"Ridiculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that they could never impose upon adults. It is during the most tender and susceptible age of men that the priests have familiarized the understanding of our race with monstrous fables, with extravagant and disjointed fancies, and with ridiculous chimeras, which, by degrees, become objects that are respected and ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... scene of the play opens when Pillage is at the zenith of his power; a stage direction orders that "The Levee enters, and range themselves to a ridiculous tune"; a partition of places ensues under the allegory of the business arrangements of a theatrical manager; and the author explains that by this levee scene he hopes that persons greater than author-managers ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... with a panic. He was not a valiant boy, generally speaking, and something about the ridiculous suggestion concerning a bomb seemed to fill ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... brief summary of the conclusions, or rather of the attempted conclusions, for the mystery, like most of the world's mysteries, is probably unfathomable. After dismissing the spiritualistic theory, which implies the intervention of the dead or of discarnate entities and is not as ridiculous as the profane would think, but which nothing hitherto has adequately confirmed, we may reasonably ask ourselves first of all whether this faculty exists in us or in the medium. Does it simply decipher, as is probably the case where the future is concerned, the latent ideas, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down on a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was aware of; but in a most ridiculous and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... precedence and dignity, as if I invited my friends not to treat them kindly, but to abuse them. Menelaus is accounted absurd and passed into a proverb, for pretending to advise when unasked; and sure he would be more ridiculous that instead of an entertainer should set up for a judge, when nobody requests him or submits to his determination which is the best and which the worst man in the company; for the guests do not come to contend about precedency, but to feast and be merry. Besides, it is no easy ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... seemed ridiculous. The "water lots" are now almost in the centre of the business district of great San Francisco, and worth ten times ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... in the proportions of his figure, nothing could exceed the ease and the grace of his motions and air; and his dress, though singularly rich in its materials, eccentric in its fashion, and from its evident study, unseemly to his years, served nevertheless to render rather venerable than ridiculous a mien which could almost have carried off any absurdity, and which the fashion of the garb peculiarly became. The tout ensemble was certainly that of a man who was still vain of his exterior, and conscious of its effect; and it was as certainly impossible to converse with Mr. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gave an account of Madam de Tournon; she thought she ought to acknowledge to him the inclination she had for the Duke de Nemours, and in that thought she continued a long time; afterwards she was astonished to have entertained so ridiculous a design, and fell back again into her former perplexity of ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... religious disbelief in general and against Atheism in particular. We have here more than the mere rejection of a theory or view of life. There is a certain emotional resentment, a shrinking from the one who is guilty of disbelief, such as is not explainable on ordinary grounds. The attitude is ridiculous, so ridiculous that many who adopt it are ashamed to openly acknowledge it, but it is there, and its ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... working with me steadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly witty. He gets a laugh round the table at my expense. Young Dent, the more intelligent of the labour men, reads me a lecture in committee manners. Old Cassidy sees HIS opening and jabs some ridiculous petty accusation at me and gets me spluttering self-defence like a fool. All my stock goes down, and as my stock goes down the chances of a good report dwindle. Young Dent grieves to see me injuring my own case. Too damned ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... not sit down," Brubitsch said firmly. "I am innocent. I am innocent like a small child. Does a small child commit a murder? It is ridiculous." ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... whether or not the commons had made good the articles exhibited against Dr. Sacheverel. The earl of Wharton observed, that the doctor's speech was a full confutation and condemnation of his sermon: that all he had advanced about non-resistance and unlimited obedience was false and ridiculous: that the doctrine of passive obedience, as urged by the doctor, was not reconcileable to the practice of churchmen: that if the revolution was not lawful, many in that house, and vast numbers without, were guilty of blood, murder, rapine, and injustice; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Violet, it is not my comfort I am considering; but I cannot help feeling annoyed that you should prefer to spend your evening with a herd of vulgar children—playing Oranges and Lemons, or Kiss in the Ring, or some other ridiculous game, and getting yourself into a most unbecoming perspiration—to a quiet home ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... asks, "What have I done for you, England, my England?" Since the question is put so pointedly, my Baronite, who has been looking through the little volume of verse, is bound to reply that, what Mr. HENLEY has done for England is to make it as ridiculous as is possible to a man with a limited audience. Mr. HENLEY has a pretty gift of versification, but it is spoiled by a wearisome proneness to smartness, and an assumption of personal superiority that occasionally reaches the heights of the ludicrous. If ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... The ridiculous creatures have wings; they can fly; but they are afraid! After all these days, however, the whole flock has mounted the tallest trees along the bank. One of the gobblers has come forward as leader in the emergency. Suddenly, from his perch, he utters a single cluck—the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... priests, scattered over the face of the earth, find it necessary to command his presence in the shape of bread—yet we see only one and the same God, who receives the homage and adoration of all those good people who find it very ridiculous in the Egyptians to adore lupines and onions. But the Catholics are not simply content with worshipping a bit of bread, which they consider by the conjurations of a priest as divine; they eat this bread, and then persuade themselves that they are nourished by ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... profiles, pointed skulls, ample breasts, flowing figures, and swelling stomachs. The outline of these is one that lends itself readily to caricature, and the artists have exaggerated the various details with the intention, it may be, of rendering the representations grotesque. There was nothing ridiculous, however, in the king, their model, and several of his statues attribute to him a languid, almost valetudinarian grace, which is by no ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... true of medical science as to make contrary declarations in the matter utterly ridiculous, and to suggest at once that there must be some motive for seeing things so different to the reality, the same story can be told of graduate science in other departments. It was to Italy that men came for special higher studies in mathematics ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... command to be perfect. That finite man may be perfect in this sinful world sounds ridiculous to many unregenerated hearts. This is because they do not understand God nor his power to deliver man from sin. With the many exhortations and commands to perfection contained in the Holy Scriptures is it not singular that man will yet say, "We can ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... utterances about himself, the "full-blooded egotism" which developed in him during his last year of mental and moral starvation at Grimstad. Through the whole series of his satiric dramas we see the little narrow-minded borough, with its ridiculous officials, its pinched and hypocritical social order, its intolerable laws and ordinances, modified here and there, expanded sometimes, modernized and brought up to date, but always recurrent in the poet's memory. To the last, the images and the rebellions which were burned into his soul at Grimstad ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... embraces whereof consists your whole commonwealth; whose councils upon their perpetual wheelings, marches, and countermarches, create her armies, and whose armies with the golden volleys of the ballot at once create and salute her councils. There be those (such is the world at present) that think it ridiculous to see a nation exercising its civil functions in military discipline; while they, committing their buff to their servants, come themselves to hold trenchards. For what avails it such as are unarmed, or (which is all one) whose education acquaints them not with the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the "ni" was attached to "Ashur" (Ashuraku or Ashurachu), as it was to "Marad" (Merodach) to give the reading Ni-Marad Nimrod. The names of heathen deities were thus made "unrecognizable, and in all probability ridiculous as well.... Pious and orthodox lips could pronounce them without fear of defilement."[384] At the same time the "Nisr" theory is probable: it may represent another phase of this process. The names of heathen gods were not all treated ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Laboratory, and also resumed his visits to the Ellrichs, but it was with an increasing discomfort. The councilor, who had been distinguished for his services in the financial transactions with the French Government, had heard the story of the refusal of the Iron Cross. He thought it very ridiculous, and his early friendship for Wilhelm became markedly cooler. Even Frau Ellrich's motherly feeling for him received a check, and modesty and shyness no longer seemed a sufficient explanation of the unaccountable delay in his love-making. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... first weeks of checking, I had run onto the Venus explanation in other cases. Several Air Force officers repeated it so quickly that it had the sound of a stock alibi. But in the daytime cases this was almost ridiculous. ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... roughly made to have been fit for use as a 'kid's toy,' as the subaltern called it. To imagine it being used as a weapon of precision in a war distinguished above all others as one of scientifically perfect weapons and implements was ridiculous beyond words. ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... more than usually intellectual. She knew also that, as a clergyman, he was of a much higher stamp than Mr. Slope and that, as a gentleman, he was better educated than Mr. Thorne. She would never have attempted to drive Mr. Arabin into ridiculous misery as she did Mr. Slope, nor would she think it possible to dispose of him in ten minutes as she ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... A ridiculous accident happened as the people were coming home from the Fair that third night. There was a great deal to be drawn home; and consequently a very long procession of carts and wagons was tailing along the road, toward nightfall; also the cows and other cattle which had been on exhibition. The ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... "I may laugh at my idiocy, but you haven't any right to. I know I'm ridiculous. I've known it for months. But ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... consider their words, in England they shall not find such grasse in them, as in their feelds & meadows. The catle find grasse, for they are as fatt as need be; we wish we had but one for every hundred that hear is grase to keep. Indeed, this objection, as some other, are ridiculous to all here which see ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... this planet, of course." A pair of beady black eyes stared back, as if trying to understand a ridiculous question. "But we're citizens ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... telling you, what the world is saying about you. You see how they treat "the search for arms," as they head it, and "the Maid of Saragossa!" O Mathew Kearney! Mathew Kearney! whatever happened the old stock of the land, they never made themselves ridiculous.