"Ridiculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I only hope that she will carry her indignation against great people so far as not to court them as she has done, and abandon all her ridiculous ideas of making a match for me. After all, she has my welfare sincerely at heart, and, although mistaken in the means of securing it, I cannot but feel that she is actuated solely by ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... great Irishman. I am not so disappointed or broken-hearted as you might suppose. For the prospect of an Irish Parliament under present auspices is not very enticing. The country might be made to look ridiculous, and the thing, by bursting up in some absurd way, might make a repetition of the attempt impossible for a century. I would rather wait for a better bill, and also for better men to work it. We are not proud of the Irish members. But we didn't want Tories, and all the propertied men ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... School-master. "And only shows how in weak hands so beautiful a thing as the sonnet can be made ridiculous." ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... woman could even look with favor upon the man who to her has been and is a sneaking coward, as well as a hypocrite in conduct toward the women of his own race. To us he abuses the Negro women, makes her the subject of ridiculous cartoons, shows her up before the world as a beast with his lips wet with kisses from her mouth, and she suckles at her breast the child of his begetting." "We can't afford to be too plain on that subject, Marjorie," interrupted Mrs. Bruce. "Southern women, not ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... However ridiculous such methods may appear, their success in Great Britain was great.* In three years after the arrival of the first missionaries, the General Conference reported a membership of 4019 in England alone; in 1850 the General Conference reported that the Mormons in England and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the old man, "very like old Peter, my steward; as like as two peas." The parallel was by no means as ridiculous as might be supposed; its ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... beauty of temperance? That is dreary work for a pretty young girl. No," Felix continued; "Clifford ought to frequent some agreeable woman, who, without ever mentioning such unsavory subjects, would give him a sense of its being very ridiculous to be fuddled. If he could fall in love with her a little, so much the better. The thing would ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... laughed in spite of himself, for he called to mind the hired herdsmen who told the owner of the flock that he had no right to do what he liked with it. Besides the ridiculous aspect there was in the case a point which was terrible. The treasury contained perhaps a thousand talents which, according to the recent rate of outlay would last from seven to ten days. And then what? How would the officials, the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... horrible woman" for a housekeeper; they knew, however, that expostulation with one possessed by such a headstrong sense of duty was utterly useless, and contented themselves with predicting to each other some terrible check, the result of his ridiculous theory concerning what was required of a Christian—namely, that the disciple should be as his Master. At the same time Mrs. Sclater had a sacred suspicion that no real ill would ever befall God's ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... that this excessive love of the soft, and horror at the rude, materially weakened his genius. The true theory of versification lies in variety, and in accommodation to the necessities and fluctuations of the thought. The "Paradise Lost," written in Waller's rhyme, would have been as ridiculous as Waller's love to Saccharissa expressed in Milton's blank verse. The school before Waller were too rugged, but surely there is a medium between the roughness of Donne, and the honied monotony of the author of the "Summer Islands." The practice ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... took him, and made him sit first of all, and desired such as pleased to speak their minds about the affairs now before them. Now Antipater, Salome's son, a very subtle orator, and a bitter enemy to Archelaus, spake first to this purpose: That it was ridiculous in Archelaus to plead now to have the kingdom given him, since he had, in reality, taken already the power over it to himself, before Caesar had granted it to him; and appealed to those bold actions of his, in destroying so many at the Jewish festival; and if ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... yourself also these errors that he has committed and say that you yourselves are responsible for all that has happened, because you assigned to him the management and investigation of the matters in question? It is ridiculous. If some general or envoy that had been chosen should fail in every way to do his duty, you who sent him would not incur the blame for this. It would be a sorry state of things, if all who are elected to perform some work should themselves receive the advantages and the honors, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... you not tell me what my daughter said? Isn't it ridiculous that I cannot get that out of you! Now, briefly and ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... should only look ridiculous if I stayed questioning the man any longer, I pressed a tip into his hand and went slowly back to my own hotel to try and think it all out. But though I devoted some hours to it, I could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion. The one vital point remained and was not to be disputed—they were ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... have made a ridiculous appearance," she replied, "but as Duke seems to have forgiven you, I suppose I must, and I think I had better explain such undignified conduct on my part. Auntie has just told me that she is going to give a grand reception ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... from the wild abandonment of revelry to absorbing devotion and back again to the revels. Without seeing it, I could not have imagined it. I have before witnessed and, at times, been impressed with this solemn call to the evening prayer, misdirected though it be. But here the effect is utterly ridiculous, to ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... indignation against the workers fill one's soul at the spectacle of the ridiculous strike methods so often employed and that as often frustrate the possible success of every large labor war. Or is it not laughable, if it were not so deadly serious, that the producers publicly discuss for months in advance where and when they might strike, and therewith ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... that I can't keep away from this house more than a few days at a time. Of course you have known it; I haven't tried to disguise why I came here so often. It's so seldom that I see you alone; and now that fortune is kind to me I must speak as best I can. I won't make myself ridiculous in your eyes—if I can help it. You despise the love-making of ballrooms and garden parties; so do I, most heartily. Let me speak like a man who has few illusions to overcome. I want you for the companion of my life; I don't see very well how I am to do without you. You know, I think, that I ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... of the main gate. Furthermore it seemed hardly possible that in so scant a space of time human hands could have worked that heavy beam out of its sockets. And if the hands had been human (of course any other hypothesis were ridiculous) what had ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... should show an organization of some twenty regiments only, of which scarce a dozen had been in active service. "If a volunteer organization is fit to decide the great wars of the nation, is it not ridiculous to keep an expensive organization of regulars for the petty contests with Indians or for an ornamental appendage to the State in peace?" The thing to be aimed at seemed to me to be to have a system flexible enough to provide for the increase of the army to any size required, without losing any ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... against local tyrants, and waged in the only way possible to the belligerents who fought for home and family. Mr. Trench always paints the people who sympathise with their champions as naturally wild, lawless, and savage. If he happens to be in good humour with them, he makes them ridiculous. His son, Mr. Townsend Trench, who did the illustrations for the work, pictures the peasantry as gorillas, always flourishing shillelaghs, and grinning horribly. With rare exceptions, they appear as an inferior race, while the ruling class, and the Trenches ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... get away from people who don't understand you, and whom, incidentally, you don't understand. Secondly, try to see how ridiculous you and everybody else always are; and, thirdly, which is much the most important, don't think about yourself. If I thought about myself I should consider how old and fat and ugly I am. I'm not ugly, really; you needn't be foolish and tell me so. I should spoil my life by trying to be young, and ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... with the governor of the Bastile, M. de Baisemeaux, a fact that Baisemeaux unwittingly reveals to D'Artagnan while inquiring of him as to Aramis's whereabouts. This further arouses the suspicions of the musketeer, who was made to look ridiculous by Aramis. He had ridden overnight at an insane pace, but arrived a few minutes after Fouquet had already presented Belle-Isle to the king. Aramis learns from the governor the location of a mysterious prisoner, who bears ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... book is perhaps the weakest. It is scarcely the climax, but an anticlimax. The end of Frankenstein is well conceived, but that of the Demon fails. It is ridiculous to conceive anyone, demon or human, having ended his vengeance, fleeing over the ice to burn himself on a funeral pyre where no fuel could be found. Surely the tortures of the lowest pit of Dante's Inferno might have sufficed for the occasion. The ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... said Mary, "it would be ridiculous in the extreme to advocate all the opinions and tenets advanced by those same Fathers. St. Augustine doubted the existence of the antipodes; Tertullian emphatically pronounced second marriages adultery; Origen denied the sin of David in causing the death of Uriah, and has often ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... the Museum,—said the landlady.—There is them that's glad enough to go to the Museum, when tickets is given 'em; but some of 'em ha'n't had a ticket sence Cenderilla was played,—and now he must be offerin' 'em to this ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is, that's come to make more mischief than her board's worth. But it a'n't her fault,—said the landlady, relenting;—and that aunt of hers, or whatever she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... that unspeakable and everlasting beauty, to be seen by the eyes of the mind, only cleared by faith? But truly, now, having named him, I fear I seem to profane that holy name, applying it to poetry, which is, among us, thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation. But they that, with quiet judgments, will look a little deeper into it, shall find the end and working of it such, as, being rightly applied, deserveth not to be scourged out of the church ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... forlorn and altogether ridiculous situation. With needle and thread it would have been an easy matter to manufacture a pair of buckskin pantaloons such as I had worn in years gone by and would have welcomed in my present predicament. ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... for two reasons. First, because, since those species are immaterial and immovable, knowledge of movement and matter would be excluded from science (which knowledge is proper to natural science), and likewise all demonstration through moving and material causes. Secondly, because it seems ridiculous, when we seek for knowledge of things which are to us manifest, to introduce other beings, which cannot be the substance of those others, since they differ from them essentially: so that granted that we have ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Westminster? We who write, if we want the talent, yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right, where he said, "That no man is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented, because the poets will ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture to get into the bed. However, time was flying; and I ended by coming to the conclusion that I was ridiculous. If they were spying on me, as I supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they had been preparing for me, have been laughing enormously at my terror. So I made up my mind to go ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... or modern story, Charles?" asked Ernest; "I have no fancy for modern ghost stories. They all end in so ridiculous a way that one feels vexed at having taken the trouble of ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... his nature was both his virtue and his weakness. Men who do nothing and say nothing are never ridiculous. Those who hope much, believe much, and love ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the Colonel of the 21st Regiment had proved to be an ignorant and bombastic adventurer, who had appeared before his troops clothed in a ridiculous costume and armed like a pirate king, and there was such dissatisfaction among both the officers and men that a new commander was urgently demanded. Of this Grant already knew something, but he was not advised ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... authority, and quote the now famous book of Jean Grave, "La Societe mourante et l'Anarchie," which was recently condemned by French judges, who thought it dangerous, while it is only supremely ridiculous. ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work, nothing outre can be allowed; but those ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... my memory, of desperate, agonizing days in Glasgow, when Suffrage was unpopular and the funds in our exchequer were very low. How well I remember writing to Dr. Inglis at the ridiculous hour of two in the morning, that we must get some money, and that I should get certain introductions and do a lecturing tour in New York and try to make Suffrage 'fashionable.' The answer came by return of post, and was deliciously typical. 'My dear, your idea is so absolutely mad that ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had taken a great vow that he did not think in ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... resemblance to that of Fanny the Phantom. The defendant urged the impossibility of the original discovery of the treasure by the spirit to the prosecutor; but the defence was repelled by the influence of the principal judge, and on a charge so ridiculous, Auguier narrowly escaped the torture. At length, though with hesitation, the prosecutor was nonsuited, upon the ground, that if his own story was true, the treasure, by the ancient laws of France, belonged to the Crown. So that the ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott
... "It seems ridiculous," stated the commander of the Kennebunk. "And yet we must not refuse to believe that the secret agents of Germany are at work in the most impossible places. If they could sink this great, new vessel in mid-ocean! Mr. Smith," to his first lieutenant, ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... Irish village— pigs, fowls, and children equally noisy and filthy, and the parents wild, ignorant, and impulsive—may have some notion of this kind of thing. You never get a true account, much less a true illustration of the real thing. Did you happen to see a ridiculous engraving on one of the S. P. Gr. sheets some years ago, supposed to be me taking two Ambrym boys to the boat? (Footnote: No such engraving can be found by the S. P. Gr. It was probably put forth in some other ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... can be more ridiculous, than, in our modern Writers, to make a debauch'd young Man, immers'd in all the Vices of his Age and Time, in a few hours take up, confine himself in the way of Honour to one Woman, and moralize in good earnest on the Follies of his past Behaviour? Nor can, that great ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... an egoist. He thought only of himself. That is not a foible peculiar to ostriches, but this particular fowl—and he was very particular—was notable for it. "Where do I come in?" was a question written all over him—from his ridiculous and inadequate head, down his long neck, on his plump fluffy body, and so to his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... responsible for this ridiculous husband? And who would bear a mocked and degraded name? I, perhaps?" said Adrienne, with animation. "No, no, my dear count, good or ill, I will answer for my own actions; to my name shall attach the reputation, which I alone have formed. I am as incapable of basely dishonoring ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Devonshire. Lodwick, who is a close friend of Leander, has been previously known to Sir Credulous, and resolving to trick and befool the coxcomb warmly welcomes him on his arrival in town. He persuades him, in fine, to give a ridiculous serenade, or, rather, a hideous hubbub, of noisy instruments under his mistress' window. A little before this Lady Knowell with a party of friends has visited Sir Patient, who is her next neighbour, and the loud laughter, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... clattering along as fast as his huge boots would permit him, and resembling nothing so much as a flying scarecrow; while the thin emaciated form of Nanty Ewart, with the hue of death on his cheek, and the fire of vengeance glancing from his eye, formed a ghastly contrast with the ridiculous object of his pursuit. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... more. I am old, and you are old, but we may live for each other just the same; as to marrying—no; don't let us appear ridiculous at ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of." Leicester, as maybe supposed, had been much discomfited and perplexed during the course of these contradictory and perverse directions. There is no doubt whatever that his position bad been made discreditable and almost ridiculous, while he was really doing his best, and spending large sums out of his private fortune to advance the true interests of the Queen. He had become a suspected man in the Netherlands, having been, in the beginning of the year, almost ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as eclectic as in pictures. Liszt, whom he thought ridiculous as a man, he considered superb as a musician —the Paganini of the piano, yet inferior to Chopin, since he had not the genius of composition. And, in singing, Rubini was his idol —Rubini who triumphed in the role of Othello, giving ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... had been a notorious opium-eater for years past; and, if the only way of getting at the valuable papers he possessed was by accepting a matter of opium as a matter of fact, my father was quite willing to take the ridiculous responsibility imposed on him—all the more readily that it involved no trouble to himself. The Diamond and the sealed instructions went into his banker's strong-room, and the Colonel's letters, periodically ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... with the leaders of the party. Notwithstanding these advantages he interpolated so much of his own speculations, conclusions, and dissertations, as to render his voluminous work not only extremely unreliable but often extremely ridiculous. Travellers to the South Seas record that the accounts of things and places described as seen by Cook are remarkably correct, but that the inferences drawn are wrong. They do not realise that the statements ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... walked along, the latter began to wonder whether a new experiment had been made lately in the way of paving the streets with india-rubber. As for May, she returned such ridiculous answers to the simplest questions, that Phil became almost anxious about her, and finally settled it in his own mind that her labours in the telegraph department of the General Post-Office must be brought to a close ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... Kievets-hoeck(2) was also purchased at the same time by one Hans den Sluys,(3) an officer of the company. On this cape the States' arms had been affixed to a tree in token of possession; but the English who now possess the Fresh River have torn them down and carved a ridiculous face in their place. Whether this was done by authority or not, cannot be positively asserted; it is however supposed that it was. It has been so charged upon them in several letters, and no denial ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... play a little. It is obvious, however, that such wings would require to be mounted only in calm weather, for a breeze of wind would infallibly sweep the flyer off the face of the earth! We would only observe, in conclusion, that, however ridiculous this method of flying may appear in your eyes, this at least may be said in its favour, that whereas all other plans that have been tried have signally failed, this plan has never failed—never having been tried! We throw the idea before ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... seemed to be struggling in Katharine; one the desire to laugh at the ridiculous spectacle of William making her a formal speech across the tea-table, the other a desire to weep at the sight of something childlike and honest in him which touched her inexpressibly. To every one's surprise she rose, stretched ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... this is right, unless you enable it to perceive the error of the one and the truth of the other. It is not only due to the child as a rational being that you should act so, but it is essentially necessary to the development of its intellectual faculties. It were not more ridiculous for a master, in teaching arithmetic, to give his pupil the problem and answer, without instructing him in the method of working the question, than it is for a person to give a child results of reasoning, without showing how the truth is arrived at. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... This ridiculous ostentation, though now practised with a view of promoting his design, was a weakness that, in some degree, infected the whole of his behaviour; for nothing gave him so much joy in conversation, as an opportunity ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... situation and take the average condition. Similarly in attempting to remedy a local or special evil, we must avoid the injustice of unduly sacrificing the general welfare. By extreme measures planned to accomplish what may be good in the abstract but is still not practical, we can make the cause ridiculous. ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... their trust in thee!" From the many folds that appear in the original I have reason to apprehend that it had been worn, and by some Englishmen, whom frequent sickness and the fond love of life had rendered weak and superstitious enough to try the effects of this barbarous and ridiculous quackery.) ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Ridiculous and contemptible as this quackery now appears, so great at one time was its power, that persons every way qualified for the generative act, have been seen suddenly reduced to a humiliating nullity, in consequence of an impudent ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... the fancies which hurried through my mind, coupled with visitations of awe and wonder when I cast my eyes upon the sleeping Frenchman. After all it was ridiculous that I should feel mortified because he supposed me crazy in the matter of dates. How was it conceivable he should believe he had lain lifeless for eight-and-forty years? I knew a man who after a terrible ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... is not to be moved by words, but things; for the incidents in this drama are laid together so happily, that the spectator makes the play for himself, by the force which the circumstance has upon his imagination. Thus, in spite of the most dry discourses, and expressions almost ridiculous with respect to propriety, it is impossible for one unprejudiced to see it untouched with pity. I must confess, this effect is not wrought on such as examine why they are pleased; but it never fails to ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... love for his son and his love for his money. Those five hundred crowns that are asked of him are five hundred dagger-thrusts—ah! ah! ah! ah! He can't bring his mind to tear out, as it were, this sum from his heart, and his anguish makes him think of the most ridiculous means to find money for his son's ransom—ah! ah! ah! He wants to send the police into the open sea after the Turk's galley— ah! ah! ah! He asks his servant to take the place of his son till he has found the money to pay for him—money he has no intention of giving—ah! ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere (Poquelin)
... battles, combats, wounds; their hatreds, dissensions, discords, births, deaths, complaints, and lamentations; their indulgences in all kinds of intemperance; their adulteries; their chains; their amours with mortals, and mortals begotten by immortals. To these idle and ridiculous flights of the poets we may add the prodigious stories invented by the Magi, and by the Egyptians also, which were of the same nature, together with the extravagant notions of the multitude at all times, who, from total ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... patriotic, ethical, or metaphysical considerations. Above all, they apply themselves with what talent has fallen to their lot to the task of creating a work of art, and, so applying themselves, those of them who lack talent become ridiculous, and the talent of those who possess it is spoilt by ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... all living in a lunatic asylum, probably yes! If we were living in the palace of reason, certainly not—the thing's ridiculous! What we are actually living in, however, is—" he broke off and ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... lackadaisical thing! is no good whatever. No more is Catherine. They both behave as if husbands tumbled into your mouth for the asking. Catherine's too good for this world—but if she doesn't do it, I must. Why, that girl Rose is a beauty—if they didn't let her wear those ridiculous mustard-coloured things, and do her hair fit to frighten the crows! Agnes too—so lady-like and well-mannered; she'd do credit to any man. Well, we shall ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ignoble, and vile persons were advanced to that holy office by the seditious; which sort of high priests, as Josephus well remarks here, were thereupon obliged to comply with and assist those that advanced them in their impious practices. The names of these high priests, or rather ridiculous and profane persons, were Jesus the son of Damneus, Jesus the son of Gamaliel, Matthias the son of Theophilus, and that prodigious ignoramus Phannias, the son of Samuel; all whom we shall meet with in Josephus's future history of this war; nor do we meet ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... it. The Chinese will not fight, and I sneer at him; he abhors me because I do. I ridicule his manner of dress; he thinks mine grossly indecent. I consider his flat nose and the plaited hair and shaven skull as heathenish; but the Chinese, eating away with his to me ridiculous chopsticks, looks out from his quick, almond-shaped eyes and considers me still a foreign devil, although he is too cunning to tell me. His opinions of me are founded upon the narrow grounds of vanity and egotism; mine, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... share it together!" cried Hilda eagerly; and then bethought herself, and blushed in her usual ridiculous way, and wondered if the back of her neck were blushing too. It was, and Roger saw the crimson mounting to the pretty ears and losing itself in the fair hair; and he wondered—and wondered again, and then remembered that people sometimes ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... are asleep or too selfishly immersed in their own affairs. We need more helpers like my friend of the skylights. Most of us are far too serious. The slumberers will slumber on, and the worriers will worry, the serious people will go ponderously about until some one shows them how ridiculous they are and ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... Lucien continued his attentions for a year,—the absurd emphasis of his manners at times amusing Madame Recamier, while at others his violence excited her fears. At last, becoming conscious that he was making himself ridiculous, he gave up the pursuit in despair. Some time after he had discontinued his visits he sent a friend to demand his letters; but Madame Recamier refused to give them up. He sent a second time, adding menace to persuasion; but she was firm in her refusal. It was rumored that Lucien was a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... before me, he very dexterously displaced one of them, and put an obscene jest-book of his own in the place. However, I took no notice of all that this mischievous group of little beings could do, but went on, perfectly sensible that what was ridiculous in my attempt would excite mirth only the first or second time, while what was serious would be permanent. My design succeeded, and in less than six days some ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... it fretting or wailing. Whenever it saw me, it used to break out into a real uproarious laugh, as if our common imprisonment was the very best joke that had ever been presented to its infantile mind. I am ashamed to avow, that my own sense of the ridiculous was by no means so keen. The mother evidently pined far more than the baby; for her face grew, every day, more white and worn. What was the offense of either against the Government, I never heard; for no official or soldier will answer any question, and discourse between the prisoners ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... them." They did so, and sent away two; and viewing them from near the above brothel-cottage, they saw them altogether as satyrs; and when they returned, they saluted those satyrs, and said, "Oh what ridiculous figures!" While they were laughing, I jested a good deal with them, and told them that I had also seen adulterers as hogs; and then I recollected the fable of Ulysses and the Circe, how she sprinkled the companions and ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... 1901 an attempt was made to correct this evil, and a ridiculous law was passed and duly signed by Governor Odell providing that a couple may become husband and wife by signing an agreement before witnesses, but in order to make this legal it must be recorded within six months. If at the end of this time it has not been recorded ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... to Alexander. After he had reduced all Asia on this side the Euphrates, he advanced towards Darius, who was coming down against him with a million of men. In his march, a very ridiculous passage happened. The servants who followed the camp, for sport's sake divided themselves into two parties, and named the commander of one of them Alexander, and of the other Darius. At first they only pelted one another with clods of earth, but presently took to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... good graces of Lisbeth Fargus you had to know her ways and humour them. Sam'l, who was a student of women, knew this, and so, instead of pushing the door open and walking in, he went through the rather ridiculous ceremony of knocking. Sanders Elshioner was also aware of this weakness of Lisbeth's, but, though he often made up his mind to knock, the absurdity of the thing prevented his doing so when he reached the door. T'nowhead ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... ancestors, hated niggers, despised Yankees, and swore and swaggered on all occasions. That was the way he was pictured in the ancient days. He laughed—sometimes—not often, and then somewhat sarcastically—but he did not make himself ridiculous. His amour propre was most intense. He appreciated fun, but did not care that it should be at his expense. He was grave, irritable and splenetic; but never comical. A braggart, a rough-rider, an aristocrat; but never a masquerader. That was ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... altered since. And while both England and America have become greatly liberalised in the interval; while shore pomp in high places has come to be regarded by the more intelligent masses of men as belonging to the absurd, ridiculous, and mock-heroic; while that most truly august of all the majesties of earth, the President of the United States, may be seen entering his residence with his umbrella under his arm, and no brass band or military guard at his heels, and unostentatiously taking his seat by the side ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... congratulate him. You are kind in offering to send us more cakes and mincepies. What we really miss according to our usual mode of life is the absence of the "sweet" course at luncheon or dinner. Perfectly ridiculous! Just the same as washing, but one misses it somehow, that is all, even when one is eating covered with mud. I received your letter of February 3rd last night; usually these letters only take 2 days to come. Thanks for sending Bryant and May's matches. I hope ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... is truly wonderful. When you write, bear constantly in mind that some one is to read and to understand what you write. This will make your handwriting and also your meaning plain. Far, I hope, from my dear James will be the ridiculous, the contemptible affectation of writing in a slovenly or illegible hand, or that of signing his name ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... is ridiculous! The duchess is in some of the rooms; she must be! Go and renew your search, and tell her grace, when you find her, that she has made the duke miss the tidal train; but that we are waiting for ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... that it was very ridiculous in me to feel so ashamed and disconcerted at being seen by her or any other dog or doggess in my common dress, and following an honest occupation. I do not deny it. And in telling you these things I have no wish to spare myself, I have no excuse to offer, but only to relate ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... indeed, if one failed to recognize the great good that an extreme reform movement may do. Some very precious increments of progress have resulted even from the most extreme and ridiculous reactions against the drill and formalism of the older schools. Let me briefly summarize these really substantial ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... him out there in the West, which he had put down firmly, the idea that she had cared too much and not too little on that Tap Day four years ago—that idea was true. She did care. She cared still. He knew it without a doubt. He sat on the men's shoulders in his ridiculous clothes, and the heavens opened. Then the tumult and the shouting died and they let the hero down, and to the rapid succession of strong emotions came as a relief another emotion—enthusiasm. They were cheering the president, on the point of bursting ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... quotations from Scripture might have lasted for hours without his being at a loss, had the abbe thought fit to continue in this strain; but such a style of conversation, garnished with grave and solemn words, seemed almost sacrilegious in the mouth of a man of such ridiculous appearance—a profanation at once sad and grotesque. Derues seemed to comprehend the impression it produced, and tuning again to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... chevalier deserted him. He understood how ridiculous the part he had played must appear; and, as the property of true sentiment is always to make us better, more intelligent and more sensible, in spite of the chaos of contradictions which surrounded Angela's conduct, the chevalier discerned that these appearances ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... were remembered, and at last (in the formula of the criminologist) "he realized his position:" hatless and uncombed, with the bathing-towel slung from his shoulder, in that weather-beaten old frieze coat with its ridiculous buttons, in those awful Turkish slippers,—offering, with his grand manner, flowers to a woman he didn't know, and smiling, to put her at her ease! His pink face burned to a livelier pink, his ears went hot, his heart went cold. The bow he finally accomplished was ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... for my soul, the struggle to leave it would be greater now. Polly would be happier and get more from life as the wife of big gangling Henry Peters, than she would as a millionaire's daughter. She'd be very suitable in a farmhouse parlour; she'd be a ridiculous little figure at a ball. As for Adam, he'd turn this ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and approached to reinstate it; but perceiving that the people of the house took her part, she commenced capering round the room; and on my giving chase, ran like a mouse over and under and behind the furniture, rendering it ridiculous for me to pursue. Hareton and the woman laughed, and she joined them, and waxed more impertinent still; till I cried, in great irritation,—'Well, Miss Cathy, if you were aware whose house this is you'd be glad enough ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... was my intention to menace or insult the Government of France is as unfounded as the attempt to extort from the fears of that nation what her sense of justice may deny would be vain and ridiculous. But the Constitution of the United States imposes on the President the duty of laying before Congress the condition of the country in its foreign and domestic relations, and of recommending such measures as may in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... unite true merit to great wealth, those who are proud of their country and its institutions, contented with its customs, and possessed of too much good sense to try to add to their importance by a ridiculous assumption of "aristocratic birth," or a pitiful imitation of the manners of the great of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... dexterous manipulation of our sympathies that amounts to absolute conjuring, he has given the death-blow to all cruelty that serves for our amusement, and killed the pride and pomp and circumstance of glorious sport, and made them ridiculous with his lusty laugh; even the bull-fights in Spain are coming to an end, and all through a Spanish translation of Life-blood. All the cruelties of the world are bound to follow in time, and this not so much because they are cruel as because ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... was very small of stature in respect to height, but his gluttony and sensuality had made him immensely corpulent in body, so that he looked more like a monster than a man. The term Physcon was a Greek word, which denoted opprobriously the ridiculous figure that ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... found? And would not that lead him to think and enquire? Meanwhile, she herself knew the wonderful truth; and she could afford to wait. It would all come right, of course it would; any other thought was too ridiculous to ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... seemed to Corinna that she was living in some absurd comedy, which mimicked life but was only acting, not reality. In her world of reserves and implications no man would have dared to make himself ridiculous ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... ideas"; a able to be expressed as a Syllogism; b about Bath-buns; c coming true; d dreams; e really ridiculous h referred to my solicitor; k worth writing down. ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... inimitable Don Quixote, which gives the burlesque adventures of the self-styled "Knight of the Rueful Countenance." This book was not intended to satirize knight-errantry itself, for that had long before died out in Spain. What it did aim to do was to make ridiculous the romances of chivalry over which all Spain at the time of Cervantes seemed to have gone mad. How well Cervantes succeeded in his aim may be known from the fact that after the appearance of his masterpiece, no new romance of chivalry was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... more or less of the humanities into scholasticism. The science of the Jewish doctor, of the sofer or scribe, was purely barbarous, unmitigatedly absurd, and denuded of all moral element.[1] To crown the evil, it filled with ridiculous pride those who had wearied themselves in acquiring it. The Jewish scribe, proud of the pretended knowledge which had cost him so much trouble, had the same contempt for Greek culture which the learned ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... of affairs was making them appear ridiculous, the officer who had suggested that Bob be allowed to plead guilty, and receive a light sentence, if he would divulge the name of the two ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... under this impalpable distrust, which classed him with the "new fathers" of certain children; and he had a feeling that was at the same time painful and ridiculous, that he was on trial. In olden days the matter might have been settled by a good thrashing, but now things had to be arranged so that they would be lasting; he could no longer buy cheaply. When helping Lasse Frederik in organizing the milk- boys, he pocketed ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Gentlemen, and Scholars, are, for the most part, grosly ignorant of, look upon as base, rustick, and things below them: is (in this learned Author's Opinion) infinitely more to be valued, than a Man brought up either in wrangling at the Bar; or the noisie, and ridiculous Disputes of our Schools, &c. To this Sense the learn'd Modena. And 'tis remarkable, that after all that wise Solomon had said, that All was vanity and vexation of Spirit (among so many particulars ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... know her," he said. "Why, Valentine, you have never known such a woman! You! The very notion is ridiculous." ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... deny that Voltaire and Rousseau were clever men; but he took every opportunity of depreciating them. Of D'Alembert he spoke with a contempt which, when the intellectual powers of the two men are compared, seems exquisitely ridiculous. D'Alembert complained that he was accused of having written Walpole's squib against Rousseau. "I hope," says Walpole, "that nobody will attribute D'Alembert's works to me." He was in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... closing your house to your friends, putting off your Christmas visits, entertaining not at all, ignoring altogether the natural expectations of the county, which did not elect a man to be its member in order that he might shut himself up and superintend his nursery? It was ridiculous, his aunt felt; it went to her nerves, and made her quite uncomfortable, to see all the resources of the house, with which she was so well acquainted, wasted upon four people. It was preposterous—an ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... dogma to be accepted as infallible by everybody else's intelligence. Be as reverent as Darwin in your agnosticism, as tolerant as Comte, we would say to such men, and there is much to commend in your teaching; but spare us the ridiculous spectacle of a handful of pamphleteers and minor essayists arraigning the sublimest philosophy ever known to the world, and consecrated by the homage of ninety out of every hundred thinkers who have ever approached its study, as a system erected upon ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... stairs, her face buried in her muddy handkerchief, "I'm not sure but you have made a mistake, and Ester is the one to be sent to her room until she can behave better. I don't pretend to be good myself; but I must say it seems ridiculous to speak in the way she did to a sorry, frightened child. I never saw a more woeful figure in my life;" and Sadie laughed again ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... transmit the necessary orders. On the other hand, M. Fournier declared on his honor that the dates in his draft were named in the original convention. The French government at once demanded an apology, and an indemnity fixed by M. Jules Ferry, in a moment of mental excitement, at the ridiculous figure of $50,000,000. An apology was offered, but such an indemnity was refused, and eventually France obtained one ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... overpoweringly ridiculous,—we must honestly confess it,—the deportment of the maiden lady while setting her shop in order for the public eye. She stole on tiptoe to the window, as cautiously as if she conceived some bloody-minded villain to be watching behind the elm-tree, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the distinction really amounts to is that Rousseau had a strong feeling for certain very important aspects of human life, which Voltaire thought very little about, or never thought about at all, and that while Voltaire was concerned with poetry, history, literature, and the more ridiculous parts of the religious superstition of his time, Rousseau thought about social justice and duty and God and the spiritual consciousness of men, with a certain attempt at thoroughness and system. As for the substance ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... nothing of actual value—such as spears, shields, and the like—but would gladly accept as much of that useless stuff, gold, as people might desire to force upon me, the accumulation of gold being one of my chief hobbies; eccentric, amusing, perhaps even ridiculous, but—well, there it was. And I accompanied my final statement with a shrug of the shoulders which I intended should express deprecation of my own folly. I intercepted a glance and nod of intelligence and amusement which passed round the circle at this naive confession ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... and ridiculous-looking lover is this bird, as, with tail stiffly spread, he sidles up to his desired mate and bows and bobs before her, then retreats and advances, bowing and bobbing again, very often with a rival lover beside him (whom he generously tolerates) trying to outdo him in grace ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... her girlish sweetness came vividly across the boy's mind. It was ridiculous to blame Tess. Ah, if he were as good as Tess desired him to be, his life would be the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... he was tired, and his nerves were shaken by being so many hours in the sick room, and nothing would have induced him to move. I was so tired at last that I sat down on the floor, too, and rested my head against the door, and Dot sat bolt upright like a watchful little dog, and in this ridiculous position we were discovered by Allan. I had not heard of his arrival; and when he came toward us, springing lightly up two stairs at a time, I could not help uttering a ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ridiculous resolution men take when possessed with fear! It deprives them of the use of those means which reason offers for their relief. The first thing I proposed to myself was to throw down my enclosures, and turn all ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... me, that nobody in England had responded to the Sartor, had secretly written you a most reverential letter, which, by dint of coaxing, be read to me, though he said there was but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. I prayed him, though I thought the letter did him no justice, save to his heart, to send you it or another; and he says he will. He is a very able young man, even if his letter should not show it.* He said he could, and would, bring many persons to ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to Jewish prejudice. He knew that the charge of sedition and treason was without foundation; and that even the framing of such an accusation by the Jewish hierarchy, whose simulated loyalty to Caesar was but a cloak for inherent and undying hatred, was ridiculous in the extreme; and he fully realized that the priestly rulers had delivered Jesus into his hands because of envy ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... knew, &c.] There is nothing more ridiculous than the various opinions of authors about the seat of Paradise. Sir. Walter Raleigh has taken a great deal of pains to collect them, in the beginning of his History of the World; where those, who are unsatisfied, may be ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... in an overcoat of thick cloth called a paletot, then the fashion. A mantle, thrown across his knees for a covering, hid the lower half of his body, while an enormous muffler of red cashmere covered his neck and head to the eyes. His hat, jauntily tipped to one side, was, nevertheless, not ridiculous. Never was a mystery more mysteriously bundled up ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... dependents. Their hats were laced, and their coats and waistcoats were embroidered with gold and silver fringe; indeed it really became extremely difficult to distinguish a man of quality from one of his lackeys. They did not, however, long persevere in this ridiculous imitation, for they soon afterwards, like the ladies, servilely followed the French fashions. The great partiality of the English beau monde towards the bon ton of France, was a wonderful advantage to that country—an advantage which the English government in vain endeavoured ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... was in itself ridiculous, and full of fustian bravadoes, according to the style of the barbarians, yet it put the governor and officers of the fortress to a shrewd demur; for how should they accept the challenge without ships to fight him, and how ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... are absurd and can only be made more ridiculous by coming events. Of course the Boxers coming in openly through the gates cannot be true, and yet—shades of Genghis Khan and all his Tartars, what is that? When I had got as far as this from all sides came a tremendous blaring of barbaric ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... man in his own opinion. The lawless and violent spirit, who is hurried by headstrong self-will to break the laws, does not like to have the ground of pride and obstinacy struck from under his feet. This is what gives the swells of the metropolis such a dread of the tread-mill—it makes them ridiculous. It must be confessed, that this very circumstance renders the reform of criminals nearly hopeless. It is the apprehension of being stigmatized by public opinion, the fear of what will be thought and said of them, that deters men from the violation of the laws, while their character remains ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... but now he hesitated before turning into Dean's Yard. When he did so, he sauntered round the inclosure two or three times, wondering in what words he could best move the Canon, and framing half a dozen speeches in his mind, which seemed ridiculous to himself when he whispered them half aloud. At last, with a sudden determination to trust to the inspiration of the moment, he turned his steps hurriedly into the dark, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... not kill your love. You cannot turn from your brother or your friend if he commit even a lurid act; you cannot turn from a stranger; much less can you turn from your beloved. Herbert, when men set themselves to judge, they are invariably ridiculous and an offence to high heaven. Believe me, it is artificial. The true judge cares not for the fact of the deed, but for its motive. And the lover knows the motive. He has the key to the life. He knows his beloved, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... three assistants joined in the refrain, of which I did not understand a word; but as Marton uttered the final words, "Alas Mr. Dintenklek," his gestures were such as to lead me to suspect that this Mr. Dintenklek must be some very ridiculous figure in the eye ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... tickle us, do we not laugh? And if you show us a little Miss Butterfly, beautiful to the finger-ends, do we not fall in love with her at least as unaffectedly as if we were canons residentiary or rural deans? Fancy little Miss Butterfly a rural deaness! the notion's too ridiculous. Fly away, little Miss Butterfly; fly away, sweet little frolicsome, laughsome creature. I won't try to tie you down to a man in a black clerical coat with a very distant hypothetical reversionary prospect of a dull and dingy country parsonage. Flit elsewhere, little Miss Butterfly, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... one must cable or telegraph for more. Ah—but cables and telegrams must be vises too—and even when they were, one got no guarantee that they would be sent! Then one could not use code addresses, and the ridiculous number of words contained in a New York address seemed to multiply as the francs in one's pockets diminished. And when the cable was finally dispatched it was either lost on the way, or reached its destination only to call forth, after anxious days, the disheartening response: "Impossible ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... than ever eager to have the medical work given over to a medical man. One day in Ch'ao Yang a man came swaggering across the open space in the marketplace. People pointed towards him and laughed. He was laughable, the ridiculous part of him being a straw hat which was an imitation, caricature rather, of a foreigner's hat. I could not help laughing. It was no laughing matter, though. He was a messenger from the cavalry camp just outside the town. He had come to take me to treat two soldiers ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... violently sick at his stomach, and began to act as he had acted on the first three days of his ocean passage from New York. At the same time all the other functions of his body began to operate. A group of Frenchmen passing by burst into hilarious laughter; it was ridiculous and humiliating, but Jimmie was powerless to help it—he wasn't cut out for a soldier, he hadn't agreed to be a soldier, they had had no business sending him up here where vast craters of shell-holes were opening in the ground, and whole trees were being lifted out ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... 'I thought so,' said the lady at No. 19; 'I always said it was Miss Willis!'—'Well, I never!' ejaculated the young lady at No. 18 to the young lady at No. 17.—'Did you ever, dear!' responded the young lady at No. 17 to the young lady at No. 18. 'It's too ridiculous!' exclaimed a spinster of an uncertain age, at No. 16, joining in the conversation. But who shall portray the astonishment of Gordon-place, when Mr. Robinson handed in all the Miss Willises, one after the other, and then squeezed himself into ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... up to the control-room. Johnny Simms stood against the wall, sulking. He had managed his life very successfully by acting like a spoiled little boy. Now he had lost any idea of saner conduct. At the moment, he looked ridiculous. But Alicia had a bruised cheek and Cochrane could have been killed, and Holden had been in danger because Johnny Simms wanted to and insisted on acting like a ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... making no headway, and her ideas, exposed to so practical a man as her father, did seem rather ridiculous. But she struck out boldly with the scheme ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... The other objection, founded on the mistaken notion of its being inherent in, and belonging to, the very essence of the company, to promote the general improvement of the Philippine Islands, if well considered, will appear equally unjust. It is, in fact, a ridiculous, although too generally received, a prejudice to suppose, that the founders of this establishment proposed to themselves the plan of sinking the money of the shareholders in clearing the lands, and perfecting the rude manufactures of these distant Islands. To ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... excellent mother; to whom you all owe so much, and whose wishes are ever dictated by reason, though it may not be always either necessary or proper to disclose those reasons to you. The Lacedeaeonians carried the doctrine of submission so far, that they obliged their Ephori to submit to the ridiculous ceremony of being shaved, when they entered upon their office; signifying, by this act, that they knew how to practise submission to the laws of their country. In short, my dear boy, it is a universal rule, that he who will gain any thing, must give up something; he that wishes to improve his ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... wasn't at all a nice girl to play with. The rose-cakes she pronounced "nasty." When Lota explained about Lady Green, she stared and said it was ridiculous, and that there was no such person. She turned up her nose at Pocahontas's journal, and declared that Lota wrote it herself! "Did you ever hear of such a thing?" asked Lady Bird afterward of Lady ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... or Blanche might ultimately have gone in making themselves ridiculous cannot be stated, because at this moment Margaret—prosaic, ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... of her particular set. Now I can tell her that there's more beauty among those who don't give themselves half the airs, and who she looks down upon, than there is to be found among her 'fashionables.' But Emma is perfectly ridiculous with her 'exclusive' nonsense," he continued, with much feeling, evidently showing how deeply he resented his sister's reflections upon the style and stamp of his present admiration, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt that ever made herself or her family ridiculous; a flirt, too, in the worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction beyond youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance and emptiness of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal contempt which her rage for admiration will excite. In this ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... I should only make myself ridiculous by trying to learn anything from him, “I hope our little spats through windows and on walls won’t interfere with our pleasant social relations. And I don’t hesitate to tell you,”—I was exerting myself to keep down my anger,—”that if I catch ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... God who is evil, as Proudhon said, that senseless and ludicrous God who delights in grotesque saturnalia, in ridiculous prayers, in shameful mummeries, in vows contrary ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... cried; "a ridiculous mistake! I beg your pardon ten thousand times! They are for the Widow Jones. Here is what I intended for you, dear, dear Belle," and I thrust another package into ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... been in the daylight before, and are ugly enough to be always shrouded in their native darkness. Down in us all, if we will go deep enough, and take with us a light bright enough, we shall discover enough to make anything but humility ridiculous, if it were not wicked. And the only right place and attitude for a man who knows himself down to the roots of his being is the publican's when 'he stood afar off, and would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven, and said, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Ah, dear friends, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... know who that was," said Mildred. "It sounds like that forward Judith Buck. She has no idea of her place. I never saw such a girl. She rides around the country in a ridiculous looking little home made blue Ford with a spring wagon back and puts on all the airs of sporting a Stutz racer. She never stops for anybody but just whizzes on by. Sometimes she even bows to us, although she gets mighty ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... early Washington winter. The lights in the great library, softened with delicate shades, had been turned on. Outside, Sheridan Circle was almost a thing of beauty in its vague outlines; even the squat, ridiculous bronze horse had a certain ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... their attacks accordingly. They affect to believe, that all the travellers of our country are grand seigneurs, immensely rich and incredibly generous; and we are silly enough to encourage this opinion, by submitting quietly to the most ridiculous extortion, as well as by committing acts of the most absurd extravagance. This folly of the English, together with a concourse of people from different quarters, who come hither for the re-establishment of their ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... I knew of could be obtained that would be of use to me, I was driven to the necessity of trying by experiment to find some new material. The result of these experiments was the development of a process of almost ridiculous simplicity which it may be of interest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... sleep. They talked and argued, and then kept still for a while, only to break out again, it was so absurd. They both maintained that they had been there, but both felt sure the other one was either crazy or obstinate beyond reason. They were wretched; it was perfectly ridiculous, two friends at odds over such a thing; but there it was—"little room," "china-closet,"—"china-closet," ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Otto; and his glance became more gloomy. Wilhelm was silent; there reigned a momentary stillness. Otto suppressed a deep sigh. At length Wilhelm broke silence, and said, with a grave and agitated voice,—"I am so thoughtless, I joke so often, and regard everything from the ridiculous side. But for all that I have both heart and feeling. You must have known how much dearer you were to me than most other people. You are so still, although you offend me. At this moment your blood is in a fever; not now, but after a few days, ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... well take this opportunity of replying to another of your Caledonian correspondents, respecting the origin of the word nugget. The Persian derivation is simply ridiculous, as the word was not first used in Australia. I am then perfectly well aware that this term has long been in use in Scotland and the north of Ireland as i. q. lump, as a nugget of bread, of sugar, &c. But an ingot is a lump also: and the derivation ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... swift refutation. 'But supposing I did. Supposing I want to swim up that water. It is impossible, it is one of the impossibilities of life, for me to take my clothes off now and jump in. But isn't it RIDICULOUS, doesn't it simply ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence |
