"Ridiculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concerts has not a single requisite for his office—he is several degrees less personable than M. Jullien—he does not even wear moustaches! and to suppose that a man can beat time properly without them is ridiculous. He looks a great deal more like a modest, respectable grocer, than a man of genius; for he neither turns up his eyes nor his cuffs, and has the indecency to appear without white gloves! His manners, too, are an insult ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Donegal, near the borders of Tyrone and Fermanagh. It was surrounded with wild and barren mountains, and was almost inaccessible by horsemen even in summer time, on account of great bogs, rocks, and precipices which environed it. The popular tradition concerning it is as ridiculous as is to be found in any legend of the Romish Martyrology. After continuing in great credit many years, it began to decline; and in the 13th of Henry the Seventh was demolished with great solemnity, on St Patrick's Day, by the Pope's express order. It, however, afterwards ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... and, as I fancy, more naturally and pathetically than if my neighbor's corns were trodden under foot. I prattle about the dish which I love, the wine which I like, the talk I heard yesterday—about Brown's absurd airs—Jones's ridiculous elation when he thinks he has caught me in a blunder (a part of the fun, you see, is that Jones will read this, and will perfectly well know that I mean him, and that we shall meet and grin at each other with entire politeness.) ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... friend and master, first looking under the bed, then going up to the window pretending to gaze out of it (which he could not do), barking, then rolling on a square of sunlit carpet, and, after that, lying on his back, his legs out stiff, his ridiculous "Imperial" pointed and ironical, then suddenly turning, with a twist on his legs, rushing at last up to Jeremy, barking at him, laughing at him, licking him, and even biting his stockings—last ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... are flattering to national vanity and professional narrowness; and though they involved those that supported them in the most glaring contradictions, and some absurdities even too ridiculous to mention, we have always been, and in a great measure still are, extremely tenacious of them. If these principles are admitted, the history of the law must in a great measure be deemed, superfluous. For ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... laughter only: but mixed with it, that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy. And the great fault even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful things; which are rather execrable than ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, or a beggarly clown? or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English so well ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... supposes to be taken from a passage in Scaliger's Exercitations against Cardan, "Narrabo tibi jocosam Sympathiam Reguli Vasconis Equitis: Is dum viveret, audito Phormingis sono, urinam illico facere cogebatur." "And," proceeds the Doctor, "to make this jocular story still more ridiculous, Shakespeare, I suppose, translated ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... wearing cerulean socks. It classed a woman, in effect, as a scholastic pedant. Now, however, when the vast diffusion of literature as a sort of daily bread has made all ridicule of female literary culture not less ridiculous than would be the attempt to ridicule that same daily bread, the whole phenomenon, thing and word, substance and shadow, is melting away from amongst us. Something of the same kind has happened in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... latter gentleman in the way of adaptation that we owe the exhibition of young ladies "practising at the bar." From babies to barmaids is indeed a leap, reversing the ordinary process of going from the sublime to the ridiculous, for while to all but appreciative mammas those infantile specimens of humanity savour largely of the ridiculous, there can be no question that the present generation of dames de comptoir is a very sublime article indeed. I do not say this in derision, nor am I among those who decry ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... encumbrances, the uniformed boys, en masse, got into step behind them and tramped up the hill, singing this dreadful dirge. The unfortunate new arrivals had to listen to the chant all the way up the hill. If they ran to get away from the crowd, it only made them look the more ridiculous; the only sensible way was to endure it with ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... Disciplined a Bad Grizzly. The most ridiculous and laughable performance ever put up with a wild grizzly bear as an actor was staged by Col. C. J.("Buffalo") Jones when he was superintendent of the wild animals of the Yellowstone Park. He marked down for punishment ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship of a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Friday morning, when just as the clock struck twelve, we heard a whirring noise, a little puff of smoke came from the pedestal of the figure, and the goddess of Liberty fell off, and broke her nose on the fender! Maria was quite alarmed, but it looked so ridiculous, that James and I went off into fits of laughter, and even papa was amused. When we examined it, we found it was a sort of alarum clock, and that, if you set it to a particular hour, and put some gunpowder ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... rather restive under so much ancient history: besides, I suspect he wanted to keep me as fresh as he could for his great-grandfather. So he burst out laughing at last, and said: "Excuse me, neighbours, but I can't help it. Fancy people not liking to work!—it's too ridiculous. Why, even you like to work, old fellow—sometimes," said he, affectionately patting the old horse with the whip. "What a queer disease! it may ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... at me. "It must seem to you ridiculous. But I am a different person now—very different. Now I am ready, eager for anything. Death can be nothing to me now, or if that is too bold, at least I may say that I am prepared to meet him—anywhere—at any time. I want to meet ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... did not change in the least, as I proved by my attempts at correspondence, by my greeting when we met. Then you perplexed and worried me more than you would believe, and I imagined all sorts of ridiculous things about you; but on that drive, after your vigil with that poor, dying girl, I felt that I understood you fully at last. Indeed, ever since your rescue of the little Wilder child from drowning my old feelings have been coming back with tenfold ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the pursuit of happiness!" That is what we are after. So it is. How ridiculous! Why don't we think of it oftener? How many of us are free? How many of us are happy? And, particularly, how many of us would be any happier if we got the things we want? What foolish wants we have, anyway! Almost everybody ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... After all, ridiculous as the scene was, Colonel Lockwood's simplicity and courage were much more serviceable to his colleagues than their own inept coup de theatre would have been if he had not spoiled it. It was plain to every one that he had acted in entire ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... subject to its own decision—in other words, to its own repudiation.[180] That the end justifies the means (in other words, that the maintenance of the German Empire as it stands justifies the violation of an international obligation) 'has a certain truth'. 'It is ridiculous to advise a state which is in competition with other states to start by taking the catechism into its hands.' All these hints of his master were adopted and expanded by Bernhardi, the faithful disciple ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... Joscelyn: Ridiculous! oh, dear! there's no bearing with you. How CAN this be the end? How can it be, with him on one side of the door and her on ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... very careful handling," he thought, "for otherwise I shall be prevented, and perhaps even arrested in the middle, which will be both painful and ridiculous. So sublime, however, was his idea that he shed many tears over it, and often paused in his tramping to regard the unconscious Blink with streaming eyes. All the next day he went about the house and heath taking a last look at objects which had been dear, and at mealtimes ate and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and your ambition: I say nothing of your hypocriticall fasts, and pretended humiliations, previous to the succeeding plots, and supposititious Revelations, that the godly might fall into the hands of your Captains, because they were bugbears, and became ridiculous even to the ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... moment on my seclusion begins: I felt that Michael was right - my pretensions were ridiculous, I had nothing by which I could claim superiority, I was a hypocrite, I played an underhand game as well as they whom I seemed to look ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... did not call me Bimbashi, Captain Keppel. The title is ridiculous for me, and it was only given me that it might be useful when with Egyptian or Soudanese soldiers. I should feel really obliged, if you would ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... of the bric-a-brac merchants, and the Lord only knows what queer oddities this kind of shop can display. Ancient arms constitute the principal stock in trade; rusty yataghans, long Souss muskets; then old leather amulets for war or for the chase; ridiculous powder-horns, and also musical instruments; guitars covered with snake-skin, pipes and tambourines. To keep the rubbish which they are selling in countenance, no doubt, the dealers are mostly ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... way, whether he kept behind or ahead of this damsel, he studied every detail of her person and her dress, hoping to dislodge the insane and ridiculous fancy that had taken up an abode in his brain; but he presently found in his examination a keener pleasure than he had felt only the day before in gazing at the perfect shape of a woman he loved, as she took her bath. Now and again, the unknown fair, bending her head, gave him a look like that ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... back again to the revels. Without seeing it, I could not have imagined it. I have before witnessed and, at times, been impressed with this solemn call to the evening prayer, misdirected though it be. But here the effect is utterly ridiculous, to say ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... leaders and orators to new vigor. Garrison, Phillips, Gerrit Smith, Sumner, and Seward aroused the anti-slavery forces as never before, and the "Biglow Papers'' of James Russell Lowell, which made Northern pro-slavery men ridiculous, were read ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... denoument is a replica of "The Tale of the King who lost kingdom and wife and wealth and Allah restored them to him" (Suppl. Nights, vol. i. 221). That a Sultan should send his Ministers to keep watch over a ship's cargo sounds passably ridiculous to a European reader, but a coffee-house audience in the East would have found it perfectly natural. Also, that three men, the Sultan and his sons, should live together for years without knowing anything of one another's lives seems to us an absurdity; in the case of an Oriental such detail would ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... How ridiculous! My father gave it to me. Sometimes, at home, I wear several rings. Does that mean I am engaged to ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... could only