"Preposterous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sank. The hole had been there six months, and he had found nothing witty to say about it, and at first sight Mr. Cibber had done its business. And on such men he and his portrait were to attempt a preposterous delusion. Then there was Snarl, who wrote critiques on painting, and guided the national taste. The unlucky exhibitor was in a cold sweat. He led the way, like a ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... this with all possible gravity, but I thought I could see a twinkle at the corner of his eye. I smiled politely, as I did not want to contradict him, and, at the same time, did not wish him to believe that I swallowed his preposterous story. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... his journey. To his surprise, his hostess asked him to stop a moment. She said that he owed her a thousand pounds, solemnly declaring that he had borrowed that sum from her inn long years ago. The traveller was astonished greatly at this, as it seemed to him a preposterous demand. So fetching his trunk, he soon hid himself by drawing a ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... was admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying. After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her; and she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to listen to a proposal patiently; whistling to her dogs, in the ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... it too preposterous for caudal comment; eyes and ears and nose were stretched toward the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... this some absurd joke that Monsieur Lefevre was playing upon him? The idea of separating him from Grace upon their wedding day, to send him on an expedition, the object of which was to recover a lost snuff box! It seemed preposterous. In his anger he muttered an exclamation which attracted the attention of Vernet. He was, in fact, on the point of stopping the automobile, and going at once to the pension where Grace was waiting ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... a sort of outin', a kind of Beanfeast for Two, we took the notion, being stryngers to South Wyles, of droppin' in 'ere an' tippin' the 'Ow Do." He breathed hard, and rivulets of perspiration began to trickle down from under the preposterous cap, converting the dust that filled the haggard lines of his thin face into mud. "An' payin' our respects." His eye slewed appealingly at his companion, asking as plainly as an eye can, "What price that?" And the glance that shot back from ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... derived this preposterous idea of vicarious imprisonment from the story of "The Buttery and the Boudoir," which was now drawing near its conclusion, and gradually killing, or marrying off, its ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... existed before Shakspere, and that he was, as usual, simply working over a play already on the boards, should serve to dismiss such a wild hypothesis. And from every other point of view, the notion is equally preposterous. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... authority. Like Jupiter on Olympus, she has only to stretch out her hand and overthrow the united force of all her colonies with the chain to which she has bound their destinies. No one can doubt, that such an attempt would be preposterous at the present moment, nor would the most strenuous advocate for colonial independence, the most violent enemy to the supremacy of this country, dream of its immediate execution. Still let her not lull herself into a false security; let her not measure ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... that Ferdinand had signed it only because he never expected the voyage to be successful; and that now, when men were beginning to believe Americo's assertion that a whole continent lay off in the west, it was preposterous that one family should hope to be its governor and viceroy and to control its trade. No, Columbus could only go on reiterating that it was so written down in Granada, away back in ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... even in psychology, where the physiological method finally replaces them with brain states. Over and above these neglected properties of things there remain the purposive activities of thought. It is equally preposterous to deny them and to describe them in mechanical terms. It is plain, then, that natural science calculates upon the basis of only a fraction of the conditions that present themselves in actual experience. Its conclusions, therefore, though true so far as they go, and they may be abstractly ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... presumption to claim the possession of Peter's Chair and of the person of the Vicar of Christ! Test it, said the young man to himself, by the ancient Fathers and Councils that Dr. Jewel quoted so learnedly, and the preposterous claim crumbled to dust. Test it, yet again, by the finger of Providence; and God Himself proclaimed that the pretensions of the spiritual kingdom, of which the prisoner in the cell had bragged, are but a blasphemous ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... you are not meditating a preposterous marriage. Go back where you belong, make a proper ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... patience to answer the question: it was simply preposterous. Her hair was by many shades darker than her mother's hair; her eyes were of a different color. There was an exquisite tenderness and sincerity in their expression—made additionally beautiful, to my mind, ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... their admiration (Ancient Monuments, p. 272), as to say that, so far as fidelity is concerned, many of them (i.e., animal carvings) deserve to rank by the side of the best efforts of the artist naturalists in our own day—a statement which is simply preposterous. So far, in point of fact, is this from being true that an examination of the series of animal sculptures cannot fail to convince any one, who is even tolerably well acquainted with our common birds and animals, that it is simply impossible to recognize specific ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... ambassadors at Paris lessened their demands more than once, and appeared willing for some time to renew negotiations after their terms had been rejected. But in the end they still insisted on a claim which in point of equity was altogether preposterous, and rejected a compromise which would have put Henry in possession of the whole of Guienne and given him the hand of the French King's daughter Catharine with a marriage portion of eight hundred thousand crowns. Meanwhile Henry was making active ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... with insisting upon some seven discriminations which, even only forty years ago, would have appeared largely preposterous ...
