"Absurdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imitation of a real woodchuck. It was stuffed with something soft to make it round and fat, and its eyes were two glass beads sewn upon the face. A big boy woodchuck wore knickerbockers and a Tam o' Shanter cap and rolled a hoop; and there were several smaller boy and girl woodchucks, dressed quite as absurdly, who followed after their mother ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... his approaching departure as a great deliverance. He was to be a man immediately; not for him that absurdly dilatory condition of pimples and hobbledehoy boots that mark a transition period. Dawson's had been the most insignificant sojourn in the tent of the enemy, and the world, it was implied, had lamented his enforced absence. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the C. B. That I will not do, and when the Duke's communication is under my eyes in no confidential manner, I will send such a reply that will make people understand the injury done to me, and the slight so absurdly offered to a million of good and loyal French Canadians. As a matter of course, all that I say to you in this letter is strictly in ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... conceal from their readers the real nature of this transaction. By making concessions apparently candid and ample, they elude the great accusation. They allow that the measure was weak and even frantic, an absurd caprice of Lord Digby, absurdly adopted by the King. And thus they save their client from the full penalty of his transgression, by entering a plea of guilty to the minor offence. To us his conduct appears at this day as at the time it appeared to the Parliament and the city. We ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... come to a broad ditch which contained in its depths the narrow trickle of a miniature cascade, pouring down from some spring on the hillside, whereon the old Fort stood. It was absurdly wide for the trifling watercourse it now disgorged upon the river. But then, in spring the whole character of it was changed. In spring it was a rushing torrent, fed by the melting snows, and tearing out its banks in a wild, ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... feel the spray and the sand on her face, or to watch the tumbling breakers and listen to the wind. Besides, she had been there some time, and she had not even had her little breakfast of coffee and rolls before coming down to the shore. She suddenly felt hungry and cold and absurdly inclined to cry, and she became aware that the sand had got into her russet shoes, and that it would be very uncomfortable to sit down in such a place to take them off and shake it out; and that, altogether, misfortunes ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... himself ready to open the door and waited absurdly for the answer as though in the hope of some suggestion. "What's up with you? Think yourself lucky," said somebody.—"It's all very well—for to-night," began the voice.—"What are you fashing yourself for?" remonstrated the other, reasonably, "we'll get ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... lives. How much it means that I say this to you— Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!" Among the windings of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite "false note." —Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... structure and the English structure may, in the nature of things, be equally good. But if you allow that the English language is established, he is wrong. My name might originally have been Nicholson, as well as Johnson; but were you to call me Nicholson now, you would call me very absurdly.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... provides abundant material for varied work—often very pleasant work too. Let it be understood, once for all, that the champions of widows and single women are very much given to talking and writing absurdly on this point. Their premises are often wholly false. They often fancy discontent and disappointment and inaction where those elements have no existence. Certainly it is not in the least worth while to risk a tremendous social revolution in behalf of this minority of ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... with whom Florent was thrown in contact, in the hotels or in his walks, during his sojourn in America, had already made him feel that humiliation from which his father had suffered so much. The youth of twelve, silent and absurdly sensitive, who made his appearance on the lawn of the peaceful English college on an autumn morning, brought with him a self-love already bleeding, to whom it was a delightful surprise to find himself among comrades of his age who did not even seem to suspect that ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... which passed the secession ordinance, in its Declaration of Causes placed the total value of their property in slaves at "four billions of money," This was at the rate of a thousand dollars for each slave, an average absurdly excessive, and showing their exaggerated estimate of the monetary value of the institution of slavery.] second, a moral debate as to the abstract righteousness or iniquity of the system; and, third, a political ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Morton think players were really worse off before the latest refinements in make-up were invented? Some of the greatest acting triumphs of the world were accomplished when the players dressed their parts absurdly, trusting almost exclusively to their ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... appear to the public that having "absolute and supreme power," I was absurdly lenient towards Abou Saood, whom I knew to be so great a villain. I confess to one fault. I should have arrested and transported him to Khartoum when he first arrived at Gondokoro with the cattle stolen from the Shir; which caused the subsequent massacre of the five ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... tourist. The space below has been lettered. After a little puzzling you recognise there the relics of a familiar verse from a Latin psalm Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, and the rest: inscribed as well as may be in Greek characters. Prior Saint-Jean caused it to be so inscribed, absurdly, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... "It's really absurdly simple. The cemented surface of this mummy had been damaged, as you can see"——Mrs. Athelstone began, but Simpkins broke ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... absurdly furious, quite thoughtlessly furious. Oh, how it lightened, crashed, rumbled, roared and snorted. What a conflict—but it was beautiful nevertheless. He raised himself up on his toes and exposed his hammering breast to the ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... to cultivate our fields or direct our factories; but prefer devoting the latter half at least of our lives to a somewhat easy-going cultivation of that division of science which takes hold of our fancy. These divisions are such as your conversation leads me to think you would probably consider absurdly minute. A single class of insects, a single family of plants, the habits of one race of fishes, suffice for the exclusive study of half a lifetime. Minds of a more active or more practical bent will spend an equal time over the construction ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... more ancient part of the city. The most important fact of the poet's genealogy is, that he was of mixed race, the Alighieri being of Teutonic origin. Dante was born, as he himself tells us,[9] when the sun was in the constellation Gemini, and it has been absurdly inferred, from a passage in the Inferno,[10] that his horoscope was drawn and a great destiny predicted for him by his teacher, Brunetto Latini. The Ottimo Comento tells us that the Twins are the house of Mercury, who induces in men the faculty of writing, science, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... right, Christine. Torvald is so absurdly fond of me that he wants me absolutely to himself, as he says. At first he used to seem almost jealous if I mentioned any of the dear folk at home, so naturally I gave up doing so. But I often talk about such things with Doctor Rank, because ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... who think that the Indian has been absurdly pampered by the Government, and that it would be as sensible to try to change the arrangement of seasons as to attempt to prevent the survival of the fittest, or, in other words, to interfere with the gradual, but in their opinion inevitable, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... but the offended individuals wronged by too much license, take the matter into their own hands, not waiting for the courts, but executing a swifter justice. It is the terror of lynch law which has, in countless instances, been the