be filled by men of great names, or chamberlains of H.M. the emperor and king. Already the prefects were a species of vizier. The myrmidons of the great man scoffed at Diard's pretensions to a prefecture, whereupon he lowered his demand to a sub-prefecture. There was, of course, a ridiculous discrepancy between this latter demand and the magnitude of his fortune. To frequent the imperial salons and live with insolent luxury, and then to abandon that millionaire life and bury himself as sub-prefect at Issoudun or Savenay ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... set. Now I can tell her that there's more beauty among those who don't give themselves half the airs, and who she looks down upon, than there is to be found among her 'fashionables.' But Emma is perfectly ridiculous with her 'exclusive' nonsense," he continued, with much feeling, evidently showing how deeply he resented his sister's reflections upon the style and stamp of his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... slowly back to where the giant negro stood by the case of rattling teeth. This time as he passed he received no card. In spite of his gaudy and ridiculous garb, the Ethiopian displayed a natural barbaric dignity as he stood, offering the cards suavely to some, allowing others to pass unmolested. Every half minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible phrase ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... cried, "it's going to fish after those ridiculous little terrapins, and they're such horrid things to take off ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... most, but even by his own children. And the army was in such distraction that there was not any one body that seemed entirely united and firm to him. A foolish ballad was made at that time treating the papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, which had a burden, said to be Irish words, lero, lero, lilibulero, that made an impression on the army that cannot be well imagined by those who saw it not. The whole army, and at last all people both in city and country, were singing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... encomiastic nonsense about Germany and the Germans. Of all infatuations connected with what is foreign, the infatuation about everything that is German, to a certain extent prevalent in England, is assuredly the most ridiculous. One can find something like a palliation for people making themselves somewhat foolish about particular languages, literatures, and people. The Spanish certainly is a noble language, and there is something ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... "Come, we must get up," he said. "It would look ridiculous for us to be late." When he was dressed he assisted his wife with all the little details of her toilet, not allowing her to call Rosalie. As they left the room he stopped. "You know, when we are alone, we can now use 'thou,' but before your parents it is better to wait a while. It will ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... nibble at the fish, we might get some food from them," suggested Madden with American delight in the ridiculous. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... England for the purpose of making an attack upon her opinions; but, as kindred ideas prevail among us, though to a limited extent only, the folly of them may be seen in persons at a distance, when it would not be realized by ourselves. Moreover, the presentation of these somewhat ridiculous notions brings ridicule upon a whole class of errors; and when errors are so ingrained that men cannot reason in regard to them, ridicule is often the only weapon of successful attack. And it is no compliment to an American audience for the speaker to say that their own minds already suggest ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... was always spoken of as "Alvarado" Hunter. A sense of humor is sometimes a dangerous cargo for a public man to carry; but the absence of it also is often dangerous. In this instance Commodore Perry, because he did not see the amusing aspect of Hunter's escapade, made himself so ridiculous that he came near cutting short his own career, which, as will afterward be seen in this history, was destined for greater achievements than any in ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... father would not let her off so easily. He demanded a demonstration of her profession for the benefit of the campers. Miss Judy promptly lined all the other councilors up and put them through a series of ridiculous exercises, such as "Tongues forward thrust!" "Hand on pocket place!" "Handkerchief take!" "Noses blow!"—performance which was greeted with riotous ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... to have asked Aunt Jane's leave; but I do think he must be a ridiculous young man if he could not attend to his proper work because you did not go after him when you ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lip twitched or curled in all that august multitude while several public attendants brought in a wooden cage containing three or four rather skinny specimens of poultry. Not even Drusus saw anything really ridiculous when Lentulus arose, took grain from an attendant, and scattered a quantity of it before the coop. Close at his elbow stood the augur, to interpret the omen,—a weazened, bald-headed old senator, who wore a purple-striped tunic,[138] and carried in his hand a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Margaret Pen being by, to whom I had spoke to go along with us to a play this afternoon, and then to the King's Theatre, where we saw "Midsummer's Night's Dream," which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure. Thence set my wife down at Madam Turner's, and so by coach home, and having delivered Pegg Pen to her father ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... gaolers had withdrawn, we looked at one another, and the sight was so ridiculous, so absurd, that for all our sorrow we could not help laughing heartily. The chains consisted of two heavy rings connected together by three small thick links, leaving just a span between one ring and the other; and these we wore for nearly twenty-one months! At first we ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... train that was waiting at the junction, and, in a little while, after the passengers for Crawford, the terminal station of the road, were all aboard, they pulled out with a great snorting and roaring that amused the girls immensely. But, ridiculous as they looked, the little engines were up to their work, and they took the sharp, steady ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... revolutionary ceremonies! What fanaticism! What licentiousness! What cruelty! Anacharsis Clootz and Marat,—feasts of the Supreme Being, and marriages of the Loire—trees of liberty, and heads dancing on pikes—the whole forms a kind of infernal farce, made up of everything ridiculous, and everything frightful. This it is to give freedom to those who ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... desirable in a leader. Whatever office-seekers, partisans, traitors, and public enemies may find in Mr. Johnson, it is certain that they find in him nothing to respect. He is cursed with that form of moral disease which sometimes renders a man ridiculous, sometimes infamous, but which never renders him respectable,—namely, vanity of will. Other men may be vain of their talents and accomplishments, but he is vain of the personal pronoun itself, utterly regardless of what it covers and includes. Reason, conscience, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... handkerchief, and his hat; but an attempt to take off his cravat had awoke the sleeper. In this case, the prisoner was marched off under sundry severe threats of vengeance; for the robbee was heated with the run, and really looked so ridiculous that his ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... advantages of printing, at this time of day, would be "wasteful and ridiculous excess." We content ourselves with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... impractically—" she stumbled over the words. "But your Sue now, in Jude the Obscure—is it not an interesting book? And is she not always too practically practical. If she had been impractically practical she could have been quite happy. Do you know what I mean?—no. But she is ridiculous. Sue: so Anna Karenine. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... intellect was in a childish phase as compared to that of modern times. Observe, however, childishness does not necessarily imply universal inferiority: there may be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood, and there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advanced life; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other the adult phase ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... for any adventure. He would drop anchor in the quiet cove he knew of; he would go ashore by night; he would be at home again. To be at home again made him shout with profane laughter, the little home he remembered would be so ridiculous to him now. He would see again his poor little trembling wife—she must be gray by now—and he was sure that she would tremble more than ever she did when she heard the great sea oaths which he was accustomed to pour forth now. And his daughter, she must ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... are dipped into the water on either side with absolute precision, in perfect time,—all the pairs of little naked arms seeming moved by a single impulse. There is much unconscious grace in this paddling, as well as skill. Then all about the ship these ridiculous little boats begin to describe circles, —crossing and intercrossing so closely as almost to bring them into collision, yet never touching. The boys have simply come out to dive for coins they expect passengers to fling to them. All are chattering creole, laughing and screaming ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... ourselves, save as conditioned upon the attitude we are willing to take toward our Army, and especially toward our Navy. It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is no intention of providing and of keeping the force necessary to back up a strong attitude, then it is far better not to assume such ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that you wouldn't call mother by that ridiculous name. She is no more tired than—than ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... am convinced of. I only hope that she will carry her indignation against great people so far as not to court them as she has done, and abandon all her ridiculous ideas of making a match for me. After all, she has my welfare sincerely at heart, and, although mistaken in the means of securing it, I cannot but feel that she is actuated solely ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Some were always so far from the center of our attention that we could swear they never had been ours; others, although once present in consciousness, were so trivial and unimportant that it seems ridiculous to suppose them conserved; others never came into our waking minds at all and entered our lives only in special states, such as sleep or delirium or dreams. All these we should expect to forget; the astonishing thing is that they ever were conserved. But there is a fourth class ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... sincerity of the author with himself argued a certain greatness of character. Dr. Hickes, who attended Pepys at his deathbed, spoke of him as 'this great man,' and said he knew no one who died so greatly. And yet there was something almost of the ridiculous in the statement when the 'greatness' was compared with the garrulous frankness which Pepys showed towards himself. There was no parallel to the character of Pepys, he believed, in respect of 'naivete', unless it were found in that of Falstaff, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... flattered me, that nothing less would serve my overweening fancy, than a formal criticism on the book. In fact, I have gravely planned a comparative view of you, Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, in your different qualities and merits as novel-writers. This, I own, betrays my ridiculous vanity, and I may probably never bring the business to bear; and I am fond of the spirit young Elihu shows in the book of Job—"And I said, I will also declare my opinion," I have quite disfigured my copy of the book with my annotations. I never take it up without ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... this ridiculous letter twice before he could perfectly comprehend its meaning. In a paroxysm of indignation at the base subterfuge under which he did not doubt Euphemia had screened some accidental discovery of her absurd passion, he hastily threw on his clothes, and determined, though in ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... commonly put forward for the attainment of eugenic ends—health certificates as a legal preliminary to marriage and the sterilization of the unfit—are excellent when wisely applied, but they become mischievous, if not ridiculous, in the hands of fanatics who would employ them by force. Domestic animals may be highly bred from outside, compulsorily. Man can only be bred upwards from within through the medium of his intelligence and will, working together under the control of a high sense of responsibility. The ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... so," said Robb readily. "The price he parted with his cattle to me for was ridiculous. I shall make a large profit out of my client. It'll all help towards furnishing, Al," he went on, turning ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... tempted to laugh. The whole thing seemed so ridiculous—so utterly absurd. Absent-mindedly he tried a pinch of the snuff, inhaling it into his nostrils. It produced nothing more startling than a violent fit of sneezing. Undoubtedly Monsieur de Grissac had told the truth. He did ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous to follow so ideal a benefaction with a report of so mundane a thing as a soup kitchen, but soup is as necessary to humanity at the present period of life as some of the exalted things of the intellect, and, as pauperism in Norway and Sweden is so almost unobservable, ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... of Mary, England was groaning under Spanish influence, and no remonstrance could reach the throne, the queen's person and government were made ridiculous to the people's eyes by prints or pictures "representing her majesty naked, meagre, withered, and wrinkled, with every aggravated circumstance of deformity that could disgrace a female figure, seated in a regal chair; a crown on her head, surrounded with M. R. and A. in capitals, accompanied by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... is ridiculous to maintain seriously that Byron's love of the desolate and inhuman in nature was the mark of vital scepticism and depression. When a young man can elect deliberately to walk alone in winter by the side of the shattering sea, when he takes pleasure in storms and stricken ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... for all me," said Sam. "It's ridiculous for a poor boy to put on such airs. You'll die in ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... ridiculous, John," said Cecilia, cooing like a covey (or whatever it is) of doves. "Of course you're ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... sherbet, or capillaire. In a word, I know not a more insignificant set of mortals than the noblesse of Boulogne; helpless in themselves, and useless to the community; without dignity, sense, or sentiment; contemptible from pride. and ridiculous from vanity. They pretend to be jealous of their rank, and will entertain no correspondence with the merchants, whom they term plebeians. They likewise keep at a great distance from strangers, on pretence of a delicacy in the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... visitor would but glance at the history, the evolution, of religious beliefs, he would realize and soundly assert that all religions are human in their origins, erroneous in their theories, and ridiculous in ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... struggle against it, so long as you live a poet, will you feel yourself a stranger or a child amongst men. And all for what? I have that confidence in your talent, that I am sure you will make no ridiculous failures. What you write for fame, will be far superior to what others write for popularity. But these will attain their end, and you, with far more merit, will be only known as having failed. And know ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... expressed a wish to belong to a certain "fash'n'ble" club, and with a view of burlesque he was invited to visit the club, where a series of ridiculous entertainments were given him, winding up with a card party. As I passed the steps of the club-house early next morning, I overheard two or three ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... earnestly and had no idea how to go on. "Angry with you? Don't be so ridiculous! I got a very sweet note from you to-night. Thank you. And I think the speech went down all right. I ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... it was ridiculous that Disston should take seriously this girl who, at the moment, was considerably less presentable than any one of their own servants—that he should treat her with all the deference he showed to any woman of his acquaintance, as if she were of his own class ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... have observ'd, your words fall from your tongue Wildly; and all your carriage, Like one that strove to shew his merry mood, When he were ill dispos'd: you were not wont To put such scorn into your speech, or wear Upon your face ridiculous jollity: Some sadness sits here, which your cunning would Cover o're with smiles, and 'twill not be. What ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... that it was very ridiculous in me to feel so ashamed and disconcerted at being seen by her or any other dog or doggess in my common dress, and following an honest occupation. I do not deny it. And in telling you these things I have no wish to spare myself, I have ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... some mark to guide their way in the hollows of the earth; but as to great-great-grandmothers, they would have mocked Curdie all the rest of his life for the absurdity of not being absolutely certain that the solemn belief of his father and mother was nothing but ridiculous nonsense. Why, to them the very word 'great-great-grandmother' would have been a week's laughter! I am not sure that they were able quite to believe there were such persons as great-great-grandmothers; ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... has not thriven; he is chiefly remembered now by the nickname of Namby-Pamby, bestowed on him by Pope, who had always vehemently contested his claims to distinction. As Johnson states the case: "Men sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous, without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his friends, who decorated him with honorary garlands which the first breath of contradiction blasted." Johnson, by-the-way, had at the age of nineteen written a new epilogue to "The Distressed Mother," for some young ladies ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... not think that the little girls had been carried to the font and baptized with such ridiculous names as Diddie, Dumps, and Tot: these were only pet names that Mammy had given them; but they had been called by them so long that many persons forgot that Diddie's name was Madeleine, that Dumps had been baptized Elinor, ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... was well into her teens before she realized the truth, that he was an excellent harness maker who often brought out of his quaint little dream world odd-shaped fancies in rhyme,—some grotesque, some ridiculous, and some that seemed pretty for a moment,—and who under the stress of a universal emotion had rhymed one phase of our common nature and set it to a simple tune that moved men deeply without regard to race or station. So she lived in her ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... hidden conviction which removes from the sphere of the ridiculous the attitude of even the feeblest woman who waves her poor little "Woman's rights" flag on the edge of a platform, and which causes us to forgive even the passionate denunciations, not always wisely thought out, in which ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... Shakespeare has, as in many other places, shown the tendency in bad men to indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions as a mode of getting rid of their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good, and also, by making the good ridiculous, of rendering the transition of others to wickedness easy. Shakespeare never puts habitual scorn into the mouths of other than bad men, as here in the instances of Antonio and Sebastian. The scene of the intended assassination of Alonzo and Gonzalo is an exact ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... proud moment, but even while Coach Ballinger was talking to him, the Temple students rushed howling from the grandstand, and Annabelle Chapin, ridiculous in a sport suit of her own construction, bedecked with the Temple colours and blowing a child's horn, positively threw herself upon his neck. He disengaged himself, not very gently, and stalked grimly away to the ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... to march upon Nimes, burn the city and put its population to the sword. Was there not good reason to fear that these men, if they succeeded in this undertaking, would take it into their heads to spread death and destruction beyond the walls of Nimes. No apprehension was ridiculous, no prudence was exaggerated at a time ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... His idealism had made him ridiculous in the eyes of the townsfolk. He had spent money he could ill spare in a hopeless cause, which was not even a worthy one. And now everybody was laughing at him or sneering—he grew hot with shame. That his ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... the attraction they can ever possess by means of dress, will be derived from three sources, viz. Plainness, Neatness, and Appropriateness. In whatever they deviate from these cardinal points, they will to the same degree make themselves ridiculous—weaken their influence, and lose the good opinion of those they are the most anxious to win. I beg these truths to be impressed ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... sentiment of the world and refused the law permission to take its course? It availed much. The unseemly conflict has been carried on until at length civilization has become shocked by the spectacle. The effect of the ever-recurring encounter is something worse than ridiculous. It has taken years to bring us to our senses, but we are rational at last. Public opinion exercises its good sense, and since it cannot bring the law into harmony with its desperate folly, deems it expedient ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... do?" he said. (After his quiet practice he would have said "How do you do Guru?" but it rhymed in a ridiculous manner and his red lips could not frame ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... were you," Forrest answered. "It is overrun just now with the wrong sort of people. There is nothing to do but gamble, which doesn't interest me particularly; or dress in a ridiculous costume and paddle about in a few feet of water, which ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... revealed until the fact of Christ's victory over him is revealed. But however ludicrous mediaeval and vulgar superstitions may have made the notion, and however incredible the tremendous figure painted by the great Puritan poet has proved to be, there is nothing ridiculous, and nothing that we have the right to say is incredible, in the plain declarations that came from Christ's lips over and over again, that the world, the aggregate of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... fairly earned; of a historian whose labors, after deducting what had been applied to the creation of a most valuable library, had scarcely yielded fifty cents per day; of another who had had but $1000 per month; and, passing rapidly from the sublime to the ridiculous, of a school copy-book maker who had seen his improvements copied, without compensation to himself, for ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... had by no means ceased because they had landed their victim in a public place. They made him ridiculous at every breath. They took off his hat, arranged his collar, and smoothed his hair as if he were a baby. They wiped his nose with many a flourishing handkerchief, and pointed out objects of interest about the theater in open derision of his supposed ignorance, to ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... with ridiculous display Killed by excess was Wormwood laid away, While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged, I wept: for I had longed to ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... games Alcinous makes himself as ridiculous as he always does, and Ulysses behaves much as the hero of the preceding afternoon might be expected to do—but on his praising the Phaeacians towards the close of the proceedings Alcinous says he is a person of such singular judgment that ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... to duty that it required, and, on the other hand, he had assumed a position towards Cis of which he in some degree felt the force. There was nothing in the opinions of the time to render their semi-betrothal ridiculous. At the Manor house itself, Gilbert Talbot and Mary Cavendish had been married when no older than he was; half their contemporaries were already plighted, and the only difference was that in the present harassing state of surveillance ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wildness or frenzy appears even in the mode and way in which they do it. Either the things themselves which they make use of for that purpose are very toys and trifles; or if they seem to be better, they are put on after an antic manner, rather to the rendering of them ridiculous, than to bespeak them sober, judicious, or wise; and so do natural men array themselves with what they would be accepted in with God. Would one in his wits think to make himself fine or acceptable to men by arraying himself in menstruous cloths, or by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I walked out into the garden together, our courteous host standing in the open window, and bowing in that exaggerated fashion which in another might have been ridiculous but which was possible in Colonel Menendez, because of the peculiar grace ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... that would be! Everyone says that if a poor artist is hampered at the beginning he has no career at all. I enjoy things as they are, anyway, and if Kersley doesn't it's his own lookout. He's a perfect baby, great, big, blue-eyed, ridiculous, unpractical thing! What do you suppose he did when he was in Chester last month, just after I'd left there? Walked all the way into town and back, twenty miles—he hadn't enough money for his car ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... began to act as he had acted on the first three days of his ocean passage from New York. At the same time all the other functions of his body began to operate. A group of Frenchmen passing by burst into hilarious laughter; it was ridiculous and humiliating, but Jimmie was powerless to help it—he wasn't cut out for a soldier, he hadn't agreed to be a soldier, they had had no business sending him up here where vast craters of shell-holes ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Lombardy and Naples every office of trust was described as held by a Spaniard; the Prince of Salerno was banished, the Prince of Benevento was a prisoner in Flanders, the Duke of Calabria a prisoner in Spain. Treating Mary's hopes of children as ridiculous, the writer pictured England, bound hand and foot, at the mercy of the insolent Philip, whose first step, on entering the country, would be to seize the Tower and the fleet, the next, to introduce a Spanish army and suppress ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... and scenery, and I propose (in behalf of my godson) to take some pains in dramatizing it. As thus;—you shall play John, as you can speak a little Scotch; I will make him what the Baron of Bradwardine would have been in his circumstances, and he shall be alternately ridiculous from his family pride and prejudices, contrasted with his poverty, and respectable from his just and independent tone of feeling and character. I think Scotland is entitled to have something on the stage to balance Macklin's two worthies.[59] You understand ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... alongside the ship, evidently straining every nerve to keep pace with her; and an occasional sea-otter rose now and then to the surface of the placid sea, to dive out of sight again the next instant in quite a ridiculous state of consternation at so unwonted a sight as the rushing form of the Flying Fish. Flocks of sea-birds of various, and indeed some of hitherto unknown, kinds next made their appearance, industriously pursuing their avocation of fishermen, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... hear it," said Rodney. "Perhaps they will be able to clear away some of the ridiculous suspicions you seem to have got into your heads ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... still and his jocund voice now mute, he sleeps soundly under the sighing trees of Hollywood—that populous "city of the silent" at Richmond. It was his corps of which such wild and ridiculous stories of bowie-knife prowess were told at the Bull Run fight. They, together with the "Crescent Rifles," "Chasseurs-a-pied" and "Zouaves," were ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon |
