"Absurd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shorter than its Chord, and sometimes longer than its Tangent: 3. That the same Straight Line must be allowed, at one place onely to Touch, and at another place to Cut the same Circle: (with others of like nature;) He findes it necessary, that these things may not seem Absurd, to allow his Lines some Breadth, (that so, as he speaks, While a Straight Line with its Out-side doth at one place {291} Touch the Circle, it may with its In-side at another place Cut it, &c.) But I shou'd sooner take this to be a Confutation of His Quadratures, than a demonstration ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... January, 1792, civilly dead, and their properties confiscated; and similar rigorous measures were ordained against those priests who should refuse the oath binding them to the constitution, and continue to excite agitation. The king refused to sanction these decrees; and then was seen the absurd balance of power provided against the constitution. The rage of the revolutionists knew no bounds; and unable to attack the monarch directly, they turned their rage against the ministers and the constitutionalists ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of her, for the three turned to regard her. She met their scrutiny with a doubtful half smile, which vanished as Anna Mantegazza made a light comment upon her hair being so newly up. Lavinia detested the latter with a sudden and absurd intensity. She saw Anna, with a veiled glance at Gheta, make an apology and leave to join an eddy of familiars that had formed in the human stream sweeping by. Mochales stood very close to her sister, speaking seriously, while Gheta ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... from her parents' race than during the first weeks of her sojourn in her native country. She was so unconscious of her relationship that she liked to play at imitating native life, as something utterly peculiar and absurd. Meals in Japanese eating-houses amused her immensely. The squatting on bare floors, the exaggerated obeisance of the waiting-girls, the queer food, the clumsy use of chop-sticks, the numbness of her feet after being sat upon for half an hour, all would set her off in peals ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... was, indeed, the fact, and any intelligent child could have enlightened a stranger as to the name of the stout gentleman indicated. He was one of the first citizens of the community, if wealth, probity, and long residence may be said to count for anything. And his name, which it were absurd longer to conceal, was Amzi Montgomery, or, to particularize, Amzi Montgomery III. As both his father and his grandfather who had borne the same name slept peacefully in Greenlawn, it is unnecessary to continue in this narrative the numerical designation of this living Amzi ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... imagine from what I have written that Lucullus has left no disciples in Germany. I could easily add a page to the list I have mentioned, and because we look upon some of these customs of the German as absurd is no reason for forgetting that he often, and from his stand-point rightly, looks upon us as boors. I like the Germans and I pretend to have learned very much from them. To sneer at superficial differences ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Absurd ideas took hold upon him. He thought that he did not relish the landscape. It threatened him. A coldness swept over his back, and it is true that his trousers felt to him that they were no fit for his legs ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... and that might yet happen, yet never would happen, between him and her. All the best things that she remembered had only happened in her dreams, her imagination no sooner sipped the first sip of an experience than it conjured up for her great absurd satisfying draughts of nectar, for which the waking Sarah Brown might thirst in vain. But there was no waking Sarah Brown. Her life was only a sleep-walking; only very rarely did she awake for a moment and feel ashamed to see how alert was ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... was the most truthful man I have ever met. In this, too, we were similar, as we were similar in our intellectual honesty. We never sacrificed truth to make a point. We had no points to make, we so thoroughly agreed. It is absurd to think that we could disagree ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... oratorios, our composer produced the beautiful music to Dryden's "St. Caecilia Ode," and Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." Henceforth neither praise nor blame could turn Handel from his appointed course. He was not yet popular with the musical dilettanti, but we find no more catering to an absurd taste, no more writing ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... cockneys in the cook's galley had found intoxicants, had poured raw whiskey into their empty stomachs and the result was the quickest and most complete intoxication. When Madden regained the deck he found his crew singing, laughing, fighting, quarreling in an absurd medley. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... exclaimed, "how absurd of me not to have thought of it before! But, you see, Mr. Colston always speaks of you by your first name. You ought to ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... Don Carlos follows you around. Bill's afraid that Nels or Ambrose or one of the cowboys will take a fall out of the Mexican. They're itching for the chance. Of course, dear, it's absurd to you, but ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... him doubtfully. He was a solid-looking person, and it seemed absurd to think of lifting him. But she did as he directed, and placing her hands under his arms she found that he weighed no more than a baby. She held him ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... number of rude fellows the innkeeper took his revenge upon the crazy knight by the mistreatment of Sancho Panza who was tossed in a blanket until the company could toss him no more for weariness and the laughter that his absurd ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... your faction of the Little Faiths. However, I never could assign any probable or feasible reason for withdrawing these memorials of ancient independence; and my doubts rather arose from the conviction that many absurd things are done in public as well as in private life, merely out of a hasty impression of passion or resentment. For it was evident the removal of the Regalia might have greatly irritated people's minds here, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... free to deny the existence of such treaties. It was undoubtedly a dread of some such occurrence which had induced the promptitude and the ever-increasing liberality in terms which France had shown from the moment when the news of Saratoga arrived. Nor perhaps was her anxiety so utterly absurd as it now seems. There was some foundation for Gibbon's epigrammatic statement that "the two greatest nations in Europe were fairly running a race for the favor of America." For the disaster to the army on the Hudson had had an effect in England even greater than it had had in France, and Burgoyne's ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... which was in great demand for miles around. Consequently, the girls would have good music for their frolic and as Mrs. Bonnell looked to the refreshments, everything was satisfactory excepting Miss Woodhull's veto upon "the absurd practices of Hallowe'en:" meaning the love tests of fate and fortune usually made that night. Those were debarred, though many a one was indulged in in secret of which that practical ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... truthfully said of these plays than that they are comprehensible. First of all, they are plays, and not works—like the dropsical dramas of Sir Henry Taylor and Mr. Swinburne. Some of them have stood the ordeal of actual representation; and though it would be absurd to pretend that they met with that overwhelming measure of success our critical age has reserved for such dramatists as the late Lord Lytton, the author of 'Money,' the late Tom Taylor, the author of 'The Overland Route,' the late Mr. Robertson, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... devoted to some other person; why should there be any greater truth in the report of to-day than in that of yesterday, or in that of yesterday than in that of to-day?" To Monsieur, in relating to him the adventure of the royal oak, she said, "Are you not very absurd in your jealousies, my dear Philip? It is asserted that the king is madly in love with that little La Valliere. Say nothing of it to your wife; for the queen will know all about it very soon." This latter confidential communication had an ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to Tommy while she watched! When the old lady was on her knees thanking him, and every other lady was impressed by the feeling he showed, it seemed to Grizel that he was again in the arms of some such absurd sentiment as had mastered him in the Den. When he behaved so charmingly about the gift she was almost sure he looked at her as he had looked in the old days before striding his legs and screaming out, "Oh, am I not a wonder? I see by your face that you think ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... came long after my close personal relations with him had ceased, and I had become only an occasional correspondent, living in Italy. But to make his decline the consequence of the use of chloral, even when it was finally become habitual, as some do, is absurd. It had been prescribed for him by a competent physician, because some remedy for his malady had become necessary. Even before I had recommended his first experiment with it he had been incapacitated from work by sleeplessness, and was in a ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... women. Our physicians are saying that there is not one American woman in a hundred who is nervously normal. The profession declares that they are excitable, irritable, peevish, and that this unfortunate state is produced by the unnatural and absurd tension they ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... wicked men have used Holy Scripture to justify the most impious crimes. Others, with more fancy than judgment, have drawn the most absurd conclusions from its facts; but we seem warranted to conclude, that by selecting shepherds to receive the first tidings of Jesus' birth, apart from the circumstance that they were Christ's own favourite types of Himself, God intended to confer special honour ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... you needn't be afraid. I will forgive the bad grammar, bad style, absurd images, faulty method, and even the verses ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of bridges or of locomotives or cars, upon the best means of reducing the working-expenses of a machine of whose component parts they have not the slightest idea, of the most complicated and elaborate piece of mechanism that men have ever designed, might at first seem absurd; but custom has made it right. It is generally supposed that the moment a man, be he lawyer, doctor, or merchant, is chosen director in a railroad enterprise, immediately he becomes possessed of all knowledge of mechanics, finance, and commerce; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... freemen, and three-fifths of the slaves it contains. He could not see any rule by which slaves were to be included in the ratio of representation;—the principle of a representation being that every free agent should be concerned in governing himself, it was absurd to give that power to a man who could not exercise it—slaves have no will of their own: the very operation of it was to give certain privileges to those people, who were so wicked as to keep slaves. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of traditional and apocryphal circumstances, in most cases sanctioned by the Church authorities of the time. However doubtful or repulsive some of these scenes and incidents, we cannot call them absolutely unmeaning or absurd; on the contrary, what was supposed grew up very naturally, in the vivid and excited imaginations of the people, out of what was recorded; nor did they distinguish accurately between what they were allowed and what they were commanded to believe. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... just like Rose!" exclaimed Eeny; "she is everything by starts, and nothing long. Flying off to Quebec for a week, just as she is going to be married, with half her dresses unmade. It's absurd." ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... law,—by the difference of which laws different churches (as different commonwealths) are made in various parts of the world; and the establishment is a tax laid by the same sovereign authority for payment of those who so teach and so practise: for no legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people to support men for teaching and acting as they please, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... think so, in another ten years," Desmond went on, "but, at present, I have no more thought of marrying than I have of becoming king of France. The idea is altogether absurd, and it happens to be particularly so, in the present case, since one of the objects of my going down to Pointdexter is that I may be present at the formal betrothal of this young lady, to Monsieur de la Vallee, a ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... to tell him it was absurd, but before the word could come she saw that it was the last one to apply; he was so confident, so quiet, so sure of himself, if not of Rachel. At last she told him she could not think of it, he