentment felt for the Dhobi by his customers is not confined to his Indian clients, as may be seen from Eha's excellent description of the Dhobi in Behind the Bungalow; and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... lib. II., De Clem., and C. Stantatus, De Temperamente) if it is not a god; and as such we know it was worshiped by the Etruscans, and, if we may believe Macrobious, by the Cupasians also. Of the only two animals admitted into the Mahometan Paradise along with the souls of men, the ass that carried Balaam is one, the dog of the Seven Sleepers the other. This is no small distinction. From what has been written about this beast might be compiled a library of great splendor and magnitude, rivalling that of the Shakespearean cult, and that which clusters about the Bible. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... fastidious corrections.[282] At any rate he seems to have been quite sincere in saying to Southey, in connection with the poet-laureateship which, according to Scott's suggestion, was offered to him in 1813, "I am not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... feeling himself getting the worst of the encounter; "my own notion is that she's on the road to Edinburgh. They say she had aye a crave for the place; perhaps there was a pair of breeches there behind her. Anyway, she's making an ass of somebody!" ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... fellow, that I revolted against the directions of that ass of a doctor, and I resolved to go out, whether it suited him or not: and, consequently, I told the valet who waited on me to bring me ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Victoria's son was bound to maintain the honour of his house. Karaiti was accordingly summoned that evening to the Ricks, where Mrs. Rick fell foul of him in words, and Queen Victoria's son assailed him with indignant looks. I was the ass with the lion's skin; I could not roar in the language of the Gilbert Islands; but I could stare. Karaiti declared he had meant no offence; apologised in a sound, hearty, gentlemanly manner; and became at once at his ease. He had in a dagger ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the church appeareth to me like the sick old lion in the fable, who, after having his person outraged by the bull, the elephant, the horse, and the bear, took nothing so much to heart, as to find himself at last insulted by the spurn of an ass. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... him aft. He hath just had speech once more with the chief rebel, the graybeard they call Lafreniere, and was in raging temper when last we met. Caramba! he even called me an ass, for no more serious fault, forsooth, than that I made the round of my guard unattended. Hath ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... south wall, opposite to the said Oratory, erected a glorious tabernacle, which contained the image of the said blessed Virgin, sitting as it were in childbed; as also of our Saviour, in swaddling clothes, lying between the ox and the ass, and St. Joseph at her feet; above which was another image of her, standing with the child in her arms. And on the beam, thwarting from the upper end of the Oratory to the before-specified childbed, placed the crowned images of our Saviour and his mother sitting in one tabernacle; as also ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... the man humbly. "Because he happened to be minus a collar and had a red skin—I was an ass; an egregious, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... but I'm not a conceited ass; your Miss Nancy would probably think me a dub; girls don't fly at my head, but I'm safe as a watchdog and errand boy—so I'll fit in, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... one of the poles of the palanquin on his own shoulder, commanding his greatest nobles to do the same, and in this manner carried her across the river. He never denied her any request that ever she made, except one, and this was, that our Bible might be hung about the neck of an ass, and so beaten about the town of Agra. The reason of this strange request was, that the Portuguese had taken a ship of theirs, in which they found a copy of the Koran, or bible of the Mahometans, which they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... to myself for that. Any person I will take in hand I make a clean job of them the same as I would make of any other thing in my yard, coach, half coach, hackney-coach, ass car, common car, post-chaise, calash, chariot on two wheels, on four wheels. Each one has the shape Thomas Hearne put on it, and it in his hands; and what I can do with wood and iron, why would I not be able to do it with ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... justification by faith; points, he thought, which it was superfluous for any man to know exactly, and which certainly much exceeded the comprehension of the vulgar. A famous martyrologist calls Gardiner, on account of this opinion, "an insensible ass, and one that had no feeling of God's spirit in the matter of justification."[*] The meanest Protestant imagined, at that time, that he had a full comprehension of all those mysterious doctrines; and he heartily despised the most learned and knowing person of the ancient religion, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... food should be of the best quality, and prepared with the most scrupulous attention to cleanliness. The milk of the cow is preferable to that of the ass or of the goat, the former of which it is difficult to procure, and the latter having a disagreeable odour. For a child under three months of age, cow's milk should be used as the only food. It should be fresh, and if possible from ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... when Titania woke the first thing she saw was a stupid clown, one of a party of players who had come out into the wood to rehearse their play. This clown had met with Puck, who had clapped an ass's head on his shoulders so that it looked as if it grew there. Directly Titania woke and saw this dreadful monster, she said, "What angel is this? Are you as wise as you ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... his guardian. No, the poor devil wrote now and then to an old retired butler of his late father, somewhere in the country, forbidding him at the same time to let any one know of his whereabouts. So that worthy old ass would go up and dodge about the Moorsom's town house, perhaps waylay Miss Moorsom's maid, and then would write to 'Master Arthur' that the young lady looked well and happy, or some such cheerful intelligence. I dare say he wanted to be forgotten, but I shouldn't think ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Assisi, treats his father (as it seems to me) but scurvily, and yet to every other created man and all the animals he is a brother. The saint of Avila founds convents, mingles with men of business, and has visions in the intervals of her journeying through Spain upon an ass. Again, another preaches to the Indians or the Japanese, gives up his substance, begs his bread from door to door, and leaves the devil's advocate scarcely a quillet or a quiddity against him. Lastly, you find against the names of some merely the docket 'virgin' or ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... was clad in trappings not his own, Like the ass mantled in the lion's hide, As he expected, to the king, unknown, Was called in place of Gryphon: when descried Or Norandine, he rising from his throne, Embraced and kissed, and placed him by his side: Nor deems enough to praise and hold him dear, But wills that all around his ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... is a theological novel. It is, without any doubt, the most brilliant of Chesterton's novels; it is an argument between a Christian ass and a very decent atheist. Atheists, if they are sincere, are on the way to becoming good Christians; Christians, if they are insincere, are on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... charlatanism, or self-sufficiency, enchanted me. His system of medicine was based on regimen, and to make rules he had to be a man of profound science. I have been assured, but can scarcely believe it, that he cured a consumptive patient of a secret disease by means of the milk of an ass, which he had submitted to thirty strong frictions of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... them being St. Thomas, who in those medieval Universities fought the battle of Revelation with the weapons of heathenism. It was no matter whose the weapon was; truth was truth all the world over. With the jawbone of an ass, with the skeleton philosophy of pagan Greece, did the Samson of the schools put ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... of St. Peter," quoth the monk, "that is just what thou needest. Hoist thee on such another fool's back, truss thee up, and lay it on lustily, till thou art ashamed. To treat thee as a man is only to make thee a more heady blown-up ass ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... What is the Fellow distracted?—Desire Sir George to walk up—Now for a Tryal of Skill that will make me Happy, and him a Fool: Ha, ha, ha, in my Mind he looks like an Ass already. ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... street. When will I acquire anything like habits of prudence? Boy," said he, fiercely, "you are a young vagabond, and deserve to starve. Your mother should be put in the pillory for ever marrying. That's what the world says,—and what I would think, if I wasn't a consummate ass. Were you ever blessed with a view of the most unmitigated simpleton the sun ever shone upon? Look at me! Look good: I am worthy of a close inspection. Now come along, and see to what extent my folly ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... replied to me yet; he will have difficulties; it is not the custom to pay decently for dramatic work. Neither do I know how to oust X. from "Tannhauser." He is said to be a complete ass and a blackguard to boot. Hartinger, the tenor, is very good and full of his task; but it was just he who told me that he did not see how X., even with the best intentions, could execute such music. You of course I cannot expect to venture into this ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... course she knows it; always has known it, ever since that first summer at Sacandaga. Not that I've been ass enough to say anything after the first time. I'm only an ordinary sort of chap when it comes to intuition, but somehow I've never plucked up the cheek to do any talking about my own miserable self; not since she let me down ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... with a love of adventure, and his dislike to his present expedition arose not from fear, but from a consciousness that if he did run into a den of thieves he would think himself such an ass to have come. Indeed, there seemed a fair chance that he might think this even if nothing worse happened than that the hut proved empty, for he would have had a long walk for nothing better than to provide McVay with an opportunity to escape. He did not see exactly how McVay could get out, but he ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... as if struck by a sudden idea, after a few moments of silence. "I say! A promise is a promise, you know. You won't throw me over and make me look and feel an ass, will you, if you should happen to meet someone you think you like better than me? You've promised to be my wife, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... long Artaxerxes' throne Arts and eloquence, mother of Asbourne, down thy hill, romantic Ashes to ashes —, e'en in our Askelon, publish it not in the streets of Ask, and it shall be given you Asleep, the houses seem Ass, write me down an Assurance double sure Athens, the eye of Greece Atlantean shoulders Attempt, and not the deed, confounds Audience, and attention drew Audience fit, though few Auld acquaintance Authority, a little brief Awake, arise, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
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