foundation of the later courts, with their slow moving and absurdly inefficient methods. In time the inefficiency of the courts once more begets impatience and contempt. The people again rebel at the fact that their government gives them no government, that their courts ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... that all these words are originally derived from Skinner, who has very absurdly explained Bismare to mean Curiosity. The true meaning has ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... victuals. Aubrey began to feel a relaxation swim through his veins. Gissing Street was very bright and orderly in its Saturday evening bustle. Certainly it was grotesque to imagine melodrama hanging about a second-hand bookshop in Brooklyn. The revolver felt absurdly lumpy and uncomfortable in his hip pocket. What a different aspect a little hot supper gives to affairs! The most resolute idealist or assassin had better write his poems or plan his atrocities before the evening meal. After the narcosis of that ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... breakfast together, dine together, and sleep in the same room. In most cases the woman knows nothing of the man's working life and he knows nothing of her working life (he calls it her home life). It is remarkable that the very people who romance most absurdly about the closeness and sacredness of the marriage tie are also those who are most convinced that the man's sphere and the woman's sphere are so entirely separate that only in their leisure moments can they ever be together. A man as intimate with his own ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... feature and the artery, the joy and the adventure of one's childhood, and it stretched, and prodigiously, from Union Square to Barnum's great American Museum by the City Hall—or only went further on the Saturday mornings (absurdly and deplorably frequent alas) when we were swept off by a loving aunt, our mother's only sister, then much domesticated with us and to whom the ruthless care had assigned itself from the first, to Wall Street and the torture chamber of Dr. Parkhurst, our tremendously respectable ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... virtue ascribed to the narrie-comboo by the Singhalese is absurdly characteristic of their passion for litigation, as well as of their perceptions of the "glorious uncertainty of the law." It is the popular belief that the fortunate discoverer of a jackal's horn becomes thereby invincible in every lawsuit, and must irresistibly triumph ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Grumps fell asleep, very absurdly overcome by liquor, we extremely regret to concede, but nobly sure to do his soldierly duty as soon as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... given great satisfaction to his employers, and presently had a clerical position in a prominent trust company offered to him. It seemed an advance. The salary was larger, even if absurdly small, and he ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... girl at Hereford, and which is a prime favorite with every 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 ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... could, if you chose, say some unpleasant things about me, and I don't want that any more than you do just now. But, you see, whilst I hold in my power what would, if necessary, effectually ruin you, and probably Bellamy too—for this country society is absurdly prejudiced—I have little cause for fear. Perhaps in the future you may be able to render me some service for which you shall have the letters—who knows? You see I am perfectly frank with you, for the simple reason that I ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Dumont, in the book called My Airships (1904), defends the rotary principle, which is the life of machines. Like the Wrights, he believed in practice, and was a skilled and experienced balloonist before he attempted to navigate an airship. His first airship was almost absurdly small; it had little more than six thousand feet of cubic capacity, was cigar-shaped, and was driven by a three and a half horse-power petrol motor. The others followed in rapid succession. M. Deutsch de la Meurthe had offered a prize of a hundred thousand francs for the first airship that should ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... she was of course absurdly wrong, but she felt bitter at all the world. Those who know society are well aware that character counts for everything within its sacred precincts. So the unjust remark should not be set down to the discredit of ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... precipitancy began to repulse an attack which had not even been opened. Mrs. Lessways was not good at strategy, especially in conflicts with her daughter. She was an ingenuous, hasty thing, and much too candidly human. And not only was she deficient in practical common sense and most absurdly unable to learn from experience, but she had not even the wit to cover her shortcomings by resorting to the traditional authoritativeness of the mother. Her brief, rare efforts to play the mother were ludicrous. She was too simply honest to acquire stature by standing on her maternal dignity. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... came in this morning," continued Mrs Winn, "quite excited about her invitation. She wanted to know what I meant to wear. Julia's so absurdly frivolous, she thinks as much of her dress as a girl of sixteen. 'At our age, my dear Julia,' I said to her, 'we need not trouble ourselves about that. You may depend on it, no one will notice what we have on. For myself, I shall put on my Paisley shawl and my ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... said the philosopher, "was ever known a quarrel more absurdly founded! The Countess is jealous of one whom her husband probably never will see, nor is there any prospect that the Princess of Zulichium will be hereafter better known, to the modern world, than if the curtain hung ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... now, with its stark ice-ribbed streets, its towering buildings, a mausoleum of frozen stone and dirty snow. As for flowers—why, even a spray of that mimosa in a frosty florist's window would be absurdly expensive; one ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... become solidified and hard as stone. It must be admitted that they underwent considerable discomfort in memory of their relatives. It took all the influence we could bring to bear to break up these absurdly superstitious practices, and it looked as if no permanent improvement could be effected, for as soon as we got them to discard one, another would be invented. When not allowed to burn down their tepees or houses, those poor souls who were in a dying condition would be carried out to the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... enough to conquer it, for one must work on the land if one would take possession of it. They left it waste and abandoned it to the soldiers of fortune by whom it was ravaged and exhausted. Their garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had conquered. The English had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an ox. That they were too few and that France was too big had been plainly seen after ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... cloud-banks lifted, strong shadows, intensely blue, pointed across the plain of snow. A small, black, energetic figure came out from among the firs and ran forward where the longest shadow pointed. It looked absurdly tiny and anxious; futile, in its pigmy haste, across the exquisite stillness. Joan, lying so still, was acquiescent; this little striving thing rebelled. It came forward steadily, following Joan's uneven tracks, stamping them down firmly to make a solid path, and, as the sun dropped, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... see it that way, Teresa, and I am perfectly willing to give up in your favor if the others will agree. Of course it is ridiculous to talk of any question of beauty having been considered. You know you are absurdly pretty, Teresa, and are merely trying to make some one say so," Joan remarked, half ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... one the remaining four quickly followed, and before what I had on entering regarded as the absurdly early hour of eight o'clock had struck, five of Watts's guests had gone to bed, and the sixth was sitting looking drowsily in the fire, and thinking what a jolly Christmas he ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... in Hades with solemn-eyed Dante, for Satan was only a woolly little black dog, and surely no dog was ever more absurdly misnamed. When Uncle Carey first heard ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... violin in one hand and the bow in the other, he almost touched the floor with them, while displaying to the public his unprecedented obeisances. In the angular curves of his body there was a horrible woodenness, and also something absurdly animal-like, that during these bows one could not help feeling a strange desire to laugh. But his face, that appeared still more cadaverously pale in the glare of the orchestra lights, had about it something so imploring, so ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... of Menzel's absurdly perverted relation of these great events, the reader is referred not only to the Duke of Wellington's despatches and to Colonel Siborne's well-established account of the battles of Ligny, Wavre, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo, but also to those ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... attitude and with a resolute expression. "Victor," she said, "I've listened to you very patiently. Now I want you to listen to me. What is the truth about us? Why, that we are as if we had been made for each other. I don't know as much as you do. I've led a much narrower life. I've been absurdly mis-educated. But as soon as I saw you I felt that I had found the man I was looking for. And I believe—I feel—I KNOW you were drawn to me in the same way. ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... use the modern phrase, between science and religion, was thus developed early in ancient Greece; and by the fifth century it is clear that it had become acute. The philosopher Anaxagoras was driven from Athens as an atheist; the same charge, absurdly enough, was one of the counts in the indictment of Socrates; and the physical speculations of the time are a favourite butt of that champion of orthodoxy, Aristophanes. To follow up these speculations in detail would be to wander ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... yards away, Carrick could be seen defending himself gamely against the combined attack of three mounted men. Something, even at that distance, about their uncouth horses and absurdly high saddles, sent a shiver of recognition through Carter. He had seen thousands of their ilk along the Neva. The trio of strangers were Russian Cossacks. How had they passed the Krovitch outposts some miles back? The ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... they were merely taking a passing glimpse at the ruins; the man on some money-making quest, and the girls just to be able to say they had seen them. His eyes rested on the temple wall, and he felt suddenly absurdly resentful that these rich pleasure-seekers should come even there to gape and stare. He had grown to love the ruins dearly, until that moment he had scarcely known how dearly, and to him it seemed for the moment like showing some treasured personal ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the discomfort of strangeness and an annoying sense of my own extreme insignificance. I was a new boy. I wanted to behave properly, to do the right thing, and I had no way of knowing what the right thing was. I was absurdly anxious not to "cheek" anybody, and thereby incur the kind of snubbing, I scarcely expected the kicks, which I had endured long ago when I found myself a lonely mite in a corner of the ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... have still a correspondency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it, so as to produce a very similar impression: enlarging themselves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the sea remains a disappointment.—Is it not, that in the latter we had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I am afraid, by the law of imagination unavoidably) not a definite object, as those wild beasts, or that mountain compassable by the eye, but all the sea at once, THE COMMENSURATE ANTAGONIST OF THE EARTH! I do not say we, tell ourselves so much, but the craving of the mind ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... on that instant that Mary Adams vanished did she become glorified. Barbara had been too absurdly agitated to transform on to the mirror of her brain Mary's appearance. In all the dim-coloured splendour of flame and mist was Mary now enwrapped, with every step that Barbara took towards her home did the ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... unventilated library, grinding at the task of putting new wrong meanings into perfectly obvious statements in the Bible. He was a series of circles—round head with smooth gray hair that hung in a bang over his round forehead; round face with round red cheeks; absurdly heavy gray mustache that almost made a circle about his puerile mouth; round button of a nose; round heavy shoulders; round little stomach in a gray sack-suit; round dumplings of feet in congress shoes that were never quite fresh-blacked or quite dusty. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... observations, all desired him to be their leader, except a certain Apollonides, who resembled a Boeotian in his manner of speaking; this man said that "whoever asserted they could gain safety by any other means than by obtaining, if he could, the king's consent to it, talked absurdly;" and at the same time began to enumerate the difficulties surrounding them. 27. But Xenophon, interrupting him, said, "O most wonderful of men! you neither understand what you see, nor remember what you hear. Yet you were on the same ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... we are a divided people. But in divisions, where a part is to be taken, we are to make a muster of our strength. I have often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any political view, are to be called the people. Without doing something of this sort, we must proceed absurdly. We should not be much wiser, if we pretended to very great accuracy in our estimate; but I think, in the calculation I have made, the error cannot be very material. In England and Scotland, I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable leisure for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... time for lunch;" and with a significant look he directed Amy to the basket he had brought, from the bottom of which was drawn a doll with absurdly diminutive feet, and for once in her life Johnnie's ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... faction" overruling it, joined "in league with the Brownists and Independents in England, to the prejudice of Religion." [Footnote: Several times in the course of the document this accusation of Brownism or Independency comes in—an absurdly selected accusation at the very time when the most patent fact about the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland was its deadly antagonism to Independency and all forms of Brownism. Montrose and Napier were probably a little behind-hand in their knowledge of English Ecclesiastical ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... vol. ii. p. 275. Jorgenson, the Dane, who was a seaman on board the Lady Nelson, tender to the Investigator, stated, in his rattling way, that she was in good condition, and absurdly insinuated foul play. The Investigator was cut down, and returned to Europe in charge of ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... was certainly, for example, the Headline Instinct which caused Mr. John Lane, a publisher of some repute, to impose on Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer's novel The Saddest Story, one of the most remarkable novels of the century, such an absurdly irrelevant title as The Good Soldier. The Good Soldier was published in April, 1915. The evidence that the publisher must have changed the title just before publication is that an instalment of it had appeared serially as The Saddest Story in the summer of 1914, and that as The Saddest ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... must be slow and gradual; for it is not to be hoped, that the whole bulk of the people will at once be divested of their habits; and, therefore, it will be rational to endeavour, not wholly to debar them from any thing in which, however absurdly, they place their happiness, but to make the attainment of it more and more difficult, that they may insensibly remit their ardour, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... proves that the necessity of resorting to the Imperial Parliament for the transaction of private business was not an objection that hindered the passage of the Act of Union, although to-day the same omission is absurdly used as an argument in favour of the repeal of that measure. At the same time, it is true that the requirements have immensely increased in proportion as the resources of the country have been developed since 1800. The introduction of railways, telegraphs, telephones and electric appliances, together ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... had been active in procuring the protection of the kings of Bosporus for the Athenian colony of Nymphaeon in the Crimea, and whose wife was a native of that region. On these grounds the adversaries of Demosthenes, in after-days, used absurdly to taunt him with a traitorous or barbarian ancestry. The boy had a bitter foretaste of life. He was seven years old when his father died, leaving property (in a manufactory of swords, and another of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... feet and was watching the glasses, as the old woman stirred the white syrup in the water with an old-fashioned, long-handled spoon. She did not wish to seem absurdly suspicious, and yet she distrusted her enemy. She took one of the glasses, went to his side, and held it to his lips as one gives an ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... will only want to get her work done as soon as possible. My being always in the room with her as I was with Martha might excite comment. I should never have done it in Martha's case if you had not been so absurdly nervous; for you know very well there was no real danger of her ever finding the place however closely she looked for it. But now there's a change it is quite time to drop it, or a rumor will be getting about that we are afraid of any of our servants ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... with rapt countenances and frequent bursts of emotion or applause; but the Americans suffered agonies, for the whole thing was so absurdly melodramatic that it was with great difficulty they kept themselves from explosions of laughter. When the little man dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper, in bidding adieu to the lost loves of his youth, tender-hearted old C. sobbed in her ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... from students' reports. If they seem absurdly simple, it is well to remember that experience reveals the student's amazing lack of ability to vizualize social relationships without some such device. These diagrams, however, should serve merely as the point of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... had been obliged to put into Rio Janeiro to refit for her voyage to Europe, and was most ungenerously denied what was needful by the Portuguese government, for eight months. The viceroy seems to have been of an unfeeling and absurdly consequential disposition, of which some instances have been already related in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... companions at these words. It was plain I was fast losing the innocence of youth. In justice to myself, however, I am bound to say that I have, in the course of my subsequent experience, seen many of the lords and masters of the creation behave much more absurdly under ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... scandalously late in his delivery of the precious fluid as his predecessor! An hour passed and he did not return. His unfortunate partners, toiling away with pick and crowbar on the burning ledge, were clamorous from thirst, and Bray was becoming absurdly uneasy. It could not be possible that Eugenia's accident had been repeated! Or had she met him with inquiries? But no! she was already gone. The mystery was presently cleared, however, by the abrupt ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... has passed absurdly quickly," said Myra. "We don't seem to have done anything—except enjoy ourselves. I mean anything specially Rivierish. But it's ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... to the sex of numbers; I myself had absurdly enough fancied that of course the even numbers would be taken to be of the male sex, and was surprised to find that they were not. I mention this as an example of the curious way in which our minds may be unconsciously ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... so little to say concerning a subject of which His disciples have said so much. It is true that the Gospels, without exception, relate the story of Christ's death with a fullness and detail which, in any other biography, would be judged absurdly out of proportion. But this, it is said, reveals the mind of the evangelists rather than the mind of Christ. And those who love that false comparison between the Gospels and the Epistles of which so much is heard to-day, have not been slow to seize upon ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... up fully cognizant of what her clothes cost. When she desires, as she doubtless will desire, silk petticoats, and an "up-to-date" hat, and high-heeled shoes, and an absurdly beruffled dress, and a wonderful array of ribbons, she must discover what each and every one of these things costs and whether it is worth the price. The high heels sometimes cost health; the conspicuous dress may cost the good opinion or the admiration of those who value modesty above style; ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... absurdly weak, without and within. And its weakness is due to one main cause—the fact that we do not grow our own food. To get the better of submarines in this war will make no difference to our future situation. A little peaceful study and development of submarines ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... make life easy. He was passive, pliable, frank, extremely slow at his books, and inordinately fond of trout-fishing. His hair, a memento of his Dutch ancestry, was of the fairest shade of yellow, his complexion absurdly rosy, and his measurement around the waist, when he was about ten years old, quite alarmingly large. This, however, was but an episode in his growth; he became afterwards a fresh-colored, yellow-bearded man, but he was never accused of anything worse than a tendency to corpulence. He emerged from ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... allowance. What do you think my Rene did? He sent back the cheque his people had just given him with quite a nice, civil, respectful letter. Then he left his office and got a place in a business house at an absurdly small salary, and he's been working there ever since. [Laughing] He shocked all the other young men in the office by the way he stuck to it. He got gradually interested in what he had to do. He ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... the right to pass his door if she so desired, and that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. The argument was only slightly adequate. But Alan was not interested in mysteries, especially when they had to do with woman—and such an absurdly ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... this modest principle that thou deridest some of us, who, not having thy confidence in their outside appearance, seek to hide their defects by the tailor's and peruke-maker's assistance; (mistakenly enough, if it be really done so absurdly as to expose them more;) and sayest, that we do but hang out a sign, in our dress, of what we have in the shop of our minds. This, no doubt, thou thinkest, is smartly observed: but pr'ythee, Lovelace, let me tell thee, if thou ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... himself obliged to pay for travelling—for sea travelling which was the normal state of life for the family—from the very cradle for most of them. I could see he grudged prospectively every single shilling which must be spent so absurdly. It was rather funny. He would become doleful over it, and then again, with a fretful sigh, he would suppose there was nothing for it now but to take three second-class tickets—and there were the four children to pay for besides. A lot of money that to spend at once. A big ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... and a sense of value continually renewed, and a vain desire for an absolutely common ground. The physical nearness, the touch, was something, and each felt it in the remoteness of his other world with satisfaction. There was absurdly little in what they had to say to each other; they talked of the Viceroy's attack of measles and the sanitary improvements in the cloth dealers' quarter. Their bond was hardly more than a mutual decency ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... characteristics of men whose 'senatus consultum' bestows an Emperor on France, a King on Italy, makes of principalities departments of a Republic, and transforms Republics into provinces or principalities. To show the absurdly fickle and ridiculously absurd appellations of our shamefully perverted institutions, this Senate was called the Conservative Senate; that is to say, it was to preserve the republican consular constitution in its integrity, both against the; encroachments ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the heart, turned up the dropped eyelids, even shook the inanimate stiffening form of his pet. He knew it was in vain—that never again would she jump trustingly upon him, never again would she appear absurdly with one of his slippers in her wide mouth that always seemed to smile at the joke, coming down the drive to greet him; that never again would he have her for his untiring companion on his walks or ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... oddest effect on him. Vaguely and confusedly he was troubled by it; feeling as if he had even himself been concerned in something deep and dim. He had allowed for depths, but these were greater: and it was as if, oppressively—indeed absurdly—he was responsible for what they had now thrown up to the surface. It was—through something ancient and cold in it—what he would have called the real thing. In short his hostess's news, though he couldn't have explained why, was a sensible shock, and his oppression a weight he felt he must ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... is," resumed Thomas Flanagan, "Mr. Fogg's project was absurdly foolish. Whatever his punctuality, he could not prevent the delays which were certain to occur; and a delay of only two or three days would be ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... frequently remained undisturbed upon the judicial chin for several weeks at a time. The atrocious story is even told that once upon a time, when half shaven, he chanced to pick up a newspaper, became absorbed in its contents, forgot to complete his task, and went to court in this most absurdly unsymmetrical condition. But, despite these personal eccentricities, a more honest or capable judge has rarely been called upon to vindicate the majesty of the law. Upon the bench none could detect a flaw in his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... are unequal to your work, and want me, and I will come to London straight and do your work. I am quite confident that, with your notes and a few words of explanation, I could take it up at any time and do it. Absurdly unnecessary to say that it would be a makeshift! But I could do it at a pinch, so like you as that no one should find out the difference. Don't make much of this offer in your mind; it is nothing, except to ease it. If you should want help, I am as safe as the bank. The ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Dr. McDonnell, was an absurdly brave little man. His heart may not have been in the Highlands, but his mind certainly was, for he led his staff into shell fire, week-days and Sundays, and all with a fine unconsciousness that anything unusual was singing ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... They know better who live where the ships are. He used to bring his young shipmates to see us, and they were like himself. Their eyes were downcast. They showed no self-reliance. Their shyness and politeness, when the occasion was quite simple, were absurdly incommensurate even with modesty. Their sisters, not nearly so ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... both in the mother and in the child. A good figure is also insured to the Indian woman, from her contemning, perhaps at the bid of necessity, arising from her poverty, though, I verily believe, from a well-grounded conception of their deforming tendencies, the absurdly irrational measures, which, adopted by many among ourselves to promote symmetry, only bring ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... a pair of absurdly tiny brocaded shoes past slender white ankles to the embroidered edge of a wonderful mandarin robe decorated with the figures of peacocks; upward again to a little bejewelled hand which held the robe confined about the slender figure of Zahara, and upward to ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... sent from hell to seduce and torment him. All this was possible because the woman was outside the orbit of the man's life, never on the same plane, necessarily higher or lower. It became difficult if woman was man's equal, absurdly impossible if she was ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Street Dion told Rosamund there would be war in South Africa, but he did not even hint at his thought that volunteers might be called for, at his intention, if they were, to offer himself. To do that would not only be absurdly premature, but might even seem slightly bombastic, an uncalled-for study in heroics. He kept silence. The battles of Ladysmith, of Magersfontein, of Stormberg, of Colenso, unsettled the theories of sleek people in silk hats. England came ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... seems to be, that if any effect be produced in our minds by the power of God, it is a passive impression, and is very absurdly called a voluntary state of the will. And even if such an impression could be a voluntary state, or a volition, properly so called, we should not be responsible for it, because it is produced by the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... absurdly impossible ideas of this kind as I went along the yard, feeling horribly guilty and ready to give up my undertaking. The very silence and solitariness of the place startled me, but I went on and turned in at the open door of the smithy where Pannell worked, and breathed more freely ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... thou dost nonplus my understanding of myself absurdly. I agree I have more minds than one, and 'tis disconcerting to try in haste to ascertain which is the best. Indeed, I do not wish to make a false step and do that 'twould make ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... again, and after hot coffee and rolls decided that is was time to go on guard. To be sure, it was absurdly early; but by this time the Duke's household might be astir, and we must not risk letting Monica be carried away before we had had a chance to practise the ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... course, made suggestions. One in particular knew "the very thing you want, and really absurdly cheap." She was enthusiastic in description. Then the rental was named—fifteen dollars a month more than the budget allowed. David made a great show of taking the address and promised to inspect the ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... was intense satisfaction to Kate in having broken all bounds and done as she pleased. Of course it would have been a bit more comfortable if David had not been so absurdly in earnest, and believed in her so thoroughly. But it was nice to have some one believe in you no matter what you did, and David would always do that. It began to look doubtful if the captain would. But David would never marry, she was sure, and perhaps, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... assure you, sir," the English-speaking manager of the department was saying, "that this garment is a wonderful value. We are able to let you have it at so absurdly low a figure because—" ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... her slip, she passed astern of a great liner. Gissing saw the four tall funnels loom up above the shed of the pier where she lay berthed. What was it that made his heart so stir? The perfect rake of the funnels—just that satisfying angle of slant—that, absurdly enough, was the nobility of the sight. Why, then? Let's get at the heart of this, he said. Just that little trick of the architect, useless in itself—what was it but the touch of swagger, of bravado, of defiance—going out into the vast, meaningless, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... brave, ball-club in hand, took his place beside each. The sailor proved himself a coward, but the captain was bold to the last, and alternately defied the king and encouraged his weaker companion, who was whimpering by his side. Then, in one long speech which, absurdly out of keeping with the surroundings as it was, yet had the ring of true pathos, the captain bade farewell to home, wife, and children, and welcomed death in the name and for the honor of queen and country. Even Aunt Jane's face grew a little gentler as the boy voice went on ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... like an absurdly pretty boy. "Don't be a silly," she replied, rather sharply. "Every one does it, except here, where old fossils refuse to think that anything new can be proper. If you're going to be that sort of a king when you grow up, I'll go somewhere ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... very absurdly introduced into marine law. "If a mariner," says Molloy, "shall commit a fault, and the master shall lift up the towel three times before any mariner, and he shall not submit, the master at the next place of land may discharge him." Some think that this refers to an ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... was the rector of the parish, Dr. Jeffreys and an absurdly young wife whom he had recently married, a fluffy-headed little thing with round eyes and a cheerful, perky manner. The two of them together looked exactly like a turkey-cock and a chicken. I remembered him well enough ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Stanley, allow me. Remember that emigrants move westward, and not eastward. Coming from Bent's Fort you had protection and company; but going towards it would be different. And then think what you would lose. The great American desert, as it is absurdly styled, is one of the most interesting regions on earth. Mrs. Stanley, did you ever hear of the Casas Grandes, the Casas de Montezuma, the ruined cities of New Mexico? In this so-called desert there was once ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... declared the senora's manners to be rustic and her voice loud; the woman in the carpenter's family would lend no ear to such a scandal because the subject of it was dumpy, shapeless, and dressed absurdly, even for the wife of a stonemason. Howbeit, the little woman was now in grief, for her husband lay in jail awaiting trial on the gravest charge that could be brought against a Cuban,—the charge of treason. In that day, as on many sad days that were to follow, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... of whose presence many of us have had painful proof, is the third or last molar, so absurdly misnamed the wisdom tooth. If there be any wisdom involved in its appearance it is of the sort characterized by William Allen White's delicious definition: "That type of ponderous folly of the middle-aged which ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... there ends a road travelled by hackney carriages and tramway cars, and noisy with the delectable hootings of smart motor cars; and behind the pyramid of Cheops squats a vast hotel to which swarm men and women of fashion, the latter absurdly feathered, like Redskins at a scalp dance; and sick people, in search of purer air; and consumptive English maidens; and ancient English dames, a little the worse for wear, who bring their rheumatisms for the treatment ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... must hasten toward that goal which he fancied (absurdly, no doubt) to be deliverance, toward the darkness from which he was now barely thirty paces distant. He pressed forward faster on his knees, his hands, at full length, dragging himself painfully along, and soon entered the dark portion ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the walnut blight germ. They had the same appearance as those nuts that you saw this afternoon in Georgetown. I brought them back here and made cultures from them in the laboratory, and after that the problem was absurdly easy. The germ was obtained without difficulty, I obtained a pure culture, and then I went up to Mr. Rush's place, at Lancaster, and made a number of inoculations, of which these few I have here are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... Mrs. Forester renewed the attack with many arguments. At last one day, in a moment of expansion, the doctor confessed what he had done. In the face of Mrs. Forester's amazed displeasure, his reasons for his conduct seemed absurdly inadequate. She told him in no measured terms exactly what she thought of him, and indignantly reproached him for the course which he had taken. She quite pooh-poohed the suggestion that Hugh Davidson might be dead, as the ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my young lord. The two parents were both absurdly fond of their child. Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all the children at school by name; and when this utterly failed on trial, how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wall and found a place where I could put my feet; Simmonds followed me, and then came Godfrey. His was the difficult part, to draw up the ladder and lower it again. As for me, it was all I could do to keep from falling. I felt absurdly as though I were standing on a tremulous tight-rope, high in the air; but Godfrey managed it somehow and ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... (William is a Winchester man, thrown into a lawyer's clerkship straight from the sixth) and the picture of the superbly groomed associates of his friend's brother, Marmaduke Fenton, are cases in point, though I don't think Winchester would have been so absurdly abashed by the glories of bachelordom in Half-Moon Street. So too is the lecture of Parbury, the neo-decadent, on the cultivation of "that sacred and imperishable flower, the white unsullied bloom of an Intensely Useless Life," even if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... he felt a little uncomfortable. His attitude was obviously the right one, but he could not help a feeling of dissatisfaction with the whole business. Miss Wilkinson, however, did not write again; nor did she, as he absurdly feared, suddenly appear in Paris to make him ridiculous before his friends. In a little while he clean ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... blurted out. The plea was somehow absurdly simple, and yet rather unanswerable. Angry as she was, she really couldn't think ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... time as droll and roguish-looking a grizzly cub as ever stepped. In a grizzly-gray full moon of fluffy hair, two big black eyes sparkled like jet beads, behind a pudgy little nose, absurdly short for a bear. Excepting for his high shoulders, he was little more than a big bale of gray fur set up on four posts of the same material. But his claws were formidable, and he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... exclaimed; and instead of shaking hands, he folded me in his arms and kissed me on both cheeks. I stepped back as soon as I was free, and stood watching as he served Bigley the same, and then took hold of Bob, whose face wore such an absurdly comical aspect of horror and disgust, that I stood holding my breath, and not daring to look at Bigley for fear ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... downstairs. He was no sinner turned saint. He still let the lash of his tongue play over the household, but his old zest in it seemed gone. He made, too, small tentative overtures to Lily, intended to be friendly, but actually absurdly self-conscious. Grace, watching him, often felt him rather touching. It was obvious to her that he blamed himself, rather than ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... more than one passage, that the author was acquainted with Shakespeare's historical plays. Dick Bowyer's puns on the sentinels' names (ii. 1) were certainly suggested by Falstaff's pleasantries with the recruits in Henry IV., Part II. Winstanley absurdly ascribes the piece to William Wager, who flourished (?) when Shakespeare was a child. If I were obliged to make a guess at the authorship, I would name Chettle or Munday, or both. It is not altogether improbable that the Tryall ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... How absurdly poor the chance! Yet they bade the old coachman turn that way, and indeed the facts were better than the hope of any one of them. Charlie, very gaunt and battered, but all the more enamored of himself therefor and for the new chevrons of a gun corporal on his dingy sleeve, was actually ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... but feel, too, somehow a little sorry for the boy—he couldn't help but think—— His eyes went from Steve's forward thrust head, from the hair shaggy and unkempt for all its fineness and thickness and wavy softness, across to that dainty vision which, poised in her absurdly short skirt like a point of flame, was already gazing back at the boy upon the steps in open ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... Wilson Avenue girl now. You saw her in and out of the shops of the district, expensively dressed. She was almost thirty-six. Her legs, beneath the absurdly short skirt of the day, were slim and shapely in their chiffon hose, but her upper figure was now a little prominent. The scant, brief skirt fore-shortened her; gave her a stork-like appearance; a combination of girlishness and ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... and common place lintels. Indeed, it might easily have been mistaken for a charity hospital; and in the absence of a front, discovering the slightest architectural grandeur, bore no small resemblance to an absurdly constructed barracks. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... applicable only to such portions of Ireland as the lord-lieutenant should proclaim to be disturbed. The reserved force of Irish constabulary was to be increased from four hundred to six hundred men—a feature of the scheme so absurdly inadequate as to expose its authors to ridicule. From this paltry reserve his excellency was to send forces into the proclaimed districts. This force would be paid out of the district it was sent to protect—a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hung over me, stupefying, deadening. One could only fight it with violence, crudely, in jerks, as one struggles against the numbness of frost. It was like a pall, like descending clouds of smoke, seemed to be actually present in the absurdly lofty room—this belief in what she stood for, in what she said ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... at the Geauga Seminary, where he got through his first term on the absurdly small sum of seventeen dollars. When he returned to school the next term he had but a six pence in his pocket, and this he dropped into the contribution box the next day at church. He made an arrangement with a carpenter in the village to board with him, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. When, in the battle of Germantown, General Washington's army was annoyed from Chew's house, he did not hesitate to plant his cannon against it, although the property of a citizen. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... purchased three—a bay and two greys. They are all of Abyssinian breed, and are handsome animals, although none exceed fourteen hands and a half. The prices were high for this part of the world where dollars are scarce; but to me, they appeared to be absurdly cheap. The bay horse was a regular strong-built cob; for him I paid nineteen dollars—about 4l. including a native saddle and bridle; for the greys, I paid fifteen and thirteen dollars, saddles and bridles also included. The bay I ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Mrs. Powers in her place, absurdly light and elastic, treading the floor in her flat, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... every one does what is right in his own eyes. Yesterday, although the Governor knew that some of his slaves or other people had stolen my sugar, he never condescended to mention the circumstance, by speaking to his eldest son about the theft; he said absurdly enough, "Oh, if we knew the thief, we would put him to death." On protesting against such punishment for the offence, he rejoined, "Oh, but we would cut off his hand." This is all stuff, and a proof of the weakness of the Governor's authority. Happily, however, there's no ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... about," said he to the valet, "for a pocket-handkerchief must be in one of my pockets; and if you do not find it, or if you have touched it—" He reflected for a moment. To make a state matter of the loss of the handkerchief would be to act absurdly, and he therefore added, "There was a letter of some importance inside the handkerchief, which had somehow got among the ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was,—you would think that it was he who had invented science, and that there was no such thing as sound reasoning before the time of Queen Elizabeth. Of course you say, that cannot possibly be true; you perceive, on a moment's reflection, that such an idea is absurdly wrong, and yet, so firmly rooted is this sort of impression,—I cannot call it an idea, or conception,—the thing is too absurd to be entertained,—but so completely does it exist at the bottom of most men's minds, that this has been a matter of observation with me for many years past. ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... he approached the log, and as he did so the figure appeared familiar to him. There was something especially familiar in the scout hat which came down over the ears of the little fellow who was underneath it, and in the hair which straggled out under the brim. The belt, drawn absurdly tight around the thin little waist, was a quite sufficient mark of identification. It was Skinny McCord, the latest find, and official mascot of the Bridgeboro troop, one of the crack troop of the camp. ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... cathedral. Stevenson describes it as being "the happiest inspiration of mankind, a thing as specious as a statue at the first glance, yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. The height of its spires cannot be taken by trigonometry: they measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the admiring eye.... I sat outside of my hotel and the sweet groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons";—and much more of the same sort, all of which tells us that, once we find ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... the young man that absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... a lecturer at the university of Pisa: delighting in poetical studies, he was then more of a critic than a philosopher, and had Ariosto by heart. This great man caught the literary mania which broke out about his time, when the Cruscans so absurdly began their "Controversie Tassesche," and raised up two poetical factions, which infected the Italians with a national fever. Tasso and Ariosto were perpetually weighed and outweighed against each other; Galileo wrote annotations on Tasso, stanza after ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... did come most of the dinner was already eaten up. The Chancellor is said to have made an admirable speech at the meeting of savans, full of dignity, propriety, and eloquence, and the savans spoke one more absurdly than another. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... body, which then becomes no otherwise distinguished from inanimate matter, than by its juxtaposition in mere space, with an heterogeneous inmate, the cycle of whose actions revolves within itself. Besides which I should think that I was confounding metaphors and realities most absurdly, if I imagined that I had a greater insight into the meaning and possibility of a living alcohol, than of a living quicksilver. In short, visible surface and power of any kind, much more the power of life, are ideas which the very forms of the human understanding make it impossible ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... instance, you sink; and the first time you try to ride a bicycle you fall off. But the ability to do these things was born in you. And shortly you can both swim and ride. Then you wonder why you could not always do these things. They seem so absurdly simple." It may be that there are people who have learned to swim and to ride a bicycle by sitting in a chair and cultivating certain inherent qualities but we have never heard of them. Everybody that we ever knew worked and worked hard swimming ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... little nod, and a furtive look of triumph about him, evasive. He went past her and into the room. Her inside burned with love for him: so elusive, so beautiful, in his silent passing out of her sight. She wiped her dishes happily. Why was she so absurdly happy, she asked herself? And why did she still fight so hard against the sense of his dark, unseizable beauty? Unseizable, for ever unseizable! That made her almost his slave. She fought against her own desire to fall at his feet. Ridiculous ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... production of one mind.' And this one mind, he thinks, was probably that of Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw, the acknowledged forger of the ballad Hardyknute, which deceived so many. Chambers, of course, was absurdly mistaken. ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... middle of it, stood an odd-looking little man, actually selling umbrellas. Here was a chance for him! When he drew nearer, he found that the little man, while vaunting his umbrellas to the skies, was asking such absurdly small prices for them, that no one would venture to buy one. He had opened and laid them all out at full stretch on the market-place—about five-and-twenty of them, stick downwards, like little tents—and he stood beside, haranguing the people. But he would not allow ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... "It is so absurdly radical," said the American Minister, "that it carries with it its own antidote. I am sure there can arise no harm from Captain W—— singing it to our English friends, who are monarchy men sufficiently staunch to disallow any ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Copse, an isolated little wood with several dug-outs in it, and on to Sanctuary Wood, which we found 400 yards further East. Here in dug-outs lived the Supports, for whom at this time was no fighting accommodation except one or two absurdly miniature keeps. At the corner of the larger wood we passed the Ration Dump, and then, leaving this on our left, turned into ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... letters round the cross, which appeared in the air to Constantlne and his whole army, as that emperor himself affirmed upon oath, and as Eusebius assures us from his testimony, and that of other eye-witnesses. (l. 1, de Vit. Constant., c. 28, olim 22.) Fabricius very absurdly pretends that [Greek: graphen] may here signify an emblem, not an inscription. Mr. Jor tin, after taking much pains on this subject, is obliged to confess (vol. 3, p. 6) that, "After all, it seems more natural to interpret [Greek: graphen legousan] of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... once," she added, as she threw herself upon the bed, "and now I think of it, I consider him very bold to dare to speak to me. I am almost inclined to laugh at him. How confidently he brought out his nonsense, how absurdly he rolled his eyes! They are really very fine, those eyes of his, and so is his mouth, and his forehead and his hair. He does not suspect that I noticed his hands, which are really very white, when he raised them to heaven, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... see the white boots, the broad drawers, and scarlet chilipa; the picturesque costume of the Pampas. Here, common trousers are protected by black and green worsted leggings. The poncho, however, is common to both. The chief pride of the Guaso lies in his spurs, which are absurdly large. I measured one which was six inches in the DIAMETER of the rowel, and the rowel itself contained upwards of thirty points. The stirrups are on the same scale, each consisting of a square, carved block of wood, hollowed out, yet weighing three or four pounds. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... romantic comedies of Shakespeare. This people, so appallingly credulous and ignorant, so brutal, childish, so mercurial compared with Englishmen of to-day, yet set the standard of national greatness. This absurdly decorated gallant could stab a rival in the back or write a penitential lyric. Each man presents strange, almost inexplicable, contrasts in character, as Bacon or Raleigh, or Elizabeth herself. The drama mingles its sentiment and fancy with horrors and bloodshed; ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... away steadily, looking so absurdly like Grim in some respects, and so utterly unlike him in character nevertheless, that it looked like plus opposing minus, or a strong man tempted by ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... are as absurdly romantic as a school-girl! Surely people of our age ought to know better than still to believe in fairyland; but, as I have told you before, you are dreadfully young for your age in ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... not found in the workshops of any other country—men of industrial skill and experience, and at the same time of the highest scientific technical attainments in the branches of science that bear particularly upon their work. These men work at salaries that in other countries would be considered absurdly low. In almost all other countries the possession of a sound scientific education is a passport to social distinction, and every profession is open to him who is deserving to enter it. In Germany, however, the learned professions, and especially the official ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... and through them in the whole of our current literature and our current mode of thought, that certain qualities of his, whether original or recent, essential or accidental, have altered the quality of our English comedy. In particular, that stoical ideal, absurdly supposed to be the English ideal, has stiffened and chilled us. It is not the English ideal; but it is to some extent the aristocratic ideal; or it may be only the ideal of aristocracy in its autumn or decay. The gentleman is a Stoic because he is a sort of savage, because he is filled ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... there is nothing remarkable about this. Your feat of finding the rope was far more meritorious, both the reasoning and the actual finding of the rope. What John and I did just now was absurdly simple. ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... captain's anecdote had scarce subsided when the tough sides of the good Prince Rupert gave a gentle creak, and the angle at which the active steward perambulated the cabin became absurdly acute. ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... before the telephone got a switchboard of its own, it made use of the boards that had been designed for the telegraph. These were as simple as wheelbarrows, and became absurdly inadequate as soon as the telephone business began to grow. Then there came adaptations by the dozen. Every telephone manager became by compulsion an inventor. There was no source of information and each ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... rules of war into instincts of intelligence, were indifferent to the scandal of violating the etiquette of fighting, provided thereby they gained the object of fighting. They had, in fact, the quality which the old generals absurdly claimed, namely, practical sagacity, or, the Yankee phrased it, "the knack of hitting it about right the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... awkward or defective, though they have globes or spheres, and a smattering of the mathematics, and think they know more than all the world besides. But they know little of the motions of the heavenly bodies; and so grossly and absurdly ignorant are their common people, that when the sun is eclipsed, they think a great dragon has assaulted it, and is going to run away with it; and they fall a clattering with all the drums and kettles in the country, to fright ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... She seemed absurdly small. Incredulity infected Lanyard's mind. Nothing so tiny, so insignificant, so make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could conceivably be that ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... his hands with delight. "Aha!" thought he; "jealous! actually jealous! absurdly jealous! That is a good sign. Who would have thought so proud a man could be jealous of a sailor? I have found out your vulnerable point, my friend. I'll tell Lucy; how she will laugh. David Dodd! Now we know how to manage him, Lucy and I. If he freezes back again, we have but to send for David Dodd ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... went. She wore a black jacket suit with a white collar, and she carried Aunt Harriet's mink furs, Aunt Harriet mourning thoroughly and completely in black astrachan. She had the faculty of the young American girl of looking smart without much expense, and she appeared absurdly young. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the vicar's daughter. Strictly speaking, I suppose her social position is superior to our own. I know for a fact that she has been to county balls. She seemed anxious to cultivate an intimacy with us, so I gathered. I was not absurdly pleased about it. One has one's dignity. Besides, at the office we frequently see people far above Miss Sakers. A nobleman who had called to see one of the partners once remarked to me, "Your office is a devilish long way from everywhere!" ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... and on. Terry, still wrapped in his blanket, sat before him looking up with an absurdly rapt air as of a student at his master's feet. Merchant stopped to swab the thick perspiration from his face, laughed at Terry's humbugging pose, and desisted. Terry slipped on his shoes, buckled on the leather leggings he had used as a pillow and picking up his ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... little variety by arrangement on the following terms. 1. Treating both upper and lower ranges alike 2. Allowing yourself to halve them, vertically only. 3. Not wasting any glass. 4. Not halving more than two in each light. How is this, fig. b? you despise it? so absurdly simple? It is the key to all simple ornament in leaded glass. Exhaust all the possible varieties, there are at least ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... But some such shocking story is told of almost every town in England that has an old castle, an old tower, or an old cathedral. This village once belonged to an Archbishop of Canterbury, vestiges of whose palace are yet to be seen. This place is also noted for making what is absurdly called copperas, which is the chrystalized salt of iron, or what is called in the new chemical nomenclature sulphate of iron; or in common parlance, green vitriol; which is manufactured, and found native in our own country, in ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... form of the young Horus seated on an open lotus flower was also popular in the Greek times. But the infant Horus with his finger to his lips {47} was the most popular form of all, sometimes alone, sometimes on his mother's lap. The finger, which pointed to his being a sucking child, was absurdly misunderstood by the Greeks as an emblem of silence. From the twenty-sixth dynasty down to late Roman times the infant Horus, or the young boy, was the most prominent subject on the temples, and the commonest figure in ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... upon his house-top, over the chimney, where they imagined that it would have the effect of a charm, and serve as a protection for the family. Another tribe lived in habits of promiscuous intercourse, like the lower orders of animals; and so, as the historian absurdly states, being, in consequence of this mode of life, all connected together by the ties of consanguinity, they lived in perpetual peace and good will, without any envy, or jealousy, or other evil passion. A third occupied ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott |
