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More "Preposterous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conjecturing whether it were possible, that one as practised, as sensible, and as much accustomed to the beauties of the court, as Bluewater, had actually been caught, by the pretty face of a country girl, when so well turned of fifty, himself! Then discarding the notion as preposterous, he gave his attention to the discourse of Sir Wycherly; a dissertation on rabbits, and rabbit-warrens. In this ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Drontheim, entreating them to support at court his plans for the conversion of the Greenlanders. Both bishops replied favourably; but when his friends saw that he was in earnest, they set up vehement opposition to what they styled his preposterous enterprise. Even his wife and family were at first among his foes, so that the poor man was greatly perplexed, and well-nigh gave up in despair. Happily, his wife at the time became involved in a ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... What do you suppose this insanity is if it is not love? What do you imagine leads me to this preposterous escapade, if not ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... light which shines upon the path of obedience, and conducts to God, they naturally lose themselves amidst the perplexities of error and the mazes of falsehood: it need not, therefore, occasion surprise though their course should be eccentric, or their conduct preposterous. The passions being chiefly engaged in this service, and kept in exercise by fear or fondness, reason retires; and imagination, supported by these auxiliaries, sways the sceptre. The absurdities, however, to which under such circumstances the human mind becomes addicted, would ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... vain, as Eveley realized at once, and she subsided quickly, trying to think. The thing was impossible. It could not be. Such things did not happen any more—not in real life in the United States. It was cruel, preposterous, unbelievable. ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... forthcoming. His complaints caused him to be arrested in 1798; and with a short interval he remained in gaol until 1800. By that time Despard was desperate, and engaged in a plot to seize the Tower of London and Bank of England and assassinate George III. The whole idea was patently preposterous, but Despard was arrested, tried before a special commission, found guilty of high treason, and, with six of his fellow-conspirators, sentenced in 1803 to be hanged, drawn and quartered. These were the last men to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... than questionable in morality, if it is to be taken in earnest. To pretend that you believe any doctrine for no better reason than that you doubt everything else, would be dishonest, if it were not preposterous. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the cast clothes of a slug, Be the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat, Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat? You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of it clings! I have lived out my time—I have prigged lots of verse—I have kissed (ah, that stings!) Lips that swore I had cribbed every line that I wrote on them—cribbed— honour bright! Then I loathed her; ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he said at length desperately, "here is a letter which I got a few days ago. I want you to read that last page. It will show you my difficulty. It is from my sister-in-law, and, of course, her position is quite preposterous; but you know a woman finds it difficult to understand some things in a man's life. You know what I mean, but read. I think you know who she is. It was she who sent Kalman out here to save him from going wrong. God ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... an unsolicited letter from the janitor of a building in which a former Minister of Education now has his law offices. I have many letters equally preposterous.... ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... continue to exist without the vast sums which Christians of wealth so generously contributed? What was to happen, even to the churches of all denominations in England itself, if they accepted the preposterous doctrine that a man could not enjoy the fruit of his own labour, or inherit that of his ancestors, and at the same time remain a Christian? It was totally out of the question, far beyond the bounds of all practical common sense, and therefore it could not be Christian, ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... occasion against the preposterous elections of vnmeet men into episcopall ses, for that they were not so qualified as the dignitie of the place required; otherwise peraduenture enabled with competent knowledge and learning. And suerlie, we may note these ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed
... of the standers-by pitied the man's misfortune, and thinking he was not able to drive those flies away himself, was going to drive them away for him; but he prayed him to let them alone: the other, by way of reply, asked him the reason of such a preposterous proceeding, in preventing relief from his present misery; to which he answered, "If thou drivest these flies away, thou wilt hurt me worse; for as these are already full of my blood, they do not crowd about ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... softly at the preposterous suggestion that he would even dream of going out in the rain, which was now roaring heavily on the loose board roof, and miss a cut of cherry pie—a cherry pie of Alice's making! And the Roussillon claret, too, was always excellent. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... literary ambition grew up in me, and in the long reveries of the afternoon, when I was distributing my case, I fashioned a future of overpowering magnificence and undying celebrity. I should be ashamed to say what literary triumphs I achieved in those preposterous deliriums. What I actually did was to write a good many copies of verse, in imitation, never owned, of Moore and Goldsmith, and some minor poets, whose work caught my fancy, as I read it in the newspapers or ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... passing by the rest. A group of persons presently attracted him who had just come apparently from the Rive Gauche, and were making for the Rue Royale. They consisted of a man, a woman, and a child. The child was a tiny creature in a preposterous feathered hat as large as itself. It had just been put down to walk by its father, and was dragging contentedly at its mother's hand, sucking a crust. The man had a bag of tools on his shoulder and was clearly an artisan going to work. His wife's face was ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had warm defenders—who affirmed that the Marquis of Arondelle would never seek a peasant girl to win her affections, unless he intended to make her his marchioness—which was an idea too preposterous to be entertained for an instant—therefore there could be ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... adorers. It might have been supposed that, like a princess in the Arabian Nights, Emilie was rich enough and beautiful enough to choose from among all the princes in the world. Her objections were each more preposterous than the last: one had too thick knees and was bow-legged, another was short-sighted, this one's name was Durand, that one limped, and almost all were too fat. Livelier, more attractive, and gayer than ever ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... by this time that I need not hesitate further to tell the doctor the truth. I disliked the task, but I saw it would not be safe to leave him any longer in ignorance of his condition. There as no telling what other preposterous tales he might invent. So I said ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... and the daring Jimmie Thomas were thoroughly in accord with Schofield's preposterous sail-carrying was a foregone conclusion. But others of the crew were not of the same mind. An hour more here or there seemed a small matter to them as compared to the chance of drowning and leaving a family ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... dread had gripped the meeting, paralysing thought, but it passed, and while some remained perplexed the majority began to resent vehemently the suggestions of Hammer. I could hear those immediately behind me insisting that the view was sheer rubbish. It was preposterous. It was pure lunacy. With these phrases, constantly repeated, they threw off the startling effect of Hammer's speech, and fortified themselves in the conviction that the Blue Disease was merely a new malady, similar to other maladies, and that life ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... having no romance of her own, would possibly have come to enjoy the autumnal poetry of his love if he had permitted. But when she first approached him on the subject of those rumors she had heard, and treated them with a natural derision, as involving the most absurd and preposterous ideas, he, instead of suffering her jests, and then turning her interest to his favor, resented them, and closed his heart and its secret against her. What could she do, thereafter, but feign to avoid the subject, and adroitly touch it with constant, invisible ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... moment Laodice had burned with confident rage, feeling that, by force of the justice of her cause, she might overthrow this preposterous villainy, but at Philadelphus' question she suddenly chilled and blanched and shrank back. A new and supreme disadvantage of her loss presented itself to her at last. She could ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the earth rotated, just as satisfactorily as by the more cumbrous supposition of Ptolemy. He showed, moreover, that the latter supposition must attribute an almost infinite velocity to the stars, so that the rotation of the entire universe around the earth was clearly a preposterous supposition. The second great principle, which has conferred immortal glory on Copernicus, assigned to the earth its true position in the universe. Copernicus transferred the centre, about which all the planets revolve, from the earth to the sun; and he established ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... have been worse employed," said Miss Metoaca abruptly, and her face cleared. "Doesn't the autopsy settle that preposterous charge against Nancy?" ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... seen in ambush at the Ford, the shaking of the cane-brake by the breeze, or by some skulking bear, would as readily account for them. The idea of his being allowed to pass a crew of Indians in their lair, without being pursued, or even fired upon, is quite preposterous." ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... spoke through her—he could not for a moment entertain. Such a claim was opposed to all sound thinking, to every law known to science—was, in short, preposterous. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... logically considered? But these we have found legitimate. Where then? I answer in deducing any consequences by such a process, and according to such rules. The rules are alien and inapplicable; the process presumptuous, yea, preposterous. The error, [Greek: to proton pseudos], lies in the false assumption of a logical deducibility ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... done quoting, however, than his mother peered into the room, claiming the business talk that had been promised. From that talk George emerged irritable and silent. His mother's extravagance was really preposterous!—not to be borne. For four years now he had been free from the constant daily friction of money troubles which had spoilt his youth and robbed him of all power of respecting his mother. And he had hugged his freedom. But all the time it ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... do the work of war-ships. The doctrine which it was thus endeavored to establish had never been admitted into international law, has ever since been repudiated by universal consent of all nations, and is intrinsically preposterous. The British, however, designed to make it effective, and set to work in earnest to confiscate all vessels and cargoes captured on their way from any neutral nation to any port within the proscribed district. On November 21, next following, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... never said them. What do you think of me? Even if I did care, do you suppose I would say as much—and to another man? Oh!" she exclaimed with sudden indignation, "let's talk of something else. This is too—preposterous." ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... that one becomes aware of its bewildering variety of native and exotic trees and shrubs. From the sea it looks one dense mass of greenery, in which the bright foliage of the candle-nut relieves the glossy dark green of the breadfruit—a maze of preposterous bananas, out of which rise slender annulated trunks of palms giving their infinite grace to the grove. And palms along the bay, almost among the surf, toss their waving plumes in the sweet soft breeze, not "palms in exile," but children of a blessed isle where ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... has the most delicious head I ever saw," was Lady Ingleton's first (preposterous) thought. "And the strongest will I ever encountered," was the following thought, as she looked into her ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the Lower Fourth were, of course, too old to consider the possibility of actually working. It was a preposterous idea. Something had to be done, however, so Collins bought excellent translations of the works of Vergil and Xenophon. A vote of thanks proposed by Foster and seconded by Brown was ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... said the duke; "but the garb should always be suitable to the office and rank of the wearer: for a lawyer to be habited like a soldier, or a soldier like a priest, would be preposterous; and you; Sancho, must be clad partly like a scholar and partly like a soldier; as, in the office you will hold, arms and ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... gleam of light. "But she is so insane that very little reliance should be placed on anything that she says. In such instances, you know, women make the most preposterous statements and believe them. In her condition, she might just as well have claimed me for ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... her sitting-room and debated the matter. It was a sense of diffidence, the fear of making herself ridiculous, which arrested her. Otherwise she might have flown into the room, declaimed her preposterous theories and leave these clever men to work out the details. She opened the door and with the ticket clenched in her ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... they shall be, yet they do not come to pass because they are foreseen, notwithstanding it is necessary that either things to come be foreseen by God, or that things foreseen do fall out, which alone is sufficient to overthrow free-will. But see how preposterous it is that the event of temporal things should be said to be the cause of the everlasting foreknowledge! And what else is it to think that God doth therefore foresee future things, because they are to happen, than to affirm that those things which happened long since, are the cause of that sovereign ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... preposterous words, the assembly was stimulated to action. The frightful clatter, drumming, and blowing of horns began again, and the donkey set off with all his might, the Mortimers after him. When he returned, little Bertram was seated on his back. "Johnnie ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... a plain clothes man from detective headquarters around the next bend of a peaceful Missouri road was so preposterous and incongruous that Billy had found it impossible to give the matter ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... back to his feet. He could conceive but one explanation of this preposterous statement. Severino's sickness had extended to his brain. He was delirious. This was ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... have in his turn? What government is formed for general happiness? Where is not it thought heresy by the majority, to insinuate that the felicity of one man ought not to be preferred to that Of Millions? Had not I better, at sixty-eight, leave men to these preposterous notions, than return to Bishop Hoadley, and sigh? Not but I have a heartfelt satisfaction when I hear that a mind as liberal as his, and who has dared to utter sacred truths, meets with approbation and purchasers of his work. You must not, however, flatter yourself, Sir, that all your ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... most willingly by taking the whole upon himself, and he managed so to do in a very ingenious way, without incurring any preposterous expense. He was acquainted with a set of rich, fashionable young men, who had taken a sporting lodge in a neighbouring county, who desired no better than to accede to the terms proposed, and to distinguish themselves by ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... "It is preposterous!" he cried. "The very idea of making a mechanic of you is absurd. I will see your father ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... that in the first place there is no shadow of evidence that he more than the other turned traitor. In the second place he would be sure to say that such an accusation against a Confederate officer is too monstrous and preposterous to be entertained for a moment; and that doubtless your negro, although he denies the fact, really chattered about his doings to the negroes he was lodging with, and that it was through them that someone got to know of the disguise you would wear. ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... amusing to see how decisively, yet with what preposterous ignorance of any thing like the true state of affairs in this country, the English press informs the public as to the 'ex or inexpediency' of President ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... intimate association from their childhood? To say that such bringing up together creates "indifference" is obviously incorrect; to say that it leads to "aversion" is altogether unwarranted; and to trace to it such a feeling as our horror at the thought of marrying a sister, or mother, is simply preposterous. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a primitive Hebrew mythology—and take him in the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers. Insisting upon his godship can only make him preposterous to the modern mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... The tales which I had been accustomed to hear of the world's deceit and falsehood seemed groundless and cruel—the inventions of envious disappointed minds—whose ambition had betrayed them into hopes, too preposterous for fulfilment Happiness was on earth—did I not find her in my daily walk?—for such as were not loth to greet her with a lowly and contented spirit. I had no present care. The days were prosperous. I obtained a scholarship in my college ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... a froward and obstinate girl," her father said angrily. "She has refused several most eligible offers, and I have to thank you for it. Well, sir, I hope at least that you have the grace to feel that it is preposterous that you should any longer stand in the way of ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and means, or any other committee of Congress, to devote all their recess to public business. Elections are coming off for Members of Congress, and they will look after the elections. They must have a little rest. Therefore, the idea of waiting for the committees of Congress to act, is preposterous in my judgment. It is too late. If the committee had commenced on the first Monday of December, they might by this time probably had prepared a bill. They have made no such preparation, and, therefore, it ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Constitution itself—that it is hard to imagine what was intended by it, unless it was to take advantage of the presumed ignorance of the subject among the readers of an English journal, to impose upon them, a preposterous fiction. It was State ratification alone—the ratification of the people of each State, independently of all other people—that gave force, vitality, and validity to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... one night. "Your existence proves that there is truth in mythology, as some of us have always believed. Your visit to Titan will create a furor in scientific circles, for you are impossibility incarnate—personifications of the preposterous. In you, wildest fancy had become commonplace. According to many of our scientists, it is utterly impossible for you to exist. Yet you say, and it must be, that there are millions upon millions of similar ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... note-making on the "Old French War," with such notes as these: "Rights of the two nations"; "When did Marquette make his discoveries?" "When did La Salle settle?" "Had not the French a right both of prior discovery and prior settlement?" "The English never settled"; "The letters patent to Louisiana are preposterous, perhaps, but not more so than the English claim from coasts back of the Mississippi"; "The first blood was spilt by Washington. Jumonville would seem to have been sent with peaceful intentions. His orders charged him to attack ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... going to be dreadful and you must be honest with me. You know you asked me to go to you the middle of the week to stay over the fete. May I come now—today? I cannot tell you why I ask now, but when I do you will be interested. May I? I know I am preposterous." ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Merope actually killed her son. The arresting and triumphant "grip" of the tragic misfortunes of Oedipus and Orestes, the combination of the course of fate and the [Greek: hamartia] of the individual, is totally absent. The wooing of Merope by Polyphontes is not so much preposterous as insignificant, though Voltaire, by a touch of modernism, has rescued it or half-rescued it from this most terrible of limbos. The right triumphs, no doubt; but who cares whether it does or not? And Mr Arnold, with the heroic ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Democratic Parliament in any case have endured it. A new civil war against Ireland seems morally impossible. Therefore Mr. Gladstone is ruining a measure which might have been good, by his preposterous dealing with it. Lord Hartington said (as indeed did John Bright) the very truth, that the Liberal Party cannot so disown its own traditions, and its wisest principles, as to allow an individual, however justly honoured, to concoct secretly from ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... land. The imagination of the people was aroused, and tales of a wealth like that of Croesus came from mariners who had sailed the seven seas, and were willingly believed by an excited audience. Indeed the nations stood ready with open-mouthed wonder to accept all stories, no matter how marvelous or preposterous. America suddenly appeared to all people as the land that offered wealth, religious and political freedom, a home for the poor, a refuge for the persecuted, in truth, a paradise for all who would begin life anew. With such a vision ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... many advantages of being very young is one's absolute certainty that there is only one type of beautiful girl in the world. That type we make a religion. We are its pugnacious champions, and the idea of our falling in love with any other is too preposterous even for discussion. If our tastes happen to be for blondness, brunettes simply do not exist for us; and if we affect the slim and willowy in figure, our contempt for the plump and rounded is too sincere for expression. Usually the type we choose is one whose beauty is somewhat ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... insignificant, for to the 80,000 holdings not exceeding one acre we must add 62,000 of from 1 to 5 acres. In the face of these facts, the assumption that "all agricultural land"—as defined in the Return—will be sold, is not only unsound but preposterous. ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Ethics, in the completed form in which we have it (no manuscript of it is extant) has the incredible appearance of a system of philosophy sprung full-grown from an unhesitating mind. Even a most cursory reading of the Short Treatise completely dispels this preposterous illusion. The Ethics was the product ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... things that take place in the world, after making mention of those which he considered to be physical and material, adds, "and the mind and everything which is by means of man."(8) Certainly; it would have been a preposterous course, when he would trace the effects he saw around him to their respective sources, had he directed his exclusive attention upon some one class or order of originating principles, and ascribed to these everything which happened anywhere. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... pleased by this trivial attention, and she knew it. It was an absurdly insignificant incident, and yet here she was recalling it with something like a thrill. Not only that, but she recalled another and equally preposterous detail of the day. She had dropped her vanity-box in the car, and as they both stooped for it his cheek had brushed hers. He laughed lightly and apologized—forgetting it the next second. Eight hours later she dared remember ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... when a woman is barren, though the instruments of generation are perfect both in herself and in her husband, and no preposterous or diabolical course used to it, and neither age, nor disease, nor any defect hindering, and yet the woman ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... death if he goes at such a preposterous speed. It must have been nearly two hundred miles an hour: the Brennan mono-rail is nothing to it. At any rate, it's rather a feather in our cap—this record, I mean, after so many have been made by the French and the Americans—and ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the peer, "such a thing never entered into my head. It was so preposterous, so insane, so out of all reasonable calculation, that I might just as well have been afraid of building my house under a hill for fear the hill should walk out of its place and crush it. I could never have dreamed of or fancied such a thing, sir, as that you should forget the difference ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... Franklin Institute. Shortly after I was invited before the Northern Medical Society of this city to address them thereon. A number of medical gentlemen have been using it in their practice, while the bulk of them have spurned it as "negative" and preposterous, without an effort at trying it, which I ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... And why, then, should any farmer in this State hold back from giving this Institution his cordial and hearty support? And stranger still—why should he put himself in antagonism to its success? Such an attitude, to my mind, is not merely unwise, but preposterous—yes, suicidal. If the College is not what it should be, the more his self-interest should prompt him to bestow upon it his aid. It is the Farmers' Institution—founded for his benefit, at much cost; and if he ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... move was to bring a preposterous charge against the whole English clergy by declaring that, in submitting to Wolsey's authority as papal legate, they had violated an ancient law forbidding papal representatives to appear in England without ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... and Leonore have had a possibly quite harmless flirtation; and instead of Vivarce being found on his way from Leonore's room, he has merely been walking with Leonore in the garden: at midnight remember, and after her husband has gone to bed. In order to lead up to this, a preposterous speech has been put into the mouth of the Marquis de Neste, an idiotic rhapsody about love and the stars, and I forget what else, which I imagine we are to take as an indication of Vivarce's sentiments as he walks with Leonore in the garden at midnight. But all these precautions are in vain; the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... it must be forever; that he must be that party's chattel and wear its brass collar the rest of his days—would not that insult him? It goes without saying. He would say some rude, unprintable thing, and turn his back on that preposterous organization. But the political boss puts no conditions upon him at all; and this volunteer makes no promises, enlists for no stated term. He has in no sense become a part of an army; he is in no way restrained ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation. I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not been saved from that impropriety by poor Fyne becoming preposterous. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... in the time of Pericles were given over to two things which were enough to damn any individual and any nation—idleness and superstition. The drudgery was done by slaves; the idea that a free citizen should work was preposterous; to be useful was a disgrace. For a time Pericles dissipated their foolish thought, but it kept cropping out. To speak disrespectfully of the gods was to invite death, and the philosophers who dared discuss the powers of Nature or refer to a natural religion were safe only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... is preposterous to suppose that household roasting will be continued long in any part of this country, if coffee properly prepared can be had. This is demonstrated by the remarkable advances made in Pittsburgh and other places, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... circumstance of the human form being concealed in this country in loose folding robes, that caused the Chinese draughtsman so completely to fail, I leave to the artists of our own country to determine: but the fact was as I state it; all his attempts to draw these figures were preposterous. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the necessity of meeting Alden again, then made a wry face at her own foolishness. "Ridiculous," she said to herself, "preposterous, absurd!" No matter what her own nightmares might be, he slept soundly—of course he did. How could healthy youth with a clear conscience ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... education which he had not, his English could not have been better; but if he had had the usage du monde which as a young man he had not, there would have been a difference. He would not, for instance, have given us the preposterous scenes in Nicholas Nickleby in which parts are played by Lord Frederick Verisopht, Sir Mulberry Hawke, and their friends; the scene of the hero's luncheon at a restaurant and the dreadful description of the mirrors and other splendours would not have been written. It is a very ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... at her as he had looked at Barbara, enjoying her absurdity, letting her play, like the child she was, with her preposterous idea. ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... something supernatural which is 'the fundamental principle of all false metaphysics.' 'No such belief can for a moment be entertained by those who see in nature the cause of all effects, and treat with the contempt it merits, the preposterous notion that out of nothing at the bidding of something, of which one can ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... She indulg'd herself in every Whim that came in her Head, without Fear of being brow-beat. In the first Place, She insisted that the Chief Magus, who was old and gouty, should dance a Saraband before her; and upon his modest Refusal to comply with so preposterous a Request, she persecuted him without Mercy: Nothing would serve her Turn, in the next Place, but his Majesty's grand Master of the Horse must make her a Minc'd-pye. The Gentleman took the Liberty to let her know, that he was no profess'd Cook; a Tart, ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... at the gate. There was one of the fattest white horses I ever saw, and a queer wagon, shaped like a van. A funny-looking little man with a red beard leaned forward from the seat and said something. I didn't hear what it was, I was looking at that preposterous wagon of his. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... cruelly enhancing red silk and melting sequin paste, the billowy arms inundated with the thumb-deep dimples lax out along the chair-sides, as preponderous and preposterous a heroine as ever fell the lot of scribe, she was nature's huge joke—a practical joke, too, at eighteen dollars a week, bank-books from three trust companies, and a china pig ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... He had heard hints of this preposterous opinion once or twice lately, and they disgusted his sense of fitness. How could a man possibly be good at business if he rushed through it like a steam-engine? Supposing one of the telegraph posts at the side ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... approach to a mere mock fallacy of form, and we see what poor amusement it generally affords. To feign that because words have the same sound, they convey the same thoughts or meanings is a fiction as transparent as it is preposterous. A word is nothing but an arbitrary sign, and apart from the thought connected with it, it is an empty unmeaning sound. The link is too slight in puns, the disparity between the things they represent as similar, too great—there is too much falsity. The worst kind of them is where the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... girl as Margaret to be merged in so dreary, undistinguished a class was manifestly preposterous. It was a stupid misapplication of human material. A plainer face and a more homespun fibre would have served the ...
— Different Girls • Various
... to devour their young because their owners have handled them too freely, or removed them from place to place! Swine, and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so much amazed; since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are capable of any enormity: but why the parental feelings of brutes, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, etc., as the only possible cause of variation. In one limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the mistletoe, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... obviously shaken, this monthly farce; this dinner that in reality mocked all the real meaning of blood-relationship. Good Lord! To Adrian's modern mind, impatient and courageous, the situation was preposterous, grotesque. He himself would have broken through to the woman he loved, were she seriously ill, if all the city was cordoned to keep him back. What could it mean? Entire selfishness on his uncle's part? Surely not that! That was too inhuman! Adrian was willing to grant his uncle exceptional ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the room. Mr. Carey was unused to work, and he turned to his correspondence with resentment. On one side of the desk was a bundle of bills, and these filled him with irritation. One especially seemed preposterous. Immediately after Mrs. Carey's death Emma had ordered from the florist masses of white flowers for the room in which the dead woman lay. It was sheer waste of money. Emma took far too much upon herself. Even if there had been no financial necessity, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... replied, stretching himself luxuriously in the long lounge chair, "the most commonplace life hovers on the edge of the bizarre. But those of us who overstep the border become preposterous in the eyes of those who have never done so. This is not because the unusual is necessarily the untrue, but because writers of fiction have claimed the unusual as their particular province, and in doing so have divorced it from fact in the public eye. Thus I, myself, am a myth, ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... Joe as if life were torn to bits, as if the world's end had come. It was unbelievable, impossible—his eyes belied his brain. That all those years of labor and dream and effort were going up in flame and smoke seemed preposterous. And only a few moments before he and Myra had stood on the heights of the world; had their mad moment; and even then his life was being burned away from him. He felt the hoarse sobs lifting up through ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... the chief consolation of the pious, and leads them into perpetual doubt. For faith cannot exist unless it looks upon the promise of mercy concerning the Mediator. Nor is there an inhabitation unless the consolation is received by this faith. And it is a preposterous way of teaching that one is to believe first the inhabitation, afterwards forgiveness of sins (prius credere inhabitationem, postea remissionem peccatorum). Since therefore this dogma of Osiander is both false and pernicious to consciences, it must be shunned and damned." (C. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... so!" And Mme. de Brecourt rebounded, standing before her. "And you LET him—about yourself? You gave him preposterous facts?" ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... understands English so well, he certainly knows how to make himself understood in it. His story of the bicycle is preposterous." ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... least understand; here a madman smitten, like Fiesco, with a mania for managing a large and dangerous intrigue all in his own way, and accomplishing his ends by modes of action which seem to him heroic, but to the ordinary mind utterly preposterous. Thus he accounts for his failure to confide his plans to Carlos by saying that he was 'beguiled by false delicacy',—which seems to mean that his relation to the king was felt by him as a breach of friendship. But how strange that a man with public ends in view should feel thus under ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... story was preposterous. In examining the late lord's private papers, he discovered the letter which I typed and signed. He said very coldly that the fact that I had waited until everyone who could corroborate or deny my story was dead, united with the improbability of the narrative itself, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... peculiarities and absurdities, affect to disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they are not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast between the real and the affected character as severely as possible, and denying to those, who would impose on us for what they are not, even the merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and satire, such as we see it ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... very sight of books, or where the torch of learning is kindled, which burns on with ever-increasing brightness forever more, and when I think of some of the teachers of my youth I am reminded of what the wise pastor said to a "stupid lunk-head" who had conceived the preposterous idea that he was called to be a preacher. "What, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... Ariel, yet as Puck profuse Of the "preposterous," was that wit, whose use Was ever held "within The limits of becoming mirth." His whim Never shy delicacy's glance could dim, Or move the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... to him in what surroundings this preposterous offer, that she should leave the Convent and fly with him to Warwick, had been made to Seraphine. Her swollen countenance would be equally unattractive, whether lifted in cell or cloister, or where white clouds chased one another across the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... now had all the absurdity of her ridiculous love-experiences superadded to it. He tried to reason with himself that it was only a phase of frontier life, which ought to have amused him. But it did not. The intrusion of this preposterous girl seemed to disarrange the discipline of his life as well as of his school. The usual vague, far-off dreams in which he was in the habit of indulging during school-hours, dreams that were perhaps ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... Mr. Narkom, for the moment I thought you were fooling," he said in a tone of deep interest. "But I see now that you are quite in earnest, although the thing sounds so preposterous, a child might be expected to scoff at it. A man to get a magic belt; to put it on, and then to melt away? Why, the 'Seven-league Boots' couldn't be a greater tax on one's credulity. Sit down and tell me all ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... breath, more thoroughly puzzled than ever. What could be her purpose to make so bold an effort to deceive? Did she imagine for a moment that he could be made to believe she had been continuously held prisoner since that Sunday morning? It was preposterous. Why, he had seen her again and again with his own eyes; had talked with her, and so had Sexton. His heart sank, but he determined to go on, and learn how far she would carry this strange tale. Perhaps out of the welter he could discern ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... war horse that he was, had already pricked up his ears, and determined to lend his tongue or his sword, as his state might require. That a fight could go on in the Union so long as Virginia or himself kept out of it, seemed to him a possibility little less than preposterous. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... peace. In April, 1525, Tunstall and Sir Richard Wingfield were sent to Spain with proposals for the exclusion of Francis and his children from the French throne and the dismemberment of his kingdom.[474] It is doubtful if Wolsey himself desired the fulfilment of so preposterous and iniquitous a scheme. It is certain that Charles was in no mood to abet it. He had no wish to extract profit for England out of the abasement of Francis, to see Henry King of France, or lord of any French provinces. He had ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... dotage, troublesome sleep, terrible dreams in the night, subrusticus pudor et verecundia ignava, a foolish kind of bashfulness to some, perverse conceits and opinions, [2653]dejection of mind, much discontent, preposterous judgment. They are apt to loath, dislike, disdain, to be weary of every object, &c., each thing almost is tedious to them, they pine away, void of counsel, apt to weep, and tremble, timorous, fearful, sad, and out of all ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... fell to laughter. "It is preposterous," he cried. "Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am I—in this damned twilight—I never knew a dream in twilight before—an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that I ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... loaded with slug, and my naked small sword, so that, thought I, if the thief ventures back, he shall not slip through my fingers again so easily. I do confess that these imposing preparations did appear to me somewhat preposterous, even at the time, as it was not, to say the least of it, very probable that my slippery gentleman would return the same night. However, my servant in his zeal was not to be denied, and I was not so fit to judge as usual, from having ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... upon the three young men at once, but it seemed too preposterous. The inspector had turned to the window and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... believed himself to be that monster Richard the Third, he deserved to be hanged every time he performed it." What Dickens himself really thought of these wilder affectations of intensity among impersonators, is, with delicious humour, plainly enough indicated through that preposterous reminiscence of Mr. Crummies, "We had a first-tragedy man in our company once, who, when he played Othello, used to black himself all over! But that's feeling a part, and going into it as if you meant it; it isn't usual—more's the pity." Thoroughly giving himself up to the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Northwest and Fort Benton's consequent growth was shared, Danvers knew, by many another enthusiast; but as he looked back, mentally, over the lonely, wind-swept miles through which the Missouri flowed, uninhabited save by a few adventurers, trappers and Indians, the prediction seemed preposterous. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... been telling me abominable stories. I don't—I can't believe them! Do you know he says he, they, all the old rogues together, believe that wretched miser had destroyed his will and died intestate, and that every penny will be yours; not a sou comes to the widow and children of the nephew. It is preposterous. It is the most monstrous injustice. If it is law, an act of Parliament ought to be passed to—to do away with it. Fancy your having everything, and me, my boys and myself, dependent on you!"—scornful emphasis ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... still further into its origin, I found the foundation so weak, that I who made it my business to confirm others, was very near being dissatisfied myself. 'Tis by this receipt that Plato —[Laws, viii. 6.]—undertakes to cure the unnatural and preposterous loves of his time, as one which he esteems of sovereign virtue, namely, that the public opinion condemns them; that the poets, and all other sorts of writers, relate horrible stories of them; a recipe, by virtue of which the most beautiful ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... inspection without feeling that every word and look and gesture was being observed, probably with a view to recording it in a letter home; and the idea of being at one's ease with them in the room was about as preposterous as the idea of sleeping comfortably on ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... David's capital. When Solomon was king it was one of the mighty and magnificent cities of the world. Sixteen sieges have destroyed it, and the city of to-day is really built on the ruins of its seven predecessors. How utterly preposterous, then, is it for any one to attempt to identify the sacred places! The present population is 60,000. It is a walled city and has eleven gates. The Mosque of Omar is its principal feature; this was completed by ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... the preposterous notion of an unhappy passion, and gyrated for a while about his fair cousin, Mme. d'Aiglemont, not perceiving that she had already danced the waltz in Faust with a diplomatist. The year '25 went by, spent in tentatives, ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... are told, was in an equal degree distressed and amazed in discovering what was in the minds of his colleagues. He, indeed, to be general of the Society of Jesus!—how strange and preposterous a supposition! Positively he could think of no such thing. What a life had he led before his conversion! How abounding in weaknesses had been his course since! How could he aspire to rule others, who so poorly could rule himself? ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... body: they are alembics through which its parts must necessarily move to attain that vigor which shall continue forever."18 To state this figment is enough. It would be folly to attempt any refutation of a fancy so obviously a pure contrivance to fortify a preconceived opinion, a fancy, too, so preposterous, so utterly without countenance, either from experience, observation, science, reason, or Scripture. The egg of man's divinity is not laid in the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of this. He wanted to, but it seemed so preposterous. Such an idiotic, outrageous thing to ask. Yet it is probable that he would have asked it if the young lady had given him the chance. But she did not; after a sidelong glance at his face, she hurriedly rose from ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for years, you have allowed yourselves to be humbugged by fine promises, and deceived—yes, deceived by preposterous stories; and to-day is the day you choose for showing yourselves inexorable! Upon my word and honor, it is positively amusing! By all means let us ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... Marilla watched the bright, animated face and graceful motions her thoughts went back to the evening Anne had arrived at Green Gables, and memory recalled a vivid picture of the odd, frightened child in her preposterous yellowish-brown wincey dress, the heartbreak looking out of her tearful eyes. Something in the memory brought tears ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... learned that Dexie was preparing to accompany the others, he was almost beside himself with rage. He refused at first to believe it—the idea was too preposterous! Well it was that the announcement was not made to him before the assembled household, for his face revealed the fierce conflict within, and he had quite as many objections to make as Gussie, though they ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... half-superstitious uneasiness that this coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost on the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order to prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked himself ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, paid little attention; regarded what German professors expounded in their class-rooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what well-advanced intrigues, lay back of what the professors and the writers were saying, and ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... "What preposterous absurdity!" I exclaimed. "She will never conform to your rules. She hates nursing. She has too much good sense to insult her fine womanly nature by degrading ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... poetic boasting and exaggeration is indulged in, each "hero" being required to give practical demonstrations of the things he has seen, the doughty deeds he has done, &c. He warms up as he goes along, and magnifies its importance in a ridiculous way. It amuses me to this day to recall my own preposterous songs about how I killed the two whales with my stiletto, and other droll pretensions. But, ah! ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... conduct would finally have upon him, if he could not obtain a pardon from me. And should he not be able to elicit it by fair means, he thought at any rate he would extract it by foul, then and there, without condition or any clause whatever. This was preposterous. I frankly told him exactly what I thought of him, saying I could not forget what had happened; that he had abused the trust reposed in him by the English, and I was bound in duty to report the whole matter in every detail to the Government; ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... certain trivial differences that shortly smote me. The windows were closed too tightly; for I had always kept the house very cool, although I had known that Theresa preferred warm rooms. And my work-basket was in disorder; it was preposterous that so small a thing should hurt me so. Then, for this was my first experience of the shadow-folded transition, the odd alteration of my emotions bewildered me. For at one moment the place seemed so ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... fairness and moderation the English ambassadors at Paris lessened their demands more than once, and appeared willing for some time to renew negotiations after their terms had been rejected. But in the end they still insisted on a claim which in point of equity was altogether preposterous, and rejected a compromise which would have put Henry in possession of the whole of Guienne and given him the hand of the French King's daughter Catharine with a marriage portion of eight hundred thousand crowns. Meanwhile Henry was making active preparations for war, and at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... on the hay-loft, in the granary, under the eaves, down cellar, and all this at the same time. It is doubtful if any stationary engine in a machine shop ever performed more diversified operations at once; thus proving most conclusively how a farmer may work motive power which it was once thought preposterous in him to think of using. It threshes wheat and other kinds of grain at the rate of from 400 to 500 bushels a day; it conveys the straw up to a platform across what we call the "great beams," where it is cut into chaff and dropped into ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Lincoln and Grant he could admire, but he would not listen to anything in favor of Mr. Gladstone. The only occasions on which I ever shook his faith in me were when I would venture meekly to suggest that some of the manifestly preposterous falsehoods about Mr. Gladstone could not be true. My uncle was one of the best men I have ever known, and when I have sometimes been tempted to wonder how good people can believe of me the unjust and impossible things they do believe, I have consoled myself by ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... him. The expense of building the house, and the keeping up of such a garden and establishment, did not leave too much available of the wealth Lady Martindale had brought, nor was the West Indian property in a prosperous state; the demand was preposterous; and Theodora found herself obliged to defend poor Violet, who, her aunt declared, must have instigated it in consequence of the notice lavished upon her; while, as Theodora averred with far more ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... courts have a power of commanding the executive government to abandon superior duties and attend on them, at whatever distance, I am unwilling, by any notice of the subpoena, to set a precedent which might sanction a proceeding so preposterous. I enclose you, therefore, a letter, public and for the court, covering substantially all they ought to desire. If the papers which were enclosed in Wilkinson's letter may, in your judgment, be communicated without injury, you will be ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... all that. We're all Socialists nowadays. Ideals—excellent. But—it gets misunderstood. It gives the men a sense of moral support. It makes them fancy that they are It. Encourages them to forget duties and set up preposterous claims. Class war and all that sort of thing. You gentlemen of the clergy don't quite realize that socialism may begin with Ruskin and end with Karl Marx. And that from the Class War to the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... of yours—or rather Bob read them to me," Doris said presently. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for writing such a preposterous yarn as ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... believe Mr. McGrath, and I told him, as I resumed my graceful occupation, that I didn't think there were any fish there to catch. The idea of their rejecting flies served up as mine were was too preposterous. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... think she was, and I had a lurid moment when I was tempted to push on and make her show herself somehow at her worst. We had undertaken a preposterous thing in befriending her as we had done, and our course in bringing Kendricks in was wholly unjustifiable. How could I lead her on to some betrayal of her essential Philistinism, and make her so impossible in his eyes that even he, with all his sweetness and goodness, must take the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... live with me, Miss Marston," said Hesper; but it was with a laugh, and that light touch of the tongue which suggests but a flying fancy spoken but for the sake of the preposterous; while Mary, not forgetting she had heard the same thing once before, heard it with a smile, and had no rejoinder ready; whereupon Hesper, who was, in reality, feeling her way, ventured a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... eventually setting up in a house of her own in a neighbouring village, and there founding 'something like a Protestant Sisterhood, without vows, for women of educated feelings'. The whole scheme was summarily brushed aside as preposterous; and Mrs. Nightingale, after the first shock of terror, was able to settle down again more or less comfortably to her embroidery. But Florence, who was now twenty-five and felt that the dream of her life had been shattered, came ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... my honour! The suggestion is preposterous. You seem to know everything. Tell Margaret that I did leave Stowmarket by the train I named, that I stayed in the Hotel Victoria the same night, and left for the Riviera at 11 a.m. next day. Margaret, don't you believe me? You and I were sweethearts as children. Can you think I murdered ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... and corn weekly to insure a steady improvement; and if cattle are forced upon cake and corn over two or three months, it will, in my opinion, pay no one. To give unlimited quantities for years, and to say it will pay, is preposterous. To give fat cattle the finishing dip, cake and corn, given in moderation and with skill for six weeks before the cattle are sent to the fat market, will pay the feeder; but to continue this for more than two months will ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... to reject all overtures from that quarter. We thus learn that the most desperate measures are in agitation—weak and preposterous too as they are desperate, and must in the end prove ruinous. Antiochus, we doubt not, is a tool in the hands of others, but he stands out as the head and centre of the conspiracy. There is a violent and a strong party, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... never-to-be-forgotten hour, and to cry to God, 'Burn my flesh, dry up all the blood in my veins, break all my bones, thou canst not take from me the remembrance which sweetens and refreshes me for ever and ever!' . . . Thais is dying! Preposterous God, if thou knewest how I laugh at Thy hell! Thais is dying, and she will never be ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... the world not only the little foibles but also the drunkenness and consequent idiocy and madness of a brother whose family was still living. Her practice was, indeed, so much at variance with her profession that it is preposterous rather to accept than to doubt her words. George Sand was certainly not the self-sacrificing woman she pretended to be; for her sacrifices never outlasted her inclinations, they were, indeed, nothing ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that the earth rotated, just as satisfactorily as by the more cumbrous supposition of Ptolemy. He showed, moreover, that the latter supposition must attribute an almost infinite velocity to the stars, so that the rotation of the entire universe around the earth was clearly a preposterous supposition. The second great principle, which has conferred immortal glory on Copernicus, assigned to the earth its true position in the universe. Copernicus transferred the centre, about which all the planets revolve, from ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... engraver,—each differing from the others in character and purpose; yet, after manipulating our crania, this man says of each what all the rest acknowledge to be true, and what, said of any but the particular person described, would be preposterous. Why are the busts of Socrates and Solon what they should be, according to this theory of Gall and Spurzheim? Were they modelled from life, or from characters resembling them? Compared the head of a Greek boy with that of a young Hottentot. One was largely developed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... the words crossed his lips, the professor realised how preposterous they must sound, but the exile shook his ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... were talking of! It was the fact of Nick's return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous terms! She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and stared vacantly before her. It had fallen at last—this blow in which she now saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined she was prepared ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... laughed harder than ever. "If there's anything more preposterous than Carol's vanity because of her beauty, it's Lark's vanity for her," ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... a whisper, of Mr. PUNCH how the latter very staid individual came to be there, I understood that, of all the absurd men of this century, he was selected as the most representatively preposterous. The PRINCE OF WALES was not asked, lest his morals might be hurt by something that was said. And it is so important, you know, for the British nation—(for the rest, see the Saturday Review.) And then Madame GEORGE SAND was to be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... first apparently not absolutely sure of the support of France, (No. 17,) and France, it would seem, was unwilling to tempt fate without the help of England. That England should be willing to join such a combination for such a cause seemed so preposterous to Germany that she did not believe it. Without England no France, without France no war, for alone Russia could not measure herself against Austria. Austria would not have attacked her of her own free will, but if Russia had attacked Austria, the whole world knew from the published treaties that ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... The thought was preposterous that the paper should mean anything to her. Ruth was about to throw it away; and then, failing to convince herself that the quotation was but idly written, she tucked the piece of paper into the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... the garrison for news that the hunters had started. Every day's delay at Challis meant an abridgment of the bridegroom's leave, and the wedding was now but a fortnight away. It began to seem preposterous that he should go at all, and the colonel was annoyed with himself for his enthusiasm over the plan in the first place. Mrs. Bogardus's watchfulness of dates told the story of her thoughts, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... thou art righteous, but they are but vain words. Knowest thou not that thy zeal, which is the life of thy righteousness, is preposterous in many things. What else means thy madness, and the rage thereof, against men as good as thyself. True, thy being ignorant that they are good, may save thee from the commission of the sin that is unpardonable, but it will never keep thee from spot in God's sight, but will make both thee ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always expresses himself inelegantly. His actions are all ungraceful; so that, with all his merit and knowledge, I would rather converse six hours with the most frivolous tittle-tattle woman who knew something of the world, than with him. The preposterous notions of a systematical man who does not know the world, tire the patience of a man who does. It would be endless to correct his mistakes, nor would he take it kindly: for he has considered everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is in the right. Impropriety is a characteristic, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... behind clocks or from within flower-pots. She looked at Pa with fresh awe. There was no knowing where you had him! He had the interest, for her, of one returned by miracle from other regions, gifted with preposterous knowledges.... He became at this instant fabulous, like Rip Van Winkle, or the Sleeping Beauty ... or the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... idiots!" yelled The Other Man. He was infuriated. "Two Englishmen with English tongues in their heads, and unable to direct their own movements. Preposterous!" And then, making an observation which I will not print, he suggested mildly that we might fix up ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... to tell me," he demanded of Harvey, "that seventeen only ran ten thousand? Why, it's preposterous! Saw it myself. It has a half-million on it, if there's a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... than the two do now from each other. Now what evidence of this is there? So perfect gradation in some departments, that some naturalists have thought that in some large divisions, if all existing forms were collected, a near approach to perfect gradation would be made. But such a notion is preposterous with respect to all, but evidently so with mammals. Other naturalists have thought this would be so if all the specimens entombed in the strata were collected{109}. I conceive there is no probability whatever of this; nevertheless it is certain all the numerous fossil forms fall in, as Buckland ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... dislikes have come about. The discovery that organism is capable of modification at all has occasioned so much astonishment that it has taken the most enlightened part of the world more than a hundred years to leave off expressing its contempt for such a crude, shallow, and preposterous conception. Perhaps in another hundred years we shall learn to admire the good sense, endurance, and thorough Englishness of organism in having been so averse to change, even more than its versatility in having been willing ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... her nephew had to endure a short and sarcastic sermon upon the nature of etiquette for young girls which finally sent him from the house, white-faced and furious. Truly, if his aunt had vented upon him her preposterous species of jealousy, she had gained thereby no good-will from the young man, who worshipped her daughter from afar as a creature scarcely to be ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... now was to exhibit her latest acquisitions, her beautiful new reading-lamp, the two preposterous cushions that supported and obliterated her; while he saw (preposterous Freda, who had not a shilling beyond what the gift brought her) that she had ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... their divine King and Saviour, by casting Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, and being miraculously supported in the air by angels—if He could do that, why should He not do it? And lastly, the third temptation looks at first sight so preposterous that it seems silly of the evil spirit to have hinted at it. To ask any man of piety, much less the Son of God Himself, to fall down and worship the devil, seems perfectly absurd—a request not to be listened to for a moment, but ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... hands. Nobody heeded Barbara; she did as she pleased, going and coming as in the colony. A favourite with all about the place, she had never to use authority. Every one, for very love, was at her service. Whatever preposterous thing, at whatever unearthly moment, she might have wanted, it would have been ready—her mare at midnight, her breakfast at noon, a cow in the library to draw from. There was little regularity in the house; every one wanted to do what was right in ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... heap ... Kent's ... the preposterous. [Talking on with steady monotony.] But I saw it would not do to interrupt that logical train of thought which reached definition about half past six. I had then been gleaning until ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... camp, before shooting at you. In short, take my advice and never mount a horse again when there is a Yankee in sight." We were highly gratified at being mistaken for them, and pretended to believe it was true. I hardly think he was right, though; it is too preposterous. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... caressing our hero in the solitude of her bed-room. Mr. Carey, however, arranged the whole matter very quickly. The dower must be L2,000, out of which the widow must find her own house. Sir George must be well aware, said Mr. Carey, that the demand made was preposterous. Sir George said one or two very nasty things; but the dower as fixed by Mr. Carey was accepted, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... not, but occasion has gone and times have changed. Now listen. The countess desired the marriage. Carlo could not go to you in Milan with the sword in his hand. Therefore you had to come to him. He waited for you, perhaps for his own preposterous lover's sake as much as to make his mother's heart easy. If she loses him she loses everything, unless he leaves a wife to her care and the hope that her House will not be extinct, which is possibly not much more the weakness of old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to have only a look round, and go on by another ferry to Sag Harbor, thence to arrive at Easthampton. But what do you think happened? Tom, Dick, and Harry's preposterous Hippopotamus broke out in an eruption of flame at the very moment when our procession was passing in review before a large beflagged hotel which faces the Bay. Of course it had never occurred to the boys to bring one of those patent extinguishers ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... himself will see that his disciple believe aright concerning him. If a man cannot trust him for this, what claim can he make to faith in him? It is because he has little or no faith, that he is left clinging to preposterous and dishonouring ideas, the traditions of men concerning his Father, and neither his teaching nor that of his apostles. The living Christ is to them but a shadow; the all but obliterated Christ ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... dog-in-the-manger control of its present handful of inhabitants. We may expect, at least, that Australia will not be permanently able to retain its position without an infusion of entirely fresh blood, and should other peoples require an outlet in that direction, the present preposterous policy will have ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... laire.' The affair was becoming a scandal. The crowd still increased. People's faces grew red with congestion in the growing heat. Each had the stupidly gaping mouth of the ignoramus who judges painting, and between them they indulged in all the asinine ideas, all the preposterous reflections, all the stupid spiteful jeers that the sight of an original work can possibly elicit from ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Byng—are you a fool? This letter, this preposterous thing from the universal philanderer, the effeminate erotic! It is what it is, and it is no more. Jasmine—you know her. Indiscreet—yes; always indiscreet in her way, in her own way, and always daring. A coquette always. She has coquetted all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... galloping through a wild country, and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. . . . I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep—kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing. Returning home from exciting political meetings in the country ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... me that you have a new servant, and that she is so preposterous as to wish to take her meals with you, but that he does not intend to allow it. Now, I say to you, as I said to him, that if she expected to sit at the table before I came, she must do it now. I am used to that ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... was this infatuated belief in the loyalty of the Natives carried that it was proposed to disarm the entire Christian population, on the pretext that their carrying weapons gave offence to the Mahomedans! It was only on the urgent remonstrance of some of the military officers that this preposterous scheme was abandoned.[5] The two Native regiments stationed at Agra were not disarmed until one of the British officers with them had been killed and another wounded. The gaol, containing 5,000 prisoners, was left in charge of a Native ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... saw a sight incredible to her. Instead of letting the bull alone, now she was safe, Uxmoor was sticking to him like a ferret. The bull ran, tossing his nose with pain and bellowing: Uxmoor dragged by the tail and compelled to follow in preposterous, giant strides, barely touching the ground with the point of his toe, pounded the creature's ribs with such blows as Zoe had never dreamed possible. They sounded like flail on wooden floor, and each blow was accompanied ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... it in myself. I thought it was utterly preposterous—I distrusted it as the result of some perversity in my own imagination. But I can do so no longer. Not only the boy's own answers to your questions, but even a chance expression that dropped from the schoolmaster's lips in explaining his story, have forced the idea back into my mind. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... "'Tis preposterous to pretend to reform the Stage before the Nation, and particularly the Town, is reform'd. The Business of a Dramatick Poet is to copy Nature, and represent things as they are; Let our Peers give ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... uneventful summer at home, with only the slight excitement of a month at Margate, was most anxious to hear an account of her adventures. That she had had adventures out there on those wild plains of course I felt certain. It would be manifestly preposterous to go to Arkansas for three months, and ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... one, but an important one, nevertheless. According to Skoropikin, every ancient work of art is valueless because it is old. If that were true, then art would be reduced to nothing more or less than mere fashion. A preposterous idea, not worth entertaining. If art has no firmer foundation than that, if it is not eternal, then it is utterly useless. Take science, for instance. In mathematics do you look upon Euler, Laplace, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... he gives—at least there—no account whatever of his peregrinations to the polar regions; and the notion of ascribing to him the story of the frozen words is preposterous. I have not in my library, but have read, the best edition of Sir John's Travels (I don't mean the abominable reprint), but I do not remember anything of the kind there. Indeed Sir John, like Marco Polo, was perfectly honest, though some of their informants ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... and desperate as many of his exploits have been, they would be as nothing to that. Even the earl could surely not expect that fifteen hundred men in fishing boats and barges could attack a fleet of some thirty men of war. The idea seems preposterous, and yet one does not see what else he can have got in ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... Ireland, as the term is understood by the National League, is without an educated class. Her intellect is represented by the moonlight maurauder and the fanatic priest. As regards England, the parallel is still more preposterous: She is not a military despotism, but a well-organized community, boasting parliamentary traditions of a thousand years. Her shores are guarded by sea from foreign interference. Notwithstanding many scandalous shortcomings in her rulers, her ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... thing hinges upon two points. The first is the making of Pycroft write a declaration by which he entered the service of this preposterous company. Do you not see how ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... sank. The hole had been there six months, and he had found nothing witty to say about it, and at first sight Mr. Cibber had done its business. And on such men he and his portrait were to attempt a preposterous delusion. Then there was Snarl, who wrote critiques on painting, and guided the national taste. The unlucky exhibitor was in a cold sweat. He led the way, like a thief going ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... ulcer. The general public knew little of the truth, and was not competent to measure the value of such facts as were placed before it. The Germans' claim to have sunk 9 1/2 million tons in the first year of unrestricted warfare was regarded as preposterous, but Sir Eric Geddes himself assessed the British loss at 6 millions.[Footnote: The total British loss in the war was 7,731,212 tons. France came next with 900,000 tons. ] Mr. Lloyd George revealed the fact that we had sunk five German submarines on 17 November, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... we are!' exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand. 'What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... The first hour of the new day rang like a long cry. Some freak of association brought to my mind that angel in the Apocalypse who proclaimed with a mighty voice that Time should be no more. I caught myself thinking this preposterous thing: Suppose it were all over? Suppose we never saw each other again? Suppose my wife were to die? To-night? Suppose some accident befell her? If she tripped upstairs? If the child's crib took fire and she put it out, and herself received one of those deadly shocks from burns ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... my mind; from yours it may easily have fled. If any one at that moment could have shown me the Edinburgh Edition, I suppose I should have died. It is with gratitude and wonder that I consider 'the way in which I have been led.' Could a more preposterous idea have occurred to us in those days when we used to search our pockets for coppers, too often in vain, and combine forces to produce the threepence necessary for two glasses of beer, or wander down the Lothian Road without any, than that I should be strong ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Such is his preposterous assertion, the absurdity of which will make an Englishman laugh; but the corollaries drawn from it are serious, as they are intended to feed the hostile feeling still existing against this country; for he attempts to prove that ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... tells us, chose poetry for their children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: for this same influencing of the soul—[Greek: phychagoghia] (a beautiful word)—is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of children unhappy: it took hold of the poets ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Caligula's Bridge, Temple of Jupiter, Departure of Regulus, Ancient Italy, Cicero's Villa, and such others, come they from whose hand they may, I class under the general head of "nonsense pictures." There never can be any wholesome feeling developed in these preposterous accumulations, and where the artist's feeling fails, his art follows; so that the worst possible examples of Turner's color are found in pictures of this class; in one or two instances he has broken through the conventional rules, and then is always fine, as in the Hero and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... will mention his name—Konstantine Feodorovitch Krylov. He was large and stout, a true Russian type, with a merry laughing face. He had the true Russian spirit of unconquerable irrational merriment. He laughed at everything with the gaiety of a man who finds life too preposterous for words. He had all the Russian untidyness, kindness of heart, gay, ironical pessimism. "To-morrow" was a word unknown to him: nothing was sacred to him, and yet at times it seemed as though life were so holy, so mysterious, that ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... with a preposterous marke in Nature, euen from her birth, which was her left eye, standing lower then the other; the one looking downe, the other looking vp, so strangely deformed, as the best that were present in that Honorable ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... the majority, properly expressed; and, above all, the military must be kept, according to the language of our bill of rights, in strict subordination to the civil authority. Wherever this lesson is not both learned and practiced there can be no political freedom. Absurd, preposterous is it, a scoff and a satire on free forms of constitutional liberty, for frames of government to be prescribed by military leaders and the right of suffrage to be exercised at the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... "How preposterous you are, Grace. Of course not. Only Somers's IDEA of what is pleasing to Rushbrook, gotten up with a taste and discretion all his own. You know Somers is a gentleman, educated at West Point—traveled all over Europe—you might have met him there; ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... to appeal to Sally at this moment. Her sense of humour was tickled. It was, if she could have analysed her feelings, at herself that she was mocking—at the feeble sentimental Sally who had once conceived the absurd idea of taking this preposterous man seriously. She felt light-hearted and light-headed, and she sank into a chair with ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... if either of your fathers were living now, and had any mistrust on that subject, his mind would not be changed by the change of circumstances involved in the change of your years? Untenable, unreasonable, inconclusive, and preposterous!' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... uncertainty of life, and you take away all its magic. It would be like going to the wicket with the certainty of making as many runs as you liked. No one would trouble to go to the wicket on those preposterous terms. It is because I may be out first ball or stay in and make a hundred runs (not that I ever did any such heroic thing) that I put on the pads with the feverish sense of adventure. And it is because every dawn breaks as full of wonder as the first day ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... petticoats she wore, and unceasing were the ablutions which her clean-tiled floors received. She was in the main not a bad old soul, and I dare say she considered herself perfectly justified, in consideration of the cause I served, in charging me a preposterous amount for my board and lodging while I ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... whole of each period, they are not allowed to run, walk much, ride, skate, or dance. In fact, entire repose is strictly enforced in every well-regulated household and school. A German girl would consider the idea of going to a party at such times as simply preposterous; and the difference that exists in this respect in America is ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... everybody else, but you can't fool me. You're delighted, man, delighted!' The mere suggestion revolted Mr Pickering. He was on the point of indignant denial, when quite abruptly there came home to him the suspicion that the statement was not so preposterous after all. It seemed incredible and indecent that such a thing should be, but he could not deny, now that it was put to him point-blank in this way, that a certain sense of relief was beginning to mingle ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... well it would be preposterous," said Peter, sullenly, "to break up all your habits, and leave Barracombe and—and all of us—and start a fresh life—at your age. And if this is how you mock at me and all my plans, I'm sorry I ever took you into my confidence ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... the same degree. His life is a romance: no, for it lacks probability. He has had beautiful dreams, he has bad ones: what am I saying? people don't dream as he has lived. No one has ever extracted out of a destiny more than he has. The preposterous and the commonplace are equally familiar to him. He has shone, he has suffered, he has dragged along a humdrum existence: nothing has escaped him.... He is an enigma, a riddle that can probably ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Belford. "To be sure you cannot believe your ears. Do you not see that this is a preposterous lie, and that he is telling it to you to tease and to ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... "Such a preposterous question!" she replied, but she was startled and frightened by it and more so by the anger in John's face and voice. In a moment the truth flashed upon her consciousness and it roused just as quickly an intense contradiction and a willful determination not only to stand her ground ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the phenomenon of a prime minister who could not command the respect of his own servants. A more preposterous figure than the Duke of Newcastle never stood at the head of a great nation. He had a feverish craving for place and power, joined to a total unfitness for both. He was an adept in personal politics, and was so busied with the arts of winning and keeping office that he had no leisure, even if he ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... for the faith that is in him concerning the Bayeux tapestry by reading the language of its details, such as the style of arms used by its preposterous soldiers; by gestures; by groupings of its figures; and we are only too glad to believe ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... looked with favour upon her opulent charms, when at last she saw the object of her ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near to wrecking everything by his unreasonable behaviour. This preposterous marquis had the effrontery to dispute his wife with Jupiter, was so purblind as not to appreciate the honour the Sun-King proposed to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... laughed—whether at Chevenix or his preposterous hero is not to be known. "You are rather absurd," she said. "Mr. Senhouse never gave me the idea of that sort of person. Why did ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... apologies, excused himself, having pressing duties to perform, and withdrew, first cordially shaking hands. The French were convinced that when William the Elector fled, he had taken with him his money. That he should have entrusted it to another, and especially a Jew, seemed preposterous. Yet such was the case. William had fled, disguised as a civil engineer, carrying with him in his chaise an outfit of surveying-instruments. All of his money had been turned over to Mayer Anselm Rothschild. The ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... echoed with a certain scornful incredulity. "Why suicide? In connexion with my brother the idea seems utterly preposterous." ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... thou sayst thou art righteous; but they are but vain words. Knowest thou not that thy zeal, which is the life of thy righteousness, is preposterous in many things? What else means thy madness, and the rage thereof, against men as good as thyself. True, thy being ignorant that they are good, may save thee from the commission of the sin that is unpardonable; but it will never keep thee from spot ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... of a man that had been wounded; upon which one of the standers-by pitied the man's misfortune, and thinking he was not able to drive those flies away himself, was going to drive them away for him; but he prayed him to let them alone: the other, by way of reply, asked him the reason of such a preposterous proceeding, in preventing relief from his present misery; to which he answered, "If thou drivest these flies away, thou wilt hurt me worse; for as these are already full of my blood, they do not crowd about me, nor pain me so much as before, but are somewhat more remiss, while the fresh ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... tipsy airiness of manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he shook hands with garrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with the nicety of old experience; in and out of shops, from which he returned laden with costly fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, a preposterous cane for himself, and a kepi of the newest fashion for the boy; in and out of the telegraph office, whence he despatched his telegram, and where three hours later he received an answer promising a visit on the morrow, and generally pervaded Fontainebleau ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the dragoman rode up to Arta on their borrowed troop horses. The correspondent first went to the telegraph office and found there the usual number of despairing clerks. They were outraged when they found he was going to send messages and thought it preposterous that he insisted upon learning if there were any in the office for him. They had trouble enough with endless official communications without being hounded about private affairs by a confident young man in khaki. But Coleman at last unearthed six cablegrams which collective ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... legislatures will enact preposterous social laws for the regulation of the morals of boys, and imagine they have placed another paving-stone in the road to the millennium, while the Mrs. Rolfstons are having a ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... authors would be invited to submit final designs for the final award. George tried to be hopeful; but he could not be hopeful by trying. It was impossible to believe that he would succeed; the notion was preposterous; yet at moments, when he was not cultivating optimism, optimism would impregnate all his being, and he would be convinced that it was impossible not to win. How inconceivably grand! His chief rallying thought was that he had undertaken a gigantic task and had accomplished it. Well or ill, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... purpose to defend myself," he said, coldly. "If you are bent upon filling your mind with such matters, go to Dr. Perrin. He will tell you that he, as a physician, knows that the charge against me is preposterous. He will tell you that even granting that the cause of the blindness is what Mrs. Abbott guesses, there are a thousand ways in which such an infection can be contracted, which are perfectly innocent, involving no guilt on the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... taken between dinner and supper. And, as it perfectly expresses the meaning of the German vesperbrod, I thought myself authorized to adopt it here; particularly as tea, in the mouth of a character, like carpenter Clarenbach, would appear preposterous. The antiquaries of Yorkshire and Lancashire derive the word bagging from the old custom of carrying bread and cheese in a bag, in the afternoon, to the labourers in the fields; and this derivation ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... a case of witchcraft in Hartford, in 1662, where some women were accused, and, after being proceeded against until they were confounded and bewildered, one of them made the most preposterous confessions, which ought to have satisfied every one that her reason was overthrown; three of them were condemned, and one, certainly,—probably all,—executed. In 1669, he says that Susanna Martin, of Salisbury,—whom ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... vol. xii. p. 417.] Who knows but this system, if it had received proper encouragement, might not have rendered the Post-Office unnecessary, and even obviated much of the necessity for railroads? Let modern magnetisers try and bring it to perfection. It is not more preposterous than many of their present notions; and, if carried into effect, with the improvement of some stenographical expedient for diminishing the number of punctures, would be much more useful than their plan of causing persons to read with their great toes, [Wirth's "Theorie des Somnambulismes," ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the barricades. This lasted but a moment, when it was succeeded by a scattered fire of fewer guns, and finally by irregular volleys. We knew that our men had fallen back; and we had not once thought it would be otherwise. Indeed, it had been a rarely preposterous enemy who should allow himself to be driven from behind a rampart by that handful of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... friends of hesitatingly adverse instincts: the three of them, however, practically assuming their own wisdom to be the highest yet attained by the human race; and their own diversion on the mountainous heights of it being by the aspect of a so-called "preposterous" sunset, described in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... personages, the deference paid them, and their entire self-possession, not a little surprised me. And it seemed preposterous, to assume a divine dignity in the presence of these undoubted potentates of terra firma. Taji seemed oozing from my fingers' ends. But courage! and erecting my crest, I strove to look every inch the character ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... a great Shadow bounced out of the fire with a single huge leap, and covered the whole room. Then it settled in one corner, and Ralph saw it shaking its fist at him from the end of a preposterous arm. So he took the hint, and held his peace. And it was as well for him. For I happen to know something about the Shadows too; and I know that if he had told his wife all about it just then, they would not have sent for him ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... like that," insisted Gaga. It was so preposterous that Sally could only look measuringly at him with a puzzled contempt that might have ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,—is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the end of the difference between the monstrous work and himself. When he has ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... were especially attached to this idea. The word Kingdom appeared in an early draft of the bill as it came from the conference. But it was vetoed by the foreign secretary, Lord Stanley,[1] who thought that the republican sensibilities of the United States would be wounded. This preposterous notion serves to indicate the inability of the controlling minds of the period to grasp the true nature of the change. Finally, the word 'Dominion' was decided upon. Why a term was selected which is so difficult to render in the French language (La Puissance is the translation ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... the spring, Mr. Williams——But no more! Haven't we already prolonged our sketch to an intolerable length, considering the subject of it? Not a lover in it! and, of course, it is preposterous to think of making a readable story without one. Why didn't we make young Gingerford in love with—let's see—Miss Frisbie? and Miss Frisbie's brother (it would have required but a stroke of the pen to give her one) in love with—Creshy Williams? What melodramatic difficulties might have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying. After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her; and she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to listen to a proposal patiently; ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... much to the same purpose, though not so preposterous. Mr Lightwood would propose to me, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... The throng was indiscriminate. Farce comedy was in the air. Religious fanatics, passing before the hero, offered up prayers for the salvation of his soul. Precocious children were thrust forward to his attention. Preposterous questions were propounded by preposterous people. To add to the confusion the names of those persons who fought their way through the throng to be presented to the General were announced to him by a little man who got most of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... and loftier pretensions be still contested; if the theory of the gifted creature who wrote that the works of the master wizard are 'like summer fruits brought forth abundantly in the full blaze of sunshine, which do not keep'—if this preposterous fantasy be generally accepted, there will yet be much in Dumas to venerate and love. If Antony were of no more account than an ephemeral burlesque; if la Reine Margot and the immortal trilogy of the Musketeers—that 'epic of friendship'—were ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... insisting upon some seven discriminations which, even only forty years ago, would have appeared largely preposterous to the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of my exhaustion and physical misery resumed its sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vividness the extraordinary folly of everything I had ever done. "Ass!" I said; "oh, ass, unutterable ass.... I seem to exist only to go about doing preposterous things. Why did we ever leave the thing? ... Hopping about looking for patents and concessions in the craters of the moon!... If only we had had the sense to fasten a handkerchief to a stick to show where ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... greatest difficulty in letting the House of Commons succeed in what he must consider a most unconstitutional, most presumptuous, and most dangerous course, after which it would be impossible for the Executive ever to oppose again the most absurd and preposterous demands for enquiry.[37] ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fall—I never had dreamed of any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a wooden-head whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his responsibilities would all go to ruin together ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that thing—I really cannot. It is preposterous. How could the chaplain have put my sword into the hands of an undertaker?—Get me a hammer; I will knock the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... will go with me. Hood, we've got a fight on in regard to the President's idea of granting permission in private suits to use judgments and facts brought out and entered in government suits against combinations. That idea has got to be killed! And the regulation of security issues of railroads—preposterous! Why, the President's crazy! If Mall and Gossitch and Wells don't oppose that in the Senate, I'll see that they are up before the lunacy commission—and I have some influence ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... go to him? But it was impossible, it was preposterous! Delaherche had more to say of his hurricane of shot and shell. Gilberte seized her by the wrists to detain her, while Madame Delaherche used all her persuasive powers to convince her of the folly of the mad undertaking. In the same gentle, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... seemed a preposterous supposition yesterday that the private trader at Murder Point should ever be in a position to bid the veriest scum among cowards to be brave. As he spoke, the intelligence came back to Strangeways' eyes, the fear went out ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Martin, doubtfully. 'I don't think the writer was a man of science. I saw it somewhere attributed to Huxley, but that was preposterous. To begin with, Huxley would have signed his name; and, again, his English is better. The article seemed to me to be stamped with literary rancour; it was written by some man ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... spirits of nitre, and a few simples. But what astonished them most, was this, that we could inform them before-hand, by means of a perpetual almanack, that an eclipse of the sun or moon would take place on the very day when it happened. Their notion of the cause of an eclipse is the most preposterous and ridiculous, that ever entered into the head, even of an heathen. They say, that the devil is come to devour the sun or moon, and falls to work to gnaw off the edge; that therefore it is necessary he should ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... overlooked, or referred to in general terms, as if they were unworthy of particular consideration. To admit the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul, and yet to leave out the consideration of it, in a system of mental instruction, is both impious and preposterous, and inconsistent with the principle on which we generally act in other cases, which requires that affairs of the greatest moment should occupy our chief attention. If man is only a transitory inhabitant of this lower world; if he is journeying ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... of Monsieur MOLIERE, that celebrated Dramatick Writer, was, by him, intended to reprove a vain, fantastical, conceited and preposterous Humour, which about that time prevailed very much in France. It had the desir'd good Effect, and conduced a great deal towards rooting out a Taste so unreasonable and ridiculous.—-As Pride, Conceit, Vanity, and Affectation, are Foibles so often found amongst the Fair Sex at present, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... "Beyond the Vanishing Point," by Ray Cummings, is preposterous. The flesh might shrink or grow, but the bone would not! If one shrunk as did George Randolph, one's bones would burst ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... laughed at the idea of this German barbarian—for some of the critics were rude enough to use this harsh term—becoming the rival of Pasta, Cinti, and Fodor, and the idea of her singing Rossini's music seemed purely preposterous. On the 15th of June, 1826, she made her bow to the French public. The victory was partly won by the shy, blushing beauty of the young German, who seemed the very incarnation of maidenly modesty and innocence, and when she had ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... and old plaster that muffled our footsteps, cobwebs hung like old dusters on the walls, a regular goblin's tatter of cobwebs draped the little bracket inside the door, and the wrought-iron of the hand-rail was closed up with webs in which not even a spider moved. The whole thing was preposterous.... ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... muttered Sam, as Miss Pillby left his den. 'No, I should think not. Why, that's what the bishops do. Fancy old Pew being confirmed too—old Pew in a white frock and a veil. That is a good'un,' and Sam exploded over his blacking-brush at the preposterous idea. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of landscape [Footnote: Appendix II, "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,—the Alsatian sublimities ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... that is. Bein' on a sort of outin', a kind of Beanfeast for Two, we took the notion, being stryngers to South Wyles, of droppin' in 'ere an' tippin' the 'Ow Do." He breathed hard, and rivulets of perspiration began to trickle down from under the preposterous cap, converting the dust that filled the haggard lines of his thin face into mud. "An' payin' our respects." His eye slewed appealingly at his companion, asking as plainly as an eye can, "What price that?" And the glance that shot back from the dusty shadow of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... would exclaim, over a mint-julep, to his friend Major Johnson, who always defended the Colonel vigorously, "the idea of such attentions to my daughter is preposterous—ludicrous! I will not permit it, sir—not for one moment. If he persists in annoying my family, sir," and the purple hue of the General's face deepened, "I would no more hesitate to shoot him—no more, by gad!—than I would ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... foolish woman with her dreams! Was anything so preposterous ever heard of? I must go and ask the help of ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... of water. We struck a spring last week" (this time the "we" didn't seem so preposterous) "that came near drowning us out, but we managed to keep it under with a six-inch centrifugal; but it meant pumping ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... too busy to pay much attention to what I was saying. He merely murmured that it was all normal, quite normal, under the circumstances. So, after all, I'm just an ordinary, everyday woman! But the man of medicine has ordered me to stay in bed for twelve days—which Olga regards as unspeakably preposterous, since one day, she proudly announced, was all her mother ever asked for. Which shows the disadvantages of being ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... turn to your "elderly lady,"—that is, to current criticism, to the public. Like every elderly person, she holds fast to preconceived ideas, however preposterous they may be. For example, she is perpetually asserting that since my "Annals of a Sportsman" my works are weak, because, having lived abroad, I cannot know Russia. But this accusation can touch only what I have written since 1863; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... since by the testator's bankers. It would then be for his lordship to decide whether in the public interest he should recommend the Crown to prosecute on a charge of forgery the clumsy fabricator of this preposterous document. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... bear in the least on his favourite craze, appear to give evidence in its favour, even though in reality they are most obviously opposed to it. He learns to look upon himself as an unappreciated Newton, and to see the bitterest malevolence in those who venture to question his preposterous notions. He is fortunate if he do not suffer his theories to withdraw him from his means of earning a livelihood, or if he do not waste his substance in propounding ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... confidence by her confidence to you, I will tell you so. Most undesirable it is that this should be continued, and yet where is there a door open to escape?[162] ... My dear brothers have the illusion that nobody should marry on less than two thousand a year. Good heavens! how preposterous it does seem to me! We scarcely spend three hundred, and I have every luxury, I ever had, and which it would be so easy to give up, at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep, I think, if an unpaid bill dragged itself by any chance into another week. He says that when people get ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... my word, I have been blind as a bat. How far has the thing gone? Has Mabel encouraged it? Does she know? What hand can James have had in bringing this state of things about? These two children—why, the thing is preposterous!" ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... had they come into harmony than the bassoon—oh, melancholy perversity of that instrument—would strike off into another key with a ribald snicker or coarse guffaw, causing more turbulence and another stampede. And this preposterous condition of affairs was kept up the whole evening, the bassoon seeming to take a fiendish delight in his ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... you mean, Mrs. Cadwallader?" said Sir James. His fear lest Miss Brooke should have run away to join the Moravian Brethren, or some preposterous sect unknown to good society, was a little allayed by the knowledge that Mrs. Cadwallader always made the worst of things. "What has happened to Miss ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... he frequently had visits from "cranks" who wished to secure his support for some new theory or "discovery." He would listen patiently, perhaps ask a few questions, and then endeavour to point out their fallacies. He would amuse us afterwards by describing their "preposterous ideas," and if much bored, he would speak of them as "muffs." He was loath to hurt their feelings, but he generally ended by expressing his opinion quite clearly, occasionally ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... sunk, by some means that we do not at present know, and if the blame could be plausibly laid against Americans, there would be hot-tempered talk in England and a lot of indignant retort from our country. It would seem preposterous that any Englishman could suspect the American government of destroying British warships, and just as absurd to think that Americans could take such a charge seriously. Yet in the relations between nations ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... neighbour. For a moment, a strange dread had gripped the meeting, paralysing thought, but it passed, and while some remained perplexed the majority began to resent vehemently the suggestions of Hammer. I could hear those immediately behind me insisting that the view was sheer rubbish. It was preposterous. It was pure lunacy. With these phrases, constantly repeated, they threw off the startling effect of Hammer's speech, and fortified themselves in the conviction that the Blue Disease was merely a new malady, similar to other maladies, and that life ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... important part the music was to play in the life of the community in after years, and of all the pleasure it was to give—the I.G. sent money from his private purse to buy instruments and music, though until that moment the idea of a band in Peking had seemed infinitely remote if not utterly preposterous. ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... it likely that the king would cast a public slight upon my family? From whom had you this preposterous order?" ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the chitchat of an evening circle. I passed a very pleasant evening, and left about ten o'clock. The gentleman who was handing me down stairs said, "I suppose you are going to one or two other places to-night." The idea struck me as so preposterous that I could not ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
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