"Preposterous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the provincial woman—never! If her waist is too short and her figure ill balanced, well, she makes up her mind to the worst, and her adorers—or they do not adore her—must take her as she is, while the Parisian always insists on being taken for what she is not. Hence the preposterous bustles, the audacious flatness, the ridiculous fulness, the hideous outlines ingeniously displayed, to which a whole town will become accustomed, but which are so astounding when a provincial woman makes her appearance in Paris or among Parisians. Dinah, who was extremely slim, showed ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... and great numbers are returning as the result of hard times, and I fear harder treatment. There is no indication that we are to be overrun by them, and until they change their religious ideas and come to California to marry, settle, die, and be buried there, it is preposterous to believe there is any thing in the agitation against them beyond the usual prejudice of the ignorant races next to them in ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... life?" The wild gayety in his eyes sobered. "I happened to come to Mercer—and, you are my wife." His fingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instant he threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in a preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger for fifty-four minutes, kissed it—and the palm of her hand—and said, "You never ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... It is a good thing to harness two horses to a cart; but it is not a good thing to try and turn two hansom cabs into one four-wheeler. Turning ten nations into one empire may happen to be as feasible as turning ten shillings into one half-sovereign. Also it may happen to be as preposterous as turning ten terriers into one mastiff. The question in all cases is not a question of union or absence of union, but of identity or absence of identity. Owing to certain historical and moral causes, two nations may be so united as upon the whole ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... for three or four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England; and who, in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that increasing too; for me to think of such a voyage, was the most preposterous thing that ever man, in such circumstances, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... with a trouble the more perplexed that he could assign to himself no reason for it. That it could be caused by any interest felt for a Chasseur d'Afrique by the haughtiest lady in all Europe would have been too preposterous and too insulting a supposition for it ever to occur to him. And he did not dream the truth—the truth that it was her withholding, for the first time in all her life, any secret from him which caused her pain; that it was the fear lest he should learn that his lost friend was living ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... line of criticism in connection with the memoirs entitled Le Diable au XIX^e Siecle would be the preposterous and impossible nature of its supernatural narratives. To attribute a historical veracity to the adventures of Baron Munchausen might scarcely appear more unserious than to accept this recit d'un temoin as evidence for transcendental phenomena. I need ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... that Henry never again did such good work as these nonsense rhymes, written thus for a frolic,—and one hundred and fifty pounds,—and as copies of the "Bon Marche Ballads" are now exceedingly scarce, it may possibly be of interest to quote two or three more of its preposterous numbers. This is a lyric illustrative of cheese, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... constabulary as might be necessary. Law and order must be enforced. This would be the view taken in any other place but this, but in Ireland the matter appeared in a totally different light. To begin with, the idea of blood being shed in order that Miss Gardiner might get in her rents appeared utterly preposterous. Secondly, the two past crops had completely failed in Mayo. Thirdly, the bad crops of 1878 and 1879 in England had prevented the Mayo men from earning the English harvest money on which they entirely depend for their rent, and much more than ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... supposition of Ptolemy. He showed, moreover, that the latter supposition must attribute an almost infinite velocity to the stars, so that the rotation of the entire universe around the earth was clearly a preposterous supposition. The second great principle, which has conferred immortal glory on Copernicus, assigned to the earth its true position in the universe. Copernicus transferred the centre, about which all the planets revolve, from the earth to the sun; and he established the somewhat humiliating truth, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... when a woman is barren, though the instruments of generation are perfect both in herself and in her husband, and no preposterous or diabolical course used to it, and neither age, nor disease, nor any defect hindering, and yet the ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... English so well, he certainly knows how to make himself understood in it. His story of the bicycle is preposterous." ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... said Hawbury, thoughtfully. "Willoughby? Ethel? Good Lord! But pooh! What rot? As though they could be the same. Preposterous! By Jove!" ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... listlessly for hours, hoping nothing, grasping nothing, except that it was all over. In all my misadventures that was the one thing I had never dreamed of. If I did, I as quickly banished the thought as preposterous. That she should be another's bride seemed so utterly impossible that, sick and feeble as I was, I laughed it to scorn even then; whereat I fell to reading the fatal letter again, and trying to ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... '30's." But the fluent chatterer reined in and became a good listener. He imbibed all the political ruses, and returned home with his quiver full of new and victorious arrows for the Presidential campaign, for his bosom friends urged him to try to gratify that ambition, preposterous when he first felt it attack him. He had grown out of the sensitiveness that once made him beg the critics not to put him out by laughing at his appearance. He formed a boundless arsenal of images and similes; he learned the American humorist's art not to parade the joke ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... terms was not, properly speaking, evidence at all. Men demanded that purely spiritual matters should be, as they said, 'proved,' by which they meant should be reduced to physical terms. Little by little, however, the preposterous nature of this claim was understood. People began to perceive that each order of life had evidence proper to itself—that there were such things, for instance, as moral proofs, artistic proofs, and philosophical proofs; and that these proofs were ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... Preposterous! He cried out that the charge was outrageous. He was so far from pessimism that he saw already the end of all private property coming along logically, unavoidably, by the mere development of its inherent viciousness. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... upon its sacred shrine. But the Puritan was still a Cromwell and the Cavalier a lord. That people so widely divergent in customs and character could long dwell at peace as one political household were preposterous. The one had his "convictions," the other his "institutions," and neither would yield the right-o'-way. When such opposing trains of thought try to pass on a single track there's going to be trouble sure. The friction, evident even in the early day of the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is one of them. They provide sixty-eight of the hundred Viceroys; we provide only seventeen. It is a preposterous and intolerable situation. ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher
... we find? Mr. Swinburne calls the book "a worthless little volume of stolen and mutilated poetry, patched up and padded out with dirty and dreary doggrel, under the senseless and preposterous title of The Passionate Pilgrim." On the other hand, Mr. Humphreys maintains that "Jaggard, at any rate, had very good taste. This is partly seen in the choice of a title. Few books have so charming a name as The ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... another wry face, indicative of disapproval, and suggest that he bring vishner-su. "Vishner-su" two or three of them sing out in a chorus of blank amazement; "Ingilis. Christian? vishner-su." they exclaim, as though such a preposterous and unaccountable thing as a Christian partaking of a non- intoxicating beverage like vishner-su is altogether beyond their comprehension. The youth who has been to the Kaizareah school then explains to the others that the American missionaries ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of her eyes; she was deeply in earnest. Calumet could see that, and the knowledge kept him silent, hushed the half-formed sarcastic replies that were on his lips, made his suspicions seem brutal, preposterous, ridiculous. There was much feeling in her voice; he was astonished and awed at the change in her; he had not seen her like this before. Her reserve was gone, the disdain with it; there was naked sincerity in her glowing eyes, in her words, in her manner. He watched her, fascinated, ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... by Mary, who had, as usual, been spending part of the morning with Averil. No one seemed to be so much taken by surprise as Tom, whose first movement was to fall on his sisters for not having made him aware of such a preposterous scheme. They thought he knew. He knew that all the five quarters of the world had been talked of in a wild sort of a way; but how could he suppose that any man could be crazed enough to prefer to be an American citizen, when he might remain ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was surprised at the cool indifference and recklessness of the youth; he was angered that McKenzie should think him mean enough to take such a preposterous advantage. ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... after he had mastered his original amazement, that they named these preposterous terms merely because they expected to be beaten down, and he summoned all his good nature and tact for the task of haggling with them. He misunderstood their first show of impatience at this, and persevered ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... supply of immaculately perfect egret plumes that annually come out of Venezuela could by any possibility be picked up in the swamps where they were shed and dropped by the egrets, is entirely preposterous and incredible. The whole proportion is denounced by several men of standing and experience, none ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... preposterous. Experience and intelligence combined to assure me that there could be no slightest grain of truth or possibility in your wild tale—it was ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... extension of a primitive Hebrew mythology—and take him in the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers. Insisting upon his godship can only make him preposterous to the modern mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will save into everlasting life those who believe ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... law-books say again and again that a blasphemous libel is punished, not because it throws obloquy on the deity—the protection of whom would be absurd— but because it tends to a breach of the peace. It is preposterous to say such a thing tends to a breach of the peace. If you want that you must go to the Salvation Army. They have a perfect right to their ideas—I have nothing to say about them; but their policy has led to actual breaches of the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... the two greatest nations. If one or more British warships should be sunk, by some means that we do not at present know, and if the blame could be plausibly laid against Americans, there would be hot-tempered talk in England and a lot of indignant retort from our country. It would seem preposterous that any Englishman could suspect the American government of destroying British warships, and just as absurd to think that Americans could take such a charge seriously. Yet in the relations between nations the ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... you are going to pay me another visit—I do hope that is your important business. Your little room can be got ready in no time, and your guitar—I hope you've brought your guitar, my dear. It really is a fact, but I haven't had one scrap of entertainment since Frances went away—preposterous, ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... Prosper Profond was dangerous should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly filly; to a remark of Fleur's: "He's like the hosts of Midian—he prowls and prowls around"; to his preposterous inquiry of Jack Cardigan: "What's the use of keepin' fit?" or, more simply, to the fact that he was a foreigner, or alien as it was now called. Certain, that Annette was looking particularly handsome, and that Soames—had sold him a Gauguin and then torn ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that affection prompted this action. We had met so briefly, always with me in the role of hunted fugitive, that it was impossible to conceive that love was the motive power of control. The thought even was almost preposterous; much as I should have rejoiced to believe it true the very ridiculousness of it caused me to smile bitterly. Perhaps her action had some connection with her brother—her protection of me might also protect him. There was a thread of mystery running through everything in which Eric's name ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... Historical Register had neither the vogue nor the wit of its predecessor. It was only half as long, and it was even more disconnected in character. "Harmonious Cibber," as Swift calls him, whose "preposterous Odes" had already been ridiculed in Pasquin and the Author's Farce, was once more brought on the stage as Ground-Ivy, for his alterations of Shakespeare; and under the name of Pistol, Theophilus Cibber is made to refer to the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Messrs Reynaud, Espiau, Maudet, &c. Richefort, in the sweetest tone, replied, "My dear, we know our business; attend to yours, and be quiet. I have already twice passed the Arguin Bank; I have sailed upon the Red Sea, and you see I am not drowned." What reply could be made to such a preposterous speech? My father, seeing it was impossible to get our route changed, resolved to trust to Providence to free us from our danger, and descended to our cabin, where he sought to dissipate his fears in ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... you are right, Buttar," said Bouldon; "but, in truth, all my English spirit was roused within me at the preposterous notion of those few big fellows proposing all of a sudden to make slaves of the rest of the school. However, what is ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... consider it preposterous to appeal for an explanation to a mere boy. Nevertheless, when Rube stated his case the sheriff was constrained to agree with ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... known the existence of their secret temple libraries. So that by the word Yavanani, "to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, 'writing,' must he supplied," the writing of foreigners in general, whether Phoenician, Roman, or Greek, is always meant. As to the preposterous hypothesis of Prof. Max Muller that writing "was not used for literary purposes in India" before Panini's time (again upon Greek authority) that matter has ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... ashamed of his legislature. If he ever had any design in summoning so preposterous an assembly beyond amusing the populace and the army, he had intended to alarm the clergy and lawyers; and he had so far succeeded as to make them desire any other government, which might secure their professions, now brought in danger by these desperate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Tomes, but not strong enough to draw that conclusion from those premises, and make it stay drawn. The savage does order his life in the preposterous manner which you have described; but he does it because he is a savage. He has not the wants of the civilized man, and therefore he does not wait to supply them before he seeks to gratify others. When man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... puffed hose or short wadded multifold petticoats, the miniature reproductions of the paternal and maternal monstrosities of attire—there, of more noisy and clamorous artizans, in humbler and less preposterous dress—on the one side, of chattering serving-damsels, almost crushed under their high pyramidical black caps, worn in imitation of an ancient fashion of their betters—on the other, of grave counsellors and schreibers in their black costumes, interlarding their pompous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... again it seemed that the old earth had a stirring, electrifying impetus for his feet. Something black, bitter, melancholy, and morbid, always unreal to him, had passed away forever. The great moment had been forced upon him. He did not believe Roy Beeman's preposterous hint regarding Helen; but he had gone back or soared onward, as if by magic, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... no less than the moral frivolity common to their age; while a singular want of appreciation of history, as the record of the moral and social evolution of the human race, permitted them to resort to preposterous theories of imposture, in order to account for the religious phenomena which are natural products of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... made no remark. To his secret feeling there was something repulsive in a woman's second marriage, and no match would prevent him from feeling it a sort of desecration for Dorothea. He was aware that the world would regard such a sentiment as preposterous, especially in relation to a woman of one-and-twenty; the practice of "the world" being to treat of a young widow's second marriage as certain and probably near, and to smile with meaning if the widow acts accordingly. But if Dorothea did choose to espouse her solitude, he felt that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... so preposterous," she exclaimed almost angrily. "You must be out of your senses, Mr. Brown. Now, be so good as to obey me at once. Go into the house and get a thick overcoat, the thickest you have, and then come home with me, and I will give you ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the way she walked made me sad. The wharf had all the seeming of a ship's deck. It lifted, tilted, heaved and sank; and since there were no handrails on it, it kept Charmian and me busy avoiding falling in. I never saw such a preposterous little wharf. Whenever I watched it closely, it refused to roll; but as soon as I took my attention off from it, away it went, just like the Snark. Once, I caught it in the act, just as it upended, and I looked down the length of it for two hundred ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... general rule, the undulating curve in garden scenery is preferable to straight lines or abrupt turns or sharp angles, but if there should happen to be only a few yards between the outer gateway and the house, could anything be more fantastical or preposterous than an attempt to give the ground between them a serpentine irregularity? Even in the most spacious grounds the walks should not seem too studiously winding, as if the short turns were meant for no other purpose than to perplex or delay the walker.[118] ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... face was critical, but because it seemed non-conducting, upon which their best passages would break like spray against a rock. It was by nature the dullest you ever saw, with hair descending low upon the forehead, and preposterous whiskers dominating everything that remained, except a heavy mouth and brown, lack-lustre eyes. For a while Donald crouched in the corner of the pew, his head sunk on his breast, a very picture of utter hopelessness. But as the Evangel began to play round his heart, he would fix the preacher ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... these four persons. I was, just at that epoch, in one of those moody frames of mind which make a man abnormally inquisitive about trifles: and I confess, with shame, that I busied myself in a variety of ill- bred and preposterous conjectures about this matter of the supernumerary stateroom. It was no business of mine, to be sure, but with none the less pertinacity did I occupy myself in attempts to resolve the enigma. At last I reached a conclusion which wrought ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,—is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the end of the difference between the monstrous work and himself. When he has satisfied himself, in general and in detail, that it was made by ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... matter of fact we have benefited them by our occupation, the shops do a roaring trade at preposterous prices, and shamefully enough the German shopkeepers are most guilty. These pot-bellied merchants don't seem to realize that they exist ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the poor and the impersonal, uninviting majesty of the law. Let no man wonder that Lorimer's people do not prefer an efficiency expert, that a Tim Sullivan has power, or that men are loyal to Hinky Dink. The cry raised against these men by the average reformer is a piece of cold, unreal, preposterous idealism compared to the solid warm facts of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... attention; regarded what German professors expounded in their class-rooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what well-advanced intrigues, lay back of what the professors and the ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... her the woman who, if he were not mistaken, had slipped to Calendar that warning in the dining-room of the Pless. Kirkwood's state of mind had come to be such, through his experiences of the past few hours, that he would have accepted anything, however preposterous, as a commonplace happening. But for that matter there was nothing particularly ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... for thee. Come! leave this sullen state, and let not wine And precious wit lie dead for want of thine. Shall the dull market landlord, with his rout Of sneaking tenants, dirtily swill out This harmless liquor shall they knock and beat For sack, only to talk of rye and wheat? Oh, let not such preposterous tippling be; In our metropolis, may I ne'er see Such tavern sacrilege, nor lend a line To weep the rapes and tragedy of wine! Here lives that chemic quick-fire, which betrays Fresh spirits to the blood, and warms our lays; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... opened again. A pink-haired, red-faced man in a preposterous green belted suit lunged in, swept his broad felt hat in greeting, and boomed like a ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... fairness and moderation the English ambassadors at Paris lessened their demands more than once, and appeared willing for some time to renew negotiations after their terms had been rejected. But in the end they still insisted on a claim which in point of equity was altogether preposterous, and rejected a compromise which would have put Henry in possession of the whole of Guienne and given him the hand of the French King's daughter Catharine with a marriage portion of eight hundred thousand crowns. Meanwhile Henry was making active ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not only awakened, but awake as she has never been awake before, with all her virgin senses exquisitely alive, every nerve changed to intense vibration. Sometimes she is perniciously awake; she is doing appalling things, things unjustifiable, preposterous; things that would have meant perdition to any other writer; she sees with wild, erroneous eyes; but the point is that she sees, that she keeps moving, that from the first page to the last she is never once asleep. To come to Jane Eyre after The Professor is to pass ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... "it is because I found it near at hand and easy to destroy. But it is also because it haunts and exasperates me, because I have long since condemned it.... As I have often said to you, one cannot imagine anything more preposterous than Paris, our great Paris, crowned and dominated by this temple raised to the glorification of the absurd. Is it not outrageous that common sense should receive such a smack after so many centuries of science, that Rome should claim the right of triumphing ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... eleven for looking at Baby's tongue every other day when there was nothing really the matter with him at all! It's preposterous, Jack. There must be something wrong. You must see Dr. Thom at once about that account. Call to-morrow, dear, on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... forever; that he must be that party's chattel and wear its brass collar the rest of his days—would not that insult him? It goes without saying. He would say some rude, unprintable thing, and turn his back on that preposterous organization. But the political boss puts no conditions upon him at all; and this volunteer makes no promises, enlists for no stated term. He has in no sense become a part of an army; he is in no way restrained of his freedom. Yet he will presently find that his bosses and his newspapers have ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... her. But when the son, their pride, declared his intention of making May Everett his wife, it was met with a decided objection by both parents. Impossible! marry a Northern teacher; he, the son of Colonel Ashton—the heir of Ashton manor! preposterous! My mother then prepared to bid adieu to them and return to her home, never for a moment listening to the repeated petitions of her lover to marry him. She would not go into a family where she was not welcome. Her high-toned principles won for her additional love and respect. And when the hour ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... his feet. He could conceive but one explanation of this preposterous statement. Severino's sickness had extended to his brain. He was delirious. This was ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... the system of Pope (of which there is not a word in his works); of having quoted Plutarch, who is not a Christian author; of not having spoken of original sin and of grace. In a word, he pretended that the 'Spirit of Laws' was a production of the constitution Unigenitus; a preposterous idea. Those who understand M. de Montesquieu and Clement XI. may judge, by this accusation, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... obscure publisher, with little or no capital, then, as some one in Thucydides remarks, congratulating you on your simplicity, I do not envy your want of common sense. Be very careful to enter into a perfectly preposterous agreement. For example, accept "half profits," but forget to observe that before these are reckoned, it is distinctly stated in your "agreement" that the publisher is to pay himself some twenty per cent. on the price of each copy sold ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... meeting Alden again, then made a wry face at her own foolishness. "Ridiculous," she said to herself, "preposterous, absurd!" No matter what her own nightmares might be, he slept soundly—of course he did. How could healthy youth with a ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... heart, no! What put that into your head?" She advanced and took the chair which Miss Bunce had left, and resting her elbows on the table, regarded her sisters steadily. "What a preposterous age you both must be, to be sure! My ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but one God, there is but one true religious experience, but under a multitude of names, under veils and darknesses, God has in this manner come into countless lives. There is scarcely a faith, however mean and preposterous, that has not been a way to holiness. God who is himself finite, who himself struggles in his great effort from strength to strength, has no spite against error. Far beyond halfway he hastens to meet the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... say so, Sir?" cried Cecilia, "when it is utterly impossible you can have formed so preposterous an opinion. Pray hear me, however, finally, and pray ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... rightly, there have been found seven specimens of its lower jaws, and not a bit of anything else, neither limb-bones nor skull, or any part whatever; not a fragment of the whole system! Of course, it would be preposterous to imagine that the beasts had nothing else but a lower jaw! The probability is, as Dr. Buckland showed, as the result of his observations on dead dogs in the river Thames, that the lower jaw, not being secured by very ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... she had passed into the asylum, had died, and with her going, a new field of life seemed to open up to him. She had died almost on the same day as John Grier. She had been buried secludedly, piteously, and he had gone back to his office with the thought that life had become a preposterous freedom. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was unable to give his testimony without smiling. The natural result, therefore, at the first trial, was that the detective succeeded in giving the unqualified impression that he was drawing the long bow in a most preposterous fashion. ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... like action in it. "The Tower of Babel" has action in the restricted sense in which it enters into Mendelssohn's oratorios, and scenic effects which would tax the utmost powers of the modern stage-machinist who might attempt to carry them out. A mimic tower of Babel is more preposterous than a mimic temple of Dagon; yet, unless Rubinstein's stage directions are to be taken in a Pickwickian sense, we ought to listen to this music while looking at a stage-setting more colossal than any ever ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... been enacted that no member of the National Assembly should sit in the Legislative Assembly; a preposterous and mischievous regulation, to which the disasters which followed must in part be ascribed. In England, what would be thought of a Parliament which did not contain one single person who had ever sat in Parliament before? Yet it may safely be affirmed that the number of Englishmen ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... man would be so weak now as to imagine that by lands lying open to the road, to be assigned to the undertakers, I should mean that all Finchley Common should be enclosed and sold for this work; but, lest somebody should start such a preposterous objection, I think it is not improper to mention, that wherever a highway is to be carried over a large common, forest, or waste, without a hedge on either hand for a certain distance, there the several parishes shall allot the directors a certain quantity ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... said a beruffled gentleman in another part of the room to his next neighbor, "what a preposterous proposal that ragged fellow, Bill Goulding, made to Governor Wentworth last week? He is a good-for-nothing, and the whole scheme is thought to have been merely a plan to talk with the Governor, whom he has wanted to see for ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Mrs. Luna further inquired whether he could imagine Olive doing anything in a first-rate way, as long as there were inferior ones. "Of course she likes bad ships—Boston steamers—just as she likes common people, and red-haired hoydens, and preposterous doctrines." ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... nothing, in the various hypotheses brought forward, which did not to me involve a greater improbability than the presumption of guilt. Take that, for witness, that Byron accused himself, through a spirit of perverse vanity, of crimes he had not committed. How preposterous! He would stain the name of a sister, whom, on the supposition of his innocence, he loved with angelic ardor as well as purity, by associating it with such an infamous accusation. Suppose there are some anomalies hard to explain in Lady Byron's conduct. Could a young and guileless woman, in the hands ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... that such a public monument might offend Arab susceptibilities. This struck me as overdoing the "pacific penetration" policy; and he thought so too, more especially as there is a commemorative stone to some preposterous native bigot at ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Impertinent, preposterous abortion! With vacant stare, And ragged hair, And every feature out of all proportion! Embodiment of echoing inanity! Excellent type of simpering insanity! Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity! I ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... And yet, Cleone, there are times when I think he is perhaps a little wiser than he seems,—nothing is so baffling as simplicity, my dear! If you wished to be talked about, Barnabas, you have succeeded admirably,—no wonder all London is laughing over such a preposterous bet. Forty thousand pounds! Well, it will at least buy you notoriety, and that is next ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... holding out his arms to her. "Ellen," he said, "surely, Ellen, you are not against me. You see how preposterous it is, how unjust it is to ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... we are!' exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand. 'What a world of gammon and spinnage ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... all these years. I suppose there are few friendships which can stand the test of correspondence. Still it is inexplicable, it is not like Lorimer. He could not have harboured a grudge against me—for what? A boyish infatuation for a woman who adored him, and whom he adored. The idea is preposterous, they must have laughed over my folly often, of winter evenings by their fireside. For they married, they must have married, they were made for each other and they knew it. Was their marriage happy I wonder? Was it as successful as ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... "transmission" or "inheritance"; it is not an object, but a method. It must mean the conveying of certain facts, views or qualities, to the last baby born. They might be the most trivial facts or the most preposterous views or the most offensive qualities; but if they are handed on from one generation to another they are education. Education is not a thing like theology, it is not an inferior or superior thing; it is not a thing in the same category of terms. Theology and education are to each other like a love-letter ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Rajah had only to appear and tell them to march back to prison, and they did so to a man, and took their punishment. The government, it will be seen, is not by votes. Still there are votes for local councils, and women have them equally with men. Any other arrangement would have seemed merely preposterous to the Nairs; and perhaps if any exclusion had been contemplated it would have been of men rather ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... went about the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I know it. It is not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state of mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful experience; that it is as well established and as common a state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted; ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... to Flora fairly preposterous that Harry could sit there looking so matter-of-fact with such experiences behind him. Even Clara looked a little taken aback, but the effect was only to set her more ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... somewhat worsted. I went to church by myself that evening, and I am ashamed to say I heard very little of the sermon. I knew Aunt Agatha would be taking advantage of my long absence to retail what she termed my preposterous scheme to Uncle Keith, and that I should have the benefit of his opinion on my return, and this thought ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... word, I have been blind as a bat. How far has the thing gone? Has Mabel encouraged it? Does she know? What hand can James have had in bringing this state of things about? These two children—why, the thing is preposterous!" ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... strong impressions, but I was very soon perfectly sure that these two young people were in love with each other and that they both knew it, but that they had given each other up. I was sure, too, that they were both under Hector's spell, and preposterous as it may seem, that they were under his will, and that Hector's plans ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Let us stick to the middle course—for our language is essentially half way between the German and the French, the Teutonic and Romance tongues, and any attempt to approximate too much to either extreme is simply preposterous. ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... resolution, mild in comparison with such excesses, is greatly lacking in that sobriety and accuracy which it is so necessary for all of us to cultivate in these days of bitterly inflamed passions. It really is preposterous to talk, among other things, about 'the extermination of a white nationality,' or to give any sort of countenance to the now fully exploded calumny about the ill-treatment of women and children. The war, gentlemen, has its horrors—every war has. Those horrors increase as it becomes more ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... gained in health and strength. The care-free, wholesome, out-of-door life at Mayberry seemed to suit her. She seemed to consider herself a member of the family now; at all events she did not speak of leaving nor hint at the prompt settlement of her preposterous "claim." Hephzy and I did not mention it, even to each other. Hephzy, I think, was quite satisfied with things as they were, and I, in spite of my threats and repeated declarations that the present state of affairs was ridiculous and could not last, put off ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... responded Foster quickly. "It was preposterous of him to ask it of you. I can't understand it in Tisdale. He was always so broad, so fine, so head and shoulders above other men, so, well, chivalrous to women. But, meantime, while he hesitated, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... thing after breakfast on Monday morning, she should bring him her account-book, that they might together go over her week's expenses. She must cultivate the business habits in which, he said, he found her more than deficient. How could he endure in a wife what would have been preposterous in a clerk, and would have led to his immediate dismissal? It was in his eyes necessary that the same strict record of receipt and expenditure should be kept in the household as in the office; how else was one to know in what direction things were ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... you? But as it certainly requires more labour to plead a whole cause, than only a part of it, and as many advantageous connections are formed by assisting in a suit in which several persons are interested, the custom, however preposterous in itself, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... unconsciously enlightened, by the mere multiplication and dissemination of volumes. Whether it be the school boy, or the school girl, or the youth at college, or the mechanic in the town, or the politician in the senate, all have been the victims in one way or other of this most preposterous and pernicious of delusions. Wise men have lifted up their voices in vain; and at length, lest their own institutions should be outshone and should disappear in the folly of the hour, they have been ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... to us from it. He who should call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter, would, in my opinion, do him very little honour; for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature, of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of men on canvas. It hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures seem to breathe; but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause, that ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... treachery was specially perilous. All that the young man could do was to seek counsel with Cuthbert Ridley, and even this he was obliged to do in the stable, bidding Dick keep watch outside. Ridley too had heard a spiteful whisper or two, but it had seemed too preposterous for him to attend to it. "You are young, Hardcastle," he said, with a smile, "or you would know that there is nothing a grumbler will not say, nor how far men's tongues ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... This preposterous suggestion made him nervous. "Gracious alive, don't make an invalid of me," he replied. "I am all right, but an over-concern about my health will make me sick. Did you ever notice that when the newspapers begin to discuss a man's health he dies pretty soon? It's a fact. One ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... seemed incredible that there lived upon earth a full-grown man who had never spoken with a fellow man, and still more preposterous that such a one could read ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... signet—Oh! you mean that with the three monstrous legs, which I supposed was devised as the most preposterous device, to represent our most absurd Majesty of Man.—The signet—I have not seen it since I gave it to Gibbon, my monkey, to play with.—He did whine for it most piteously—I hope he has not gemmed the green breast of ocean with my ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... charms of a young man whose initials seem to have been J. U. or J. V., and of whom nothing else seems known. These sonnets, which preceded even the Amoretti of Spenser, are of unusual merit as poetry, and would rank as high in quality as in date of publication if their subject-matter were not so preposterous. They show the influence of Drayton's Idea, which had appeared a few months before; in that collection also, it is to be observed, there had appeared amatory sonnets addressed to a young man. If editors would ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... unrelieved diet of bannock and beans," said Stonor, with a carelessness so apparent, they ought to have been warned; but of course they never dreamed of anything so preposterous as ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... Parliament to-day will be occupied with the preposterous Budget proposals, but we hope our legislators will find time to press the PRIME MINISTER for an explanation of the outrageous incident at Bobadig reported in our columns last week. There is only too good reason to fear that the policy of alternate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... pressing duties to perform, and withdrew, first cordially shaking hands. The French were convinced that when William the Elector fled, he had taken with him his money. That he should have entrusted it to another, and especially a Jew, seemed preposterous. Yet such was the case. William had fled, disguised as a civil engineer, carrying with him in his chaise an outfit of surveying-instruments. All of his money had been turned over to Mayer Anselm Rothschild. The many biographers place the sum anywhere from one to fifty million ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... know. I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in the front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb lock to the door. Large sitting room on the right side, well furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those preposterous English window fasteners which a child could open. Behind there was nothing remarkable, save that the passage window could be reached from the top of the coach-house. I walked round it and examined it closely from every point of view, but without noting ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... you, dear John, why should we not have laughed over such a preposterous communication? The idea, we could not but grant, was well conceived, but it was too grotesque to be taken seriously. Mr. Hale said he would preserve it as a literary curiosity, and shoved it away in a pigeonhole. Then we promptly forgot its existence. ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... believe it!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to say that you people are to be held up there for weeks? It's preposterous! It's criminal!" ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... photographs. It was his own handwriting that met his eye, and Mrs. Marteen had not exaggerated when she had designated the letters as a "series of the first importance." With the shock of recognition came doubt of his own senses. Mrs. Martin Marteen blackmailing him? Preposterous! His eyes sought the lady's face. She was ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Castelmare had conceived, or was likely to conceive, any project of marrying her, Paolina Foscarelli, had suggested itself, or had been suggested, to her at any time during those eight months,—would at once have replied to her own heart or to any other person, that such an idea was utterly preposterous ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... stayed a preposterous time that day, and when at last he went, even Beth's kindly forbearance was exhausted, and she determined to see no more of him. He was not the man to take a hint, however, and it was no easy matter to get rid of him. He sent her flowers, for which she did not thank him, books which she did not ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... this, that we could inform them before-hand, by means of a perpetual almanack, that an eclipse of the sun or moon would take place on the very day when it happened. Their notion of the cause of an eclipse is the most preposterous and ridiculous, that ever entered into the head, even of an heathen. They say, that the devil is come to devour the sun or moon, and falls to work to gnaw off the edge; that therefore it is necessary he should be driven away; ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... by some mysterious likeness,"—Tom began eagerly, smiling at her. And stopped short, open-mouthed, assailed by so apparently preposterous a recognition that for the minute it left ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... moments—the terror of burglars, requires unthinkable flights of imagination. As I gazed at this singular resurrection of Moore and Burgess and breathless childhood's afternoons at the St. James's Hall—the half circle of inanely alert faces the colour of fresh polished boots—the preposterous uniforms and expansive shirt-fronts—the "nigger" dialect which this strange convention demands but which cannot be said to resemble the speech of any African tribe yet discovered—I found that by no effort of faith or credulity could I pierce ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... wretched imitations of some of the Persian and Arabian tales, in which everything was distorted, and rendered absurd and preposterous.] ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... standing fixture may become. Theoretic truth, truth of passive copying, sought in the sole interests of copying as such, not because copying is GOOD FOR SOMETHING, but because copying ought schlechthin to be, seems, if you look at it coldly, to be an almost preposterous ideal. Why should the universe, existing in itself, also exist in copies? How CAN it be copied in the solidity of its objective fulness? And even if it could, what would the motive be? 'Even the hairs of your head are numbered.' Doubtless they are, virtually; but why, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... said it was very imprudent. "What! admit as a visitor in her family a person whom she had never seen in her life before, and who, for anything she knew, might be a swindler or a Jew! There was never anything so preposterous—a woman, too, of Mrs. Sommers's judgment and propriety! It was very—very strange." But whether it was very strange or not, the fact is that the stranger soon spent most of his time at Violet Cottage; and what is perhaps no less wonderful, notwithstanding his apparent intimacy, he ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... doing he might learn something regarding Skip seem preposterous, and he hardly gave it a thought after Joe made the suggestion, therefore he was startled by ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... may not rashly and in the heat of discourse engage themselves too soon, which might bias them so much that, instead of consulting the good of the public, they might rather study to support their first opinions, and by a perverse and preposterous sort of shame hazard their country rather than endanger their own reputation, or venture the being suspected to have wanted foresight in the expedients that they at first proposed; and therefore, to prevent this, they take care that ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... not so preposterous, if they had not gone farther; but they neither did, nor proposed any thing, but what had mischief in the design, or the event. One morning, these three fellows came down to the limited station, and humbly desired ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... the priests of Canada; for thus far the news papers have been almost entirely closed against every thing in her defence, while most of them have published false charges against the book, some of a preposterous nature, the contradiction of which is plain ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... of any other man in Paraguay the idea would have appeared preposterous. If Francia resembled the frying-pan, the Chaco to a Paraguayan seemed the fire itself. A citizen of Assuncion would no more dare to set foot on the further side of that stream which swept the very walls of his town, than would ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... whether these spaces may not have subsided. But considering the form of the irregularly branching valleys, and of the narrow promontories projecting into them from the platforms, we are compelled to abandon this notion. To attribute these hollows to the present alluvial action would be preposterous; nor does the drainage from the summit-level always fall, as I remarked near the Weatherboard, into the head of these valleys, but into one side of their bay-like recesses. Some of the inhabitants remarked to me that they ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... used to. Take a man who has never had so much as a headache or a toothache in his life, strap one of his legs in a section of water-spout, keep him in a room in the city for weeks, with the hot weather turned on, and then expect him to smile and purr and be happy! It is preposterous. I can't be ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... London and North Western Railway Company. The share-certificates were in his safe; he could hold them in his hand; he could sell them and buy Wilbraham Hall with the proceeds. That is to say, he could exchange them for Helen. Now, it would be preposterous to argue that he would not derive more satisfaction from Helen than from those ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... will do—and a pretext can always be found. Already Germany is preparing her pretext: she has demanded equal rights with France in Morocco—a preposterous demand, and one which France can never grant. What cares Germany about Morocco? Nothing! But the pretext must be ready. And now, Lepine," he added, pushing back the papers, and speaking in another tone, "I will tell you why I have come to you: I should prefer to work alone; but, in the first place, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... of ever being able to obtain a hearing. It may well be doubted whether Congress, from the nature of its organization, is properly constituted to decide upon such cases. It is impossible that each member should examine the merits of every claim on which he is compelled to vote, and it is preposterous to ask a judge to decide a case which he has never heard. Such decisions may, and frequently must, do injustice either to the claimant or the Government, and I perceive no better remedy for this growing evil than the establishment ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... down his own with the view of erecting it anew, and that people are even sometimes constrained to this when their houses are in danger of falling from age, or when the foundations are insecure. With this before me by way of example, I was persuaded that it would indeed be preposterous for a private individual to think of reforming a state by fundamentally changing it throughout, and overturning it in order to set it up amended; and the same I thought was true of any similar project for reforming the body ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... latter published his Vision of Judgment—the most quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned—he prefixed to it a long explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes Don Juan as a "monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety," regrets that it has not been brought ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... see him, and his childlike dependence on me was quite pathetic. His general attitude was, "You see I'm such a damned fool." And so he is. But when I compare him with the Balzacian hauteur and the preposterous posing of many of our Fleet Street decadent geniuses, I feel a movement of the blood which declares that perhaps there are worse things than War. (Between ourselves, I have a sneaking sympathy with fighting: I fought horribly at school. It is well ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... unworthy of her, but, as she led this wonderful, winsome creature, whom she knew to be accustomed only to the softnesses of life, up over the worn stair carpeting to the room she had prepared for her, she was wondering how she herself had ever conceived the preposterous idea of inviting her cousin to visit her; the task of making this daughter of luxury comfortable, even for a ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... when my design was made public by the Press, these and others at once applied to me. "To issue a thousand still more objectionable copies by another and not a better hand" (notice the quip cursive!) may "seem preposterous" (p. 180), but only to a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... person on whom he was bound to take revenge. Accordingly, the unfortunate creature actually sent a challenge to Lord Sidmouth, inviting and defying him to mortal combat. Perhaps Lord Sidmouth would have acted wisely if he had taken no notice whatever of this preposterous challenge, but, at the same time, it is only fair to remember that Lord Sidmouth might think it dangerous to the public peace to allow a person to go unrebuked who had sent a challenge to a Minister of the Crown. Criminal proceedings ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. . . . I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep—kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing. Returning home from exciting political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe I have ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... exults in it in secret. It is a fund, a store against lean years or wry ones. You can see it throned sedately in her eyes, when she is with him, however much she may feel his absurdity or presumption. So it was with Sanchia. She was fully conscious of Struan's preposterous state, strictly the elder sister, never the patroness, for were they not bond- slaves both? She patronised nobody at Wanless, yet, with a steady eye for distances, kept a perfect length, varying with each oncomer. With Mr. Menzies, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... about, loved even, goes without saying. After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her: and she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... not advocate any thing so preposterous as the change of the whole animate power of Great Britain into inanimate, though in this the political economist can see the solution of all our Malthusian difficulties to an indefinite extent and duration. What we urge is merely the partial adoption of the thing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... of relieving the guard. This nobody believed. The idea of taking such a body of men a league or more into the country at midnight for the purpose of relieving the guard of a country palace was preposterous. ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... were worth her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a youth in your unassured position, to say no worse. She is old enough to know that a liaison with her may, and almost certainly would, be your ruin; and, on the other hand, that a marriage would be preposterous,—unless she is a complete goose, and in that case there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were in her ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... preposterous! I've known him ever since I was a little girl, and would no more think of marriage with him than of ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... over—um. But I am premature. My hour is not yet struck. (He puts the revolver down.) But I shall write nothing. The world will have to understand all by itself. (FEDYA continues to write.) The world, what is it but a mass of preposterous creatures, who crawl around through life, understanding nothing—nothing at all —do you hear me? (FEDYA looks up, rather exasperated.) Oh, I'm not talking to you. All this is between me and the cosmos. (Pours ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... realized that he was in peril of losing his head over this tantalizingly pretty girl who gracefully kept him at a distance, fencing with an adroitness which was baffling, and Sir Lucien Pyne had set out with no intention of doing anything so preposterous as falling in love. Keenly intuitive, Rita scented danger and made a bold move. Carelessly rolling a bread-crumb along ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... much playing for position. A favored fellow, whose election is certain, is courted by others who stand on a slippery edge, because it is known that in Senior elections one is rated by his association. And is it not preposterous that fifteen youngsters should set themselves above the crowd, wear obscure jewelry and wrap themselves in an empty and ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... do an act that would bring disgrace not only upon themselves but their relatives, wives, children, and forever debar them from society for a paltry few dollars that they could bilk a railroad company out of? The idea is preposterous, and ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Balzac in his Critics on Heinsius his Baptista, are frighted, as at some Magical Charm, if they find but one Word there which was made use of by the old Heathens; which, says he, (unluckily as things have since happened) is as preposterous as to see Turks wear Hats, and Frenchmen Turbants; the Flower-de-lis in the Musselmens Colours, or the Half-Moon on the Standard of France. He's, however, it must be granted, justly angry with Tasso, as Mr. Dryden since, ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... Perkins, "a charlatan believer in mesmeric influence," plied his trade in early Manhattan. He seems to have belonged to that vast army of persons who seriously believe their own teachings even when they know them to be preposterous. Perkins made a specialty of yellow fever, and insisted that he could cure it by hypnotism. That he had a following is in no way strange, considering his day and generation, but the striking point about this is that, when he was exposed to the horror ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... bed—side, on which it pleased him to place my brace of Mantons, loaded with slug, and my naked small sword, so that, thought I, if the thief ventures back, he shall not slip through my fingers again so easily. I do confess that these imposing preparations did appear to me somewhat preposterous, even at the time, as it was not, to say the least of it, very probable that my slippery gentleman would return the same night. However, my servant in his zeal was not to be denied, and I was not so fit to judge as usual, from ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... A preposterous and affected statue to our left, with the immortal name of Shakespeare below it, has distracted the eyes of our friends, and comments are freely made when we tell them how nearly the bones of the sweet Swan of Avon were brought from Stratford to this burial-place ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... come into your head," Olivia went on. "Do you know, Papa, that day when I was helping Mrs. O'Trannon with her preposterous packing and suddenly came upon this miracle hidden away under an old bedquilt, the only thing I could think of was the way my first pentstemons came out, 'white with purple spots,' exactly as I had chosen them by the seed-catalogue. And to think that she had bought it for ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... Val drew up. "It's preposterous, but I'm under Bernard's express orders to drive Isabel straight home. I don't know how to apologize for turning you and Hyde out of your own car, Laura!" No apology was needed, Laura and Lawrence knew too well how direct Bernard's orders ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... by this trivial attention, and she knew it. It was an absurdly insignificant incident, and yet here she was recalling it with something like a thrill. Not only that, but she recalled another and equally preposterous detail of the day. She had dropped her vanity-box in the car, and as they both stooped for it his cheek had brushed hers. He laughed lightly and apologized—forgetting it the next second. Eight hours later she dared remember it, like any schoolgirl. Small wonder that she glanced about to ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... carrying on his head a raft-like platform laden with plaster-of-Paris images. They were dark-complexioned little fellows, not more than twelve or thirteen years old; and were having difficulty to keep their feet and stagger along with their preposterous burdens. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... that something must happen. At any rate, the silence of the man must be broken. And so I gathered together my courage, and with a preposterous attempt at a ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... resemblance. There is no syntax between a cap of maintenance and a helmet. Who ever knew an enemy routed by a grand jury and a Billa vera? It is a left-handed garrison where their authority perches; but the more preposterous the more in fashion, the right hand fights while the left rules the reins. The truth is, the soldier and the gentleman are like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, one fights at all adventures to purchase the other the government of the island. A committee-man properly ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various |
