"Preposterous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Northwest and Fort Benton's consequent growth was shared, Danvers knew, by many another enthusiast; but as he looked back, mentally, over the lonely, wind-swept miles through which the Missouri flowed, uninhabited save by a few adventurers, trappers and Indians, the prediction seemed preposterous. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... been telling me abominable stories. I don't—I can't believe them! Do you know he says he, they, all the old rogues together, believe that wretched miser had destroyed his will and died intestate, and that every penny will be yours; not a sou comes to the widow and children of the nephew. It is preposterous. It is the most monstrous injustice. If it is law, an act of Parliament ought to be passed to—to do away with it. Fancy your having everything, and me, my boys and myself, dependent on you!"—scornful emphasis ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... still further into its origin, I found the foundation so weak, that I who made it my business to confirm others, was very near being dissatisfied myself. 'Tis by this receipt that Plato —[Laws, viii. 6.]—undertakes to cure the unnatural and preposterous loves of his time, as one which he esteems of sovereign virtue, namely, that the public opinion condemns them; that the poets, and all other sorts of writers, relate horrible stories of them; a recipe, by virtue of which the most beautiful ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... inspection without feeling that every word and look and gesture was being observed, probably with a view to recording it in a letter home; and the idea of being at one's ease with them in the room was about as preposterous as the idea of sleeping comfortably on ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... David's capital. When Solomon was king it was one of the mighty and magnificent cities of the world. Sixteen sieges have destroyed it, and the city of to-day is really built on the ruins of its seven predecessors. How utterly preposterous, then, is it for any one to attempt to identify the sacred places! The present population is 60,000. It is a walled city and has eleven gates. The Mosque of Omar is its principal feature; this was completed by ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... the preposterous notion of an unhappy passion, and gyrated for a while about his fair cousin, Mme. d'Aiglemont, not perceiving that she had already danced the waltz in Faust with a diplomatist. The year '25 went by, spent in tentatives, ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... are told, was in an equal degree distressed and amazed in discovering what was in the minds of his colleagues. He, indeed, to be general of the Society of Jesus!—how strange and preposterous a supposition! Positively he could think of no such thing. What a life had he led before his conversion! How abounding in weaknesses had been his course since! How could he aspire to rule others, who so poorly could rule himself? ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... body: they are alembics through which its parts must necessarily move to attain that vigor which shall continue forever."18 To state this figment is enough. It would be folly to attempt any refutation of a fancy so obviously a pure contrivance to fortify a preconceived opinion, a fancy, too, so preposterous, so utterly without countenance, either from experience, observation, science, reason, or Scripture. The egg of man's divinity is not laid in the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of this. He wanted to, but it seemed so preposterous. Such an idiotic, outrageous thing to ask. Yet it is probable that he would have asked it if the young lady had given him the chance. But she did not; after a sidelong glance at his face, she hurriedly rose from ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for years, you have allowed yourselves to be humbugged by fine promises, and deceived—yes, deceived by preposterous stories; and to-day is the day you choose for showing yourselves inexorable! Upon my word and honor, it is positively amusing! By all means let us ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... Marilla watched the bright, animated face and graceful motions her thoughts went back to the evening Anne had arrived at Green Gables, and memory recalled a vivid picture of the odd, frightened child in her preposterous yellowish-brown wincey dress, the heartbreak looking out of her tearful eyes. Something in the memory brought tears ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... learned that Dexie was preparing to accompany the others, he was almost beside himself with rage. He refused at first to believe it—the idea was too preposterous! Well it was that the announcement was not made to him before the assembled household, for his face revealed the fierce conflict within, and he had quite as many objections to make as Gussie, though they ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... half-superstitious uneasiness that this coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost on the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order to prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked himself ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, paid little attention; regarded what German professors expounded in their class-rooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what well-advanced intrigues, lay back of what the professors and the writers were saying, and ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... "What preposterous absurdity!" I exclaimed. "She will never conform to your rules. She hates nursing. She has too much good sense to insult her fine womanly nature by degrading ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... preposterous overmatching for a child. Hawk Rufe had laughed well when I had heard him laughing last. If Ward were only back in the saddle of the Black Abbot! But he was stretched out over yonder with the night shining through his window, and ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... poetic boasting and exaggeration is indulged in, each "hero" being required to give practical demonstrations of the things he has seen, the doughty deeds he has done, &c. He warms up as he goes along, and magnifies its importance in a ridiculous way. It amuses me to this day to recall my own preposterous songs about how I killed the two whales with my stiletto, and other droll pretensions. But, ah! ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... conduct would finally have upon him, if he could not obtain a pardon from me. And should he not be able to elicit it by fair means, he thought at any rate he would extract it by foul, then and there, without condition or any clause whatever. This was preposterous. I frankly told him exactly what I thought of him, saying I could not forget what had happened; that he had abused the trust reposed in him by the English, and I was bound in duty to report the whole matter in every detail to the Government; ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... certain trivial differences that shortly smote me. The windows were closed too tightly; for I had always kept the house very cool, although I had known that Theresa preferred warm rooms. And my work-basket was in disorder; it was preposterous that so small a thing should hurt me so. Then, for this was my first experience of the shadow-folded transition, the odd alteration of my emotions bewildered me. For at one moment the place seemed so ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... fairness and moderation the English ambassadors at Paris lessened their demands more than once, and appeared willing for some time to renew negotiations after their terms had been rejected. But in the end they still insisted on a claim which in point of equity was altogether preposterous, and rejected a compromise which would have put Henry in possession of the whole of Guienne and given him the hand of the French King's daughter Catharine with a marriage portion of eight hundred thousand crowns. Meanwhile Henry was making active preparations for war, and at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Joe as if life were torn to bits, as if the world's end had come. It was unbelievable, impossible—his eyes belied his brain. That all those years of labor and dream and effort were going up in flame and smoke seemed preposterous. And only a few moments before he and Myra had stood on the heights of the world; had their mad moment; and even then his life was being burned away from him. He felt the hoarse sobs lifting up ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... on the hay-loft, in the granary, under the eaves, down cellar, and all this at the same time. It is doubtful if any stationary engine in a machine shop ever performed more diversified operations at once; thus proving most conclusively how a farmer may work motive power which it was once thought preposterous in him to think of using. It threshes wheat and other kinds of grain at the rate of from 400 to 500 bushels a day; it conveys the straw up to a platform across what we call the "great beams," where it is cut into chaff and dropped into ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Lincoln and Grant he could admire, but he would not listen to anything in favor of Mr. Gladstone. The only occasions on which I ever shook his faith in me were when I would venture meekly to suggest that some of the manifestly preposterous falsehoods about Mr. Gladstone could not be true. My uncle was one of the best men I have ever known, and when I have sometimes been tempted to wonder how good people can believe of me the unjust and impossible things they do believe, I have consoled myself by ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... him. The expense of building the house, and the keeping up of such a garden and establishment, did not leave too much available of the wealth Lady Martindale had brought, nor was the West Indian property in a prosperous state; the demand was preposterous; and Theodora found herself obliged to defend poor Violet, who, her aunt declared, must have instigated it in consequence of the notice lavished upon her; while, as Theodora averred with far more ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... courts have a power of commanding the executive government to abandon superior duties and attend on them, at whatever distance, I am unwilling, by any notice of the subpoena, to set a precedent which might sanction a proceeding so preposterous. I enclose you, therefore, a letter, public and for the court, covering substantially all they ought to desire. If the papers which were enclosed in Wilkinson's letter may, in your judgment, be communicated without injury, you will be ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... all that. We're all Socialists nowadays. Ideals—excellent. But—it gets misunderstood. It gives the men a sense of moral support. It makes them fancy that they are It. Encourages them to forget duties and set up preposterous claims. Class war and all that sort of thing. You gentlemen of the clergy don't quite realize that socialism may begin with Ruskin and end with Karl Marx. And that from the Class War to the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... of yours—or rather Bob read them to me," Doris said presently. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for writing such a preposterous yarn as ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... believe Mr. McGrath, and I told him, as I resumed my graceful occupation, that I didn't think there were any fish there to catch. The idea of their rejecting flies served up as mine were was too preposterous. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... think she was, and I had a lurid moment when I was tempted to push on and make her show herself somehow at her worst. We had undertaken a preposterous thing in befriending her as we had done, and our course in bringing Kendricks in was wholly unjustifiable. How could I lead her on to some betrayal of her essential Philistinism, and make her so impossible in his eyes that even he, with all his sweetness and goodness, must take the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... live with me, Miss Marston," said Hesper; but it was with a laugh, and that light touch of the tongue which suggests but a flying fancy spoken but for the sake of the preposterous; while Mary, not forgetting she had heard the same thing once before, heard it with a smile, and had no rejoinder ready; whereupon Hesper, who was, in reality, feeling her way, ventured a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... eventually setting up in a house of her own in a neighbouring village, and there founding 'something like a Protestant Sisterhood, without vows, for women of educated feelings'. The whole scheme was summarily brushed aside as preposterous; and Mrs. Nightingale, after the first shock of terror, was able to settle down again more or less comfortably to her embroidery. But Florence, who was now twenty-five and felt that the dream of her life had been shattered, came ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... my honour! The suggestion is preposterous. You seem to know everything. Tell Margaret that I did leave Stowmarket by the train I named, that I stayed in the Hotel Victoria the same night, and left for the Riviera at 11 a.m. next day. Margaret, don't you believe me? You and I were sweethearts as children. Can you think I murdered ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... and corn weekly to insure a steady improvement; and if cattle are forced upon cake and corn over two or three months, it will, in my opinion, pay no one. To give unlimited quantities for years, and to say it will pay, is preposterous. To give fat cattle the finishing dip, cake and corn, given in moderation and with skill for six weeks before the cattle are sent to the fat market, will pay the feeder; but to continue this for more than two months will ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... to reject all overtures from that quarter. We thus learn that the most desperate measures are in agitation—weak and preposterous too as they are desperate, and must in the end prove ruinous. Antiochus, we doubt not, is a tool in the hands of others, but he stands out as the head and centre of the conspiracy. There is a violent and a strong party, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... never-to-be-forgotten hour, and to cry to God, 'Burn my flesh, dry up all the blood in my veins, break all my bones, thou canst not take from me the remembrance which sweetens and refreshes me for ever and ever!' . . . Thais is dying! Preposterous God, if thou knewest how I laugh at Thy hell! Thais is dying, and she will never be ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... the world not only the little foibles but also the drunkenness and consequent idiocy and madness of a brother whose family was still living. Her practice was, indeed, so much at variance with her profession that it is preposterous rather to accept than to doubt her words. George Sand was certainly not the self-sacrificing woman she pretended to be; for her sacrifices never outlasted her inclinations, they were, indeed, nothing ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that the earth rotated, just as satisfactorily as by the more cumbrous supposition of Ptolemy. He showed, moreover, that the latter supposition must attribute an almost infinite velocity to the stars, so that the rotation of the entire universe around the earth was clearly a preposterous supposition. The second great principle, which has conferred immortal glory on Copernicus, assigned to the earth its true position in the universe. Copernicus transferred the centre, about which all the planets revolve, from ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... engraver,—each differing from the others in character and purpose; yet, after manipulating our crania, this man says of each what all the rest acknowledge to be true, and what, said of any but the particular person described, would be preposterous. Why are the busts of Socrates and Solon what they should be, according to this theory of Gall and Spurzheim? Were they modelled from life, or from characters resembling them? Compared the head of a Greek boy with that of a young Hottentot. One was largely developed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... the words crossed his lips, the professor realised how preposterous they must sound, but the exile shook his ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... were talking of! It was the fact of Nick's return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous terms! She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and stared vacantly before her. It had fallen at last—this blow in which she now saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined she was prepared ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... laughed harder than ever. "If there's anything more preposterous than Carol's vanity because of her beauty, it's Lark's vanity for her," ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... a whisper, of Mr. PUNCH how the latter very staid individual came to be there, I understood that, of all the absurd men of this century, he was selected as the most representatively preposterous. The PRINCE OF WALES was not asked, lest his morals might be hurt by something that was said. And it is so important, you know, for the British nation—(for the rest, see the Saturday Review.) And then Madame GEORGE SAND was to be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... first apparently not absolutely sure of the support of France, (No. 17,) and France, it would seem, was unwilling to tempt fate without the help of England. That England should be willing to join such a combination for such a cause seemed so preposterous to Germany that she did not believe it. Without England no France, without France no war, for alone Russia could not measure herself against Austria. Austria would not have attacked her of her own free will, but if Russia had attacked Austria, the whole world knew from the published treaties that ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... The thought was preposterous that the paper should mean anything to her. Ruth was about to throw it away; and then, failing to convince herself that the quotation was but idly written, she tucked the piece of paper into the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... the garrison for news that the hunters had started. Every day's delay at Challis meant an abridgment of the bridegroom's leave, and the wedding was now but a fortnight away. It began to seem preposterous that he should go at all, and the colonel was annoyed with himself for his enthusiasm over the plan in the first place. Mrs. Bogardus's watchfulness of dates told the story of her thoughts, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... thou art righteous, but they are but vain words. Knowest thou not that thy zeal, which is the life of thy righteousness, is preposterous in many things. What else means thy madness, and the rage thereof, against men as good as thyself. True, thy being ignorant that they are good, may save thee from the commission of the sin that is unpardonable, but it will never keep thee from spot in God's sight, but will make both thee ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always expresses himself inelegantly. His actions are all ungraceful; so that, with all his merit and knowledge, I would rather converse six hours with the most frivolous tittle-tattle woman who knew something of the world, than with him. The preposterous notions of a systematical man who does not know the world, tire the patience of a man who does. It would be endless to correct his mistakes, nor would he take it kindly: for he has considered everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is in the right. Impropriety is a characteristic, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... behind clocks or from within flower-pots. She looked at Pa with fresh awe. There was no knowing where you had him! He had the interest, for her, of one returned by miracle from other regions, gifted with preposterous knowledges.... He became at this instant fabulous, like Rip Van Winkle, or the Sleeping Beauty ... or the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... idiots!" yelled The Other Man. He was infuriated. "Two Englishmen with English tongues in their heads, and unable to direct their own movements. Preposterous!" And then, making an observation which I will not print, he suggested mildly that we might fix up ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... to tell me," he demanded of Harvey, "that seventeen only ran ten thousand? Why, it's preposterous! Saw it myself. It has a half-million on it, if there's a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... than the two do now from each other. Now what evidence of this is there? So perfect gradation in some departments, that some naturalists have thought that in some large divisions, if all existing forms were collected, a near approach to perfect gradation would be made. But such a notion is preposterous with respect to all, but evidently so with mammals. Other naturalists have thought this would be so if all the specimens entombed in the strata were collected{109}. I conceive there is no probability whatever of this; nevertheless it is certain all the numerous fossil forms fall in, as Buckland ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... dislikes have come about. The discovery that organism is capable of modification at all has occasioned so much astonishment that it has taken the most enlightened part of the world more than a hundred years to leave off expressing its contempt for such a crude, shallow, and preposterous conception. Perhaps in another hundred years we shall learn to admire the good sense, endurance, and thorough Englishness of organism in having been so averse to change, even more than its versatility in having been willing ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... her nephew had to endure a short and sarcastic sermon upon the nature of etiquette for young girls which finally sent him from the house, white-faced and furious. Truly, if his aunt had vented upon him her preposterous species of jealousy, she had gained thereby no good-will from the young man, who worshipped her daughter from afar as a creature scarcely to be ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... now was to exhibit her latest acquisitions, her beautiful new reading-lamp, the two preposterous cushions that supported and obliterated her; while he saw (preposterous Freda, who had not a shilling beyond what the gift brought her) that she had ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... their divine King and Saviour, by casting Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, and being miraculously supported in the air by angels—if He could do that, why should He not do it? And lastly, the third temptation looks at first sight so preposterous that it seems silly of the evil spirit to have hinted at it. To ask any man of piety, much less the Son of God Himself, to fall down and worship the devil, seems perfectly absurd—a request not to be listened to for a moment, but ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... hands. Nobody heeded Barbara; she did as she pleased, going and coming as in the colony. A favourite with all about the place, she had never to use authority. Every one, for very love, was at her service. Whatever preposterous thing, at whatever unearthly moment, she might have wanted, it would have been ready—her mare at midnight, her breakfast at noon, a cow in the library to draw from. There was little regularity in the house; every one wanted to do what was right in ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... heap ... Kent's ... the preposterous. [Talking on with steady monotony.] But I saw it would not do to interrupt that logical train of thought which reached definition about half past six. I had then been gleaning until ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... camp, before shooting at you. In short, take my advice and never mount a horse again when there is a Yankee in sight." We were highly gratified at being mistaken for them, and pretended to believe it was true. I hardly think he was right, though; it is too preposterous. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... caressing our hero in the solitude of her bed-room. Mr. Carey, however, arranged the whole matter very quickly. The dower must be L2,000, out of which the widow must find her own house. Sir George must be well aware, said Mr. Carey, that the demand made was preposterous. Sir George said one or two very nasty things; but the dower as fixed by Mr. Carey was accepted, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... not, but occasion has gone and times have changed. Now listen. The countess desired the marriage. Carlo could not go to you in Milan with the sword in his hand. Therefore you had to come to him. He waited for you, perhaps for his own preposterous lover's sake as much as to make his mother's heart easy. If she loses him she loses everything, unless he leaves a wife to her care and the hope that her House will not be extinct, which is possibly not much more the weakness of old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to have only a look round, and go on by another ferry to Sag Harbor, thence to arrive at Easthampton. But what do you think happened? Tom, Dick, and Harry's preposterous Hippopotamus broke out in an eruption of flame at the very moment when our procession was passing in review before a large beflagged hotel which faces the Bay. Of course it had never occurred to the boys to bring one of those patent extinguishers ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... himself will see that his disciple believe aright concerning him. If a man cannot trust him for this, what claim can he make to faith in him? It is because he has little or no faith, that he is left clinging to preposterous and dishonouring ideas, the traditions of men concerning his Father, and neither his teaching nor that of his apostles. The living Christ is to them but a shadow; the all but obliterated Christ ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... dog-in-the-manger control of its present handful of inhabitants. We may expect, at least, that Australia will not be permanently able to retain its position without an infusion of entirely fresh blood, and should other peoples require an outlet in that direction, the present preposterous policy will have ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... laire.' The affair was becoming a scandal. The crowd still increased. People's faces grew red with congestion in the growing heat. Each had the stupidly gaping mouth of the ignoramus who judges painting, and between them they indulged in all the asinine ideas, all the preposterous reflections, all the stupid spiteful jeers that the sight of an original work can possibly elicit from ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Byng—are you a fool? This letter, this preposterous thing from the universal philanderer, the effeminate erotic! It is what it is, and it is no more. Jasmine—you know her. Indiscreet—yes; always indiscreet in her way, in her own way, and always daring. A coquette always. She has coquetted all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... galloping through a wild country, and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. . . . I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep—kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing. Returning home from exciting political meetings in the country ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... me that you have a new servant, and that she is so preposterous as to wish to take her meals with you, but that he does not intend to allow it. Now, I say to you, as I said to him, that if she expected to sit at the table before I came, she must do it now. I am used to that ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... was this infatuated belief in the loyalty of the Natives carried that it was proposed to disarm the entire Christian population, on the pretext that their carrying weapons gave offence to the Mahomedans! It was only on the urgent remonstrance of some of the military officers that this preposterous scheme was abandoned.[5] The two Native regiments stationed at Agra were not disarmed until one of the British officers with them had been killed and another wounded. The gaol, containing 5,000 prisoners, was left in charge of a Native ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... saw a sight incredible to her. Instead of letting the bull alone, now she was safe, Uxmoor was sticking to him like a ferret. The bull ran, tossing his nose with pain and bellowing: Uxmoor dragged by the tail and compelled to follow in preposterous, giant strides, barely touching the ground with the point of his toe, pounded the creature's ribs with such blows as Zoe had never dreamed possible. They sounded like flail on wooden floor, and each blow was accompanied ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... it in myself. I thought it was utterly preposterous—I distrusted it as the result of some perversity in my own imagination. But I can do so no longer. Not only the boy's own answers to your questions, but even a chance expression that dropped from the schoolmaster's lips in explaining his story, have forced the idea back into my mind. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... "'Tis preposterous to pretend to reform the Stage before the Nation, and particularly the Town, is reform'd. The Business of a Dramatick Poet is to copy Nature, and represent things as they are; Let our Peers give ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... uneventful summer at home, with only the slight excitement of a month at Margate, was most anxious to hear an account of her adventures. That she had had adventures out there on those wild plains of course I felt certain. It would be manifestly preposterous to go to Arkansas for three months, and ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... one, but an important one, nevertheless. According to Skoropikin, every ancient work of art is valueless because it is old. If that were true, then art would be reduced to nothing more or less than mere fashion. A preposterous idea, not worth entertaining. If art has no firmer foundation than that, if it is not eternal, then it is utterly useless. Take science, for instance. In mathematics do you look upon Euler, Laplace, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... is preposterous!" growled Julius, gaining courage from Stampoff's bold denunciation; but Beliani tried ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... he gives—at least there—no account whatever of his peregrinations to the polar regions; and the notion of ascribing to him the story of the frozen words is preposterous. I have not in my library, but have read, the best edition of Sir John's Travels (I don't mean the abominable reprint), but I do not remember anything of the kind there. Indeed Sir John, like Marco Polo, was perfectly honest, though some of their informants ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... and desperate as many of his exploits have been, they would be as nothing to that. Even the earl could surely not expect that fifteen hundred men in fishing boats and barges could attack a fleet of some thirty men of war. The idea seems preposterous, and yet one does not see what else he can have got in ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... Ireland, as the term is understood by the National League, is without an educated class. Her intellect is represented by the moonlight maurauder and the fanatic priest. As regards England, the parallel is still more preposterous: She is not a military despotism, but a well-organized community, boasting parliamentary traditions of a thousand years. Her shores are guarded by sea from foreign interference. Notwithstanding many scandalous shortcomings in her rulers, her ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... thing hinges upon two points. The first is the making of Pycroft write a declaration by which he entered the service of this preposterous company. Do you not see how ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... sank. The hole had been there six months, and he had found nothing witty to say about it, and at first sight Mr. Cibber had done its business. And on such men he and his portrait were to attempt a preposterous delusion. Then there was Snarl, who wrote critiques on painting, and guided the national taste. The unlucky exhibitor was in a cold sweat. He led the way, like a thief going ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... ulcer. The general public knew little of the truth, and was not competent to measure the value of such facts as were placed before it. The Germans' claim to have sunk 9 1/2 million tons in the first year of unrestricted warfare was regarded as preposterous, but Sir Eric Geddes himself assessed the British loss at 6 millions.[Footnote: The total British loss in the war was 7,731,212 tons. France came next with 900,000 tons. ] Mr. Lloyd George revealed the fact that we had sunk five German submarines on 17 November, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... we are!' exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand. 'What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... The first hour of the new day rang like a long cry. Some freak of association brought to my mind that angel in the Apocalypse who proclaimed with a mighty voice that Time should be no more. I caught myself thinking this preposterous thing: Suppose it were all over? Suppose we never saw each other again? Suppose my wife were to die? To-night? Suppose some accident befell her? If she tripped upstairs? If the child's crib took fire and she put it out, and herself received one of those deadly shocks from burns ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... my mind; from yours it may easily have fled. If any one at that moment could have shown me the Edinburgh Edition, I suppose I should have died. It is with gratitude and wonder that I consider 'the way in which I have been led.' Could a more preposterous idea have occurred to us in those days when we used to search our pockets for coppers, too often in vain, and combine forces to produce the threepence necessary for two glasses of beer, or wander down the Lothian Road without any, than that I should be strong ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Such is his preposterous assertion, the absurdity of which will make an Englishman laugh; but the corollaries drawn from it are serious, as they are intended to feed the hostile feeling still existing against this country; for he attempts to prove that ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... tells us, chose poetry for their children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: for this same influencing of the soul—[Greek: phychagoghia] (a beautiful word)—is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of children unhappy: it took hold of the poets ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Caligula's Bridge, Temple of Jupiter, Departure of Regulus, Ancient Italy, Cicero's Villa, and such others, come they from whose hand they may, I class under the general head of "nonsense pictures." There never can be any wholesome feeling developed in these preposterous accumulations, and where the artist's feeling fails, his art follows; so that the worst possible examples of Turner's color are found in pictures of this class; in one or two instances he has broken through the conventional rules, and then is always fine, as in the Hero and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... will mention his name—Konstantine Feodorovitch Krylov. He was large and stout, a true Russian type, with a merry laughing face. He had the true Russian spirit of unconquerable irrational merriment. He laughed at everything with the gaiety of a man who finds life too preposterous for words. He had all the Russian untidyness, kindness of heart, gay, ironical pessimism. "To-morrow" was a word unknown to him: nothing was sacred to him, and yet at times it seemed as though life were so holy, so mysterious, that ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... with a preposterous marke in Nature, euen from her birth, which was her left eye, standing lower then the other; the one looking downe, the other looking vp, so strangely deformed, as the best that were present in that Honorable ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... the majority, properly expressed; and, above all, the military must be kept, according to the language of our bill of rights, in strict subordination to the civil authority. Wherever this lesson is not both learned and practiced there can be no political freedom. Absurd, preposterous is it, a scoff and a satire on free forms of constitutional liberty, for frames of government to be prescribed by military leaders and the right of suffrage to be exercised at the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... "How preposterous you are, Grace. Of course not. Only Somers's IDEA of what is pleasing to Rushbrook, gotten up with a taste and discretion all his own. You know Somers is a gentleman, educated at West Point—traveled all over Europe—you might have met him there; ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... to appeal to Sally at this moment. Her sense of humour was tickled. It was, if she could have analysed her feelings, at herself that she was mocking—at the feeble sentimental Sally who had once conceived the absurd idea of taking this preposterous man seriously. She felt light-hearted and light-headed, and she sank into a chair with ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... if either of your fathers were living now, and had any mistrust on that subject, his mind would not be changed by the change of circumstances involved in the change of your years? Untenable, unreasonable, inconclusive, and preposterous!' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... uncertainty of life, and you take away all its magic. It would be like going to the wicket with the certainty of making as many runs as you liked. No one would trouble to go to the wicket on those preposterous terms. It is because I may be out first ball or stay in and make a hundred runs (not that I ever did any such heroic thing) that I put on the pads with the feverish sense of adventure. And it is because every dawn breaks as full of wonder as the first day ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... petticoats she wore, and unceasing were the ablutions which her clean-tiled floors received. She was in the main not a bad old soul, and I dare say she considered herself perfectly justified, in consideration of the cause I served, in charging me a preposterous amount for my board and lodging while I ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... whole of each period, they are not allowed to run, walk much, ride, skate, or dance. In fact, entire repose is strictly enforced in every well-regulated household and school. A German girl would consider the idea of going to a party at such times as simply preposterous; and the difference that exists in this respect in America is ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... everybody else, but you can't fool me. You're delighted, man, delighted!' The mere suggestion revolted Mr Pickering. He was on the point of indignant denial, when quite abruptly there came home to him the suspicion that the statement was not so preposterous after all. It seemed incredible and indecent that such a thing should be, but he could not deny, now that it was put to him point-blank in this way, that a certain sense of relief was beginning to mingle ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... well it would be preposterous," said Peter, sullenly, "to break up all your habits, and leave Barracombe and—and all of us—and start a fresh life—at your age. And if this is how you mock at me and all my plans, I'm sorry I ever took you into my confidence ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... the same degree. His life is a romance: no, for it lacks probability. He has had beautiful dreams, he has bad ones: what am I saying? people don't dream as he has lived. No one has ever extracted out of a destiny more than he has. The preposterous and the commonplace are equally familiar to him. He has shone, he has suffered, he has dragged along a humdrum existence: nothing has escaped him.... He is an enigma, a riddle that can probably ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... preposterous," urged the lieutenant. "Mr. Almayer, this is no joking matter. The man is a criminal. He deserves to hang. While we dine he may escape; the rumour ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... Belford. "To be sure you cannot believe your ears. Do you not see that this is a preposterous lie, and that he is telling it to you to tease and to ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... "Such a preposterous question!" she replied, but she was startled and frightened by it and more so by the anger in John's face and voice. In a moment the truth flashed upon her consciousness and it roused just as quickly an intense contradiction and a willful determination not only to stand her ground ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the phenomenon of a prime minister who could not command the respect of his own servants. A more preposterous figure than the Duke of Newcastle never stood at the head of a great nation. He had a feverish craving for place and power, joined to a total unfitness for both. He was an adept in personal politics, and was so busied with the arts of winning and keeping office that he had no leisure, even if he ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... for the faith that is in him concerning the Bayeux tapestry by reading the language of its details, such as the style of arms used by its preposterous soldiers; by gestures; by groupings of its figures; and we are only too glad to believe ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... looked with favour upon her opulent charms, when at last she saw the object of her ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near to wrecking everything by his unreasonable behaviour. This preposterous marquis had the effrontery to dispute his wife with Jupiter, was so purblind as not to appreciate the honour the Sun-King proposed to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... laughed—whether at Chevenix or his preposterous hero is not to be known. "You are rather absurd," she said. "Mr. Senhouse never gave me the idea of that sort of person. Why did ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... apologies, excused himself, having pressing duties to perform, and withdrew, first cordially shaking hands. The French were convinced that when William the Elector fled, he had taken with him his money. That he should have entrusted it to another, and especially a Jew, seemed preposterous. Yet such was the case. William had fled, disguised as a civil engineer, carrying with him in his chaise an outfit of surveying-instruments. All of his money had been turned over to Mayer Anselm Rothschild. The ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... echoed with a certain scornful incredulity. "Why suicide? In connexion with my brother the idea seems utterly preposterous." ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... thou sayst thou art righteous; but they are but vain words. Knowest thou not that thy zeal, which is the life of thy righteousness, is preposterous in many things? What else means thy madness, and the rage thereof, against men as good as thyself. True, thy being ignorant that they are good, may save thee from the commission of the sin that is unpardonable; but it will never keep thee from spot ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... of a man that had been wounded; upon which one of the standers-by pitied the man's misfortune, and thinking he was not able to drive those flies away himself, was going to drive them away for him; but he prayed him to let them alone: the other, by way of reply, asked him the reason of such a preposterous proceeding, in preventing relief from his present misery; to which he answered, "If thou drivest these flies away, thou wilt hurt me worse; for as these are already full of my blood, they do not crowd about me, nor pain me so much as before, but are somewhat more remiss, while the fresh ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... tipsy airiness of manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he shook hands with garrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with the nicety of old experience; in and out of shops, from which he returned laden with costly fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, a preposterous cane for himself, and a kepi of the newest fashion for the boy; in and out of the telegraph office, whence he despatched his telegram, and where three hours later he received an answer promising a visit on the morrow, and generally pervaded Fontainebleau ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the dragoman rode up to Arta on their borrowed troop horses. The correspondent first went to the telegraph office and found there the usual number of despairing clerks. They were outraged when they found he was going to send messages and thought it preposterous that he insisted upon learning if there were any in the office for him. They had trouble enough with endless official communications without being hounded about private affairs by a confident young man in khaki. But Coleman at last unearthed six cablegrams which collective ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... legislatures will enact preposterous social laws for the regulation of the morals of boys, and imagine they have placed another paving-stone in the road to the millennium, while the Mrs. Rolfstons are having a ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... authors would be invited to submit final designs for the final award. George tried to be hopeful; but he could not be hopeful by trying. It was impossible to believe that he would succeed; the notion was preposterous; yet at moments, when he was not cultivating optimism, optimism would impregnate all his being, and he would be convinced that it was impossible not to win. How inconceivably grand! His chief rallying thought was that he had undertaken a gigantic task and had accomplished it. Well or ill, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... purpose to defend myself," he said, coldly. "If you are bent upon filling your mind with such matters, go to Dr. Perrin. He will tell you that he, as a physician, knows that the charge against me is preposterous. He will tell you that even granting that the cause of the blindness is what Mrs. Abbott guesses, there are a thousand ways in which such an infection can be contracted, which are perfectly innocent, involving no guilt on the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... taken between dinner and supper. And, as it perfectly expresses the meaning of the German vesperbrod, I thought myself authorized to adopt it here; particularly as tea, in the mouth of a character, like carpenter Clarenbach, would appear preposterous. The antiquaries of Yorkshire and Lancashire derive the word bagging from the old custom of carrying bread and cheese in a bag, in the afternoon, to the labourers in the fields; and this derivation ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... a case of witchcraft in Hartford, in 1662, where some women were accused, and, after being proceeded against until they were confounded and bewildered, one of them made the most preposterous confessions, which ought to have satisfied every one that her reason was overthrown; three of them were condemned, and one, certainly,—probably all,—executed. In 1669, he says that Susanna Martin, of Salisbury,—whom ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... vol. xii. p. 417.] Who knows but this system, if it had received proper encouragement, might not have rendered the Post-Office unnecessary, and even obviated much of the necessity for railroads? Let modern magnetisers try and bring it to perfection. It is not more preposterous than many of their present notions; and, if carried into effect, with the improvement of some stenographical expedient for diminishing the number of punctures, would be much more useful than their plan of causing persons to read with their great toes, [Wirth's "Theorie des Somnambulismes," ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the barricades. This lasted but a moment, when it was succeeded by a scattered fire of fewer guns, and finally by irregular volleys. We knew that our men had fallen back; and we had not once thought it would be otherwise. Indeed, it had been a rarely preposterous enemy who should allow himself to be driven from behind a rampart by that handful of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... friends of hesitatingly adverse instincts: the three of them, however, practically assuming their own wisdom to be the highest yet attained by the human race; and their own diversion on the mountainous heights of it being by the aspect of a so-called "preposterous" sunset, described in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... personages, the deference paid them, and their entire self-possession, not a little surprised me. And it seemed preposterous, to assume a divine dignity in the presence of these undoubted potentates of terra firma. Taji seemed oozing from my fingers' ends. But courage! and erecting my crest, I strove to look every inch the character ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... a great Shadow bounced out of the fire with a single huge leap, and covered the whole room. Then it settled in one corner, and Ralph saw it shaking its fist at him from the end of a preposterous arm. So he took the hint, and held his peace. And it was as well for him. For I happen to know something about the Shadows too; and I know that if he had told his wife all about it just then, they would not have sent for him ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... like that," insisted Gaga. It was so preposterous that Sally could only look measuringly at him with a puzzled contempt that might have ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,—is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. Belzoni digs and measures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, until he can see the end of the difference between the monstrous work and himself. When he has ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... were especially attached to this idea. The word Kingdom appeared in an early draft of the bill as it came from the conference. But it was vetoed by the foreign secretary, Lord Stanley,[1] who thought that the republican sensibilities of the United States would be wounded. This preposterous notion serves to indicate the inability of the controlling minds of the period to grasp the true nature of the change. Finally, the word 'Dominion' was decided upon. Why a term was selected which is so difficult to render in the French language (La Puissance is the translation ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... the spring, Mr. Williams——But no more! Haven't we already prolonged our sketch to an intolerable length, considering the subject of it? Not a lover in it! and, of course, it is preposterous to think of making a readable story without one. Why didn't we make young Gingerford in love with—let's see—Miss Frisbie? and Miss Frisbie's brother (it would have required but a stroke of the pen to give her one) in love with—Creshy Williams? What melodramatic difficulties might have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... preposterous," said Christine, and a sense of bitter injustice seethed within her. "Why in the world should I be expected ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying. After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her; and she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to listen to a proposal patiently; ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... much to the same purpose, though not so preposterous. Mr Lightwood would propose to me, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... The throng was indiscriminate. Farce comedy was in the air. Religious fanatics, passing before the hero, offered up prayers for the salvation of his soul. Precocious children were thrust forward to his attention. Preposterous questions were propounded by preposterous people. To add to the confusion the names of those persons who fought their way through the throng to be presented to the General were announced to him by a little man who got most of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... and loftier pretensions be still contested; if the theory of the gifted creature who wrote that the works of the master wizard are 'like summer fruits brought forth abundantly in the full blaze of sunshine, which do not keep'—if this preposterous fantasy be generally accepted, there will yet be much in Dumas to venerate and love. If Antony were of no more account than an ephemeral burlesque; if la Reine Margot and the immortal trilogy of the Musketeers—that 'epic of friendship'—were ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... insisting upon some seven discriminations which, even only forty years ago, would have appeared largely preposterous to the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of my exhaustion and physical misery resumed its sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vividness the extraordinary folly of everything I had ever done. "Ass!" I said; "oh, ass, unutterable ass.... I seem to exist only to go about doing preposterous things. Why did we ever leave the thing? ... Hopping about looking for patents and concessions in the craters of the moon!... If only we had had the sense to fasten a handkerchief to a stick to show where ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... greatest difficulty in letting the House of Commons succeed in what he must consider a most unconstitutional, most presumptuous, and most dangerous course, after which it would be impossible for the Executive ever to oppose again the most absurd and preposterous demands for enquiry.[37] ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fall—I never had dreamed of any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a wooden-head whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his responsibilities would all go to ruin together ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that thing—I really cannot. It is preposterous. How could the chaplain have put my sword into the hands of an undertaker?—Get me a hammer; I will knock the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... will go with me. Hood, we've got a fight on in regard to the President's idea of granting permission in private suits to use judgments and facts brought out and entered in government suits against combinations. That idea has got to be killed! And the regulation of security issues of railroads—preposterous! Why, the President's crazy! If Mall and Gossitch and Wells don't oppose that in the Senate, I'll see that they are up before the lunacy commission—and I have some influence ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... go to him? But it was impossible, it was preposterous! Delaherche had more to say of his hurricane of shot and shell. Gilberte seized her by the wrists to detain her, while Madame Delaherche used all her persuasive powers to convince her of the folly of the mad undertaking. In the same gentle, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... seemed a preposterous supposition yesterday that the private trader at Murder Point should ever be in a position to bid the veriest scum among cowards to be brave. As he spoke, the intelligence came back to Strangeways' eyes, the fear went out ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Martin, doubtfully. 'I don't think the writer was a man of science. I saw it somewhere attributed to Huxley, but that was preposterous. To begin with, Huxley would have signed his name; and, again, his English is better. The article seemed to me to be stamped with literary rancour; it was written by some man ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... spirits of nitre, and a few simples. But what astonished them most, was this, that we could inform them before-hand, by means of a perpetual almanack, that an eclipse of the sun or moon would take place on the very day when it happened. Their notion of the cause of an eclipse is the most preposterous and ridiculous, that ever entered into the head, even of an heathen. They say, that the devil is come to devour the sun or moon, and falls to work to gnaw off the edge; that therefore it is necessary he should ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... overlooked, or referred to in general terms, as if they were unworthy of particular consideration. To admit the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul, and yet to leave out the consideration of it, in a system of mental instruction, is both impious and preposterous, and inconsistent with the principle on which we generally act in other cases, which requires that affairs of the greatest moment should occupy our chief attention. If man is only a transitory inhabitant of this lower world; if he is journeying ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... of Monsieur MOLIERE, that celebrated Dramatick Writer, was, by him, intended to reprove a vain, fantastical, conceited and preposterous Humour, which about that time prevailed very much in France. It had the desir'd good Effect, and conduced a great deal towards rooting out a Taste so unreasonable and ridiculous.—-As Pride, Conceit, Vanity, and Affectation, are Foibles so often found amongst the Fair Sex at present, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... "Beyond the Vanishing Point," by Ray Cummings, is preposterous. The flesh might shrink or grow, but the bone would not! If one shrunk as did George Randolph, one's bones would burst ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... laughed at the idea of this German barbarian—for some of the critics were rude enough to use this harsh term—becoming the rival of Pasta, Cinti, and Fodor, and the idea of her singing Rossini's music seemed purely preposterous. On the 15th of June, 1826, she made her bow to the French public. The victory was partly won by the shy, blushing beauty of the young German, who seemed the very incarnation of maidenly modesty and innocence, and when she had ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... and old plaster that muffled our footsteps, cobwebs hung like old dusters on the walls, a regular goblin's tatter of cobwebs draped the little bracket inside the door, and the wrought-iron of the hand-rail was closed up with webs in which not even a spider moved. The whole thing was preposterous.... ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... muttered Sam, as Miss Pillby left his den. 'No, I should think not. Why, that's what the bishops do. Fancy old Pew being confirmed too—old Pew in a white frock and a veil. That is a good'un,' and Sam exploded over his blacking-brush at the preposterous idea. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of landscape [Footnote: Appendix II, "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,—the Alsatian sublimities ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... that is. Bein' on a sort of outin', a kind of Beanfeast for Two, we took the notion, being stryngers to South Wyles, of droppin' in 'ere an' tippin' the 'Ow Do." He breathed hard, and rivulets of perspiration began to trickle down from under the preposterous cap, converting the dust that filled the haggard lines of his thin face into mud. "An' payin' our respects." His eye slewed appealingly at his companion, asking as plainly as an eye can, "What price that?" And the glance that shot back from the dusty shadow of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... would exclaim, over a mint-julep, to his friend Major Johnson, who always defended the Colonel vigorously, "the idea of such attentions to my daughter is preposterous—ludicrous! I will not permit it, sir—not for one moment. If he persists in annoying my family, sir," and the purple hue of the General's face deepened, "I would no more hesitate to shoot him—no more, by gad!—than I would ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... foolish woman with her dreams! Was anything so preposterous ever heard of? I must go and ask the help of ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... of water. We struck a spring last week" (this time the "we" didn't seem so preposterous) "that came near drowning us out, but we managed to keep it under with a six-inch centrifugal; but it meant pumping ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... too busy to pay much attention to what I was saying. He merely murmured that it was all normal, quite normal, under the circumstances. So, after all, I'm just an ordinary, everyday woman! But the man of medicine has ordered me to stay in bed for twelve days—which Olga regards as unspeakably preposterous, since one day, she proudly announced, was all her mother ever asked for. Which shows the disadvantages of being ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... turn to your "elderly lady,"—that is, to current criticism, to the public. Like every elderly person, she holds fast to preconceived ideas, however preposterous they may be. For example, she is perpetually asserting that since my "Annals of a Sportsman" my works are weak, because, having lived abroad, I cannot know Russia. But this accusation can touch only what I have written since 1863; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... since by the testator's bankers. It would then be for his lordship to decide whether in the public interest he should recommend the Crown to prosecute on a charge of forgery the clumsy fabricator of this preposterous document. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... bear in the least on his favourite craze, appear to give evidence in its favour, even though in reality they are most obviously opposed to it. He learns to look upon himself as an unappreciated Newton, and to see the bitterest malevolence in those who venture to question his preposterous notions. He is fortunate if he do not suffer his theories to withdraw him from his means of earning a livelihood, or if he do not waste his substance in propounding ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... confidence by her confidence to you, I will tell you so. Most undesirable it is that this should be continued, and yet where is there a door open to escape?[162] ... My dear brothers have the illusion that nobody should marry on less than two thousand a year. Good heavens! how preposterous it does seem to me! We scarcely spend three hundred, and I have every luxury, I ever had, and which it would be so easy to give up, at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep, I think, if an unpaid bill dragged itself by any chance into another week. He says that when people get ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... my word, I have been blind as a bat. How far has the thing gone? Has Mabel encouraged it? Does she know? What hand can James have had in bringing this state of things about? These two children—why, the thing is preposterous!" ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... had they come into harmony than the bassoon—oh, melancholy perversity of that instrument—would strike off into another key with a ribald snicker or coarse guffaw, causing more turbulence and another stampede. And this preposterous condition of affairs was kept up the whole evening, the bassoon seeming to take a fiendish delight in his ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... forthcoming. His complaints caused him to be arrested in 1798; and with a short interval he remained in gaol until 1800. By that time Despard was desperate, and engaged in a plot to seize the Tower of London and Bank of England and assassinate George III. The whole idea was patently preposterous, but Despard was arrested, tried before a special commission, found guilty of high treason, and, with six of his fellow-conspirators, sentenced in 1803 to be hanged, drawn and quartered. These were the last men to be so sentenced in England. Despard was executed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... you mean, Mrs. Cadwallader?" said Sir James. His fear lest Miss Brooke should have run away to join the Moravian Brethren, or some preposterous sect unknown to good society, was a little allayed by the knowledge that Mrs. Cadwallader always made the worst of things. "What has happened to Miss ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... he frequently had visits from "cranks" who wished to secure his support for some new theory or "discovery." He would listen patiently, perhaps ask a few questions, and then endeavour to point out their fallacies. He would amuse us afterwards by describing their "preposterous ideas," and if much bored, he would speak of them as "muffs." He was loath to hurt their feelings, but he generally ended by expressing his opinion quite clearly, occasionally ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... sunk, by some means that we do not at present know, and if the blame could be plausibly laid against Americans, there would be hot-tempered talk in England and a lot of indignant retort from our country. It would seem preposterous that any Englishman could suspect the American government of destroying British warships, and just as absurd to think that Americans could take such a charge seriously. Yet in the relations between nations ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... neighbour. For a moment, a strange dread had gripped the meeting, paralysing thought, but it passed, and while some remained perplexed the majority began to resent vehemently the suggestions of Hammer. I could hear those immediately behind me insisting that the view was sheer rubbish. It was preposterous. It was pure lunacy. With these phrases, constantly repeated, they threw off the startling effect of Hammer's speech, and fortified themselves in the conviction that the Blue Disease was merely a new malady, similar to other maladies, and that life ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... important part the music was to play in the life of the community in after years, and of all the pleasure it was to give—the I.G. sent money from his private purse to buy instruments and music, though until that moment the idea of a band in Peking had seemed infinitely remote if not utterly preposterous. ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... it likely that the king would cast a public slight upon my family? From whom had you this preposterous order?" ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the chitchat of an evening circle. I passed a very pleasant evening, and left about ten o'clock. The gentleman who was handing me down stairs said, "I suppose you are going to one or two other places to-night." The idea struck me as so preposterous that I could not ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe |
