"Ludicrously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possible that, as old Jackie Deeds said, God Almighty had His jokes too, jokes at the expense of His own creation? That in cynical abuse of human impotence, as a wanton pastime, He sent human beings forth into the world thus ludicrously defective? The thought was unformulated. It amounted hardly to a thought indeed,—was but a blind terror of insecurity, which, coursing through the boy's mind, filled him with agonised and angry pity towards all disgraced fellow-beings, all enslaved and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... an uneasy laugh.] You're the red rag, Duke. This spirit of revolt in her—it's ludicrously extravagant; but it will die out in time, when she has become used to being happy and cared for—[partly to himself, with clenched ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... from the portieres to the safe, and the flashlight played again—this time reflecting back from the glistening nickelled knobs. Jimmie Dale's lips tightened. It was a small safe, almost ludicrously small; but to such height as the art of safe design had been carried, that design was embodied ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of wires, bringing you a jangle of sounds far different from what you desire—all these and a multiplicity of other things that will suggest themselves to every user of the telephone may be imagined as being almost ludicrously paralleled in the operations of the nervous mechanism. And that parallel, startling as it may seem, is not a mere futile imagining. It is sustained and rendered plausible by a sound substratum of knowledge of the anatomical conditions under which the central ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the girl, and she spoke as simply and soberly as Bruce himself, though her own warmth surprised her, "I see you can't go. But was that all you meant"—her voice grew ludicrously disappointed—"by a person's having a choice only of how he will do a thing? There's nothing to that but making the best ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... Gommecourt Wood and near Ferme Sans Nom. It was far and away their biggest show up to date, but the number of rounds fired by the Divisional Artillery in the three hottest days was only 5,000, an amount which, by present-day standards, appears ludicrously small. Meanwhile, two platoons of 5th Sussex, cursing the fortune which had brought them up again to the trenches, were packed into the battalion sector to look after our belongings, if ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... had so jealously guarded is of rather an amazing character, asserts that it is "not without example in the records of the fierce severity which monkish superstition has sometimes inflicted on mankind." But the explanation falls so ludicrously short of our expectations and is so improbable a possibility, that Mrs. Radcliffe would have been wise not to defraud Catherine Morland and other readers of the pleasure of guessing aright. Few enjoy being baffled and thwarted in so unexpected a ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of the Time: a Dictionary of Contemporaries. Eleventh edition. Revised by Thompson Cooper. London, 1884. Sm. 8vo. A volume of 1168 pages should contain a fair representation of the men of the day, and yet it is ludicrously incomplete. The literary side is as much overdone as the scientific side is neglected. This is not the place to make a list of shortcomings, but it will probably astonish most of our readers to learn that such eminent Men of the Time as Sir Frederick Abel, Sir Frederick Bramwell, and the ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... stout man had returned to his newspaper, Patty found Gershom standing beside the perambulator, with the black-eyed baby in his arms. He was gazing gravely over the round bald head, and his face wore a funereal expression which contrasted ludicrously with the clucking sounds he was making to the attentive and interested baby. When Patty joined him he put the child back into the carriage, carefully tucking the crocheted robe about the tiny shoulders. "I kind ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... was proposed, for example, to substitute a profession of belief in the Bible for a subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles. But the House of Commons sensibly refused to expose itself by venturing upon any theological innovations. A body more ludicrously incompetent could hardly have ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... like the dream presented to my mind when under the influence of the night-mare. This is most ludicrously expressed.' C. Ll[oyd] ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... floor by the Mistress, Laddie had crossed to where the Master stood. The man, glancing down, met the puppy's gaze. For an instant he scowled at the miniature watchdog, so ludicrously different from the ferocious brute he had expected. Then,—for some queer reason,—he stooped and ran his hand roughly over the tawny coat, letting it rest at last on the shapely head that did not flinch or ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... servants were diminutive, and ludicrously out of proportion with the enormous horses of the equipage, and had sharp, sallow features, and small, restless fiery eyes, and faces of cunning and malice that chilled the children. The little coachman was scowling and showing his ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... at that time was pitifully small and ludicrously prescriptive, but its shelves held a few of the fine old classics, Scott, Dickens and Thackeray—the kind of books which can always be had in sets at very low prices—and in nosing about among these I fell, one day, upon ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... many a year. I prided myself upon my nursery reputation for stoicism, which I should lose if my voice faltered. I was beginning to doubt my ability to get calmly through the next page, when the old lady exclaimed, in such a truly yet ludicrously indignant tone, "Dretful creturs!" that I had a fair right to laugh while she wiped the tears off of her spectacles. The time gained placed me on a firmer footing, and I got safely through thereby. I enjoy Mr. Hawthorne's writings none the less now that ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Fly" was worn out years ago. (3) Either title alone is good; "The Holdup of No. 4" is preferable because of its definiteness. (4) "The Battle of the Black Cats" alone would pass, in spite of its hint of sensationalism; but the second part is of course ludicrously impossible. (5) "Fate" is too indefinite; the second title is cheap and old. (6) Either would do, though the first is somewhat vague, and "Curse" savors of sensationalism. (7) Either would do, though the first ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... to be gravely compromised in the Insurrection, but the number of British subjects engaged in it appears to have been ludicrously exaggerated:—not 20 have had cases made ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... schoolroom maid, and Miss Fennimore rose. No sooner was her back turned, than Bertha indulged in a tremendous writhing yawn, wriggling in her chair, and clenching both fat fists, as she threatened with each, at her governess's retreating figure, so ludicrously, that Phoebe smiled while she shook her head, and an explosive giggle came from Maria, causing the lady to turn and behold Miss Bertha demure as ever, and a look of disconsolate weariness fast settling down on each of the two young faces. The unbroken routine pressed heavily at those ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little old woman seized hold of an outlying sack and tried to lift it, a ludicrously impossible feat, at witnessing which a cripple leaner than his crutches laughed boisterously, saying, "Och, good luck to you, granny. You're makin' a great offer at it entirely. Is it often you do be liftin' up the Hill of Howth? More power ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... discovered, nay, insisted, that I had a taste for cards (this was clumsily worked in, but it was my fault, for in that I met him half-way and allowed him no chance of good acting). Hereupon I laid my head upon one side and simulated unholy wisdom, quoting odds and ends of poker talk, all ludicrously misapplied. My friend kept his countenance admirably, and well he might, for five minutes later we arrived, always by the purest of chance, at a place where we could play cards and also frivol with Louisiana State Lottery ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... and Ireland. A dozen were added to them from the pure well of Welsh undefiled, and mark the districts settled by Cambro-Britons. Out of our Bibles we got thirty-three Hebrew appellations, nearly all ludicrously inappropriate; and these we have been very fond of repeating. In California, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, and the Louisiana purchase, we bought our names along with the land. Fine old French and Spanish ones they are; some thirty of them names of Saints, all well-sounding and pleasant to the ear. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... condescension. I have known a dozen combinations spoilt by English commanders who in this way have combined extreme offensiveness with conscious affability; and I have watched their allies—Spaniards and Portuguese of the first nobility—raging inwardly, while ludicrously impotent to discover a peg on ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... not be supposed that, though their astronomical achievements have been grossly, even ludicrously, exaggerated by some popular writers, the Babylonians contributed nothing of value to the progress of the science. We may infer from such a tablet as that already quoted on page 320, when the equinox was observed ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... whenever you are asked to play deeper than you would, do not refuse it gravely and sententiously, alleging the folly of staking what would be very inconvenient to one to lose, against what one does not want to win; but parry those invitations ludicrously, 'et en badinant'. Say that, if you were sure to lose, you might possibly play, but that as you may as well win, you dread 'l'embarras des richesses', ever since you have seen what an encumbrance they were to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... abandoned to the greed of power and the greed of gain. They interfere with the projects of those venerable politicians who are continually appealing to the public to surrender, bit by bit, its humanity, its morality, its Christianity, for what are ludicrously misnamed practical advantages, and who slowly sap the moral vitality of a people through an insinuating appeal to their temporary interests. The heart of a nation may be eaten out by this process, without its losing any external signs of prosperity and strength; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... and taking him by the arm: "Andy, this thing will have to be fixed up. Come here; I want to talk to you." And he led him some paces aside, inside the boundary line, which seemed a ludicrously unnecessary precaution, seeing that there was no one within sight ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... as though intoxicated by its sudden freedom, raced away out of sight, covering eight or ten feet at a bound, its legs scurrying ludicrously in empty air ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... this petition. So much luxury which does not mean refinement; so much ostentatious expenditure which does not represent increased culture or pleasure or anything but a resolve to be on a level with somebody else; so much which is so ludicrously unlike the poor little shrimp of a man or woman that sits in the centre of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... There is something ludicrously tragic, as our politics are managed, in seeing an Administration compelled to print a campaign document (for such is General McClellan's Report in a double sense) directed against itself. Yet in the present ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... be made to prove anything; but I confess I should be curious to see the figures by which the theory of chance-coincidence could here be proved adequate to the facts. Whatever group of phenomena be selected, and whatever method of reckoning be adopted, probabilities are hopelessly and even ludicrously overpassed."[77] ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... unfolded on the desk, and, as she rose, said in a tone of ludicrously mingled petulance and elation, "You have conquered! But I shall ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... talked perhaps to me alone, was genuinely pathetic, for here, in Terence O'Malley, I thought to see the essential futility of all dreamers nakedly revealed. His vision was so fine, sincere, and noble; his difficulty in imparting it so painful; and its marriage with practical action so ludicrously impracticable. At any rate that combination of vision and action, called sometimes genius, which can shake the world, assuredly was not his. For his was no constructive mind; he was not "intellectual"; he saw, but with the heart; he could not build. To plan a new Utopia was ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... country, and nearly 300,000 were reported as armed, either with firelocks or pikes. Of this total, 110,000 alone were returned for Ulster; about 60,000 for Leinster, and the remainder from Connaught and Munster. A fund, ludicrously small, 1,400 pounds sterling, remained in the hands of the Executive, after all the outlay which had taken place, in procuring arms, in extending the union, and in defending prisoners arrested as members of the society. Lord Edward Fitzgerald ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... these islands love, but absolutely incompatible with license, or even lightness of life, controlling a thousand disorders rampant in societies where it does not exist; a power which, tyrannical as it is, and ludicrously tragical as are the sacrifices sometimes exacted by it, saves especially the artist class of England from those worst forms of irregularity which characterize the Bohemianism of foreign literary, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... population of New York has an aspect very different from that of London, or the large towns in England. One striking feature of it is formed by the number of blacks, many of whom are finely dressed: the females are ludicrously so, generally in white muslin, with artificial flowers and pink shoes. Mr. Fearon saw very few well-dressed white ladies; but this was a time of the year when most of them were absent at the springs of Balston and Saratoga, places of fashionable resort, about 200 miles ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... Midget, demurely, her simple straightforward gaze fixed on her teacher's face. This calm announcement of a fact also struck Miss Lawrence ludicrously, but she managed to preserve ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... other wing straight across the body, holds it there a moment, while it takes a last look in all directions. Then lifting its fingers slightly, it bends its head and wraps all in the full-spread web. It is most ludicrously like a tragedian, acting the death scene in "Julius Caesar," and it loses nothing in repetition; for each time the little animal thus draws its winding sheet about its body, one is forced to smile as he thinks of the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... way, I happened not to walk myself, which was most ludicrously noticed by Mr. Musgrave; who, while we were at tea, suddenly crossed the circle to come up ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... heightened by the fact that they were novelists and painters, poets and critics, sculptors and musicians. One man, with a refined and delicate face—a dramatic critic on a great San Francisco daily, she was told—introduced a feat which all the men tried and failed at most ludicrously. On the beach, at regular intervals, planks were placed as obstacles. Then the dramatic critic, on all fours, galloped along the sand for all the world like a horse, and for all the world like a horse taking hurdles ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of the various articles. A fine wether cost four rupees (8s.); eighteen fowls, a rupee (2s.); a fish, weighing several pounds, an anna (1.5d.); eight eggs, an anna; twenty oranges, two annas (3d.); a pound of fine bread, three beis (ld.); and yet, in spite of these ludicrously cheap prices, the captain charged each passenger three rupees (6s.) a-day for his board, which was not even passable! Many of the passengers made purchases here of eggs, new bread, and oranges, and the captain was actually not ashamed ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... a proprietor receives innumerable applications for the vacant office, often from persons ludicrously ignorant of its duties. Thus, some time ago a seeker of such an office accompanied his application—he was a retired army officer—by a sketch of a sort of watch-tower whence he proposed to watch the tenantry, and fire upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... their work; and the rippling rivers and singing birds would sing and flow again and again in many a young head bending carefully over its task. The excursion of the next year was on a grander scale: 250 started from Vauxhall Bridge, to go down the river to Herne Bay, which, though it may sound ludicrously Cockneyfied, was quite as much as the strength, and more than the stomachs of the little candlemakers could stand; yet very delightful, notwithstanding the qualmishness and face-playing of the majority. This year, they are all invited by the Bishop of Winchester to the brave old castle of Farnham—a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... feet. The sheriff's special deputy put his hands on the prisoner's shoulders and tried to force him down into his seat. The deputy was a little man, sandy, freckled, and frail, and his efforts, ludicrously eager, threw the court-room into a fit of unseemly laughter. The little man might as well have attempted to bend one of the oak columns ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... bent upon him a last disgusted glance and, looking ludicrously intellectual in her corded glasses, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the court, may be supposed to have been driven away by the unexampled success of the Beggars' Opera. This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury-lane, and rejected; it being then carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... country with real abandonment to imagination. It became a visioned loophole of escape. She rose and clasped a shawl over her night-dress to ward off chillness, and sitting to the table again, could not produce a word. The lines she had written were condemned: they were ludicrously inefficient. The letter was torn to pieces. She stood ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... very kind to him, and proposed to get Pen a commission in the Foot Guards. Pen's heart leaped at this: he had been to hear the band at St. James's play on a Sunday, when he went out to his uncle. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of the fourth form, who used to wear a jacket and trousers so ludicrously tight, that the elder boys could not forbear using him in the quality of a butt or 'cockshy'—he had seen this very Ricketts arrayed in crimson and gold, with an immense bear-skin cap on his head, staggering under the colours of the regiment. Tom had ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in many respects as little the method of nature, that is to say it gave as little play for the spontaneous working and growth of the forces of nature in the youth's breast, as that regimen of the cloister which he so profoundly abhorred. Partly this was the result of a ludicrously shallow psychology. He repeats again and again that self-love is the one quality in the youthful embryo of character, from which you have to work. From this, he says, springs the desire of possessing pleasure ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... charm. The reader feels the author's joy in close analysis, and his sensitive discriminations. In 'Outre-Mer,' especially interesting to Americans as a study of the United States, which he visited in 1894, he shows the same receptivity to new feelings and new ideas. The book is often ludicrously inaccurate, and fundamentally incomplete in that it ignores the great middle class of our people, yet it is full of suggestive comments ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... The old lady, naturally strong-minded, was nevertheless frail and fading; she was notoriously subject to that confusion of ideas, or, to say the least, of speech, to which age and garrulity are liable. The slight, the very slight, confusion apparent in these expressions is manifest, and is ludicrously easy of correction. 'Aye, aye,' quoth she, and it will be observed that no emendation whatever is necessary to be made in these two initiative remarks, 'Aye, aye! This lantern was carried by my forefather'—not fourth son, which is preposterous—'on the fifth of November. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... alone, father," put in Ned, ludicrously ready for the faintest opportunity either to put his father under obligation or to bring down Margaret. "I'll be frank with you. I've no reason to hide what's past and gone. She and Captain Falconer had a plan to make Washington a prisoner, by a night expedition from New York, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Aguecheek, the aspiring, lackadaisical, self-satisfied echo and sequel of Sir Toby, fitly serves the double purpose of a butt and a foil to the latter, at once drawing him out and setting him off. Ludicrously proud of the most petty, childish irregularities, which, however, his natural fatuity keeps him from acting, and barely suffers him to affect, on this point he reminds us of that impressive imbecility, Abraham Slender; yet not in such sort as to encroach at all on Slender's province. There can ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... have a somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had been called, "I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to deny it;—you have been eating beans." On their way home, the apprentice, admiring his master's ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... the seas, tugging at her tiller, eager as himself. She reminded him of the scuttling haste with which old Trumps, his pony, bustled along, head set for home; and he laughed merrily. The fuss and fury of the little thing contrasted so ludicrously with the majestic calm of the swan-lady sweeping ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... desert. There was a wave of the arm to Riley, and he responded by bringing his horse to a trot, then reining in close to the big man. At close hand he seemed even larger than from a distance, a burly figure with ludicrously inadequate support from the narrow-heeled riding boots. He looked sharply at Riley Sinclair, but his first speech was for ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... of the tide, the fishermen spend the months of their captivity. Their women live here all the year round, labouring incessantly in drying and salting the fish which have been taken by the men, or pounding prawns into blachan, that evil-smelling condiment which has been so ludicrously misnamed the Malayan Caviare. It needs all the violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds to even partially purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... lost amid the sound of the waters. Only the sea talked now, wildly, moodily; flying feathers of foam flecked the night. The boat took the waves laboriously and came down with shrill seething. She seemed ludicrously minute amid that vast unrest. The youth steered steadily; to Betty Dalrymple he seemed just going on anyhow, dashing toward a black blanket with nothing beyond. It was all very wonderful and awe-inspiring as well as somewhat fearsome. The waves had a cruel ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... further. Every laboratory should publish an annual statement setting forth plainly the number and kind of experiments, the objects aimed at, and most definitely the methods of conducting them. At present the public somewhat ludicrously but sincerely enough grossly exaggerates the amount and the character of this work, and by our foolish secrecy we feed the flame of their passionate error. As organized, systematic, and absolute frankness, besides self-benefit, would ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... government, and their usurpation of supreme authority which had been destroyed in England, was outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency. A king-highpriest, who dictated his supreme will to bishops and ministers as well as to courts and parliaments, was ludicrously employed in a foreign country in enforcing the superiority of the Church to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... This name, ludicrously enough, has been bestowed on the range of mountains separating Oregon and California, and also on a county in the latter State. The origin of this designation, as related to me by Mr. Anderson, was as follows. Mr. Archibald R. McLeod, a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, in ...
— Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon • George Gibbs
... muzzle caressed its owner's cheek. Undoubtedly this attention was meant for a kiss, and was as daintily conferred as any woman's favor. It brought a reward in a lump of sugar. There followed an exhibition of equine delight; the mare's lips twitched, her nose wrinkled ludicrously, she stretched her neck and tossed her head as the sweetness tickled her palate. Even the nervous switching of her tail was eloquent of pleasure. Meanwhile the owner showed his white ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... acquaintance of Mignet, cultivated literature rather than the law, and won a prize for a dissertation on Vauvenargues. Called to the bar at the age of twenty-three, he set off for Paris in the company of Mignet. His prospects did not seem brilliant, and his almost ludicrously squat figure and plain face were not recommendations to Parisian society. His industry and belief in himself were, however, unbounded, and an introduction to Lafitte, of the Constitutionnel, then the leading organ of the French liberals, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... but without success. As Judge Lindley remarked in his confidential report, the sole arguments in favour of Daniel were provocation and his previous high character; and these were no sort of an argument. The provocation was utterly inadequate, and the previous high character was quite too ludicrously beside the point. So once more the Marquis's humane instincts were routed and he ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Don Rafael against the man who had killed his brave comrade, Caldelas, there was something so ludicrously comic in the countenance of the ex-student—so much innocent simplicity in its expression—that the resentment of Don Rafael vanished upon the instant. Then, quick as a flash of lightning, came over him the remembrance ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... all right. Floyd engaged me for your loyal knight and true," announces Eugene, in a confident tone, bowing ludicrously low. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... onwards from Montrose, we had the Grampion hills in our view, and some good land around us, but void of trees and hedges. Dr. Johnson has said ludicrously, in his Journey, that the hedges were of stone[228]; for, instead of the verdant thorn to refresh the eye, we found the bare wall or dike intersecting the prospect. He observed, that it was wonderful to see a country so divested, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... belief, he proceeded to spin a yarn that as often as not was as unlike life as A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. His characters are inventions, not portraits. Even the dialects they speak—dialects which used to be enthusiastically spoken of as masterly achievements of realism—are ludicrously false to life, as a page of Mulvaney's or Ortheris's talk will quickly make clear to any one who knows the real thing. But with what humour the stories are told! Mr. Kipling does undoubtedly possess the genius of humour and energy. There are false ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... upon him as their leader, almost as their saviour, and he knew also that they were going to follow him without a murmur in the conviction that he knew ten-fold more than they knew. It occurred to him that his position was ludicrously false, but, anyhow, he was glad. Surely it would be a very easy thing to lead them to safety in the morning and he foresaw the credit which would come to him. He concluded that it was beneath his dignity as preserver to vouchsafe them many words. His business ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... unbeautiful residuum which might, without straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of the heaven she would find if, as begins to seem possible, she and the rest of us, have or are to have heavens to suit our respective tastes. But what would have to be taken out is often ludicrously incongruous with George Eliot, and taking it out would certainly ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... abject cowardice refused to cross to their assistance. The command of the army was then handed over to a ridiculous personage named Smythe, who issued proclamations so bombastic that they really must have come from an unsound mind, and then made a ludicrously abortive effort at invasion, which failed almost of its own accord. A British and Canadian force of less than 400 men was foiled in an assault on Ogdensburg, after a slight skirmish, by about 1,000 Americans under Brown; and with this ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... armistice affected the market. To Anthony this seemed almost unfair. In Mr. Carleton's salesman's Utopia the only reason prospective buyers ever gave for not purchasing stock was that they doubted it to be a promising investment. Obviously a man in that state was almost ludicrously easy game, to be brought down merely by the judicious application of the correct selling points. But these men—why, actually they weren't considering ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... annoyed me. "But do you find my hunting exploit so amusing?" I broke in,—"so well fitted for banter?" "By no means," he rejoined, "by no means, cousin mine; but you've no idea what a comical face such a whipper-snapper as you cuts, and how ludicrously he acts as well, when Providence for once in a while honours him by putting him in the way to meet with something out of the usual run of things. I once had a college friend who was a quiet, sober fellow, and always on good terms with himself. By accident he became entangled ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 'ave a shy!' said Liza, excitedly, at which the unlucky men had to pull out their coppers, while Sally and Liza made ludicrously bad ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... a blush of confusion to my cheek. A silly notion had induced me to don my full evening regalia, spike-tail coat and all. Nothing could have been more ludicrously incongruous than my appearance, I am sure, and I never felt ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... commands achieve so little. Very soon, when the troubles in Albania continue, as they certainly will, Mr. Lloyd George will see that he was misled.... But here it should be stated that while Italy persisted throughout in demanding the 1913 frontier (with the ludicrously inconsistent proviso that she herself should have the island of Saseno, which in 1913 she had demanded for independent Albania), and France raised no finger against her, the actual improvements of the frontier adopted were entirely due to Great Britain. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... said Grubb, mournfully twisting about his face most ludicrously, and trying at the same time to level his optics towards ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... in confounding Dati and Deodati; it has been done by Fenton and others: but that Dr. Symmons, in his Life of Milton (p. 133.), should transform La Tina into a wine-press, is ludicrously amusing. La Tina is the rustic mistress to whom the sonnets are supposed to be addressed; and every one knows that rusticale and contadinesca is that naive and pleasing rustic style in which the Florentine poets delighted, from the expressive nature of the patois of the Tuscan ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... acquaintances of my mother's, both had visited The Farm before I was born; and about General Smith, in particular, there had survived amongst the servants a remembrance which seemed to us (that is to them and to myself) ludicrously awful, though, at that time, the practice was common throughout our Indian possessions. He had a Hindoo servant with him; and this servant every night stretched himself along the "sill" or outer threshold of the door; so that he might have been trodden on by ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... avoid, if possible, treating this matter ludicrously, lest grave men and politicians, whom I know to be offended at a jest, may cry pish at it; but, in reality, might not a battle be as well decided by the greater number of broken heads, bloody noses, and black eyes, as by the greater heaps of mangled and murdered human bodies? Might not towns ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... fluorspar—first made and brought into fashion, we believe, by the late Mr. Mawe, of the Strand—are even more appreciated by our Gallic neighbours than by ourselves. We have been in society where the attention and admiration of a gallant French gentleman was ludicrously divided between the attractions of a lady's face and her satin-stone necklace. Some years since, the Duchess de Berri, it is said, purchased various ornaments of this description and material, to a considerable amount, which she wore, either upon, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... is that my dear girl's head was on my breast, and one arm flung across the pillow that supported my head. I have a dim recollection, too, of trying to smooth her hair, and finding my strength too feeble even for that. That is all, I think; except that we were ludicrously happy, of course—Tamsin smiling with moist eyes, while I lay still and let the joy of it trickle in my veins. I am extremely obliged to you, my dear young friend, for not laughing outright at this confession. It encourages me to add, for ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hat, and set himself in such a ludicrously woebegone attitude, that Miss Arnold had great difficulty in restraining herself from laughing outright. She managed, however, to keep a straight face, ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... the centre of the room, where she stood, gazing dumbly about. She was the scrub-woman you've seen in every hotel from San Francisco to Scituate. A shapeless, moist, blue calico mass. Her shoes turned up ludicrously at the toes, as do the shoes of one who crawls her way backward, crab-like, on hands and knees. Her hands were the shrivelled, unlovely members that bespeak long and daily immersion in dirty water. But even had these invariable marks of her trade been lacking, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... defects cause of complaint in a philosophical writer of the past generation. What struck me was his want of apprehension of the great features of science; his strange mistakes as to the merits of his scientific contemporaries; and his ludicrously erroneous notions about the part which some of the scientific doctrines current in his time were destined to play in the future. With these impressions in my mind, no one will be surprised if I acknowledge that, for these sixteen years, it has been a periodical ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Mr. S. Solomon. I thought it had a great intention, I thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly represented, to my mind, the dark children of the Egyptian bondage, and suggested the touching story. My newspaper says: "Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object;" and so good-by, Mr. Solomon. Are not most of our babies served so in life? and doesn't Mr. Robinson consider Mr. Brown's cherub an ugly, squalling ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sleeve. To sleeve silk means to divide or ravel out a thread of silk with the point of a needle till it becomes floss. (A.S. slefan, to cleavedivide.) This, I think, explains the 'sleeveless errand' in 'Troilus and Cressida' so inadequately, sometimes so ludicrously darkened by the commentators. Is not a 'sleeveless errand' one that cannot be unravelled, incomprehensible, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the "Sausage-Killer," who, appropriately enough, was ludicrously like a young butcher, with his red fat face and his cold blue eye, was very much alive ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... ingredients in the spell besides the accumulation of facts and a happy title. Many of their publications, perpetually appearing and constantly forgotten, were drawn up by persons of considerable acquirements, and were ludicrously mimetic of their prototype, even as to the size of the volume and the form of the page. What has become of these "Varieties of Literature," and "Delights of Literature," and "Delicacies of Literature," and "Relics of Literature,"—and the other Protean forms ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Spaniards, he is filled with sad forebodings, which the amusements fail to dispel. In the second act, Hernando Cortez appears, with soldiers. While the costumes of the indians were gay, and more or less attractive, those of these European warriors were ludicrously mongrel and unbecoming. The new-comers demanded that Montezuma acknowledge the authority of the King of Spain and the cross of Christ. Conversations, demands, replies, tableaus, sword-dances, etc., ensued. Finally, Montezuma and his warriors ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... with which women entwine their husbands is not love at all, but a nameless anxiety due to their sense of helplessness. Transpose the conditions of each and the same beseeching look so often seen in women's faces will be ludicrously mixed with the whiskers on the faces of their lords. The only ineradicable difference between men and women is gender. They are singularly alike in every other particular. Give a woman liberty, and she will go a man one better in license. Take a man's liberty from him, and he surpasses ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... of animated speech as he added: "In real life a man of any stability of judgment would be decidedly suspicious of the hero of a modern woman's novel if one should walk into his office, or, doubtless, he would observe this whimsical caricature with something of the amusement he would find in the ludicrously false comic Irishman of the vaudeville stage. This irreverent flight of fancy on our part, however, is yanking the strong man from his appropriate and supporting setting, where paste is given the glow of an authentic stone; in the sympathetic pages created by feminine intuition he ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... that it seemed even nearer. A human figure, but so disheveled, so fantastic, and yet so mean and puerile in its extravagance, that it seemed the outcome of a childish dream. It was a mounted figure, but so ludicrously disproportionate to the pony it bestrode, whose slim legs were stiffly buried in the dust in a breathless halt, that it might have been a straggler from some vulgar wandering circus. A tall hat, crownless ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... rewarded by finding a small eyelet hole in the side of the mattress. He took out his knife, opened the pipe cleaner, and pressed the narrow blade into the aperture. There was a click and two doors, ludicrously like the doors which deaden the volume of ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes left. For this apathy there were three causes. First: the almost surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill—first of the Forsytes to desert ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... made something out of our name if he had represented it. My Lord Graveairs would have done very well. Yes, you have a very pretty way, and would have made a very decent, grave speaker;" and here she began to imitate Esmond's way of carrying himself, and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see there was some likeness in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the art of fiction to excel. Let the question be asked, with as much gravity as is possible: What is the use of a critic who gravely assures us that Mr. S. R. Crockett 'has rivalled, if not surpassed, Sir Walter'? The statement is, of course, most lamentably and ludicrously absurd, but it is made more than once, or twice, or thrice, and it is quoted and advertised. It is not Mr. Crockett's fault that he is set on this ridiculous eminence, and his name is not cited here with any grain ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... hunter completes his proposal thus ludicrously, though emphatically pronounced, he brings his huge hand down upon his brawny breast with a slap like the crack of a ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... many readers, that perhaps Homer may furnish the sole exception to this sweeping assertion. Any but Homer is clearly and ludicrously below the level of the competition, but even Homer "with his tail on," (as the Scottish Highlanders say of then chieftains when belted by their ceremonial retinues,) musters nothing like the force which ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and then at me, as if mentally determining our respective claims to priority; and, mine at length prevailing—I know not on what occult principle—I was beckoned in. I presented my letter of introduction, which was graciously read; and though the nature of the business did strike me as ludicrously out of keeping with the place, and it did cost me some little trouble to suppress at one time a burst of laughter, that would, of course, have been prodigiously improper in the circumstances, I detailed to him in a few words my little plan, and handed him my copy ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of the question from an economic point of view has been ludicrously exaggerated on both sides. The original proposal would have in itself done far less harm than its opponents imagined and far less good than its supporters hoped. Yet to the extent of its influence it would have been a step backward. It would have been the rejection ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... allowance,' said she, 'to be made for him, that lost his son and heir—that would have been heir to all, and a fine youth that he doted upon. But,' continued the old woman, in whose mind the transitions from GREAT to little, from serious to trivial, were ludicrously abrupt, 'that was no reason why the old gentleman should scold me last time he was here, as he did, for as long as ever he could stand over me, only because I killed a mouse who was eating my cheese; and, before night, he beat a boy ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... been minutes during the last half-hour when, as he looked into Diane's face, it seemed to him that here at last was one as honest as air and as straightforward as light. But no experienced woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower. She must either avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing it. It took him a few minutes to perceive that Diane had chosen the latter course, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... heart. In him, those devoted members of the Society of Jesus, found neither a sympathizer nor a persecutor. A Christian Legislative Assembly, like that of Canada, of which Sir James Craig afterwards privately expressed an opinion so ludicrously high, could not be contaminated with the presence of a Jew. By a vote of twenty-one to five, it was resolved:—"That Ezekiel Hart, Esquire, professing the Jewish religion, cannot take a seat, nor sit, nor vote in this House." Ezekiel departed. The word "baruch," was on ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... character was, however, much more spruce in his appearance, and better dressed, than when in Frank Oldfield's service. There was an assumption of the fine gentleman about him, which made him look ludicrously contemptible, and had Frank not been roused to furious indignation at the sight of him, he could hardly have refrained from a violent outburst of merriment at the absurd airs and graces of his former servant. As it was, breathless with wrath, his eyes flashing, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... thought that Second Part should not have been written; why then did I—not for contradiction's sake, I am sure—so much prefer it? Old Hallam, in his History of Literature, resolved me, I believe, by saying that Cervantes, who began by making his Hero ludicrously crazy, fell in love with him, and in the second part tamed and tempered him down to the grand Gentleman he is: scarce ever originating a Delusion, though acting his part in it as a true Knight when led into it by others. {108b} A good deal however might ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... instant. Question with yourselves respecting any feeling that has taken strong possession of your mind, "Could this be sung by a master, and sung nobly, with a true melody and art?" Then it is a right feeling. Could it not be sung at all, or only sung ludicrously? It is a base one. And that is so in all the arts; so that with mathematical precision, subject to no error or exception, the art of a nation, so far as it exists, is an exponent of its ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... me. The men checked, sprawling over each other in the snow—ludicrously, if I had been seeing much humor in things—and it was then it struck me that I should have had an accident if I had bolted straight into a dark house, instead of delaying in the stable till Macartney's gang got tired of waiting for me and bundled out themselves to see where I was. But I only wheeled, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... bunker. But the unphilosophic gentleman, who is ignorant of, or tries to resist, these truths, feels that his bunkered stroke must be compensated for by the next one or never. What is the result? Recklessly, unscientifically, even ludicrously, he fires away at the ball in the bunker with a cleek or an iron or a mashie, striving his utmost to get length, when, with the frowning cliff of the bunker high in front of him and possibly even overhanging him, no length is possible. ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... same, the cabin-boy's words passed from mouth to mouth; a little chuckle was heard here and there; the men's faces became more and more ludicrously uneasy, and their suppressed laughter was on the point of bursting forth. Then the steersman was seen to nudge the ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the girl sought to make Aunt Agatha comprehend the curious facts that had come to light that morning beneath the trees. Quite in vain. That good lady refused flatly to absorb it, grew ludicrously plaintive and aggrieved and flew off at tearful tangents into complicated segments of family history from which it was possible to extricate only the most ridiculous of facts, chief among them the reiterated ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Gammon enjoyed anything more exquisitely than the scene which I have been describing. To a man of his practical sagacity in the affairs of life, and knowledge of human nature, nothing could appear more ludicrously contemptible than the conduct of poor Tag-rag. How differently are the minds of men constituted! How Gammon despised Tag-rag! And what opinion has the acute reader by ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of a sort of glass kettle, had somewhat classical in it, and reminded me of the recumbent figure in the Herculanean painting, who is drinking in the same manner. Simple as it may appear, this knack is not to be acquired without a long apprenticeship, and I was ludicrously reminded of my abortive efforts to master it by the sight of the party on the quay. It certainly is adapted for making the most of any liquid, and might have been adopted during such a scarcity of water as the Hanoverian consul informed us existed in Cette during ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... my heated head, undressed myself, and got into bed, considering what I should say to the police when I went next morning to communicate my suspicions. And it is worthy of remark, as well as somewhat ludicrously self-betraying, that no sooner did I mentally see myself in the presence of the police, and was thus forced to confront my suspicions with some appearance of evidence, than the whole fabric of my vision rattled to the ground. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... subsequently entered upon. His talents were at that time known only to a few intimates: there were peculiarities about him, which prevented him from being generally appreciated up to his deserts. His figure, to begin with, was almost ludicrously small. Then, in his anxiety to get rid of the Scottish accent, he had contracted an elocution intended to be English, but which struck every one as most affected and offensive. His manners were marked by levity, and his conversation ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... should not be able to find employment for them. I asked one of them, a very fine-looking mulatto, how long she had been married, and her age. She replied that she was thirty- four, and had been married twenty-one years! Their black faces and woolly hair contrasted most ludicrously with the white pillow-case. After sleeping for a time, I was awoke by a dissonance of sounds—groaning, straining, creaking, and the crash of waves and roar of winds. I dressed with difficulty, and, crawling to the window, beheld a cloudless sky, a thin, blue, stormy-looking mist, and waves ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... cliffs which oppose them. The clustering buildings of Bar Harbor appear like a child's playthings, or Nuremberg toys; the miniature vessels like sea gulls just alighted; the white tents of the Indian encampment ludicrously suggest a laundry with big "wash" hung out to dry; and the whole scene looks as if viewed through the large end of an opera glass. It is a peaceful and beautiful picture for memory to treasure and look back upon ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... not so ludicrously out of it after all in regard to the literary gentleman in the back parlour. Henry had hardly known what to expect; but certainly he had pictured no one so interesting as Ashton Gerard proved to be. For a dark den smelling strongly of whisky and water, and some slovenly creature of the under-world ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... beans or plaster, but to allow them to drop off, and sometimes, if a man, with patches on his head, is asked, what is the matter? he will answer, "I had a headache the day before yesterday." Many of the remedies used by the people of the country are ludicrously strange, but too disgusting to be mentioned. One of the least nasty is to kill and cut open two puppies and bind them on each side of a broken limb. Little hairless dogs are in great request to sleep ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... mirth, which was apparently excited at the idea of the sisterhood of Saint Bridget becoming attractive to any one by dint of their personal beauty, in which, as it happened, they were all notably, and almost ludicrously, deficient. The English knight, to whom the sisterhood were well known, felt also inclined to smile ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Plautus—there breathes throughout a purer and more poetical atmosphere than in all the other remains of the contemporary stage. The good-natured gods treated with gentle irony, the noble forms from the heroic world, and the ludicrously cowardly slaves present the most wonderful mutual contrasts; and, after the comical course of the plot, the birth of the son of the gods amidst thunder and lightning forms an almost grand concluding effect But this ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... closer and still closer, took the General's horse by the head, and finally almost by actual force compelled him to allow himself to be lifted into a blanket, held high up by twenty strong men; and thus he was borne up the steps, across the corridor, and into the Padre's room. It was a position ludicrously undignified in itself, but the General ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... certain people present to be exclusive. Arabella would have answered: "Lady Gosstre and her party cannot associate with you to your mutual pleasure and profit; and do you therefore blame her for not attempting what would fail ludicrously?" With herself, as she was not sorry to show, Lady Gosstre could associate. Cornelia had given up work to become a part of the Court. Adela made flying excursions over the lawn. Laura Tinley had the field below and Mr. Pericles to herself. That anxious gentleman consulted his watch from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at cards deeper than you would, refuse it ludicrously; tell them, "If you were sure to lose, you might possibly sit down; but that as fortune may be favourable, you dread the thought of having too much money, ever since you found what an incumbrance it was to poor Harlequin, and therefore you are resolved never to put yourself in ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... up. Neither Lelia nor Jacques combined the elements of lasting popularity with those of instant success; but they roused a stir and strife which created an impression of her as a writer systematically inimical to religion and marriage—an impression almost ludicrously at variance with facts, taking her fiction as a whole, but which has only recently begun to give way, in this country, to a juster estimate ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... succession of great periods. Louis XIV, though beautiful at its best, is of the three the most ornate and is characterised in its worst stage by the extremely bowed (cabriole) legs of the furniture, ludicrously suggestive of certain debauched courtiers who ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... said. Now you must promise to have dinner with grandmother and me at the hotel and you can come up to my room and rest." And be it said right here that Frances proved herself to be very much of a lady for not adding "and wash your face," for Judy's face was ludicrously dirty. "Grandmother said she thought she saw ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... As he watched him and his nose, like the magnified beak of a hen,—the nose of a man who loves to talk,—he tried a little to imagine those merry evenings spoken of by Aurora. The fellow looked almost ludicrously solemn at this moment. He took himself and his art right seriously, there could be no doubt of it. His face was a map of the emotions expressed by the music, and wore, besides, according to his conception of the part, the look of a great man unacclaimed ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... a little surprised at it himself. He had no idea she would back down instantly, nor indeed, though it were hammered into her, that she would own the game was up. The same recoil struck her and she ludicrously ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... master, looking ludicrously piebald after his ink bath, 'before resuming duties I wish to draw your attention to the crass foolishness of which our young friends Haddon and McKnight are guilty. You perceive that their ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... said Toby, snuffing and winking ludicrously. "Why shouldn't a cullud pusson hab de right to be honest, well as white folks? If you's gwine to tank anybody, ye better jes' tink and tank yersef! Who gib ol' Toby his freedom, an' den 'pose to pay him wages? ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... might have excelled in the poetical and historical character. So versatile is this faculty of genius, that its possessors are sometimes uncertain of the manner in which they shall treat their subject, whether gravely or ludicrously. When BREBOEUF, the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had completed the first book as it now appears, he at the same time composed a burlesque version, and sent both to the great arbiter of taste in that day, to decide which the poet should continue. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... a very large young man, with a fair moustache which looked almost flaxen against the deep tan of his face. This last, like the rest of him, was ludicrously typical of that race which has wandered farther than the Jews, and has hitherto managed, like them, to retain a few of its characteristics. The Anglo-Saxonism of this youth was almost aggressive. It lurked in the ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman |
