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More "Absurd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its inwardest fountain, 840 If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain. Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd's worth. No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant; But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client, By attempting to stretch him up into a giant; If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per- -sons fit for a parallel—Thomson and Cowper;[2] 850 I don't mean exactly,—there's something of each, There's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... after raiding and provisioning itself at the expense of the Virginia and Maryland farmers, made a dash at Washington, sending boats up the Patuxent and Potomac rivers, and landing a body of about 2,000 men. On August 24, with absurd {230} ease, this force scattered in swift panic a hasty collection of militia, and entered Washington, sending the President and Cabinet flying into the country. In retaliation for the damage done at York, the British officers ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... men and maids dwell together in amity, and where clowns wander, making love to shepherdesses. Some of these same pestilent pedants have pretended to believe that this forest of Arden was situated in France, which is absurd, as there are no serpents and no lions in France, while we have the best of evidence as to the existence of both in Arden—you know that, ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... remember of him, was the point he made every Christmas of getting in the "Yule-log," a huge log which he had doubtless been saving out in chopping the wood-pile, big enough for a yoke of oxen to draw, and which he placed with a kind of ceremony and respect in the great kitchen fireplace. With our absurd New England Puritan ways, yet naturally derived from the times of the English Commonwealth, when any observance of Christmas was made penal and punished with [24] imprisonment, I am not sure that we should have known anything of Christmas, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan; —but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Moreover, the Christian Greeks had much the same hopes on those points as the Mussulmans; and similar causes should produce similar effects: but those hopes gave them no strength. Besides, according to the Mussulmans' own account, this was not their great inspiring idea; and it is absurd to consider the wild battle-cries of a few imaginative youths, about black-eyed and green- kerchiefed Houris calling to them from the skies, as representing the average feelings of a generation of sober and self-restraining ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... like Twostars, learned and profound like Threestars, exquisitely humorous and human like Fourstars? Why, finally, is he not somebody else?" My good people, it is not only impossible to please you all, but it is absurd to try. The dish which one man devours, another dislikes. Is the dinner of to-day not to your taste? Let us hope to-morrow's entertainment will be more agreeable. . . . I resume my original subject. What an odd, pleasant, humorous, melancholy feeling it is to sit in the study, alone and quiet, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... How absurd we islanders are! London is a poky place, but we adore it. St. James's Street is about the length of a good big ship, yet we don't feel we have lived till we get back to it! And as for Piccadilly and St. Paul's, well, we see them in ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... instructed to prepare certain text-books by Cardinal Paleotti. These were an Ecclesiastical History, a treatise on the Hebrew Commonwealth, and an edition of Sulpicius Severus. The MSS. were returned to him, accused of unsound doctrine, and scrawled over with such remarks as 'false,' 'absurd.'[125] ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... whispered that the young girl, having had conscientious scruples about her love for Urbain, he had allayed them by an act of sacrilege—that is to say, he had, as priest, in the middle of the night, performed the service of marriage between himself and his mistress. The more absurd the reports, the more credence did they gain, and it was not long till everyone in Loudun believed them true, although no one was able to name the mysterious heroine of the tale who had had the courage to contract a marriage with a priest; and considering ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Torture Phorbas!" Corbulo cried. "Absurd! In my court I never torture men like him, any more than if they were freemen. And though it might be imperative to torture him for a confession if all the testimony pointed to his guilt, it is ridiculous to suggest torturing him ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... this celebrated devotional work, arranged in languages in chronological order. It realized L101. The second lot comprised a collection of 437 printed editions, a few of which were not included in the former, and sold for the equally absurd amount of L43. The British Museum had the first pick of this collection, and the authorities were enabled to fill up a large number of gaps in their already extensive series of editions. The six MSS. and over 250 printed editions passed into the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... vain was her promise to the senses of a mysterious luxury of untold bliss; her fulfillment was richer than her promise. When she reached Lavriky in the very height of the summer, she found the house dark and dirty, the servants absurd and old-fashioned, but she did not think it necessary even to hint at this to her husband. If she had proposed to establish herself at Lavriky, she would have changed everything in it, beginning of ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... "it's those absurd children." Then, opening the gate, she called: "John! Dorry! come out and show yourselves." But nobody replied, and no one could be seen. The nosegay lay on the path, however, and picking it up, Katy exhibited to the girls a long end of black ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... advantageous, and that they feel that their individual security depends on such restriction. But that would be to suppose them to have too much reasoning power, and, what's more, a false reasoning, because it is absurd to save one's life at the expense of all that makes it reasonable and valuable. It is further said that fear keeps them obedient, and it is true that prison, gallows and wheels are excellent assurers of submission ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... leaning over the iron railing of the top row of the Academy of Music, and had finished the evening at Pfaff's, drinking beer and munching hardtack and pickles, and had laughed and sung in a dozen other equally absurd escapades. And yet it was as plain as daylight to Fred that Oliver's heart was no longer centred in the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... illustrated by an Englishwoman in India for her two small daughters, Little Black Sambo, with its absurd story, and funny crude pictures in color, will delight young ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... find a hidden meaning in the story. Bishop Warburton, in his 'Divine Legation of Moses,' professes to see in it a defense of Paganism at the expense of struggling Christianity. While this seems absurd, it is fairly evident that the mind of the author was busied with something more than the mere narration of rollicking adventure, more even than a satire on Roman life. The transformation of the hero into an ass, at the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... comedy they play at home and which they repeat abroad? The piece abroad is the same as that played in Paris for the past eight years,[51120] an absurd, hasty translation in Flemish, Dutch, German, and Italian, a local adaptation, just as it happens, with variations, elisions and abbreviations, but always with the same ending, a shower of blows with gun and sword on all property-owners, communities, and individuals, compelling the surrender of their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of the many absurd fictions which long formed the elements of romance writing, the word romance is sometimes taken as synonymous with falsehood. Thus the French talk of Des Romans, and thus the English ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... well?" asked the inquisitive Nettie. "How she stares—why does she stare, do you suppose? Is there anything absurd about my dress? Look here—don't they wear bonnets just like this ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... "How absurd!" said another; "for I am told they don't like it, as, of course, they cannot. And she is so young, that if they delayed it a little while, another season, with the admirers she is sure to have, would put it out ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Alaric to make use of a portion of Madame Jaquetanape's marriage portion. 'You have taken part of the girl's money,' was Undy's argument; 'you have already converted to your own purposes so much of her fortune; it is absurd for you now to talk of conscience and honesty, of your high duties as a trustee, of the inviolable distinction between meum and tuum. You have already shown that the distinction is not inviolable; let us have no more such nonsense; there are still left L15,000 on ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... have imagined that a chit of a thing like you, Dorothy Glenn, would have the impudence to put in your oar, or that you ever thought of lovers, or marrying, and you only sixteen a day or so ago?" cried one. "It's absurd!" ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... objects as are best calculated to arrest their attention, and keep them in a continual state of excitement. This course is succeeded by a supply of all sorts of toys, to gratify the passion of novelty. These are followed by wonderful stories, and books of every variety of absurd impossibilities;—which system of development is, it would seem, entirely based upon the presumption, that the faculty of admiration must be expanded, in order that the young idea may best learn how to shoot. It is therefore ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... amused and tender, "I thought you didn't want me! And it would have been rather absurd to hang round, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... evident the attitude of Albuquerque, his desire to earn the friendship of Hindu rulers and his unrelenting enmity to all Muhammadans. He had not the absurd notion which Almeida attributed to him of desiring to establish a direct Portuguese rule all over India. He wished rather to pose as the destroyer of Muhammadanism and the liberator of the natives. In return for this service Portugal was ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... Country Faith in Love Unrequited Affection The Poet's Troubles Echoes from the City Love's Wiles Hazard in Love A Mother's Love "The Shadow of the Cross" Curates and Colliers: on reading in a Comic Paper absurd comparisons between the wages of Curates and Colliers Wanted—a Wife: a Voice from the Ladies Sympathy A Fragment Law versus Theology: on an Eminent County Court Judge The Broken Model Impromptu: on ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... absurd under the circumstances Darrin promptly obeyed. Instantly the German officer snatched a fold of Darrin's rubber coat, pulling it aside and thus revealing a glimpse ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... me it is quite absurd— But tastes and opinions vary; And some have declared that no beast or bird Can sing like the small canary,— Who, if it be true as I've heard it told, Is really worth more than its weight ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... Essay with Part of a Character, which is finely drawn by the Earl of Clarendon, in the first Book of his History, and which gives us the lively Picture of a great Man teizing himself with an absurd Curiosity. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... man who never enjoyed the advantage of going to college, is puzzled as he witnesses the demonstration of undergraduate life, and he fails to catch the meaning; he does not understand; it has played no part in his own experience; college customs seem absurd to him, and he fails to appreciate that in these traditions our American college spirit ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... incursions of northern barbarism had quenched the light of classic art, the struggle made by such artists as the Goths had at command to embody the ideas of power or grace they wished to indicate, were often as absurd as the work of a modern child. Hence the grotesque is an inseparable ingredient in their designs, often quite accidental, and frequently in express contradiction to the intention of the designer, who imagined in all seriousness many scenes that now only excite a smile. A strong ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... uncharitable and absurd, as the navigators could not know any thing of the motives of these fires, and much less about the alleged sacrifices. The fires might have been friendly signals, inviting ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... plague, or St. Vitus' dance,[60] in the year 1418, and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... matter! Nothing could possibly be of any importance now. Rose was making her way with some difficulty towards him. How wan and tired she looked. Was it possible that any one besides himself was suffering? The idea was absurd. ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... jar she concluded that Henry Perkins was an angel—a conclusion which, in view of the well-known facts, was manifestly absurd. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... was issued making it lawful for all native-born Spaniards to make voyages of discovery, and to settle in Espanola itself if they liked. This was an infringement of the original privileges granted to the Admiral—privileges which were really absurd, and which can only have been granted in complete disbelief that anything much would come of his discovery. It took Columbus two years to get this order modified, and in the meantime a great many Spanish ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the day,"[49] that Martien's patent outranked Bessemer's, insisted that Mushet link his process to Martien's. This, as late as 1861, Mushet believed to be in effective operation.[50] His later repudiation of the process as an absurd and impracticable patent process "possessing neither value nor utility"[51] may more truly represent his opinion, especially as, when he wrote his 1861 comment, he still did not know of ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... quite upset at this absurd notion; and he laughed outrageously. "Why, the fact is, sir," said I, "that my friend Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, boldly, he was in the army. He only assumed the rank in order ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hear all about it!" she called to her father as soon as she saw him; "the strangest, most absurd, most amusing affair"—she piled up the adjectives—"that has ever occurred in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... brought into Queenstown harbor? Farraday himself, the efficient, the concentrated, sat absent-mindedly reading the papers, or drumming a slow, ceaseless tap with his fingers upon the desk. The general gloom was enhanced by their knowledge that Mac, their dear absurd Mac, was going. But they were all proud ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... look dreadfully," she said to Irene; "but moping here will not mend you. It was a most absurd step for Fred to come back to Yerbury, and take that paltry position! He has no real Lawrence pride, and I don't see that his elegant education has done much for him. Why didn't he study law, and go into politics? With his style and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Rolypoly there, but I believe she's a grandmother. If she'd been a boy, we should have been cut out of it. Oh yes, she's a lady—a born Morton; and when it was over she was very jolly about it—no harm done—bears no malice, only Ida makes such an absurd work ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as my law, His providence as my will, His fellowship as my joy. And the root and beginning of all such following is in coming to Him, conscious of mine own darkness, and trustful in His great light. We must rely on a Guide before we accept His directions; and it is absurd to pretend that we trust Him, if we do not go as He bids us. So 'Follow thou Me' is, in a very real sense, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... next morning, ready to take our train for Berlin, we beheld—unmistakably beheld—our beloved Greenie by the drinking-fountain!!! Her back was toward us, and all the proofs we had at that moment were the hang of her familiar gray suit, and our old friend, that absurd chicken feather, awry upon her little, black, St. Helen's hat. We stood breathless ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... rejoined. "There was a man with us whose farm and stock would, in the event of his death, fall into Clarke's hands, and it's clear that I was a serious obstacle in his way. Can't you see that he couldn't use his absurd story to bleed you ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... dress, leaning over my father while he had gone so happily into his old delight of showing his prints and engravings; and Torwood, standing by the fire, watching them with the look of a conqueror, and Jaquetta—like the absurd child she loved to be—teasing them with ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has been in the habit of using cubes for arithmetic; let him use them also for the elements of geometry. I would begin with solids, the reverse of the usual plan. It saves all the difficulty of absurd definitions, and bad explanations on points, lines, and surfaces, which are nothing but abstractions.... A cube presents many of the principal elements of geometry; it at once exhibits points, straight lines, parallel lines, angles, parallelograms, etc., etc. These cubes are divisible ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... an example which I quote because it is so absurd. The rooms I live in were owned by a prim old woman who for more than twenty years was my landlady. She and I were great friends, indeed she tended me like a mother, and when I was so ill nursed me as perhaps few mothers would have done. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... with care we found ourselves before the shop of Nathan the Jew. Here, whilst the Capuchin went farther on to see his Jewess, I haggled with Nathan for an hour or more over the price of the diamond, but could not persuade him to give more than fifteen livres. This was absurd, and I was about to turn away in disgust when the Capuchin returned. The bargaining was now taken up by a master, and the short of it was that we made our way out of the Jews' quarter with sixty-three livres in my purse. Three of these I gave Grigole for his good offices, and on approaching ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... say, an absurd anticlimax to that noble scene. Antigone, being recalled and made the centre of a volley of bouquets, ceased to be Antigone and became only Mademoiselle Bartet; and the Greek chorus, breaking ranks and scampering about the stage in order to pick up the leading lady's flowers, ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... suddenly one day it occurred to him that these qualms and forebodings were sheer folly. Was not Celia rich? Would she not with lightning swiftness draw forth that check-book, like the flashing sword of a champion from its scabbard, and run to his relief? Why, of course. It was absurd not to ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... what she might not do. And yet she had been only a child when living with her father. Now she was a married woman, and the mistress of her own house. She was quite sure that were she to ask her father, the Dean would say that such a prohibition as this was absurd. Of course she could not ask her father. She would not appeal from her husband to him. But it was a hardship, and she almost made up her mind that she would request him ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... as shadows I Know to be substance; tell me why My visions, like those haunting you, May not be as substantial too. Alas, who ever answer heard From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! 220 Your consciousness I half divine, But you are wholly deaf to mine. Go, I dismiss you; ye have done All that ye could; our silk is spun: Dive back into the deep of dreams, Where what is real is what, seems! Yet I shall fancy till my grave Your ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Frisk, and Kitty would not be able to tease me as they do. It is very annoying to be tormented all the time, and if one says a word in one's own defence, one gets blamed for being quarrelsome. The idea of my quarrelling with any one: it is perfectly absurd." ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Lord did not really rise from the dead, and that the tale of his resurrection, if it were not a fabrication, was the elaboration of a myth. But neither of these alternatives will bear investigation. On the one hand, it is absurd to suppose that the temple of truth could be erected on the quagmire and morass of falsehood—impossible to believe that the one system in the world of mind which has attracted the true to its allegiance, and been the stimulus of truth-seeking throughout ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... Chatham is very pretty. Young Thames, for I do not see why there should not be Young Thames as well as Young England, that most absurd of all D'Israelisms, looks enchanting in a country where lakes as flat on their shores as a pancake take the lead, and where rivers ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... 'what my funny little mite of a Japanese maid calls me! You'd really never guess! She calls me Madam Peach Blossom! Isn't that perfectly absurd, Mr. Floud?' ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... nullify the vague rumours brought against him. Richard himself in a few scornful words disposed of this accusation. The accusation that he, Richard of England, would stoop to poison a man whom he could have crushed in an instant, was too absurd ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... sides, minus his evil sides, remained forever. Logically stated, this means that man's goal is the world; this world meaning earth carried to a state higher and with elimination of its evils is the state they call heaven. This theory, on the face of it, is absurd and puerile because it cannot be. There cannot be good without evil, or evil without good. To live in a world where there is all good and no evil, is what Sanskrit logicians call a 'dream ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... sarcastically, as though this future that he was anticipating was an absurd contradiction ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... How do we show that such an excuse is false and absurd? A. We show that such an excuse is false and absurd because (1) It is false and absurd to say that we should remain in error after we have discovered it; (2) because if one religion is as good as another, Our Lord would not have abolished the Jewish ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... itself, what is to be said? It should speak for itself if I could find it, but I cannot, and only remember that it was a "male nurse and constant attendant" that was "wanted for an elderly gentleman in feeble health." A male nurse! An absurd tag was appended, offering "liberal salary to University or public-school man"; and of a sudden I saw that I should get this thing if I applied for it. What other "University or public-school man" would dream of doing so? Was any ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... harlot!" said he, and looked right and left, till he caught sight of the axe and the sandals and said, "These are some man's gear. Who has been with thee?" Quoth she, "I never set eyes on them till this moment; they must have clung to thee as thou camest hither." But he said, "This talk is absurd and will not impose on me, O strumpet!" Then he stripped her naked and stretching her on the ground, tied her hands and feet to four stakes and proceeded to torture her to make her confess. I could not bear to hear her weeping; ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... This is impossibly absurd; and unless there is some flaw in our argument, the fault must lie in the premisses; we have ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... accurate time, except in connection with matters of transportation, but will refuse to adopt a standard which would materially alter their accustomed habits of thought and of language in every-day life. That this position is absurd may be argued, and, perhaps, admitted, but it is a fact, and one ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... south, and making his summer home in the Arctic regions. He is a noisy, lively, sociable Duck, who has in spring some pleasing notes, so mellow and musical that he may almost be said to sing; but he is not choice or dainty in his food, and the flesh is too rank for House People to eat. He has many absurd names besides ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... come to sum it all up general reasons for drinking are as absurd as general reasons for not drinking. It is entirely an individual proposition. I concluded it was a bad thing for me to drink. I know now I was right. But—and here is the point—it may be a good thing for my neighbor to drink. He must judge ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... think of it," Sheila admitted frankly. "But I know it makes no difference to Casey. Fact is, I wonder, knowing him as I do, that he hadn't some absurd scruples on ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... man—I use no ceremony with you, because we are a kind of relations;—positively, Mama Meagles,' exclaimed Mrs Gowan cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for the first time, 'a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this world none of us can have everything ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... words which, unlocked from their absurd imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for instance, 'condign honours,' 'condign treatment' (treatment appropriate to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz., giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also providing ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... been variously attributed to George II, the King then reigning; to the two Georges from whom the land was taken, and to George Washington, which last is, of course, absurd, as he was then a young man of twenty, engaged in surveying the properties of ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... self-poise. "Aunt Margaret was asking a good deal about Mr. Bressant, too," said she. "She said she'd only heard about him from you, papa; but I thought, sometimes, she must be fibbing. Once in a while, you know, she acted just as if she had forgotten having said she didn't know him. However, that's absurd, of course. By-the-way, where ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... precautions. She writes the day before to Madame Foullepointe to go to St. Maur with Adolphe, to look at a piece of property for sale there. Adolphe would go to breakfast with her. She aids Adolphe in dressing. She twits him with the care he bestows upon his toilet, and asks absurd questions about Madame Foullepointe. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... that in twenty guesses you could get at the actual instrument of destiny. Cassandra chokes over a fish-bone! That's what I meant about Mrs. Vaizey's courage. And the reward of it is that, after your first moment of incredulity, the fish-bone isn't in the least bit absurd. Poor Cassandra comes quite near to expiring of it; and Dane, having thumped and battered her into safety, sobs out his wild and whirling passion, while Grizel and poor Teresa have just to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... to them absurd, but they answered very civilly that it was a signal of some sort which could only be interpreted by Indians, and that they had no doubt that it meant some sort ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... their researches to the uttermost. It is much to be regretted that every possible telegram and letter should not have been called for upon that occasion; but the idea that this was not done for fear that Mr. Chamberlain and the British Government would be implicated, becomes absurd in the presence of the fact that the Commission included among its members Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Sir William Harcourt. Is it conceivable that these gentlemen held their hands for fear of damaging the Government, or that ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this passage is an absurd truism; but the proposition in question can be resolved into—An animal is rational or it is irrational. Again, "the former does not belong to pure categoricals," it is simply disjunctive. MR. INGLEBY falls into the same ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... good-looking upon the cricket field or in any gathering of people belonging to the other side of life. Here he seemed almost a curiously incongruous figure. He passed through the glass-paned door and stood respectfully before his employer. Mr. Weatherley—it was absurd, but he scarcely knew how to make his suggestion—fidgetted for a moment and coughed. The young man, who, among many other quite unusual qualities, was possessed of a considerable amount of tact, looked down upon his employer with a little well-assumed anxiety. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Paris of Rops is at once an abode of disillusionment, of mordant joys, of sheer ecstasy and morbid hallucinations. The opium of Rops is his imagination, aided by a manual dexterity that is extraordinary. He is a master of linear design. He is cold, deadly cold, but correct ever. Fabulous and absurd, delicious and abominable as he may be, his spirit sits critically aloft, never smiling. Impersonal as a toxicologist, he handles his poisonous acids with the gravity of a philosopher and the indifference of a destroying angel. There is a diabolic spleen more strongly developed in ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... up into the clouds: that is, if we are idealists with the religious impulse rampant in our breasts. If we are scientists we practice aeroplane flying or eugenics or disarmament or something equally absurd. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... Lewiston, N. Y., in 1825, and reprinted at Lockport, in 1848. ] a record of singular value. His confused and imperfect style, the English of a half-educated foreigner, his simple faith in the wildest legends, and his absurd chronology, have caused the real worth of his book, as a chronicle of native traditions, to be overlooked. Wherever the test of linguistic evidence, the best of all proofs in ethnological questions, can be applied to his statements relative ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... was absurd that Jack Glover should imagine she needed a guardian at all, but if he insisted, as he did, it would be better to have somebody as ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... arrangement. For, as ten thousand loads of brick and stone dumped down higgledy piggledy will not build a house, neither will ten thousand millions of materials poured into a chaos make a world like this earth, arranged in order and beauty. It is grossly absurd to imagine that the inanimate materials of the earth arranged themselves in ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Medici, in spite of his name and influence, was in the eyes of the French nobility, who considered it a dishonourable thing to concern oneself with art or industry, nothing more than a rich merchant, with whom it would be absurd to stand upon any very strict ceremony. So Charles VIII received him on horseback, and addressing him with a haughty air, as a master might address a servant, demanded whence came this pride of his that made him dispute his entrance into Tuscany. Piero dei Medici replied, that, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Absurd as we consider such stories, they were believed by the Normans, who were no less credulous than the Anglo-Saxons. This is evident from the large number of miracles, revelations, visions, and enchantments which are related with great gravity by ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... comfortable, and did not feel disposed to move, for all seemed so calm and pleasant; and when I thought a little about my previous night's fancies I was ready to smile at them as being perfectly absurd. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... make use of its works. Whistler assumes that we make no use of works of art except as objects of use; and since pictures, poems, music are not objects of use, we can have no concern with them whatever—which is absurd. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... for a time, but only for a time. It came back to her again. Why did he not come to her? Why had not the Major sent him off to her at once? Could the Major have been killed? even if so, there was Doctor Mulhaus. Her terrors were absurd. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... matter how riotously absurd it is, or how full of inane repetition, remember, if it is good enough to tell, it is a real story, and must be treated with respect. If you cannot feel so toward it, do not tell it. Have faith in the story, and in the attitude of the children ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... follow that every Pole, whose name ends in ski is a nobleman. Therefore the translation of that particular z into English of is only strictly correct, although in other cases z should be translated into English from: to write: Baron de Rothschild is absurd and ridiculous, because the sign "red shield" was not an estate, and one ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... illustrations in history, to "decorate with legend" the early history of great men. In reply, it may be enough here to say that legends analogous to the pagan legends of the births of heroes, false and absurd legends, did gather round the infancy of Jesus Christ. The Apocryphal Gospels are full of such legends. They tell us how the idols of Egypt fell down before Him; how His swaddling-clothes worked miracles; ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... wanting: No priest, no ceremonies of their sect; Or, grant we these defects could be supplied, How could our prophet do an act so base, So to resume his gifts, and curse my conquests, By making me unhappy? No, the slave, That told thee so absurd a story, lied. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Mays, the Cabots, the Higginsons, and others, were known throughout the world for their integrity, their mercantile skill, and the extent and beneficial character of their operations. These were the golden days of Boston's commerce.... The standard of integrity was high, and though it would be absurd to suppose that there was not the usual amount of evil in the place, it may be assumed that in no part of the world was the young trader more likely to find severer judges of character and conduct, or to be better treated if he should ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... visiting Simpheropol and Baktchiserai. I travelled to Simpheropol with a pretty large party, and had a very amusing journey. My companions were young and full of fun, and tried hard to persuade the Russians that I was Queen Victoria, by paying me the most absurd reverence. When this failed they fell back a little, and declared that I was the Queen's first cousin. Anyhow, they attracted crowds about me, and I became quite a lioness in the streets of Simpheropol, until the arrival of some Highlanders in their ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... house, nor have any of my relations either. It has belonged to me, to be quite accurate, since March 25th, 1920, and the interloper was interloping on a short lease when I bought the long lease over his head. It is also true that by an awkward and absurd convention I have to restore the old home to the ground landlord in 1941. But who cares about what is going to happen in 1941? The Coalition may have come to an end by that time, and the first Labour Government, under Lord NORTHCLIFFE or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... a boy astride him, with a big drum placed before him. Now, under the treatment recommended by MR. G. SHADBOLT, both sides of the ass would be visible; both the boy's legs; and the drum would have two heads. This would be untrue, absurd, ridiculous, and quite as wonderful as Mr. Fenton's twelve-feet span ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... more absurd than any dream, was yet based on a substantive foundation. In fact he had that morning put it in practice, and unless a miracle occurred he would have to continue putting it in practice for some days ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... no other grounds can I understand why a reading should be preserved by which broad sunshine is attributed to ten o'clock at night! Nor can I believe that the copyist of the MS. with whom the error must have originated would have set down anything so glaringly absurd, unless he had in his own mind some means of reconciling it with probability. It may, I believe, be explained in the circumstance that "ten" and "four," in horary reckoning, were convertible terms. The old Roman method of naming ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... is part of the history of my country. During many years he was my only parent or friend or companion; he taught me my lessons by day and my prayers by night, and, when I passed through all the absurd ailments to which a child is heir, he sat beside my cot and lulled me to sleep, or told me stories of the war. There was a childlike and simple quality in his own nature, which made me reach out to him and confide in him ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... each represents an economy of time or of manual labour. And if most of the workshops we know are foul and unhealthy, it is because the workers are of no account in the organization of factories, and because the most absurd waste of human energy is the distinctive feature of the ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... say, have you seen at the willows so green, So charming and rurally true, A singular bird, with the manner absurd, Which they call the Australian emeu? Have you Ever seen this ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... artists who cannot help themselves must borrow from other artists. The critic's business is to help the public. With the artist he is not directly concerned: he is concerned only with his finished products. So it is ridiculous for the artist to complain that criticism is unhelpful, and absurd for the critic to read the artist lectures with a view to improving his art. If the critic reads lectures it must be with a view to helping the public to appreciate, not the artist to create. To put the public in the way of aesthetic pleasure, that is the end for which critics exist, ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... thought, as well as of outward attire. She is as independent in mind as in dress. She is as ready to throw off the restraints society seems to have placed on woman's mind, as she is to cast aside what she considers an absurd fashion in dress. Without endorsing the eliminated petticoats, we can not but admire Miss Stone's "stern old Saxon pluck," and her total independence of the god, Fashion. Her dress is first a black velvet coat with collar, fastened ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... can't be done, Peter. And it can't even be pretended. Imagine the mother of twins trying to flirt with a man even as nice as you are! It would be as bad as an elephant trying to be kittenish and about as absurd as one of your dinosauria getting up and trying to do a two-step. And I'm getting old and prosy, Peter, and if I pretend to be skittish now and then it's only to mask the fact that I'm on the shelf, that I've eaten my pie and that ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the doctrine of a de facto officer can be applied to such an office at all. In the present case, Brewster went into the State-House and voted for Mr. Hayes; at the same instant his rival went into the same State-House and voted for Mr. Tilden. It is absurd to pronounce Brewster, under such circumstances, an elector de facto, so as to make his vote for that reason good against his rival in the Tilden college, who was as much an elector de facto as was Brewster, and had this difference in his favor, that he was elected, and was ...
— The Vote That Made the President • David Dudley Field
... tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. 1930 SHAKS.: Hamlet, Act ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... up, and caught Annixter about the shoulders with one arm, gripping his hand hard. This absurd figure, with dangling silk suspenders, lathered chin, and tearful eyes, seemed to be suddenly invested with true nobility. Beside this blundering struggle to do right, to help his fellows, Presley's own vague schemes, glittering ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... admire their outline in passing, or when I see them silhouetted against the setting sun, that is all right, but further than that I will not go. The idea of entering these cold spaces, while some one explains their absurd and interminable history, of looking up at their ceilings with craning neck, of cramping my feet by walking unnaturally over highly waxed floors, of being obliged to admire the restoration of the left wing that they would have done ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Shorter than its Chord, and sometimes longer than its Tangent: 3. That the same Straight Line must be allowed, at one place onely to Touch, and at another place to Cut the same Circle: (with others of like nature;) He findes it necessary, that these things may not seem Absurd, to allow his Lines some Breadth, (that so, as he speaks, While a Straight Line with its Out-side doth at one place {291} Touch the Circle, it may with its In-side at another place Cut it, &c.) But I shou'd sooner take this to be a Confutation of His Quadratures, than a demonstration ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... January, 1792, civilly dead, and their properties confiscated; and similar rigorous measures were ordained against those priests who should refuse the oath binding them to the constitution, and continue to excite agitation. The king refused to sanction these decrees; and then was seen the absurd balance of power provided against the constitution. The rage of the revolutionists knew no bounds; and unable to attack the monarch directly, they turned their rage against the ministers and the constitutionalists ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of her, for the three turned to regard her. She met their scrutiny with a doubtful half smile, which vanished as Anna Mantegazza made a light comment upon her hair being so newly up. Lavinia detested the latter with a sudden and absurd intensity. She saw Anna, with a veiled glance at Gheta, make an apology and leave to join an eddy of familiars that had formed in the human stream sweeping by. Mochales stood very close to her sister, speaking seriously, while Gheta ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... from her parents' race than during the first weeks of her sojourn in her native country. She was so unconscious of her relationship that she liked to play at imitating native life, as something utterly peculiar and absurd. Meals in Japanese eating-houses amused her immensely. The squatting on bare floors, the exaggerated obeisance of the waiting-girls, the queer food, the clumsy use of chop-sticks, the numbness of her feet after being sat upon for half an hour, all would set her off in peals ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... was, indeed, the fact, and any intelligent child could have enlightened a stranger as to the name of the stout gentleman indicated. He was one of the first citizens of the community, if wealth, probity, and long residence may be said to count for anything. And his name, which it were absurd longer to conceal, was Amzi Montgomery, or, to particularize, Amzi Montgomery III. As both his father and his grandfather who had borne the same name slept peacefully in Greenlawn, it is unnecessary to continue in this narrative the numerical designation of this living Amzi ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... imagine from what I have written that Lucullus has left no disciples in Germany. I could easily add a page to the list I have mentioned, and because we look upon some of these customs of the German as absurd is no reason for forgetting that he often, and from his stand-point rightly, looks upon us as boors. I like the Germans and I pretend to have learned very much from them. To sneer at superficial differences ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... and that might yet happen, yet never would happen, between him and her. All the best things that she remembered had only happened in her dreams, her imagination no sooner sipped the first sip of an experience than it conjured up for her great absurd satisfying draughts of nectar, for which the waking Sarah Brown might thirst in vain. But there was no waking Sarah Brown. Her life was only a sleep-walking; only very rarely did she awake for a moment and feel ashamed to see how alert was ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... was the most truthful man I have ever met. In this, too, we were similar, as we were similar in our intellectual honesty. We never sacrificed truth to make a point. We had no points to make, we so thoroughly agreed. It is absurd to think that we could disagree ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... oratorios, our composer produced the beautiful music to Dryden's "St. Caecilia Ode," and Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." Henceforth neither praise nor blame could turn Handel from his appointed course. He was not yet popular with the musical dilettanti, but we find no more catering to an absurd taste, no more writing ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... cockneys in the cook's galley had found intoxicants, had poured raw whiskey into their empty stomachs and the result was the quickest and most complete intoxication. When Madden regained the deck he found his crew singing, laughing, fighting, quarreling in an absurd medley. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... exclaimed, "how absurd of me not to have thought of it before! But, you see, Mr. Colston always speaks of you by your first name. You ought to ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... Don Carlos follows you around. Bill's afraid that Nels or Ambrose or one of the cowboys will take a fall out of the Mexican. They're itching for the chance. Of course, dear, it's absurd to you, but ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... him doubtfully. He was a solid-looking person, and it seemed absurd to think of lifting him. But she did as he directed, and placing her hands under his arms she found that he weighed no more than a baby. She held him ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... number of rude fellows the innkeeper took his revenge upon the crazy knight by the mistreatment of Sancho Panza who was tossed in a blanket until the company could toss him no more for weariness and the laughter that his absurd ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... your faction of the Little Faiths. However, I never could assign any probable or feasible reason for withdrawing these memorials of ancient independence; and my doubts rather arose from the conviction that many absurd things are done in public as well as in private life, merely out of a hasty impression of passion or resentment. For it was evident the removal of the Regalia might have greatly irritated people's minds here, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... free to deny the existence of such treaties. It was undoubtedly a dread of some such occurrence which had induced the promptitude and the ever-increasing liberality in terms which France had shown from the moment when the news of Saratoga arrived. Nor perhaps was her anxiety so utterly absurd as it now seems. There was some foundation for Gibbon's epigrammatic statement that "the two greatest nations in Europe were fairly running a race for the favor of America." For the disaster to the army on the Hudson had had an effect in England even greater than it had had in France, and Burgoyne's ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... which was in great demand for miles around. Consequently, the girls would have good music for their frolic and as Mrs. Bonnell looked to the refreshments, everything was satisfactory excepting Miss Woodhull's veto upon "the absurd practices of Hallowe'en:" meaning the love tests of fate and fortune usually made that night. Those were debarred, though many a one was indulged in in secret of which that practical ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... truthfully said of these plays than that they are comprehensible. First of all, they are plays, and not works—like the dropsical dramas of Sir Henry Taylor and Mr. Swinburne. Some of them have stood the ordeal of actual representation; and though it would be absurd to pretend that they met with that overwhelming measure of success our critical age has reserved for such dramatists as the late Lord Lytton, the author of 'Money,' the late Tom Taylor, the author of 'The Overland Route,' the late Mr. Robertson, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... devoted to some other person; why should there be any greater truth in the report of to-day than in that of yesterday, or in that of yesterday than in that of to-day?" To Monsieur, in relating to him the adventure of the royal oak, she said, "Are you not very absurd in your jealousies, my dear Philip? It is asserted that the king is madly in love with that little La Valliere. Say nothing of it to your wife; for the queen will know all about it very soon." This latter confidential communication had an ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to Tommy while she watched! When the old lady was on her knees thanking him, and every other lady was impressed by the feeling he showed, it seemed to Grizel that he was again in the arms of some such absurd sentiment as had mastered him in the Den. When he behaved so charmingly about the gift she was almost sure he looked at her as he had looked in the old days before striding his legs and screaming out, "Oh, am I not a wonder? I see by your face that you think ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... came long after my close personal relations with him had ceased, and I had become only an occasional correspondent, living in Italy. But to make his decline the consequence of the use of chloral, even when it was finally become habitual, as some do, is absurd. It had been prescribed for him by a competent physician, because some remedy for his malady had become necessary. Even before I had recommended his first experiment with it he had been incapacitated from work by sleeplessness, and was in a ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... women. Our physicians are saying that there is not one American woman in a hundred who is nervously normal. The profession declares that they are excitable, irritable, peevish, and that this unfortunate state is produced by the unnatural and absurd tension they ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... wicked men have used Holy Scripture to justify the most impious crimes. Others, with more fancy than judgment, have drawn the most absurd conclusions from its facts; but we seem warranted to conclude, that by selecting shepherds to receive the first tidings of Jesus' birth, apart from the circumstance that they were Christ's own favourite types of Himself, God intended to confer special honour ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... you needn't be afraid. I will forgive the bad grammar, bad style, absurd images, faulty method, and even the verses ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of bridges or of locomotives or cars, upon the best means of reducing the working-expenses of a machine of whose component parts they have not the slightest idea, of the most complicated and elaborate piece of mechanism that men have ever designed, might at first seem absurd; but custom has made it right. It is generally supposed that the moment a man, be he lawyer, doctor, or merchant, is chosen director in a railroad enterprise, immediately he becomes possessed of all knowledge of mechanics, finance, and commerce; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... freemen, and three-fifths of the slaves it contains. He could not see any rule by which slaves were to be included in the ratio of representation;—the principle of a representation being that every free agent should be concerned in governing himself, it was absurd to give that power to a man who could not exercise it—slaves have no will of their own: the very operation of it was to give certain privileges to those people, who were so wicked as to keep slaves. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of traditional and apocryphal circumstances, in most cases sanctioned by the Church authorities of the time. However doubtful or repulsive some of these scenes and incidents, we cannot call them absolutely unmeaning or absurd; on the contrary, what was supposed grew up very naturally, in the vivid and excited imaginations of the people, out of what was recorded; nor did they distinguish accurately between what they were allowed and what they were commanded to believe. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... just like Rose!" exclaimed Eeny; "she is everything by starts, and nothing long. Flying off to Quebec for a week, just as she is going to be married, with half her dresses unmade. It's absurd." ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... law,—by the difference of which laws different churches (as different commonwealths) are made in various parts of the world; and the establishment is a tax laid by the same sovereign authority for payment of those who so teach and so practise: for no legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people to support men for teaching and acting as they please, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... think so, in another ten years," Desmond went on, "but, at present, I have no more thought of marrying than I have of becoming king of France. The idea is altogether absurd, and it happens to be particularly so, in the present case, since one of the objects of my going down to Pointdexter is that I may be present at the formal betrothal of this young lady, to Monsieur de la Vallee, a ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... to tell him it was absurd, but before the word could come she saw that it was the last one to apply; he was so confident, so quiet, so sure of himself, if not of Rachel. At last she told him she could not think of it, he had seen nothing of her, ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... You remember Mrs. Calfsfoot's habit of twitching her nose and twirling her thumbs when she is beginning an anecdote about somebody one never saw, and never cared to see. Well, Carrie stopped in the middle of our rambles in the forest, and imitated her squeaky voice and absurd gestures to the life. The anecdote, concocted impromptu, was a wonderfully sustained bit of pure invention. On my honour, when she had finished her little performance, I could not help giving ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... see, from this anecdote, that, though there is but one rule of the school, I by no means intend to say that there is only one way of doing wrong here. That would be very absurd. You must not do any thing which you may know, by proper reflection, to be in itself wrong. This, however, is a universal principle of duty, not a rule of the Mount Vernon School. If I should attempt to make rules which would specify and prohibit every possible ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... a false key to open all your secrets. All his affections jump[86] even with your's; he is before-hand with your thoughts, and able to suggest them unto you. He will commend to you first what he knows you like, and has always some absurd story or other of your enemy, and then wonders how your two opinions should jump in that man. He will ask your counsel sometimes as a man of deep judgment, and has a secret of purpose to disclose to you, and whatsoever you say, is persuaded. He ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... own hands. I, you see, have taken it into mine. What do you propose to do? I am quite at your service. Your idea of arresting me on a charge of receiving stolen goods is, if you will allow me to say so, absurd. You could no more make me guilty of that than you could hang me for the deaths of those foolish spies of yours. Now, what is it to be? Pardon me, Herr von Hamner: the bracelets inconvenience you. Allow me." He took the ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... decorative costume. All of the present-day extravagance in female attire, with its ever-changing fashion, is a medley of commercial intrigues, female competition and sex excitement. Though the modesty restrictions are absurd, the motive that obscurely prompts it is not, and the transgressors either seek notice in a risky way, are foolish, to speak bluntly, or else are inviting actual ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... is so strong, that everyone would have more than he hath, and few men will be content. This desire of aggrandisement overcomes and masters us; and yet, what can be more absurd than to witness the care and anxiety of those to gain riches, who have already more, perhaps, than is necessary for their wants,—thus 'heaping up riches, not knowing who may gather them,' and endangering the soul ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... of London (female figure) is writing the words "Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar." With admirable taste the sculptor, who knew what his female figures were, has turned the City of London with her back to the spectator. At the base of this absurd monument two sailors watch over a bas-relief of the battle of Trafalgar, which certainly no one of taste would steal. The inscription is from the florid ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... presents Him, without presumption and without fear. For the same spacious faith that will render the idea of airing their egotisms in God's presence through prayer, or of any such quite personal intimacy, absurd, will render the idea of an irascible and punitive ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Other absurd questions followed—as to his hair; long or short? Had he a pair of scales with him? As before, Joan of Arc answered these futile, and sometimes indecent, questions with her wonderful patience. At one moment she could not help exclaiming how ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... in spite of his wife's indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought them absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... defended on a priori principles without much real reflection, and was quite outgrown by him when taught by the experience of riper years. In the Constantio Sapientis he praises and holds up to imitation the absurd apathy recommended by Stilpo. In the De Animi Tranquillitate, addressed to Annaeus Serenus, the captain of Nero's body- guard, [1] he adopts the same line of thought, but shows signs of limiting its application by the necessities of circumstances. The person to whom this dialogue is addressed, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... hoped, the boys were wildly curious about the mysterious letters "M.K." They made a great many absurd guesses, and Carl finally nicknamed it the "Club of Many Kinks," which he thought sounded like girls. But they only ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... it's absolutely absurd, Richard," began one of these, as they approached—"your putting such notions into the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... became crowded and uncomfortable. Armed constables were placed at both doors—the one entering the hall and the other the dining-room—as well as in all the corners. Their faces were dull, and their guns seemed unnecessary and absurd in these peaceful surroundings—but then the guests ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... sufficient to deter Men who make it their Glory to despise it, but if every one that fought a Duel were to stand in the Pillory, it would quickly lessen the Number of these imaginary Men of Honour, and put an end to so absurd a Practice. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... The South African News—that is to say, of the journal which, as we have noticed before, served as the medium for the expression of the political views of Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer. At the period in question The South African News rendered itself notorious by circulating the absurd, but none the less injurious, report that General Buller and his army had surrendered to the Boers in Natal and agreed to return to England on parole; by publishing stories of imaginary Boer victories; by eulogising Mr. Hargrove, whose acceptance of the L1,000 from the Netherlands Railway ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... other; he always frowns, and I always smile. Theoretically I am annoyed and indignant; but at the critical moment the comical side of the situation sweeps over me, and out flashes the smile before I can force it back. It is so absurd to see a big grown man sulking like a child! Quite a good thing he does not intend to marry. His wife would ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hand, he would not allow his followers to indulge in pleasures; but he insists most sensibly on keeping between the two extremes and proclaims the middle path of leading a righteous life. There is nothing absurd about him. Think of Devadatta. He insists that the monks should dress in rags picked up in cemeteries. The Buddha appeals to common sense, and therefore I say, he is a ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... a very hot afternoon in June, but the young professor had forgotten the heat and the grime of the workshop. He was wholly absorbed in the making of a nondescript machine, a sort of crude harmonica with a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. It was a most absurd toy in appearance. It was unlike any other thing that had ever been made in any country. The young professor had been toiling over it for three years and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot afternoon in June, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... broke silence. "Well?" she said. "Is there anything you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou" the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that one ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of old army and militia officers. Old Tom has done wonders, I can tell you. You see, he is so fearfully earnest himself every one else has got to be earnest. There has been no playing about anything, but just fifteen hours' hard work a day. Fellows grumbled and growled and said it was absurd, and threatened to do all sorts of things. You see, they had all come out to fight if necessary, but hadn't bargained for ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... of one mind in the quarters of the working men. I have been much struck with the difference between one of these poor fellows who is prepared to die for the honour of his country, between his quiet, calm demeanour, and the absurd airs, and noisy brawls, and the dapper uniforms of the young fellows one meets with in the fashionable quarters. It is the difference between reality and ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... The House of Stuart being ended, 1714-1727 George of Hanover (descended From daughter of King Jamie One) Comes over to ascend our throne. Of English George knew not a word, Most awkward, not to say absurd, At Cabinet Councils to preside; So from this ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... of the tribunate, feeble as it was, displeased the first consul; not that it was any obstacle to his designs, but it kept up the habit of thinking in the nation, which he wished to stifle entirely. He put into the journals among other things, an absurd argument against the opposition. Nothing is so simple or so proper, was it there said, as an opposition in England, because the king is the enemy of the people; but in a country, where the executive government is itself named by the people, it is opposing the nation to oppose its representative. ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... "It is absurd," he continued, with affected anger. "Ointment such as that has a value. It might better have ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... laughed again till I thought there must be some elf scrambling among the rafters of that smothery ceiling. It seemed so absurd to be thrilled with love of Hortense with the breath of the wolves ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... for the same doctrine to be at once true and false; or that they think it immaterial whether, on a religious question, a man comes to a true or a false conclusion. If there be any Protestants who hold notions so absurd, we abandon ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Memory" in Nature (January 27, 1881) the notion of a "race-memory," to use his own words, was still so new to him that he declared it "simply absurd" to suppose that it could "possibly be fraught with any benefit to science," and with him too it was Professor Hering who had anticipated me in the matter, not ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... if indeed it were a note from him, seemed only likely to throw me into further trouble, by disquieting to no purpose my already enfeebled and agitated mind. In vain I revolved in my brain a multitude of absurd expedients for procuring light—such expedients precisely as a man in the perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar purpose—each and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wounds, and wished to call Oros, the physician, to dress them, and as he refused this, offered to do so herself. He begged that she would leave his wounds alone, and then, his great beard bristling with wrath, asked her solmenly if he was a child in arms, a query so absurd that I ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... were staring at the boy who had spoken. Even in the dim light their intense interest was plainly manifest. Zeke was doing his utmost by absurd motions to impress upon the mind of John the fact that he must ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... more substantial part of the feast had been concluded, a band of dancing-girls and musicians made their appearance; followed by a puppet-show, which might have afforded amusement to a party of children, but which to Reginald's taste appeared absurd in the extreme. He felt far more disgusted with the performances of the nautch-girls, and he resolved to prohibit their ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... hundred thousand roubles?" he asked. But his mother remained profitably silent over the preparation of the family soup. The fire now blazed with the additional wood that had been heaped upon it. The little voice repeated the absurd question, and the mother shouted, "Silence! Don't make yourself ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... admitted for performance at Fontainebleau; and for the first time the King had the curtain dropped before the end of the play. It was called the "Dramomane" or "Dramaturge." All the characters died of eating poison in a pie. The Queen, highly disconcerted at having recommended this absurd production, announced that she would never hear another reading; and this time she kept ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Phocians on their arrival; but according to him, they met with a kind reception among the Ligurians, who continued to inhabit those parts for a long time after. Even the story of the lucumo who is said to have invited the Gauls is opposed to him, and if it were referred to Clusium alone it would be absurd. Polybius places the passage of the Gauls across the Alps about ten or twenty years before the taking of Rome; and Diodorus describes them as advancing toward Rome by an uninterrupted march. It is further stated that Melpum in the country of the Insubrians was destroyed on the same ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... it's absurd! And yet," the Riding Officer went on irritably, "if one could count on its being absurd, I wouldn't mind. But there's just a chance that, with all this foolery, Hymen and Pond are covering up a little game. Why have they chosen Talland ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tells me we may expect the "Dissolution" very shortly, and I'm sure the poor Members must be glad of it, for this weather makes one long to dissolve—though I must say it seems to me an absurd time to choose, as it will stop the Season and upset everybody's arrangements! These things will be better managed when we get a "House of Peeresses" at the head of affairs—and that is only a question of time, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... at most, did give shape to the great epic of the Greek people. Wolf, Lachmann, and Bert have shown the follies of men of genius when pursuing a line of evidence to prove a favorite theory. Their assumptions are often absurd, and their conclusions, once admitting their premises, are a logical necessity. The spirit of iconoclasm rested, not with the authority of the book, but assailed the geographic and topographical features. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... they walked they hoofed it. And the last time they sang was just before they heard the Italians sing. The first performance by comparison with the second sounded as a tom-tom concert in competition with the celestial choir. Talk about carrying coals to Newcastle; the most absurd performance of the Y was exporting American singers to entertain ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... mere number of fires irrespective of the size of the industrial group upon which they committed their ravages, houses would appear to be hazardous according to the order in which we have placed them. Now, this is manifestly absurd, inasmuch as private houses stand at the head of the list, and it is well known that they are the safest from fire of all kinds of tenements. Mr. Brown, of the Society of Actuaries, who has taken the trouble to compare the number of fires ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... perfectly absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a way out of it for the moment. "We will never get any of our comrades to serve as seconds. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... "I shall go home now now—this instant why am I kept in ignorance of my father's death? I know who murdered him in spite of secrecy," she screamed," it was Mr. Palsey, that false villain below," "Helen cried Cyril," "how could it be Mr. Palsey, why I should know it if it was he, dont be absurd dear, get into bed again do you know you are very ill, and to go out ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... him and to the conspirators to whom he had been sent; and the more reprehensible was it, therefore, in a President of the United States, to make the use that was made of this story, which an impartial examination would have shown was essentially absurd and infamously false. Mr. Madison's intelligence is not to be impugned. He was too sagacious, as well as too unimpassioned a man, to be taken in by the ingenious tale of such an adventurer as Henry. In a letter to Colonel David Humphreys, written the next spring, in defense of the policy ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... of advice, at the last moment, which was as common-place and natural, and which I ought to have expected, enervated me, and, in spite of myself, plunged me into a state of perplexity, from which I could not extricate myself. I remembered those absurd stories which we hear among friends, after a good dinner. What would be that last trial of our love for her and for me, and could that love which then was my whole life, come out of the ordeal lessened or increased tenfold? And when I looked at the couch on which Elaine, my adored Elaine, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... "Absurd, isn't it!" she replied, with a weak smile. "I'll get over it directly. I don't think I am going ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... maintain that they are merely local, and depend entirely upon the customs and fashions of different countries; nay, there are still, if possible, more unaccountable wretches; I mean those who affect to preach and propagate such absurd and infamous notions without believing them themselves. These are the devil's hypocrites. Avoid, as much as possible, the company of such people; who reflect a degree of discredit and infamy upon all who converse with them. But as you may, sometimes, by accident, fall ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... doing an absurd thing, but the superstition of the people demanded it, and he must cater to their desires because it ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... In verse the speaker lays down what entities dwell in the body. In the rest he expounds the nature of Sattwa which the commentator takes to mean buddhi or knowledge. He begins with the statement that Sattwasya asrayah nasti. This does not mean that the knowledge has no refuge, for that would be absurd, but it means that the asraya of the knowledge, i.e., that in which the knowledge dwells, viz., the body, does not exist, the true doctrine being that the body has no real existence but that it exists like to its image ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... social scale, the houses grow simpler and simpler. Small shops are set into the street wall at either side of the entrance door, and on entering one finds himself in a very limited and utterly dingy court with a few dirty compartments opening thence, which it would be absurd to dignify by the name of "rooms." Again one ceases to wonder that the male Athenians are not "home folk" and are glad to leave their houses to ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... the afternoon to ride 4 1/2 miles, attend a native feast in the gaol, and ride four and a half miles back. But there is no help for it. I am a sort of father of the political prisoners, and have charge d'ames in that riotously absurd establishment, Apia Gaol. The twenty-three (I think it is) chiefs act as under gaolers. The other day they told the Captain of an attempt to escape. One of the lesser political prisoners the other day effected a swift capture, while the Captain was trailing about with the warrant; the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and generously lamented the cruel necessity of thus compelling them to relinquish a league, which had for it's object, beneath the artful veil of a generous love of liberty, that has sufficiently deluged the earth with blood, the unjust and absurd view of destroying the maritime power of Great Britain, by which the freedom of the, seas is alone preserved to the honourable commerce ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... right, and I ought to be obliged to you for being so considerate. But no one would pay heed to my aunt's ravings. Every person in the house knows that the statement is absurd. Mr. Hilton was in his room. I myself saw him go upstairs after exchanging a few words with his father in the hall, and he came down again instantly when Harris ran to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... effect, and rather absurd mistake, resulted from the different densities in the super-heated atmosphere which caused this mirage. Fancying that I saw two springboks on the horizon I pointed them out to ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... acted perfectly absurd about it. Seeing that they were going to make a fuss, I refused to say with whom I had been walking. You'd have thought I had committed ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... photo-gravured portrait of him will be included, with views of the interior and exterior of 'The Drudgeries,' and a bit from the back-garden." (You do know MINCING—and you cannot help inwardly wondering at the absurd vanity of the man—a mere nobody, away from the City!) "Between ourselves," says your interviewer, candidly, having possibly observed your expression, "I am by no means sure that I shall feel warranted in allotting Alderman MINCING as much space ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended. In like manner the judicial authority of the federal judicatures is declared by the Constitution to comprehend certain cases particularly specified. The expression of those cases marks the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... bad showing in comparison with the average denizen of Christian lands. As to beliefs, how much more defensible were the superstitions of our own race two or three centuries ago, or of to-day, than those of the Hawaiians? How much less absurd and illogical were our notions of cosmogony, of natural history; how much less beneficent, humane, lovable the theology of the pagan Hawaiians than of our Christian ancestors a few centuries ago if looked at from an ethical or practical point of view. At the worst, the Hawaiian sacrificed the enemy ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... table. Landor became flushed, and greatly agitated: "My dear Count D'Orsay, I thank you! My dear Count D'Orsay, I thank you from my soul for pointing out to me the abominable condition to which I am reduced! If I had entered the Drawing-room, and presented myself before Lady Blessington in so absurd a light, I would have instantly gone home, put a pistol to my head, ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... we assert that these excellencies, which have thus been succinctly exhibited, characterise the mental constitution of Burke, we do not mean that others have not, in their degree, possessed similar endowments. Such an inference would be an absurd extravagance. But what we mean to affirm is—the qualifications enumerated have never been combined into co-operative harmony, and developed in proportionable effect, as they appear in the speeches and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... splash of his father's blood impressed there, till the "solid flesh" would verily "melt"? Was it his neighbourhood which brought out the ruddy spot, that, like the scarlet streaks down Lady Macbeth's little hands, would not wash off? Absurd folly! But he wished he had done with it. He wished old ladies would confine themselves to their own concerns. He hoped fainting was not heard of among the girls of the moors—that would be a talk! He supposed he ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the beach has not yet been settled and the chief point of dispute is the way a woman should dress. It is absurd for her to wear a suit that will hamper her movements in the water but it is even worse for her to wear a skimpy garment that makes her the observed of all observers as she parades up and down the beach. There is no set rule as to ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about to take leave of M. Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart was overflowing with bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the slaughter; I had been made to look foolish and absurd in the midst of this Israelite community which I despised; I was saddled for the rest of my life with an unprepossessing elderly wife, who could do naught for me but share the penury, the hard crusts, the onion pies with me and Theodore. The only advantage I might ever derive ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and unschool'd; For what we know must be, and is as common As any the most vulgar thing to sense, Why should we, in our peevish opposition, Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd; whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, From the first corse till he that died to-day, 'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth This unprevailing woe; and think of us ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... creatures are, apparently so wise on some occasions and so absurd on others! This vesper sparrow in bringing food to her young, going through the same tactics over and over, learns no more than a machine would. But, of course, the bird does not think; hence the folly of her behavior to a being that does. The wisdom of nature, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... (for she did not sleep by day) frightened us so much that at last we bought the drivers over to our hours.... The caravanserai at Aintab is so disagreeable a place for Mrs. Cronin that we enquired for a private house, and... we have hired one at the absurd price of three-halfpence sterling! It has a large grassy yard, very convenient for our horses, We have now only ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... out of caves and deserts, to deliberate upon topicks, which the experience and studies, and the refinements of civil life alone suggest. Therefore no government in the universe begun from this original." But there are no grounds for so absurd a supposition; for government, and of course the social compact, does not appear to have been introduced at the time, when families coming out of their caves and deserts, or, in other words, quitting their former dissociated state, joined themselves ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... position of deputy. Happily this object, having come to the surface, will end in failure. Electors will certainly not be inveigled by so wily a manner of advancing self-interests; and when the proper time arrives, if ridicule has not already done justice on this absurd candidacy, we shall ourselves prove to the pretender that to aspire to the distinguished honor of representing the nation something more is required than the money to buy a paper and pay an underling to put into good French the horrible diction of his articles ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... multitude of editions, and many thousand copies have been circulated. It was patronized in those early efforts of the Religious Tract Society, which have been so abundantly blessed in introducing wholesome food to the young, instead of the absurd romances which formerly poisoned ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you're talking about," Dorothy replied, with some spirit. "Herr Deichenberg had all he could do to induce me to leave my dressing-room. Let the announcement sound as absurd as it may, I ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... should have it for all time to come, and had made it secure and firm to him, to have refused it. However, he himself will judge again who it shall be whom he would have to offer sacrifices to him, and to have the direction of matters of religion; for it is absurd that Corah, who is ambitious of this honor, should deprive God of the power of giving it to whom he pleases. Put an end, therefore, to your sedition and disturbance on this account; and tomorrow morning do every one of you that desire the priesthood bring a censer from home, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... divergences have been trivial compared to ours, so far as concerned the avowed principles of strife. In the French wars of the Fronde, the only available motto for anybody was the Tout arrive en France, "Anything may happen in France," which gayly recognized the absurd chaos of the conflict. In the English civil wars, the contending factions first disagreed upon a shade more or less of royal prerogative, and it took years to stereotype the hostility into the solid forms with which we now associate it. Even at the end of that contest, no one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Lilly's incantations, I had almost accepted his absurd vaporings, but cooler thought had brought contempt, and I had begun to look upon our journey as a very ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Nietzsche. I was told that Wagner was a fairly good musician, although no inventor of themes. He had evolved no new melodies, but his knowledge of harmony, above all, his constructive power, were his best recommendations. As for his abilities as a dramatic poet, absurd! His metaphysics were green with age, his theories as to the syntheses of the arts silly and impracticable, while his Schopenhauerism, pessimism, and the rest sheer dead weights that were slowly but ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... of the Spaniards, who carried on the slave-trade, that it may be inferred the inhabitants of Paria visited by Christopher Columbus and by Ojeda, were not of the same race as the Chaymas. I doubt much whether the custom of blackening the teeth was originally suggested, as Gomara supposed, by absurd notions of beauty, or was practised with the view of preventing the toothache. * This disorder is, however, almost unknown to the Indians; and the whites suffer seldom from it in the Spanish colonies, at least in the warm regions, where ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Willy would have been quick to laugh at such an absurd remark; but now, tired as he was, it made him downright angry. He stopped whistling, and did not speak again for five minutes. Meanwhile he began to ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... governor answered that "he would try," and the flagellator soon determined the problem in favor of authority. Indignant exclamations of free men were deemed preposterous by a body of officials, who regarded the diffidence of civil government as absurd, and considered power ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... near relative. She and Florence had always been good friends, had often discussed Clarence of late. What sort of advice would Florence's forty-five years be apt to give to Rachael's twenty-eight? "Don't be so absurd, Rachael, half the men in our set drink as much as Clarence does. Don't jump from the frying-pan into the fire. Remember Elsie Rowland and Marian Cowles when you talk ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... carrying on a whispered conversation with Minnie, who was snugged close in her arms, and merry bursts of laughter came every few minutes from the little girl. The idea of Sadie keeping quiet herself, or of keeping any body else quiet, was simply absurd. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... seems almost absurd for the United States to recognize the need, and so earnestly to seek, for cooperation among the nations unless we can achieve voluntary, dependable, abiding cooperation among the important segments ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that absurd Delaroche, who is so much in love with himself that he has no place in his heart for any one else! Fi donc! I am ashamed of you. There—adieu, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... sensibility, without the aid of speculation, requiring only to be insured against the effects of a speculation which would involve it in contradiction with itself. To deny the positive advantage of the service which this criticism renders us would be as absurd as to maintain that the system of police is productive of no positive benefit, since its main business is to prevent the violence which citizen has to apprehend from citizen, that so each may pursue his vocation in peace and security. That space and time ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Brute looks with a kind of Pride on one of an inferior Species. If they could reflect, we might imagine from the Gestures of some of them, that they think themselves the Sovereigns of the World, and that all things were made for them. Such a Thought would not be more absurd in Brute Creatures, than one which Men are apt to entertain, namely, That all the Stars in the Firmament were created only to please their Eyes and amuse their Imaginations. Mr. Dryden, in his Fable of the Cock and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this opinion his mind was made up; and he was persuaded that, the more the subject was considered, the more his opinion would gain ground; and it would be admitted, that to consider it in any other manner, or on any other principles than those of humanity and justice, would be idle and absurd. If there were any such men, and he did not know but that there were those, who, led away by local and interested considerations, thought the Slave Trade might still continue under certain modifications, these were the dupes of error, and mistook what they thought their interest, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... have you for such absurd fears? Pray do you take the castle of my ancestors to be the lair of banditti?" he asked in a tone of assumed ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... embracing work of such primitive crudity and apparently unstudied frankness as the work of Mark Twain. It is for American criticism to posit this more comprehensive aesthetic, and to demonstrate that the work of Mark Twain is the work of a great artist. It would be absurd to maintain that Mark Twain's appeal to posterity depends upon the dicta of literary criticism. It would be absurd to deny that upon America rests the task of demonstrating, to a world willing enough to be convinced, that Mark Twain is one of the supreme ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... that kingly office which he was then on the point of relinquishing for ever. To enter upon an appreciation of the moral value of the enterprise which Henry had then in prospect, would be as much out of place here, as it would be absurd to estimate it by the rule of the present age. In those ages, when all the higher orders of society were either clerical or martial, much real piety of sentiment (p. 317) must, in innumerable instances, have been compounded ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... "So absurd! But I was vexed when you said you'd give it up. You mustn't do that, or you'll be flying in the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... story of a stone having the property of converting the baser metals into gold being merely an absurd fable: yet, although the pursuits of Alchemy were the most preposterous that can be conceived, the ardor with which they were followed, and the amazing number of experiments made in consequence, led to the discovery of many facts to which Chemistry ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... eternal benefit of mankind. The fear of the Lord is imperfect knowledge, it is but the beginning of wisdom; but it could become, in a Jew like St. Paul, the perfect knowledge of His will. It may seem absurd to think of two such religions as the Jewish and the Roman side by side; but the absurdity vanishes when we begin to understand the humble beginnings of the Jewish religion as scientific research has already laid it bare. Knowledge of the Power manifesting itself in the universe is open to ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... such a treasure the fear of losing it is so strong that it naturally inspires a feeling of terror. I am absurd, I know; forgive ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... come," said Dr. Howe, with an indignant splutter, "you don't understand these things my dear,—you're young yet, Helen. They were wrong through and through; so don't be absurd." Then turning half apologetically to John Ward, he added, "You'll have to keep this child's ideas in order; I'm sure she never heard such sentiments from me. Mr. Ward will think you haven't been well brought up, Helen. Principle? ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... silly, because the Piccaninnies lived so deep in the Bush that the sun couldn't hurt them, but then fashions are absurd. (Look at the ladies who wear fur coats ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... the ivory of the skin; such sweet radiance in the lip when it broke into a smile. And it was said that in her maiden day, before Caroline Lyndsay became Marchioness of Montfort, that smile was the most joyous thing imaginable. Absurd now; you would not think it, but that stately lady had been a wild, fanciful girl, with the merriest laugh and the quickest tear, filling the air round her with April sunshine. Certainly, no beings ever yet lived the life Nature intended them to live, nor had fair play for heart ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the cart before the horse, the Greeks call it Histeron proteron, we name it the Preposterous, and if it be not too much vsed is tollerable inough, and many times scarse perceiueable, vnlesse the sence be thereby made very absurd: as he that described his manner of departure from his mistresse, said thus not much to be misliked. I kist her cherry lip ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... homewards with long strides and mind uneasy. Surely Dain was not thinking of playing him false. It was absurd. Dain and Lakamba were both too much interested in the success of his scheme. Trusting to Malays was poor work; but then even Malays have some sense and understand their own interest. All would be well—must be well. At this point in his meditation he found himself at the foot ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... Joe was by his side on the bunk, his arm around him. Prompted by some instinctive monitor, he had done it before he thought. A week before he could not have imagined himself in such an absurd situation—his arm around a boy; but now it seemed the most natural thing in the world. He did not comprehend, but he knew, whatever it was, that it was of deep ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... the history of prostitution in relation to militarism, nothing could be more absurd than the familiar statement that virtuous women could not safely walk the streets unless opportunity for secret vice were offered to the men of the city. It is precisely the men who have not submitted to ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... was dressed and out in the fresh air things did not look so bad. Mrs. Burton might have been quite mistaken in thinking that Mary cared for Jervis Ferrars. In the broad light of the sunshiny morning the very idea seemed absurd. The rich man's daughter had a wide circle to choose from; it was scarcely likely that her choice would fall on a poor man, whose position was little removed from that of a ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... told her, concerning the affair of the lost package of money—for as she utterly disbelieved the tale, (imputing it to the effects of an excited imagination,) she had no desire to wound the feelings of her lover by acquainting him with the absurd charge (as she thought) which had been brought against him. How blind is love to the imperfections, the faults, and even the crimes of the object of its adoration! We believe it is Shakespeare ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... won't believe us, of course. The story will sound altogether too absurd." "What will he do—have us sent ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... Philosophers are absurd from many causes, but principally from laying out unthriftily their distinctions. They set up four virtues: fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. Now a man may be a very bad one, and yet possess three out of the four. Every cutthroat must, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... much more liberal; for ordinary it is, that two young princes fall in love; after many traverses she is delivered of a fair boy; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and all this in two hours' space: which how absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine, and art hath taught, and all ancient examples justified. But, besides these gross absurdities, all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... against this more exalted strain of passion. The love of the senses he has in many places expressed, in as forcible and dignified colouring as the subject could admit; but of a mere moral and sentimental passion he seems to have had little idea, since he frequently substitutes in its place the absurd, unnatural, and fictitious refinements of romance. In short, his love is always in indecorous nakedness, or sheathed in the stiff panoply of chivalry. But if Dryden fails in expressing the milder and more tender passions, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... provided for cabin use; nor would he be satisfied, although I pointed out that he was getting the food that the owners had undertaken to provide him with in exchange for his passage money. Of course to attempt to argue with so unreasonable an individual was obviously absurd, and I therefore dismissed him and thought nothing more ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... the use of arguing the question with him, Captain Scott?" interposed Louis, who retained his place in the ranks. "His position is absurd, and the fellow is a fool as well as ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... lion, is to our minds equally picturesque and absurd. He was among the "far-off hills." How far, pray? Twenty miles? If so, then without a silver ear-trumpet he could not have heard the huzzas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh as to allow the lion to hear the huzzas even in ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... house, and it must be told that my wife and I, as young married people, had possessed ourselves of a house too large for our slender means immediately to furnish. The one person who thoroughly approved of our great bare absurd drawing room was Louis, who very earnestly dealt with us on the immorality of chairs and tables, and desired us to sit always, as he delighted to sit, upon hassocks on the floor. Nevertheless, as armchairs and settees straggled into ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... between Cape Breton and the mainland of Nova Scotia. The eighty fishermen in Canso surrendered to du Vivier, the French commander, who sent them on to Boston, after burning their fort to the ground. Elated by this somewhat absurd success, and strengthened by nearly a hundred regulars and four hundred Indians, who raised his total force to at least a thousand men, du Vivier next proceeded against Annapolis on the west side of Nova Scotia. But Mascarene, the British commander there, stood ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... terminated fatally as a proof of the efficacy of any medicine, recommended to the attention of the public, may perhaps appear singular; but cannot be deemed absurd, when that remedy answered the purposes for which it was intended. For in the instance before us; fixed air was employed, not with an expectation that it would cure the fever, but to obviate the symptoms of putrefaction, and to allay the uneasy irritation in the bowels. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... apparition of a woman, whom he personally knew while living, and who had been dead about eight years. Ridicule, threats, persuasions, were alike used in vain by the family to induce him to dismiss these absurd ideas. Finally, Mr Ruddle was sent for, and to him the boy ingenuously told the time, manner, and frequency of this appearance. It was in a field called Higher Broomfield. The apparition, he said, appeared dressed in female attire, met him two or three ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... jest occurs to me in connection with the historic umbrella: and perhaps its infinite smallness attracts me. Would you mind handing it to Rudyard Kipling with the enclosed note?[136] It seems to me fitly to consecrate and commemorate this most absurd episode. ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... more Gothick than an Opera, since nothing can be more oppos'd to the ancient Tragedy, than the modern Tragedy in Musick, because the one is reasonable, the other ridiculous; the one is artful, the other absurd; the one beneficial, the other pernicious; in short, the one ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the "House of the Flutes" since the beginning of time. People had said that the name was absurd, and Harry's grandfather, a prosaic gentleman of rather violent radical opinions, had made a definite attempt at a change—but he had failed. Trojans had appeared from every part of the country, angry Trojans, tearful Trojans, indignant Trojans, important ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... had reference to national usages, or to the personal relations of the Inca, over which the Spanish conquerors had clearly no jurisdiction, are so absurd, that they might well provoke a smile, did they not excite a deeper feeling. The last of the charges was the only one of moment in such a trial; and the weakness of this may be inferred from the care taken to bolster it up with the others. The mere specification of the articles must have been ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... we call the effect, and that we know not how they are connected. But there seems a natural propensity in the mind of man, to endeavour to account for every phenomenon that falls under his view, which has given rise to a number of absurd and romantic conjectures in almost every branch of science. From this source has risen the vibration of the fibres of the optic nerve, or the undulation of a subtile ether, or animal spirits, by which attempts have been made to ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... existing customs; it cannot therefore be surprising, that the manners of another quarter of the globe, at the distance of more than thirty centuries, should essentially differ from our own. To judge of their propriety by our standard is manifestly absurd; and to make great allowances for the state of society is, in cases of extreme variation, obviously necessary. After all, the conduct of Naomi may not be capable of entire vindication; though we are certain it proceeded from a sentiment of pure ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... necessities of the fleet compelled Hawke to lift his blockade of Brest and take shelter in Torbay, after leaving four frigates to watch the port. On the 14th, Conflans, discovering that his enemy was gone, came out, with the absurd idea of covering the transportation of the French army before Hawke should appear again. That very day Hawke returned to renew the blockade, and learning that Conflans had been seen heading southeast, decided rightly that the French admiral ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the ingenious fabrication of Mr. Wace, we have to believe one of two things: either that Mr. Cave's crystal was in two worlds at once, and that, while it was carried about in one, it remained stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it had some peculiar relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar crystal in this other world, so that what was seen in the interior of the one in this world was, under suitable conditions, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... downstairs, whilst his room upstairs was prepared for Hadrian. This was done, and preparations were going on for the arrival, when, at ten o'clock in the morning the young man suddenly turned up, quite unexpectedly. Cousin Emmie, with her hair bobbed up in absurd little bobs round her forehead, was busily polishing the stair-rods, while Cousin Matilda was in the kitchen washing the drawing-room ornaments in a lather, her sleeves rolled back on her thin arms, and her head tied up oddly and coquettishly ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... must go so contrary ways, ever act with sincerity, or hardly with consistence? Such a man is no proper vehicle to retain or convey the sense of the House, which, in so many points of the greatest moment, will be directly contrary to his; 'tis full as absurd, as to prefer a man to a bishopric who denies revealed religion. But it may possibly be a great deal worse. What if the person you design to vote into that important post, should not only be a declared enemy of the sacramental test, but should prove to be a solicitor, an encourager, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... an approach to Page as had his partners. He never treated an idea, even a grotesque one, with contempt; he always had time to discuss it, to argue it out, and no one ever left his presence thinking that he had made an absurd proposal. Thus Page had a profound respect for a human being simply because he was a human being; the mere fact that a man, woman, or child lived and breathed, had his virtues and his failings, constituted in Page's imagination a tremendous ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... truth of Philip's recital. "My impression is, that it was managed in a very slovenly manner by her lawyer; and some of his oversights we may repair in a suit instituted by yourself. But it would be absurd to conceal from you the great difficulties that beset us—your mother's suit, designed to establish her own rights, was far easier than that which you must commence—viz., an action for ejectment against ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... longitude, arbitrarily divided the public domain into rectangular districts, to the first of which the following names were applied: Sylvania, Michigania, Cherronesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia, Pelisipia. The amusement which this absurd and thoroughly Jeffersonian nomenclature is bound to cause ought not to detract from the really important features of the Ordinance. In each of the districts into which the country was divided the settlers might be ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... Browning was in this strict sense a strenuous amateur. He tried and practised in the course of his life half a hundred things at which he can never have even for a moment expected to succeed. The story of his life is full of absurd little ingenuities, such as the discovery of a way of making pictures by roasting brown paper over a candle. In precisely the same spirit of fruitless vivacity, he made himself to a very considerable extent a technical expert in painting, a technical expert in sculpture, a technical expert in music. ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Jean-Christophe, and did not admit his authority in the house, although it seemed natural to him to eat the food that he provided. He had espoused the cause of Theodore and Melchior's ill-feeling against Jean-Christophe and used to repeat their absurd gossip. Neither of the brothers cared for music, and Rodolphe, in imitation of his uncle, affected to despise it. Chafing against Jean-Christophe's authority and lectures—for he took himself very seriously as the head of the family—the two boys had tried to rebel; ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... amusements was at hand. Butts for archery were established, and bows and arrows were to be let, at so many shots for a penny,—there being abundance of space for a farther flight-shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft. Then there was an absurd game of throwing a stick at crockery-ware, which I have witnessed a hundred times, and personally engaged in once or twice, without ever having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery. In other spots, you found donkeys for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... was my wont to win success, not by routine, but by ability. I added that I would abandon the test altogether unless they would agree not to put off their attendance at my lecture. In truth at this first lecture of mine only a few were present, for it seemed quite absurd to all of them that I, hitherto so inexperienced in discussing the Scriptures, should attempt the thing so hastily. However, this lecture gave such satisfaction to all those who heard it that they spread ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... fitted by a Court dressmaker. Such a mistake to rush things like this! I rather like that Marshal, Edna; there's something very gentlemanly and straightforward about him, though I can't see why he shouldn't wear a proper uniform instead of that absurd armour." ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... veil, struck Farwell again by its change, which now seemed to have settled into permanency. Of course it was only the ridiculous fashion of the world he once knew, but he could not free himself of the fancy that Priscilla was more her real self in the shabby trappings than she had ever been in the absurd ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... two were silent. Robert suddenly realized that there was little to say unless he ventured on debatable ground. It would be too absurd of him to commence making love at once, and as for asking Ellen about her work, that seemed a subject better ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... where it was really comic, was doubtless likewise more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim. Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion, contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art, though to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his wife's indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought them absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was overflowing. Whenever she was ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... princess; and Editha, though possessed of many amiable accomplishments, could never acquire the confidence and affection of her husband. It is even pretended that, during the whole course of her life, he abstained from all commerce of love with her; and such was the absurd admiration paid to an inviolable chastity during those ages, that his conduct in this particular is highly celebrated by the monkish historians, and greatly contributed to his acquiring the title of Saint and Confessor ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... ceaselessly complaining, they gradually become absorbed by these ideas of ill-fortune, which grow to be their accomplices in their detestation of effort and suggest to them the thought of attempting nothing upon the absurd pretext that ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... his relatives. But money became exceedingly scarce; the Marquis had actually beheld many of his peers reduced to the necessity of earning the despicable but indispensable article after many ludicrous fashions. And the duration of this absurd upsetting of law, order, privilege, and property began to assume unexpected and very ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... last for weeks, perhaps months. Are we in a position to stand that? And as for smashing the unions, let us once and for all put such a thought out of our minds. These unions have all international affiliations. It is absurd to imagine that we here in Blackwater ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... chide himself over his absurd stupidity. He should have known her better than to have entertained, for even a passing moment, a thought of her inconstancy, and that he should have so misjudged her,—her whom he himself would have selected from among his host of acquaintances as the one best fitted for the office ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... asking customers to hand in orders on Monday to ensure delivery within a week. In justice to a much-abused State department it must be pointed out that telegrams are frequently delivered within that period without any absurd restriction as to the day of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... remembered her serene, sweet, trustful glance, a shiver of awe went over him, and the work of saving her, of healing her, seemed greater than the discovery of any new principle; but whenever his keen, definite, analytic mind took up the hit-or-miss absurd caperings of "the spirits" he paced the floor in revolt of their childish chicanery. That the soul survived death he could not for an instant entertain. Every principle of biology, every fibre woven into his system ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... word, you may put it down to my weak nerves or not, but I believe there is some deep political intrigue going on around me, and that for some reason that passes my understanding my life is aimed at by the conspirators. It sounds high-flown and absurd, but consider the facts! Why should a thief try to break in at a bedroom window, where there could be no hope of any plunder, and why should he come with a long knife in ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... linked by a legal formula so rigid, so lasting, so indelible, that not all their tears could wash out a word of it, unless they took to themselves other mates, in which case their second state might be worse than their first. Free love—love in chains. How absurd it all was, and how tragic too. One might react back to the remaining choice—no love at all—and that was absurder and more tragic still, since man was made (among other ends) to love. Looking under her heavy lashes at her ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... told you already that my present name must be some absurd blunder, or some intentional concealment. But why do you want to know NOW?" she continued, adding her faint smile to ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... instinct or habit of prayer, had its origin in the ignorance and superstition of an age which knew nothing of the inviolable reign of law throughout the infinities of the Divine creation, in an age whose religious conceptions were as gross as their scientific ideas were absurd. ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... at all, and in which our proficiency has reached the stage of unconscious performance obviously through repeated effort and failure, and through this only, with actions which we could do as soon as we were born, and concerning which it would at first sight appear absurd to say that they can have been acquired by any process in the least analogous to what we commonly call experience, inasmuch as the creature itself which does them has only just begun to exist, and cannot, therefore, in the very nature ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... people dined in the Schloss last night! The King and Queen were most kind to me yesterday; the King gave me a charming little locket for his hair, and only think—what will sound most extraordinary, absurd, and incredible to your ears—made me Second Chef of the 2nd Regiment of Hussars! I laughed so much, because really I thought it was a joke—it seemed so strange for ladies; but the Regiments like particularly having ladies for their Chefs! The Queen and the Queen Dowager have Regiments, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... put an extinguisher over the light of heaven-born genius, and that the power and passion and wisdom of Aeschylus came from himself or the devil, and not from God? Surely, without any further argument on such an absurd proposition, it ought to be sufficient for you that this kind of learning forms a ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... discover that there was not the slightest sign of a living human being in sight. He was rapidly coming to believe there might be something ghostly about these sounds. Billy was just then in a fit condition to believe anything, no matter how absurd, for his poor heart was fluttering in his manly bosom just as you have doubtless felt the tiny organ of a bird throb when you held the frightened thing ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... to the lasso that hung coiled upon the horn of his saddle, and then stood ready to mount. Lucien saw it was of no use to urge his advice farther, and ceased to interfere. Francois would fondly have joined Basil in the chase; but his diminutive pony rendered the idea too absurd to ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... the best stanza of the 215 remainder, were written by a friend [Southey] of deserved celebrity; and because there are passages in both which might have given offence to the religious feelings of certain readers. I myself indeed see no reason why vulgar superstitions and absurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220 should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape, if it but wear a monk's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the absurd suggestion that the impediment was Swift's knowledge that both he and Stella were the illegitimate children of Sir William Temple—a theory which is absolutely disproved ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... not its slaves," I continued. "That's absurd. We have only a sensible regard for it, as every ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... wit of the last century, Champfort, used to say, "There is nothing more dangerous than an honest man engaged in a rascally calling." There is nothing more dangerous than errors and crimes of which the perpetrators do not see the absurd and odious character. The contemporary historian, Sleidan, says, expressly, "The common people in France hold that there are no people more wicked and criminal that heretics; generally, as long as they are a prey to the blazing fagots, the people around them are excited to frenzy and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... him, under a strong sentiment of devotion, a secret of that kingly office which he was then on the point of relinquishing for ever. To enter upon an appreciation of the moral value of the enterprise which Henry had then in prospect, would be as much out of place here, as it would be absurd to estimate it by the rule of the present age. In those ages, when all the higher orders of society were either clerical or martial, much real piety of sentiment (p. 317) must, in innumerable instances, have been compounded with the widely-extended romantic spirit which was ardent to ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... ground with the first troops that reached the fort and that there was a captain of that regiment who then and there claimed the capture of the place, even against the claims of a Major-General. He was told that his proposition was absurd, and so it may have been from one standpoint; and yet there may be a ground upon which the captain's claim was ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... at so absurd an idea in connection with poor old Fay, but his nerves were shaken by certain passionate, desperate utterances he had just heard from Rosie. She was in general so prudent, so self-controlled, that he had hardly expected to see ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... as unemployment; and whether lack of work at one's principal occupation is ever or always unemployment when the person is actually employed or can get work at some lower paid employment. The more frequent answer to these questions is in the negative but this in some cases is almost palpably absurd. Further study is necessary to work out a generally acceptable ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... extent of a poetical work is, ceteris paribus, the measure of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition sufficiently absurd—yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size, abstractly considered—there can be nothing in mere bulk, so far as a volume is concerned, which has so continuously elicited admiration from these saturnine ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... anything so absurd?" said Mother Bear without disturbing herself. "It has been settled for good and all that we are not to harm mankind any more; but if one of them were to put in an appearance here, where the cubs and I have our quarters, there ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... out of town had an element of the absurd in it, and in one case that of mystery, namely: a sheriff appeared before the woebegone intruder, and said, half laughing, "I warn you off the face of the earth." "Let me get my hat before I go," stammered the terrified wanderer, who ran into the ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... It would be absurd to say that these two fell in love, seeing that one was only seven and the other fifteen; but there can be no doubt they entertained some sort of regard for each other, of a very powerful nature. ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Theatrum Poetarum," in assigning it to Greene, followed either some tradition of the time or his own whim; but he is not a trustworthy authority; and his article on Greene is assuredly as puerile and absurd a performance ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... approved; his courage in every danger; his mastery in every game, and his skill in every science. She was a little, vulgar-looking woman, with small cunning eyes, and a very round face, glistening and shining with its absurd obesity; and in shape and complexion bearing a close resemblance to a sun-flower stuck into a Dutch cheese. The awe with which she regarded her nephew arose partly from his size, but principally from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... sane view of life), who always twisted my ankle if it could be twisted, or lost my luggage, or caught childish ailments for the second time. Where there is but one gifted member in a large and commonplace family, an absurd idea of this kind is apt to grow from a joke into ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... subtle analysis of the motives and progress of actions generally overshoots the mark, since no men can act always according to rule, but are in some degree influenced by circumstances and caprice. It would be equally absurd to imagine that Frederick, in the complicated intrigues which preceded the first partition, was actuated by one deeply laid scheme of policy to arrive at one end: the possession of Polish Prussia. It was, indeed, absolutely essential for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... book. To them, of course, I must offer a somewhat different apology. I believe that, with all my limitations, I can tell my fellow-countrymen things about the history of America which they do not know. It would be absurd effrontery to pretend that I can tell Americans what they do not know. For them, whatever interest this book may possess must depend upon the value of a foreigner's interpretation of the facts. I know that I should ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... boom came surging over, Jim and I, alone as it were, to leeward of the mainsail, clasped each other's hands and exchanged the last hurried words. My heart was freed from that dull resentment which had existed side by side with interest in his fate. The absurd chatter of the half-caste had given more reality to the miserable dangers of his path than Stein's careful statements. On that occasion the sort of formality that had been always present in our intercourse vanished from our speech; ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... her alive with alien presences, and once she caught herself listening—which was absurd, for, of course, she could not hope to hear what Mr. Sleuth was doing two, if not three, flights upstairs. She wondered in what the lodger's experiments consisted. It was odd that she had never been able to discover what it was he really did with that big gas-stove. All she knew was that he used ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Instantly the column was in an uproar. Caps were thrown into the air, voices grew hoarse with shouting; frantic gesticulation, tearful eyes and laughter, yells, inane antics, queer combinations of sacrilegious oaths and absurd embraces were everywhere to be ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... message to the moon, if they had only shown him the way. Many odd jobs and private messages he had already been employed in by Harry, who now called Andrew upstairs, entreating him to carry out all those absurd notes as fast as possible, and to deliver them immediately, as they were of the greatest consequence. Upon hearing this, old Andrew lost not a moment, but threw on his hat, and instantly started off, looking ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Mary's superstitious protest, my wife put a penny on one eye and half-a-crown on the other. Mary seemed to regard this as a desecration, or at best as unlucky. Then they bound up the jaw of that body with one of my handkerchiefs. I thought I had never seen anything more wantonly absurd. Their trouble in straightening the arms—the legs were quite straight—infuriated me. I wanted to weep in my tragic vexation. It seemed as though tears would ease me. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... visiting his lawyer for the purpose of making his will, insisted that a final request be attached to the document. The request was, that his Ford car be buried with him after he died. His lawyer tried to make him see how absurd this was, but failed, so he asked the gentleman's wife to use her influence with him. She did the best she ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... procession in particular that has displeased the Whigs. It is the abandonment of a policy which they dared not proclaim in India, and which they could not justify in England. They are always hankering after it still. Mr. Vernon Smith: "Considered it most absurd for any Governor General to declare publicly that our Indian empire had reached the limits which nature had assigned to it. Why, what were the limits which nature had assigned to our Indian empire? In early days, the Mahratta ditch was said to be its natural ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... blunders was the acceptance of battle by MacMahon at Worth; the second in attaching too much importance to the fortified position of Metz, resulting in three battles Colombey, Mars-la-Tour, and Gravelotte—all of which were lost; and the third, the absurd movement of MacMahon along the Belgian frontier to relieve Metz, the responsibility for which, I am glad to say, does ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... with a little smile. "Do you think I'm afraid of you?" she asked as if it were too absurd to be thought of. She unhitched and mounted her pony but did ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... trade." The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe from the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared for any rush. It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility; but the world was full of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to silly questions about does a horse lie down when it goes to sleep each night after its hard day's labour, and isn't her horse's sash too tight, and what a pretty fetlock he has, so long and thick and brown—Oh, do you call that the mane? How absurd of poor little me! Mr. Daggett knows just everything, doesn't he? He's perfectly terrifying. And where in the world did he ever learn to ride so stunningly, like one of those dare-devils in a Wild West entertainment? If her own naughty, naughty horse tries to throw ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was in 1844, may not compare favourably in every respect with a modern preparatory school, where supervision has been so far "reduced to the absurd" that the unfortunate masters hardly get a minute to themselves from sunrise till long after sunset, yet no better or wiser men than those of the school of Mr. Tate are now to be found. Nor, I venture to think, are the results of the modern system more successful than those of the old one. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... delegates, and that the thousands of workers who will watch its work, should understand why the resolutions arrived at by the Paris, Brussels, and Zurich International Congresses with regard to the Anarchists should be enforced. The Anarchists who cynically declare Workers' Congresses "absurd, motiveless, and senseless" must be taught once and for all, that they cannot be allowed to make the Congresses of the Revolutionary Socialists of the whole world a playground ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... exemplars. Niccola Pisano copied at least four classical motives. There was no plagiarism; it was a warm tribute on his part, and at that time a notable achievement to have copied at all. But the imitation of antiquity was carried to absurd lengths. Ghiberti, who was a literary man, says that Andrea Pisano lived in the 410th Olympiad.[122] But Ghiberti remained a Renaissance sculptor, and his classical affectation is less noticeable in his statues than in his prose. Filippo ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... horror, three Spanish vessels coming towards them. It was impossible for a very large ship, manned by an extremely small crew, to sail away from those fully equipped vessels, and as to attempting to defend themselves against the overwhelming power of the antagonists, that was too absurd to be thought of even by such a reckless fellow as Bartholemy. So, when the ship was hailed by the Spanish vessels he lay to and waited until a boat's crew boarded him. With the eye of a nautical man the Spanish captain of one of the ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... answers I would receive to my questions on this subject. With reference to Townley's case I was told by an intelligent prisoner, who knew him and saw him commit suicide, that it was committed mainly in consequence of the cruel, absurd and childish system of suppressing a prisoner's letters to his friends, on grounds usually hostile to the interests of society, viz., the ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... readers will also, at this touch of simplicity; and yet, why should not a Bishop know as much of ships, as a set of ignoramuses who never read a theological book in their lives, some of them not even the Bible, should know about Bishops? The circumstance was not a tittle more absurd than many that are occurring daily before our eyes, and to which, purely from habit, we submit, very much ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... I should tell you that you had made a very absurd mistake, my good fellow. The Princess is in the confidence of the Dowager Empress; she is perfectly aware of the object of my mission, and she has just promised me that if I carry it out successfully she ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... attentive reader of this horrible narrative will hardly fail to conclude that Gaufredi's fault was chiefly his seduction of Mademoiselle de la Palud, and that the rest was the effect of a heated imagination. The absurd proportions of the "Sabbath" bell will be sufficient to show this. If the bell were metallic, it would have weighed many tons, and a wooden bell of such dimensions, even were it capable of sounding, would weigh ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the Governor remarked to us that the first thing to be done in our country, toward the removal of slavery, was to discard the absurd notion that color made any difference, intellectually or morally, among men. "All distinctions," said he, "founded in color, must be abolished everywhere. We should learn to talk of men not as colored men, but ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... struck me as absurd. For Chaikin was in the foremost ranks of a trade in which I was one of the ruck. Should he conceive the notion of going into business on his own account, he would have no difficulty in forming a partnership with considerable capital. Why, then, should ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the time of his birth. Astrological rules were also drawn from the signs of the zodiac. A child born under the sign of the Lion will be courageous; one born under the Crab will not go forward well in life; one born under the Waterman will probably be drowned, and so forth. Such fancies seem absurd enough, but in the Middle Ages ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... sooner or later. I saw all the hands in the mill had got to know about it somehow or other, and I was sure it would soon get over the place; and I would rather that I could say, if any one asked me, that I had not talked about it to any one, and was in no way responsible for the absurd stories which had got about. I have been talked about enough in Marsden, goodness knows, and it is disgusting that just as I should think they must be getting tired of the subject here is something fresh for them ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... had anticipated. My mother was anything but gracious to my grandmother, notwithstanding the obligations she was under to her, and very soon took an opportunity of quarrelling with her. The cause of the quarrel was very absurd, and proved that it was predetermined on the part of my mother. My grandmother had some curious old carved furniture, which my mother coveted, and requested my grandmother to let her have it. This my grandmother would not consent to, and my mother took offence at her refusal. I and my brother ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... of an overturned bowl: a calm survey up and down; a taking in of the dry and wet spots; a careful gathering up of her skirts, and over skimmed the slender, willowy old lady with a one—two—and three—followed by a stamp of her absurd feet and the shaking out of ruffle and pleat. When a woman strides through mud without a shiver because she has plenty of dry shoes and good ones at home, there are other parts of her make-up, inside and out, that may want a ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... When you set your mind upon it, you have a peculiar way of edging one in with a circle of dilemmas, so that they hardly know how to refuse you; however, I shall take a running leap and clear them all. Frankly, my dear Ellen, I cannot come. Reflect for yourself a moment. Do you see nothing absurd in the idea of a person coming again into a neighbourhood within a month after they have taken a solemn and formal leave of all their acquaintance? However, I thank both you and your mother for the invitation, which was most kindly expressed. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... be twisted. Why not a supremely clever stroke? Well, of course the thing is absurd—but disagreeable—considering the circumstances. The moral is—find the man! Good-day, Lord Tatham. I understand you will have fifty men out by this evening, assisting the police ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as he dropped back heavily from the back of the wagon, "and it was all a dream. Ugh!" I shuddered. I lay still again, my mind going over the fantasy of the night, which came back so vividly, yet was so strangely mixed and absurd; but all the time Denham slept on, breathing heavily, dead to all the sorrows and horror of our ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... Vitus' dance,[60] in the year 1418, and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who came ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... thoughts are natural, and the language plain; but in composition like the above, we see a continual striving to say something for effect, which the writer invents by his ingenuity as he goes on, without any honest impulses from the heart to guide him. He soars one minute and breaks down the next, in absurd alternations of the sublime and the ridiculous. How honest Charles was in such professions, and what was the kind of connubial happiness which he was preparing for his bride, is shown by the fact that he was even now spending all his ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... lately given countenance to writers, the absurd slavishness of whose doctrines would have sunk below contempt, but for such patronage. Among the ablest of them was Arthur Young,—one of those renegades from the cause of freedom, who, like the incendiary that set fire to the Temple with the flame he had stolen from ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... do "There was a Man in Our Town," another of Ned's parts, his efforts were so absurd and so utterly unlike what the tableau was expected to be, that it was decided to make it "I Had a Little Husband, no Bigger than my Thumb." Roland certainly looked diminutive enough to fit into a pint pot, and ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... of his hand, to whom "Latin was no more difficile, than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle"? Then, gradually, she began to have the courage to laugh; to try a little soft teasing of her new friend and mentor, who was at once so wonderful and so absurd. And the Master bore it well, could indeed never have too much of her company; while his white-haired sister beamed at the sight of her. She became the child of a childless house, and when Lady Langmoor ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... turbaned Indian prince, any number of impatient officers and soldiers, and an American woman who was carefully avoiding the war office and trying to look like a buyer crossing the Channel for hats, the whistle for starting sounded rather inadequate. It was not martial. It was thin, effeminate, absurd. And so we were off, moving slowly past that line on the platform, where no one smiled; where grief and tragedy, in that one revealing moment, were written deep. I shall never forget the faces of the women ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... French officers afterwards refused to sign the usual head-money certificate unless the Veteran was named as one of their captors, though they afterwards withdrew their objections, which were absurd, considering that though she had seen the flashes of their guns, she had not caught sight of the combatants until the Pique was ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... have had enough of it. I wish to tell you, Mrs. Haddo, that Haddo Court is no longer the place for me. I suppose I ought to repent of what I have done; and, of course, I never for a moment thought that Betty would be so absurd and silly to get an illness which would nearly kill her. As a matter of fact, I do not repent. The wicked person was Betty Vivian. She first stole the packet, and then told a lie about it. I happened to see her steal it, for I ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... the political reasons, they are clear enough. It is absurd to say that they wished to free Italy from Lombard tyrants. What did they do but hand her over to Frankish tyrants instead? No. The true reason was this. Gradually there had arisen in the mind of all Popes, from Gregory the Great onward, the idea of a spiritual supremacy, independent ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Gentleman robbed. That I was indeed enlarged, but was not suffered to go scot-free, inasmuch as, being tried by court-martial for absence without leave on the night of the gentleman's misfortune, I was sentenced to receive three hundred lashes at the halberts. Infamous and Absurd calumnies! ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... and bustle, a deafening roar which never ceases all day long, a hurrying, a striving and eagerness to clear the stock and gain money. If the prices were fixed, business would soon be done. But if you have taken a fancy to a Kurdish mat and ask the price, the tradesman demands a quite absurd sum. You shrug your shoulders and go your way. He calls out another, lower price. You go on quietly, and the man comes running after you and has dropped his price to the lowest. In every shop bargains are made ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... I've a shrewd suspicion, Our post's no better than the pillory. It is a burning shame, a trooper should Stand sentinel before an empty cap, And every honest fellow must despise us, To do obeisance to a cap, too! Faith, I never heard an order so absurd! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... always some ignorant and foolish friend who is prepared still further to muddle things: Eat a meal every other day! Eat twelve meals a day! Never eat fruit! Always eat grass! The advice emphatically given in sexual matters is usually not less absurd than this. When, however, the matter is fully open, the problems of food are not indeed wholly solved, but everyone is enabled by the experience of his fellows to reach some sort of situation suited to his own case. And when the rigid ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... considerable time before Paris gives in. Such is the report of a competent and impartial authority. Rumours of the most contradictory character are rife from morning till night in the open air lobby of the Assembly—the Rue des Reservoirs. Deputies who "ought to know better" circulate very absurd canards; but, as remarks a local print, "Que voulez-vous? On s'ennuie, il faut bien passer le temps!" In my last letter of Thursday night I stated that the affair at Moulin Saquet was a repetition of that at the Clamart ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... Polar adventures, the "Voyage towards the North Pole," 1774, of Constantine John Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, is gently ridiculed, and so also some incidents from Patrick Brydone's "Tour through Sicily and Malta" (1773), are, for no obvious reason, contemptuously dragged in. The exploitation of absurd and libellous chap-book lives of Pope Clement XIV., the famous Ganganelli, can only be described as a low bid for vulgar applause. A French translation of Baron Friedrich von Trenck's celebrated Memoirs appeared at Metz in 1787, and it would certainly seem that in overlooking ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Their influence had been good, however; he was distinctly less bitter after they left him and his thoughts went back to Miss Wilbur. What would she think of him if he gave up all his plans the first day, simply because some mischievous girls and boys had made him absurd? When he thought of her he felt strong enough to go back, but when he thought of his tormentors and what he would be obliged to endure from them, he shivered and shrank back ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the same law of gravitation. How far Newton himself adhered to the narrow meaning of mechanism (motion from pressure and impulse), is evident from the fact that, though he is often honored as the creator of the dynamical view of nature, he rejected actio in distans as absurd, and deemed it indispensable to assume some "cause" of gravity (consisting, probably, in the impact of imponderable material particles). It was his disciples who first ventured to proclaim gravity as the universal ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... proper thing, but business was another, and a very proper thing also—with customs and indeed laws of its own far more determinate, at least definite, than those of religion, and that to mingle the one with the other was not merely absurd—it was irreverent and wrong, and certainly never intended in the Bible, which must ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... appear, And I shall credit whatsoe'er You tell me after on your word, 555 Howe'er unlikely, or absurd. ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... and was able to act for the best," I murmured. "The June sunshine and the lightning have thrown considerable light on my future. I said to Emily Warren, 'What could I have done without you in this emergency?' With still greater emphasis I feel like asking, What would life be without you? It seems absurd that one person should become essential to the life of another in a few brief hours. And yet, why absurd? Is it not rather in accord with the deepest and truest philosophy of life? Is the indissoluble union of two lives to result from long and careful calculations of the pros and cons? In true ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... and all other such expedients are vain and absurd. A piece of calm water always contains a picture in itself, an exquisite reflection of the objects above it. If you give the time necessary to draw these reflections, disturbing them here and there as you see the breeze or current disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... enough to take that man for his model; and, following out his absurd theory, dabbled in unsavory places no respectable man would think of exploring—all among the native riff-raff. He educated himself in this peculiar way for seven years, and people could not appreciate it. He was perpetually "going Fantee" among the natives, which, of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... be absurd!" said Mrs. Livingstone, and locking her arm within that of her daughter's, she drew ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... right to uproot from the laws and customs of war what centuries of humanity, of Christianity, and chivalry have at great pains injected into it; the theory of systematic and organized ferocity; today exposed to public reprobation, not only as an odious thing, but no less silly and absurd. For have we not reached the ridiculous when the incendiaries of Louvain, and Malines, and Rheims, the assassins of women and children, and of the wounded, already find it necessary to repudiate their actions, at least in words, and to impose upon the servility of their ninety-three ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... she said. "In a moment of absurd impulsiveness I had overlooked that fact. Also, thank ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... saw her laughing and chatting with such unforced geniality that she muttered: "It's perfectly absurd to imagine that her husband is on the eve of bankruptcy. Even if he tried he couldn't keep such trouble utterly from his wife, and I've seen enough of people to be sure she does not dream of danger. The best people of the house are ever ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... of the seriousness of the situation. She believed in her heart that after a few days of restraint they would resume their former life, and that Wilbur, on reflection, would appreciate that he had been absurd. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... well known that I would not sign it; but some little girls undertook my case; and the effect of their parroting of Mr. Wordsworth, about "ourselves" and "the common people" who intrude upon us, was as sad as it was absurd. The whole matter ended rather remarkably. When all were gone but Mrs. Wordsworth, and she was blind, a friend who was as a daughter to her remarked, one summer day, that there were some boys on the Mount in the garden. "Ah!" said Mrs. Wordsworth, "there is no end to those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... said, "it is absurd to think that you can get a special train at a roadside station like this. Probably they do things differently in America, but if you suggest a special to the station-master here, he will take you for an amiable lunatic. I have an idea that may work out all right, though it all depends ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... it not only overclouded, but even menaced—beheld its light in danger of being dimmed if not utterly extinguished. It was absurd, it was tragic, it was unbelievable—yet it was so. And when he was confronted with the fact, there crept back into the old gentleman's heart something of his old fire, as well as a slow, brooding sense of angry injury against ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... This grotesque and absurd fable has for two hundred years been accepted as an almost indisputable historical fact. Men of great intelligence in other matters seem when the life of Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon is concerned, quite prepared to refuse ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... think!" she said the minute they were in their rooms. "There was I, leaning meditatively over the boat, thinking solemnly on the truths I had heard, and that absurd little water-proof morsel was having a flirtation with a nice young man. Here is one of the fruits of the system! What on earth was he saying ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... as it was, I could not avoid it, and with a heavy heart, and as much indignation at Waller for what I could not but consider a most scurvy trick, I donned the yellow inexpressibles; next came the vest, and last the coat, with its broad flaps and lace excrescenses, fifty times more absurd and merry-andrew than any stage servant who makes off with his table and two chairs amid the hisses and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... to enter his own cave, because he sees the footsteps of a lion going in, but not coming out, we feel strongly inclined to admit a common origin for both fables. Here, however, the idea that the Greeks, like La Fontaine, had borrowed their fable from the Pacatantra would be simply absurd, and it would be much more rational, if the process must be one of borrowing, to admit, as Benfey ("Pantschatantra," i. 381) does, that the Hindus, after Alexander's discovery of India, borrowed this story from the Greeks. But if we consider that each of the two fables has its own peculiar ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... fairest part of the continent, with domains stretching more than three thousand miles from ocean to ocean, and so situated in geographical configuration and commercial relations as to make the very idea of disunion absurd, save for men in whose minds fanaticism for the moment usurped the place of sound judgment. The men of 1783 dwelt in a long, straggling series of republics, fringing the Atlantic coast, bordered on the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... overhauled a huge galleon, which proved, he declared, to be the provost himself, not exactly water-logged, and yet not very buoyant, but carrying a good deal of sail. He might possibly have escaped very particular notice, he said, but for the assiduous attendance upon him of an absurd little cock-boat, in the person of wee Gibbie—the two reminding him right ludicrously of the story of the Spanish Armada. Round and round the bulky provost gyrated the tiny baronet, like a little hero of the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... don't know," says she. "You see, although she knows perfectly well I've heard all about it, Auntie makes a deep mystery of everything connected with this cruise. It's that absurd Captain Killam who puts her up to it, ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... stunned and irritated me. "How infinitely absurd!" I said. "Do they dream of sinking you into ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... be sure," said Mr. Maud and Mr. Caern, "it is an allegorical expression; nothing can be more clear; it is a metaphor, and therefore it is absurd to understand it in a literal sense." And now they, in their turn, triumphed over poor Clerk, and drank large draughts to my health in strong ale; which, as my company seemed to like so much, I was sorry I could not like. It either intoxicated or stupefied me; and I do think it overpowers ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... Haversacks are supplied by the army, but it takes such a time to get anything, that, if the matter is urgent, it has to be done without the army. We (the bloomin' orficers) have a "mess-cart" for all our absurd wines and tinned peaches and things, but the men often have nothing but the contents ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... happen to you," he growled, "and I wanted to stop you. I never saw a person climb in such an utterly absurd way." ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the sagging bed and the doors covered with wall paper. Her feet had stopped aching, too, She could have sat there for hours. And—why evade it?—she was interested. This whimsical and respectful young man with his absurd talk and his shabby clothes ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I can guess no more than I can guess the cause of Keredec's fears, but the moment I saw him to-day, saw that he'd come back, I knew it was THAT, and tried to draw him out. You heard what he said; there's no doubt that Saffren stands in danger of some kind. It may be inconsiderable, or even absurd, but it's evidently imminent, and no matter what it is, Mrs. Harman must be kept out of it. I want you to see her as soon as you can and ask her from me— no, persuade her yourself—not to leave Quesnay for a day or two. I mean, that she ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... false professions, in how many is no declaration of motive made? Admit this doctrine, and you give to the States an uncontrolled right to decide, and every law may be annulled under this pretext. If, therefore, the absurd and dangerous doctrine should be admitted that a State may annul an unconstitutional law, or one that it deems such, it will not apply to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... places. Many interesting topics are touched upon—among which we point to his remarks on the difficulties experienced by him in meeting the literary requirements of the day, and the peculiar demands of editors; his opinion of Mr. Carlyle; the present condition of the stage, the absurd pretensions of actors, and the delusions attempted respecting the "legitimate" drama; the question of the laureateship, and his own qualifications for holding that office; his habits of reading; and finally an avowal of his religious opinions. We miss some account of ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... natural glow through the ladies' rouge, and silenced the gentlemen, when he has happened to enter while Miss Dundas and half-a-dozen other beaux and belles have been ridiculing Euphemia on the absurd civilities ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... aloud: Dear Aranyani, it is not I that am tearing thee in two, as thou sayest: but it is rather thou thyself that art pulling thy soul to pieces, utterly without a cause. Truly wonderful is love, that fills his victims with fears that are absurd, and makes them see before them dangers that do not exist ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... thus prohibited. The caste also do not favour Anta santa or the practice of exchanging girls between families, the reason alleged being that after the bride's father has acknowledged the superiority of the bridegroom's father by washing his feet, it is absurd to require the latter to do the same, that is, to wash the feet of his inferior. So they may not take a girl from a family to which they have given one of their own. The real reason for the rule lies possibly in an extension of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... little Boxer! How perfectly absurd," exclaimed Grace, at the risk of spoiling all the thrilling story Mary had ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... you to a standstill, doesn't it?" said Adele, sipping her absinthe, her face lighted up with joy at sight of Germinie's discomposed features. "Oh! it is too absurd, really; but it's true, 'pon my word it's true. She noticed the gamin on the steps of the shop the other day, coming home from the races. She's been there two or three times on the pretence of buying something. She'll probably have some perfumery sent from there—to-morrow, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... falsehoods. You told two in that one sentence. You know perfectly well Timothy hasn't been asking you to marry him since he was nine—a child of that age doesn't think of marriage. And you also know just as well as I do that you'll not live to be five hundred, it's absurd to make such statements. Come back here, Arethusa? Now what is your real reason for acting this way whenever I speak to you of Timothy. I want to know? You know just how your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath feel about it. Why do you persist ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... was, that knowing his man thoroughly, he was aware that, with the bane, he bore about with him, in some degree, its antidote. For so vast and absurd were his vain boastings, and so needless his exaggerations of his own recklessness, blood-thirstiness, and crime, that hitherto his vaporings had excited ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... AEthelstan and Dunstan, as Athelstahn and Doonstahn; Eadwine and Oswine, nearly as Yahd-weena and Ose-weena; Wulfsige and Sigeberht, as Wolf-seeg-a and Seeg-a-bayrt; Ceolred and Cynewulf, as Keole-red and Kuene-wolf. These approximations look a little absurd when written down in the only modern phonetic equivalents; but that is the fault of our own existing spelling, not of the early English ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... for, instead of abandoning your bad habit, you tell me an absurd story about killing fifteen men ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... exist and are depicted in the subsequent volume. This is a task which the author undertakes more for the sake of his country than himself; and he rejoices that the demand for the present edition puts it in his power to aid in removing many absurd prejudices which have existed for time immemorial against ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... right; you are a very absurd child, Miriam," she said, smiling, in spite of her efforts to keep ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... been playing this trick upon us, Mr. Holmes?" said the inspector angrily. "How long have you allowed us to waste ourselves upon a search that you knew to be an absurd one?" ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... husband," said his wife, "I know no more about the little thing than you do. Some neighbor's child, I suppose. Our Violet and Peony," she added, laughing at herself for repeating so absurd a story, "insist that she is nothing but a snow-image, which they have been busy about in the garden, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the restoration of the Stuarts; and if such verses could then pass for serious poetry, they have ceased to sound in any ear as other than a burlesque; the associations which they arouse are only absurd, and they could only have continued to ring in his memory through their ludicrous doggerel. * Here is the old stanza. Let whoever is disposed to think us too hard on Captain ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... versed in theology and metaphysics, but she knew he was wrong. Therefore she covered her confusion by quietly pouring him out another cup of tea, and then said, "Even my slight knowledge of the past has taught me how many absurd and monstrous things can be done and said in the name of reason. Religion is a matter of revelation and experience. But it is not contrary to reason, certainly not to mine. If your reason should conclude that this tea is not hot, what difference ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... a great deal of the pleasure of being distinguished by the Earl of Carnarvon; but it is almost absurd to particularize any one generous action in a person whose whole life is a continued series of them. Mr. Stanhope, the present secretary of state, will pardon my desire of having it known that he was pleased to promote this affair. The particular ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... at her husband anxiously. The answer was so unexpected and seemingly so absurd that she for a moment feared he had lost his mind. The notion that two years' service in so important an office as that of Mayor of Dumfries Corners received as its sole reward nothing but lamps was ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... and avoid absurd or incompatible expressions. Example of error: "To pursue those remarks, would, probably, be of no further service to the learner than that of burdening his memory with a catalogue of dry and uninteresting ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... didn't it? It's the way we've been brought up, I reckon,—even we southerners who know what it is to be whipped. The idea of a girl like me talking about war and trouble and all that! It's absurd, isn't it?" ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... probably be necessary to effect an escape from a period of time, which has never been employed in the full integrity of tasteful elegance; and thus to break the spell, by which the whole realm of fancy has long been bewitched. An absurd and inconvenient practice, which is almost peculiar to this country, of attending public places in that uncomfortable condition, which is technically called being dressed, but which is in truth, especially in females, being more or less naked and undressed, might ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... the complaints, the growls, the criticisms, the requisitions or demands for resources that were not available, the reports of disasters, sometimes exaggerated and sometimes unduly smoothed over, the futile suggestions, the conflicting counsels, the indignant protests, the absurd schemes, the self-seeking applications, that poured into the White House from all points of the field of action and from all parts of the Border States and of the North. The man who during four years could stand that kind of battering and pressure and who, instead of having his hopefulness ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... to understand this absurd language, which is in use amongst the officers of Excise and dealers in spirit, in order to know what is meant in commerce by the strength of spiritous liquors of different denominations. And hence, for the business of the exciseman, a table has been constructed, expressing the ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... her mind, and my explanation ought to have led me to go out as I had come. I must repeat again that it did not, for I found myself at the same moment thinking of something else. I had no definite purpose, no bad intention, but I felt myself held to the spot by an acute, though absurd, sense of opportunity. For what I could not have said, inasmuch as it was not in my mind that I might commit a theft. Even if it had been I was confronted with the evident fact that Miss Bordereau did not leave her secretary, her cupboard, and the drawers of her tables gaping. I had no keys, no tools, ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... manifest by the many French scribblers of this age: they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, but want of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in their writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with cold and absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress the matter: provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they care not what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave the old one, very often more ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... in fine, seemed a man dressed in a mask that was unable to deceive. His lean face was almost absurd in its irregularity, its high cheek-bones and deep depressions, its sharp nose, extensive mouth and nervous chin. But the pale blue eyes that were its soul shone plaintively beneath their shaggy, blonde eyebrows, and even an application of pomade almost ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... tinkle of a sheep bell recalled her, but each time the sound had less meaning for her, and the sheep seemed less and less important. She was staggering, her knees had an absurd fashion of giving way beneath her, but she could not prevent them. She was approaching the end of her endurance; she could not resist much longer—this her dull rambling brain told her over and over. And that curious phenomenon—that feeling of confidence and exultation that she had had ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... their dinner had they But some minced meat served up in a narrow-neck'd jar; Too long, and narrow, for Reynard by far. "You make a poor dinner, I fear," said the bird; "Why, I think," said the fox, "'twould be very absurd To deny what you say, yet I cannot complain, But confess, though a fox, that I'm matched by ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... at him curiously; he had been telling me the oddest mixture of history and superstition, of intelligence and ignorance, the most whimsically absurd, yet impressive, tale I ever heard from ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... he replied; "I made it out last night, as you advised me, in the service form. It was witnessed by our colonel and Captain Smart and the doctor. To say truth, I thought it absurd for a man who has nothing to leave to make his will, but as you said, sir, I should like my dear mother to get my kit and any arrears of pay that may be due to me ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... music-stand and tried to see the notes of the exercises. Jennings closed the door and seated himself at the far end of the room. She began—a ridiculous attempt. She stopped, gritted her teeth, began again. Once more the result was absurd; but this time she was able to keep on, not improving, but maintaining her ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... same hall, in much better preservation, though of the same date; and the doorway which the tasteful Dominicans cut in the wall, through the bottom of the painting, is, though blocked up, still quite visible. It is but too probable that the monks valued the absurd and hideous frescoes in the cloisters outside, representing Saint Dominic's miracles! and the Virgin fishing souls out of purgatory with a rosary, beyond Lionardo's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... while Walter kept doing absurd things with his face—pinched his lips and tapped his teeth and rubbed his jaw as though he needed a shave. He took off his eye-glasses to wipe them and tied his thin legs in a knot, and all the while said, "Yes, there's certainly a great deal ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... Skelmersdale was already in love with her, but the pure inertia of his mind kept him in the way he was going. I imagine him sitting in a sort of stupefaction amidst all these glowing beautiful things, answering about his Millie and the little shop he projected and the need of a horse and cart.... And that absurd state of affairs must have gone on for days and days. I see this little lady, hovering about him and trying to amuse him, too dainty to understand his complexity and too tender to let him go. And he, you know, hypnotised ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... testament, should offer his assertion as sufficient evidence of the validity of the will. And, even were not such a circular, or rather rotatory, argument, that the infallibility of the Bible is testified by the infallible Church, whose infallibility is testified by the infallible Bible, too absurd for serious consideration, it remains permissible to ask, Where and when the Church, during the period of its infallibility, as limited by Anglican dogmatic necessities, has officially decreed the "actual historical truth of all records" in the Old Testament? Was Augustine heretical ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... No brindle-thatched guy in buckskin can interfere without sleepin' in smoke. Understand?" The long, sallow man nervously stroked his hair, which was flattened down on his forehead in a semicircle in the absurd fashion of the day. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... it was but folklore, he said to himself. Nothing more than that. Every one knew it. All intelligent people were nowadays of one religion. The thing was manifestly absurd—the Hebrew fetich was dead—dead as Mumbo Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... pen a more severe and pregnant comment on the after-policy of England than that suggested by the italicized lines, written as they were by England's Plenipotentiary—an idea reported to headquarters, not as a feeler, but as a suggestion so absurd that it called for no expression of opinion. But he lived to find that it was not too absurd to be realized; and perhaps, after all, it was written as a warning, and the wise and cool-headed old statesman in his inmost soul had a ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... live, thinking, perfect Power at the heart and head of affairs, count it impossible that, in their great and manifest need, their meal—chest should be supplied like that of the widow of Zarephath? If he could believe the thing was done then, there could be nothing absurd in hoping the thing might be done now. If it was possible once, it was possible in the same circumstances always. It was impossible, however, for him or any human being to determine concerning any circumstances whether they were or were not the same. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... be not an offence against good sense and good taste; but it is as unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author's conceptions, as to deny that the execution is imperfect, and, at times, bungling and absurd. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... posit an aesthetic, embracing work of such primitive crudity and apparently unstudied frankness as the work of Mark Twain. It is for American criticism to posit this more comprehensive aesthetic, and to demonstrate that the work of Mark Twain is the work of a great artist. It would be absurd to maintain that Mark Twain's appeal to posterity depends upon the dicta of literary criticism. It would be absurd to deny that upon America rests the task of demonstrating, to a world willing enough to be convinced, that Mark Twain is ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... motion, and the Geltin were not quiet; but all was in disorder after the death of Nero. And the opportunity now offered induced many to aim at the royal power; and the soldiery affected change, out of the hopes of getting money. I thought it therefore an absurd thing to see the truth falsified in affairs of such great consequence, and to take no notice of it; but to suffer those Greeks and Romans that were not in the wars to be ignorant of these things, and to read either flatteries or fictions, while the Parthians, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... to attach such consequences to acts of young men, or young women either, in an age as original as our own. I saw nothing particularly absurd but the introduction;—and so many absurder have since passed, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... idea!" he exclaimed. "What a perfectly absurd idea! Besides, although it did disappear, they came up and told me that there was a man lying in the boudoir. You understand now how it all happened," he went on. "It seemed to me quite natural at the time. Still, when the morning came I realized that I had killed a man. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... assuming of them at proper times and proper places, is what particularly constitutes a man of the world, and a well-bred man!" All true enough, but how shallow, and how ineffably conceited! Here is another absurd fragment—"My dear boy, let us resume our reflections upon men, their character, their manners—in a word, our reflections upon the World." It is quite like Mr. Pecksniff's finest vein. There is not a touch of nature or vital ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... suited their purpose. The imagination of the people at last became so accustomed to facts of this kind that the death of any powerful man was seldom or never attributed to natural causes. There were certainly absurd notions current with regard to the effect of various poisons. There may be some truth in the story of that terrible white powder used by the Borgias, which did its work at the end of a definite period, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... would have aspired to such a glory—and everybody could have aspired to it—by no other means could he have attained it than his own merits. Such a man must have, of his own accord and spontaneously, withdrawn himself from the general current of depravity; opposed, by his own impulse, the absurd ravings of his contemporaries; displayed a lively attachment to virtue, and a steady abhorrence of evil; cultivated, above all, justice, charity, and righteousness, in his every action; that man must have thrown off the ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... path again, this time knowing certainly that the woman would never more stand waiting and wondering at the end, to embitter his renunciations. The woman was definitely gone. That was something, even though she went with that absurd, unreasoning, womanish suspicion. And he had one free, dear look from her to keep through the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... happiness by any appearance of ill-humour, receiving me with the heartiest affection, and loving me, next to Charlotte, better than all the world! Wilhelm, you would be delighted to hear us in our rambles, and conversations about Charlotte. Nothing in the world can be more absurd than our connection, and yet the thought of it ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... stranger had returned from Warwickshire the day before. Twice during my residence with the minister, business of importance had carried him to that county. It was certainly a curious coincidence, but coincidences more curious pass by us every day unheeded. It would have been absurd to conclude from that the identity of the stranger; yet the fact, coupled with the voice, staggered and confounded me. I said nothing, but determined, as soon as we reached the public streets, to call to my aid the light—feeble as it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... before Huddy was taken from his prison, and, without even a show of a trial, was condemned to death. It was said that he assisted in the killing of White; and although he asserted boldly that this was an absurd charge, as he was in prison at the time White was shot, the Tories would not listen to any such plea. They were determined to kill him, ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... good man—I use no ceremony with you, because we are a kind of relations;—positively, Mama Meagles,' exclaimed Mrs Gowan cheerfully, as if the absurd coincidence then flashed upon her for the first time, 'a kind of relations! My dear good man, in this world none of us can ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... that way. It's absurd. You talk of going off to-day, why, good heavens, it takes time even to start on a journey like that. You have to book your passage in a ship—and how are ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... little. "Bad luck for us! That's what comes of getting out of bed the wrong side first this morning. No, it's your fault, Adams; you helped me to salt last night, in spite of my remonstrances" (the Professor has sundry little superstitions of this sort, particularly absurd in so learned a man). "Well, what shall we do? Get under the lee of the hill ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... maladjustment. Crime results from defective heredity when applied to the environment. It comes from the inability of the machine to make the necessary adjustments of life. The making of the criminal is largely a question of his fortune or misfortune in the environment where he is placed. It is absurd to say that one inherits the tendency to rob or rape or burglarize or kill. He may inherit an unstable organization that in certain hostile environments will lead him to any of these crimes. For that matter ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... quite shocked. This absurd faintness! The tent was very crowded, and there is not much air to-day, is there? I shall be all right if I may sit quietly in the hail a little. How deliciously cool in here after the glare outside. A glass of water? Thanks. Yes, only I hate to be so troublesome. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... necessary it could be sworn to before a notary public. But I am perfectly sure that you might read this page through without skipping a word, and if you had never seen the creature with your own eyes, you would have no idea how absurd it looks and how ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... little purchases. Owen, and Morgan, and I were all hard at work, during her absence, on the stories that still remained to be completed. Owen desponded about ever getting done; Morgan grumbled at what he called the absurd difficulty of writing nonsense. I worked on smoothly and contentedly, stimulated by the success ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... with an eye to the bizarre, to whom Dennis had presented some of his characteristic enterprises, had put the young Irishman in the way of securing a biography of the Hebrew premier, whom he provided with such an absurd travesty of likeness, and the "ole clo' merchant" was so impressed by the resolution and dexterity of the celebrated statesman, that he became, from that moment, the prey of a consuming ambition whose ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... called "The Crime against Kansas"; and the excuses for the crime he denominated the apology tyrannical, the apology imbecile, the apology absurd, and the apology infamous. "Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity, and infamy," he continued, "all unite to dance, like the weird sisters, about ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... a man must wait for a lady to recognize him, but should be ready to remove his hat simultaneously with her greeting, raising and replacing it quickly. The fashion of removing the hat after meeting a lady is absurd. How does she know the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... genius, and singularly demanded by certain phenomena of the present day. I hold those phenomena to be alike feeble and fugitive; but only so by reason of their being openly so proclaimed; for mankind have a tendency to the absurd, if their imaginations are not properly directed; and one of the uses of poetry is, to keep the faculty in a healthy state, and cause it to know its duties. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... be done. It was absurd to dream of more than formal resistance. Up in the North in more than one abbey the inmates had armed themselves, and faced the spoilers grimly on the village green; but that was where the whole country side was with them, and here ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Nicholl could not help laughing at this absurd reflection. But a cry from their merry companion stopped them; he was bending over Satellite's ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Vincent, a granddaughter of one of the sugar-kings; she was dark-skinned and slender, and had appeared at a recent lawn fete in the costume of an Indian maiden. The company amused itself by selecting an Indian name for her; all sorts of absurd ones were suggested, depending upon various intimate details of the young lady's personality and habits. Robbie caused a laugh by suggesting "Little Dewdrop"—it appeared that she had once been discovered writing a poem about a dewdrop; some one else suggested "Little Raindrop," and then Ollie ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... 'Looking Backward' was the sensation of the year, a newspaper charge brought against Mr. Bellamy was that he was "posing for notoriety." To those who know the retiring, modest, and almost diffident personality of the author, nothing could have been more absurd. All opportunities to make money upon the magnificent advertising given by a phenomenal literary success were disregarded. There were offers of lecture engagements that would have brought quick fortune, requests from magazine editors for articles and stories on any terms that he might name, proffered ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... had only her parents or her husband. She preferred to go out alone. The excellent Risler had such an absurd way of showing his love for her, playing with her as if she were a doll, pinching her chin and her cheek, capering about her, crying, "Hou! hou!" or staring at her with his great, soft eyes like ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... "However absurd his reasoning may appear, it unfortunately happened that he possessed the power to reduce his aversion to practice, and he may be considered as the author of that unwarrantable persecution of the tobacco plant, which under varying ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... words he would use for making his little proposition, the picture did not seem to him to be so beautiful. If Clara really loved Herbert—and she had declared that she did twenty times over—it would be absurd to expect her to give him up merely because he was not a ruined man. But then, which did she love? His mother declared that she loved Owen. "That's the real question," said the earl to himself, as on the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... voice, accompanying himself in a wooden and inanimate fashion—the whole thing might have been turned out by a machine. I was, I suppose, in a fretful mood. "Good God!" I thought to myself, "what is the meaning of this woeful performance?—a party of absurd dressed-up people, who have eaten and drunk too much, sitting in a circle in this hot room listening gravely to this lugubrious performance! And this is the best that Schubert can do! This is the real Schubert! Here have I been all my life pouring pints of subjective emotion ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fool he was making of himself! It was astonishing that one of his age should be so excited over a mere business proposition—really not a proposition at all, when he came to think of it—just an ordinary question asked. He must compose himself. It was quite absurd for him to go on this way. But would the boy NEVER come? It was four o'clock now—or would be ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... students nothing about the complete failure which military government—not republicanism— must always have among the Anglo-Saxon peoples and which is the sole reason why Cromwellism disappeared. Even when treating the history of his own country Dr. Goodnow seems to take pleasure in being absurd. For he says: "The mind of the American people was so imbued with the idea of republicanism that a republican form of government was the ideal of the whole race"; then adding as if to refute his own statements, "Had General Washington—the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... kinswoman, and upon the whole a well meaning woman, yet the Court of Cocagne never produced such a fantastic fool, and I hold it for certain that her niece, whom I have always observed to be a modest and orderly young lady, was led into the absurd frolic of flying from Burgundy to France, by that blundering, romantic old match ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Fair, he could stay but a day or two. He said he had come this time from "quite a good deal" of a stay in Texas and Mexico, and his father had written him that he was needed at home. "Which is absurd, you ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... and cape on—his leggings buttoned up—and his capacious leather 'overalls' pulled up and strapped over these—and his broad-leafed hat tied down over his wig and ears with a mighty silk kerchief. I dare say he looked absurd enough—but it was the women's doing—who always, upon emergencies, took the doctor's wardrobe in hand. Old Sally, with her kind, mild, grave face, and gray locks, stood modestly behind in the hall; and pretty Lilias, his only child, gave him her parting kiss, and her last grand charge ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... he was too clever?" Mrs. Nelson broke in. "How absurd to say that! We have won a ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... believed to explain why all interference with free competition was useless or worse. Not only was the whole subject of economic relations clarified, much that had been regarded as wise brought into doubt, and much that had been only doubted shown to be absurd, but the attainment of many objects previously sought for was, apparently, shown to be impossible, and to lie outside of the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... then an absurd statement that an assessment company properly and honestly administered, with that amount invested, can ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... I know, at least, that this absurd idea cannot, and will not, be advocated by any man here in the United States; which did not open its hospitable shores to humanity, and greet the flocking millions of emigrants with the right of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... with diligent search, no humorous poems by women have been found which are of merit sufficient to give them claim to a place in a collection like this. That lively wit and graceful gayety, that quick perception of the absurd, which ladies are continually displaying in their conversation and correspondence, never, it seems, suggest the successful epigram, or inspire happy ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... attended with ceremonies of the most absurd description, which were continued till the time of the revolution. They are detailed at length in the Histoire de Dieppe I. p. 68; and a brief account has lately been given of them in English, in Turner's Tour in Normandy, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... that ever have been written, and that is soliloquy; therefore I will answer it, not only for my own sake, but to save others the trouble to whom it may be hereafter objected. I grant, that for a man to talk to himself, appears absurd, and unnatural, and indeed it is so in most cases, but the circumstances which may attend the occasion, makes great alteration. It often happens to a man to have designs, which require him to himself, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... and stopped. She had wanted in her hospitable way to say that Pamela's brother must come to The Rigs, but she checked the impulse with a fear that it was an absurd proposal. She was immensely interested in this brother of Pamela's. All she had heard of him appealed to her imagination, for Jean, cumbered as she was with domestic cares, had an adventurous spirit, and thrilled to hear of the perils of the mountains, the treks behind the ranges for something ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... dread of a plunge back into the old atmosphere, but in the end she did go up to change her dress,—rejoicing that the new blue linen was finished, and did join Isabel at the train, filled with an absurd regret at having to miss a ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... sentence of this passage is an absurd truism; but the proposition in question can be resolved into—An animal is rational or it is irrational. Again, "the former does not belong to pure categoricals," it is simply disjunctive. MR. INGLEBY falls into the same error, and moreover seems ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... it is very absurd of me," she went on, smiling appealingly at him, "but your words were altogether too graphic. I can't bear to think of what might have taken place underneath that tunnel! You must remember that I saw it, too. Don't go on. Don't talk about it any more. I am going ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... meaning) 517; exaggeration &c 549; moonshine, stuff; mare's nest, quibble, self-delusion. vagary, tomfoolery, poppycock, mummery, monkey trick, boutade[Fr], escapade. V. play the fool &c. 499; talk nonsense, parler a tort et a travess[Fr]; battre la campagne[Fr][obs3]; <gr/ hanemolia bazein/gr>; be - absurd &c. adj. Adj. absurd, nonsensical, preposterous, egregious, senseless, inconsistent, ridiculous, extravagant, quibbling; self-annulling, self- contradictory; macaronic[obs3], punning. foolish &c. 499; sophistical ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... is a rebel unto faith, so passion unto reason. As the propositions of faith seem absurd unto reason, so the theorems of reason unto passion and both unto reason; yet a moderate and peaceable discretion may so state and order the matter, that they may be all kings, and yet make but one monarchy: every one exercising ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... rope of sand, build castles in the air, prendre la lune avec les dents [Fr.], extract sunbeams from cucumbers, set the Thames on fire, milk a he-goat into a sieve, catch a weasel asleep, rompre l'anguille au genou [Fr.], be in two places at once. Adj. impossible; not possible &c 470; absurd, contrary to reason; unlikely; unreasonable &c 477; incredible &c 485; beyond the bounds of reason, beyond the bounds of possibility, beyond the realm of possibility; from which reason recoils; visionary; inconceivable &c (improbable) 473; prodigious &c (wonderful) 870; unimaginable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... important point: The tail is real; accuracy is attempted: but though the tail be real, the horse is not; the horse is played by a boy, and only by a boy; it is in this mimicry that the enjoyment consists. But how absurd to put a real tail on an unreal horse! How revolting this mixture of imagination and fact! It is equalled only by that ludicrous practice of placing the face of a real watch in the place of a church-clock in a landscape; where one may not only see the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... matter of individual opinion. I am of the opinion that a man of his uncontrollable temper was quite likely to commit suicide," he said firmly. "As for its being absurd, if there is any attempt to prove any one guilty of murdering him on purely circumstantial evidence, that person won't find anything absurd in the theory at all. In fact, he'll work it for all it's worth. I think myself that, with Dr. Thornhill's evidence in mind, the police, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... all. There's no reason in the world why the allegorical and the real should not go together, provided, of course, they don't grossly conflict and become absurd. What the artist is always working for is the effect of beauty. If a picture is beautiful, no matter how the beauty is achieved, it deserves recognition as a work of art. In these murals Du Mond has tried to reach as closely ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... It is absurd now to say that we will not negotiate but will appropriate the whole subject-matter of negotiation. At the very least let us adhere to the President' instructions and if conditions require the keeping of Luzon forego the material advantages claimed in annexing other islands. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... true religion; since it is ridiculous by asserting fables and impossibilities; since it appears, when duly considered, to be all bloody and full of dangerous consequence unto the lives and safety of men; I hope that with this my Discourse, opposing an absurd and pernicious error, I can not at all disoblige any sober, unbiassed person; especially if he be of such ingenuity as to have freed himself from a slavish subjection unto those prejudicial opinions which custom and education do with too much tyranny impose.—If the doctrine of witchcraft should ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... men who looked less like beaten men. Those Belfast citizens, who sign Covenants and form volunteer armies at home, have in them the fixed belief that no one in the world is equal to them or can subdue them. It seems an absurd and arrogant faith. But there is this to be said. They remained just as convinced of their own strength after their appalling experience north of the Somme as they were when they shouted for Sir Edward Carson in the streets of Belfast. Men who believe in their invincibility the day after ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... said, "these affectionate demonstrations may do well enough for us alone, but keep them for private service, and don't let us play Damon and Pythia in this touching manner, to so large an audience. It partakes slightly of the absurd." ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... to smile. "My dear, you're incorrigibly old-fashioned. Why should two people who've done each other the best turn they could by getting out of each other's way at the right moment behave like sworn enemies ever afterward? It's too absurd; the humbug's too flagrant. Whatever our generation has failed to do, it's got rid of humbug; and that's enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellie never liked each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago, they'd have ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... felt the pain considerably better; and now that I have obtained this secret spell, I have recourse, at once, when I am in the height of anguish, to shouts of girls, one shout after another. Now what do you say to this? Isn't this absurd, eh?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fantasies, was laid to-day. Sometimes he had felt, Why does no one sympathise with my views; why, though they treat them with conventional respect, is it clear that all I have addressed hold them to be absurd? My parents are pious and instructed; they are predisposed to view everything I say, or do, or think, with an even excessive favour. They think me moonstruck. Lord Eskdale is a perfect man of the world; proverbially shrewd, and celebrated for his judgment; he looks upon me as a raw boy, and believes ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... "I know it's absurd," Sandy agreed, smiling. Her answer was ready somewhere in her mind, but she could not quite find it. "But, you see, that's a new problem," she presently offered, "that's ours to-day, just as managing your house was Mother's when she married you. ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... himself, as we all do, the whole interest and meaning of the Universe. Truly the most commonplace fact, yet none the less amazing; and often when in the dust of documents he has seemed most dead and unreal to me I have found courage from the entertainment of some deep or absurd reflection; such as that he did once undoubtedly, like other mortals, blink and cough and blow his nose. And if my readers could realise that fact throughout every page of this book, I should say that I had succeeded in ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... was not going to be accepted by the McKelveys made Babbitt feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly to the Elks; at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding the wickedness of strikes; and again he saw ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... "This is perfectly absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a way out of it for the moment. "We will never get any of our comrades to serve as ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... If it be absurd to give information to Englishmen in a queer jargon which it is difficult for him to understand, what must be said of those who attempt to teach a language of which they are profoundly ignorant? Most of us can call ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... do know. But something must be done. The Health Department," she explained, "has sent in complaint after complaint, and Miss Eliot simply won't handle the property unless she's allowed to spend a lot setting things to rights. Alys says it's absurd; none of the other property owners out there are doing anything, and she won't. So, nobody's looking after ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... imp, I know it. Jeff's case is ancient history. We can't do anything practical about it, so what we want is to agitate—agitate—until he leaves his absurd plaything—carrots, is it, or summer squash?—and gets into business in a civilised way. The man's a genius, if only his mind wakes up. Let him think we're going to spread the necklace story far and wide, let him see Esther about to ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Hazlitt, 'the oldest frequenter of the place and the latest sitter-up; well-informed, unobtrusive, and that sturdy old English character, a lover of truth and justice. Mouncey never approved of anything unfair or illiberal, and, though good-natured and gentleman-like, never let an absurd or unjust proposition pass him without expressing dissent.' He was much liked by Hazlitt, for they had mutual friends, and Mouncey had been intimate with most of the wits and men about town for ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... really that alone that frightened the girl, and caused her illness? How very absurd the thing ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and yet not have warmed the social atmosphere wherever he appeared with that summer glow which seemed to attend him. His laugh was brimful of enjoyment. There was a peculiar humorous protest in it when recounting or hearing anything specially absurd, as who should say "'Pon my soul this is too ridiculous! This passes all bounds!" and bursting out afresh as though the sense of the ridiculous overwhelmed him like a tide, which carried all hearers away with it, and which I well remember. His ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... placing Horace in the court of a Norman king is the result. But Dekker's play is not without its palpable hits at the arrogance, the literary pride, and self-righteousness of Jonson-Horace, whose "ningle" or pal, the absurd Asinius Bubo, has recently been shown to figure forth, in all likelihood, Jonson's friend, the poet Drayton. Slight and hastily adapted as is "Satiromastix," especially in a comparison with the better wrought and more significant satire of "Poetaster," the town awarded ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... the door opened and she came in. As she moved into the circle of light, the man felt an absurd satisfaction, as if he were partly responsible for the dignified figure with its beautifully waved soft, fair hair, of which he was so proud. She smiled on him, and sat down at his feet, leaning back against his chair and placing her left elbow on his knees. He laid a ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... studied the works of ancient philosophers on the question. He examined mathematical traditions and criticised the opinions of learned professors. He found accounts of those who had asserted the motion of the earth. "Though," he says, "it appeared an absurd opinion, yet, since I knew that in former times liberty had been permitted to others to figure as they pleased certain circles for the purpose of demonstrating the phenomena of the stars, I considered that to me also it might be easily allowed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... call him—Lambert?" thought Richard. "Absurd! That was only banter on the part of his companions. I wonder whether I ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... then turning to the neighboring boxes he said: "My friends, applaud; you must encourage the author;" and the two bold women clapped their hands and shrieked out, "Let us encourage Ballanche! Bravo! Ballanche!" It was absurd. ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... It is the naval flag of your country. Mire! This rotten tub we stand upon is its navy—that dead cockatoo lying there was its commander—that stroke of cutlass and single pistol shot a sea battle. All a piece of absurd foolery, I grant you—but authentic. There has never been another flag like this, and there never will be another. No. It is unique in the whole world. Yes. Think of what that means to a collector of flags! ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Ninon. "But I had to come to tell you about the lilies. But, do you see, I never could bring myself to put them in this room as it is now. It would be too absurd to place them among this dirt. We must clean ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... various parishes, disarmed the inhabitants, administered oaths of neutrality, which were taken without much apparent reluctance, and on the fourth of August came within sight of Three Rivers, then occupied by a body of troops expecting an attack. "But," says Knox, "a delay here would be absurd, as that wretched place must share the fate of Montreal. Our fleet sailed this morning. The French troops, apparently about two thousand, lined their different works, and were in general clothed as ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the Admiralty to give him leave to come to London, though founded on alleged motives of state, he thinks absurd. "They are beasts for their pains," he says; "it was only depriving me of one day's comfort and happiness, for which they have my hearty prayers." His spleen breaks out in oddly comical ways. "I have a letter from Troubridge, recommending me to wear flannel ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... forgetting him, his behaviour was such that she could not avoid the internal suggestion of "Can it really be as my brother imagined? can it be possible for this man to be beginning to transfer his affections from Harriet to me?—Absurd and insufferable!"—Yet he would be so anxious for her being perfectly warm, would be so interested about her father, and so delighted with Mrs. Weston; and at last would begin admiring her drawings with so much zeal and so little ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "How exquisitely absurd it is," says Sydney Smith, "to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use. Beauty is of value. Her whole prospect and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet. If she has five grains of common sense, she will find this out. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... said, that war can exist without a tumult, but a tumult cannot exist without a war. In truth, as there is no medium between war and peace, it is quite plain that a tumult, if it be not a sort of war, must be a sort of peace; and what more absurd can be said or imagined? However, we have said too much about a word; let us rather look to the facts, O conscript fathers, the appreciation of which, I know, is at times injured by too much attention ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... gradually subsided, and objections began to be based on grounds less absurd in character. The political opposition also was henceforth founded on a more subtle policy, and on an appreciation of the nature of Christianity. Soon after the middle of the third century we meet with the next attack of a purely literary kind, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... sense of responsibility for carrying on the world's affairs which little children often exhibit because "the old man clogs our earliest years," I remember in myself in a very absurd manifestation. I dreamed night after night that every one in the world was dead excepting myself, and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel. The village street remained as usual, the village blacksmith shop was "all there," ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... and death! Sissy waiting for him at Ashendale, and no money to pay for a railway-ticket! It would have been absurd if it had not been horrible. What had he to sell or pawn? By the time he could go to Bellevue street and return would not the shops be shut? It was a quarter to nine already. He did not even know where any pawnbroker lived, nor what he could take to him, and the time was terribly short. He was hurrying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... imagined, and the note of my friend, if indeed it were a note from him, seemed only likely to throw me into further trouble, by disquieting to no purpose my already enfeebled and agitated mind. In vain I revolved in my brain a multitude of absurd expedients for procuring light—such expedients precisely as a man in the perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar purpose—each and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the most reasonable and the most preposterous ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... our political institutions, should yet work so well in the field; and we must cheerfully give Grig, and his like, the credit for courage which they display whenever occasion calls for it. The Duke's dandy regiments fought as well as any (they said better than any, but that is absurd). The great Duke himself was a dandy once, and jobbed on, as Marlborough did before him. But this only proves that dandies are brave as well as other Britons—as all Britons. Let us concede that the high-born Grig rode into the entrenchments at Sobraon as gallantly ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at first glance, English. As she jerked off her flaunting bonnet, and dragged off her loud shawl, saluting me, as she did so, with an overdone obeisance, she said, "This San Fanfrisko"—why would she, how could she, always twist the decent name of the metropolis of the Pacific into such an absurd shape?—"was a norrid 'ole; she happealed to the gentleman,"—meaning me,—"didn't 'e find it a norrid 'ole, habsolutely hawful?" And then she went clattering among tinware and crockery, and snubbed the gentlemanly boy in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the light in which he saw her position. Had there been nothing between them two but a mutual desire to be married, the reason given by her for changing it all would be absurd. As he had continued to speak, slowly adding on one argument to another, with a certain amount of true eloquence, she felt that unless she could go back to John Gordon she must yield. But it was very hard for her to go back to John Gordon. In the first place, she must acknowledge, in doing so, ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... exclaimed the Major. "How absurd! I had not thought of that. But, all the same, the explosion seems to have completely scared them away, for I don't hear a sound. Do any ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... ladies, his contemporaries. To these he repeated the identical high-flown compliments he had addressed to them thirty years before, in the court circle of the Duke of Lucca—compliments such as elderly ladies love, though conscious all the time of their absurd inappropriateness. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... they only brought home the top end of him; that all that shows below his waist is only a padded roll of blankets. That's one reason I want so much to see him; I know I could tell whether there was any truth in such absurd stories." She pulled herself up short; then went on with a change of tone. "Of course, though, what I really want is to help him pass the time, if I can. He must be very lonely for thoroughly congenial ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... woman to allow herself to be governed from the outside in the most intimate concerns and the deepest and most natural choices of her life is not so very much more absurd than for a man in his business, the main and most important and fundamental activity in which he lives, the one that he spends eight hours a day on, to be controlled from a distance ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... plain country gentleman, sir; and something more, a man of wealth and distinction; but who, unlike my friend Cooke here, do not make myself ridiculous by absurd eccentricities, and the adoption of the nonsensical doctrines of Pythagoras, so utterly at variance with reason and Christian truth. You know, my dear Cooke, I could have cured you of your rheumatism had you possessed common-sense; but who could cure any man who guards his person ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... are of an age not to feel time in your bones, and can see the folly of some of our old-fashioned notions, perhaps; though you are not quite as likely to understand the fooleries that have come in, in your own day. Nothing is more absurd than to be experimenting on the settled principles of ships. They are machines, Greenly, and have their laws, just the same as the planets in the heavens. The idea comes from a fish,—head, run, and helm; and all we have to do is to ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... first thought, he may by Philosophy compose something prettier than he saw, and mightier than he felt, it is all over with him. Every such attempt at composition will be utterly abortive, and end in something that is neither true nor fanciful; something geographically useless, and intellectually absurd. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... and the reader will hardly believe me when I say, that, transparently absurd though this statement was, nevertheless I believed every word of it—and so did Jack. I saw that by his glowing eye and ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... was supported by the fact that he did not lose consciousness of the eyes and the figure. But for these it is probable that he would have gone blind with fury at certain points which forced themselves upon him. The first was that there had been an absurd and immense expenditure which would simply benefit his son and not himself. He could not sell or borrow money on what had been given. Apparently the place had been re-established on a footing such as it had not ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Cuthbert, therefore, is its tough, sun-enduring foliage, which enables the wood to ripen perfectly. It has never received winter protection thus far, either in this region or in Michigan, where it is largely raised, but it may be found necessary to shield it somewhat in some localities. It is both absurd and dishonest to claim perfection for a fruit, and the Cuthbert, especially as it grows older and loses something of its pristine vigor, will, probably, like all other varieties, develop faults and weaknesses. We cannot too much deprecate the arrogant spirit often manifested in introducing new ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... I. The House of Stuart being ended, 1714-1727 George of Hanover (descended From daughter of King Jamie One) Comes over to ascend our throne. Of English George knew not a word, Most awkward, not to say absurd, At Cabinet Councils to preside; So from ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... "peak load" of December would be evenly distributed through the year. No sourface dare tell us that we drive postmen and shopgirls into Bolshevism by overtaxing them with our frenzied purchasing or that it is absurd to send to a friend in a steam-heated apartment in a prohibition republic a bright little picture card of a gentleman in Georgian costume drinking ale by a roaring fire of logs. None in his senses, I say, would emit such sophistries, for Christmas is a law unto itself and is not ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... about the garden. A saying of Montaigne's came into my head: "I neither love nor esteem sadness, although the world has invested it, at a given price, with the honor of its particular favor. They dress up in it wisdom, virtue, conscience. Stupid and absurd adornment." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... character many things appear of a nature, either so monstrous as to shock humanity, or so absurd as to excite derision; yet they have some redeeming qualities which must elicit commendation. And while we view with satisfaction those bright spots, shining more brilliantly from the gloom which surrounds them, their want of learning and the absence of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... remains master of forms. It is very necessary to accustom children to courtesy and to bring them up in the etiquette of the prevailing social custom; but they must be prevented from falling into an absurd formality which makes the triumph of a polite behavior to consist in a blind following of the dictates of the last fashion-journal, and in the exact copying of the phraseology and directions of some book on manners. One can best teach and practise politeness when he does not merely ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... reluctant, she would as soon have refused obedience to my request as have withheld a kindness because it cost her an unexpected trial. Taking Eunane with her, she approached and addressed the girl. Whatever my own doubt as to her probable reception, however absurd in my own estimation the thing I was induced to do, there was no corresponding consciousness, no feeling but one of surprise and gratification, in the face on which I turned my eyes. There was a short and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... known. It is only of late years that the fragments remaining of his "Chronicles of the Theban Kings" have been justly appreciated. For many centuries they were thrown into discredit by the authority of our existing absurd theological chronology. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... themselves in absurd speculations as to the probable effect on the villagers of that, and so failed to take note as their gondola nosed into the green shadow under the consulate, of the Merrythought's launch athwart the landing, until ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... regard to loch-fishing is, that the tyro and the experienced angler have nearly the same chance in fishing,—the one from the stern and the other from the bow of the same boat. Of all the absurd beliefs as to loch-fishing, this is one of the most absurd. Try it. Give the tyro either end of the boat he likes; give him a cast of any flies he may fancy, or even a cast similar to those which a "crack" may be using; and if he catches one for every three ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... present state of finery." "I am very well pleased to see it," answered Amelia, "and I wish him joy of being made an officer with all my heart." In fact, from what Mr. Booth said, joined to the serjeant's laced coat, she believed that he had obtained a commission. So weak and absurd is human vanity, that this mistake of Amelia's possibly put poor Atkinson out of countenance, for he looked at this instant more silly than he had ever done in his life; and, making her a most respectful bow, muttered something ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... night at M. de Bouillon's house, where a motion was made for the generals of the army to send a deputation likewise to the place of conference; but it was quashed, and indeed nothing would have been more absurd than such a proceeding when we were upon the point of concluding a treaty with Spain; and, considering that we told the envoy that we should never have consented to hold any conference with the Court were we not assured ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... managed, is the use of Compound Words. But there is nothing requires a greater Genius than to form Beautiful Compound Words in Epick Poetry, or more Exactness and Labour in Pastoral. In Epick Poetry 'tis absurd to make a Compound Word, unless it helps forward the Sence; and in Pastory, it must add to the Softness of the Dialect, and in some measure assist the Thought, yet it need not do it so much as in Epick Poetry; ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... far off. I should like to. I should like to try quite a new life-mode. This is finished in me—and yet perhaps it is absurd to go further. I'm rather sick of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... genius for his attack upon les femmes savantes. Marivaux, too, had, as Palissot expresses it, "un faible pour les precieuses,"[20] and for the author of those famous attacks, a contempt as unfeigned as absurd. The high moral character of his writings and his ideas on marriage and children may readily have found their origin with ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... be slowly acquired; and it is only by degrees, after patient study, that the possibilities of such composition can be fairly estimated. Hasty criticism has declared that to put forward any serious claim on behalf of seventeen-syllable poems "would be absurd." But what, then, of Crashaw's famous line upon the miracle at the marriage feast ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... the State, many of the most important industries would entirely stop, and the prosperity of California would receive a blow from which it would not recover for twenty years. They are, as a class, peaceable, patient, ingenious, and industrious. That they deprive any white man of work is absurd, in a State which has scarcely half a million of people, and which can support ten millions, and needs at least three millions to develop fairly its abundant natural wealth; and no matter what he is, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
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