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... this contemplation was smitten with a large astonishment. He discovered that the distances, as compared with the brilliant measurings of his mind, were trivial and ridiculous. The stolid trees, where much had taken place, seemed incredibly near. The time, too, now that he reflected, he saw to have been short. He wondered at the number of emotions and events that had been crowded into such little spaces. Elfin thoughts must have exaggerated and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... is good for my soul, the struggle to leave it would be greater now. Polly would be happier and get more from life as the wife of big gangling Henry Peters, than she would as a millionaire's daughter. She'd be very suitable in a farmhouse parlour; she'd be a ridiculous little figure at a ball. As for Adam, he'd turn this down quick ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... it not ridiculous enough that you should inflict upon it now, and unnecessarily, this system, merely through fear that some day or other it might chance to be subjected to ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... as it passed. The spectacle was magnificent, but except among the soldiers themselves a sense of sadness and disappointment passed over the whole assembly. The speech of the Emperor showed that he was still the despot at heart: the applause was forced: all was felt to be ridiculous, all unreal. [234] ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... During the ridiculous deadlock on the Naval Aid Bill, when his supporters went so grotesquely far as to read the Bible to talk out the Bill, he was away from the House for a week, reported as quite ill, in reality having ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... it is, it would seem, an antipathy or the absence of sympathy which produces the other. "The thing at which we laugh," says Aristotle, "is a defect or ugliness which is not great enough to cause suffering or injury. Thus, for example, a ridiculous face is an ugly or misshapen face, but one on which suffering has not marked." Bain says likewise, "The laughable is the deformed or ugly thing which is not pushed to the point where it is painful or injurious. An occasion for laughter is the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... now to be released. They are persons some of whom had committed assaults and other offenses cognizable by the laws of the States where they lived, and the Ku-Klux legislation by Congress was a political device as unnecessary as it was unconstitutional. Perhaps the most ridiculous, as well as the most unjust prosecution under the Ku-Klux law was that instituted against Miss Anthony for voting in Rochester. Under her view of her rights, she presented herself at the polls, and submitted her claims to the proper officers, who decided that she had a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... caressed the ridiculous good soul. Her arm remained about her shoulder, her hand touched it. "How nice of you! I'll go and get ready at once. Then I'll see what rooms we had better have. Wasn't it lucky we did the drawing-rooms ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... the custom to talk of Shakespeare as nature's child—as the lad who held horses for people who came to the play—as a sort of chance phenomenon who wrote these plays by accident and unrecognized. How supremely ridiculous! How utterly irreconcilable with the grand dimensions of the man! How absurdly dishonoring to the great age of which he was, and was known to be, the glory! The noblest literary man of all time—the finest and yet most ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... darkens more of a man's mental horizon, and in its possible bearing on the destinies of a race is far more dangerous than even total blindness to the course of human history and endeavour; and yet it is difficult to question the popular verdict that to know nothing of gravitation though ridiculous is venial, while to know nothing of Ananias is an offence which ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... these institutions are entirely appropriate means. Only it would not be worth while in that case to begin a movement for such a purpose throughout all Germany, to stir up a general agitation in the whole working class of the nation. You must not bring mountains into labor in order that a ridiculous mouse appear. This so extremely limited and subordinate purpose can better be left to local unions and local organizations, which can always handle it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... book called The Travels of Baron Munchausen is a series of the most extravagant stories imaginable. No one can possibly believe them to be true, and yet when we are reading them they do not appear so absurdly ridiculous as they seem afterward when we think of them. The book is said to have been written by a German named Rudolph Erich Raspe, but we cannot be sure of it, as there are no proofs. It is said, too, that there ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Our PARTY"—she emphasized the word, and accompanied it with a look toward the further extremity of the plateau, to show she was not alone—"our party climbed this ridge, and put up this pole as a sign to show they did it." The ridiculous self-complacency of this record in the face of a man who was evidently a dweller on the mountain apparently struck her for the first time. "We didn't know," she stammered, looking at the shaft from which Rand had emerged, "that—that—" ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... "Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with our last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of any kind. Could—could its exercise ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... other fiery orator, Patrick The Great, might have lost his balance had his new peach-colored coat split up the back, when he was hurling death and destruction upon tyrants and pleading for liberty or death. To be ridiculous with equanimity is the ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... its nature on examination. It is so disguised that one fails to recognise it, so subtle that it deceives the scientific, so elusive that it escapes the doctor's eye: experiments seem to be at fault with this poison, rules useless, aphorisms ridiculous. The surest experiments are made by the use of the elements or upon animals. In water, ordinary poison falls by its own weight. The water is superior, the poison obeys, falls downwards, and takes ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to speak, in England, where we read that Charles II and the Duke of Yorke attended the first performance of Tarugo's Wiles, or the Coffee House, a comedy, in 1667, which Samuel Pepys described as "the most ridiculous and insipid play I ever saw in my life." The author was Thomas St. Serf. The piece opens in a lively manner, with a request on the part of its fashionable hero for a change of clothes. Accordingly, Tarugo puts off his "vest, hat, perriwig, and sword," and serves ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... rapidly than beauty to the effects of time. The consequence of his indulgence towards the two conspirators was, that at about the commencement of the following year, 1720, they began to play a very ridiculous comedy, of which not a soul was the dupe; not even the public, nor the principal actors, nor ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... expression; it is however certain, that in common discourse we readily affirm, that many arguments from causation exceed probability, and may be received as a superior kind of evidence. One would appear ridiculous, who would say, that it is only probable the sun will rise to-morrow, or that all men must dye; though it is plain we have no further assurance of these facts, than what experience affords us. For this reason, it would perhaps be more convenient, in order at once to preserve the common signification ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the room and speaking seriously to her brother.] Really, Morris, you are very rude. And it's quite ridiculous to be rude. This gentleman was only practising some tricks by himself in the garden. [With a certain dignity.] If there was any mistake, it was mine. Come, shake hands, or whatever men do when they apologize. Don't be silly. He won't turn you ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... not reached a ridiculous degree of heat, Blugsey's was certainly a very satisfactory location. The dirt was rich, the river ran dry, there was plenty of standing-room on the banks, which were devoid of rocks, the storekeeper dealt strictly on the square, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... sodden, smoky, stupid wretch I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my self-reproach and shame, and—in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... children for that matter, she doesn't have to go into hysterics, and send for Judge Lee. She said she didn't feel at all well, and she wanted to secure to Kate some money in her will I told her it was ridiculous—she never looked better in her life! I wish she could get over to see you, Alice; you always soothe her so. What on earth does Chris make ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... with a situation that must be kept top secret for two reasons: First, it may be the first move in an attempt to subjugate or destroy our planet; two, it is so utterly ridiculous on its face that a public announcement would be greeted by hoots of laughter from pole to pole." Brent's ugly scowl deepened at what he seemed to feel was an injustice. "Even the Eskimos would get a yack out ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... the men undress their master and put him in his bed. Laisangy was ready to swear at her, but, of course, he was too ill to dispute. If he suddenly revived and made a row, then the story would get about of the ridiculous comedy he had played. His patience was not long tried, however. Carmen only wanted to gain a little time, in which she might hope to discover the contents of a letter which she saw the banker receive and put in his pocket early in the evening. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... that he had sworn to observe statutes which required him, among other things, to wear garments only of a black or "subfusk" hue; to abstain from that absurd and proud custom of walking in public in boots, and the ridiculous one of wearing the hair long;* - statutes, moreover, which demanded of him to refrain from all taverns, wine-shops, and houses in which they sold wine or any other drink, and the herb called nicotiana or "tobacco"; not to hunt wild beasts with dogs or snares or nets; not to carry ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go, the impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature of his own tenacity—prevented him. He turned about again, and there stood, with his back against the door, as hers was against the wall opposite, quite unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by the whole width ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... credulous hope on that of the people, they found a madman let loose to take the place of an unfathomable and gloomy tyrant. Caligula was much taken up with Gaul, plundering it and giving free rein in it to his frenzies, by turns disgusting or ridiculous. In a short and fruitless campaign on the banks of the Rhine, he had made too few prisoners for the pomp of a triumph; he therefore took some Gauls, the tallest he could find, of triumphal size, as he said, put them in German clothes, made them ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... one here, including Dick, my little terrier, who—although he ought to know better at his age, being over eight—"galumphs" about in an absurdly clumsy manner, under the mistaken impression that he is playing with it. He only succeeds, however, in making himself ridiculous in the eyes of the kitten, who, despite his years, treats him with little or no respect, and does not hesitate to box his ears, and bite his tail whenever it ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... Japanese come to nibble at the fish, we might get some food from them," suggested Madden with American delight in the ridiculous. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... run away this time, they retired to a safe distance, and stood ready to fly at any sign of the barbarian's approach. They watched him wonderingly. They noticed his strange white face, his black beard, his hair cut off quite short, his amazing hat, and his ridiculous clothes. And when at last he walked away, and all danger was over, they burst into shouts ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's 'style' depended in any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a thing as 'style' should depend in the least upon so ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,—or check,—his poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... its corridors, galleries, and hallways there came no sound. There was no one upon the same floor as herself. She had read all her books. It was too late to go out—and there was no one to go with. To go to bed was ridiculous. She was never more wakeful, never more alive, never more ready to ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... never had in view virtue rather than vice. To take his stand as a teacher of humanity, at his age, would have seemed ridiculous to him. After having chosen subjects in harmony with his genius, and a point of view favorable to his poetic temperament, which especially required to throw off the yoke of artificial passions and of weak, frivolous sentiments, what he ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Richard Arkwright, the great mechanician. He was never at school in his life—never forced to do ridiculous sums, to spell correctly, to parse, to drill, to sing! His biographer said that the only education he ever received he gave himself—that he was fifty years of age when he set to work to learn grammar and to improve his hand-writing. He ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... and the pursuit of happiness!" That is what we are after. So it is. How ridiculous! Why don't we think of it oftener? How many of us are free? How many of us are happy? And, particularly, how many of us would be any happier if we got the things we want? What foolish wants we have, anyway! Almost everybody ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... known, and to the boys of my size it was a matter of eternal wonder how I could belong to 'the big class in that reader.' When we were to read the death of 'Little Nell,' I would run away, for I knew it would make me cry, that the other boys would laugh at me, and the whole thing would become ridiculous. I couldn't bear that. A later teacher, Captain Lee O. Harris, came to understand me with thorough sympathy, took compassion on my weaknesses and encouraged me to read the best literature. He understood that he couldn't get numbers into my head. You couldn't ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... to Beatriz Enriquez; but he had no right to provide for her out of money that in all equity and decency ought to have gone to another and a poorer man. His biographers, some of whom have vied with his canonisers in insisting upon seeing virtue in his every action, have gone to all kinds of ridiculous extremes in accounting for this piece of meanness. Irving says that it was "a subject in which his whole ambition was involved"; but a plain person will regard it as an instance of greed and love of money. We must not shirk facts like this if we wish to know the man as he ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... known—often—to do stupider things than that, and particularly young white men who have not yet learned to gauge proportions accurately; so there was nothing really ridiculous in the suggestion. A young white man who has had his temper worked up to the boiling-point, his nerves deliberately racked, and then has been subjected to the visit of a driven tiger, may be confidently expected to exhibit all the faults of ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... established success. They show that the American people were not slow to recognize the genius of the young girl, who was destined hereafter to spread a luster on the stage of two continents. At the same time they are full either of a ridiculous praise which is blind to the presence of the least fault, and would have turned the head of a young girl not endowed with the sturdy common sense possessed by Mary Anderson; or they are marked by a vindictive animosity which defeats its very object, and practically attracts ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... 'Don't be ridiculous, Michael!' replied Mrs. Harcourt, in her good-tempered way; 'of course you take her part simply because she is accused: you are ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 'That would not have been so had she been without talent. And now it is all in the grave, to which she has hastened of herself.... But I've nothing to do with that ... I'm not to blame! It would be positively ridiculous to suppose ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... It is you who can offer me no reparation for the offence against my feelings—and my person; for what reparation can be adequate for your odious and ridiculous plot so scornful in its implication, so humiliating to my pride. No! I don't want ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the same time more ridiculous and more awful, more laughable and more taunting, than that little fan in those huge hands. It seemed like a make-believe sceptre in the hands of such an old, hideous, and bony giantess! A like effect was produced by the showy percale handkerchief ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... And yet, people like my family and myself are worth serving and saving. I have known what it means to lie awake all night, suffering with shame because of some stupid social blunder which had made me appear ridiculous before my husband's ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... said Rosamund slowly, stamping her foot in her endeavor to speak with emphasis, "it is absolutely ridiculous for any one to give way to those morbid feelings in these days. If her mother wished us to come here to be educated, I suppose she had her good reasons for it, and that Lucy should be such a goose ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... Great: and will, I hope, do them good. I heard but little music: the glorious Acis and Galatea; and the redoubtable Jenny Lind, for the first time. I was disappointed in her: but am told this is all my fault. As to naming her in the same Olympiad with great old Pasta, I am sure that is ridiculous. The Exhibition is like most others you have seen; worse perhaps. There is an 'Aaron' and a 'John the Baptist' by Etty far worse than the Saracen's Head on Ludgate Hill. Moore is turned Picture dealer: and that high Roman virtue in which he indulged is ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... of good-humor. "That is a ridiculous accident, and it all came about when I lived in Chicago. Do you know anything about the infernal climate there? Well, in Chicago I used to lose my voice whenever I caught a cold—sometimes for weeks together. So they began calling me Whispering Smith, and I've never been able ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... ridiculous tale, one of our silliest paddlers burst into uncontrollable mirth. Offended at which breach of decorum, Media sharply ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... ambition, the malice, or the revenge, nay, even the whim and caprice of one ruling man among them, is enough to arm all the rest, without any private views of their own, to the worst and blackest purposes: and what is at once lamentable, and ridiculous, these wretches engage under those banners with a fury greater than if they were animated by revenge ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Mrs. Brinkley, "and that's what makes the whole thing so perfectly ridiculous. Just think of two children, one of twenty and the other of twenty-three, proposing to decide their lifelong destiny in such a vital matter! Should we trust their judgment in regard to the smallest business affair? Of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... enough, for I felt strangely dispirited, and, to tell the truth, in my strange disguise not a little ridiculous. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... as that by which the race attains its perfection, Lessing connects the idea of the transmigration of souls. Why may not the individual man have been present in this world more than once? Is this hypothesis so ridiculous because it ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... made myself ridiculous by pulling you away from Felix that idiotic, humiliating way!" Molly threw this inquiry out, straight before her, angrily. The wind caught at her words and hurled ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... tumble down before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before, and stop to think. But I can't think about the lesson. I think of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone's cap, or of the price of Mr. Murdstone's dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have no business with, and don't want to have anything at all to do with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances submissively at them, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... circumstance, however, was over- balanced by my alarm at finding that the Doctor still persisted in his intention of entering; for I had hoped that at the last moment his faith would give way, and let him slide down from the elevation of his ridiculous and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the testimony was incredible and would be ridiculous if the outcome had not been so tragic. Let us read some bits from the record of those solemn trials. Increase Mather in his Remarkable Providences related the following concerning the persecution of William Morse and wife at Newberry, Massachusetts: "On ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... for bearing witness to any truth, but only for witnessing to the Divine truth, otherwise a man would be a martyr if he were to die for confessing a truth of geometry or some other speculative science, which seems ridiculous. Therefore faith alone ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... with pauses, and indicates the whole censorious universe.] And now let me assure you—I am the last man in the world to be jilted on the very eve of—of—everything with you. I won't be jilted. [CYNTHIA is silent.] You understand? I propose to marry you. I won't be made ridiculous. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... sit down, my ward, and, if you can possibly help it, stop saying ridiculous things, because I have some very serious things to say to you. Listen. I suppose you are not going to insist upon being sent back to the establishment of Mademoiselle Prefere?... No. Well, then, what would you say if I should take you here to live with me, and to finish ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... "Don't be ridiculous, Lenox. Still, I suppose that is something like it. They wouldn't deserve anything else if they were fools enough to go on fighting after they knew ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... How ridiculous and consuming are the unreasonable demands of the souls of artists and the childish laws which govern their passionate lives! Hardly had he once more found the friend whom he had neglected in the old days when she loved him, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... got ready for her; that she should have time to choose her clothes to harmonise with her moods—time, after a look at the weather, and hearing the news of the day, to settle on what the moods should be. For a man, on the contrary, he thought it ridiculous and weakly idle—indolent in a way not suited to a man. A man, according to Nigel, ought no more to have his breakfast in bed than to come down with a bow of blue ribbon in his hair, or to go and lie down ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... you mean, you ridiculous thing?" drawled Jennie. "You cannot be a Crusoe. You are not dressed ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... is false, my Manilius; it is not merely a fiction, but a ridiculous and bungling one too; and we should not tolerate those statements, even in fiction, relating to facts which not only did not happen, but which never could have happened. For it was not till the fourth year of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus that Pythagoras is ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... steep slope of a mule's back, with a precipice above your head and your feet dangling over a gulf below? There is no help for it. Imagine yourself a sack of meal, if you can, and expect as little sympathy as would be accorded to that article. Are you moved to a keen sense of the ridiculous, as a curve in the road discloses the figures of your elongated party, unused to riding, and rendered the more grotesque by their mountain-equipment? A laugh unshared is no laugh at all, so you may as well smother it at once. Does the scenery through which you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... your heart of hearts, don't want to have to walk and talk continually with a person who might at any moment try to bamboozle you with some ridiculous tale. And I, for my part, don't want to degrade myself by trying to bamboozle any one, especially one whom I have taught to see through me. Let the two talks we have had be as though they had not been. Let ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... Both arise from the perception of something out of the common order of things—something, in fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be excited. The close alliance of these opposites—they are not contraries—appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Knickerbockers were so vastly more exclusive. I do recall this name now. I remember hearing tales of the family in Spokane. They're a type, you know. One sees many of the sort there. They make a strike in the mines and set up ridiculous establishments regardless of expense. You see them riding in their carriages with two men in the box—red-handed, grizzled old vulgarians who've roughed it in the mountains for twenty years with a pack-mule and a ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... bleaching bones 'Twixt here and Moscow.... I have been subdued; But by the elements; and them alone. Not Russia, but God's sky has conquered me! [With an appalled look she sits beside him.] From the sublime to the ridiculous There's but a step!—I have been saying it All through the leagues of my long journey home— And that step has been passed in this affair!... Yes, briefly, it is quite ridiculous, Whichever way ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... remodeled is obvious. We are convinced that the same holds true where only minor changes, replacements and the introduction of modern conveniences are the program. Our own little country home is an example. The necessary alterations were so simple that it seemed ridiculous to ask architectural advice. There was nothing to the job but to install plumbing, move one partition, patch the plastering, and close chimney and other pipe openings cut in the days when stoves, rather ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... the ladies of the family, one can say little. They are not perhaps, by nature, as ridiculous as they have made themselves. Time may do something for them. But their father is a very worthy, respectable man; you must have seen him at our house last summer. Don't you remember one day two uncles of Patsey Hubbard dining ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... ridiculous," snapped Mollie, her thoughts working along with Betty's. "You know you don't believe ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... point Sewell felt himself helpless. He could not pretend that the boy would not be ridiculous in the eyes of his friends, and all the more ridiculous because so wholly innocent. He could only say, "That is a thing you must bear," and then it occurred to him to ask, "Do you feel that it is right to let your family meet ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... ready. It being Collar-day, we had no time to talk with him about any business. To the King's Theatre, where we saw "Midsummer's Night's dream," which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... perceived how his ridiculous talk captivated Miss Jennings, it occurred to her that the vanity of women was such, that this instance of one of their number being impressed by a foolish man's silly conversation was only typical of the manner in which the rest ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... us not call it a flying-machine. Let us call it simply an automobile. There it is on the road, jolting, screeching, rattling, perfuming. And there he is, saying: 'This road ought to be as smooth as velvet. That hill in front is ridiculous, and the descent on the other side positively dangerous. And it's all turns—I can't see a hundred yards in front.' He has a wild idea of trying to force the County Council to sand-paper the road, ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... blushed as my mother said this; had I not been charmed with her already?)—'when you hear her play, for she has expression as well as brilliancy. She is passionately fond of music, I know; not because she went into any ridiculous sentimental raptures about it, as some girls do, but because her eyes lighted up when she told me what a happiness her piano had been to her ever since she was a child. She gave a little sigh after saying that; and I fancied, poor girl, that she had perhaps known very ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... There are three varieties of flowers in it—nasturtiums, portulacas, and bright red geraniums. The portulacas grow around the border, then come the nasturtiums, and finally the taller geraniums in the centre. The Cap'n has never seen nor heard of those ridiculous wooden birds on green shafts which it is now the fashion to stick up in flower beds, but he has something quite appropriate, and, all things considered, quite as "artistic." In the bow of his garden, astride a spar, is a blue-legged sailor man ten inches tall, keeping perpetual lookout up the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... weather, as he was in the habit of fishing in these beaver-hats, and never owned an umbrella in his life. He lived near Meshach, in the old part of Princess Anne, near the bridge, and was the subject of the money-lender's scorn and contempt, as tending to make a mutual eccentricity ridiculous. Milburn had been willing to be hated for his hat, but Jack Wonnell made all unseasonable hats laughable, the more so that he was nearly as old a wearer of his bell-crowns as Milburn of the steeple-top. Although he had no such reasons of reverence ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... let Mary come too! Dogs always liked her. Why was it that dogs liked some people and not others? he asked himself. Ridiculous! No one liked dogs better than he, if this ass of a ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... and my poor child came in with the constable, but walking backwards, [Footnote: This ridiculous proceeding always took place at the first examination of a witch, as it was imagined that she would otherwise bewitch the judges with her looks. On this occasion indeed such an event was not unlikely.] ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... "Don't be ridiculous, Margaret," says Lady Rylton pettishly; "and, above all things, don't be old-fashioned. There is no such product nowadays as a child of seventeen. There isn't time for it. It has gone out! The idea is entirely exploded. Perhaps there were children aged seventeen long ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... mediaeval museum. How the temper of this people and their endurance of legal inflictions have changed since then! There was Matthew Lyon, a noted Democrat of Irish origin, who had published a letter charging the President with "ridiculous pomp, idle parade, and selfish avarice." He was found guilty of sedition, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment and a fine of one thousand dollars. There was Cooper, an Englishman, who fared equally ill for saying or writing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... in a multipara who has had three or four children, whose soft parts are relaxed and who has short labors, the anesthetic of choice would be a few whiffs of chloroform as the head passes over the perineum. It is ridiculous to try to give such women the "twilight sleep." Furthermore, take the cases you see for the first time at the end of the first stage of labor, or during the second stage; these cases are best treated with the nitrous oxid and oxygen method. You have to individualize your cases. The prospective ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... encountered, though we did not suppose that there were any dangers to be feared to which we would not gladly submit for the sake of accompanying Colonel Armytage, who so much requires our care," observed Mrs Armytage. "The inconveniences are more ridiculous than disagreeable, and I fully believe Edda enjoys them; and as to dangers, we have found none hitherto, and rather look for them to add zest to the ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... do it under protest," she declared—"because you force me to." She took up the envelope, and began to unloose the rubber bands. "The Wild Olive" she quoted, half to herself. "Ridiculous! I should think clerks might have something better to do than write such things as that—on envelopes—on people's business." But her indignation turned to surprise when a small flat thing, not unlike a card-case, certainly, tumbled out. "What in ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... brought a box of small candles for just such an emergency. I lit one after the other, sat on the seat, and read Keats all night ... in an ecstasy, forgetting my surroundings, my pitiful poverty, my pilgrimage that would seem ridiculous ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... conclusions of logic can be carried from the one to the other. It is precisely so with these two events. There is a certain analogy between the experience of Jonah, as told in the book, and that of our Lord; but it is ridiculous to say that the one event, if an "admitted reality," "warrants belief" in the other,—whether it is said by Mr. Huxley or Canon Liddon. Our Lord's words convey no such meaning. In truth, if we are here dealing with scientific ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Italian girl would have been accustomed to such treatment, and would not have seen anything unusual in it. But Mrs. Bowring had never acted in such a way before now, and it irritated the young girl extremely. She felt that she was being treated like a child, and that Johnstone must see it and think it ridiculous. At last Clare made an attempt at resistance, out ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... the office, where among other things we made a very great contract with Sir W. Warren for 3,000 loade of timber. At noon dined at home. In the afternoon to the Fishery, where, very confused and very ridiculous, my Lord Craven's proceedings, especially his finding fault with Sir J. Collaton and Colonell Griffin's' report in the accounts of the lottery-men. Thence I with Mr. Gray in his coach to White Hall, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... determined little caricature of the hotel lobby. A little peasant masquerading as a dazzled moth around the bright lights. Not entirely. There is something else. There is something of a great dream behind the ridiculous pathos of this over-dressed little fool. There is something in him that desires expression, that will never achieve expression, and that will always leave him just such an absurd little clown of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... pass the wink and go at it tooth and nail. It was ridiculous, arguing the toss on a long-gone-by small-time scrap like the Civil War with the greatest show in history going on all around us. Anyway the Tommies loved it and would fairly howl with delight when ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... rustling paper ruffle tied round his tail, paper shoes on, and a fool's cap on his head? and as everybody laughed at him, and he knew they were doing so, do you remember his reproachful look of helpless, indignant protest against being made to appear ridiculous ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mean the Keely motor man?" cried Jennie, laughing. "That arrant humbug! Why, all the papers in the world have exposed his ridiculous pretensions; he has done nothing ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr |
