"Absurd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... averted. He stooped his head to hers, and she raised one hand as if in protest. Next moment I saw them spring apart and turn hurriedly round. Stapleton was the cause of the interruption. He was running wildly towards them, his absurd net dangling behind him. He gesticulated and almost danced with excitement in front of the lovers. What the scene meant I could not imagine, but it seemed to me that Stapleton was abusing Sir Henry, ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Granville to say anything about his policy during the war which would please the French.' Gambetta's official reply was, however, that, having read Lord Granville's speech, he found it "proper under the circumstances and impartial," and that, although "absurd ideas with regard to our recent elections had been ascribed to himself," he had "desired nothing in those elections" except Sir Charles's personal triumph. To this Lord Granville rejoined: "Please thank M. Gambetta for his friendly message. I ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... meridians of longitude, arbitrarily divided the public domain into rectangular districts, to the first of which the following names were applied: Sylvania, Michigania, Cherronesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia, Pelisipia. The amusement which this absurd and thoroughly Jeffersonian nomenclature is bound to cause ought not to detract from the really important features of the Ordinance. In each of the districts into which the country was divided the settlers ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... from love of fighting. When a man is attacked, he may be sure he has excited either the fear or the cupidity of his assailants, for men fight either to protect that which they have or to gain that which they feel they must have. So far as I could see, it was absurd that cupidity was inciting Langdon and Roebuck against me. I hadn't enough to tempt them. Thus, I was forced to conclude that I must possess a strength of which I was unaware, and which stirred even Roebuck's fears. But ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... was active, but his feelings were dormant. Every emotion seemed to have been eradicated. He felt no regrets, no fears, no pain or discomfort. Even when he thought of the girl, it was as of an inhabitant of one of those remote stars at which he gazed. He remembered the absurd antics of his companion and laughed softly, yet without a feeling of mirth. Soon the daily army of milk wagons made of the city a roaring drum to which they marched. Vallance fell asleep on his ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... It startled the public and set the Whitney forces agape. My proposition was decidedly novel, and on its face absurd—the State could not under the law accept a million dollars or any other sum for its charter—but, on the other hand, it was the quickest-acting horse-sense producer that could possibly have been brought to bear. It was discussed everywhere. Men said: "Why not? If the State has a ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... was to laugh there— Where death becomes absurd and life absurder. For power was on us as we slashed bones bare Not to feel sickness or ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... It was worse than absurd; it was stupid! Imagine a woman driving a ball four hundred yards! I would never dare marry such a woman, and I came near making some idiotic remark to that effect, but luckily at that moment we came to ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... things—to him, and not being able to find out his address, Mr. Larkin wrote to Sir Julius, whom Chelford did not find at home, to ask him for a description of Mark, to ascertain whether he had disguised himself; and Sir Julius wrote to Chelford such an absurd description of poor Mark, in doggrel rhyme—so like—his odd walk, his great whiskers, and everything. Chelford does not like personalities, but he could not help ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Skipping Rabbit was standing in front of Eaglenose with clasped hands and glittering eyes, shrieking with delight as the absurd creature of wood threw up its legs and arms, kicked its own head, and all but dislocated its own limbs. Catching sight of her friend, however, she gave vent to another shriek with deeper delight in it, and, bounding towards her, sprang into ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... shrewd suspicion, Our post's no better than the pillory. It is a burning shame, a trooper should Stand sentinel before an empty cap, And every honest fellow must despise us. To do obeisance to a cap, too! Faith, I never heard an order so absurd! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... barely suggest space, he impales like a butterfly the human type, mostly in a moment of folly or wickedness.... The least definition of surrounding would blunt his (the artist's) keenness, and make his vehemence absurd." ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Imagine, if you can, a brigade of infantry following Sheridan on his wild ride of "twenty miles" and then rushing to attack an army which, according to the tradition of which I have spoken, had just whipped four army corps. Of course, the statement is an absurd one. No brigade came from Winchester. No brigade could have come from Winchester; and had such a thing been possible, it would have constituted but a slight ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... not bargained on this kind of work. They bluntly declared that it was absurd trying to go up canons with such cascades. Mackenzie paid no heed to the murmurings. He got his crew to the top of the hill, spread out the best of a regale—including tea sweetened with sugar—and while ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... naturally enough spoiled by the absurd amount of adulation he has met with, he has not been made cold-hearted or worldly. He is vain, but true and loyal to his class. He does not seek to disguise or belie his profession. In fact, he ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... he go to the Antipodes; nor should any Christian prince give him a ship to try; nor would any pious mariner wish to try. For Cosmas there was nothing in the least absurd about his map. Only by remembering his absolute conviction that this was the map of the universe can we begin to understand how he would have dreaded Magellan or Peary or the aviator who risked a collision with the angels ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... tried to ponder on something great, I never failed to find myself cherishing the absurd, obstinate apprehension that soon the Birkins would leave their beds, enter the courtyard, and have Nadezhda ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... know that's an absurd claim! You didn't find my horse and deliver him to me; I found him in your hands, and you even refused to give him up! The truckman has a better claim for the reward than you have, for he had him first; and then I don't see but the thief ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... 'Don't be absurd; it's simply wicked to talk like that. How do I know what you are doing? As if I can leave you for an hour in uncertainty! Your face! If you don't open at once I shall believe there's something seriously wrong: I shall send Ada ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... faults and failings soever we may have in England, and their "name is legion," by all means let them be unsparingly exposed by every foreign tourist that treads upon our soil. Let us be satirized, ridiculed, laughed at, caricatured, anything, so that we may be shamed out of all that is absurd and vicious in our habits and customs. In the present instance our Western kinsmen are described by one, if they will believe his own testimony, of the most candid and truthful of travellers,—one who has viewed them and all their institutions, except one, with the ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... shake her, although Belle hung about her tearfully. Russell and Gwen protested, Aunt Rutha looked at her with sorrowful eyes, and Mr Davis repeated that the very idea was absurd, as he paced up and down with a strange huskiness ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... a herald to the camp of his enemies, challenging any one of them to meet him, and settle the question of his guilt or innocence by single combat. This proposition was not quite so absurd in those days as it would be now, for it was not an uncommon thing, in the Middle Ages, to try in this way questions of crime. Many negotiations ensued on Bothwell's proposal. One or two persons ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... "Don't be so absurd, Captain Bloxam," rejoined Mrs. Sartoris. "But I am told, Lady Mary, it is a pretty walk to the camp, and that there is a grand view over the Channel on the south side ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... seriously. No matter how riotously absurd it is, or how full of inane repetition, remember, if it is good enough to tell, it is a real story, and must be treated with respect. If you cannot feel so toward it, do not tell it. Have faith in the story, and in the attitude of the ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... a pang as she stood up. Not to see her again—why, that was absurd! Why should he not see her? She had quarrelled with Tom, yes, and perhaps the family might be hard on her; but he—he understood, and why should he shake off her acquaintance? She was not for Tom. Well, it ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... child he had had it, and it grew with his years. He wanted to paint, and he painted; he wanted to sculp in clay, and he sculped in clay; but all the time he was conscious it was the things he had seen and the life he had lived which made his painting and his sculpture worth while. It was absurd that a man of his great outdoor capacity should be the slave of a temperamental quality, and yet it was so. It was no good for his father to condemn, or his mother to mourn, he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... recover from the stupor of surprise, and instantly he did a thing so apparently absurd but so marvelous in its calculated effect that no brain but his could have conceived it. It shakes me at once with laughter and recollected terror when ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... be an insupportable place for women, if he had! But whatever the moral aspect of the matter is in general, circumstances arise which alter the point, and that is where the absurd ticketing system hampers suitable action. A thing is ticketed 'dishonourable.' Pah! it is sometimes, and it is not at others—there is no hard and ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... course not. How absurd! It was never in me to do anything very well," he added almost wistfully, "for I have no gifts. But if I could sing even a little, I would cultivate my voice. And if I but knew how to paint at all, I would work to paint better, always hoping that some time I might do at least one ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... was in no sense monastic, indeed it was to a certain extent established to counteract monastic influence; but it is absurd to suppose that the younger communities would borrow nothing from the elder—especially when we reflect that the monastic system, as inaugurated by S. Benedict, had completed at least seven centuries of successful existence before Walter de Merton was moved to ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... control them with ease. Up to this time they were all perfectly conscious and without any hallucinations; they knew who they were, where they were and what they were doing, and they laughed as heartily at the absurd results obtained as any spectator. Up to this time, too, I had no means of ascertaining whether the apparent results were genuine. I might be the dupe of cunning people who were conspiring to fool me, for, in these early stages, there seems to be no ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... tobacco, and start for New Orleans. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] He faced dangers from the waters, from the Indians, from lawless whites of his own race, and from the Spaniards themselves. The New Orleans customs officials were corrupt, [Footnote: Do. VOL III-8] and the regulations very absurd and oppressive. The policy of the Spanish home government in reference to the trade was unsettled and wavering, and the attitude towards it of the Governors of Louisiana changed with their varying interests, beliefs, caprices, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... her own property was separated from his and reserved to herself and her children. Since her marriage she had never said a word to him about her money,—unless it were to ask that something out of the common course might be spent on some, generally absurd, object. But now had come the time for squandering money. She was not only rich but she had a popularity that was exclusively her own. The new Prime Minister and the new Prime Minister's wife should entertain after a fashion ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... am sure that some of the settings by your divinity, Handel, are absurd. "For as in Adam all die" may be true enough, and the harmonies are magnificent, but I am always tempted to ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... was out in all that storm on your Caesar," he went on, changing the subject quickly from the man whom he knew bore him an absurd animosity. "A pretty great horse, Caesar. He's looking none the worse for fetching that whisky either. Guess the boys'll be getting over their drunk by now. And it's probably done 'em a heap of good. You did right to encourage 'em. Maybe ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... will do. Ill join the Asmoneans. There! that's a great concession to your absurd prejudices. But you must make a concession to mine. You know how I hate the Jewish canvassing of engagements. Let us keep ours entirely entre nous a fortnight—so that the gossips shall at least get their material stale, and we shall be hardened. I wonder why you're so conventional," ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of nonsense written and uttered about poetry. In an age when verses are more noisily and fluently circulated than ever before, it might seem absurd to plead in the Muse's defence. Yet poetry and the things poets love are pitifully weak to-day. In essence, poetry is the love of life—not mere brutish tenacity of sensation, but a passion for all the honesties that ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... shapes the language of the imagination and the passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd than the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid and pedantic critics, for reducing the language of poetry to the standard of common sense and reason: for the end and use of poetry, "both at the first and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature," seen through the medium ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... dance,[60] in the year 1418, and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... a small emblem worn on top of a knight's helmet. A tower with a lily stuck in it would have been unwieldy and absurd. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... which he describes are the fruit of self-study,—personal traits disguised in fiction; yet this is what has often been affirmed of Hawthorne. We don't think of attributing to Dickens the multiform oddities which he pictures with such power, it being manifestly absurd to do so. As Dickens raises the laugh against them, we at once perceive that they are outside of himself. Hawthorne is so serious, that we are absorbed in the sober earnest of the thing, and forget ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... his position in the silent house; the overalls still showed their pristine folds, the shirt was of good quality and well-cut. The ends of a narrow red-silk four-in-hand swung free. He was clean-shaven save for an absurd little mustache so fair as to be almost indistinguishable. His blond hair was brushed back unparted from his forehead. Another swift survey of the slight figure disclosed a pair of patent-leather pumps. His socks, revealed at the ankles, were scarlet. Dan was unfamiliar with the menage ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... and Mr. Peter Willeby, lawyers. Outlaw was acquitted, and Ledred forced to fly for safety to England, of which he was a native. It is pleasant to remember that, although Irish credulity sometimes took shapes absurd and grotesque enough, it never was perverted into diabolical channels, or directed to the barbarities ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... down from his tremendous height at Barbara, tenderly as one who contemplates a thing at once heartrending and absurd. Then his eyes turned to Kitty, smiling quietly as if they said, "Didn't I tell you to wait until you'd seen them?" Kitty's heart contracted with a sharp, ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... you absurd Alicia!" But I did not ask my dear girl what her incoherent words might mean. I did not ask why the soft cheek against ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... extraordinary than the costumes we made for the girls you never saw. They were not of elaborate design, being of the shape of a long sack, with holes for the arms and neck; and they afterwards shrank in the most absurd way. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... all right, Ralph," Thomson agreed, "but you're departing from a principle, and I wouldn't do it. It isn't a personal risk you're running, or a personal secret you're sharing with others. It may sound absurd under the present circumstances, ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... inanimate matter begin to exist? And how was space found in which it could exist? And why does anything exist, animate or inanimate? And is the existence of matter a proof of a supreme design, or is it not?' Thereupon science gets very red in the face, and says that these questions are absurd, after previously stating that ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... England too well to like to see it, but one of these days they will get into some scrape in the same way. The foolish accusation that we are doing all we can to break up the French Alliance is certainly the most absurd of all; if anything can be for our local advantage, it is to see England and France closely allied, and for a long period—for ever I ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... small man put it away he chirped and chuckled like a cricket. His thanks were mere words, his voice was calm. He accepted our aid as a matter of course. No perfectly reasonable man would ever take such frightful chances as this absurd little ass set his face to without fear. He hummed a little tune as he packed his outfit into his shoulder-straps. "I ought to rattle into Glenora on this grub, hadn't ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the lights far below go out? She hated her indecision. It was new to her, and she felt it to be a weakness. Whatever she had been till now, she had certainly never been a weak woman, except perhaps from the absurd point of view of the Exeter Hall moralist. Scruples had been strangers to her, a baggage she had not burdened herself with on ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Yet it seemed so absurd, that suspicion. He and Phillips met frequently, sometimes at church, or oftenest at the Harbor—Egbert's visits there were daily now, and he dined or supped with the Berrys and the "inmates" at least twice ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... an absurd business, this ritual of ours,' he answered. 'But it has at least the saving grace of antiquity to excuse it. I have a copy of the questions and answers here if you care to run your ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... had felt for the sheriff from the first now became overpowering. That he should be the means of bringing that terrible and active little man to an end seemed, as a matter of fact, absurd. Guile must have played a part ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... dispositions wholly foreign from the worldly sagacity and stern shrewdness of Johnson. As in his judgment of life and character, so in his criticism on poetry, he was a sort of Free-thinker. He suspected the refined of affectation, he rejected the enthusiastic as absurd, and he took it for granted that the mysterious was unintelligible. He came into the world when the school of Dryden and Pope gave the law to English poetry. In that school he had himself learned to be a lofty and vigorous declaimer ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... of Cain," by Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, an inimitable satire on the feebleness of our jury system and the absurd pretence of "temporary insanity," must wait for that encyclopaedia. And her "Miss Molony on the Chinese Question" is known and admired by every one, including the Prince of Wales, who was fairly ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... are quite absurd," It said, "with your song's insistence; For I never saw a tree or a bird, So of course there are ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... flat of his hand: "your boys were born to be heroes, madam. If I mistake not, that Charlie and Bub of yours were the defenders of that cabin against the savages. And yet," he added, doubtfully, "that is simply absurd; it's beyond the power of two little boys to perform such a feat; for you recollect, ladies, that Long Hair said that not only a number of guns were fired, but at the same time; and to conclude that two little boys should fire off a score of guns, more or less, simultaneously, is to assent ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... the Managers, that they have the same Right to discharge an Actor that a Master has to turn away a Servant, than which nothing can be more false and absurd; for, when a Master dismisses a Servant, there are many thousands besides to apply to; but when the Managers dismiss an Actor, where are they to apply? It is unlawful to act any where but with them; Necessity or Inclination ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... a wonderful lot to me, It's quite absurd how my soul is smitten With Padie, who's four, and Bay, who's three, And Sufi, ...
— The Bay and Padie Book - Kiddie Songs • Furnley Maurice
... went, and saw the bronze young man again. He was standing with his arms folded across his blue-flannel-shirted chest, leaning against one of the supports of a kind of bridge, looking up towards the first-class deck. Our eyes met as they had before, and I was so absurd that I felt myself blushing. I could have boxed my own ears; and though the trained dog really was a ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... all talking around the question," she said. "Mr. Pierce undertook to manage the sanatorium, and to try to manage it successfully. He can not do that without making some attempt at conciliating the people. It's—it's absurd ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... course, is the weak point in the enemy's lines. Here he has trusted to the ground as it looked from his side of the field, when, in reality, it presented few difficulties from yours. Some experience in the world has led me to believe that if a salesman has come to the opinion, even in the most absurd manner, that he can sell a certain man goods, he can do it, almost beyond the chance of a doubt. I once knew a successful solicitor who seemed to do all his work at his desk. He would sit ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... the present day. This practice may have had advantages at the time, but it must have been ultimately productive of many corruptions; and, in a great measure, accounts for many superstitious and absurd customs which prevailed among that people to a very recent period, and which are not yet entirely extinct. In a very ancient family in that country two round balls of coarse glass have been carefully preserved from time immemorial, and to these have been ascribed many ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... what spoils his digestion— And always feel sure that his joy o'er a stew Portends a clear case of dyspepsia to you. Read him backwards, like Hebrew—whatever he wishes Or praises, note down as absurd or pernicious. Like the folks of a weather-house, shifting about, When he's out be an In-when he's in be an Out. Keep him always reversed in your thoughts, night and day, Like an Irish barometer turned the wrong way:— If he's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... a time, there was perfect peace in the house, the peace of mutual aversion. Hosts and guests ignored each other scrupulously. But after a while a family was born to the Little Villager, a litter of absurd, blind, tiny whimperers, all heads and hungry mouths. The two owls were immensely interested at once, but their efforts to show their interest were met by such an astonishing display of ferocity on the part of both the Little Villager and his mate that they discreetly withdrew their advances ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... measures to claim this sum, and for this purpose came to Boston. Imagine his surprise and indignation when the lawyer positively denied having received any such deposit and called upon him, to prove it. With great effrontery he declared that it was absurd to suppose that my father would have entrusted him with any such sum without a receipt for it. This certainly looked plausible, and I acknowledge that few except my father, who never trusted without trusting entirely, would have ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... tore up her notes, a strange sense of relief mingled with the bitterness and fierceness of his mood; relief to think that never again would he be called upon to jabber with the apes, to grasp their loathly paws, to join in their solemnly absurd posturings, never would he be tempted from the peace and seclusion of his book-lined study. The habits of fifteen years tugged him back like ropes of which he had ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... dreams-perfectly absurd ones-filled him with an incommunicable delight. All those that he remembered began by the brushwood-pile. For instance, he found a small clockwork steamer (he had noticed it many nights before) lying by the sea-road, and stepped into it, whereupon it moved with surpassing ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... to say if our laws relating to vagrancy and vagrants are more cruel or more absurd. If not so atrocious they would evoke laughter; if less ridiculous we should read them with indignation. Here is an ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... verse the speaker lays down what entities dwell in the body. In the rest he expounds the nature of Sattwa which the commentator takes to mean buddhi or knowledge. He begins with the statement that Sattwasya asrayah nasti. This does not mean that the knowledge has no refuge, for that would be absurd, but it means that the asraya of the knowledge, i.e., that in which the knowledge dwells, viz., the body, does not exist, the true doctrine being that the body has no real existence but that it exists like to its image in a dream. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Indeed, steam navigation was universally regarded in America as a mere chimera, and Fulton and Livingston were ridiculed for their faith in it. The bill granting the monopoly held by Livingston was regarded as so utterly absurd by the Legislature of New York, that that wise body could with difficulty be induced to consider it seriously. Even among scientific men the project was considered impracticable. A society in Rotterdam had, several years ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... comparison with the natives of the country; or, in other words, he considered the American as an animal inferior to the parent stock, and viewed all his notions of military service, in particular, as undigested and absurd. A more impracticable subject, therefore, could not well have offered for the purpose of Mabel, and yet she felt obliged to lose no time in ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... paint her as Madonna. She had refused to touch the Bambino—sometimes petulantly, sometimes in silent scorn. The tiny figure lay always on the studio floor, dusty and disarranged. The artist picked it up. It was an absurd little wooden face in the lace cap. He straightened the velvet mantle and smoothed the crumpled dress. He stepped to the model-stand and placed the tiny figure in the draped chair. It rested stiffly ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... can hardly tell. He made a great many absurd protestations, begged me to give him no decided answer just then, and said something about letting him write to me, but all I am quite sure of is that at last I had the courage to utter a very decided No, and then ran away and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... which sportsmen are liable. All these things may be as he says they are. He may be the most unfortunate, the most unjustly treated of mankind. But why insist upon it? Why check the current of sympathy by the dam of constant repetition? And, after all, how trivial and absurd the whole thing is! Even a man whose career has been ruined by malicious persecution will be avoided like a pest if it is known that he dins the account of his wrongs into everyone's ears. How, then, shall the sufferer by the petty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... cockneys in the cook's galley had found intoxicants, had poured raw whiskey into their empty stomachs and the result was the quickest and most complete intoxication. When Madden regained the deck he found his crew singing, laughing, fighting, quarreling in an absurd medley. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... scarcely one Englishman in ten who has not belonged to some association for distributing books, or for prosecuting them; for sending invalids to the hospital, or beggars to the treadmill; for giving plate to the rich, or blankets to the poor. To be the most absurd institution among so many institutions is no small distinction; it seems, however, to belong indisputably to the Royal Society of Literature. At the first establishment of that ridiculous academy, every sensible man predicted that, in spite of regal patronage and episcopal management, it ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners, as it is more usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely; but there has always been a ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... moments of relaxation his coarse streak appeared, and Waythorn dreaded his geniality; but in the office he was concise and clear-headed, with a flattering deference to Waythorn's judgment. Their business relations being so affably established, it would have been absurd for the two men to ignore each other in society. The first time they met in a drawing-room, Varick took up their intercourse in the same easy key, and his hostess's grateful glance obliged Waythorn to respond to it. After that they ran across each other frequently, and one ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the Rajah himself was in the business was absurd. That idea might be dismissed on the spot. The more Field thought of it the more was he puzzled. He would take an early opportunity of seeing ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... thanks," I answered. "But how are you?" And the next moment, it seemed to me, I heard her asking if I was hungry;—whereupon, absurd as it must sound, I was aware of an immense emotion that interfered with my breathing. It broke up through some repressive layer that had apparently concealed it, and made me feel—well, had I been thirty-five years younger, I could have cried—for pleasure. ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... are so many who speak to me now, because of my public position here. So I thought nothing strange at first, until I discovered his mistake, and then it seemed so absurd that I nearly laughed outright. Isn't it odd what such a man could possibly want with her? But really, gentlemen, I must return with my news; Naida will be so anxious. I am so glad to ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... objects by feeling of them with a stick held in the hand, and thus perceive their roughness or smoothness; but how do we sense these facts? It seems to us as if we felt them with the end of the stick, but that is absurd, since there are no sense organs in the stick. It must be that we perceive the roughness by means of sensations arising in the hand and arm, but to identify these sensations is a much harder task than to discover the objective ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... know that many persons may consider the Grindwell Governing Machine a humbug,—an obsolete, absurd, and tyrannous institution, wholly unfitted to the nineteenth century. A machine that proposes to think and act for the whole people, and which is rigidly opposed to the people's thinking and acting for themselves, is likely to find little favor among us. With us the doctrine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... field and doubled back and sold his own apples to his own cook for a hat-full of doughnuts; and the time that we——" and so forth and so on, bringing in names of imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd and, of course, wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures, but putting them into lively and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... British Liberty, I, for one, move we should lay it on the shelf a little, and look out for something other and farther. We have achieved British Liberty hundreds of years ago; and are fast growing, on the strength of it, one of the most absurd populations the Sun, among his great Museum of Absurdities, looks down upon ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... conceptions of his nature, attributes, word, and works? And how ready and prone are we to receive and entertain wrong apprehensions of all his ways and dealings with his church and people? And as for his works in and about ourselves, O! what unsuitable, erroneous, false, ungodly, absurd, and abominable opinions do we with greediness drink in and foster; yea, feed upon with delight? Who is able to recount all the errors and mistakes which our heart by nature is ready to admit and foster with complacency? ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... and Chancellor of the Court, who was with him at Hamburg negotiating a new treaty. Salvius answered, that Grotius had received orders to conform to the Earl of Leicester's example; that it would be absurd that the Minister of such a King as yielded not the precedence to any other King, should yield it to a Minister; and, in fine, that the dignity of Cardinal was unknown ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... reply on the tip of her tongue, but glancing at Roger's face, thought better of it, and merely said, "My dear boy, don't be absurd!" ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... experience. We cannot fancy we are glad when we are not glad, or sorry when we are not sorry, or hopeful when in despair; and to pretend that we can possibly be conscious of willing when we are not willing, would be as absurd as to meet the cogito, ergo sum of Descartes, with the reply that, perhaps, we do not really think, but only ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... transact with her master—she supposed by appointment—shewed him into M. Derville's private business-rooms, and left him there. Bertrand seated himself, fell asleep after awhile, woke up about ten o'clock considerably sobered, and quite alive to the absurd impropriety of the application he had tipsily determined on, and was about to leave the place, when M. Derville arrived. The ship-broker's surprise and anger at finding Hector Bertrand in his house were extreme, and his only reply to the intruder's stammering ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... two Propositions, "Some x are y" and "No x are not-y", do not "assert", necessarily involves the supposition that "All x are y" does not "assert", since it would be absurd to suppose that they assert, when combined, more than they do when ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... natural religion proves the first, by intimating the necessity of a providence guiding and governing the world, from the consequence of the wisdom, justice, prescience, and goodness of the Almighty Creator: for otherwise it would be absurd to think, that God should create a world, without any care or providence over it, in guiding the operations of nature, so as to preserve ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... but a shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because it is not possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change His plans. He produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by the instrumentality of the forces of nature, all of which are His forces. Our ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... a thing that he knew might happen any day, and which he had expected to happen for the last four or five years. It was nothing to him one way or another. Nothing could be more absurd than that a hearty and strong young man in the full tide of his life and with a good breakfast before him should receive a shock from that innocent little letter as if he had been a sentimental woman. But the fact is that he pushed his plate away with an exclamation of disgust and a feeling that ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... after midnight now. How long would it take them to find out that between eight and midnight you had not only never been near your mother, but could not prove an alibi of any sort? If you told the truth it would sound absurd. No one in their ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... girl," he persisted. "It's absurd! It's outrageous! Why people would—would hoot ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... reason and common-sense to bear upon the honest estimate and retrospect of the facts of his life, may be fully convinced of. These are, first, his own weakness. One main use of a wise retrospect is to teach us where we are weakest. What an absurd thing it would be if the inhabitants of a Dutch village were to let the sea come in at the same gap in the same dyke a dozen times! What an absurd thing it would be if a city were captured over and over again by assaults ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning, to suffer a man to keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret, without swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not, they will gather as much by his silence, as by his speech. As for equivocations, or oraculous speeches, they cannot hold out long. So that no man can be secret, except ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... compartment above sifted down a dry light with great power of lighting. It came into Alexander's mind, into that, too, of Ian.... How absurd was the human animal! All this saying the opposite left the truth intact. They were not strangers, each was quite securely seated in the other. Self-annihilation—self-oblivion!... All these farcical high horses!... Men went to see comedies and did ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather blind and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who did nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured fellow. But a complex and difficult process of internal development was taking place all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him and causing him ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Genoa to the Empire within four months after his solemn declaration to the Legislative Body, in which he pledged himself in the face of France and Europe not to seek any aggrandisement of territory. The pretext of a voluntary offer on the part of Genoa was too absurd to deceive any one. The rapid progress of Napoleon's ambition could not escape the observation of the Cabinet of Vienna, which hegan to allow increased symptoms of hostility. The change which was effected in the form of the Government of the Cisalpine Republic was likewise ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... constitution so contradictory to all the principles which govern mankind, can never be brought about, one should imagine, but by foreign conquest or native usurpations." Brit. Ant. p. 2.—Rousseau speaking of the same system, calls it, "That most iniquitous and absurd form of government, by which human nature was so shamefully degraded." Social compact, Page 164.——It would be easy to multiply authorities; but it must be needless, because as the original of this form of government was among savages, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... will shut herself up and speedily die of grief. He makes such vows as most men would make under such circumstances; he presses her hands ardently to his lips, bedews them with his tears, and moves the whole company to sympathy with his own agitation. The scene is absurd enough, or seems so to us dull people of phlegmatic habit. Yet Diderot, even for us, redeems it by the fine remark: "'Tis the effect of what is good and virtuous to leave a large assembly with only one thought and one soul. How all respect one ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... with such a companion to your heart's content. Such had been his belief until now, with a dozen words, Ted saw his father shatter the illusion. No, of course Mr. Laurie would never come to the shack. It had been absurd to think it for a moment. And even if he did, it would only be as a lofty and unapproachable spectator. Mr. Fernald's words were a subtly designed flattery intended to put him in good humor because he wanted something ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... of flame-berried holly, looked as though it had received a visitation from the fairies. A diminutive black leather violin case, encircled with a wreath of ground pine and tied with a huge red bow, leaned against one wheel of the magic vehicle, and the cunning chair with its absurd little arms and leather cushion was ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... other. "Mr. Errol said once," rejoined Miss Carmichael, "that there are two opposite natures, an old man and a new, in all human beings, as well as in those who are converted, and that no contradiction of the kind is too absurd for human nature." "Mistah Ehhol is quite right, my deah Miss Mahjohie, as all expehience attests. Bret Hahte has shewn it from a Califohnian standpoint. I have seen it in times of wanah and of peace, bad men, the bent of whose lives ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the pastry; and every one in that bar having now either accepted or refused his delicacies, the young man with the cream tarts led the way to another and similar establishment. The two commissionaires, who seemed to have grown accustomed to their absurd employment, followed immediately after; and the Prince and the Colonel brought up the rear, arm-in-arm, and smiling to each other as they went. In this order the company visited two other taverns, where scenes were enacted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perfectly absurd," said Mrs Ledwith. "You couldn't be left to take care of yourself. And if you could, how it would look! No; of course you must ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... with a little smile. "Do you think I'm afraid of you?" she asked as if it were too absurd to be thought of. She unhitched and mounted her pony but ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... to say, would have guessed it. With his long scrag neck and great moons of spectacles, which he had now drawn down, the better to study me, he suggested an absurd combination of the vulture and ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... intelligent child could have enlightened a stranger as to the name of the stout gentleman indicated. He was one of the first citizens of the community, if wealth, probity, and long residence may be said to count for anything. And his name, which it were absurd longer to conceal, was Amzi Montgomery, or, to particularize, Amzi Montgomery III. As both his father and his grandfather who had borne the same name slept peacefully in Greenlawn, it is unnecessary ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... enjoyment are activities, moods, or phases of life; and it follows that before this specific interest can be safely or adequately satisfied, it is necessary to fulfil the general conditions that underlie the satisfaction of all interests. It is as absurd to speak of art for art's sake as it is to speak of drinking for drinking's sake, if you mean that this interest is entitled to entirely free play. Art, like all other interests, can flourish only in a sound and ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... she had left at Craddock station by accident, and come down. Was there anyone who could go and fetch her handbag? It was such a nuisance; she laid it down for a moment to get at her ticket—she never could find her pocket, dressmakers always hid them in such an absurd way; could Hadria recommend any dressmaker who did not hide pockets? Wasn't it tiresome? She had no time-table, and so she had gone to the station that morning and waited till a Craddock train started, and by this arrangement it had come to pass that ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... all things," said I. "Woman's-Rights Conventions are a protest against many former absurd, unreasonable ideas,—the mere physical and culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with puddings and shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast upon the sex. Many of the women connected with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... receive certain sums annually in case they would settle down and commence farming, and that they should be allowed to select their own locality within certain prescribed limits. The making of such offers to tribes of savages half subdued is absurd. The wisdom of this assertion has since been clearly shown, for hardly one article contained in the treaty there made has been carried out. The actions of those Apaches present at the council were trifling in the extreme, notwithstanding which, they were presented with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the same box," Mary said shortly, "and you, of all people, ought simply to dance till your feet drop off. Let me see your card—What? no dances at all down? Oh, that's absurd—come with me." And before poor Eloquent could protest he found himself being whisked from one young lady to another, and his card was full all except twelve, fourteen, and the second extra—which ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... like to enlarge a little upon the subject of literary property, on which he has touched, in my opinion, with proper feeling. Certainly I am a party concerned. I should like to say something upon the absurd purposes of the Literary Fund, with its despicable ostentation of patronage, and to build a sort of National Academy in the air, in the hope that Canning might one day lay its foundation in a more solid manner. [Footnote: Canning had his own opinion on the subject. When the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... I replied. 'On the contrary, I lead a very retired life. It would be absurd to come to Rome to see society, and people everywhere the same. I prefer to visit what is peculiarly her own—her monuments ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... "what else could I do? It would have been absurd to keep my name. Any day it might have been recognized. Don't ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... winters murder the bob white, wholesale, they should not have a chance to recover themselves! Could human beings possibly assume a more absurd attitude? ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Sheila had very keen and sensitive notions about the duties that people ought to perform, about the dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of a man, and so forth. These notions you may regard as romantic and absurd, if you like, but you might as well try to change the color of her eyes as attempt to alter any of her beliefs in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... things that always greatly afflict me in the idea of a new country," said Basil, as they loitered slowly through the grounds of the convent toward the gate. "Of course, it's absurd to think of men as other than men, as having changed their natures with their skies; but a new land always does seem at first thoughts like a new chance afforded the race for goodness and happiness, for health and life. So I grieve for the earliest dead at Plymouth more than for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the men of that time we think sometimes we feel the beating of a woman's heart; they have exquisite sentiments, delightful inspirations, with absurd terrors, fantastic angers, infernal cruelties. Weakness and fear often make them insincere; they have the idea of the grand, the beautiful, the ugly, but that of order is wanting; they fast or feast; ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... is very poor. I am sure my best frocks always were five or six hundred francs each, and I dare say hotels run away with money. But for the moment I am rich, as Mr. Barton kindly advanced some of my legacy to me; and, oh, I am going to see life! and it is absurd to be sad! I shall go to bed, and ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... Romanes reviewed "Unconscious Memory" in Nature (January 27, 1881) the notion of a "race-memory," to use his own words, was still so new to him that he declared it "simply absurd" to suppose that it could "possibly be fraught with any benefit to science," and with him too it was Professor Hering who had anticipated me in the ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... creaking and the heavy boom came surging over, Jim and I, alone as it were, to leeward of the mainsail, clasped each other's hands and exchanged the last hurried words. My heart was freed from that dull resentment which had existed side by side with interest in his fate. The absurd chatter of the half-caste had given more reality to the miserable dangers of his path than Stein's careful statements. On that occasion the sort of formality that had been always present in our intercourse vanished from our speech; I believe I called ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... penny-book manufacturers, that 'tis absolutely necessary that the good boys and girls should be rewarded and the naughty ones punished. Yet I think, where there is much tribulation, 'tis fitter it should be the consequence rather than the cause of misconduct or frailty. You'll say that rule is absurd, inasmuch as it is not observed in human life: that I allow, but we know the inflictions of Providence are for wise purposes, therefore our reason willingly submits to them. But as the only good purpose of a book is to inculcate morality and convey some lesson of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... near him, and he was uncomfortably aware of the little start of surprise with which she burst upon each new arrival, In the old and rather staid surroundings of the club she looked out of place—oriental, extravagant, absurd. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... equally absurd to draw an unfavourable inference from every inarticulate cry; because, in most instances, these vociferating sounds imply the effort which children necessarily make to display the strength of their lungs, and exercise the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... apocryphal circumstances, in most cases sanctioned by the Church authorities of the time. However doubtful or repulsive some of these scenes and incidents, we cannot call them absolutely unmeaning or absurd; on the contrary, what was supposed grew up very naturally, in the vivid and excited imaginations of the people, out of what was recorded; nor did they distinguish accurately between what they were allowed and what they were commanded to believe. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... operate the mystery of Transubstantiation. I know there are certain occultists who claim to have been consecrated by the Lord, as Saint Paul was, and who think they can consummate a veritable sacrifice just like a real priest. Absurd! But even in default of real masses with ordained celebrants, the people possessed by the mania of sacrilege do none the less realize the sacred stupration of which ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Semite. That which is not congenital is probably not indelible, so that the less favoured races, placed under happier circumstances, may in time be brought to the level of the more favoured, and nothing warrants inhuman pride of race. But it is surely absurd to deny that peculiarities of race, when formed, are important factors in history. Mr. Buckle, who is most severe upon the extravagances of the race theory, himself runs into extravagances not less manifest in a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Commander-in-chief of the British army, in the harshness of spirit which had been excited while governor of Massachusetts, not only threw all his prisoners into a common jail, but rejected every proposition for an exchange of them. When the command devolved on Sir William Howe, this absurd system was abandoned, and an exchange[103] took place to a considerable extent. But the Americans had not made a sufficient number of prisoners to relieve all their citizens, and many of them still remained in confinement. Representations were continually ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... at once too absurd and too grave to be permitted to continue. "Sockless" Jerry Simpson now counseled the Populists to let the decision go to the courts. The judges, to be sure, were Republican; but Simpson, ever resourceful, argued that if they decided against the Populists, the house and senate could ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... struggle for supremacy between two races; as an astronomical statement referring to the relative positions of the planet Venus and the Moon; as a conflict between Christianity, introduced by Saint Thomas, and the native heathenism; and as having other meanings not less unsatisfactory or absurd. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... charges against the free people of color, as unmerited, wanton and untrue. It would be absurd to pretend, that, as a class, they maintain a high character: it would be equally foolish to deny, that intemperance, indolence and crime prevail among them to a mournful extent. But I do not hesitate to assert, from an intimate acquaintance with their condition, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... possession of fiefs, of ecclesiastical dignitaries, and of a small number of municipal officers. It claimed to elect the deputies to the States-general according to the ancient usages. Mirabeau's common sense, as well as his great and puissant genius, revolted against the absurd theories of the privileged: he overwhelmed them with his terrible eloquence, whilst adjuring them to renounce their abuseful and obsolete rights; he scared them by his forceful and striking hideousness. "Generous friends of peace," said he, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this series did not have such absurd sensitiveness about the value of space and such pitifully small ideas about the nobility of novels, I should like to write at least twenty pages about "Chicot." There are books that none of us ever put down in our lists of great books, and yet which we think more of and delight more in than ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... everywhere—sticky London mud—and over everything the pall of drizzle and fog. Of course there were several long and tiresome errands to be done—there always were on days like this—and Sara was sent out again and again, until her shabby clothes were damp through. The absurd old feathers on her forlorn hat were more draggled and absurd than ever, and her downtrodden shoes were so wet that they could not hold any more water. Added to this, she had been deprived of her dinner, because Miss Minchin had chosen to punish her. She was so ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Gamba's 'Travels in South Russia.' He was Consul of France, but writes like a Russian. He talks of restoring the commercial communication with Asia by the Phasis, Caspian, and Oxus. All this is absurd. Unless indeed the Russians, after occupying China, turn the Oxus into its old course, and thus enable themselves to carry goods by water carriage to the foot of the Himalaya, or rather ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... man Kant and the man James. Only in their capacity as professors they were compelled to justify rationally an attitude in itself so little rational. Which does not mean, of course, that the attitude is absurd. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... their eyes, or they were disconcerted at the American's change in their plans; at any rate their laboriously ascending target did not drop. Up he climbed. Jacqueline wondered why he still clung to the jacket over his arm, as people will cling to absurd things ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the world has broadened somewhat, I think an addition to the trio is demanded. A man may be faithful, hopeful, and charitable, and yet leave much to be desired. He may be useful, no doubt, with that equipment, but he may also be both tiresome and even absurd. The fourth quality that I should like to see raised to the highest rank among the Christian graces is the Grace ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... Declarer scoring a game he would not otherwise obtain, is, as a rule, inexcusable. By this is not meant that a bid of two or three Hearts or Royals, or of three or four Clubs or Diamonds, should never be doubled. That would be absurd doctrine, but such a double should never be made with the chances even, or nearly even. An experienced bidder will not risk presenting the adversaries with the game and a bonus unless reasonably sure ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... thus not only made a correct guess about the number of the satellites, but he actually stated the periodic time with considerable accuracy! We do not know what can have suggested the latter guess. A few years ago any astronomer reading the voyage to Laputa would have said this was absurd. There might be two satellites to Mars, no doubt; but to say that one of them revolves in ten hours would be to assert what no one could believe. Yet the truth has been ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... is pretty generally allowed by the competent. It has, fortunately, ceased to be fashionable to regard the dispute about Universals as proper only to amuse childhood or beguile dotage, and the quarrels of Scotists and Thomists as mere reductions of barren logomachy to the flatly absurd. Still, this importance, though real, though great, is not directly literary. The claim which makes it impossible to pass them over here is that excellently put in the two passages from Condorcet and Hamilton which ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... and protect a revived State government, constructed in whole or in preponderating part from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected, is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the sound; and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... ask, What was the ethical or spiritual truth that illumined their souls and finds concrete expression and illustration through these primitive stories? To discuss the literal historicity of the story of the Garden of Eden is as absurd as to seek to discover who was the sower who went forth to sow or the Samaritan who went down to Jericho. Even, if no member of the despised Samaritan race ever followed in the footsteps of an hypocritical Levite along the rocky road to Jericho and succored a needy human being, the vital ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... I give credit to my opponents in Parliament for that desire quite as readily as I do to my colleagues or to myself. The idea that political virtue is all on one side is both mischievous and absurd. We allow ourselves to talk in that way because indignation, scorn, and sometimes, I fear, vituperation, are the fuel with which the necessary heat of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... confess I find it hard to write with any patience and civility of this argument that humanity will not work except for greed or need of money and only in proportion to the getting. It is so patently absurd. I suppose the reasonable Anti-Socialist will hardly maintain it seriously with that crudity. He will qualify. He will say that although it may be true that good work is always done for the interest of the doing or ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... make them hear down there, and it's no fault of ours if their voices reach us occasionally. And it does seem to me, PODBURY, that, in a matter which may be of vital importance to me—to us both—it would be absurd to be over-scrupulous. But of course you will please yourself. I intend ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... accessible an approach to Page as had his partners. He never treated an idea, even a grotesque one, with contempt; he always had time to discuss it, to argue it out, and no one ever left his presence thinking that he had made an absurd proposal. Thus Page had a profound respect for a human being simply because he was a human being; the mere fact that a man, woman, or child lived and breathed, had his virtues and his failings, constituted in Page's imagination a tremendous fact. He ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... post Dawson's lecture, which seems to me interesting, but with nothing new. I think he must be rather conceited, with his "If Dr. Hooker had known this and that, he would have said so and so." It seems to me absurd in Dawson assuming that North America was under sea during the whole Glacial period. Certainly Greenland is a most curious and difficult problem. But as for the Leguminosae, the case, my dear fellow, is as plain as a pike-staff, as the seeds are so very quickly killed by the sea-water. Seriously, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... it, and a cable all to myself and the only man on the spot, and nothing to say. I'd just like to know how long that German idiot intends to wait before he begins shelling this town and killing people. He has put me in a most absurd position." ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... age of dissimulation and of reckless political gambling, that at the very moment when Henry's marriage with Marie de Medicis was already arranged, and when that princess was soon expected in Lyons, a cabal at the king's court was busy with absurd projects to marry their sovereign to the Infanta of Spain. It is true that the Infanta was already the wife of the cardinal-archduke, but it was thought possible—for reasons divulged through the indiscretions ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the robbery, of course not; that would be absurd! But has it been clearly proven that there is a robbery? Might it not have been—might ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... Is it not absurd for such a barbarian as I am to discuss these gospel-makers of literature with you? But it is much more remarkable that one or any of them should excite my admiration and respect. Really, if you must know it, Mr. Towers, this is where I grow humble-minded in ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... against the railway was not brought to me, as it was well known that I would not sign it; but some little girls undertook my case; and the effect of their parroting of Mr. Wordsworth, about "ourselves" and "the common people" who intrude upon us, was as sad as it was absurd. The whole matter ended rather remarkably. When all were gone but Mrs. Wordsworth, and she was blind, a friend who was as a daughter to her remarked, one summer day, that there were some boys on the Mount in the garden. "Ah!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... rode away, but Sancho was held by the innkeeper for payment. And calling a number of rude fellows the innkeeper took his revenge upon the crazy knight by the mistreatment of Sancho Panza who was tossed in a blanket until the company could toss him no more for weariness and the laughter that his absurd plight awoke ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Charles reigns are contributed by my provinces. Torrents of ducats inundate your treasury, and yet—yet—it's enough to drive one mad!—in spite of this and the lamentable parsimony with which the Emperor deprives himself of both great and small pleasures—it is simply absurd!—the story is always: The finances are at the lowest ebb—save and save again. To protect the plumes in his new cap from being injured by the rain, the sovereign of half the world ordered an old hat to be brought, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rice, can migrate only to warm latitudes. They cannot support our cold, but we can support the countervailing hardships of their heat. This cause alone would have weatherbound the Mussulmans for ever within the Pyrenean cloisters. Mussulmans in cold latitudes look as blue and as absurd as sailors on horseback. Apart from which cause, we see that the fine old Visigothic races in Spain found them full employment up to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, which reign first created a kingdom of Spain; in that reign the whole fabric of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Hongkong," said he, "never venture into the sun without an umbrella, and never go snipe shooting without top boots pulled up well over the thighs." As no snipe have ever been seen on Hongkong, the last bit of counsel was as absurd as the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... of Peterborough—was reviled for not being positive for her damnation. And besides this boldness of their becoming Gods, so far as to set limits to His mercies, there was not only one Martin Mar-Prelate,[22] but other venomous books daily printed and dispersed; books that were so absurd and scurrilous, that the graver Divines disdained them an answer. And yet these were grown into high esteem with the common people, till Tom Nash[23] appeared against them all, who was a man of a sharp wit, and the master of a scoffing, satirical, merry ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... couple like Maria and Tom Price. It comes over her that she has taken it largely from THEM (and she HAS) that we're living in immorality, Lorraine and I: ah THEN, poor dear little Mother—! Upon my word I believe I'd go on lying low to this positive pitch of grovelling—and Lorraine, charming, absurd creature, would back me up in it too—in order precisely to save Mother such a revulsion. It will be really more trouble than it will be worth to her; since it isn't as if our relation weren't, of its kind, just as we are, about as "dear" ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... in such absurd superstitions?" enquired Madame d'Aragona with a contemptuous curl of her heavy lips. "Monsieur de Saracinesca, will you not sit down? You make ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford |
