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More "Ridiculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if I did not know that poetic enthusiasm is very ridiculous in a criticism—the action is brought before us with such power that this tragedy may very well be compared to a German oak, on which every branch flourishes luxuriantly, and whose summit is nearer to heaven than to earth. The whole play contains nothing but characters, not a single ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... linens, tapestries, and other assorted articles for this first great speculation to Cathay, via the North Pole, stowed on board the fleet, that nearly half the summer had passed before anchor was weighed in the Meuse. The pompous expedition was thus predestined to an almost ridiculous failure. Yet it was in the hands of great men, both on shore and sea. Maurice, Barneveld, and Maalzoon had personally interested themselves in the details of its outfitting, Linschoten sailed as chief commissioner, the calm and intrepid Barendz was upper pilot of the whole fleet, and a man ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... reached London, and I shall not believe in the resources of the provinces until they prove their existence by raising the siege. I am very curious to discover what is thought of Paris by the world. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. If really by holding out for several months the situation can be altered for the better, the Parisians are right to do so, but if the Government is only humbugging them with false intelligence, if they are simply destroying ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Enid should have taken such a dislike to her teacher, for she kept up a state of ill-feeling among the girls which otherwise would probably have died away. Absurd trifles were magnified and made much of, and ridiculous grievances were nursed and cherished. One day Miss Rowe set the upper division a grammar exercise consisting of two questions. The first was long and very difficult; it was on the origin of the English language, and required a certain ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... in 1596, correcting "antecessors" into "grandfather." Halliwell-Phillipps only mentions one at that date, but Mr. Stephen Tucker,[54] Somerset Herald, gives facsimiles of both. Halliwell-Phillipps calls these ridiculous assertions, and asserts that both parties were descended from obscure country yeomen. The heralds state they were "solicited," and "on credible report" informed of the facts. We must not forget that all the friends intimately associated either with the Ardens or the Shakespeares (with ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... signories of Confolens, Chabanes, Chateaumorant, Lombert, ceded to a captain for a ridiculous price; now it's the fief of Fontaine Milon, of Angers, the fortress of Saint Etienne de Mer Morte acquired by Guillaume Le Ferron for a song; again it's the chateaux of Blaison and of Chemille forfeited to Guillaume ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... seated herself as if she were a noble lady, a fille de qualite, instead of a mere minister's widow and a watchmaker's daughter. Pretend ignorance that precedence was to be here observed! That was another Parisian piece of impudence, above all in one who showed such ridiculous airs as to wipe her face with her own handkerchief instead of the table-cloth, and to be reluctant to help herself from the genera dish of potage with her own spoon. Even that might have been overlooked if she would have regaled them with a full and particular ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Dorothy, with the eight pins on her shirtwaist, and a guilty consciousness that Miss Mills, who taught "Lit. II" was staring at them from the faculty row, Betty resolved that she was going to be different—to keep her room in order, not to do ridiculous things at ridiculous times, and always to ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... knew, &c.] There is nothing more ridiculous than the various opinions of authors about the seat of Paradise. Sir. Walter Raleigh has taken a great deal of pains to collect them, in the beginning of his History of the World; where those, who are unsatisfied, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... convinced me still further that what I had heard last night was the truth. Adam Stallman accompanied them; he was grave, but kind and courteous as usual, and seemed to take great pains to answer all the questions, some of them not a little ridiculous, which were put to him. Mr Vernon invited him to join the luncheon-party in the ward-room, so I did ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... regret at not being able to erase them from my memory that I recaptured the years in which, in the eyes of this same Swann who was at this moment before me in the Champs-Elysees, and to whom, fortunately, Gilberte had perhaps not mentioned my name, I had so often, in the evenings, made myself ridiculous by sending to ask Mamma to come upstairs to my room to say good-night to me, while she was drinking coffee with him and my father and my grandparents at the table in the garden.) He told Gilberte that she might play one game; he ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship of a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots or ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... persuasion on my part keep quiet. On inquiring from the Balyuz the cause of their violent discussions, he informed me they were drawing lots to see who should be my Abban, and those of the seven foreign servants I had with me. The bare idea of eight Abbans was too ridiculous, and their persistency made it beyond a joke. I instantly ordered the sails to be hauled down, and had my instructions from Lieutenant Burton about Abbans proclaimed to the whole crew: that the Balyuz was my Ras Cafila, and the other foreigners my protectors. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... it were just like a week-day. So while every one else was in evening dress, I more than once—at seventeen—came to these Sunday gatherings on a winter evening, purposely, in a high woolen frock, sternly but uncomfortably conscious of being sublime—if only one were not ridiculous! The Rector, "Mrs. Pat," Mr. Bywater, myself, and perhaps a couple of undergraduates—often a bewildered and silent couple—I see that little vanished company in the far past so plainly! Three of them are dead—and for me the gray walls of Lincoln ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... But when business is to be done, the eye-stalks jump bolt upright side by side, like a pair of little lighthouses, and survey the field of battle in a fashion utterly ludicrous. Moreover, as if he were not ridiculous enough even thus, he is (as Mr. Wood well puts it) like a small man gifted with one arm of Hercules, and another of Tom Thumb. One of his claw arms, generally the left, has dwindled to a mere nothing, and is not seen; while along the whole front of his shell lies folded one mighty right ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... swallow up a whole box of his proper pills. "Very well," I say, "that must be egregious. It is cannot be possible;" but they bring little a box, not more grand nor my thumb. It seem to be to me very ridiculous; so I returned to my hotel at despair how I could possibility learn a language what meant so many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... conflict begins late, and advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the catastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension just described. To this may be added that, after the conflict has begun, there is very little relief by way of the ridiculous. Henceforward at any rate Iago's humour never raises a smile. The clown is a poor one; we hardly attend to him and quickly forget him; I believe most readers of Shakespeare, if asked whether there is a clown ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... ingrate, indeed, if one failed to recognize the great good that an extreme reform movement may do. Some very precious increments of progress have resulted even from the most extreme and ridiculous reactions against the drill and formalism of the older schools. Let me briefly summarize these really substantial ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... Spectator owed the most natural and elegant, if not the most original, of its humorous sketches of human character and social eccentricities, its good-humoured satires on ridiculous features in manners and on corrupt symptoms in public taste; these topics, however, making up a department in which Steele was fairly on a level with his more famous co-adjutor. But Steele had neither learning, nor taste, nor critical acuteness sufficient to qualify him ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... absurd story, a rather ridiculous one, but if the surgeon had made the mistake Mr. Beard charged, he would not have made any greater than is made every day at the marriage altar. Young women, I would not silence the love songs in your hopeful hearts, but I would have every betrothed girl demand of her ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... from it, and the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word. We really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not "do the subject justice," the whole situation was so painfully ridiculous and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... become, in good truth, a godsend. I wonder why Providence does not cause a clear, cold fountain to bubble up at our doorstep; methinks it would not be unreasonable to pray for such a favor. At present we are under the ridiculous necessity of sending to the outer world for water. Only imagine Adam trudging out of Paradise with a bucket in each hand, to get water to drink, or for Eve to bathe in! Intolerable! (though our stout handmaiden really fetches our water). In other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... thank fortune, from the ridiculous to the sublime, just as it is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. Another illustration of a perfect nervous system: You remember how our Lord spent a whole day in preaching, in healing, working deeds of kindness, in pouring ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... in Egypt, the human intellect arrived with the lapse of time at something beyond this childish and primitive belief. Men did not, however, repel it altogether as false and ridiculous; they continued to cherish it at the bottom of their hearts, and to allow it to impose certain lines of action upon them which otherwise could hardly be explained or justified. As in Egypt, and in later years in Greece, a new and more abstract conception was imposed ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... at me. "It must seem to you ridiculous. But I am a different person now—very different. Now I am ready, eager for anything. Death can be nothing to me now, or if that is too bold, at least I may say that I am prepared to meet him—anywhere—at any time. I want to meet him—I want ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... hair, unshaven, haggard face, bloodshot eyes, and slovenly dishevelled dress, had appeared repulsive enough while in the boat; but, now, as he stood dripping with water and covered with mud, there was a touch of the ridiculous in his appearance that brought a grin to the unlovely face of his rescuer, and caused her to exclaim with unnecessary frankness: "I'll be dad burned if you-all ain't a thing ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... my long tail switched the roses out of the bowl in the middle of the table. That confused me slightly, and in trying not to upset anything else I stepped flat into the butter, and dragged my little plaid flannel skirt through the applesauce. Why they persist in dressing me in this ridiculous fashion is more ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... till it was read over, though the author has fallen into the common mistake of romance-writers; intending a virtuous character, and not knowing how to draw it; the first step of his heroine (leaving her patroness's house) being altogether absurd and ridiculous, justly entitling her to all the ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... folded up her own sheet of paper, put it into its envelope, and laid it in her desk. She felt pretty certain now of being elected as one of the lucky three, and no one need ever know that she had peeped at Kitty's answers. After all, but for this ridiculous and sudden prohibition on the part of Sir John Wallis, Kitty would have helped her with her English History all the afternoon. Now, of course, she could not ask her, but never mind, she knew what she ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... cock-fight between himself and Gerald Tribe, on the question of religion, and it was punctuated by roars of laughter from Leonetta, Vanessa, Guy Tyrrell, and even Stephen Fearwell; while the unfortunate Mrs. Tribe, feeling that her husband was being made to look ridiculous for the edification of the rest of the party, would repeatedly interrupt the proceedings by urging her spouse to "come to bed." This, however, he always resolutely refused to do, much to the satisfaction of everybody present; and the unequal ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... ridiculous!" exclaimed Charles. "Such silly people deserve to be imposed upon, for not using the faculties they ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... chiefly effected by vessels going coastwise."[247] The two methods were not incompatible. Besides the sea-going vessels already mentioned as lying in New York alone, there were there over four hundred coasters. It was impossible to watch so many. The ridiculous gunboats, identified with this Administration, derisively nicknamed "Jeffs"[248] by the unbelieving, were called into service to arrest the evil; but neither their numbers nor their qualities fitted them to cope with the ubiquity and speed of their nimble opponents. "The larger part ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... occupies too much time, attention, and money. For my own part, I confess I am most affected by female dress, and although certainly I like to see women well dressed, and would rather see them a little too fine than slovenly, I am often pained at witnessing the extravagance and, to me, ridiculous taste exhibited. Whenever I see a handsome and expensive dress trailing in the dirt, I regard it as culpable waste and in bad taste, and when I see it accidentally trodden on I am not sorry. I am inclined to believe that many women can hardly find time or opportunity ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... moment; but in the end he would shake his head doubtfully, as much as to say that this was all very well, but that there were depths in the Dutch official nature which no one but himself had ever fathomed. Perfectly ridiculous. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... absolutely ridiculous, Mr. Terwilliger," replied the earl. "I'd look well marrying a draught from a dark cavern, as you call it, now wouldn't I? To say nothing of the impossibility of a Mugley marrying a cook. ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... frequent intercourse now existing between Europe and the United States, we derived our impressions of the French people, as well as of Italian skies, from English literature. The probability was that our earliest association with the Gallic race partook largely of the ridiculous. All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism, strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner stories. Our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the sultan, who with his vizier was traversing the city, disguised as merchants. Finding the doors open, they entered, and beheld the cauzee and his companion in the height of their mirth, who welcomed them, and they sat down. At length, after many ridiculous tricks, the fisherman starting up, exclaimed, "I am the sultan!" "And I," rejoined the cauzee, "am my lord the bashaw!" "Bashaw!" continued the fisherman, "if I choose I can strike off thy head." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... rest in it; it tires. A man who plays with it must be on his guard every second. To spend a lifetime on it is ridiculous—a whole life of intelligent effort, against perpetual, brutal, inanimate resistance—one endless uninterrupted fight—a ceaseless human manoeuvre against senseless menace; and then the counter attack of the lifeless monster, the bellowing advance, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... dreadfully old after all. Perhaps she mightn't turn out quite such a wet blanket as the rest; though, from experience, he couldn't connect any pleasure with relatives' visits: they were nasty pills that had to be swallowed. He feared and disliked his father; Aunt Zara had been sheerly ridiculous, with her frills and simpers—the boys had imitated her for weeks after—and once, most shameful of all, his stepmother had come down and publicly wept over him. His cheeks still burnt at the remembrance; and he had been glad to hear that she was dead: served her ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... went on aiming at him. Fruitlessly did Clare assure him that neither would the dog do any harm, nor allow any one to hit him. It was from very weariness that at last he desisted, and wiping his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, turned upon Clare in the smothered wrath that knows itself ridiculous. For all the time the cook stood by, shaking with delighted laughter ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... same time. "For to tell you the truth, my friend, I think you are rather a white-livered sort of rogue for a colonel, to think of hanging, drowning, shooting, and poisoning yourself about such a ridiculous story as that. One of these modes would be too much, but as to all the four—nonsense. I tell you that at this moment I don't know what to make out of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... very ridiculous. The bluejackets on our deck were grinning quietly, while even Ransome himself (much to the fore in lending a hand) had to enlarge his wistful smile for ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... dissuade her. It was ridiculous. It was monstrous. She was not strong enough. It would be throwing her life away, as surely as to transplant a tender orchid to that burning sage-brush country. But in the end she said: "Well, Bee, then I'll ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their usefulness (See Rousseau, "De l'Inegalite parmi les Hommes", note 7.): the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which but for his unceasing exertions would annihilate the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... advocating the per se doctrines, if sincere, can continue in the constant use of slave grown products, without a perpetual violation of conscience and of all moral law. Taking them under protest, against the slavery which produced them, is ridiculous. Refusing to fellowship the slaveholder, while eagerly appropriating the products of the labor of the slave, which he brings in his hand, is contemptible. The most noted case of the kind, is that of the British Committee, who had charge of the preliminary ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... foolishly superstitious, and exceedingly fond of soothsayers and magicians. After the death of Constantius, he openly professed idolatry, and by besmearing himself with the blood of impious victims, pretended to efface the character of baptism. He was deceived in almost every step by ridiculous omens, oracles, and augurs, as may be seen in his heathen historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, (b. 22.) Maximus, the magician, and others of that character, were his chief confidants. He endeavored, by the black art, to rival the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... what I want you to do,' said the latter. 'Go to this Count Leven and tell him it's a cash transaction or nothing, and that he runs no risk. Find out what he'll really take, but don't come talking to me about five thousand pounds or anything of that kind, for that's ridiculous. Tell him that if proceedings are not begun by the first of May his wife won't get any more money from Van Torp, and he won't get any more from his wife. Use any other argument that strikes you. That's your business, because that's what I pay you for. What I want is the result, and ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... exceedingly. I think I was annoyed that he should have seen the young lady while I had not. I also resented his toasting her before a stranger. I knew he could not have met her, and his pretence of enthusiasm made him appear quite ridiculous. He looked at me mournfully, shaking his head as though it were impossible for him to give me ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... nearest refuge, and that, I considered, must be at least twenty miles distant, altogether too far to dream of swimming to it, although I rather prided myself upon my prowess as a long-distance swimmer. But twenty miles! The idea was ridiculous, especially in that heavy sea, in my exhausted condition, without food, and with no means of getting any. I looked rather longingly at the smaller fragments of wreckage floating in my neighbourhood; if I could but secure one of them of sufficient size to support me ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Theodore, having perceived in the enemy's camp some Europeans, had sent orders for our immediate execution; the fulfilment of the sentence resting with the Empress, who was residing at Gondar, and that his (De Bisson's) agent was using his influence to stay the execution. Absurd and ridiculous as were these reports, they were not the less productive of great distress to the families and friends ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... were payments of the French indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five millions had been for the post-office, which I knew to be untrue; that ten millions had been for the Maine boundary war, which I not only knew to be untrue, but supremely ridiculous also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough to hope that I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to go unexposed,—I readily consented that, on the score both of veracity and sagacity, the audience should judge ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a most serious expression of countenance: (31) You are pleased to laugh at me. Pray, do you find it so ridiculous my wishing to improve my health by exercise? or to enjoy my victuals better? to sleep better? or is it the sort of exercise I set my heart on? Not like those runners of the long race, (32) to have my legs grow muscular and my shoulders leaner in ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... wanting more! Well, they won't get it. I think Steve is ridiculous with his banquets and bonuses and all, and upon my word, Mary Faithful has as good an Oriental rug in her office as I have in my house. Tell us something ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Francisco, and although Dona Pomposa and Aunt Anastacia began at once to make the wedding outfit, Eulogia appeared to forget that she ever had given a promise of marriage. She was as great a belle as ever, for no one believed that she would keep faith with any man, much less with such a ridiculous scrap as Garfias. Her flirtations were more calmly audacious than ever, her dancing more spirited; in every ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... in imagining there can be revolt," she sternly replied. "These are the ridiculous stories of those who favor trouble; the king's authority will soon ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... urn that stood upon the table: Having remarked this with great curiosity and attention, he presently turned the cock, and received the water upon his hand: As soon as he felt himself scalded, he roared out, and began to dance about the cabin with the most extravagant and ridiculous expressions of pain and astonishment: The other Indians not being able to conceive what was the matter with him, stood staring at him in amaze, and not without some mixture of terror. The surgeon, however, who had innocently been the cause of the mischief, applied ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... candid as to call that the opinion of a party, which they hear in a coffeehouse, or over a bottle from some warm young people, whom it is odds but they have provoked to say more than they believed, by some positions as absurd and ridiculous of their own. And so it proved in this very instance: for, asking one of these gentlemen, what it was that provoked those he had been disputing with, to advance such a paradox? he assured me in a very calm manner, it was nothing in the world, but that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... proud of their power of swelling and puffing themselves out in this way; and I think it is about as droll a sight as you can well see to look at a cage full of these pigeons puffing and blowing themselves out in this ridiculous manner. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... us isn't the only piece of bad news which reached me this morning. Have you heard of Sister Cecilia's adventure with her counterpart?" Evelyn nodded and tried to repress a smile. "It is difficult not to smile, so ridiculous is her story; and if I didn't look upon the matter as very serious, I shouldn't be able ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... sensible girl, Vera. I observed the fact on the afternoon I met you in New York City when you made no effort to argue with me in connection with the escape of that ridiculous burglar." ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... poetry, the flames of eloquence." [Applause.] He had the courage of his convictions, he counselled not with his fears. He neither looked to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He might have been a zealot—he was never a hypocrite; he might have been eccentric—he was never ridiculous. He was a Hercules rather than an Adonis. In his warfare he fired hot shot; he did not send in flags of truce; he led forlorn hopes; he did not follow in the wake of charges. When he went forth with his sledge-hammer logic and his saw-mill ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Hope sitting up on the portico roof I wish I could see how she looked when she was riding the waves on the prow of a gallant vessel. That's where she ought to be, I heard a man say. He said Hope squatting on a portico roof may look ridiculous, but Hope breasting the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... goin', and that it'll take you about an hour and a half. I don't want her a-gettin' scared and a-hollerin' 'round and a-sendin' some one after you, like she did that day you didn't git home till dark. She acted ridiculous, as if she thought you never would come back. I couldn't fer the life of me see what made her do so; it was real silly, and I told her so at the time. I did think, though, that you'd ought to be licked fer not hurryin' ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... let me hear any of that ridiculous nonsense you were talking the other day! I won't have these ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... doesn't sound very ridiculous to me," her husband said. "Plenty of women do become confidential with their ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... else, this sublime and ridiculous superstition, that the pleasure of the pair is somehow blessed to others, and everybody is made happier in their happiness, would serve at least to keep love generous and greathearted. Nor is it quite a baseless superstition after all. Other lovers are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would she not want more to match with them? I don't want her to learn to dress in a style that she cannot honestly afford. I think this love of dress is the ruination of many a young girl. I think this straining after fine things when you are not able to get them, is perfectly ridiculous. I believe in cutting your coat according to your cloth. I saw Mrs. Hempstead's daughter last Sunday dressed up in a handsome light silk, and a beautiful spring hat, and if she or her mother would get sick to-morrow, ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... either like peacocks' feathers make a great show but are neither solid nor useful; or else like apes, if they have some appearance of being rational, are blemished with some absurdity or other, that, when they are attentively considered make them appear ridiculous." But however we may condemn their method, because it rested on their own conception of what the order of nature must be, we cannot but praise their assiduity in conducting ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... himself erect with ridiculous pomposity. Now there are times when the bravest and wisest thing a brave and wise man can do is take to his heels. I have heard my Uncle Jack MacKenzie say that vice and liquor and folly are best frustrated ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... were the only titled persons present; and from both European and American voyagers received a ridiculous amount of homage. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... you care for a place you grow porous, as it were, until after a time you are precisely like blotting-paper. Now, there was Italy, for example. After eight weeks in Venice, you were completely Venetian, from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you wore because an Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually needed to teach a woman how to wear a shawl, but that you had been born with the art, and the shoulders! Anything but ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... men too often pay for wreaking paltry revenges—writing under morbid memories and narrow and petty grievances—they not only fail in truth and impartiality, but inscribe a kind of grotesque parody of themselves in their effort to make their subject ridiculous, as he did, for example, about the name LewisLouis, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Juan or Blanche might ultimately have gone in making themselves ridiculous cannot be stated, because at this moment Margaret—prosaic, literal Margaret—appeared on ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... myself—O, what?— A most conspicuous monster! Crown my head, Pile Caesar's purple on me—and what then? My hump shall shorten the imperial robe, My leg peep out beneath the scanty hem, My broken hip shall twist the gown awry; And pomp, instead of dignifying me, Shall be by me made quite ridiculous. The faintest coward would not bear all this: Prodigious courage must be mine, to live; To die asks nothing but weak will, and I Feel like a craven. Let me skulk away Ere life o'ertask me. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... political wisdom centres in Holland House, and the 'Edinburgh Review' is its prophet. There is something in the absolute confidence of Macaulay's political dogmatism which varies between the sublime and the ridiculous. We can hardly avoid laughing at this superlative self-satisfaction, and yet we must admit that it is indicative of a real political force not to be treated with simple contempt. Belief is power, even when ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... concerned, I'm not bothered. That is, I'm not afraid of Ewen and Miller. But Chandler's proposition is another matter. It's plain enough that he wanted our men to join him and go to Edmonton and file papers on this claim. But that isn't as ridiculous as it appears. You know," he said, "Mr. Zept asked me if I hadn't grubstaked these fellows. If they could make it appear that I had, then part of this claim would belong to them. And if they all got together and swore that I had, I don't know how I could prove that they were ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... not ridiculous,' exclaimed Pierre Bedard, whose name will appear later in these pages, 'to wish to make a people's loyalty consist ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... always happens," she reflected, pausing for a moment on the top step. "I hope the Anarchist will 'stay put' this time." She laughed softly at the idea of the Anarchist standing stiff and stationary in her new room. Then the ridiculous side of the encounter dawning on her, she sat down on the stairs and gave ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... What hopes has alcohol destroyed! What resolves it has broken! What promises it has blighted! Think of any or of all these things, and hasten to say with Dr. Johnson that this vice of drink, if long indulged, will render knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible. Oh! how many lost sons of earth, whose lamps of genius blazed only to light their pathway to the tomb, might have achieved an inheritance of immortal fame but for this vice, or ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... fates in the stars, and to tell their fortunes by signs and wonders; generals thinking to conquer their enemies by making the sign of the cross, or by telling a rosary. It found all history full of petty and ridiculous falsehood, and the Almighty was supposed to spend most of his time turning sticks into snakes, drowning boys for swimming on Sunday, and killing little children for the purpose of converting their parents. It found the earth filled ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. In general, elopements, divorces, and family quarrels, pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... lie back in despair, as if howling, "O-o-oh! what a place! No-o-o, I can never go-o-o down there!" His natural composure and courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuous storm of fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would have seemed ridiculous. But in this dismal, merciless abyss lay the shadow of death, and his heartrending cries might well have called Heaven to his help. Perhaps they did. So hidden before, he was now transparent, and one ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... Observe Anne of Austria! What arms! I'll lay odds that her great-grandmother took in washing. There's Romeo, now, with a pair of legs like an old apple tree. The freedom of criticism is mine to-night! Did you ever see such ridiculous ideas of costume? For my part, the robe and the domino for me. All lines are destroyed; nothing is recognizable. My, my! There's Harlequin, too, ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... father, staring at her and waving his hands mysteriously in obedience to Jacob's directions. So ridiculous did he look indeed while thus engaged that Benita had the greatest difficulty in preventing herself from bursting into laughter. This was the only effect which his grimaces and gesticulations produced upon her, although outwardly ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... mouth of the three tailors. Beyond was Fort Garry, unlawfully seized by Riel, and now unlawfully invested by his troops. This was, therefore, a menace to the unlawful combination at the fort. At once the agitator began to dictate terms. If they would come out of their ridiculous hive, and surrender their arms, he would suffer no harm whatever to befall them; but content himself with merely taking them all in a lump, and locking them up prisoners in the fort. He would, however, insist upon other formalities; and, therefore, exhibited a declaration which ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... over your shoulders. He says you were fainting from the smoke when he dragged you out. You must be a little fool to be afraid to come out looking that way. They say that new boarder is a drawing-master, and I seen some of his pictures yesterday; he had some such ridiculous things. He'll caricature me for the amusement of the young men, I know. Only think how my portrait would look taken to-night! and he'll have it, I'm sure, for I noticed him looking at me—the first that reminded ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... become seasick on the voyage, you'll be just as anxious to get back," laughed Mr. Gilroy, causing the girls to giggle in chorus at his ridiculous speech. ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... by the Northern papers that Pope claimed a great victory over Lee and Jackson! It was too much even for the lying editors themselves! The Federal army being hurled back on the Potomac, and then compelled to cross it, it was too transparently ridiculous for the press to contend for the victory. And now they confess to a series of defeats from the 26th June to the culminating calamity of the 30th August. They acknowledge they have been beaten—badly beaten—but they will not admit that our army has crossed into Maryland. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... yourself in her place. She wouldn't like it supposed that I was making love to her. She might consider the whole thing made her look as ridiculous as it ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... likely to result from the election of General Cass. To unite with those who annexed the new territory, to prevent the extension of slavery in that territory, seemed to him to be in the highest degree absurd and ridiculous. Suppose these gentlemen succeed in electing Mr. Van Buren, they had no specific means to prevent the extension of slavery to New Mexico and California; and General Taylor, he confidently believed, would not encourage it, and would not prohibit its restriction. But if General ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... independent of me," Helen suggested with a smile. "I suppose it's an honest ambition, but isn't the distinction you try to make ridiculous?" ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... 'It seems very ridiculous, very impertinent I fear you will think it,' said Tancred, in a hesitating confused manner, 'but that person, that person who has just left the room; I have a particular reason, I have the greatest desire, to know ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... wishing to live in it—from the first he had never blamed her. He might have managed even had she pulled it about his ears to rebuild it in some fashion, but this was the bitterest, that he knew now for a certainty there had never been any House and the certainty made him ridiculous. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... larger-eyed, strangely thinner, a whitened and somehow a tightened Stella Schump drew up, those ten days later, before the little old row with the little old iron balconies, there was already in the ridiculous patches of front yards a light-green powdering of grass, and from the doorbell of her own threshold there hung quite a little spray of roses, waxy white against a frond of fern and a fold of black. ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... the all-powerful? She had not seen him hitherto, and she thought that he looked differently. She had imagined some kind of ghastly face, with malignity petrified in its features; now she saw a great head, fixed on a thick neck, terrible, it is true, but almost ridiculous, for from a distance it resembled the head of a child. A tunic of amethyst color, forbidden to ordinary mortals, cast a bluish tinge on his broad and short face. He had dark hair, dressed, in the fashion introduced by ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... ideals of his wife were so low and commonplace that she influenced his career by antithesis. His soul was ahungered for the bread of life, and stones were given him in way of the dull, the ugly, the affected, the smug, the ridiculous. Wagner's life was a revolt from the ossified commonplace, a struggle for right adjustment—a heart tragedy. And all this reaching out of the spirit, all the prayers, hopes, fears and travail of his soul, are told and told again in his poetry and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... attention to the Lusitania outrage. Yet (as I understand it) the people will not run the risk of war—or the Administration thinks they will not—and hence the President can do nothing to make his threat good. Therefore we stand in a ridiculous situation; and nobody cares how many notes we write. I don't know that the President could have done differently—unless, before he sent the Lusitania notes, he had called Congress together and submitted his notes to Congress. But, as the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... more opposition was experienced. Public sentiment can be inferred from an article which appeared in the Quarterly Review for March, 1825. Among other things it said: "What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as horses. We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's richochet rockets as to trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... completely; and in seeing that he was (at a certain period) a fool, he had come to discern that of which his friends had always been aware. Of course, early interests do not always die out. You remember Dr. Chalmers, and the ridiculous exhibition about the wretched little likeness of an early sweetheart, not seen for forty years, and long since in her grave. You remember the singular way in which he signified his remembrance of her, in his famous and honored ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... were still standing on top of the straw stack rocking with laughter at the ridiculous figure cut by Ruth, while their uncle stopped the team and hurried up the bank as fast as he could go. He was the first to get to Ruth as she picked herself up and ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... ghastly head, with mockings and derisive laughter. They had put a paper crown upon the head, which they seemed to think produced a comic effect. The queen, though at first she averted her face, soon turned back again toward the horrid trophy, and laughed, with the rest, at the ridiculous effect produced ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... satisfied with them, besides, just as they came from the end of the tube. Pencroft had asked to be allowed to "blow" in his turn, and it was great fun for him; but he blew so hard that his productions took the most ridiculous shapes, which he ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... to the evident discomfort of the camels, who were quite unhappy when going up or down hill. It was really ridiculous to see these huge, clumsy brutes quite done up, even on the gentlest incline. The track went up and up in zigzag and curves, the cries of the camel-drivers were constantly urging on the perplexed animals, and the dingle of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... tipsy—on the beauty of temperance? That is dreary work for a pretty young girl. No," Felix continued; "Clifford ought to frequent some agreeable woman, who, without ever mentioning such unsavory subjects, would give him a sense of its being very ridiculous to be fuddled. If he could fall in love with her a little, so much the better. The thing ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... come to nibble at the fish, we might get some food from them," suggested Madden with American delight in the ridiculous. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... paint!' 'No, don't you wish you could?' replied the artist. Now the old lady was perfectly right. You cannot put white quivering tropical heat on a canvas, but Turner dashes unnatural vermilion over his scene and the picture is not ridiculous; the effect of noonday heat is somehow produced. Look at those sunsets! In one sense they are failures, every one of them; but what a splendid audacity the man had, and what a genius, to attempt to portray nature in those special moments when it shines with a glory ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... earthie name to Interrogatories Can tast the free breath of a sacred King? Thou canst not (Cardinall) deuise a name So slight, vnworthy, and ridiculous To charge me to an answere, as the Pope: Tell him this tale, and from the mouth of England, Adde thus much more, that no Italian Priest Shall tythe or toll in our dominions: But as we, vnder heauen, are supreame head, So vnder him that great supremacy Where we ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... flowing figures, and swelling stomachs. The outline of these is one that lends itself readily to caricature, and the artists have exaggerated the various details with the intention, it may be, of rendering the representations grotesque. There was nothing ridiculous, however, in the king, their model, and several of his statues attribute to him a languid, almost valetudinarian grace, which is by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... other time, in any other mood, the action would have stirred her sense of the ridiculous. She would have laughed and whipped him with sarcasm. He had done exuberant things before and left her unmoved except to mirth. But this time she raised him up without a word, and he answered her touch with curious unresistance, like a man hypnotized and stood speechless, but with ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... handed over my report, after asking how it happened that the signature of the colonel and adjutant was on the ridiculous report, and the adjutant and the red-headed recruit went out, mounted and rode away. On the way the adjutant said, "I ought to kill you on the spot. But I wont. You have only retaliated on us for playing them pants on you. I hate a man that can't ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... first place, I received my ridiculous name because my father died a short time after I was born. It was intended I should be a boy, so I was named for him. We were poor and mother had to make her own living and mine. She did not feel troubled over this because she had studied dancing and loved it. So she gave dancing lessons in California, ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... Spencer, it will be evident that purposeful games rather than exercises are to be commended. There is indeed no comparison for a moment possible between Nature's method of exercise, which is obtained through play, and the ridiculous and empty parodies of it which men invent. The truth is that Nature is aiming at one thing, and man at another. Man's aim, for reasons already exploded, is the acquirement of strength; Nature's is the acquirement of skill. It is really ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... says Jack. "The fact is, I'm so excited and agitated that I can't sit still anywhere for five minutes together. Ridiculous as it may appear to you, I'm in a perpetual state of nervous flutter. I can't, for the life of me, help fearing that we shall be found out. I fancy that every man who looks twice at me in the street is ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... gods and it was thou who hadst caused them to be created! Through thy grace, the gods pass their time in joy and perfect fearlessness!' Having praised Mahadeva in this manner, the Rishi bowed to him, 'Let not this absence of gravity, ridiculous in the extreme, that I displayed, O god, destroy my ascetic merit! I pray to thee for this!' The god, with a cheerful heart, once more said unto him 'Let thy asceticism increase a thousandfold, O Brahmana, through my grace! ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... won't get away. It's safe in the ground. We'll knock off work and let the claim lie idle till the thing is settled. You can't really expect us to surrender possession of our mine on the mere allegation of some unknown man. That's ridiculous. We won't do it. Why, you'll have to let us argue our case, at least, before you try to put ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... long after Lilly's dresses had descended to her shoe tops and until the ritual came to have a distinctly ridiculous aspect, there took place the one pleasantry in which Lilly and her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... he goes too far out of his way to avoid evils, and makes an unnecessary sacrifice of pleasure, he is, in reality, not the worse off for that; for all pleasures are chimerical, and to mourn for having lost any of them is a frivolous, and even ridiculous proceeding. ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said the Dodo, getting in front of him, grasping the reins, and pulling with all his might. "I shall get very angry with you in a minute. It's perfectly ridiculous going on in this way; however do you imagine we are to get to our destination if you ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... for the first time, and did not well understand their business. I agreed with him fully on the latter point. To fire upon a solitary horseman, advancing at a walk, and challenge him afterward, was something that will appear ridiculous in the eyes of all soldiers. The corporal and all his men promised to do better next time, and begged me not to report them at head-quarters. When I reached the center of the town, I found the garrison had been alarmed at the picket firing, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... everywhere about," said he; "and to see them lighting the people's fires, boiling the people's pots, minding the people's babies, rocking the people's cradles, washing the people's greens, and making themselves generally useful, in every sort of unmilitary way, is most ridiculous! Never saw such a set of fellows,—never did in ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... my sisters and brothers, as are nice to me; and won't even draw any distinction between those born of primary wives and those of secondary ones. Properly speaking, I shouldn't say these things about her, but she's narrow-minded to a degree, and unlike what she should be. There's besides another ridiculous thing. This took place the last time I gave you the money to get me those trifles. Well, two days after that, she saw me, and she began again to represent that she had no money and that she was hard up. Nevertheless, I did not worry my brain with her goings on. But as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... gentleman had been a conspirator with Lord Cochrane, when he heard that Lord Cochrane was gone to Snow-hill, he would have gone on to Snow-hill, then they would have been near the purlieus of that place where all this infamy is daily transacting; instead of that Lord Cochrane comes back. It is too ridiculous and absurd, says my learned friend, to suppose that Lord Cochrane should be coming back to see an officer. I hope, gentlemen, that will not appear to you to be absurd under the circumstances he has sworn to. I can hardly ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... sovereigns. Old and young hastened to present themselves on the day of general reception; little black bonnets with great wings, shaking heads, low curtsies, keeping time with the motions of the head, made, it must be admitted, a few venerable dowagers appear somewhat ridiculous; but the Queen, who possessed a great deal of dignity, and a high respect for decorum, was not guilty of the grave fault of losing the state she was bound to preserve. An indiscreet piece of drollery of one of the ladies of the palace, however, procured her the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that they could never impose upon adults. It is during the most tender and susceptible age of men that the priests have familiarized the understanding of our race with monstrous fables, with extravagant and disjointed fancies, and with ridiculous chimeras, which, by degrees, become objects that are respected and ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... scene of the play opens when Pillage is at the zenith of his power; a stage direction orders that "The Levee enters, and range themselves to a ridiculous tune"; a partition of places ensues under the allegory of the business arrangements of a theatrical manager; and the author explains that by this levee scene he hopes that persons greater than author-managers ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... with a panic. He was not a valiant boy, generally speaking, and something about the ridiculous suggestion concerning a bomb seemed to fill ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... brief summary of the conclusions, or rather of the attempted conclusions, for the mystery, like most of the world's mysteries, is probably unfathomable. After dismissing the spiritualistic theory, which implies the intervention of the dead or of discarnate entities and is not as ridiculous as the profane would think, but which nothing hitherto has adequately confirmed, we may reasonably ask ourselves first of all whether this faculty exists in us or in the medium. Does it simply decipher, as is probably the case where the future is concerned, the latent ideas, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down on a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was aware of; but in a most ridiculous and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... precedence and dignity, as if I invited my friends not to treat them kindly, but to abuse them. Menelaus is accounted absurd and passed into a proverb, for pretending to advise when unasked; and sure he would be more ridiculous that instead of an entertainer should set up for a judge, when nobody requests him or submits to his determination which is the best and which the worst man in the company; for the guests do not come to contend about precedency, but to feast and be merry. Besides, it is no easy ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... seemed ridiculous. The "water lots" are now almost in the centre of the business district of great San Francisco, and worth ten times ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... in the proportions of his figure, nothing could exceed the ease and the grace of his motions and air; and his dress, though singularly rich in its materials, eccentric in its fashion, and from its evident study, unseemly to his years, served nevertheless to render rather venerable than ridiculous a mien which could almost have carried off any absurdity, and which the fashion of the garb peculiarly became. The tout ensemble was certainly that of a man who was still vain of his exterior, and conscious of its effect; and it was as certainly impossible to converse with Mr. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gave an account of Madam de Tournon; she thought she ought to acknowledge to him the inclination she had for the Duke de Nemours, and in that thought she continued a long time; afterwards she was astonished to have entertained so ridiculous a design, and fell back again into her former perplexity of ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... religious disbelief in general and against Atheism in particular. We have here more than the mere rejection of a theory or view of life. There is a certain emotional resentment, a shrinking from the one who is guilty of disbelief, such as is not explainable on ordinary grounds. The attitude is ridiculous, so ridiculous that many who adopt it are ashamed to openly acknowledge it, but it is there, and its ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... working with me steadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly witty. He gets a laugh round the table at my expense. Young Dent, the more intelligent of the labour men, reads me a lecture in committee manners. Old Cassidy sees HIS opening and jabs some ridiculous petty accusation at me and gets me spluttering self-defence like a fool. All my stock goes down, and as my stock goes down the chances of a good report dwindle. Young Dent grieves to see me injuring my own case. Too damned ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... not sit down," Brubitsch said firmly. "I am innocent. I am innocent like a small child. Does a small child commit a murder? It is ridiculous." ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... whether or not the commons had made good the articles exhibited against Dr. Sacheverel. The earl of Wharton observed, that the doctor's speech was a full confutation and condemnation of his sermon: that all he had advanced about non-resistance and unlimited obedience was false and ridiculous: that the doctrine of passive obedience, as urged by the doctor, was not reconcileable to the practice of churchmen: that if the revolution was not lawful, many in that house, and vast numbers without, were guilty of blood, murder, rapine, and injustice; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Violet, it is not my comfort I am considering; but I cannot help feeling annoyed that you should prefer to spend your evening with a herd of vulgar children—playing Oranges and Lemons, or Kiss in the Ring, or some other ridiculous game, and getting yourself into a most unbecoming perspiration—to a quiet home ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... asks, "What have I done for you, England, my England?" Since the question is put so pointedly, my Baronite, who has been looking through the little volume of verse, is bound to reply that, what Mr. HENLEY has done for England is to make it as ridiculous as is possible to a man with a limited audience. Mr. HENLEY has a pretty gift of versification, but it is spoiled by a wearisome proneness to smartness, and an assumption of personal superiority that occasionally reaches the heights of the ludicrous. If ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... The ridiculous creatures have wings; they can fly; but they are afraid! After all these days, however, the whole flock has mounted the tallest trees along the bank. One of the gobblers has come forward as leader in the emergency. Suddenly, from his perch, he utters a single cluck—the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... priests, scattered over the face of the earth, find it necessary to command his presence in the shape of bread—yet we see only one and the same God, who receives the homage and adoration of all those good people who find it very ridiculous in the Egyptians to adore lupines and onions. But the Catholics are not simply content with worshipping a bit of bread, which they consider by the conjurations of a priest as divine; they eat this bread, and then persuade themselves that they are nourished by ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... profiles, pointed skulls, ample breasts, flowing figures, and swelling stomachs. The outline of these is one that lends itself readily to caricature, and the artists have exaggerated the various details with the intention, it may be, of rendering the representations grotesque. There was nothing ridiculous, however, in the king, their model, and several of his statues attribute to him a languid, almost valetudinarian grace, which is by no ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... true of medical science as to make contrary declarations in the matter utterly ridiculous, and to suggest at once that there must be some motive for seeing things so different to the reality, the same story can be told of graduate science in other departments. It was to Italy that men came for special higher studies in mathematics ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... command to be perfect. That finite man may be perfect in this sinful world sounds ridiculous to many unregenerated hearts. This is because they do not understand God nor his power to deliver man from sin. With the many exhortations and commands to perfection contained in the Holy Scriptures is it not singular that man will yet say, "We can ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... utterances about himself, the "full-blooded egotism" which developed in him during his last year of mental and moral starvation at Grimstad. Through the whole series of his satiric dramas we see the little narrow-minded borough, with its ridiculous officials, its pinched and hypocritical social order, its intolerable laws and ordinances, modified here and there, expanded sometimes, modernized and brought up to date, but always recurrent in the poet's memory. To the last, the images and the rebellions which were burned into his soul at Grimstad ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... embraces whereof consists your whole commonwealth; whose councils upon their perpetual wheelings, marches, and countermarches, create her armies, and whose armies with the golden volleys of the ballot at once create and salute her councils. There be those (such is the world at present) that think it ridiculous to see a nation exercising its civil functions in military discipline; while they, committing their buff to their servants, come themselves to hold trenchards. For what avails it such as are unarmed, or (which is all one) whose education acquaints them not with the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the "ni" was attached to "Ashur" (Ashuraku or Ashurachu), as it was to "Marad" (Merodach) to give the reading Ni-Marad Nimrod. The names of heathen deities were thus made "unrecognizable, and in all probability ridiculous as well.... Pious and orthodox lips could pronounce them without fear of defilement."[384] At the same time the "Nisr" theory is probable: it may represent another phase of this process. The names of heathen gods were not all treated ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Laboratory, and also resumed his visits to the Ellrichs, but it was with an increasing discomfort. The councilor, who had been distinguished for his services in the financial transactions with the French Government, had heard the story of the refusal of the Iron Cross. He thought it very ridiculous, and his early friendship for Wilhelm became markedly cooler. Even Frau Ellrich's motherly feeling for him received a check, and modesty and shyness no longer seemed a sufficient explanation of the unaccountable delay in his love-making. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... first weeks of checking, I had run onto the Venus explanation in other cases. Several Air Force officers repeated it so quickly that it had the sound of a stock alibi. But in the daytime cases this was almost ridiculous. ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... roughly made to have been fit for use as a 'kid's toy,' as the subaltern called it. To imagine it being used as a weapon of precision in a war distinguished above all others as one of scientifically perfect weapons and implements was ridiculous beyond words. ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... more than usually intellectual. She knew also that, as a clergyman, he was of a much higher stamp than Mr. Slope and that, as a gentleman, he was better educated than Mr. Thorne. She would never have attempted to drive Mr. Arabin into ridiculous misery as she did Mr. Slope, nor would she think it possible to dispose of him in ten minutes as she ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... A ridiculous accident happened as the people were coming home from the Fair that third night. There was a great deal to be drawn home; and consequently a very long procession of carts and wagons was tailing along the road, toward nightfall; also the cows and other cattle which had been on exhibition. The ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... "I may laugh at my idiocy, but you haven't any right to. I know I'm ridiculous. I've known it for months. But ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... consider their words, in England they shall not find such grasse in them, as in their feelds & meadows. The catle find grasse, for they are as fatt as need be; we wish we had but one for every hundred that hear is grase to keep. Indeed, this objection, as some other, are ridiculous to all here which see ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... this planet, of course." A pair of beady black eyes stared back, as if trying to understand a ridiculous question. "But we're citizens ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... telling you, what the world is saying about you. You see how they treat "the search for arms," as they head it, and "the Maid of Saragossa!" O Mathew Kearney! Mathew Kearney! whatever happened the old stock of the land, they never made themselves ridiculous.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... this contemplation was smitten with a large astonishment. He discovered that the distances, as compared with the brilliant measurings of his mind, were trivial and ridiculous. The stolid trees, where much had taken place, seemed incredibly near. The time, too, now that he reflected, he saw to have been short. He wondered at the number of emotions and events that had been crowded into such little spaces. Elfin thoughts must have exaggerated and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... is good for my soul, the struggle to leave it would be greater now. Polly would be happier and get more from life as the wife of big gangling Henry Peters, than she would as a millionaire's daughter. She'd be very suitable in a farmhouse parlour; she'd be a ridiculous little figure at a ball. As for Adam, he'd turn this down quick ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... it not ridiculous enough that you should inflict upon it now, and unnecessarily, this system, merely through fear that some day or other it might chance to be subjected to ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... as it passed. The spectacle was magnificent, but except among the soldiers themselves a sense of sadness and disappointment passed over the whole assembly. The speech of the Emperor showed that he was still the despot at heart: the applause was forced: all was felt to be ridiculous, all unreal. [234] ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... During the ridiculous deadlock on the Naval Aid Bill, when his supporters went so grotesquely far as to read the Bible to talk out the Bill, he was away from the House for a week, reported as quite ill, in reality having ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... it is, it would seem, an antipathy or the absence of sympathy which produces the other. "The thing at which we laugh," says Aristotle, "is a defect or ugliness which is not great enough to cause suffering or injury. Thus, for example, a ridiculous face is an ugly or misshapen face, but one on which suffering has not marked." Bain says likewise, "The laughable is the deformed or ugly thing which is not pushed to the point where it is painful or injurious. An occasion for laughter is the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... now to be released. They are persons some of whom had committed assaults and other offenses cognizable by the laws of the States where they lived, and the Ku-Klux legislation by Congress was a political device as unnecessary as it was unconstitutional. Perhaps the most ridiculous, as well as the most unjust prosecution under the Ku-Klux law was that instituted against Miss Anthony for voting in Rochester. Under her view of her rights, she presented herself at the polls, and submitted her claims to the proper officers, who decided that she had a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... caressed the ridiculous good soul. Her arm remained about her shoulder, her hand touched it. "How nice of you! I'll go and get ready at once. Then I'll see what rooms we had better have. Wasn't it lucky we did the drawing-rooms ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... the custom to talk of Shakespeare as nature's child—as the lad who held horses for people who came to the play—as a sort of chance phenomenon who wrote these plays by accident and unrecognized. How supremely ridiculous! How utterly irreconcilable with the grand dimensions of the man! How absurdly dishonoring to the great age of which he was, and was known to be, the glory! The noblest literary man of all time—the finest and yet most ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... darkens more of a man's mental horizon, and in its possible bearing on the destinies of a race is far more dangerous than even total blindness to the course of human history and endeavour; and yet it is difficult to question the popular verdict that to know nothing of gravitation though ridiculous is venial, while to know nothing of Ananias is an offence which ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... these institutions are entirely appropriate means. Only it would not be worth while in that case to begin a movement for such a purpose throughout all Germany, to stir up a general agitation in the whole working class of the nation. You must not bring mountains into labor in order that a ridiculous mouse appear. This so extremely limited and subordinate purpose can better be left to local unions and local organizations, which can always handle it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... book called The Travels of Baron Munchausen is a series of the most extravagant stories imaginable. No one can possibly believe them to be true, and yet when we are reading them they do not appear so absurdly ridiculous as they seem afterward when we think of them. The book is said to have been written by a German named Rudolph Erich Raspe, but we cannot be sure of it, as there are no proofs. It is said, too, that there ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Our PARTY"—she emphasized the word, and accompanied it with a look toward the further extremity of the plateau, to show she was not alone—"our party climbed this ridge, and put up this pole as a sign to show they did it." The ridiculous self-complacency of this record in the face of a man who was evidently a dweller on the mountain apparently struck her for the first time. "We didn't know," she stammered, looking at the shaft from which Rand had emerged, "that—that—" ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... "Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with our last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of any kind. Could—could its exercise ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... other fiery orator, Patrick The Great, might have lost his balance had his new peach-colored coat split up the back, when he was hurling death and destruction upon tyrants and pleading for liberty or death. To be ridiculous with equanimity is the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... its nature on examination. It is so disguised that one fails to recognise it, so subtle that it deceives the scientific, so elusive that it escapes the doctor's eye: experiments seem to be at fault with this poison, rules useless, aphorisms ridiculous. The surest experiments are made by the use of the elements or upon animals. In water, ordinary poison falls by its own weight. The water is superior, the poison obeys, falls downwards, and takes ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to speak, in England, where we read that Charles II and the Duke of Yorke attended the first performance of Tarugo's Wiles, or the Coffee House, a comedy, in 1667, which Samuel Pepys described as "the most ridiculous and insipid play I ever saw in my life." The author was Thomas St. Serf. The piece opens in a lively manner, with a request on the part of its fashionable hero for a change of clothes. Accordingly, Tarugo puts off his "vest, hat, perriwig, and sword," and serves ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... rapidly than beauty to the effects of time. The consequence of his indulgence towards the two conspirators was, that at about the commencement of the following year, 1720, they began to play a very ridiculous comedy, of which not a soul was the dupe; not even the public, nor the principal actors, nor ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... expression; it is however certain, that in common discourse we readily affirm, that many arguments from causation exceed probability, and may be received as a superior kind of evidence. One would appear ridiculous, who would say, that it is only probable the sun will rise to-morrow, or that all men must dye; though it is plain we have no further assurance of these facts, than what experience affords us. For this reason, it would perhaps be more convenient, in order at once to preserve the common signification ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the room and speaking seriously to her brother.] Really, Morris, you are very rude. And it's quite ridiculous to be rude. This gentleman was only practising some tricks by himself in the garden. [With a certain dignity.] If there was any mistake, it was mine. Come, shake hands, or whatever men do when they apologize. Don't be silly. He won't turn you ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... not reached a ridiculous degree of heat, Blugsey's was certainly a very satisfactory location. The dirt was rich, the river ran dry, there was plenty of standing-room on the banks, which were devoid of rocks, the storekeeper dealt strictly on the square, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... sodden, smoky, stupid wretch I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my self-reproach and shame, and—in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... children for that matter, she doesn't have to go into hysterics, and send for Judge Lee. She said she didn't feel at all well, and she wanted to secure to Kate some money in her will I told her it was ridiculous—she never looked better in her life! I wish she could get over to see you, Alice; you always soothe her so. What on earth does Chris make ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... with a situation that must be kept top secret for two reasons: First, it may be the first move in an attempt to subjugate or destroy our planet; two, it is so utterly ridiculous on its face that a public announcement would be greeted by hoots of laughter from pole to pole." Brent's ugly scowl deepened at what he seemed to feel was an injustice. "Even the Eskimos would get a yack out ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... the men undress their master and put him in his bed. Laisangy was ready to swear at her, but, of course, he was too ill to dispute. If he suddenly revived and made a row, then the story would get about of the ridiculous comedy he had played. His patience was not long tried, however. Carmen only wanted to gain a little time, in which she might hope to discover the contents of a letter which she saw the banker receive and put in his pocket early in the evening. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... that he had sworn to observe statutes which required him, among other things, to wear garments only of a black or "subfusk" hue; to abstain from that absurd and proud custom of walking in public in boots, and the ridiculous one of wearing the hair long;* - statutes, moreover, which demanded of him to refrain from all taverns, wine-shops, and houses in which they sold wine or any other drink, and the herb called nicotiana or "tobacco"; not to hunt wild beasts with dogs or snares or nets; not to carry ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his own tenacity—prevented him. He turned about again, and there stood, with his back against the door, as hers was against the wall opposite, quite unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by the whole width ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... credulous hope on that of the people, they found a madman let loose to take the place of an unfathomable and gloomy tyrant. Caligula was much taken up with Gaul, plundering it and giving free rein in it to his frenzies, by turns disgusting or ridiculous. In a short and fruitless campaign on the banks of the Rhine, he had made too few prisoners for the pomp of a triumph; he therefore took some Gauls, the tallest he could find, of triumphal size, as he said, put them in German clothes, made them ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... one here, including Dick, my little terrier, who—although he ought to know better at his age, being over eight—"galumphs" about in an absurdly clumsy manner, under the mistaken impression that he is playing with it. He only succeeds, however, in making himself ridiculous in the eyes of the kitten, who, despite his years, treats him with little or no respect, and does not hesitate to box his ears, and bite his tail whenever it ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... Japanese come to nibble at the fish, we might get some food from them," suggested Madden with American delight in the ridiculous. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... run away this time, they retired to a safe distance, and stood ready to fly at any sign of the barbarian's approach. They watched him wonderingly. They noticed his strange white face, his black beard, his hair cut off quite short, his amazing hat, and his ridiculous clothes. And when at last he walked away, and all danger was over, they burst into shouts ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's 'style' depended in any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a thing as 'style' should depend in the least upon so ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,—or check,—his poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... its corridors, galleries, and hallways there came no sound. There was no one upon the same floor as herself. She had read all her books. It was too late to go out—and there was no one to go with. To go to bed was ridiculous. She was never more wakeful, never more alive, never more ready to ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... never had in view virtue rather than vice. To take his stand as a teacher of humanity, at his age, would have seemed ridiculous to him. After having chosen subjects in harmony with his genius, and a point of view favorable to his poetic temperament, which especially required to throw off the yoke of artificial passions and of weak, frivolous sentiments, what he ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Richard Arkwright, the great mechanician. He was never at school in his life—never forced to do ridiculous sums, to spell correctly, to parse, to drill, to sing! His biographer said that the only education he ever received he gave himself—that he was fifty years of age when he set to work to learn grammar and to improve his hand-writing. He ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... and the pursuit of happiness!" That is what we are after. So it is. How ridiculous! Why don't we think of it oftener? How many of us are free? How many of us are happy? And, particularly, how many of us would be any happier if we got the things we want? What foolish wants we have, anyway! Almost everybody ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... known, and to the boys of my size it was a matter of eternal wonder how I could belong to 'the big class in that reader.' When we were to read the death of 'Little Nell,' I would run away, for I knew it would make me cry, that the other boys would laugh at me, and the whole thing would become ridiculous. I couldn't bear that. A later teacher, Captain Lee O. Harris, came to understand me with thorough sympathy, took compassion on my weaknesses and encouraged me to read the best literature. He understood that he couldn't get numbers into my head. You couldn't ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... to Beatriz Enriquez; but he had no right to provide for her out of money that in all equity and decency ought to have gone to another and a poorer man. His biographers, some of whom have vied with his canonisers in insisting upon seeing virtue in his every action, have gone to all kinds of ridiculous extremes in accounting for this piece of meanness. Irving says that it was "a subject in which his whole ambition was involved"; but a plain person will regard it as an instance of greed and love of money. We must not shirk facts like this if we wish to know the man as he ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... known—often—to do stupider things than that, and particularly young white men who have not yet learned to gauge proportions accurately; so there was nothing really ridiculous in the suggestion. A young white man who has had his temper worked up to the boiling-point, his nerves deliberately racked, and then has been subjected to the visit of a driven tiger, may be confidently expected to exhibit all the faults of ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... established success. They show that the American people were not slow to recognize the genius of the young girl, who was destined hereafter to spread a luster on the stage of two continents. At the same time they are full either of a ridiculous praise which is blind to the presence of the least fault, and would have turned the head of a young girl not endowed with the sturdy common sense possessed by Mary Anderson; or they are marked by a vindictive animosity which defeats its very object, and practically attracts ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... 'Don't be ridiculous, Michael!' replied Mrs. Harcourt, in her good-tempered way; 'of course you take her part simply because she is accused: you are ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 'That would not have been so had she been without talent. And now it is all in the grave, to which she has hastened of herself.... But I've nothing to do with that ... I'm not to blame! It would be positively ridiculous to suppose ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... It is you who can offer me no reparation for the offence against my feelings—and my person; for what reparation can be adequate for your odious and ridiculous plot so scornful in its implication, so humiliating to my pride. No! I don't want ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the same time more ridiculous and more awful, more laughable and more taunting, than that little fan in those huge hands. It seemed like a make-believe sceptre in the hands of such an old, hideous, and bony giantess! A like effect was produced by the showy percale handkerchief ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... And yet, people like my family and myself are worth serving and saving. I have known what it means to lie awake all night, suffering with shame because of some stupid social blunder which had made me appear ridiculous before my husband's ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... said Rosamund slowly, stamping her foot in her endeavor to speak with emphasis, "it is absolutely ridiculous for any one to give way to those morbid feelings in these days. If her mother wished us to come here to be educated, I suppose she had her good reasons for it, and that Lucy should be such a goose ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... Great: and will, I hope, do them good. I heard but little music: the glorious Acis and Galatea; and the redoubtable Jenny Lind, for the first time. I was disappointed in her: but am told this is all my fault. As to naming her in the same Olympiad with great old Pasta, I am sure that is ridiculous. The Exhibition is like most others you have seen; worse perhaps. There is an 'Aaron' and a 'John the Baptist' by Etty far worse than the Saracen's Head on Ludgate Hill. Moore is turned Picture dealer: and that high Roman virtue in which he indulged is ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... of good-humor. "That is a ridiculous accident, and it all came about when I lived in Chicago. Do you know anything about the infernal climate there? Well, in Chicago I used to lose my voice whenever I caught a cold—sometimes for weeks together. So they began calling me Whispering Smith, and I've never been able ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... ambition, the malice, or the revenge, nay, even the whim and caprice of one ruling man among them, is enough to arm all the rest, without any private views of their own, to the worst and blackest purposes: and what is at once lamentable, and ridiculous, these wretches engage under those banners with a fury greater than if they were animated by revenge ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Mrs. Brinkley, "and that's what makes the whole thing so perfectly ridiculous. Just think of two children, one of twenty and the other of twenty-three, proposing to decide their lifelong destiny in such a vital matter! Should we trust their judgment in regard to the smallest business affair? Of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... enough, for I felt strangely dispirited, and, to tell the truth, in my strange disguise not a little ridiculous. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... as that by which the race attains its perfection, Lessing connects the idea of the transmigration of souls. Why may not the individual man have been present in this world more than once? Is this hypothesis so ridiculous because it ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... made myself ridiculous by pulling you away from Felix that idiotic, humiliating way!" Molly threw this inquiry out, straight before her, angrily. The wind caught at her words and hurled ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... tumble down before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before, and stop to think. But I can't think about the lesson. I think of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone's cap, or of the price of Mr. Murdstone's dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have no business with, and don't want to have anything at all to do with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances submissively at them, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... circumstance, however, was over- balanced by my alarm at finding that the Doctor still persisted in his intention of entering; for I had hoped that at the last moment his faith would give way, and let him slide down from the elevation of his ridiculous and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the testimony was incredible and would be ridiculous if the outcome had not been so tragic. Let us read some bits from the record of those solemn trials. Increase Mather in his Remarkable Providences related the following concerning the persecution of William Morse and wife at Newberry, Massachusetts: "On ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... for bearing witness to any truth, but only for witnessing to the Divine truth, otherwise a man would be a martyr if he were to die for confessing a truth of geometry or some other speculative science, which seems ridiculous. Therefore faith alone ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... with pauses, and indicates the whole censorious universe.] And now let me assure you—I am the last man in the world to be jilted on the very eve of—of—everything with you. I won't be jilted. [CYNTHIA is silent.] You understand? I propose to marry you. I won't be made ridiculous. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... sit down, my ward, and, if you can possibly help it, stop saying ridiculous things, because I have some very serious things to say to you. Listen. I suppose you are not going to insist upon being sent back to the establishment of Mademoiselle Prefere?... No. Well, then, what would you say if I should take you here to live with me, and to finish ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... "Don't be ridiculous, Lenox. Still, I suppose that is something like it. They wouldn't deserve anything else if they were fools enough to go on fighting after they knew ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... How ridiculous and consuming are the unreasonable demands of the souls of artists and the childish laws which govern their passionate lives! Hardly had he once more found the friend whom he had neglected in the old days when she loved him, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... got ready for her; that she should have time to choose her clothes to harmonise with her moods—time, after a look at the weather, and hearing the news of the day, to settle on what the moods should be. For a man, on the contrary, he thought it ridiculous and weakly idle—indolent in a way not suited to a man. A man, according to Nigel, ought no more to have his breakfast in bed than to come down with a bow of blue ribbon in his hair, or to go and lie down ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... you mean, you ridiculous thing?" drawled Jennie. "You cannot be a Crusoe. You are not dressed ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... is false, my Manilius; it is not merely a fiction, but a ridiculous and bungling one too; and we should not tolerate those statements, even in fiction, relating to facts which not only did not happen, but which never could have happened. For it was not till the fourth year of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus that Pythagoras is ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... steep slope of a mule's back, with a precipice above your head and your feet dangling over a gulf below? There is no help for it. Imagine yourself a sack of meal, if you can, and expect as little sympathy as would be accorded to that article. Are you moved to a keen sense of the ridiculous, as a curve in the road discloses the figures of your elongated party, unused to riding, and rendered the more grotesque by their mountain-equipment? A laugh unshared is no laugh at all, so you may as well smother it at once. Does the scenery through which you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... your heart of hearts, don't want to have to walk and talk continually with a person who might at any moment try to bamboozle you with some ridiculous tale. And I, for my part, don't want to degrade myself by trying to bamboozle any one, especially one whom I have taught to see through me. Let the two talks we have had be as though they had not been. Let ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... Both arise from the perception of something out of the common order of things—something, in fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be excited. The close alliance of these opposites—they are not contraries—appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Knickerbockers were so vastly more exclusive. I do recall this name now. I remember hearing tales of the family in Spokane. They're a type, you know. One sees many of the sort there. They make a strike in the mines and set up ridiculous establishments regardless of expense. You see them riding in their carriages with two men in the box—red-handed, grizzled old vulgarians who've roughed it in the mountains for twenty years with a pack-mule and a ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... bleaching bones 'Twixt here and Moscow.... I have been subdued; But by the elements; and them alone. Not Russia, but God's sky has conquered me! [With an appalled look she sits beside him.] From the sublime to the ridiculous There's but a step!—I have been saying it All through the leagues of my long journey home— And that step has been passed in this affair!... Yes, briefly, it is quite ridiculous, Whichever way ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... remodeled is obvious. We are convinced that the same holds true where only minor changes, replacements and the introduction of modern conveniences are the program. Our own little country home is an example. The necessary alterations were so simple that it seemed ridiculous to ask architectural advice. There was nothing to the job but to install plumbing, move one partition, patch the plastering, and close chimney and other pipe openings cut in the days when stoves, rather ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... the ladies of the family, one can say little. They are not perhaps, by nature, as ridiculous as they have made themselves. Time may do something for them. But their father is a very worthy, respectable man; you must have seen him at our house last summer. Don't you remember one day two uncles of Patsey Hubbard dining ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... point Sewell felt himself helpless. He could not pretend that the boy would not be ridiculous in the eyes of his friends, and all the more ridiculous because so wholly innocent. He could only say, "That is a thing you must bear," and then it occurred to him to ask, "Do you feel that it is right to let your family meet ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... ready. It being Collar-day, we had no time to talk with him about any business. To the King's Theatre, where we saw "Midsummer's Night's dream," which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... perceived how his ridiculous talk captivated Miss Jennings, it occurred to her that the vanity of women was such, that this instance of one of their number being impressed by a foolish man's silly conversation was only typical of the manner in which the rest ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... us not call it a flying-machine. Let us call it simply an automobile. There it is on the road, jolting, screeching, rattling, perfuming. And there he is, saying: 'This road ought to be as smooth as velvet. That hill in front is ridiculous, and the descent on the other side positively dangerous. And it's all turns—I can't see a hundred yards in front.' He has a wild idea of trying to force the County Council to sand-paper the road, ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... blushed as my mother said this; had I not been charmed with her already?)—'when you hear her play, for she has expression as well as brilliancy. She is passionately fond of music, I know; not because she went into any ridiculous sentimental raptures about it, as some girls do, but because her eyes lighted up when she told me what a happiness her piano had been to her ever since she was a child. She gave a little sigh after saying that; and I fancied, poor girl, that she had perhaps known very ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... There are three varieties of flowers in it—nasturtiums, portulacas, and bright red geraniums. The portulacas grow around the border, then come the nasturtiums, and finally the taller geraniums in the centre. The Cap'n has never seen nor heard of those ridiculous wooden birds on green shafts which it is now the fashion to stick up in flower beds, but he has something quite appropriate, and, all things considered, quite as "artistic." In the bow of his garden, astride a spar, is a blue-legged sailor man ten inches tall, keeping perpetual lookout up the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... weather, as he was in the habit of fishing in these beaver-hats, and never owned an umbrella in his life. He lived near Meshach, in the old part of Princess Anne, near the bridge, and was the subject of the money-lender's scorn and contempt, as tending to make a mutual eccentricity ridiculous. Milburn had been willing to be hated for his hat, but Jack Wonnell made all unseasonable hats laughable, the more so that he was nearly as old a wearer of his bell-crowns as Milburn of the steeple-top. Although he had no such reasons of reverence ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... let Mary come too! Dogs always liked her. Why was it that dogs liked some people and not others? he asked himself. Ridiculous! No one liked dogs better than he, if this ass of a ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... and my poor child came in with the constable, but walking backwards, [Footnote: This ridiculous proceeding always took place at the first examination of a witch, as it was imagined that she would otherwise bewitch the judges with her looks. On this occasion indeed such an event was not unlikely.] ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... mediaeval museum. How the temper of this people and their endurance of legal inflictions have changed since then! There was Matthew Lyon, a noted Democrat of Irish origin, who had published a letter charging the President with "ridiculous pomp, idle parade, and selfish avarice." He was found guilty of sedition, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment and a fine of one thousand dollars. There was Cooper, an Englishman, who fared equally ill for saying or writing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... in a multipara who has had three or four children, whose soft parts are relaxed and who has short labors, the anesthetic of choice would be a few whiffs of chloroform as the head passes over the perineum. It is ridiculous to try to give such women the "twilight sleep." Furthermore, take the cases you see for the first time at the end of the first stage of labor, or during the second stage; these cases are best treated with the nitrous oxid and oxygen method. You have to individualize your cases. The prospective ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... encountered, though we did not suppose that there were any dangers to be feared to which we would not gladly submit for the sake of accompanying Colonel Armytage, who so much requires our care," observed Mrs Armytage. "The inconveniences are more ridiculous than disagreeable, and I fully believe Edda enjoys them; and as to dangers, we have found none hitherto, and rather look for them to add zest to the ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... do it under protest," she declared—"because you force me to." She took up the envelope, and began to unloose the rubber bands. "The Wild Olive" she quoted, half to herself. "Ridiculous! I should think clerks might have something better to do than write such things as that—on envelopes—on people's business." But her indignation turned to surprise when a small flat thing, not unlike a card-case, certainly, tumbled out. "What in ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... brought a box of small candles for just such an emergency. I lit one after the other, sat on the seat, and read Keats all night ... in an ecstasy, forgetting my surroundings, my pitiful poverty, my pilgrimage that would seem ridiculous ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... conclusions of logic can be carried from the one to the other. It is precisely so with these two events. There is a certain analogy between the experience of Jonah, as told in the book, and that of our Lord; but it is ridiculous to say that the one event, if an "admitted reality," "warrants belief" in the other,—whether it is said by Mr. Huxley or Canon Liddon. Our Lord's words convey no such meaning. In truth, if we are here dealing with scientific ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Italian girl would have been accustomed to such treatment, and would not have seen anything unusual in it. But Mrs. Bowring had never acted in such a way before now, and it irritated the young girl extremely. She felt that she was being treated like a child, and that Johnstone must see it and think it ridiculous. At last Clare made an attempt at resistance, out ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... the office, where among other things we made a very great contract with Sir W. Warren for 3,000 loade of timber. At noon dined at home. In the afternoon to the Fishery, where, very confused and very ridiculous, my Lord Craven's proceedings, especially his finding fault with Sir J. Collaton and Colonell Griffin's' report in the accounts of the lottery-men. Thence I with Mr. Gray in his coach to White Hall, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... determined little caricature of the hotel lobby. A little peasant masquerading as a dazzled moth around the bright lights. Not entirely. There is something else. There is something of a great dream behind the ridiculous pathos of this over-dressed little fool. There is something in him that desires expression, that will never achieve expression, and that will always leave him just such an absurd little clown of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... pass the wink and go at it tooth and nail. It was ridiculous, arguing the toss on a long-gone-by small-time scrap like the Civil War with the greatest show in history going on all around us. Anyway the Tommies loved it and would fairly howl with delight when ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... rustling paper ruffle tied round his tail, paper shoes on, and a fool's cap on his head? and as everybody laughed at him, and he knew they were doing so, do you remember his reproachful look of helpless, indignant protest against being made to appear ridiculous ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mean the Keely motor man?" cried Jennie, laughing. "That arrant humbug! Why, all the papers in the world have exposed his ridiculous pretensions; he has done nothing ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
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