Surely of all dealers in sin the swearer is palpably the silliest, and maketh the worst bargains for himself, for he sinneth gratis, and, like those in the prophet, "selleth his soul for nothing."

" "Busby," Wyatt declared, "is the silliest old ass who ever escaped petticoats by the mere accident of sex.

I was standing on the Eden rock at Antibes last month, idly watching the bathers disport themselves in the water, and a girl I knew slightly pointed at a male diver and asked me if I didn't think his legs were about the silliest-looking pair of props ever issued to human being.

One of the six silliest asses in England, I should think he must be.

But it is pitiable to see his weakness for Madame du Barri, who is the silliest and most impertinent creature that it is possible to conceive.

Dean Swift, by his lordship's own account, was so intoxicated with the love of flattery, he sought it amongst the lowest of the people, and the silliest of women; and was never so well pleased with any companions as those that worshipped him while he insulted them.

But these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise: For silliest ignorance, on these may light, Which when it sounds at best but ecchoes right; As blind affection, which doth ne'er advance The truth; but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; A crafty malice might pretend his praise, And think to ruin where it seem'd to raise.

To offer a poem of imagination to a man whose whole life and study have been to acquire a stoical indifference towards enthusiasm of every kind, would be the last, as it would surely be the silliest, action of my life.

"She said it was the silliest thing she had ever seen.

But in representing people of quality as the "vilest and silliest part of the nation" Mrs. Haywood and her ilk prepared their readers to welcome characters drawn from their own station in society, and paved the way for that "confounding of all ranks and making a jest of order," which, though deplored by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was nevertheless a condition of progress toward realism.

The doctor had no doubt that these trinkets had been purchased by Amelia; and this account tallied so well with the ideas he had imbibed of Booth's extravagance in the country, that he firmly believed both the husband and wife to be the vainest, silliest and most unjust people alive.

It was the silliest idea anyway

Caelius has some political insight; he sees civil war approaching, but he takes it all as a game, and on the eve of events which were to shake the world he trifles with the symptoms as though they were the silliest gossip of the capital.

On a shelf of books in my bedroom was a novel called The Old Helmet, probably the silliest novel in the world.

It is no such great matter with him; he does it because he must have something to do, and he thinks no more about it afterward than he does of the silliest freaks which he engaged in out of the purest idleness.

The silliest grew vain, To think a song or strain Of theirs, however weak, or loud, or hoarse, Was worthy to be heard Repeated by the bird; For of his wit they could not feel the force.

There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called the silliest ever known among men.

Gamblers have not unfrequently the silliest ideas concerning numbers, their heads being filled with notions about lucky figures and beautiful combinations of them.

I mean that, though I can talk of women rationally enough with a friend, I am at their mercy when alone with themat the mercy of the silliest, vulgarest creature.

"Trying to the other men, until I got my bearings and lost the silliest of the silly ideas put in my head by college and that sort of thing.

Really, girls' dreams are the silliest things in the world.

The silliest were those you could know only by belonging to a club.

Her intense worship for her "Baby Beatrice" was equalled only bythat of all the silliest and all the wisest women, who have true womanly hearts in their bosoms, for their children.

'This is the silliest stuff that e'er I heard,' remarked Hippolyta of Bottom's amateur theatricals; and one is tempted to wonder what she would have said to the dreary puns and interminable conspiracies of Alonzo, and Gonzalo, and Sebastian, and Antonio, and Adrian, and Francisco, and other shipwrecked noblemen.

It is the custom to call these old romantic poses artificial; but the word artificial is the last and silliest evasion of criticism.