had seen nothing of her, ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... You remember Mrs. Calfsfoot's habit of twitching her nose and twirling her thumbs when she is beginning an anecdote about somebody one never saw, and never cared to see. Well, Carrie stopped in the middle of our rambles in the forest, and imitated her squeaky voice and absurd gestures to the life. The anecdote, concocted impromptu, was a wonderfully sustained bit of pure invention. On my honour, when she had finished her little performance, I could not help giving ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... see, from this anecdote, that, though there is but one rule of the school, I by no means intend to say that there is only one way of doing wrong here. That would be very absurd. You must not do any thing which you may know, by proper reflection, to be in itself wrong. This, however, is a universal principle of duty, not a rule of the Mount Vernon School. If I should attempt to make rules which would specify and prohibit every possible ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... a false key to open all your secrets. All his affections jump[86] even with your's; he is before-hand with your thoughts, and able to suggest them unto you. He will commend to you first what he knows you like, and has always some absurd story or other of your enemy, and then wonders how your two opinions should jump in that man. He will ask your counsel sometimes as a man of deep judgment, and has a secret of purpose to disclose to you, and whatsoever you say, is persuaded. He ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... own hands. I, you see, have taken it into mine. What do you propose to do? I am quite at your service. Your idea of arresting me on a charge of receiving stolen goods is, if you will allow me to say so, absurd. You could no more make me guilty of that than you could hang me for the deaths of those foolish spies of yours. Now, what is it to be? Pardon me, Herr von Hamner: the bracelets inconvenience you. Allow me." He took the ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... decorative costume. All of the present-day extravagance in female attire, with its ever-changing fashion, is a medley of commercial intrigues, female competition and sex excitement. Though the modesty restrictions are absurd, the motive that obscurely prompts it is not, and the transgressors either seek notice in a risky way, are foolish, to speak bluntly, or else are inviting actual ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... is so strong, that everyone would have more than he hath, and few men will be content. This desire of aggrandisement overcomes and masters us; and yet, what can be more absurd than to witness the care and anxiety of those to gain riches, who have already more, perhaps, than is necessary for their wants,—thus 'heaping up riches, not knowing who may gather them,' and endangering the soul ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... of London (female figure) is writing the words "Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar." With admirable taste the sculptor, who knew what his female figures were, has turned the City of London with her back to the spectator. At the base of this absurd monument two sailors watch over a bas-relief of the battle of Trafalgar, which certainly no one of taste would steal. The inscription is from the florid ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... presents Him, without presumption and without fear. For the same spacious faith that will render the idea of airing their egotisms in God's presence through prayer, or of any such quite personal intimacy, absurd, will render the idea of an irascible and punitive ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Other absurd questions followed—as to his hair; long or short? Had he a pair of scales with him? As before, Joan of Arc answered these futile, and sometimes indecent, questions with her wonderful patience. At one moment she could not help exclaiming how ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... absurd or impossible, therefore, in these odd manifestations,—however bizarre and unusual they appear to us at first sight. An unusual combination of circumstances might bring them about. Stones do not ordinarily fall out of the air; yet at times they do (meteors). ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... in spite of his wife's indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought them absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... defended on a priori principles without much real reflection, and was quite outgrown by him when taught by the experience of riper years. In the Constantio Sapientis he praises and holds up to imitation the absurd apathy recommended by Stilpo. In the De Animi Tranquillitate, addressed to Annaeus Serenus, the captain of Nero's body- guard, [1] he adopts the same line of thought, but shows signs of limiting its application by the necessities of circumstances. The person to whom this dialogue is addressed, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... hoped, the boys were wildly curious about the mysterious letters "M.K." They made a great many absurd guesses, and Carl finally nicknamed it the "Club of Many Kinks," which he thought sounded like girls. But they only ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... it's absolutely absurd, Richard," began one of these, as they approached—"your putting such notions into the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... became crowded and uncomfortable. Armed constables were placed at both doors—the one entering the hall and the other the dining-room—as well as in all the corners. Their faces were dull, and their guns seemed unnecessary and absurd in these peaceful surroundings—but then the guests ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... sufficient to deter Men who make it their Glory to despise it, but if every one that fought a Duel were to stand in the Pillory, it would quickly lessen the Number of these imaginary Men of Honour, and put an end to so absurd a Practice. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... The South African News—that is to say, of the journal which, as we have noticed before, served as the medium for the expression of the political views of Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer. At the period in question The South African News rendered itself notorious by circulating the absurd, but none the less injurious, report that General Buller and his army had surrendered to the Boers in Natal and agreed to return to England on parole; by publishing stories of imaginary Boer victories; by eulogising Mr. Hargrove, whose acceptance of the L1,000 from the Netherlands Railway ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... other; he always frowns, and I always smile. Theoretically I am annoyed and indignant; but at the critical moment the comical side of the situation sweeps over me, and out flashes the smile before I can force it back. It is so absurd to see a big grown man sulking like a child! Quite a good thing he does not intend to marry. His wife would ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hand, he would not allow his followers to indulge in pleasures; but he insists most sensibly on keeping between the two extremes and proclaims the middle path of leading a righteous life. There is nothing absurd about him. Think of Devadatta. He insists that the monks should dress in rags picked up in cemeteries. The Buddha appeals to common sense, and therefore I say, he is a ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... a very hot afternoon in June, but the young professor had forgotten the heat and the grime of the workshop. He was wholly absorbed in the making of a nondescript machine, a sort of crude harmonica with a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. It was a most absurd toy in appearance. It was unlike any other thing that had ever been made in any country. The young professor had been toiling over it for three years and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot afternoon in June, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... broke silence. "Well?" she said. "Is there anything you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou" the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that one ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of old army and militia officers. Old Tom has done wonders, I can tell you. You see, he is so fearfully earnest himself every one else has got to be earnest. There has been no playing about anything, but just fifteen hours' hard work a day. Fellows grumbled and growled and said it was absurd, and threatened to do all sorts of things. You see, they had all come out to fight if necessary, but hadn't bargained for ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... of one mind in the quarters of the working men. I have been much struck with the difference between one of these poor fellows who is prepared to die for the honour of his country, between his quiet, calm demeanour, and the absurd airs, and noisy brawls, and the dapper uniforms of the young fellows one meets with in the fashionable quarters. It is the difference between reality and ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... The House of Stuart being ended, 1714-1727 George of Hanover (descended From daughter of King Jamie One) Comes over to ascend our throne. Of English George knew not a word, Most awkward, not to say absurd, At Cabinet Councils to preside; So from this ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... of the tribunate, feeble as it was, displeased the first consul; not that it was any obstacle to his designs, but it kept up the habit of thinking in the nation, which he wished to stifle entirely. He put into the journals among other things, an absurd argument against the opposition. Nothing is so simple or so proper, was it there said, as an opposition in England, because the king is the enemy of the people; but in a country, where the executive government is itself named by the people, it is opposing the nation to oppose its representative. ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... "It is absurd," he continued, with affected anger. "Ointment such as that has a value. It might better have ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... laughed again till I thought there must be some elf scrambling among the rafters of that smothery ceiling. It seemed so absurd to be thrilled with love of Hortense with the breath of the wolves ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... for the same doctrine to be at once true and false; or that they think it immaterial whether, on a religious question, a man comes to a true or a false conclusion. If there be any Protestants who hold notions so absurd, we abandon ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Memory" in Nature (January 27, 1881) the notion of a "race-memory," to use his own words, was still so new to him that he declared it "simply absurd" to suppose that it could "possibly be fraught with any benefit to science," and with him too it was Professor Hering who had anticipated me in the matter, not ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... if indeed it were a note from him, seemed only likely to throw me into further trouble, by disquieting to no purpose my already enfeebled and agitated mind. In vain I revolved in my brain a multitude of absurd expedients for procuring light—such expedients precisely as a man in the perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar purpose—each and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wounds, and wished to call Oros, the physician, to dress them, and as he refused this, offered to do so herself. He begged that she would leave his wounds alone, and then, his great beard bristling with wrath, asked her solmenly if he was a child in arms, a query so absurd that I ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... were staring at the boy who had spoken. Even in the dim light their intense interest was plainly manifest. Zeke was doing his utmost by absurd motions to impress upon the mind of John the fact that he must ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... more substantial part of the feast had been concluded, a band of dancing-girls and musicians made their appearance; followed by a puppet-show, which might have afforded amusement to a party of children, but which to Reginald's taste appeared absurd in the extreme. He felt far more disgusted with the performances of the nautch-girls, and he resolved to prohibit their ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... hundred thousand roubles?" he asked. But his mother remained profitably silent over the preparation of the family soup. The fire now blazed with the additional wood that had been heaped upon it. The little voice repeated the absurd question, and the mother shouted, "Silence! Don't make yourself ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... admitted for performance at Fontainebleau; and for the first time the King had the curtain dropped before the end of the play. It was called the "Dramomane" or "Dramaturge." All the characters died of eating poison in a pie. The Queen, highly disconcerted at having recommended this absurd production, announced that she would never hear another reading; and this time she kept ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Phocians on their arrival; but according to him, they met with a kind reception among the Ligurians, who continued to inhabit those parts for a long time after. Even the story of the lucumo who is said to have invited the Gauls is opposed to him, and if it were referred to Clusium alone it would be absurd. Polybius places the passage of the Gauls across the Alps about ten or twenty years before the taking of Rome; and Diodorus describes them as advancing toward Rome by an uninterrupted march. It is further stated that Melpum in the country of the Insubrians was destroyed on the same ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... it's absurd! And yet," the Riding Officer went on irritably, "if one could count on its being absurd, I wouldn't mind. But there's just a chance that, with all this foolery, Hymen and Pond are covering up a little game. Why have they chosen Talland ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tells me we may expect the "Dissolution" very shortly, and I'm sure the poor Members must be glad of it, for this weather makes one long to dissolve—though I must say it seems to me an absurd time to choose, as it will stop the Season and upset everybody's arrangements! These things will be better managed when we get a "House of Peeresses" at the head of affairs—and that is only a question of time, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... at most, did give shape to the great epic of the Greek people. Wolf, Lachmann, and Bert have shown the follies of men of genius when pursuing a line of evidence to prove a favorite theory. Their assumptions are often absurd, and their conclusions, once admitting their premises, are a logical necessity. The spirit of iconoclasm rested, not with the authority of the book, but assailed the geographic and topographical features. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... they walked they hoofed it. And the last time they sang was just before they heard the Italians sing. The first performance by comparison with the second sounded as a tom-tom concert in competition with the celestial choir. Talk about carrying coals to Newcastle; the most absurd performance of the Y was exporting American singers to entertain ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... mere number of fires irrespective of the size of the industrial group upon which they committed their ravages, houses would appear to be hazardous according to the order in which we have placed them. Now, this is manifestly absurd, inasmuch as private houses stand at the head of the list, and it is well known that they are the safest from fire of all kinds of tenements. Mr. Brown, of the Society of Actuaries, who has taken the trouble to compare the number of fires ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... perfectly absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a way out of it for the moment. "We will never get any of our comrades to serve as seconds. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... "I shall go home now now—this instant why am I kept in ignorance of my father's death? I know who murdered him in spite of secrecy," she screamed," it was Mr. Palsey, that false villain below," "Helen cried Cyril," "how could it be Mr. Palsey, why I should know it if it was he, dont be absurd dear, get into bed again do you know you are very ill, and to go out ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... him and to the conspirators to whom he had been sent; and the more reprehensible was it, therefore, in a President of the United States, to make the use that was made of this story, which an impartial examination would have shown was essentially absurd and infamously false. Mr. Madison's intelligence is not to be impugned. He was too sagacious, as well as too unimpassioned a man, to be taken in by the ingenious tale of such an adventurer as Henry. In a letter to Colonel David Humphreys, written the next spring, in defense of the policy ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... of advice, at the last moment, which was as common-place and natural, and which I ought to have expected, enervated me, and, in spite of myself, plunged me into a state of perplexity, from which I could not extricate myself. I remembered those absurd stories which we hear among friends, after a good dinner. What would be that last trial of our love for her and for me, and could that love which then was my whole life, come out of the ordeal lessened or increased tenfold? And when I looked at the couch on which Elaine, my adored Elaine, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... "Absurd, isn't it!" she replied, with a weak smile. "I'll get over it directly. I don't think I am going ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... maintain that they are merely local, and depend entirely upon the customs and fashions of different countries; nay, there are still, if possible, more unaccountable wretches; I mean those who affect to preach and propagate such absurd and infamous notions without believing them themselves. These are the devil's hypocrites. Avoid, as much as possible, the company of such people; who reflect a degree of discredit and infamy upon all who converse with them. But as you may, sometimes, by accident, fall ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... doing an absurd thing, but the superstition of the people demanded it, and he must cater to their desires because it ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... In verse the speaker lays down what entities dwell in the body. In the rest he expounds the nature of Sattwa which the commentator takes to mean buddhi or knowledge. He begins with the statement that Sattwasya asrayah nasti. This does not mean that the knowledge has no refuge, for that would be absurd, but it means that the asraya of the knowledge, i.e., that in which the knowledge dwells, viz., the body, does not exist, the true doctrine being that the body has no real existence but that it exists like to its image ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... social scale, the houses grow simpler and simpler. Small shops are set into the street wall at either side of the entrance door, and on entering one finds himself in a very limited and utterly dingy court with a few dirty compartments opening thence, which it would be absurd to dignify by the name of "rooms." Again one ceases to wonder that the male Athenians are not "home folk" and are glad to leave their houses to ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... the afternoon to ride 4 1/2 miles, attend a native feast in the gaol, and ride four and a half miles back. But there is no help for it. I am a sort of father of the political prisoners, and have charge d'ames in that riotously absurd establishment, Apia Gaol. The twenty-three (I think it is) chiefs act as under gaolers. The other day they told the Captain of an attempt to escape. One of the lesser political prisoners the other day effected a swift capture, while the Captain was trailing about with the warrant; the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and generously lamented the cruel necessity of thus compelling them to relinquish a league, which had for it's object, beneath the artful veil of a generous love of liberty, that has sufficiently deluged the earth with blood, the unjust and absurd view of destroying the maritime power of Great Britain, by which the freedom of the, seas is alone preserved to the honourable commerce ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... right, and I ought to be obliged to you for being so considerate. But no one would pay heed to my aunt's ravings. Every person in the house knows that the statement is absurd. Mr. Hilton was in his room. I myself saw him go upstairs after exchanging a few words with his father in the hall, and he came down again instantly when Harris ran to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... effect, and rather absurd mistake, resulted from the different densities in the super-heated atmosphere which caused this mirage. Fancying that I saw two springboks on the horizon I pointed them out to ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... acted perfectly absurd about it. Seeing that they were going to make a fuss, I refused to say with whom I had been walking. You'd have thought I had committed ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... photo-gravured portrait of him will be included, with views of the interior and exterior of 'The Drudgeries,' and a bit from the back-garden." (You do know MINCING—and you cannot help inwardly wondering at the absurd vanity of the man—a mere nobody, away from the City!) "Between ourselves," says your interviewer, candidly, having possibly observed your expression, "I am by no means sure that I shall feel warranted in allotting Alderman MINCING as much space ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended. In like manner the judicial authority of the federal judicatures is declared by the Constitution to comprehend certain cases particularly specified. The expression of those cases marks the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... bad showing in comparison with the average denizen of Christian lands. As to beliefs, how much more defensible were the superstitions of our own race two or three centuries ago, or of to-day, than those of the Hawaiians? How much less absurd and illogical were our notions of cosmogony, of natural history; how much less beneficent, humane, lovable the theology of the pagan Hawaiians than of our Christian ancestors a few centuries ago if looked at from an ethical or practical point of view. At the worst, the Hawaiian sacrificed the enemy ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... table. Landor became flushed, and greatly agitated: "My dear Count D'Orsay, I thank you! My dear Count D'Orsay, I thank you from my soul for pointing out to me the abominable condition to which I am reduced! If I had entered the Drawing-room, and presented myself before Lady Blessington in so absurd a light, I would have instantly gone home, put a pistol to my head, ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... absurd prejudice that claims that national honor requires you to hate to-day the enemy who may be ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... we assert that these excellencies, which have thus been succinctly exhibited, characterise the mental constitution of Burke, we do not mean that others have not, in their degree, possessed similar endowments. Such an inference would be an absurd extravagance. But what we mean to affirm is—the qualifications enumerated have never been combined into co-operative harmony, and developed in proportionable effect, as they appear in the speeches and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... splash of his father's blood impressed there, till the "solid flesh" would verily "melt"? Was it his neighbourhood which brought out the ruddy spot, that, like the scarlet streaks down Lady Macbeth's little hands, would not wash off? Absurd folly! But he wished he had done with it. He wished old ladies would confine themselves to their own concerns. He hoped fainting was not heard of among the girls of the moors—that would be a talk! He supposed he ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the beach has not yet been settled and the chief point of dispute is the way a woman should dress. It is absurd for her to wear a suit that will hamper her movements in the water but it is even worse for her to wear a skimpy garment that makes her the observed of all observers as she parades up and down the beach. There is no set rule as to ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... newly-enthroned Mme. Ratichon on my arm, was about to take leave of M. Goldberg. I must admit that at that moment my heart was overflowing with bitterness. I had been led like a lamb to the slaughter; I had been made to look foolish and absurd in the midst of this Israelite community which I despised; I was saddled for the rest of my life with an unprepossessing elderly wife, who could do naught for me but share the penury, the hard crusts, the onion pies with me and Theodore. The only advantage I might ever derive ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and unschool'd; For what we know must be, and is as common As any the most vulgar thing to sense, Why should we, in our peevish opposition, Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd; whose common theme Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, From the first corse till he that died to-day, 'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth This unprevailing woe; and think of us ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... creatures are, apparently so wise on some occasions and so absurd on others! This vesper sparrow in bringing food to her young, going through the same tactics over and over, learns no more than a machine would. But, of course, the bird does not think; hence the folly of her behavior to a being that does. The wisdom of nature, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... (for she did not sleep by day) frightened us so much that at last we bought the drivers over to our hours.... The caravanserai at Aintab is so disagreeable a place for Mrs. Cronin that we enquired for a private house, and... we have hired one at the absurd price of three-halfpence sterling! It has a large grassy yard, very convenient for our horses, We have now only ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... out of caves and deserts, to deliberate upon topicks, which the experience and studies, and the refinements of civil life alone suggest. Therefore no government in the universe begun from this original." But there are no grounds for so absurd a supposition; for government, and of course the social compact, does not appear to have been introduced at the time, when families coming out of their caves and deserts, or, in other words, quitting their former dissociated state, joined themselves ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... position of deputy. Happily this object, having come to the surface, will end in failure. Electors will certainly not be inveigled by so wily a manner of advancing self-interests; and when the proper time arrives, if ridicule has not already done justice on this absurd candidacy, we shall ourselves prove to the pretender that to aspire to the distinguished honor of representing the nation something more is required than the money to buy a paper and pay an underling to put into good French the horrible diction of his articles ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... multitude of editions, and many thousand copies have been circulated. It was patronized in those early efforts of the Religious Tract Society, which have been so abundantly blessed in introducing wholesome food to the young, instead of the absurd romances which formerly poisoned ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you're talking about," Dorothy replied, with some spirit. "Herr Deichenberg had all he could do to induce me to leave my dressing-room. Let the announcement sound as absurd as it may, I ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... should have it for all time to come, and had made it secure and firm to him, to have refused it. However, he himself will judge again who it shall be whom he would have to offer sacrifices to him, and to have the direction of matters of religion; for it is absurd that Corah, who is ambitious of this honor, should deprive God of the power of giving it to whom he pleases. Put an end, therefore, to your sedition and disturbance on this account; and tomorrow morning do every one of you that desire the priesthood bring a censer from home, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... divergences have been trivial compared to ours, so far as concerned the avowed principles of strife. In the French wars of the Fronde, the only available motto for anybody was the Tout arrive en France, "Anything may happen in France," which gayly recognized the absurd chaos of the conflict. In the English civil wars, the contending factions first disagreed upon a shade more or less of royal prerogative, and it took years to stereotype the hostility into the solid forms with which we now associate it. Even at the end of that contest, no one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Lilly's incantations, I had almost accepted his absurd vaporings, but cooler thought had brought contempt, and I had begun to look upon our journey as a very ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Nietzsche. I was told that Wagner was a fairly good musician, although no inventor of themes. He had evolved no new melodies, but his knowledge of harmony, above all, his constructive power, were his best recommendations. As for his abilities as a dramatic poet, absurd! His metaphysics were green with age, his theories as to the syntheses of the arts silly and impracticable, while his Schopenhauerism, pessimism, and the rest sheer dead weights that were slowly but ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... of the Spaniards, who carried on the slave-trade, that it may be inferred the inhabitants of Paria visited by Christopher Columbus and by Ojeda, were not of the same race as the Chaymas. I doubt much whether the custom of blackening the teeth was originally suggested, as Gomara supposed, by absurd notions of beauty, or was practised with the view of preventing the toothache. * This disorder is, however, almost unknown to the Indians; and the whites suffer seldom from it in the Spanish colonies, at least in the warm regions, where ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Willy would have been quick to laugh at such an absurd remark; but now, tired as he was, it made him downright angry. He stopped whistling, and did not speak again for five minutes. Meanwhile he began to ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... governor answered that "he would try," and the flagellator soon determined the problem in favor of authority. Indignant exclamations of free men were deemed preposterous by a body of officials, who regarded the diffidence of civil government as absurd, and considered power ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... near relative. She and Florence had always been good friends, had often discussed Clarence of late. What sort of advice would Florence's forty-five years be apt to give to Rachael's twenty-eight? "Don't be so absurd, Rachael, half the men in our set drink as much as Clarence does. Don't jump from the frying-pan into the fire. Remember Elsie Rowland and Marian Cowles when you talk ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... carrying on a whispered conversation with Minnie, who was snugged close in her arms, and merry bursts of laughter came every few minutes from the little girl. The idea of Sadie keeping quiet herself, or of keeping any body else quiet, was simply absurd. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... seems almost absurd for the United States to recognize the need, and so earnestly to seek, for cooperation among the nations unless we can achieve voluntary, dependable, abiding cooperation among the important segments ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that absurd Delaroche, who is so much in love with himself that he has no place in his heart for any one else! Fi donc! I am ashamed of you. There—adieu, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... sensibility, without the aid of speculation, requiring only to be insured against the effects of a speculation which would involve it in contradiction with itself. To deny the positive advantage of the service which this criticism renders us would be as absurd as to maintain that the system of police is productive of no positive benefit, since its main business is to prevent the violence which citizen has to apprehend from citizen, that so each may pursue his vocation in peace and security. That space and time ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Brute looks with a kind of Pride on one of an inferior Species. If they could reflect, we might imagine from the Gestures of some of them, that they think themselves the Sovereigns of the World, and that all things were made for them. Such a Thought would not be more absurd in Brute Creatures, than one which Men are apt to entertain, namely, That all the Stars in the Firmament were created only to please their Eyes and amuse their Imaginations. Mr. Dryden, in his Fable of the Cock and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this opinion his mind was made up; and he was persuaded that, the more the subject was considered, the more his opinion would gain ground; and it would be admitted, that to consider it in any other manner, or on any other principles than those of humanity and justice, would be idle and absurd. If there were any such men, and he did not know but that there were those, who, led away by local and interested considerations, thought the Slave Trade might still continue under certain modifications, these were the dupes of error, and mistook what they thought their interest, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... have you for such absurd fears? Pray do you take the castle of my ancestors to be the lair of banditti?" he asked in a tone of assumed ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... embracing work of such primitive crudity and apparently unstudied frankness as the work of Mark Twain. It is for American criticism to posit this more comprehensive aesthetic, and to demonstrate that the work of Mark Twain is the work of a great artist. It would be absurd to maintain that Mark Twain's appeal to posterity depends upon the dicta of literary criticism. It would be absurd to deny that upon America rests the task of demonstrating, to a world willing enough to be convinced, that Mark Twain is one of the supreme ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... that kingly office which he was then on the point of relinquishing for ever. To enter upon an appreciation of the moral value of the enterprise which Henry had then in prospect, would be as much out of place here, as it would be absurd to estimate it by the rule of the present age. In those ages, when all the higher orders of society were either clerical or martial, much real piety of sentiment (p. 317) must, in innumerable instances, have been compounded ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... "So absurd! But I was vexed when you said you'd give it up. You mustn't do that, or you'll be flying in the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... story of a stone having the property of converting the baser metals into gold being merely an absurd fable: yet, although the pursuits of Alchemy were the most preposterous that can be conceived, the ardor with which they were followed, and the amazing number of experiments made in consequence, led to the discovery of many facts to which Chemistry ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... eternal benefit of mankind. The fear of the Lord is imperfect knowledge, it is but the beginning of wisdom; but it could become, in a Jew like St. Paul, the perfect knowledge of His will. It may seem absurd to think of two such religions as the Jewish and the Roman side by side; but the absurdity vanishes when we begin to understand the humble beginnings of the Jewish religion as scientific research has already laid it bare. Knowledge of the Power manifesting itself in the universe is open to ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... such a treasure the fear of losing it is so strong that it naturally inspires a feeling of terror. I am absurd, I know; forgive ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... come," said Dr. Howe, with an indignant splutter, "you don't understand these things my dear,—you're young yet, Helen. They were wrong through and through; so don't be absurd." Then turning half apologetically to John Ward, he added, "You'll have to keep this child's ideas in order; I'm sure she never heard such sentiments from me. Mr. Ward will think you haven't been well brought up, Helen. Principle? ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... silly, because the Piccaninnies lived so deep in the Bush that the sun couldn't hurt them, but then fashions are absurd. (Look at the ladies who wear fur coats ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... the ivory of the skin; such sweet radiance in the lip when it broke into a smile. And it was said that in her maiden day, before Caroline Lyndsay became Marchioness of Montfort, that smile was the most joyous thing imaginable. Absurd now; you would not think it, but that stately lady had been a wild, fanciful girl, with the merriest laugh and the quickest tear, filling the air round her with April sunshine. Certainly, no beings ever yet lived the life Nature intended them to live, nor had fair play for heart ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the cart before the horse, the Greeks call it Histeron proteron, we name it the Preposterous, and if it be not too much vsed is tollerable inough, and many times scarse perceiueable, vnlesse the sence be thereby made very absurd: as he that described his manner of departure from his mistresse, said thus not much to be misliked. I kist her cherry lip ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... homewards with long strides and mind uneasy. Surely Dain was not thinking of playing him false. It was absurd. Dain and Lakamba were both too much interested in the success of his scheme. Trusting to Malays was poor work; but then even Malays have some sense and understand their own interest. All would be well—must be well. At this point in his meditation he found himself at the foot ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... Joe was by his side on the bunk, his arm around him. Prompted by some instinctive monitor, he had done it before he thought. A week before he could not have imagined himself in such an absurd situation—his arm around a boy; but now it seemed the most natural thing in the world. He did not comprehend, but he knew, whatever it was, that it was of deep ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... the history of prostitution in relation to militarism, nothing could be more absurd than the familiar statement that virtuous women could not safely walk the streets unless opportunity for secret vice were offered to the men of the city. It is precisely the men who have not submitted to ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... was dressed and out in the fresh air things did not look so bad. Mrs. Burton might have been quite mistaken in thinking that Mary cared for Jervis Ferrars. In the broad light of the sunshiny morning the very idea seemed absurd. The rich man's daughter had a wide circle to choose from; it was scarcely likely that her choice would fall on a poor man, whose position was little removed from that of a ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... told her, concerning the affair of the lost package of money—for as she utterly disbelieved the tale, (imputing it to the effects of an excited imagination,) she had no desire to wound the feelings of her lover by acquainting him with the absurd charge (as she thought) which had been brought against him. How blind is love to the imperfections, the faults, and even the crimes of the object of its adoration! We believe it is Shakespeare ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... won't believe us, of course. The story will sound altogether too absurd." "What will he do—have us sent ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... Philosophers are absurd from many causes, but principally from laying out unthriftily their distinctions. They set up four virtues: fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. Now a man may be a very bad one, and yet possess three out of the four. Every cutthroat must, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock |
