"The absurd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in regard to loch-fishing is, that the tyro and the experienced angler have nearly the same chance in fishing,—the one from the stern and the other from the bow of the same boat. Of all the absurd beliefs as to loch-fishing, this is one of the most absurd. Try it. Give the tyro either end of the boat he likes; give him a cast of any flies he may fancy, or even a cast similar to those which a "crack" may be using; and if he catches one for every three the other has, he may consider himself ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... garbling and inserting new words into extracts, they had attempted to deceive the people here as to his opinions, and had crowned the fraud by the absurd announcement that his was the creed on which the people of Maine ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... abruptly as it begins, but while it is on the neighbours know it. She shrieks, yells, sings, chivies the servant, and skims plates out of the window at the passers-by. Of course, it is really not funny, but pathetic and deplorable—all the same, it is hard to keep from laughing at the absurd contrast between her actions and her appearance. I was called in by accident in the first instance; but I speedily acquired some control over her, so that now the neighbours send for me the moment the crockery begins to come through the window. She has a fair competence, so that her little ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Scott), the Second now added in this Third Edition as succedaneous to the former, and conducing to the completing of the whole work." This Second Book, though stated as succedaneous to the first, is, in fact, entirely at variance with it; for the work of Reginald Scott is a compilation of the absurd and superstitious ideas concerning witches so generally entertained at the time, and the pretended conclusion is a serious treatise on the various means ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... heart was too heavy to permit continuance in a playful vein, and he told her substantially what had been said. "Well," she concluded, with a complacent little nod, "I think I'll let him pay his addresses a while longer. The absurd fellow to go and idealize me so! Time will cure such folly, however. Papa, there's something troubling you ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... "Yes," said Beauchamp; "the absurd reports have died away, and should they be renewed, I would be the first to oppose them; so let us ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... brindle-thatched guy in buckskin can interfere without sleepin' in smoke. Understand?" The long, sallow man nervously stroked his hair, which was flattened down on his forehead in a semicircle in the absurd fashion of ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... be carried out through a special opening instead of through the door. Again, when a Queen of Bali died, "the body was drawn out of a large aperture made in the wall to the right-hand side of the door, in the absurd opinion of cheating the devil, whom these islanders believe to lie in wait in the ordinary passage."[766] Again, in Mukden, the capital of Manchuria, the corpses of children "must not be carried out of a door or window, but through a ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... him. From the instant, two years ago, of his first arrival he had been disturbed by an irritating sense of inadequacy; he had been sent, it seemed, into this new and tiresome condition of things without any fitting provisions for his real needs. Demands were always made upon him that were, in the absurd lack of ways and means, impossible of fulfilment. But now, at last, he was using the world as it should be used.... He was fine, he was free, he was absolutely master. His legs might shake, his body lurch from side to side, his breath come in agitating ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... coupe. Harlequin, and Colombine, and Humpty-Dumpty; shapes which came out of nowhere and instantly vanished into nothing, for all the world like the absurd pantomimes of his boyhood days. He kept close to the curb, scrutinizing the numbers as he went along. Never had he seen such a fog. Two paces away from the curb a headlight became an effulgence. Indeed, there were a thousand lights jammed in the street, and the fog above absorbed the radiance, ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... knowledge that the absurd sect which originated in Bohemia, is spreading its pernicious tenets even to our capital. A heart-broken father has this day come before me to accuse his daughter of Deism. To what extremes the Deists go in their imbecility, is ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... their eyes with a little shudder, as though what they saw was terrible to look upon. Emily's hand, the tiny hand that was so unexpectedly firm, tightened its hold on his, and his crushed the absurd fingers until ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... in our supplying a succession of poulettes, which, at the invalids' express desire, were smuggled into their room under my cloak. Not that there was the most remote necessity for concealment, but the invalids, whose sole interest centred in food, laboured under the absurd idea that, did the authorities know they were being supplied from without, their regular meals would be curtailed to ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... yellow halo of her hair floated, with the sun shining through it, as through a glass of claret, a bright carmine balloon which the child held by a string. Andrews looked at her for a long time, enraptured by the absurd daintiness of the figure between the big bundles of flesh of the nursemaids. The thought came to him suddenly that months had gone by,—was it only months?—since his hands had touched anything soft, since he had seen any flowers. The last was a flower an old woman had given him in a village ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Moselle, Bordeaux, Champagne, or Wuerzburg were not localities but libations. The women, for the most part, went in for tortoise-shell combs, fringed silk shawls, jade earrings, beaded bags, and coral neck chains. Up and down the famous thoroughfare of Europe went the absurd pale blue tweed tailleurs and the lavender tweed cape suits of America's wives and daughters. Usually, after the first month or two, they shed these respectable, middle-class habiliments for what they fondly believed to be smart Paris costumes; and you could almost invariably ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... well. The causes which have led to the development of morality in mankind, which have guided or impelled us all the way from the savage to the civilised state, will not cease to operate because a number of ecclesiastical hypotheses turn out to be baseless. And, even if the absurd notion that morality is more the child of speculation than of practical necessity and inherited instinct, had any foundation; if all the world is going to thieve, murder, and otherwise misconduct itself as soon as it discovers that certain portions ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... and untaxed, while I continued to pursue the even tenor of a "school-marm's" way, unagitated by my honorary title. In fact, the whole affair was ridiculous; and I was inclined to feel a little ashamed of the distinction, when I reflected on the absurd figure I must have cut, with my head in a string like a grocer's parcel, and Boy imploring me, with all his astonished eyes, not to submit to so silly an operation. So he and I tacitly agreed to hush the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... the absurd experiment was made. Afterwards, John asked himself a thousand times why he had not foreseen the inevitable result. But the explanation is almost too simple to be recorded: he wished to convince a friend that he would attempt ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... half-sovereign which was to have been treasured to his dying day, had shared the fate of the commonplace coins which were destined for Mrs. Bryant and his bootmaker. It was a cruel blow, but Percival saw the absurd side of his misfortune, and laughed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... first, owing to the patriotic resistance of the Belgian officials and the inability of the Germans to replace them, and long before they were obliged to evacuate the country the Germans had given up the hope of mastering the absurd and unscientific decision of Walloons and Flemings alike to remain one people, as history had ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... States not one was left. Only a handful of regular troops were within call, and the resignations of their officers came in daily. The plight of the navy and treasury was no better. Amazing coolness and the absurd prejudice against coercing States largely possessed even the loyal masses. The attack on Sumter was ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... me, and said, "Pray forgive me, but I do not see that the examples you have adduced bear any relation to the question." "Very likely," I answered; "for I have often been told that my style of illustration borders a little on the absurd. But let us see if we cannot place the matter in another point of view, by inquiring what can be a man's state of mind who resolves to free himself from the burden of life,—a burden often so pleasant to bear,—for we cannot otherwise ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... Bell had been in the habit of making such demands, the housekeeper would have continued to rebel. As it was, she had grave doubts of the wisdom of establishing such a dangerous precedent as compliance with the absurd request. But Raymond Mortimer's distress was so genuine, and the pleasure of the picnic so obviously rested on her surrender, that she made it, albeit slowly and with groans and dismal predictions. The boy's face beamed as he ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... clear and resolute faith, a profound and unfailing interest in men and things and books, which gave strange vigor to her whole range of intellectual activities. But above all she possessed that happiest of gifts, the keen, undying sense of the humorous, the absurd, the witty. As she once said, "All life laughs for me." It followed her to death, as it has certain others as noble. When dying, she said some gay thing which disturbed a dear friend. The sufferer, well knowing her own state, looked up. "I must laugh, dear," ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... the ground would open and swallow me away from his cold, contemptuous eye. I had forgotten my ridiculous costume entirely. The shame and humiliation of having exposed myself to his just criticism, the added disgrace of the grinning gardener's enjoyment of the figure I had cut—the absurd coal-scuttle of a bonnet hanging down my back, the black silk apron streaming behind me like a half-inflated balloon—overwhelmed me with speechless confusion. I hung my head in ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... imputed? In how many cases are they concealed by false professions? In how many is no declaration of motive made? Admit this doctrine, and you give to the States an uncontrolled right to decide, and every law may be annulled under this pretext. If, therefore, the absurd and dangerous doctrine should be admitted, that a State may annul an unconstitutional law, or one that it deems such, it will not apply to the ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... marvellous prayer rugs strewed the floor. Ibrahim had set sticks of incense burning in silver holders. Upon the dining-room table, beyond the screen of mashrebeeyah work, still stood the tawdry Japanese vase. And the absurd cuckoo clock uttered its foolish sound to ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... states of Holland, however, sympathizing wholly with the parliament, remonstrated with the stadtholder; and the Dutch colonists encouraged the hostile efforts of their brethren, the Puritans of Scotland, by all the absurd exhortations of fanatic zeal. Boswell, the English resident in the name of the king, and Strickland, the ambassador from the parliament, kept up a constant succession of complaints and remonstrances on occasion of every incident which seemed to balance the conduct of the republic in the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the gold coin, in which alone all public and private payments were made. At this time, the geographical knowledge of the Romans, respecting what had formerly constituted a portion of their empire, must have declined in a striking manner, if we may judge from the absurd and fabulous account which Procopius gives of Britain. And the commercial relations of the Britons themselves had entirely disappeared, even with their nearest neighbours; since, in the history of Gregory of Tours, there is not a single ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... The trees were a mass of bloom, and everybody ought to have enjoyed himself. We were having a very good time of it among ourselves reading the absurd signs, until we noticed the three girls who sat opposite to us. They had serious faces, and long, consumptive teeth, which they never succeeded in completely hiding. I knew just how they would look ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... affectation, and of ignominious admiration of trivial things; a resolute representative of the independent literary spirit, with a strong desire to see things as they are, and with the gift of describing them truthfully. He repudiated 'the absurd outcry about neglected men of genius'; and in a letter quoted by Mrs. Ritchie ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... unparalleled hue and tone (of colour) imparted by the old Italian varnish—a hue, he is sure to inform you, which it is impossible to imitate by any modern nostrums—twang. Then he reverts to the subject of a Fiddle's indispensables and fittings; discourses learnedly on the carving of scrolls, and the absurd substitution, by some of the German makers, of lions' heads in lieu of them; hinting, by the way, that said makers are asses, and that their instruments bray when they should speak—twang. Then touching briefly on the pegs, which he prefers unornamented, he will ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... first to see the absurd-looking little creature, and, planting his feet upon the gunwale, he barked himself into a state of terrible excitement, driving the young walrus into hiding beneath the water, but only to come up again from ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... but it is an attitude in the flat, not in the round; not a statue, but the cardboard king in a toy-theatre, which can only be looked at from the front. In Wilde's own poetry we have particularly a perpetually toppling possibility of the absurd; a sense of just falling too short or just going too far. "Plant lilies at my head" has something wrong about it; something silly ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... as they scampered about the common, here again came the absurd-looking stranger, walking slowly, as though careful not to frighten them. The boys did not run away this time, and to their utter astonishment he spoke to them. Mackay had practised carefully the ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... 2 The absurd act to compel uniformity in modes of worship, (14) Charles II, had then recently passed; and when this treatise was written, it desolated the country. This paved the way for the glorious Revolution. The wicked fell into the pit which they had dug for the righteous; the hopes of the Papists ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the presumption of the young advocates on their first appearance at the bar; their want of legal knowledge, and the absurd habits which they contracted in the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... It will scarcely be believed that the tale of the Scanlon outrages was not yet finished. Leary had gained his point, but Scanlon had lost his compensation. And it was months later, and this time in the shape of a threat of bombardment in black and white, that Tamasese heard the last of the absurd affair. Scanlon had both his fun and his money, and Leary's practical joke was brought to an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when it had served its purpose it was allowed to drop. As Gibbon says, "it was at first treated as a profound allegory, was considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless opinion, and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of heresy and fanaticism." The Millennium is stigmatised, in what once stood as the forty-first Article of the English Church, as "a fable of Jewish dotage." We wonder whether the plain-spoken divines who drew up that article included Jesus Christ, St. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... if there was even one germ to start with, as most admit, it must have created itself, unless the absurd claim that it came from another world, riding on a meteorite, be entertained. If such a foolish assumption were possible, it would require a God to ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... was anything of the kind! I always was so careful! I was awfully afraid of this. I love you so! I would have told you without fail." She caught his hands, pressed them to her wet face and continued to assure him with the absurd and touching sincerity ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Assignation" seems pretty much on a level with Dryden's other comedies; and certainly the spectators, who had received the blunders of Sir Martin Mar-all with such unbounded applause, might have taken some interest in those of poor Benito. Perhaps the absurd and vulgar scene, in which the prince pretends a fit of the cholic, had some share in occasioning the fall of the piece. This inelegant jeu de theatre is ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... ages placed there by Nature. His mind trained to detect a sense of beauty in garments, rugs, pictures, and women, appreciated the picture on which he was gazing. Where was this anyway? Surely not the place with the absurd name that he remembered now on the mountain Detour. Sabbath Valley! How ridiculous! It must be the home of some wealthy estate, and yet there seemed a rustic loveliness about it that scarcely established ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... to Philip; "after all the absurd goodness of my son and myself; after rejecting all our offers, and persisting in your miserable and vicious conduct, how dare you presume to force yourself into this house? Begone, or I will send for ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Many interesting topics are touched upon—among which we point to his remarks on the difficulties experienced by him in meeting the literary requirements of the day, and the peculiar demands of editors; his opinion of Mr. Carlyle; the present condition of the stage, the absurd pretensions of actors, and the delusions attempted respecting the "legitimate" drama; the question of the laureateship, and his own qualifications for holding that office; his habits of reading; and finally an avowal of his ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... different acts as I perform them—they seem to perform themselves. The sequence of the various acts and the manner of performing them are not particularly good, but I do not seem inclined to change them. I put on my left shoe before my right, my right sleeve before my left. I have the absurd habit of washing my teeth after I have washed my face. That my habits may execute themselves automatically, all the articles of my toilet must be in their proper places. I am thwarted in carrying out my habits unless my laundry has been properly placed, unless towels, brushes, etc., are ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... Alma's dog, which was dead. The poor wheezy, spaniel had died in the course of the cruise, though what the cause of its death was nobody knew, unless it had been fretting for its mistress during the period of quarantine which the absurd regulations of government had required on ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... their umbrellas. They all took away with them the wrong ones, and then wrote to me to send them their right ones. Arthur Vivian never brought one, and whose he took away I can't say. In fact I've been exposed to an avalanche of returning umbrellas, and Parkins has spent all his time in doing up the absurd things and posting them. He has just celebrated his seventieth birthday, and these umbrellas have ruined what's left of his temper. Umbrellas still keep pouring in, and nobody ever seems by any chance to get the right ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... of police (now deceased) was their confederate, and, above all persons, not to be taken into my confidence, and that the principal line of transatlantic telegraph was under the supervision of a confederate of the association. The latter betrayed himself at once by the absurd difficulties he made about my registering a London telegraphic address, which I at the instant saw to be assumed for the purpose of delay and imposing on me a prearranged address, which, however, I accepted with apparent simplicity ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... in the wake of fashion: but at first they wore their old coifs and caps over their false hair. Finding this plan cumbersome, they gradually diminished the size of the ancient covering, until the coif and cap became the absurd thing which resembles a bald place covered with court-plaster quite as much as the rest of the wig resembles ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the ambassador's attendants, most of whom carried hawks on their "fists" as a present to Charles. The strangeness of this sight caused the mob to jeer, upon which the diarist characteristically remarks, "but lord! to see the absurd nature of Englishmen that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at every thing that looks strange." Later on he makes a note of having seen the ambassador's retinue at York House engaged in a manner that does not speak well for their ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... you will hear his cry, a sort of yodel, or bird-call, peculiar to him, with which he bursts forth upon the world. Then you will hear, perhaps, loud peals of laughter at something that has excited his sense of the absurd,—contagious laughter, full ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... couple of cushions in an arm-chair and placed it near the window. Angela half-reluctantly seated herself, watching the Abbe under the shadow of her long lashes as he sat down opposite to her. "Yes,—the emmets, the flies, the worms and the men, are all of one equality in the absurd belief that they can do things—things that will last. Their persistent self-credulity is astonishing,—considering the advance the world has made in science, and the overwhelming proofs we are always getting of the fact that we are ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... least. He is as good-natured as a child and as confiding. I can let him walk around here as much as he likes. If it were not for the absurd nonsense that he talks when he has one of his attacks, and which frightens those who do not understand him, I could let ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... unenjoying prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical processes; the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants:—all these and innumerable other causes contribute their mite to the mass ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... chit-chit of the tea-table, copied faithfully and at full length! Nothing can please persons of taste but nature drawn with all her graces and ornament—la belle nature; or, if we copy low life, the strokes must be strong and remarkable, and must convey a lively image to the mind. The absurd naivete of Sancho Panza is represented in such inimitable colours by Cervantes, that it entertains as much as the picture of the most ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... to have forgotten that he had only a little before mentioned this very woman as the wife of a caceque. The absurd notion of these women being Amazons probably proceeded from the Spaniards not understanding the language of these islanders, who appear to have been Caribs. The truth seems to have been that during the long absences ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the locksmith, turning to his wife, and shaking his head sorrowfully, while a smile at the absurd figure beside him still played upon his open face, 'I trust it may turn out that this poor lad is not the victim of the knaves and fools we have so often had words about, and who have done so much harm ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... simple theory of the existence of antipodes. And even now we are not entitled to affirm it as having historical proof: the evidence {34} goes to Virgil having been charged with very absurd notions, which it seems more likely than not were the absurd constructions which ignorant contemporaries put upon sensible ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... marriage, as is the fate of many a beau, and was struck out of the list of visitors. Algernon generally occupied the baronet's disused town-house, a wretched being, dividing his time between horse and card exercise: possessed, it was said, of the absurd notion that a man who has lost his balance by losing his leg may regain it by sticking to the bottle. At least, whenever he and his brother Hippias got together, they never failed to try whether one leg, or two, stood the bottle best. Much of a puritan as Sir Austin was in his habits, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heat. In London, I should be near Cozens: a telegram would fetch him out to South Kensington within the hour, to listen and approve. (I had no doubt of his approval.) In London, I should renew relations with the real Trewlove—the familiar, the absurd. I will not swear that for the moment I thought of Trewlove at all: but he remained at the back of my mind, and at Calais I began the process of precipitating him (so to speak) by a telegram advertising him of my return, and requesting that my ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... meaning. In fact there are those who maintain that it is vain to search for reasons of the laws where none are given in the Bible itself; that the sole reason in those cases is the will of God. These people labor under the absurd impression that to discover a rational purpose in the ceremonial laws would diminish their value and reduce them to human institutions. Their divine character and origin is attested in the minds of these people by their irrationality, by the fact that they have no human meaning. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... every hand we come across harsh contradictions presented by those who, with all their study, try to reconcile the true with the absurd in order to get the latter accepted in homage to the former, and they make use of this maxim for their own ends and to take advantage of others, whereas this savage, reared in the maternal arms of Nature (that gives and takes, produces and causes without ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... succeed in dispelling some of the absurd ideas which are now current about Russia, I shall be content. If I win a little comprehension and kindly sympathy for them, I ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... remembered that they "ought to be Catholics," were not ready to accept, on the word of a "minister," all the absurd calumnies spread against the Church throughout those vast regions. They had heard, by a kind of tradition, kept alive in their families, of what their ancestors had formerly suffered, and they at least were not inclined ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of civilities and polite phrases finished from one step to another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone in the unfriendly empty apartment, where the mats are still littered with the little cups of tea, the absurd little pipes, and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... the spiritual life. Admitting as she did the fundamental doctrine of the system of Molinos, namely, that perfection consists in a state of self-abnegation in which the soul is wrapped up completely in pure love of God, she rejected most of the absurd and immoral conclusions that seemed to follow from it. According to her, and more especially according to her principal defender, Fenelon, pure love of God without any thought of self- interest or of reward or punishment, constitutes ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... class of sensitives so responsive that I could control them with ease. Up to this time they were all perfectly conscious and without any hallucinations; they knew who they were, where they were and what they were doing, and they laughed as heartily at the absurd results obtained as any spectator. Up to this time, too, I had no means of ascertaining whether the apparent results were genuine. I might be the dupe of cunning people who were conspiring to fool me, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... angling for salmon had brought us to Scandinavia; and up to the present moment we had not seen the scaly snout of a single fish. We murmured not; but could not resist the doubt, that the existence of salmon in Northern Europe was a reality; nor could we conceal from ourselves the absurd light in which we appeared to the simple people who each day, with mute astonishment, beheld us, late and early, in storm and calm, deliberately and untiringly flog with a long line of cat-gut their legendary streams, in the vain hope ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... existence as to reckon it by centuries instead of units. From this sprang the search, so long continued and still pursued, for the elixir vitae, or water of life, which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it. From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Vergniaud, and the unhappy king had no resource but to choose their successors from the party which had triumphed over them. The absurd law by which the last Assembly had excluded its members from office was still in force, so that the orator himself and his colleagues could obtain no personal promotion; but they were able to nominate the new ministers, who, with but one exception, were all men ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... other hand, is the supposed page pressing his master's suit to a woman who loves the supposed page, and thus giving rise to the series of scenes between Viola and Olivia. Out of this love of Olivia for Viola grows the absurd situation of Viola's being obliged to fight a duel, which is made still more ridiculous through the circumstance of her challenger being a fool. Out of Viola's resemblance to her brother and her disguise grows the absurd ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... at a cuff. "Well, look at it from this angle. Before you discovered that your marriage was a sham, you were prepared to assume a few obligations and some of them may still subsist. The man with the absurd name can tell you what they are. Surely you are not a slacker. This ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... story which Fanny had told her, concerning the affair of the lost package of money—for as she utterly disbelieved the tale, (imputing it to the effects of an excited imagination,) she had no desire to wound the feelings of her lover by acquainting him with the absurd charge (as she thought) which had been brought against him. How blind is love to the imperfections, the faults, and even the crimes of the object of its adoration! We believe it is Shakespeare ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... description of the pirate leader had somehow brought vividly before my minds' eye the personality of Monsieur Le Breton, the first lieutenant of the French gun-brig Vestale; and it was this which doubtless prompted me to put the absurd question to my companion as to the nationality of the man who had so inhumanly treated him. Not, it must be understood, that I seriously for a single instant associated Monsieur Le Breton or the Vestale with the diabolical act of piracy to the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... best out of a pathetic incident by approaching it from a grotesque angle. It came, as Chesterton points out in his own inimitable way, 'into the inner chamber by coming down the chimney.' Which demonstrates the ever nearness of pathos to humour, of the absurd to the pathetic. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... schools of mythological interpretation, though unscientific and unsuccessful, are not without interest. We find philosophers and grammarians looking, just as we ourselves are looking, for some condition of the human intellect out of which the absurd element in myths might conceivably have sprung. Very naturally the philosophers supposed that the human beings in whose brain and speech myths had their origin must have been philosophers like themselves—intelligent, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... What more loathsome than the swaggering quackery of some present holders of the hammer? There was a late sale, for instance, which made some noise in the world (I mean the late Lord Gimcrack's, at Dilberry Hill). Ah! what an opportunity was lost there! I declare solemnly that I believe, but for the absurd quackery and braggadocio of the advertisements, much more money would have been bid; people were kept away by the vulgar trumpeting of the auctioneer, and could not help thinking the things were worthless ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been converted into one to provide Miss Deane with ample accommodation. There were no bunks, but a cozy bed was screwed to the deck. She lay down, and strove to read. It was a difficult task. Her eyes wandered from the printed page to mark the absurd antics of her garments swinging on their hooks. At times the ship rolled so far that she felt sure it must topple over. She was not afraid; but subdued, rather astonished, placidly prepared for vague eventualities. Through it all she wondered why she clung to the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with historic localities, and rear their young among the most picturesque sites with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the least ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reported. But his auditor dryly remarked that he was fully informed of what had taken place in France.[1343] As the elector also took occasion to remind Anjou of sundry miserable deaths of notorious persecutors, such as Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa, and Maxentius; as he openly ridiculed the absurd suggestion that Coligny, a wounded man, with both arms disabled in consequence of Maurevel's shot, planned on his bed an attack on the king; and as, furthermore, he plainly denounced the shocking immorality of Catharine de' Medici's court ladies—it must be confessed ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... rights—with the added consciousness that an equally questionable passion had drawn him into it, and that SHE knew it—death seemed to offer the only escape from the explanation he could never give. If another sting could have been added it was the absurd conviction that Cressy would not appreciate his sacrifice, but was perhaps even at that moment calmly congratulating herself on the felicitousness of the complication in which ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... hundreds of ideas; he tried them all, retaining some and discarding others. Some half-dozen have fixed themselves immutably in certain minds, and an undue importance is given to them, an importance that Wagner would never have allowed. The absurd idea, propounded in the heat of controversy, that all the arts were to wax to one art in the music drama, that even sculpture was to be represented by attitudes of the actors and actresses! Wagner had written this thing in order to confound his enemies and bring the weak-kneed ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... large city of our land snobbery and plutocracy reign as twin evils, while in every small town, from Salem to some Pacific-slope settlement, the beginnings of the same social curse are manifest. Of course New York towers in bad eminence over the entire country. Abroad they are finding out the absurd shallowness of our professions. Nearly seven years ago an able literary man said to me in London: "I am wearied, here, by the necessity of continual aristocratic patronage. Especially true is this," ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... last resort, the opposition to a lock canal brings forward the earthquake argument. It is a curious reminder of the early and bitter opposition to the building of the Suez Canal; its enemies had to fall back upon the absurd theory that the canal would prove a failure because the blowing sands of the desert would soon fill the channel. It was seriously proposed to erect a stone wall four feet high on each side of the embankment to provide against this imaginary danger to the canal. Another early objection to ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... to view the battle-ground upon the banks of the Mississippi had chiefly reference to this question. The action itself had been one of my strong arguments in favour of my belief; for upon this spot some six thousand men—who had never heard the absurd command, "Eyes right!"—out-generalled, "whipped," in fact nearly annihilated, a well-equipped and veteran army of ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... that little scene was a got up thing: not indeed for the sake of the absurd sight of the French admiral and his captains tearing breathlessly along in full uniform like people who are afraid of missing a train, but to give us an idea of the strictness of the regulations under that particular governorship. Of which strictness we had another ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... and with the preposterous habits which I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as gross mistakes in the pursuit of this as of other branches of knowledge. I imagined, on setting out, a system of strict and impartial investigation of the sources of history. I was inspired with the absurd ambition, not uncommon to youthful students, of knowing as much as their masters. I imagined it necessary for me, stripling as I was, to study the authorities; and, imbued with the strict necessity of judging for myself, I turned from the limpid pages of the modern historians ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... argument; and the difficulty here is that there is no way of testing which is a master-race except by asking which is your own race. If you cannot find out (as is usually the case) you fall back on the absurd occupation of writing history about prehistoric times. But I suggest quite seriously that if the Germans can give their philosophy to the Hottentots, there is no reason why they should not give their sense of superiority to the Hottentots. If they ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... for me, truly! That is the very part of the absurd spectacle to which you used to say the people never dreamed of attending. All which is worth settling you seemed to have settled for yourself before ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... he lolled back among his pillows, dabbling complacently at the absurd yellow toy. A description of his surroundings would sound like Pages 3 to 17 of a novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward. The place was all greensward, and terraces, and sun dials, and beeches, and even those rhododendrons without which no English novel or country ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... himself, a nerve which would keep him quiet and motionless in a dentist's chair, but what philosophy or hardihood can steel one against the pain which those whom we love have to endure. He fretted and chafed, and always with the absurd delusion that his fretting and chafing were successfully concealed. A hundred failures never convince a man how impossible it is to deceive a woman who loves him. Maude watched him demurely, and ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley, Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he called 'one of the best and ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the royal cause,—the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the independent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans,—the valour, the policy, the public spirit, which lurked beneath these ungraceful disguises,—the dreams of the raving Fifth-monarchy-man, the dreams, scarcely less wild, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Austrian nation,—but I know very few qualities, physical, intellectual, or moral, which the Italians do not possess. Are they "devoid of energy," as M. de Rayneval declares? I should rather reproach them with the opposite excess. The absurd but resolute defence of Rome against the French army, may surely be regarded as the act of an energetic people. We must be extremely humble, if we admit that a French army was held in check for two months by men wanting in energy. The ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... wretchedness, that they felt the fiercest envy, the most brutal rage, towards all the wealthy and noble, believing them born to be unboundedly happy, and to make everybody below them as miserable as they pleased. Never, perhaps, were the absurd notions of the privileges of royalty held in such exaggeration as by the common people of France at this time; and never, perhaps, was a more intense hatred shown among men than by those who abolished this royalty. The story of the ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... Baron Burian, entered upon his office with an established reputation and a political programme. But so immersed were the Allies in the absurd illusions which ascribed disorganization to Germany and discord to the two imperial Governments, that Burian's appointment was read by many as an omen that Austria-Hungary was already scheming for a separate peace. Events soon showed that the disorganization was not in Germany nor ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... character? On that last subject, be sure, no mercy was shown to her by many a Bideford dame, who had hated the poor girl simply for her beauty; and by many a country lady, who had "always expected that the girl would be brought to ruin by the absurd notice, beyond what her station had a right to, which was taken of her," while every young maiden aspired to fill the throne which Rose had abdicated. So that, on the whole, Bideford considered itself as going on as well without poor Rose as it had done with her, or even ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the Cattleys, senior and junior, threw cloaks round them, exchanged their wigs for caps; and, regardless of the absurd appearance of their faces, hurried out to one of the minor theatres, with heavy hearts because of the little fairy left so ill and ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... necessarily apply. It was undignified, certainly, to be revolving like a child on a merry-go-round, while these crowds glared with bright alien eyes; but the important thing was that they had not once offered him any violence. They had not even put him into the absurd revolving seat by force; they had led him to it gently, with a great deal of gesturing and twittered explanation. And if their faces were almost nauseatingly unpleasant—with the constantly-moving complexity of parts that he had seen ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... clearly that he was set upon the absurd notion he had conceived that the lady had gone westward, and I felt it my duty to warn the Earl not to be ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... sooner or later. I saw all the hands in the mill had got to know about it somehow or other, and I was sure it would soon get over the place; and I would rather that I could say, if any one asked me, that I had not talked about it to any one, and was in no way responsible for the absurd stories which had got about. I have been talked about enough in Marsden, goodness knows, and it is disgusting that just as I should think they must be getting tired of the subject here is something fresh for ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... a real man of the world had a proper and constant dread of the opinion of his neighbour, was prodigiously annoyed by the absurd little tempest which was blowing in Chatteris, and tossing about Master Pen's reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders had to support the charges of the whole Chatteris society against the young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime. Pen did not ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... taketh from the Scriptures,'" I reminded this gentleman; and added that a twisted interpretation of the Scriptures was as bad as adding to or taking from them, and that no one doubted that Paul was warning the elders against polygamy. Then I went a bit further, for by this time the absurd character of the questions was getting ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... distinguished according to the name of the house each occupied) was the first Burgomaster ever elected in this city from below the knightly rank. While the piece of money in his hand, far from fulfilling the absurd purpose sometimes suggested,—that of showing his claim to wealth!—marks another civic event of this year. For it was on the 10th of January, 1516, that the Emperor Maximilian had just issued the Charter which gave to Basel the right to mint her own gold coins. In ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... insuring against seizure. At one time, at any rate, in the French ports were to be found brokers who would insure the evasion of a cargo of goods for a premium of fifteen per cent. At the safe distance of a century and a half, the absurd prohibition and its incompetent administration are equally comic. At the time, however, there was nothing comic in the contempt for law and order thus engendered, in the feeling of outrage on the part of those ruined by seizures, and in the alliance of respectable merchants ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the indisposition of Mar, and the attention of his daughter, with tenderness. And Edwin, with the unrestrained vivacity of happy friendship, proceeded sportively to describe the regal style which the countess had affected, and the absurd group with which she had welcomed the Earls Badenoch and Athol to their native country. "Indeed," continued he, "I cannot guess what vain idea has taken possession of her; but when I went to Snawdoun, to receive her commands for you, I found her ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... head and laughed, and after a moment she laughed, too. But as he went on his face was grave. Somebody ought to be looking after her. It was not for some time that he realized he carried the absurd little spelling-book. He took it back to the office with him, and put it in the back of a drawer of his desk. Joey, coming in some time later, found him, with the drawer open, and something in his hands which he hastily put away. Later on, Joey investigated that drawer, and found the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... natural instinct against speaking of that which is in the core of one's mind. Second, there is the fear, nearly amounting to certainty, of being misunderstood or not comprehended at all. And third, there is the absurd insufficiency of space. However!... For me, spiritual content (I will not use the word "happiness," which implies too much) springs essentially from no mental or physical facts. It springs from the spiritual fact that there is something ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... the supper in Hogg's rooms, to the curious desultory meals, the talk, and the deep slumber by the roaring fire, the small head lying perilously near the flames. One would not linger here over the absurd injustice of his expulsion from the University. It is pleasant to know, on Mr. Hogg's testimony, that "residence at Oxford was exceedingly delightful to Shelley, and on all accounts most beneficial." At Oxford, at least, he seems to have been happy, he ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... Burroughs began to contribute to the columns of the "Saturday Press," an organ of the literary bohemians in New York, edited by Henry Clapp. These were fragmentary things of a philosophical cast, and were grouped under the absurd title "Fragments from the Table of an Intellectual Epicure," by "All Souls." There were about sixty of these fragments. I have examined most of them; some are fanciful and far-fetched; some are apt and felicitous; ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... the Vigilance Committee, characteristically returned as a dashing stockbroker, and the fact that Mrs. Brooks seemed to have discarded her ascetic shawl forever. But as all this was contemporaneous with the absurd rumor, that owing to the loneliness induced by the marriage of her daughter she contemplated a similar change in her own condition, it is deemed unworthy the serious consideration of this ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make everyone at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation and ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... present, having an opportunity last spring of preaching in my parish pulpit, gets up and preaches against doctrine with which I am in good measure identified. No plainer proof can be given of the feeling in these quarters, than the absurd myth, now a second time put forward, 'that Vice-Chancellors cannot be got to take the office on account ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... them is well shown by the Abbe Dubois: [400] "To the Brahmans alone belongs the right of reading the Vedas, and they are so jealous of this, or rather it is so much to their interest to prevent other castes obtaining any insight into their contents, that the Brahmans have inculcated the absurd theory, which is implicitly believed, that should anybody of any other caste be so highly imprudent as even to read the title-page his head would immediately split in two. The very few Brahmans who are able to read those sacred books in the original, only do so in secret ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Utah as a state. The inauguration of the new state officers took place at Salt Lake City two days later. The first governor, Heber M. Wells,* in his inaugural address made this declaration: "Let us learn to resent the absurd attacks that are made from time to time upon our sincerity by ignorant and prejudiced persons outside of Utah, and let us learn to know and respect each other more, and thus cement and intensify the fraternal sentiments ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... shall know it! I have him in my power—neck and heels in my power! He does not know it, and never could guess how; but it is true: one word from me, and the rascal is paralysed! Oblige me by telling him what I have just said. The absurd marriage shall not take place, I repeat. Invalid as I am, I am not yet reduced to the condition ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... there was no time for letter-writing. The Comte's attacks came on suddenly at night. To soothe him it was necessary to find the chief actor in the absurd comedy at once, at any cost to her reputation. Besides, what did it matter? The only person who knew of her escapade was the coachman, an old family servant of the Comte, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... general directions as these had actually been given, but great latitude was necessarily left to Sir John himself; and, as after events proved, he was ill fitted for the discharge of such duties as had been entrusted to him. He was destined to furnish, in his own person, a sufficient argument against the absurd system pursued by the Home Government of saddling the colonies with military rulers. That Sir John was an excellent soldier goes without saying. It is certain, too, that he was in the main actuated by upright and honourable motives. But he had been ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... supported on grounds of mere expediency, has much to recommend it, is here defended on a priori principles without much real reflection, and was quite outgrown by him when taught by the experience of riper years. In the Constantio Sapientis he praises and holds up to imitation the absurd apathy recommended by Stilpo. In the De Animi Tranquillitate, addressed to Annaeus Serenus, the captain of Nero's body- guard, [1] he adopts the same line of thought, but shows signs of limiting its application by the necessities ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... write about it; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers. I should like to be intimate with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle—I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith, though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... there was also, on another page, a special financial article in a hostile tone beginning with the words "We have always feared" and a guarded, half-column leader, opening with the phrase: "It is a deplorable sign of the times" what was, in effect, an austere, general rebuke to the absurd infatuations of the investing public. She glanced through these articles, a line here and a line there—no more was necessary to catch beyond doubt the murmur of the oncoming flood. Several slighting references by name to de Barral revived her animosity against the man, suddenly, as by the effect ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... on Margaret's tired heart like balm, and she rested her head back against the wall and closed her eyes to listen. Sitting so away from Rosa's stare, she could forget for a while the absurd burdens that had got on her nerves, and could rest down hard upon her Saviour. Every word that the man of God spoke seemed meant just for her, and brought strength, courage, and new trust to her heart. She forgot the little crowd of other listeners and took the message to herself, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... the jealousy and avarice of Phillip V., who caused many of the inmates to be burned alive, in order that the fire might purify at one and the same time, the infection of the body and that of the soul, giving as an ostensible reason for his fiendish barbarity, the absurd and baseless allegation, that the Lepers had been bribed to commit the detestable sin and horrible crime of poisoning the wells, waters, etc., used by the Christians. The real cause being a desire, through this flimsy excuse, to rob the richer hospitals ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... main only large landholders, could enter into such engagements: and thus there grew up a class of tax-farmers and contractors, who, in the rapid growth of their wealth, in their power over the state to which they appeared to be servants, and in the absurd and sterile basis of their moneyed dominion, quite admit of comparison with the speculators on the stock exchange of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... George IV., called the Pavilion. I have seen a picture of the demure little Princess, walking on the esplanade, with her mother, governesses, and gentlemen attendants, the whole elegant party and the great crowd of Brightonians following and staring at them, wearing the absurd costumes of half a century ago—the ladies, big bonnets, big mutton-leg sleeves, big collars, heelless slippers, laced over the instep; the gentlemen, short-waisted coats, enormous collars, preposterous neckties, and indescribably ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... seven o'clock. She knew the time by the sun's rays upon the window curtains. In that strong, cheerful light, the phantom faces had shrunk back to great red bunches of flowers again. She thought of the absurd dream, or vision, as of something that had happened ages ago, and wondered that she had been foolish enough ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... pretty well go by. I could not see the Embassador in his coach; but his attendants in their habits and fur caps very handsome, comely men, and most of them with hawkes upon their fists to present to the King. But Lord! to see the absurd nature of Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at every thing that looks strange. So back and to the office, and there we met and sat till seven o'clock, making a bargain with Mr. Wood for his masts ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? Which question he were wiser than the present Editor who should satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much bountifully given by ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... "No, I hate him, the absurd imbecile, with his fine boots and plumes, and tragedy airs. He was not to be pitied, for he recovered health, he found a fortune, he won his Marie. His sufferings were nothing; there was no fatal blight on him, and he had time and power to ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... existing system were fully revealed, as well as the wretched character of the "health officers,'' "inspectors,'' and the whole army of underlings, and I exhibited statistics carefully ascertained and tabulated, showing the absurd disproportion of various classes of officials to each other, their appointment being made, not to preserve the public health, but to carry the ward caucuses and elections. During this exposure Boole, the head of the whole ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... credible that an educated and a sane man could ever have honestly believed in the absurd stuff which he produced as evidence of the supernatural; his description of the impudence of the children ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... warm water placed to the left side, the soles of the feet rubbed with salt, and a little white wine dropped on the tongue. The patient should then be left in a quiet state till able to drink a little warm wine, or tea mixed with a few drops of vinegar. The absurd practice of rolling persons on casks, lifting the feet over the shoulders, and suffering the head to remain downwards, in order to discharge the water, has occasioned the loss of many lives, as it is now fully and clearly established, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... that any handiwork of man afloat could have got so much way through the water. To this very day I am not rid of the absurd impression that, at that particular moment, the dinghy was travelling with us as fast as a cannon-ball. No sooner round than we were upon them. We were upon them so fast that I had barely the time to fling away ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... example and influence cannot, as yet, effect much against the strong majority of Ultramontanists in Parliament and the crowds of priests who still hold spiritual sway over the greater portion of his people. One peculiar hindrance to the success of any progressive measure in Bavaria lies in the absurd regulation which makes every ex-cabinet minister a member of a separate government council, the consent of which must be obtained before any new royal or parliamentary decree can be put in force; and as the majority of these ex-ministers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the subsistence of the adults, and make a grateful and wholesome change from the yam and salt fish which constitute the staples of their diet the rest of the time. It is this, probably, which has given rise to the absurd report that the negroes live ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... hypocrisy as you richly deserve, for ten to one he will drop in again when he comes back from his office, and arrest you wandering in Dreamland in the beautiful twilight. Delighted to find that you are neither reading nor writing,—the absurd dolt! as if a man weren't at work unless he be wielding a sledge-hammer!—he will preach out, and prose out, and twaddle out another hour of your golden even-tide, "because he is your friend." You don't care whether he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, an inimitable satire on the feebleness of our jury system and the absurd pretence of "temporary insanity," must wait for that encyclopaedia. And her "Miss Molony on the Chinese Question" is known and admired by every one, including the Prince of Wales, who was fairly convulsed by its fun, when brought out by our favorite elocutionist, Miss Sarah Cowell, who had the honor ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... been the absurd suggestion that the impediment was Swift's knowledge that both he and Stella were the illegitimate children of Sir William Temple—a theory which is absolutely disproved ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... yet there must be gold enough. The Queen has sunk millions in the sand on the Syrian frontier of the Delta. There is to be a square hole or something of the sort dug there to hide the fleet. I only half understand the absurd plan. The money might have paid hundreds of spies. So talents are thrown away, and the strong-box is locked against the son. But I'll find one that will open to me. I must have her, though I risk the crown. It always sounds like a jeer when they call me the King of kings. I am ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... affection would have seemed like evidence of childishness, and any one who indulged in it, a baby. Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... her half-tenderly, smiling at the pathos, the absurd pathos of her face. He was the same George Tanqueray that he had always been, except he was no longer restless, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... he said, his cruel mouth sneering under the absurd moustache, "what has happened ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... of the justice of moral and political equality with the absurd and unnatural demand for social and material equality. The great modern cry for equal opportunity for all is sound and Christian; but any attempt to guarantee individual success in using opportunity, to insure ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... in due time. It occurs to me that perhaps the simplest way out of the difficulty will be for you to withdraw the guarantee of financial assistance which, as I understand, you have given. If you are prepared to support me in this way I may safely promise that no further notice of the absurd publication will be taken by the college authorities. There are rumours of libel actions pending, but I think we may disregard them. No damages can be obtained from you beyond the amount of your original guarantee, which, I understand, ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... concerning our relations with France. The absolute candor and completely good understanding which existed a short time ago seems to have become clouded. Carraby is trying to suggest in English circles that I have been using my influence over here against the present government. The absurd part of it is that although I have been in France for a month, I arrived in ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was mildly amused by the spectacle the baronet presented, and surprised to see that their fellow-travellers thought it an excellent joke. A loud "Haw! haw!" and many convulsive titters testified their appreciation of the absurd contrast between Sir Robert's highly-respectable head, his grave, absorbed air, and the remarkable way in which he was finished off below the ears; but he read on and on, in his round, agreeable voice, unconscious of the effect he was producing, until the train came to the final stop, when Mr. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... why should I mingle in Fashion's full herd? Why crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules? Why bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd? Why search for delight, in the friendship ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the absurd irrelevant particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, eloquence and bathos, each startling in its kind, and yet all luminous in the admired disorder of their combination. A talker of a different calibre, though belonging to the same school, is Burly. Burly is a man of a great presence; he ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... talents of eminent men have been wasted in unsuccessful research for the line of demarcation, between the African and the highest order of animals,—such for instance as the monkey or the ourang-outang. Some even, have advanced the absurd idea, that wicked Cain transmitted to them the "mark" which the Almighty set upon him for the murder of his brother; and that he, (who then must have survived the deluge), is the progenitor of that despised and inferior race—the negro slave of ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... the Prince of Wales, and in daily intercourse with the British heir apparent, who was naturally supposed to know the truth about young Hahnke's death. Perhaps the most striking and convincing evidence of the absurd fabrication of this story, which has given much sorrow, both to the emperor and empress, is to be found in the fact that the young officer's father remained at the head of the emperor's military ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... "endeavoured to spread the Cabala among the Christians by translating Cabalistic works which they regarded as most ancient wisdom." "Most of them," the Jewish Encyclopaedia goes on to observe derisively, "held the absurd idea that the Cabala contained proofs of the truth of Christianity.... Much that appears Christian [in the Cabala] is, in fact, nothing but the logical development of certain ancient ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... be led. It is only by holding fast to the high rare moments when the apex-thought attains its consummation that we are able to keep such isolated acts of faith in their place and prevent the element of the "impossible" becoming the element of the absurd. The philosophy of the complex vision, though far more sympathetic to much that is called "materialism" than to much that is called "idealism," certainly cannot itself be regarded as materialistic. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... article without remarking the absurd influence which our Author unquestionably attributes to the calculations of judicial astrology. No power of chance alone could have fulfilled the joint predictions both of Guy Mannering and Meg Merrilies; we cannot suppose that the Author can be endowed with sufficient ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... than five thousand will pay five dollars extra. I should, perhaps, mention that no distinction is made to dealers, the only advantage they have over the private buyer is, that they are enabled to get the discount for large lots. The absurd notion so prevalent with us, that the Cubans only smoke their cigars green, is an error, since the leaf is entirely dried in the sun before being touched by the manufacturer. The Cubans are very particular indeed to preserve the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... but she mournfully shook her head. There were the otter-skins lying on the table. She had seen plenty of the absurd paragraphs about her sister which good-natured friends had cut out of provincial and foreign papers and forwarded to the small family at South Bank. But the mythical Russian nobleman had never sent a parcel of otter-skins. These were palpable and not to be explained away. She sorrowfully left ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... received all such information with great suspicion. Anthony Cornelius, a lawyer in the sixteenth century, wrote a small tract, which was so effectually suppressed, as a monster of atheism, that a copy is now only to be found in the hands of the curious. This author ridiculed the absurd and horrid doctrine of infant damnation, and was instantly decried as an atheist, and the printer prosecuted to his ruin! Caelius Secundus Curio, a noble Italian, published a treatise De Amplitudine ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... everywhere like a guard of soldiers. Yet I liked him even for that. He was genuine; so sincere, so masterful with it. In all matters his methods were drastic. If he had been alive I should not be tormented by the absurd fears which I now allow to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... Molly, that you could have been here clairvoyantly. It was one of those scenes, just touched with that fine and almost imperceptible perfume of the ludicrous, in which you especially delight. There are a thousand minute shreds of the absurd which my duller sense overlooks, but which never can hope to escape your ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... to like her more and more. In a house where Bruce lived it was certainly a wonderful help to have a third person often present—if it was the right person. The absurd irritations and scenes of fault-finding that she had become inured to, but which were always trying, were now shorter, milder, or given up altogether. Bruce's temper was perennially good, and got better. Then the ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... proof is needed to refute the absurd hope entertained by "Prussian", according to which "political understanding" is called upon "to discover the roots of social ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... who sat beside him and whispered and laughed. It was quite evident that he did not consider the flight of this little fledgling in the face of things seriously. But even he, as Ellen's clearly delivered sentiments grew more and more defined—almost anarchistic—became a little grave in spite of the absurd incongruity between them and the girlish lips. Once he looked in some wonder at the school-teacher as much as to say, "Why did you permit this?" and the young man ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to his own or the public profit. There seems to be no room left, no inclination left, for competition in their own line with Marlowe, Greene, Nash, and half a dozen other professed playwrights: no room for plays done under the absurd pseudonym ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... ships would soon arrive. Out of this conversation and dream, a story had been fabricated, purporting that this harmless old creature had prophesied many extraordinary things; so that she had the credit of all the absurd and extravagant additions which some designing and wicked villains had made to the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... must be brought, or the strong hold of prescription will never be forced by reason; yet to urge prescription as an argument to justify the depriving men (or women) of their natural rights, is one of the absurd sophisms ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin] |
