sottishness

• “And sometimes again, so that it be discreetly and moderately done, it shall not be amiss to make resistance, to take down such a saucy companion, no better means to vindicate himself to purchase final peace: for he that suffers himself to be ridden, or through pusillanimity or sottishness will let every man baffle him, shall be a common laughing stock to flout at.”

  Anatomy of Melancholy

• “If the brain be hot, the animal spirits are hot; much madness follows, with violent actions: if cold, fatuity and sottishness, [1072] Capivaccius.”

  Anatomy of Melancholy

• “How many groundless opinions and absurd institutions have not received a general sanction from the sottishness and intemperance of individuals!”

  The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley

• “But, besides, I know not what I should rather admire in him, his presumption or his sottishness.”

  Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel

• “His sottishness and want of spirit, in that he thought that, without any other demonstration or sufficient argument, the world would be pleased to make his blockish and ridiculous impositions the rule of their devices.”

  Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel

• “An indirect reprimand to reprove the sottishness of Adam in not perceiving his fault in his punishment, as if it had been said, not simply that Adam was afraid at the voice of God, but that the voice of his judge was formidable to him because he was a sinner.”

  Commentary on Genesis - Volume 1

• “Pharisaism and the sottishness of traditions had, now a good while ago, thrown them into blindness, stupidity, and hardness of heart; and that for some ages before Christ was born: but when the gospel came, the Lord had his gleanings among them, and there were some that believed, and unto whom the participation of the promises was granted: concerning them the apostle speaks in that chapter: see verse 5.”

  From the Talmud and Hebraica

• “Lest that any should call this into question (as our unbelieving hearts are very apt and skilful in putting in pleas against the truth of the promises of God and their accomplishment towards us), verse 9, the Lord farther confirmeth the assurance formerly given, and removeth those objections to which, through the sophistry of Satan and the sottishness of our own hearts, it may seem to be liable.”

  The Doctrine of the Saints��� Perseverance Explained and Confirmed

• “This is an uncontrollable evidence of that sottishness and folly which is come upon our nature by sin, -- a depravation that the apostle places in the head of the evils of corrupted nature, Tit. iii.”

  Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ

• “Finally he returned to Haworth to loaf at the village inn, shock his sisters by his excesses, and to fritter his life away in painful sottishness.”

  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 "Brescia" to "Bulgaria"

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