— Progress and History • Various
... verses without very well understanding what metre is. Even if you write in a known and approved metre, the odds are, if you are not a metrist yourself, that you will not write harmonious verses; but to deal in new metres without considering what metre means and requires, is preposterous. What I would, with many wishes for success, prescribe to Tennyson,—indeed without it he can never be a poet in act,—is to write for the next two or three years in none but one or two well-known and strictly defined metres, such as the heroic couplet, the octave ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Claverhouse's engagement to Helen Graham. Jean would not admit to herself, even in her own room or in her own heart, that she was in love with Graham, and she was ready to say to herself that no marriage could be more preposterous than between a Cochrane and a Graham. It did not really matter to her whether he had been engaged or was going to be engaged to one Graham or twenty Grahams. She had never seen him till a few days ago, and very likely, having done all he wanted, he would never come to Paisley Castle ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... of what I had been taught all along and of what I was then seeing with my own eyes from the bishop's chair such a representation would have seemed preposterous and what was true of me was equally so of all present, rector, wardens, ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... of the time, overflowing as they were with free and republican ideas as far as regarded their own welfare, when it came to a question of extending the same to their Catholic fellow-men, if they would have admitted the term, scouted such a preposterous and ungodly idea. These latter were unworthy the enjoyment of such benefit. And thus the hoot of Protestant ascendancy, "Protestant liberty and right! " came up as war-cries to stifle out all efforts tending to extend even the most ordinary ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... withdrew, first cordially shaking hands. The French were convinced that when William the Elector fled, he had taken with him his money. That he should have entrusted it to another, and especially a Jew, seemed preposterous. Yet such was the case. William had fled, disguised as a civil engineer, carrying with him in his chaise an outfit of surveying-instruments. All of his money had been turned over to Mayer Anselm Rothschild. The many biographers place the sum anywhere from one to fifty million dollars. The ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... diligent practitioners stare, with unfeigned wonder, at the supposition, that the five hours per diem devoted to the piano and the easel had any other object than to accomplish the fingers? The idea of their influencing the head would be ridiculous! of their improving the heart, preposterous! Yet if both head and heart do not combine in these pursuits, how can the cultivators justify to themselves the devotion of time and labour to their acquisition: time and labour, in many cases, abstracted from the performance of present, or preparation ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... chaffing his valued adjutants, Bram Stoker and Loveday. H.J. Loveday, our dear stage manager, was, I think, as absolutely devoted to Henry as anyone except his fox-terrier, Fussie. Loveday's loyalty made him agree with everything that Henry said, however preposterous, and didn't Henry trade ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... as you see, but not willing," she answered, bridling up with a scornful air. "Very much the reverse indeed. The more I think over it the more outrageous and preposterous your behaviour seems. Where are we going? I insist upon knowing. I must have a plain categorical answer or I will not move an inch." Her dogged, determined air was belied by her dress and the obvious preparations ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... that it contains two of the most exquisitely Shakespearean verses ever vouchsafed to us by Shakespeare, and two of the most execrably euphuistic or dysphuistic lines ever inflicted on us by man. Upon the Sonnets such a preposterous pyramid of presumptuous commentary has long since been reared by the Cimmerian speculation and Boeotian "brain-sweat" of sciolists and scholiasts, that no modest man will hope and no wise man will desire to add to the structure ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as her actions, in spite of her sophistication, reflecting the artlessness of her companion. The damage that she had done, as I was afterwards to discover, was mainly by the force of suggestion. She assumed the absurd premises of modernity, drew her own preposterous conclusions and Jerry drank them in, absorbed them as he did all information, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... was irritatingly conscious of her presence—a presence which now had all the absurdity of her ridiculous love-experiences superadded to it. He tried to reason with himself that it was only a phase of frontier life, which ought to have amused him. But it did not. The intrusion of this preposterous girl seemed to disarrange the discipline of his life as well as of his school. The usual vague, far-off dreams in which he was in the habit of indulging during school-hours, dreams that were perhaps superinduced by the remoteness of his retreat ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... authorities who respectively took cognisance of the theocratic and of the civic life of the nation, and at the time when His life hung on the decision of the two, were the causes of His judicial sentence. The people who allege that Jesus never made the preposterous claims for Himself which Christians have made for Him, but was a simple Teacher of morality and lofty religion, have never fairly faced the simple question: 'For what, then, was He crucified?' It is easy for them to dilate on the hatred of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... I can see a distinction between being the father of a famous half-back and the father of a famous toreador or famous prize-fighter. I know that Leggatt and one or two others, to whom I ventured to expose my qualms on the way home, declared them preposterous, and that the game was magnificent discipline for both mind and body. Come to that, the vicissitudes of a matador are magnificent discipline for both mind and body. So are those of a gladiator. Yet I have my doubts whether Leggatt would like to be the father of either. Nevertheless, although he is ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... were not the only results of the mismanagement of the household; the waste, extravagance, and peculation that also flowed from it were immeasurable. There were preposterous perquisites and malpractices of every kind. It was, for instance, an ancient and immutable rule that a candle that had once been lighted should never be lighted again; what happened to the old candles, nobody knew. Again, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... to estimate that to dance upon air must necessarily prove to everybody a disgusting performance, but pre-eminently unpleasing to the main actor. Two weeks of safety till the Tranchemer sailed I therefore valued at a perhaps preposterous rate. To-night, as I have said, the ship lies at anchor ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... he glanced at me with a comical expression, as though I had said something preposterous. "You couldn't give it up if you wanted to. It will come to you by my will. I shall leave ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... there is to know. I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in the front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb lock to the door. Large sitting room on the right side, well furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those preposterous English window fasteners which a child could open. Behind there was nothing remarkable, save that the passage window could be reached from the top of the coach-house. I walked round it and examined it closely ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... thou sayest thou art righteous, but they are but vain words. Knowest thou not that thy zeal, which is the life of thy righteousness, is preposterous in many things. What else means thy madness, and the rage thereof, against men as good as thyself. True, thy being ignorant that they are good, may save thee from the commission of the sin that is unpardonable, but it will never keep thee from spot in God's sight, but will make both thee ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... on to state that to the primaeval civilization of America must be assigned a great and indefinite antiquity, leaving however no palpable monuments; but sending colonies to civilize China and Japan! is not this preposterous? where are the proofs either from traditions, languages, monuments or ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... village should present within its outmost circle the collection of peculiarities gathered here would be little less than marvellous. That they are found in so many American villages as to justify their being attributed to American villages in general is preposterous. Certainly, this picture does not daguerreotype New England, however it may be in New York,—and though New England is small and provincial and New York is large and cosmopolitan, still we respectfully submit that any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... his head with a certain alert interest. Perhaps he himself had doubted whether his wife would think him worth the money. There was a general flutter of good-natured gratulation, and it seemed at the moment only some preposterous mistake that Con Hite should put it into Persimmon Sneed's lean paw and close his ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... authentic mermaid was something more than a mere critic of our civilised conventions. She was that, too; she asked why people walked on the Leas "with little to talk about and nothing to look at, and bound not to do all sorts of natural things, and bound to do all sorts of preposterous things." But she was also the personification of "other dreams." She had "the quality of the open sky, of deep tangled places, of the flight of birds ... of the high sea." She represented to one man, at least, "the Great Outside." And, if we still find a repetition of the old statement in ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... have to thank his light-headed lordship for giving a spirited end to your assembly. Could you conceive how preposterous you and your friends looked sitting against the walls, mute as stockfish, and suggesting nothing but a Quaker's meeting, you would make us your lowest curtsy, and thank us kindly for having helped ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... I listened to such a preposterous proposition? No! Thank fortune I'm not a simpleton! I saw through the pretty scheme in a second. It's a vast iron speculation!—millions upon millions in it! But fool as I am I told him he could have half the iron property for thirty thousand—and if I only had him back here he couldn't touch it ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the dragoman rode up to Arta on their borrowed troop horses. The correspondent first went to the telegraph office and found there the usual number of despairing clerks. They were outraged when they found he was going to send messages and thought it preposterous that he insisted upon learning if there were any in the office for him. They had trouble enough with endless official communications without being hounded about private affairs by a confident young man in khaki. But Coleman at ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... antiquity ate was live flesh and not putrescence. Nor can it be admitted that the chances of fortune can have led at the first trial to success in a system of nourishment so full of pit-falls: fortuitous results are preposterous amid so many complications. Either the feeding is strictly methodical at the beginning, in conformity with the organic exigencies of the prey devoured, and the Wasp established her race; or else it was hesitating, without determined rules, and the Wasp left ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... have the same privileges. These conditions were on such a scale as no sovereign could readily approve. Columbus's lack of pedigree, and the fact also that he was a foreigner, made them seem the more preposterous; for although he might receive kindness and even friendship from some of the grand Spaniards with whom he associated, that friendship and kindness were given condescendingly and with a smile. He was delightful ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... came soon enough. It was the work of a wretched political adventurer, who, inflated by an overweening estimate of his own abilities and importance, had made a preposterous claim to two high political offices—the post of Minister to Austria, and Consul to Paris—and receiving no encouragement in either direction, had deliberately made up his mind to "remove" the President, as he termed it, in the foolish hope that his chances ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. . . . I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep—kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing. Returning home from exciting political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... called away on urgent business. That might pass easily enough, but mark what follows. He writes to his servants asking them to join him at once in some foreign town because he has let his house for two months, and the new tenant wishes to get in without delay. Did ever anybody hear anything so preposterous? Just as if a man would let a house in that break-neck fashion without giving his servants due warning. The thing is not ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... and other reasons he was in no haste to open the box, preferring rather to gloat over it and to think how he could spend the money to the greatest advantage. He had been paying his court to a girl as black as himself on a neighboring plantation; but he now regarded that affair as preposterous. ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... thought that she had discovered his preposterous passion, and reproached herself for being a cause of pain. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... abroad. My journey out there was a failure; both lads are swallowed up in the Australian bush, but I don't believe they are dead, and I am convinced that Alick will never come back without tidings of his cousin. Their affection for each other was absurd, preposterous, ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... replied the Doctor. 'Don't you know it's always somebody's birth-day? Did you never hear how many new performers enter on this - ha! ha! ha! - it's impossible to speak gravely of it - on this preposterous and ridiculous business ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... of serfdom as a result aimed at in the present Polish struggle, is not only rash but preposterous, and has no foundation except in a fixed purpose to direct ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... law-books say again and again that a blasphemous libel is punished, not because it throws obloquy on the deity—the protection of whom would be absurd— but because it tends to a breach of the peace. It is preposterous to say such a thing tends to a breach of the peace. If you want that you must go to the Salvation Army. They have a perfect right to their ideas—I have nothing to say about them; but their policy has led to actual breaches of the peace; and even in India, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... something quite different from what they had seen. Mr. Welles could not at all make out the expression which very passingly had flickered across her eyes with a smoke-like vagueness and rapidity. He had the queerest fancy that she looked somehow scared,—but of course that was preposterous. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... not purpose to defend myself," he said, coldly. "If you are bent upon filling your mind with such matters, go to Dr. Perrin. He will tell you that he, as a physician, knows that the charge against me is preposterous. He will tell you that even granting that the cause of the blindness is what Mrs. Abbott guesses, there are a thousand ways in which such an infection can be contracted, which are perfectly innocent, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the concerns, the admirable stoicism with which he received alarming news, his dry humour while they waited between messages—all were so unlike anything the telegraph-clerk had ever seen, or imagined, that the thing was like a preposterous dream. Even when, at last, a telegram came which the clerk vaguely felt was, somehow, like the fall of an empire, Mr. Vandewaters remained unmoved. Then he sent one more telegram, gave the clerk a pound, asked that the reply be sent to him as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... furious exclamation. "Absurd preposterous professor, surely you are not mad enough to believe the story this would-be thief ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... was a pony! Yes, a real pony! not bigger, however, than a good sized pointer dog, although his head was of most preposterous horse-like length. This equine Tom Thumb, was one of the mustangs, or wild horses of Sable Island, some little account of which here may not be uninteresting. But first let me say, in order not to tax the credulity ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... restore to you the power to inflict further injury upon our commerce? I am afraid not, monsieur," answered I. "Had you been a mere harmless trader, it might possibly have been different; but, as it is, the proposal is—pardon me for saying so—preposterous." ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... thank you," somewhat confusedly. "Just been trying to persuade Miss Liddell here to dispute this preposterous claim. I don't believe this man ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... same practical spirit. Their vaulted architecture demanded for the support of its enormous weights and for resistance to its disruptive thrusts, piers and buttresses of great mass. To construct these wholly of cut stone appeared preposterous and wasteful to the Roman. Italy abounds in clay, lime, and a volcanic product, pozzolana (from Puteoli or Pozzuoli, where it has always been obtained in large quantities), which makes an admirable hydraulic cement. With these materials it was ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... faithful adherent of Louis amidst all his distresses. But it was not easy to find any ground for disbanding a force which was too small to be formidable to any but traitors; and the pretext which was put forward was so preposterous that it could excite no feeling but that of amusement, if the object aimed at were not too serious and shocking for laughter. At Easter the dauphin had presented the mess of the regiment with a cake, one of the ornaments of which was a small white flag taken from among his own toys. Petion ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... vessel, Orellana succeeded in reaching the Island of Cubagua, whence he set sail for Spain. If the proverb "He who comes from a distance tells many lies" were not of much earlier date, one might have thought it had been coined for Orellana. He invented the most preposterous fables as to the wealth of the countries he had traversed; the inhabitants were so rich that the roofs of the temples were formed of plates of gold; an assertion which gave rise to the legend of El Dorado. Orellana had heard of the existence of a Republic ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... good taste, was followed with ceaseless vigilance. Excesses that would have startled the most thoughtless were pursued with restless activity; absurdities that drew forth a shout of ridicule were committed with provoking good humor. No freak seemed exuberant, no folly preposterous, no extremity extravagance. The joy of paternity, sinking deep into his nature, made every peculiarity more glaringly apparent. Money had been his idol, its accumulation the summit of his ambition; its reckless sacrifice in his daughter's honor appeared the only adequate expression of his love. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... astrologers "a perverse and preposterous generation of men, who profess to know future things, but in the meantime are altogether ignorant of past and present; and undertaking to tell all people most obscure and hidden secrets abroad, at the same time, know not what happens in their ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... shrill summons as he approached, and she heard the sound of steps hurrying to the spot. She was full of fear, apprehensive of treason and danger. The gentleman in the cocked hat was now close to her. He had long black hair, descending upon his shoulders, a pair of shaggy eyebrows, and a preposterous pair of black moustaches. She asked, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... immense services to the history of art one will gladly forgive these pleasantries; but it is deplorable when they are solemnly quoted as infallible. One author says: "... impossibile a guardare quel goffo e disgraziato San Lodovico senza sentire una stretta al cuore." This is preposterous. The statue has faults, but they do not spring from organic error. The Bishop is overweighted with his thick vestments, and his mitre is rather too broad for the head; the left hand, moreover, is big and Donatellesque. ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... your "elderly lady,"—that is, to current criticism, to the public. Like every elderly person, she holds fast to preconceived ideas, however preposterous they may be. For example, she is perpetually asserting that since my "Annals of a Sportsman" my works are weak, because, having lived abroad, I cannot know Russia. But this accusation can touch only what I have written since 1863; for until then—i.e., until ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... than the one prescribed; seeing that a few hours earlier in the day it is admired. It is the implied rebellion, therefore, that annoys. How little the cause of quarrel has to do with the dress itself, is seen in the fact that a century ago black clothes would have been thought preposterous for hours of recreation, and that a few years hence some now forbidden style may be nearer the requirements of Fashion than the present one. Thus the reformer explains that it is not against the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... The Three Thousand, wherever their several divisions were posted, were everywhere a prey to discord. Those who were implicated in deeds of violence, and whose fears could not sleep, protested hotly that to yield to the party in Piraeus were preposterous. Those on the other hand who had faith in their own innocence, argued in their own minds, and tried to convince their neighbours that they could well dispense with most of their present evils. "Why yield obedience to these Thirty?" they asked, "Why assign to ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... he could give was, that the young man was tipsy, and fell in consequence, and that he had nothing whatever to do with the matter. This answer would not be satisfactory to the gentleman who had brought the challenge. Still, it seemed too preposterous that he should allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel, against his will, by hair-brained young men who had lost the few wits they possessed by drinking. His own high sense of honour had never before been called in question—his gallantry ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... and almost savage ceremonies used at sea on crossing the equator have been so often described that a voyager, at this time of day, may be well excused for omitting any minute account of such wild proceedings. The whole affair, indeed, is preposterous in its conception, and, I must say, brutal in its execution. Notwithstanding all this, however, I have not only permitted it to go on in ships which I commanded, but have even encouraged it, and set it agoing, when the men themselves were in doubt. Its evil is transient ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... fool as well as your brisk man of sense, and so of the melancholick. I confess 'tis possible a fool may reveal himself by his Dress, in wearing something extravagantly singular and ridiculous, or in preposterous suiting of colours; but a decency of Habit (which is all that Men of best sense pretend to) may be acquired by custom and example, without putting the Person to a superfluous expence of wit for the contrivance; ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... of an unrelieved diet of bannock and beans," said Stonor, with a carelessness so apparent, they ought to have been warned; but of course they never dreamed of anything so preposterous as the truth. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... coming in,' said Ethel, 'but I never thought it was really for that mischief! The children only laugh about it as the most preposterous thing they can think of, for he never speaks to a woman if he ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... essentially your superior, and of a higher order of being than the rest of my fellow-creatures; should I foolishly imagine myself without wisdom superior to the wise, without knowledge to the learned, without courage to the brave, and without goodness and virtue to the good and virtuous; surely so preposterous, so absurd a pride, would justly render me the object of ridicule. But far be it from me to entertain it. And yet, gentlemen, I prize the lot I have drawn, nor would I exchange it with any of yours, seeing it is in my eye so much greater than the rest. Ambition, which ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... demeanour, as their companions. Among the latter was the Prior of Jorvaulx, in the most gallant trim which a dignitary of the church could venture to exhibit. Fur and gold were not spared in his garments; and the points of his boots, out-heroding the preposterous fashion of the time, turned up so very far, as to be attached, not to his knees merely, but to his very girdle, and effectually prevented him from putting his foot into the stirrup. This, however, was a slight inconvenience to the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Obrogensko for the purpose of relieving the guard. This nobody believed. The idea of taking such a body of men a league or more into the country at midnight for the purpose of relieving the guard of a country palace was preposterous. ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... with a perfumed quasi-philosophy for the boudoirs of the faubourgs; yet again came Rudolf Eucken and Pastor Wagner, with their middle-class beeriness and banality. The list need go no further. It begins with preposterous Indian swamis and yoghis (most of them, to do them justice, diligent Jews from Grand street or the bagnios of Constantinople), and it ends with the fabulous Ibsen of the symbols (no more the real Ibsen than Christ was a prohibitionist), the Ellen Key of the new gyneolatry and the Signorina ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... a political crime that was on the eve of being committed. The Deputy had been abroad since the unhappy riots of the First of February, and advices from foreign police left no doubt whatever that he had contemplated a preposterous raid of the combined revolutionary clubs of Europe against Italy, timed with almost fiendish imagination to break out on the festival of ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... cried; "it was he who blundered. YOU blundering in a social amenity! Preposterous! No; Mr. Cedarquist forgot that we were dining out ourselves to-night, and when he told me he had asked you here for the same evening, I fell upon the man, my dear, I did actually, tooth and nail. But I wouldn't hear of his wiring you. I just dropped a ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... is nothing comic in a stress of feeling. Let the lover pale and flutter and faint; in the presence of his deity it is an acceptable form of worship. The very self-possessed lover is more preposterous! ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... that politics is a part of their business, as long as the safety of their business is not threatened by civil disorders. They think the reconstruction question is practically settled, and when you speak to them of plots such as are now hatching in Washington, and which seem as preposterous as the story of a sensational novel, their incredulity confirms them in the notion that it is safe to allow things to take their course. Their very good sense makes them blind to the designs of such a Bobadil-Cromwell as Andrew Johnson. The great body of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... he gains by it is to do himself harm, and in this manner furthers the designs of his rival. Your distrust often is the cause that a mistress pays attention to a man, before whose merits your own have paled. I know a certain person who, were it not for the preposterous jealousy of a rival, had never been so happy as he now is. But, in any case, to show suspicion in love is acting a foolish part, and after all is to make one's-self miserable for nothing. This, sir (to Eraste), I mean as ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... letters from her suit-case and stared at the handwriting—Raymond's writing. The whole thing was too preposterous. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... to do nothing of the sort! There now!" burst from Aurora. "I'm not going to permit any such foolishness." She firmly proceeded to pile up a barricade against his preposterous intention. "Now, Gerald, you pay attention to what I say, child. Can't you see for yourself, now you've put it into words, what nonsense all this is? You could no more, in your sane and waking moments, be sentimentally in love ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... to Joe as if life were torn to bits, as if the world's end had come. It was unbelievable, impossible—his eyes belied his brain. That all those years of labor and dream and effort were going up in flame and smoke seemed preposterous. And only a few moments before he and Myra had stood on the heights of the world; had their mad moment; and even then his life was being burned away from him. He felt the hoarse sobs lifting ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... of July 20, 1918, pages 151-160, you may read an interesting account of British writers on the United States. The bygone ones were pretty preposterous. They satirized the newness of a new country. It was like visiting the Esquimaux and complaining that they grew no pineapples and wore skins. In Littell you will find how few are the recent Sam Johnsons as compared with the recent friendly writers. You will also ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... anticipation. "And then, I suppose, he will begin to jabber French, and I shall wish to goodness I hadn't. I expect he will want to marry me, poor thing! And I shall have to explain—in French, ugh!—that as he is only a foreigner I couldn't possibly, under any circumstances, entertain such a preposterous notion for a single instant. No, I am afraid that would sound rather rude. How else ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... travel alone in my chariot from Hammersmith to London, I will not care for the outriders. In these days, when there is so much poverty and so much disaffection in the country, we should not eclabousser the canaille with the sight of our preposterous prosperity." ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have been gifted with clairvoyance, her preposterous idea came so close to the actual fact, for at that very moment William was barking. He was not barking directly at Mr. Parcher, it is true, but within a short distance of him and all too well ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... disguise or suppress the fact that I have received handsome sums for advance sheets. When I was in the States, I said what I had to say on the question, and there an end. I am absolutely certain that I have never since expressed myself, even with soreness, on the subject. Reverting to the preposterous fabrication of the London correspondent, the statement that I ever talked about "these fellows" who republished my books or pretended to know (what I don't know at this instant) who made how much out of them, or ever talked of their sending me "conscience ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... probable, 'but I should have used them. I should have said, "Paul! You to marry a second time without family! You to marry without beauty! You to marry without dignity! You to marry without connexion! There is nobody in the world, not mad, who could dream of daring to entertain such a preposterous idea!"' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... how ludicrous was life! Here was Helen Curtis, fleeing from the recollection of him; here was himself, fleeing from the too-sweet actuality of her calm face and lambent eyes; and they were set down face to face in midocean! Such a preposterous trick on ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... white nurse, my dear Margery, who had hitherto been silent, interfered, saying, 'Oh, then you think it will not always be so?' 'Me hope not, missis.' I am afraid, E——, this woman actually imagines that there will be no slaves in Heaven; isn't that preposterous now? when by the account of most of the Southerners slavery itself must be Heaven, or something uncommonly like it. Oh, if you could imagine how this title 'Missis,' addressed to me and to my children, shocks all my feelings! Several times I have exclaimed, 'For God's sake ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of personal ridicule. Its whole attraction consisted in idealizing jocularly the reality that came nearest home to every one of the spectators, that is, in representing it under the light of the most preposterous perversity; and how was it possible now to lash even the general mismanagement of the state-affairs, if no offence was to be given to individuals? I cannot, therefore, agree with Horace in his opinion that the abuse gave rise to the restriction. The Old Comedy flourished together with Athenian liberty; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Truth?—yes, just that misleading sufficiency of it in which a lie thrives. For, as every artist "in this kind" is aware, precisely as you would have the overgrowth of your improvisation richly phenomenal and preposterous, must you be careful to set the root of it in the honest soil of fact. To omit this precaution is to court eventual detection ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the start he found in Heitman Michael his master. Jurgen had never reckoned upon that, and he considered it annoying. If Heitman Michael perforated Jurgen the future would be altered, certainly, but not quite as Jurgen had decided it ought to be remodeled. So this unlooked-for complication seemed preposterous, and Jurgen began to be irritated by the suspicion that he was getting himself killed ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... to Dr. Johnson that a gentleman who had a son whom he imagined to have an extreme degree of timidity, resolved to send him to a publick school, that he might acquire confidence;—'Sir, (said Johnson,) this is a preposterous expedient for removing his infirmity; such a disposition should be cultivated in the shade. Placing him at a publick school is ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... an appearance, of which no idea can be formed, without a personal knowledge of this barbarous people. The chiefs, in particular, were covered with gris-gris and fetishes, a mixture of feathers and other preposterous materials, calculated to obliterate any trace of human appearance, and possessing the virtue, as they conceived, of shielding them from danger. Solemn palaver is always held upon these occasions, and their gris-gris makers, fetish men, and priests, exorcise their absurd decorations, which, ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... Machiavelli at self-concealment and usually too egotistic to be jealous, thus to speak, and that, without being able to conceal his venom—"Can it be possible," thought the old lady, "that this Craig is about to be a somebody?" Aloud she said: "He is a preposterous creature. The vilest manners I've seen in three generations of Washington life. And what vanity, what assumptions! The first time I met him he lectured me as if I were a schoolgirl —lectured me about the idle, worthless life he said I lead. I decided not ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... heresies. Of course I denied it, and declared that he had misunderstood me, but on comparing his notes with those of his companions, it became clear that he was right, and that I really had made some most preposterous statements. Of course I shall explain it away as being the result of a moment of aberration, but I feel only too sure that it will be the first of a series. It is but a month now to the end of the session, and I pray that I may be able to hold out ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that you might regret all your life. At any rate, I'm not going to be the cause of giving that poor darling another moment's annoyance or uneasiness. The idea of the angelic creature being worried about me! Why, it's preposterous! I'm sure she heard what I said to you when she came in behind the screen. I can't bear it, and I won't have it. Now go and see her, and you're not to come back till you have. ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... Christ's piercing rebuke, addressed, not to the poor, ignorant tools, but to the prime movers of the conspiracy, who had come to gloat over its success. He asserts His own innocence, and hints at the preposterous inadequacy of 'swords and staves' to take Him. He is no 'robber,' and their weapons are powerless, unless He wills. He recalls His uninterrupted teaching in the Temple, as if to convict them of cowardice, and perchance to bring to remembrance His words there. And then, with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... possessions. But from the preference of a small child for a garden of its own however small, to another's however large, she characteristically infers the instinct of property as a law of nature it were preposterous to disallow, and furthermore she lays down as an axiom that, "in treating the communistic idea it is necessary first to distinguish what is essential in liberty and work to the complete existence of the individual, from what is collective." When forced by actual experience ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... give much advice. As this very large debt, of which no proof was extant, was freely admitted by the Countess, and as steps were being at once taken to ensure payment of the whole sum named to Daniel Thwaite, as his father's heir, it was hoped that Daniel Thwaite would at once abandon his preposterous claim to the hand of Lady Anna Lovel. Then Mr. Goffe put forward in glowing colours the iniquity of which Daniel Thwaite would be guilty should he continue his fruitless endeavours to postpone the re-establishment of a ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... merchant. A ship of his, called The Mary, bound from Ireland to Bayonne, had been driven by tempest into the port of St. Jean de Luz, seized there at the suit of one Martin de Lazon, and only discharged on security given to abide a trial at law of this person's claim. Now, his claim was preposterous. It was founded on an alleged loss of money as far back as 1642 by the seizure by the English Parliament of goods on board a ship called The Santa Clara. He was not the owner of the goods, but only agent, with a partner of his, called Antonio Fernandez, for the real owners; there had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... some time before she recovered from her surprise. This was, indeed, a mysterious affair. The earnestness with which the old soldier pleaded his cause had moved her strongly, and had almost persuaded her to accept the proposal, which had at first seemed preposterous. Fifty pounds a year, too, was certainly a handsome sum. She could get a girl from the village for two or three shillings a week to look after the child, and go out with her during school hours, and a hundred pounds would be a very handsome addition to the sum which ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... find? Mr. Swinburne calls the book "a worthless little volume of stolen and mutilated poetry, patched up and padded out with dirty and dreary doggrel, under the senseless and preposterous title of The Passionate Pilgrim." On the other hand, Mr. Humphreys maintains that "Jaggard, at any rate, had very good taste. This is partly seen in the choice of a title. Few books have so charming a ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... You shall drink your reward at Christmas-time," said one of the dealers to his porters, who, stout, strong men as they were, showed a disposition to grumble at their task. Encouraged by large promises, they shouldered sullenly the Nuernberg stove, grumbling again at its preposterous weight, but little dreaming that they carried within it a small, panting, trembling boy; for August began to tremble now that he was about to see the future ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... occupations of adults and thus serving an apprenticeship; in part, it is indirect, through the dramatic plays in which children reproduce the actions of grown-ups and thus learn to know what they are like. To savages it would seem preposterous to seek out a place where nothing but learning was going on in order that ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... is preposterous. I—I have reason to believe that she intended this marriage to serve as a shield, or cloak, for her own purposes, which were, I regret to say, largely inspired by a stubborn resolve not to marry a man who is suitable as a husband in every ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... But the preposterous buoyancy of youth! The cold water that splashed away the clamminess of bed washed, too, the more vapoury fears from George's brain; the chilly splashings that braced his system to a tingling glow braced also his mind against the pummellings of his position. Drying, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... can't possibly write a drama, cast it, and rehearse it properly for Monday night. Furthermore, you have no pictorial printing as yet. These two gentlemen, whom you have with you, have never been on the stage, and they certainly must have time to study their parts. It is preposterous to think of opening on Monday night, ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... who is therefore designated as the Lord's "Anointed." How great his influence! "he will keep the feet of his saints!" How terrible his power! "the adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces: out of heaven shall he thunder upon them." Preposterous indeed is the hope of his enemies, that they shall evade the destruction of his iron rod; while pleasing and well-founded is the expectation of his saints, who bow with unreluctant submission, with grateful acceptance, to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... tell me," he demanded of Harvey, "that seventeen only ran ten thousand? Why, it's preposterous! Saw it myself. It has a half-million on it, if there's a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... A preposterous and affected statue to our left, with the immortal name of Shakespeare below it, has distracted the eyes of our friends, and comments are freely made when we tell them how nearly the bones of the sweet Swan of Avon were brought from Stratford ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... meal taken between dinner and supper. And, as it perfectly expresses the meaning of the German vesperbrod, I thought myself authorized to adopt it here; particularly as tea, in the mouth of a character, like carpenter Clarenbach, would appear preposterous. The antiquaries of Yorkshire and Lancashire derive the word bagging from the old custom of carrying bread and cheese in a bag, in the afternoon, to the labourers in the fields; and this derivation is not ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... sturdy fellow, Tomes, but not strong enough to draw that conclusion from those premises, and make it stay drawn. The savage does order his life in the preposterous manner which you have described; but he does it because he is a savage. He has not the wants of the civilized man, and therefore he does not wait to supply them before he seeks to gratify others. When man rises in the scale ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... "How perfectly preposterous," said Christine, and a sense of bitter injustice seethed within her. "Why in the world should I be expected ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller |
