"Absurdity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more permanent distinctions of character and manners, it may be questioned whether they can be much relished out of their own country, and whether even there, the effect must not be weakened as fatuity and absurdity shall discover new methods of fastening ridicule upon themselves. They border more nearly on farce than comedy. They have neither of them any thing of fancy, that power which can give a new and higher ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... yet, but everything moves past me. I sit in the gallery looking on. If Nikolai the carpenter had been observant, he would have seen my fingers closing and opening again, my absurdity augmented by affectation and grimacing. Fortunately he was a child. In the end I left it all behind me, and took my proper seat. My address is ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... out the absurdity of "during which" applied to the last part of the sentence. (a) ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... respects between Christ and Plato. He speaks of Plato as "the greatest representative of human reason in the direction of spirituality"; yet he says "Plato is nowhere in this respect as compared with Christ." While in Plato there are errors of all kinds, "reaching even to absurdity in respect of reason, and to sayings shocking to the moral sense," there is, he declares, in literal truth no reason why any of Christ's words should ever pass away in the sense of becoming obsolete. And it is this absence from the biography of Christ of any doctrines ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... hard,' he half murmured to himself, half to me; yet he added whimsically enough, being struck with the seeming absurdity of such a view, 'I must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb'" ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... imprecation on the formality and absurdity of the writer, Lord Etherington let the letter of advice drop from his hand into the fire, and throwing himself into a chair, passed his hand across his eyes, as if their very power of sight had been blighted by what he had read. His title, and his paternal fortune, which he thought ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... slightly. However, there must be many Arthur Dillons, the Irish being so numerous, and tasteless in the matter of names. When she described her particular Arthur his astonishment became boundless at the absurdity ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... to discover it?" Meg spoke dubiously. Her practical mind was fighting against the absurdity ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... by the absurdity of the statement that he stopped to look at her. "Ah," he said, "you have not been running up and down to the stables or you never would ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Muriel breathing fast. Then her eyes fell on Peggy, standing in disdainful quiet, and her expression showed uncertainty. Rosetta Muriel was hardly capable of appreciating that for one in a fit of passion to attempt to correct a child is the height of absurdity, but she recognized the indignation Peggy took ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... these artificial clouds will roll away at once. We have an evil heredity behind us in this matter, for we have inherited all kinds of funereal horrors from our forefathers, and so we are used to them, and we do not see the absurdity and the monstrosity of them. The ancients were in this respect wiser than we, for they did not associate all this phantasmagoria of gloom with the death of the body—partly perhaps because they had a much more rational method of disposing of the body—a method which was not ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... having lived among them since about the commencement of the Christian era, is probably confined to Nepal, and other remote parts, where no means of knowing the contrary exists. Such an absurdity could scarcely pass among actual observers, however degraded in understanding, and in Thibet the Lama of Lassa is probably considered as merely an incarnation ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... upon it, to inform against her would be far worse than letting any amount of absurdity be talked. I should like to know how you would get over ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the powers of luminous reason in contemplating eternal nothing with sweet complacency. This is "exactly" as it should be! Varying from this the proposition would need to be "pruned!" Dear brother, does reason countenance all this absurdity? If it be a pleasure to contemplate non-existence does it not involve the absurdity of enjoying the expectation of ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... were having! Yes, they were absurd, with the absurdity that belongs to youth—happy, light-hearted, inconsequent youth. Eleanor Watson felt that she had left that sort of thing far behind her. Before the summer when Judge Watson had brought home a gay young wife to take his daughter's place at the head of his household, before the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... study would arouse except as the scientist perceives that indignation is, for him, beside the point and the religionist believes that it proceeds from not seeing far enough into the process. This is why there is an essential absurdity in any naturalistic system of ethics. Even the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... no child under fourteen years of age should be sent to prison at all. It is an absurdity, and, like many ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... was a year older, and therefore considered himself a man at all events, burst into a loud fit of laughter, in which his companion joined him, at the absurdity of their conversation; of which, although they had spoken in earnest, they were both somewhat conscious. "But I say, old fellow, without any more humbug about love and such like bosh, just look at the dear old craft! how beautifully she sits ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... trustee, I am sure that no fraud was committed, and that none was possible. Since that time the Board has been controlled by trustees, some of whom are thorough experts in bridge building, and the others men of such high character that the suggestion of malpractice is improbable to absurdity. ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... General Observation The novel of Cynthio Giraldi, from which Shakespeare is supposed to have borrowed this fable, may be read in Shakespeare illustrated, elegantly translated, with remarks which will assist the enquirer to discover how much absurdity Shakespeare has admitted or avoided. I cannot but suspect that some other had new-modelled the novel of Cynthio, or written a story which in some particulars resembled it, and that Cynthio was not the authour whom Shakespeare immediately followed. The emperour in Cynthio is ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... concerned, so far from having any objection to it, I wish, for their own merits and the good-will that I bear them, that they were incorporated into our navy-list; but as long as they command vessels of the above description, in the event of a war, I will put a case, to prove the absurdity and danger which may result. There is not one vessel at this present time in their service which would not be sunk by one well-directed broadside from a large frigate; yet, as many of their officers are of long standing, it is very probable that a squadron of English frigates ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... time we were decidedly less scrupulous than we are now in our ideas on the subject; and we all said freely that as gunpowder destroyed the feudal system, so the capitalist system could not long survive the invention of dynamite. Not that we are dynamitards: indeed the absurdity of the inference shows how innocent we were of any practical acquaintance with explosives; but we thought that the statement about gunpowder and feudalism was historically true, and that it would do the capitalists good to remind them of it. Suddenly, however, ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... man Miles to the Doctor's Friar Bacon, and listening day after day to innumerable orations addressed by the Doctor to various people, all tending to show that his very existence was at best a mistake and an absurdity, this unfortunate servitor had fallen, by degrees, into such an abyss of confused and contradictory suggestions from within and without, that Truth at the bottom of her well, was on the level surface as compared with Britain in the ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... Hawkins. And the minions of the law would laugh at the truth, even if he told it—which he never would. More than once his imaginative genius had drawn up a picture of that impossible happening. For it was a truth so inconceivable that he found the absurdity of it a grimly humorous thing. Even Nada believed he had killed her scoundrelly foster-father. Yet it was she—herself—who had killed him! And it was Nada whom the law would hang, if the truth was ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... it into your handsome head to marry me—please, I'm only saying "if"—the absurdity would be rather reassuring, wouldn't it? When a man is in love with two women at the same time, it really is a little unlikely that he should fall in ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... commission had interviews with the president, his cabinet, and others, and afterward we had time to look about us. Few things could be more dispiriting. The city had been burned again and again, and there had arisen a tangle of streets displaying every sort of cheap absurdity in architecture. The effects of the recent revolution—the latest in a long series of civic convulsions, cruel and sterile—were evident on all sides. On the slope above the city had stood the former residence of the French governor: it had been a beautiful palace, and, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... vagueness of the service he had rendered made the deed loom larger in her imagination. She felt his breath warm on her cheek, and suddenly into her dispassionate musings there came a fresh sense, which made her face grow hot. She was angry at the absurdity of flushing there in the dark, and asked herself why the mere breath on her cheek of an insensible and wounded man should set her to blushing like a self-conscious fool! Then she remembered how he had held her in his ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... gods the Fijians have, as any man who can distinguish himself in murdering his fellow-men may certainly secure to himself deification after death. Their friends are also sometimes deified and invoked. I have heard them invoke their friends who have been drowned at sea. I need not advert to the absurdity of praying to those who could not save themselves from a watery grave. Tuikilakila, the chief of Somosomo, offered Mr. Hunt a preferment of this sort. 'If you die first,' said he, 'I shall make you my god.' In fact, there appears to be no ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... appear to the modern student or engineer, they were denounced as nothing short of absurdity at the time of their promulgation—especially so with regard to Edison's proposal to upset the then settled dictum that the armature resistance should be equal to the external resistance. His proposition was derided in the technical press of the period, both at home ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... to make me marry that stick of a Connemara. What is there in him, I should like to know, to make any girl admire or love him? And yet half the girls in London would be glad to get him, for all his absurdity. It's monstrous, it's incomprehensible, it's abominable; but it's the fact. For my part, I must say I do like a little originality. And whenever I hear Papa, and Uncle Sussex, and Lord Connemara talking at dinner, it does seem to me too ridiculously absurd that they should each have ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... are entitled to some indulgence from the reader, when they occur in a work of real genius. Those, who do not strive at excellence, will seldom fall into absurdity; as he, who is contented to walk, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Not-being is detected, and there is no longer any metaphysical impediment in the way of admitting the possibility of falsehood. To the Parmenides, the Sophist stands in a less defined and more remote relation. There human thought is in process of disorganization; no absurdity or inconsistency is too great to be elicited from the analysis of the simple ideas of Unity or Being. In the Sophist the same contradictions are pursued to a certain extent, but only with a view to their resolution. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... nice distinctions that savor of the schools, but to be guided by true good sense and manly reason. After the Statute of Uses, it is much to be lamented that the courts of Common Law had not adopted all the rules and maxims of courts of equity. This would have prevented the absurdity of receiving costs in one court and paying them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the by-play with an amused expression. There was not much cynicism in her nature. She believed that experience would soon prick the bubble of his vanity, and it was her disposition to smile rather than to sneer at absurdity in others. Besides, she was just. She never applied to a young man of twenty the standard by which she would measure those of her own age, and she remembered Haldane's antecedents. But Mr. Arnot went ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Lords. But here the fallacy of their grand scheme of political mystification begins to develop itself. Had, indeed, their new constituency, as they have long impudently pretended, really been 'the people,' a struggle between such a body and the House of Lords would have been brief but final. The absurdity of supposing that a chamber of two or three hundred individuals could set up their absolute will and pleasure against the decrees of a legislative assembly chosen by the whole nation is so glaring that the Whigs and their scribes might reasonably suspect that in ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... modern (and very Gallic) Caesar Augustus, the avenger of his ill-used uncle, and the crusher of the Junii and the Crassi, and all the rest of the aristocrats, who overthrew him, and caused his early death. It is not necessary to point out the utter absurdity of this attempt to justify modern despotism by referring to the action of men who lived and acted in the greatest of ancient revolutions; and those men who admire Julius Caesar, but who are not disposed to see in his conduct a justification of the conduct of living men, object ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... nature and simple poetic beauty of this class of superstitions have doubtless often induced the moralist to hesitate in exposing their absurdity, and, like Burns in view ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... little girl's. High-heeled boots tilted her well forward, a tiny muff pinioned her arms, and a spotted veil, tied so closely over her face that her eyelashes were rumpled by it, gave the last touch of absurdity to ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... a case of belief; that is, of settled conviction. There is no religion until some interpretation of life, some accommodation between man and God, has been so far accepted as to be unhesitatingly practised. The absurdity of doubt in matters of religion has been pointed out in the well-known parody, "O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul." The quality of religion lies not in the entertaining of a speculative hypothesis, but in an assurance so confident ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... according to the saying of Plato, "none but the pure ought to approach the pure." Now, no superfluity of our food, and no excrementitious substance, is looked upon by them as pure and clean; such, however, are all kinds of wool and down, our hair and our nails. It would be the highest absurdity, therefore, for those who, whilst; they are in a course of purification, are at so much pains to take off the hair from every part of their own bodies, at the same time to clothe themselves with that of other animals. So when we are told by Hesiod "not ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... contradicted, we can only reassert. If the old words, "He that made the eye, shall he not see? he that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" do not at once commend themselves to the intellect of any person, we shall never convince that person by any arguments drawn from the absurdity of conceiving the invention of optics by a blind man, or of music by a ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... oversight of the College of which they were the legal guardians. In April, 1850, a Committee of the Board of the Royal Institution was appointed to suggest a solution of the peculiar problem. They wrote to the Governor-General, setting forth the absurdity and the hopelessness of a condition which permitted the College to be controlled by Governors no longer resident in Montreal, and emphasising the necessity that existed for "a prompt application of remedies ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... practice in the Christian virtue of patience. Dr. Barlow's was not the worst, though his hearers regarded it as an admirable 'confutation' of the text. The preacher, among the four, who reached the climax of absurdity was Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester. He was one of the extreme High Churchmen of his time: no man urged the doctrine of passive obedience to a more abject degree, or did more to support with the sanction of religion the most extravagant pretensions of the Crown. ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... we'd have to keep away from town or the mine for a while. He wanted to go right back and finish up the fight!" Dade grinned at the absurdity. "I sat down hard on that proposition." Not that phrase, exactly, did he use. One may be pardoned a free translation, since, though he spoke in excellent Spanish, he did not twist his sentences like a native, and he was not averse to ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... built, with a commanding figure, prominent features, watchful, gray-hazel eyes, and a rich, manly voice, he was very ready in debate. When the army bill was up, and it was argued that the South was in danger of intimidation, he showed the absurdity of such a position by giving the exact numbers of troops then stationed in each State: "And the entire South has eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers to intimidate, overrun, oppress, and destroy the liberties of fifteen million people! In the Southern States there are twelve hundred and three ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... heard the whole of this case, will be a verdict of guilty,) will be a most salutary verdict:—It will shew the world that as there is no man beneath the law, so there is no man above it. It will teach evil minded persons, the absurdity of expecting that schemes of fraud can be so formed as to provide for all events. It will teach them that no caution can insure safety: that there is no contrivance, that there is no device, no stratagem, ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... to say you warned me months ago. Mind, it is no fault of hers, she is behaving beautifully; but oh! the absurdity, and the worst of it is, I have promised not to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in a great measure, the seeming absurdity of their interference with the subject of the drama: being deemed so indispensable a part of the performance, that the scene itself was hardly more so: consequently, there was no secret supposed to be more violated by speaking before them, than before the inanimate ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... furor, the sister of the departed wife walked calm and still. The power of the silent woman has often been dwelt upon, but I really do not think that half enough has been said, although I am aware of committing an absurdity when I recommend voluble speech on the subject of silence. Jesting and paradoxes aside, however, the silent woman wields a power known only to the man toward ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... she had told you that the sun goes round the earth, you would quite readily have believed her. My dearest Morris, that way madness lies. Perhaps you understand now what I have been driving at, and the best proof of the absurdity of the whole thing is that I, stupid as I am, from my intimate knowledge of your character since childhood, was able to predict that something of this sort would certainly happen to you. You will admit that is ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... be) might have known before now. Or, (if he had not before known it) he might have learned, (by what I shew him upon a like occasion, in my Hob. Heaut. pag. 142. 143. 144.) How to understand that language, without an Absurdity. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... Much has been rightly written about the horrors of war. Everyone knows them to be sudden, hideous, and overwhelming; those who have seen them can speak also of the squalor, the filthiness, the murderous swindling, and the inconceivable absurdity of the whole monstrous performance. But the horrors of peace, if not so obvious, come nearer to our daily life, and we are naturally terrified at its softness, its monotony, and its enfeebling relaxation. Of all people in the world ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... correspondence with strangers, however, this adapted and unusual signature frequently becomes a source of loss to himself and irritation to his correspondents. In the case of hundreds of such individuals, the writing to a stranger in expectation of a reply becomes an absurdity for the reason that the person addressed is hopelessly barred from reading the name attached to the letter. A plain ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... vocal organs; and even if Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory be rejected, it is too late now to deny that music is conceived by its creators as a language of the emotions and so applied by them. The German philosopher Herbarth sought to reduce the question to an absurdity by expressing surprise that musicians should still believe that feelings could be "the proximate cause of the rules of simple and double counterpoint;" but Dr. Stainer found a sufficient answer by accepting the proposition as put, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... debt was nothing new: he had always been so at school, and probably always will be. Had you reproached him with it in those young self-conscious days of glorious absurdity, he would probably have retorted, with a toss of his vain ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,—an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are full of these ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... dying; I shall keep mine even though my heart break.' And again: 'Forget, therefore, the girl who has loved you so much: she is now the betrothed of another, and honor requires she should forget even your name!'" He read these passages with an extravagant emphasis, which heightened their absurdity. "And what shall I say of these mistakes in spelling?" he resumed. "You noticed them, of course, mother?—command is written with a single 'm,' and supplicate with one 'p.' These are certainly not mistakes that we can attribute to ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... thought about himself. He acknowledged, though with a certain lenience of judgment, the absurdity of being where he was. He should have shown more resolve, he admitted, at 2 A.M., and have gone to his lodgings, a mile or so away. But he had been doing good work the night before; that, at least, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... what greater nonsense can there be in connection with what we are now discussing than for an infant to appear in swaddling clothes in the first scene of the first act, and in the second a grown-up bearded man? Or what greater absurdity can there be than putting before us an old man as a swashbuckler, a young man as a poltroon, a lackey using fine language, a page giving sage advice, a king plying as a porter, a princess who is a kitchen-maid? And then what shall I say of their ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... involved in this exemplary remark, combined with the absurdity of repentance taking the form of interest in mining speculations, was almost too much for Richard's sense of humor; but he only nodded with gravity, as became a man who was imbibing information, and inquired further, whether, in addition to these ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... with Myra, Clem, and a lanky, freckled youth of about sixteen, whom he introduced as Archelaus Libby. She could not help a smile at this odd name, and the young man himself seemed to be conscious of its absurdity. He blushed, held out his hand and withdrew it again, dropped his hat and caught it awkwardly between his knees. Myra (who had made the sign of the cross as Hester entered) stood and regarded him ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is necessary to a recognition of the full absurdity of intolerance. One of the greatest absurdities of it is evident when we are annoyed and caused intense suffering by our intolerance of others, and, as a consequence, blame others for the fatigue or illness which follows. However mistaken or blind other people may be in ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... and all became communicative. Family histories, not excepting our own, were now discussed, with a confidence new to my boyish conjectures. Charlatanski's career abroad and at home seemed to be as well known as if he had been pilloried in the county town; the infinite absurdity of the noble duke who suffered him to make his way under his roof, and the palpable penchant of his ward, next underwent discussion; until the ignorance of my noble father on the subject, gave, with me, the death-blow to his penetration. The prettinesses which had won ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... the injunctions grew less nerve-racking: "You must use a medium soft black pencil (which will be furnished)"—law-breaking under such conditions would be absurdity—"use no ditto marks and"—here I could not but shudder as there passed before my eyes memories of college lecture rooms and all the strange marks that have come to mean something to me ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... their sisters. Was it wrong in the nature of things? [Here Dr. Wisner spoke out, and said, "Certainly."] I deny it. What an absurdity, to suppose that God could not provide for the propagation of the human race from one pair, without requiring them to sin! Adam's sons and daughters must have married, had they remained in innocence. They must then have sinned in Eden, from the very necessity of the command ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... that prince in recalling those circumstances; no doubt, he acted upon the suggestion of others, and perhaps, also, under a sincere emotion on witnessing the enthusiasm of those outside; but that could not cure the original absurdity of recognizing as a representative audience, clothed with the national functions of recognizing himself, a chance gathering of passengers through a single street, between whom and any mob from his own stables and kitchens there could be ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... in his own story, I could not doubt; and he told it throughout with the oddest mixture of vanity and modesty, and an obvious struggle between a dim perception of his own absurdity and the determination to spare himself in no single particular, which, though it did not overcome my scepticism, could not fail to enlist sympathy. But for all that, by the time he entered upon the more sensational part of his case, I was driven to form conclusions respecting it which, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... even what beating, could be so unendurable as this total want of sympathy, as this deadness in life, which her present lot entailed upon her? As for that matter of beating, she ridiculed the idea in her very soul. She sat smiling at the absurdity of the thing as she thought of the beauty of Burgo's eyes, of the softness of his touch, of the loving, almost worshipping, tones of his voice. Would it not even be better to be beaten by him than to have politics ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... so easily disposed of. In fact, the separating of the literature from the language, you will say, is a self-evident absurdity. That, however, only shows that you have not looked carefully into examination papers. I am not concerned with what the a priori imagination may suppose to be Literature, but with the actual questions put by ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... his hat, his hose, and his shoes were dazzling to the eye. Add to this wondrous raiment feet and hands that could not be satisfactorily disposed of, and an unrest of manner painful to behold, and you may possibly conceive the grandiose absurdity of Dorothy's wooer. The sight of him almost made Sir George ill; and his entrance into the long gallery, where the queen was seated with her ladies and gentlemen, and Sir George and his friends standing about her, was a signal for laughter in which ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... adopted a method of procedure of which he did not approve; they were, his friend Calcraft wrote to him, "completely disgraced," and Chatham styled their bill "a compound of connexion, tyranny and absurdity".[83] While the opposition was in this distracted state the ministerial party was united. In three years' time at most opposition in parliament was practically dead, and the ministry was thoroughly ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... "appears to be probable. But what you said just now, Socrates, that philosophers should be very willing to die, appears to be an absurdity, if what we said just now is agreeable to reason—that it is God who takes care of us, and that we are his property. For that the wisest men should not be grieved at leaving that service in which they govern them who are the best of all masters—namely, ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... much of the claims of scientists who announce that they are on the eve of "creating life" from non-living matter. This is all nonsense—life can come only from life. Life from non-life is an absurdity. And all Life comes from the One Life underlying All. But it is true that Science has done, is doing, and will do, something very much like "creating life," but of course this is merely changing the form of Life into other forms—the lesser form into the higher—just as one produces ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... exclaimed. "The idea of Cuthbert Hartington rebuking us for laziness is rich indeed," and a roar of laughter showed the general appreciation of the absurdity. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... the sincerity of his visitor's manner, touched by the unexpected poetry of his appeal, and yet keenly alive to the absurdity of an incomprehensible blunder somewhere committed, the ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... for his thorough knowledge of Nat Burns's character he would have laughed at the absurdity of the thing and thrown the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... had seen it in that flashing glimpse, rose again before his consciousness. It seemed for a startling instant to be grimly, portentously familiar, then the fancy faded before the fact of its obvious absurdity, and he laughed contemptuously. The danger of the moment had played tricks ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... the movement for the emancipation of woman has for its final end the making of never so fine a quality, never so sublimated a sort of non-child-bearing women, it is an absurdity upon the ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... the scene one of motion and variety. Everywhere was water,—color, new forms, childish figures, little details, all glossy and fresh,—an ingenuous display of prettiness—a mixture of the primitive and the theatrical, of grace and absurdity, which was partly European, partly Chinese, partly belonging to no land,—and over all a delightful air of peace ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... life occur on all sides to elucidate the utter absurdity, and, in fact, total impracticapability of the system of free trade, as applied to nations who are, or are becoming, rivals of each other in manufacturing industry. Those who have the advantage, will always advocate free competition; those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... suppose, that He, who is the Fountain of all wisdom, could have been the Author of such inevitable disorder,—a kind of disorder which must ever keep the axe at the root of that unity for which He prayed,—is not only an absurdity, but an opinion equally repudiated by all parties." "It is manifest," therefore, "that whatever may prove itself to be THE form of ministry, established and authorized by Jesus Christ, every other must be altogether void ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... pervade the whole union in as energetic a manner, as the authority of the state governments extends over the several states. To be fearful of investing congress, constituted as that body is, with ample authorities for national purposes, appears to me the very climax of popular absurdity and madness. Could congress exert them for the detriment of the people, without injuring themselves in an equal or greater proportion? Are not their interests inseparably connected with those of their constituents? By ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... principally at Ephesus during the last thirty years of the first century; [242:5] so that, according to this tale, the beloved disciple must have been nearly all this time under the ecclesiastical supervision of Timothy! The story otherwise exhibits internal marks of absurdity and fabrication. It would lead us to infer that Paul must have distributed most unequally the burden of official labour; for whilst Timothy is said to have presided over the Christians of a single city, Titus is represented as invested with the care of a whole island ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Branches of the Legislature here: Nor do we concede, that even his Majesty in Council has any Constitutional Authority to decide such Questions, or any other Controversy whatever that arises in this Province, excepting only such Matters as are reservd in the Charter. It seems a great Absurdity, that when a Dispute arises between the Governor and the House, the Governor should appeal to his Majesty in Council to decide it. Would it not be as reasonable for the House to appeal to the Body of their Constituents to decide ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... cigar, looked thoughtfully at Lorraine, and said, "Well, Alfred, as we are kinsmen and life-long friends, I will not resent your asking my reason for doing that which seems to you the climax of absurdity, and if you will have the patience to ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... measurable interest, the same in kind and roughly the same in degree for each; and the vote of the majority, if it could be taken on this question alone and based on self-interest alone, might be conceived without absurdity as representing a sum of individual interests. Even here, however, observe that, though the greatest number is considered, the greatest happiness does not fare so well. For to raise the same sum the tax on wine will, as less is drunk, have to be much larger than the ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... so much yearning in his eyes that the man was touched, in spite of the absurdity of it. "Go on," ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... on the part of the States was a manifest absurdity. The new reinforcement of the garrisons in Canada did not, when I was in Canada, amount, as I believe, to more than 2000 men. But had it amounted to 20,000, the States would have had no just ground for complaint. Of all nationalities that in modern days have risen to power, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... absurdity of these dreams, and wished to keep his heart free from them, he left the next day for Campvallon. After enjoying for seven or eight hours all the comforts and luxuries the Western line is reputed to afford its guests, Camors arrived in the evening at the station, where the ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... that my wife, if they ever mean to send me one at all, shall be a member of the Episcopal church. There is about that church, what attaches to no other sect, a sort of dignified reserve, that never breaks out in four-day meetings, revivals, or any other similar ebullition of fanaticism and absurdity. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Milton made sad work with his artillery, when he armed his devils therewithal. He did so; and this artificial object must have had much of the sublime to attract his attention for such a conflict. He has made an absurd use of it; but the absurdity consists not in using cannon against the angels of God, but any material weapon. The thunder of the clouds would have been as ridiculous and vain in the hands of the devils, as the "villanous saltpetre:" the angels were ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and the supporters of this amazing abuse assured the world that Greek and Latin versification was an essential element of a liberal education. It took a good many generations to deliver England from this absurdity, and there are others like unto it which still hold their own in the scholastic world. To sweep these away should be the first object of the educational reformer; and, when that preliminary step has been taken, the State will be able to say ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... for them, you well know, I'd demolish you in the twinkling of an eye, and give your body to the fowls of heaven and the lilies of the fields!' Then, planting a chair by Lady Lowborough's side, he stationed himself in it, and began to talk to her with a mixture of absurdity and impudence that seemed rather to amuse than to offend her; though she affected to resent his insolence, and to keep him at bay with sallies ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Spear of State in the other, and a dagger in either lower hand. With his left hand, von Schlichten detached the bayonet from the rifle of one of his followers and went forward, trying not to think of the absurdity of a man of the Sixth Century A.E., the representative of a civilized Chartered Company, dueling to the death with swords with a barbarian king for a throne he had promised to another barbarian, or of what could happen ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... and warning, were, "Never trust a nigger with a gun;" and accustomed to chafe each other into a fever heat of excitement over any matter of public interest, were ready to give credence to any report—all the more easily because of its absurdity. On the other hand, the colored people, hearing these rumors, said to themselves that it was simply a device to prevent them from voting, or to give color and excuse for a conflict ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... breath and he started to speak, but in the end shook his head and remained silent. Through the whirl and din of falling skies he was yet able to see the utter futility of words. He could have adduced a hundred arguments to prove her absurdity. He could have shown her that before he ever read Hartley's note he had decided upon Stewart's guilt—and for much better reasons than Hartley had. He could have pointed out to her that it was he, not Hartley, who discovered young Benham's whereabouts, that it ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... following the Baron's arrival, when the company assembled to breakfast, my old uncle introduced me to the Baroness; and, as usually happens with people in the frame of mind in which I then was, I behaved with indescribable absurdity. In answer to the beautiful lady's simple inquiries how I liked the castle, &c., I entangled myself in the most extraordinary and nonsensical phrases, so that the old aunts ascribed my embarrassment simply and solely to my profound ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... promises which Sir Edward Grey indicated; and with a potentially hostile Bulgaria in her flank Greece could not march to Servia's aid. So M. Venizelos, under the impulse of ambition, set his energetic brain to work, and within a few hours produced a scheme calculated to correct the "absurdity" of the British notion, to earn the gratitude of the Entente to himself, and an Asiatic Empire for his country. It was nothing less than a complete reversal of his former attitude: that Greece should not only withdraw her opposition to concessions on the part of Servia, but should voluntarily ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... than being patted on the head and called "My dear boy" by the lady of your love. Ted ducked from under the delicate caress, and rose to his feet with dignity. His emotion was spent, and he was chiefly conscious of the absurdity of the situation. Every object in that ridiculous room accentuated the distasteful humour of the thing. Psyche looked downcast virgin disapproval from her pedestal under the Malay creeses, and the frivolous little Parisienne flung her ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... a conception as that of those mysterious super human beings, whom I have named "the gods," into a serious philosophic system, may well appear to many modern scientific minds the very height of absurdity. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... for the common practice of speaking of the present inhabitants of Britain as an "Anglo-Saxon" people. It is, in fact, just as absurd as the habit of talking of the French people as a "Latin" race, because they speak a language which is, in the main, derived from Latin. And the absurdity becomes the more patent when those who have no hesitation in calling a Devonshire man, or a Cornish man, an "Anglo-Saxon," would think it ridiculous to call a Tipperary man by the same title, though he and his forefathers may have spoken English for as long ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... his resolve, Dink, with the assistance of Finnegan and the Tennessee Shad, had started the fad of souvenir toilet sets; which, like all fads, ran its course the faster because of its high qualities of absurdity and uselessness. Dink's intention of recouping himself by selling his own set of seven colors at a big advance was cut short by a spontaneous protest to the Doctor from the house masters, whose artistic souls were stirred ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... consider the absurdity of swearing to take for law what another man will declare to be law, and before you hear it! Suppose the judge should be drunk and declare the fugitive slave bill in perfect harmony with the Sermon on the Mount, those noble words "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... which the people publicly profess, and is a relic of a far older paganism. There are, indeed, independent grounds for thinking that the Arabs enjoyed the advantage of a comparatively well-regulated solar year before the prophet of God saddled them with the absurdity and inconvenience of a purely lunar calendar.[557] Be that as it may, it is notable that some Mohammedan people of North Africa kindle fires and bathe in water at the movable New Year of their lunar calendar instead of at the fixed ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Mr. Strafford went back to the Cottage with a new page in her sorrowful life to tell to Mrs. Costello. To say that she heard with great grief of the probable nearness of that widowhood which, for years past, would have been a welcome release, would be to say an absurdity; but, nevertheless, it is true that a deep and tender feeling of pity, which was, indeed, akin to love, seemed to sweep over and obliterate all the bitterness which belonged to her thoughts of her husband. She wished at once ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... (c) The implied Absurdity of it. What a contrast between the safe 'munitions of rocks' and the unsheltered security of these Damascene gardens! What fools to leave the heights and come down into the plain! Think of the contrast between the sufficiency of God and the emptiness of the substitutes. Forgetfulness of Him ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... working hours in Germany have also been reduced and wages have risen up to 400 per cent.[181] The German Socialists have been honest enough to abandon the Doctrine of Increasing Misery under the guidance of Bernstein; the French have dropped it under the guidance of Sorel; the Dutch have seen its absurdity, guided by Vandervelde, their foremost leader. The British Socialists, on the other hand, have not abandoned it, though they must see its absurdity, probably because, though palpably and ridiculously false, the Doctrine of Increasing Misery is considered ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... in a child by means of bribery, to promise him a reward in case he obeys you, is manifestly an absurdity. You are destroying the very traits in his character you are presumably endeavoring to build up. You are educating a human being who knows good from evil, and who should be taught deliberately to choose the right for the right's sake, who should ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... worthy indeed. When honour is paid to such a one, he makes no great account of it, feeling that it is but his due, or even less than his due. If he is dishonoured and insulted, he despises the insult as an absurdity, offered to a man of his deserts. He is too conscious of his real worth to be much affected by the expression of his neighbour's view of him. For a man is most elated, when complimented on an excellence ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... in some measure removed this absurdity, by destroying the old convention that it was middle-class to be sane, and that between the artist and the outer-world yawned a gulf which few could cross. Modern artists are beginning to realize their social duties. They are the spiritual teachers of ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... for a moment as it passed over them, but making no noise. "There he goes," whispered Sam. "That's the Screech Owl. Not much of a screech, was it?" Not long afterward Yan came across a line of Lowell's which says, "The song of the Screech Owl is the sweetest sound in nature," and appreciated the absurdity ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... trade, these fits of coughing were succeeded by a handkerchief act, in which the dying Camille appeared to spit blood in carmine splotches. No burlesque that I have seen of a play frequently burlesqued ever approached the side-splitting absurdity of these rehearsals for the benefit of the heroine of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... here. Pardon me if I ask you to ride on.' Of course I wished him good day; and a little farther up the road I saw a dark plain chariot, no coronet, no arms, no footman only the man on the box, but the beauty of the horses assured me it must belong to Lilburne. Can you conceive such absurdity in a man of that age—and a very clever fellow too? Yet, how is it that one does not ridicule it in Lilburne, as one would in another man ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... conceal their real disbelief in one half of Christian doctrine by judicious silence about it; or by flight to those refuges for the logically destitute, accommodation or allegory. But the faithful who fly to allegory in order to escape absurdity resemble nothing so much as the sheep in the fable who—to save their lives—jumped into the pit. The allegory pit is too commodious, is ready to swallow up so much more than one wants to put into it. If the story of the temptation is an allegory; if the early recognition ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... form and manners must be sacrificed to efficiency of business. The judge who said that he did not hear the constant objections of the lawyer because he made his objections sitting down was not so much an adherent of good form as a protestor against the absurdity of professional objections. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... no doubt, appear fantastic in its absurdity to those who hear it asked for the first time; but those who are at all familiar with the mysterious but undisputed phenomena of hypnotism will realize how naturally this question arises, and how difficult it is to answer it otherwise than in the affirmative. ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... my pupils. But, however it was broken off, I repeat that I am glad it happened. One is never sure of a man's wisdom, till he has been really and vainly in love. You know what that moralizing lump of absurdity, Lord Edouard, has said in the Julie—'the path of the passions conducts us to philosophy!' It is true, very true; and now that the path has been fairly trod, the goal is at hand. Now, I can confide in your steadiness; now, I can feel that you will ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exaggerated views with regard to what people are so fond of calling psychism. You will not denounce it in the foolish way of many people, because in denouncing it you will know that you denounce all intellectual manifestations, an absurdity of which very few people are likely to be guilty; if you take your intellectual manifestations in the physical world as admirable things, to be always encouraged, strengthened, developed, then you will be compelled, by parity ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... assuming that such facts existed in some life which has left no trace, or by forcing a metaphorical sense on words which sound wonderfully like the sad language of a real sufferer. Of course, if we believe that prediction is an absurdity, any difficulty will be lighter than the acknowledgment that we have prediction here. But, unless we have a foregone conclusion of that sort to blind us, we shall see in this psalm a clear example of the prophecy of a suffering Messiah. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... I'm not going to leave it entirely alone, old Ham," said Bones, shrugging his shoulders at the absurdity of such a suggestion. "The business can be doubled if a man with a capable, up-to-date conception of ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... straight in the present is all they ask in Canada, and homeless adventurers with no possessions—the kind of comrades I've generally met—are charitable. As a rule, it wouldn't become them to be fastidious. Anyway, sir, you must see the absurdity of believing that Bertram could have failed in his duty in ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... Dealer holds any suit which counts 7, on the basis of an Ace or face counting 2, and any lower card, 1. The believers in this doctrine would, therefore, bid a Club from such a hand as Queen, Knave, X, X, X, without any possibility of another trick; or even from Knave, X, X, X, X, X. The absurdity of this becomes obvious when it is remembered that the only real object in bidding a Club or Diamond is to show strength which will justify the partner in declaring one of the three game-going declarations. Any such holding as that mentioned ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... cuts is droll enough. It is entitled, "L'Enfant Prodigue est chasse par ses maitresses." The expulsion consists in the women driving him out of doors with besoms and hair-brooms. It is very probable, however, that all this character of absurdity attaches to some of our own representations of the same subject; if, instead of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... time, when the importunity of parents, and the example of a few injudicious young men of my acquaintance, had almost prevailed on me to thwart my genius, and prostitute my abilities by an application to serious pursuits. And if you had not opened my eyes to the absurdity and profligacy of such a perversion of the best gifts of nature, I am by no means clear that I might not have been a wealthy merchant or an eminent lawyer at this very moment. Nor was it only on my first setting ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... her dainty feet. I never saw a bevy of more beautiful women than officiated at one senatorial afternoon tea I visited; so beautiful were they as to make me entirely forget what seemed to my untutored European taste the absurdity of their wearing low-necked evening gowns while their guests sported hat and jacket and fur. The whole tone of Washington society from the President downward is one of the greatest hospitality and geniality towards strangers. The ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... meant to be under the guidance of reason and conscience looking up to God, and put it in the supreme place, and so, setting a beggar on horseback, ride where we know such equestrians are said in the end to go! The desires are meant to be impelling powers. It is absurdity and the destruction of true manhood to make them, as we so often do, directing powers, and to put the reins into their hand. They are the wind, not the helm; the steam, not the driver. Let us keep things in their right places. Remember that the constitution ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... during Joan's journey, and which were magnified by report into miracles, added to the feeling in her favor. The king and his council doubted if it were wise to give her an audience. That a peasant girl could succor a kingdom in extremity seemed the height of absurdity. But something must be done. Orleans was in imminent danger. If it were taken, the king might have to fly to Spain or Scotland. He had no money. His treasury, it is said, held only four crowns. He had no troops to send to the besieged city. Drowning men catch at straws. The people ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... marriage. Even while I had been holding Edith Bartlett's great-granddaughter in my arms, I had not, till this moment, so illogical are some of our feelings, distinctly realized that but for that marriage I could not have done so. The absurdity of this frame of mind could only be equalled by the abruptness with which it dissolved as Edith's roguish query cleared the fog from my perceptions. I laughed as ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Phellion. "Ask him to come in," he added, with that solemnity in little things which gave him even now a touch of absurdity, though it always impressed his family, which accepted him ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... so, Hermogenes; all that has preceded would lead to this conclusion. And if, as I think, the conclusion is true, then I shall again say to you, come and help me, that I may not fall into some absurdity in stating the ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... had only to get my pitch, and could then go on interminably. Many passages of this book ought to be finished with the minuteness of a Dutch picture, in order to give them their proper effect. Sometimes, when tired of it, it strikes me that the whole is an absurdity, from beginning to end; but the fact is, in writing a romance, a man is always, or always ought to be, careering on the utmost verge of a precipitous absurdity, and the skill lies in coming as close as possible, without actually tumbling over. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... thenceforth the greater part of the original drawings and verses for the first "Book of Nonsense" were struck off with a pen, no assistance ever having been given me in any way but that of uproarious delight and welcome at the appearance of every new absurdity. ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... exposing himself to well meant ministrations from men who were his inferiors: the theory of the equalizing effect of the sacred office, which appears to be held in great tranquillity by many who see the absurdity of parallel ideas applied in other spheres, was one of the fictions that proved entirely powerless over his mind at this juncture. He did not say to himself that fools were fools and blind men blind, whatever their office, degree, or profession, but he was driven to the Retreat by a thought ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... scene displays in a full light the barbarity of this theological faction: the sequel will sufficiently display their absurdity. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... rave as they like about the absurdity of love at first sight; but the young and sensitive always love at first sight, and the love of after-years, however better and more wisely bestowed, is never able to obliterate from the heart the memory of those sudden and vivid impressions made ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... tell him I advise him to relinquish his knight-errant project, or I will expose his absurdity by taking the advantage which the law offers in ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... I could have done something for her; she's a pretty girl, but you see all these things take a long time, and Lucy wanted an engagement at once. When we left the theatre I began to realise the absurdity of the adventure, and the danger to which I was exposing myself. I, a man of over forty, seeking the seduction of a girl of seventeen—for that is the plain English of it. We walked on side by side, and I asked myself, 'What ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... of her fitness for a dramatic career, but on the ground of an urgent and bitter necessity for exertion on her part, to ward off actual destitution and suffering,—he exclaimed, somewhat impatiently,—"Why, Zelma, it is an impossibility, almost an absurdity, you urge! You could never make an actress. You are too hopelessly natural, erratic, and impulsive. You would follow no teaching implicitly, but, when you saw fit, would trample on conventionalities and venerable stage-traditions. You would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various |
