"Ludicrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Haydn was crossing the Straits of Dover to England, amid his sufferings he could not help laughing at the ludicrous recollections of this ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... pleasure and benefit outside of his own family and intimate friends, he could have done more than he has and a great deal more even. He is known to the public as a humorist, but he has much more in him that is earnest than that is humorous. He has a keen sense of the ludicrous, notices funny stories and incidents knows how to tell them, to improve upon them, and does not forget them. He has been through a great many of the funny adventures related in "Tom Sawyer" and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... of that nature which cannot repress a dash of fun, even in the midst of anxiety and sorrow. We would not have it understood that the boy ever deliberately mingled the two things—joy and sorrow—at one and the same time; but he was so irresistibly alive to the ludicrous, that a touch of it was sufficient at any time to cause him to forget, for a brief space, his ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... it; for he must have been a miracle of accomplishments in their eyes. He could imitate Punch and Judy; make an old woman of his hand, with the assistance of a burnt cork and pocket-handkerchief; and cut an orange into such a ludicrous caricature that the young folks were ready to die ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... instructers in our country, fall into it at all. But some young beginner, whose knowledge is very limited, and who, in manner and habits, has only just ceased to be a boy, walks into his school-room with a countenance of forced gravity, and with a dignified and solemn step, which is ludicrous even to himself. I describe accurately, for I describe from recollection. This unnatural, and forced, and ludicrous dignity, cleaves to him like disease, through the whole period of his duty. In the presence ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Mowbray to draw him out by degrees into a repetition of the history of his first attempt to play the character of Shylock. A play altered from Shakespeare's, and called "The Jew of Venice," had been for some time in vogue. In this play, the Jew had been represented, by the actors of the part, as a ludicrous and contemptible, rather than a detestable character; and when Macklin, recurring to Shakespeare's original Shylock, proposed, in the revived Merchant of Venice, to play the part in a serious style, he was scoffed at by the whole ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... embarrassment in the city, and much difficulty was experienced in quartering the Emperor's horses; since to improvise stables in a few days, almost in a moment, was impossible, and to build carriage-houses in the midst of courts would have had a ludicrous effect. But fortunately this difficult situation was ended by one of the quartermasters of the palace named M. Emery, a man of great intelligence, and an old soldier, who, having learned from Napoleon and the force of circumstances never to be overcome by difficulties, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... instead of vaulting clear over the rails, as he had anticipated, his Excellency was drawn back in his leap, and found himself seated astride upon the barrier, with a desperate woman tugging at his tail, and trying to pull him back into the arena. Nothing, we believe, has ever exceeded the ludicrous misery displayed in his Excellency's visage on finding himself in this perilous situation. But seeing the private secretary and a mob of clerks, with their pens in their hands, hastening to his rescue, he made a desperate effort, and cast himself off on the other side; and finally succeeded ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... fashion his most effective weapon. Fashion enthralls man, it deprives him of his freedom; it is the most autocratic dictator, its mandate being obeyed by all classes, high and low, without exception. Every season it issues new decrees, and no matter how ludicrous they are, everyone submits forthwith. The fashions of this season are changed in the next. Look, for example, at women's hats; some years ago the "merry widow" which was about two or three feet in diameter, was all the rage, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... that seems ludicrous as we recall it now. The youths of the community, imbued with the idea that "cold steel" would play an important part in the conflict, provided themselves with huge bowie-knives, fashioned by our home blacksmith, and with these fierce weapons swinging from their belts were much ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... and Hippocrates. The originality, though a queer one to be sure, of Gabirol is to bring the ethical qualities of man into relation with all these. The approximations are forced in every instance and often ludicrous. Instead of attempting to give a psychological analysis of the qualities in question, he lays stress on their physical basis in one of the five senses, as we ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... wanton and ludicrous tales. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton (Lord Lytton) published six of the Lost Tales of Mil[e]tus in rhymeless verse. He pretends he borrowed them from the scattered remnants preserved by Apollodo'rus and Conon, contained in the pages of Pausa'nias and Athenaeus, or dispersed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... dogmatic and off-hand manner which is far from scientific. It is not surprising, therefore, that the most widely divergent opinions are expressed. Nor is it surprising that ignorant and chaotic notions among the general population should lead to results that would be ludicrous if they were not pathetic. To mention one instance known to me: a married lady who is a leader in social-purity movements and an enthusiast for sexual chastity, discovered, through reading some pamphlet against solitary vice, that she had herself been practicing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sense,—when suddenly a friend at your elbow laughs aloud, and offers you a piece of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his writings,—the serious and the comic, the sublime and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous are mingled together. At times he is sententious, energetic, simple; then again, obscure and diffuse. His thoughts are like mummies embalmed in spices, and wrapped about with curious envelopements; but within these the thoughts themselves are kings. At times glad, beautiful ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... their sorrows to John, and then the breach becomes too wide ever to be bridged over. Unless John is an exceptionally independent man he will attempt in his clumsy way to bring both women to the same way of thinking, and the result would be ludicrous were it not also pitiful. The chances are nine hundred and ninety-nine to one thousand that he will succeed in making his mother feel that he is unduly influenced by his silly wife, while said wife thinks indignantly that John is, and always will ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... he attacked the old monopoly, and visioned a time when a claim to individual ownerships of the earth's surface would be as ludicrous as were now the assertion of title to a fee-simple somewhere in the moon. He mustered statistics; he adduced historic and contemporary example of the just and the unjust in land-holding; he gripped the throat of a certain English duke, and held him up ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... in brief, one American example (to be found at length in S. P. R. Proceedings XVIII.) of well-recorded telepathic transmission. The incident thus transferred is trivial and even ludicrous; the fact of the transference was absolutely useless. But the case is not only none the worse for this; it is all the better. When we are trying to prove that such transmission exists, we want to keep clear, if we can, of emotional complications. If P is brooding over A's ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... he said this ... the haunting face of the sewer digger came back to Judd ... came back in such a ludicrous light that Judd looked at Barley and laughed. Get him out of the hole? Certainly he would! The other players—grim, tired, water-soaked—saw Judd laugh. His first time under fire in the biggest game of the year ... and ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... turn of my rear gun came afterwards when the pilot flattened out and steered northward along the wrong border of No Man's Land. Once, when flying very low, we looked into a wide trench and saw a group of tiny figures make confused attempts to take cover, tumbling over each other the while in ludicrous confusion. ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... would say in some use of that term—a thief who had no shame in his thievery but rather gloried in it. If you left anything edible within his ingenious and comprehensive reach he regarded it as a challenge. There comes to me a ludicrous incident that concerned a companion of one winter journey. He had carefully prepared a lunch and had wrapped it neatly in paper, and he placed it for a moment on the sled while he turned to put his scarf about him. But in that moment Nanook saw it and it was gone. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... up and are very open; their eyes project outwards. When walking they carry their heads low, on a short neck; and their hinder legs are rather longer compared with the front legs than is usual. Their bare teeth, their short heads, and upturned nostrils give them the most ludicrous self-confident air of ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... distinctness, a sort of resurrection dream of which the events of the two days before supplied the bones and skeleton outline. As in all very vivid and dreadful dreams the whole vision was connected and coherent, there were no ludicrous and inconsequent interludes, none of those breakings of one thread and hurried seizures of another, which though one is dreaming very distinctly, supply some vague mental comfort, since even to the sleeper they are reminders that his experiences are not solid but mere phantasies woven by ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... says, to palliate or extenuate the crimes he himself has been guilty of: but laments, for Mr. Lovelace's own sake, that he gives him, with so ludicrous and unconcerned an air, such solemn and useful lessons and warnings. Nevertheless, he resolves to make it his whole endeavour, he tells him, to render them efficacious to himself: and should think himself but too happy, if he shall be enabled to set him ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... then be adopted, I would say—destroy the facility of spirit-drinking, by laying on a heavy duty. It is in vain that interested sophistry would plead its benefits in particular cases—such, for instance, as the ludicrous plea of the needfulness of drams for market-women on wet and frosty mornings.[A] Set these specious benefits against the dreadful results to men's health and pockets, from the present low price of spirits, and ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... beyond his power. When, therefore, he exerted his magic strength, the mountains bent and the seas receded; but when the philosopher attempted to lead forth the Princess of Zulichium in the youthful dance, youths and maidens turned their heads aside lest they should make too manifest the ludicrous ideas with which they ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... may be remembered that Mr Mansfield had a competitor in Mr Bandman Palmer, who, however, missed horror by the simple vulgarity of his horrors, and, though he may have impressed the simple-minded, was ludicrous to the thoughtful. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... very ludicrous. Jack crept under the table to show us how he and the cook made eyes at each other down there in the darkness, not daring to speak. The pantomime was necessary, for the Genoese had very little English ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... be worthy of the name of a cause. Yet the men who could show that he had failed to clear up the mystery could themselves throw no light upon it. The government was especially ignorant of all that it should have known; and there is something almost ludicrous in the tone of the speech made by the President of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the spectacle, found it hard to preserve their gravity. The confusion, the clamour, the grotesque appearance of an army in which there could scarcely be seen a shirt or a pair of pantaloons, a shoe or a stocking, presented so ludicrous a contrast to the orderly and brilliant appearance of their master's troops, that they amused themselves by wondering what the Parisians would say to see such a force mustered on the plain ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in New Jersey when it rains is to let it rain; and what I did when he pounded was to let him pound. I was perfectly willing he should pound; I even hoped that he enjoyed it. In spite of the anxiety I felt for poor Kate, I could not help laughing at the ludicrous earnestness with which he swore and pounded. Like most men, my uncle was cool when he was not excited; and as there had been nothing on the present occasion to excite him, I suppose he was cool. Doubtless he stopped to dress himself before he answered the summons. Very ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... heartily. The idea of anyone voluntarily entering upon a single combat with the terrible Frisian giant, who for months had been a name of fear among the thousands that beleaguered Haarlem, struck them as really ludicrous. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... took no Pains to shew it at his latest Hour, that is, he did not dye like one of those prophane Wits, who bid the Curtains be drawn, and said the Farce of Life was ended. This is making our Warfare too slight and ludicrous: He departed with more Grace, and, like the memorable Type of his Prudence, Don Quixote de la Mancha, where he perceiv'd his Sand was running out, he repented the Extravagance of his Knight-Errantry, and ingenuously confess'd his Family Name. ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... great inside as out. It was a horrid din of discordant sounds. Conversation at the supper table was out of the question, and as soon as it was over we went out among the boys who had come to charivari us. There were perhaps fifty of them, with blackened faces and ludicrous dresses, and after the bride and bridegroom had shown themselves and received their congratulations, they went their way, and left us to enjoy ourselves in peace. It was after this manner the young folks wedded. There was ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... the table scratching his bristly head and looking the picture of ludicrous bewilderment. I watched him and meanwhile debated whether or not I should take the opportunity to knock him down. That was undoubtedly the proper course. But I could not bring myself to do it. A spirit of wild mischief possessed me; a strange, unnatural ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... that followed may be conceived, but cannot be described. Some of the men burst into laughter, for anything ludicrous is irresistible to an Eskimo of the very far north. A few were petrified. Others there were who resented this indignity to the heir-apparent, and flourished their spears in a threatening manner. These ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... "that's all that is the matter with her. She sees all her friends married and established, she has the perfectly ludicrous idea that she is not as young as she used to be. She feels like an ambitious thoroughbred that's been left ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... embarrassing was the duty he had taken on himself. To force an entrance into the banquet-hall of a great and powerful noble, surrounded by the rank of Naples, and to arraign him for what to his boon-companions would appear but an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could not fail to be at once ludicrous and impotent. He mused a moment, and, slipping a piece of gold into the porter's hand, said that he was commissioned to seek the Signor Zanoni upon an errand of life and death, and easily won his way across the court, and into the interior ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Hildreff. I hez your permission, sah?" and the negro rolled his eyes with a ludicrous expression ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... passed the small gate of the inner fence it was easy for me to see that this royal pair were not upon the best of terms, for each of them tried to get through it first, to show his right of precedence. The result was somewhat ludicrous, for they jammed in the gateway. Here, however, Umbelazi's greater weight told, for, putting out his strength, he squeezed his brother into the reeds of the fence, and won through a foot or ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... gross contempt and what passed among them for ridicule. They mimicked the high stomach as they stood, as the dead man had stood, with arms aloft in rebellion against his lot, and fell back, as he had fallen, screaming, to kick and wallow on the ground. Here was plot and matter for ludicrous corroboree, the first rehearsal of which took place on ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... dispersed. With it they could claim the status of a separate dynasty. Yet the capture of Nanking was put off until the last act of all. These sapient leaders, whose military knowledge was antiquated, acted with an indifference to the most obvious considerations, that would have been ludicrous if it had not been a further injury to a suffering people. In 1858 their apathy was such that it not merely saved Nanking but played the whole game into the ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... And if the orderly people are English, they add that (1) is the inferior method, and characteristic of the South. It is inferior. Yet those who pursue it at all events know what they want; they are not puzzling to themselves or ludicrous to others; they do not take the wings of the morning and fly into the uttermost parts of the sea before walking to the registry office; they cannot breed a tragedy quite ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... involved in giving a man such faculties and capacities, if this be the only field on which they are to be exercised. If you think of what most of us do in this world, and of what it is in us to be, and to do, it is almost ludicrous to consider the disproportion. All other creatures fit their circumstances; nothing in them is bigger than their environment. They find in life a field for every power. You and I do not. 'The foxes have holes, and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... know that the girl was respectable, and so far worthy of her son. The idea of such an inquiry would have filled Mercy's parents with scornful merriment, as a thing ludicrous indeed. People in THEIR position, who could do this and that, whose name stood so high for this and that, who knew themselves well bred, who had one relation an admiral, another a general, and a marriage-connection ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... list of fifty-four Articles, containing instructions to the clergy of his diocess of Canterbury, some of which are too ludicrous and puerile to excite any other sentiment than laughter in ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... other monkeys. A few young monkeys and one old Anubis baboon alone took no notice of the snake. I then placed the stuffed specimen on the ground in one of the larger compartments. After a time all the monkeys collected round it in a large circle, and staring intently, presented a most ludicrous appearance. They became extremely nervous; so that when a wooden ball, with which they were familiar as a plaything, was accidentally moved in the straw, under which it was partly hidden, they all instantly ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... imagine what I want to go there for! You wouldn't suppose, would you, that I had any special secrets— an old man like me;—for instance, you would not suspect me of any love secrets, eh?" And he made a ludicrous attempt to appear sentimental. "The fact is, Roger,—I have got into a little scrape over at The Islands—" here he looked warmer and redder than ever;—"and I want to take precautions! You understand—I want to take care that the King does not hear of it—Gott in Himmel! What a ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... o'clock Mr. Binns arrives, and is highly amused at the ludicrous mistake that brought me to the Armenian pastor's instead of to his man, with whom he had left instructions concerning me, should I arrive after his departure in the evening for the vineyard; in return he has an amusing story to tell of the people waylaying ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... trepidation; his bow draws out nothing but groans or squeals; and so, in order to correct these visceral complaints, a piece of rosin is awkwardly produced from his trousers' pocket, and applied to the rheumatic member, with some half-dozen brisk rubs in a parenthesis of music. The effect is painfully ludicrous!—— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... sensitive face flushed hotly. He felt himself to be in an extremely ludicrous position, Mr. Watson stood in the background ready to second anything he might say, but very glad to be able to take a subordinate position in the affair, and Donald leaned back against a tree and looked upon the little scene with an extravagant ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... Kemp wanted me to," he responded; "and I shall never forget that meeting with her niece while life lasts, it was so ludicrous. I arrived at the depot just as the train had stopped, and the passengers were already pouring from the car. In my haste to reach the throng I slipped upon a banana peel, and the next instant I was plunging headlong ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... in, I could not resist laughing at my ludicrous situation. I felt as one does when looking at a ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... threshold; and looking through the glass I saw the master of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now I had come to see and pay my compliments to a poet, and there did appear to me to be something strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to some extent, in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... luck and bad management as to the work of Bridport's fleet. Intended, moreover, primarily as diversions to keep England occupied at home and sicken her of the war, they did not altogether fail of their aim. Some of these projects verged on the ludicrous, as that of corraling a band of the criminals and royalist outlaws that infested France and dropping them on the English coast for a wild campaign of murder and pillage. Fifteen hundred of these Chouans were actually landed at Fishguard ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Americans were well in the stream, and some had gained the bank, on the Canadian side, when eighteen or twenty of the red children of the forest, sprang to their feet, and gave a yell, so hideous, that the Americans, stricken with panic, fled with almost ludicrous precipitancy. So terror-stricken, indeed, were the valiant host, that they left arms, accoutrements, and haversacks, behind them. No further attempt was made by General Hull, on Amherstburgh. It would have been captured with great difficulty, if it ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... some wag in the crowd made a remark about the diminutive size of the speaker, and the ludicrous figure he would cut as a general, at which ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... pony's head round, and jogged along with Arthur. His mother was charmed to see him in such high spirits, and welcomed Mr. Smirke for his sake, when Arthur said he had forced the curate back to dine. He gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night before, and of the acting of Bingley the Manager, in his rickety Hessians, and the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess, in rumpled green satin and a Polish cap; he mimicked ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the girl, the pure and sweet unreason of her proceedings, was beyond his mental grasp. The attitude of reproach which this delicate and altogether lovely young blossom of a thing had adopted towards him filled him with dismay and a ludicrous sense of guilt. He had a keen sense of the unreason and contrariness of her whole attitude, but he had no contempt towards her on account of it. He felt as if he were facing some new system of things, some higher order of creature for whom unreason was the finest ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... simile, and figure. This is a sin to which women are wofully prone. They commit it with glee, and I have often found it a most difficult matter to make them realise the absurdities which result from the practice of it. As an illustration of the ludicrous consequences of unbridled indulgence in metaphor and simile, I quote the following extract (not, however, the work of a woman) from a serious ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... destroyed, the delicacy of the sex be violated, the dignity of halls of legislation degraded, by an attempt to introduce them there. Such duties are inconsistent with those of a mother;" and then we have ludicrous pictures of ladies in hysterics at the polls, and ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... his work, printed on large paper and sumptuously bound. He loved to read in this, as people read over the letters of friends who have long been dead; and it might have awakened a feeling of something far removed from the ludicrous, if his comments on his own production could have been heard. "That's a thought, now, for you!—See Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay's Essay printed six years after thus book." "A felicitous image! and so everybody would have said if only Mr. Thomas Carlyle had hit upon ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... courage, endurance, and humanity, to the front. One feels glad to know that all the praise did not make her other than the humble British girl, though few, perhaps, could pass through such an ordeal of adulation unscathed. The flatteries had, however, a ludicrous as well as a touching side, as may be seen from the following extract. Hero-worship leads to the hoarding of many things, including bark of trees, stones, mortar, old rags, and hair; and it is little wonder if Grace found the latter tendency ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... the end of each verse. He sang several verses; at the time I knew how many, but am unable now to recall the exact number. He must surely have been a sound sleeper or the loud laughter which filled the room would have waked him, for the scene was ludicrous in the extreme: Terry sitting up in bed, sound asleep, at the hour of midnight, and singing with a loud voice and very earnest manner, to an audience who were unable to understand one word of the song. At the close of the last verse he lay quietly down, all unconscious of the ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... commendation ends and irony begins, where attraction ends and pretence begins, in a manner which would be impossible for persons possessed of a different order of apprehension. Persons possessed of identical apprehension view objects in an identically ludicrous, beautiful, or repellent light; and in order to facilitate such identical apprehension between members of the same social circle or family, they usually establish a language, turns of speech, or ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... himself the lord of creation had ever blessed or cursed the universe with his presence. Down in the yard lies Austin with sprawling limbs, his face glimmering white in the dawn, and the hose nozzle still projecting from his dead hand. The whole of human kind is typified in that one half-ludicrous and half-pathetic figure, lying so helpless beside the machine which it ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a step, and there rested motionless, under the sway of an emotion akin to dismay. He stood staring intently at his son with a perplexity in his expression that was almost ludicrous. When, at last, he spoke, his voice was a ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... have been inspired by the same thought, and evidently longs in his heart for the advent of the new seamanship. He is an expert, of course, and I rather believe he's the same gentleman who did not see his way to fit water-tight doors to bunkers. With ludicrous earnestness he assured the Commission of his intense belief that had only the Titanic struck end-on she would have come into port all right. And in the whole tone of his insistent statement there was suggested the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... portion of his father's life lived in a fine house on Lafayette Place. I have attended evening parties there that were exceedingly simple in character, and at which Mrs. Astor was always plainly dressed and wore no jewels. I have a very distinct recollection of one of these parties owing to a ludicrous incident connected with myself. My mother was a woman of decidedly domestic tastes, whose whole life was so immersed in her large family of children that she never allowed an event of a social character to interfere with what she regarded as her household or maternal duties. We older children were ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... it being contrary to etiquette. Conversation was therefore impossible, and he was very glad, therefore, when at length his Majesty got up and retired, with a gait which was intended to be very majestic. It was to represent the step of a lion, but the outward sweep of the legs looked only like a ludicrous waddle. The king had in reality gone to eat his breakfast, as he had not broken his fast since hearing of the traveller's arrival. He quickly returned, and Speke was again invited in, with his men. He found the king standing on a red blanket, talking and laughing to a hundred or ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... amalgamated with one another. Yet, while amendment in these matters is to be striven for, there is nothing that the teacher who wishes to establish habits of orthoepy has to be more watchful in guarding against, than bestowing upon his pupils an affected or mincing utterance, all the more ludicrous and objectionable, it may be, in that a certain set of words are pronounced with over-nicety, while almost all others are left in a state ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... decided to leave Parliament. But the effect of this "secession" was marred by the occasional reappearance of Sheridan, Tierney, and others who had loudly advocated it.[456] Unpatriotic in conception, it speedily became ludicrous from its half-hearted execution. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... morning to the Chapel of St. Januarius, to see the blood liquefy. The grand ceremony was last Saturday at the Cathedral, but the miracle is repeated every morning in the Chapel for eight days. I never saw such a scene, at once so ludicrous and so disgusting, but more of the latter. There was the saint, all bedizened with pearls, on the altar, the other silver ladies and gentlemen all round the chapel, with an abundance of tapers burning before them. Certain people were admitted within the rails of the altar; the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... soon as the letter was sealed, put on her bonnet, and taking Mr Ramsden's servant with her, stepped into the chaise, and drove to the house of Mr Nicholas Forster. She found Mrs Forster squatted on the bed in her ludicrous attire, awaiting her return ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Crati'nus—under whom comedy received its full development—Cimon is highly eulogized, and his rival, Pericles, is bitterly derided. With unmeasured and unsparing license comedy attacked, under the veil of satire, not only all that was really ludicrous or base, but often cast scorn and derision on that which was innocent, or even meritorious. For the reason that the comic writers were so indiscriminate in their attacks, frequently making transcendent genius ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... May's smirk exactly, and wagging his tail slightly, he commenced to play the false Kishwegin. He sidled and bridled and ejaculated with raised hands, and in the dumb show the tall Frenchman made such a ludicrous caricature of Mr. Houghton's manager that Madame wept again with laughter, whilst Max leaned back against the wall and giggled continuously like some pot involuntarily boiling. Geoffrey spread his shut fists across the table and shouted with laughter, Ciccio threw back his head and showed ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... hold on Peter, who, adopting a ludicrous air of extreme cunning, rushed immediately around to the other table, where he burst into derisive laughter and thumbed his nose ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... waistcoat. Sometimes you inhabit the expansive bosom of a matron. Nor do you confine yourself to one class alone out of the many that go to the composition of our social life. You have impelled grocers to ludicrous pitches of absurdity; you have driven the wife of a working-man to distraction because her neighbour's front room possesses a more expensive carpet, of a sprucer pattern than her own. Clerks have suffered acutely from your stings, and actresses have spent many a sleepless ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... impostor, was the author of a discovery of a gold mine, a few months before: a composition resembling ore mingled with earth, which he pretended to have brought from it, he produced. After a number of attendant circumstances, too ludicrous and contemptible to relate, which befell a party, who were sent under his guidance to explore this second Peru, he at last confessed, that he had broken up an old pair of buckles, and mixed the pieces with sand and stone; and on assaying the composition, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Poet," a dramatic attack upon himself. In this attempt to forestall his enemies Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an immediate and deserved success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than its earlier companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to lead up to the ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed from the "Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the difficult words with which he had overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... women in childbirth, were tainted with the Sabbatian heresy. So bitter and widespread were the charges and counter-charges, that at one moment every Jewish community in Europe stood excommunicated by the Chief Rabbis of one side or the other—a ludicrous position, whereof the sole advantage was that it brought the Ban into contempt and disuse. It was not likely that a controversy so long-standing and so impassioned would fail to permeate Poland; and, indeed, among us the quarrel, introduced as it was by Baruch Yavan, who was agent ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... taken or offered to take any part in the rebellion. Told of the letter found, and of the date it bore, he laughed. That letter made everything very simple and clear. At the date it bore he had been away at Flushing marrying a wife, whom he had since brought thence to Middelburg. It was ludicrous, he urged, to suppose that in such a season—of all seasons in a man's life—he should have been concerned with rebellion or correspondence with rebels, and, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... first time. "Donald, fetch out the pony. Can you ride bareback?" he asked: "I fear there's no saddle but an old piece of sacking." In spite of my protestations the pony was led forth; a starved little beast, on whose over-sharp ridge I must have cut a sufficiently ludicrous figure when hoisted into place with the valises slung ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... stayed, against the Emperor's orders, five days too long at Odessa—that was all—yes, you see, a little French actress who was there, who sang operettas; oh, how she did sing operettas! Offenbach, you know;" and the General tried to hum a bar or two of the 'Dites lui', with ludicrous effect. "Charming! To leave her, ah! I found that very hard. I remained five days: that wasn't much, eh, Zilah? five days? But the devil! There was a Grand Duke—well—humph! younger than I, of course—and—and—the Grand Duke was jealous. Oh! there was at ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... tight and too short. She used Maurice's slang without its virile appropriateness; when they accepted an invitation from one of Maurice's new acquaintances, her anxiety to be of his generation was pathetic—or ludicrous, as one happened to look at it. These friends of Maurice's seemed to have innumerable interests in common with him that she knew nothing about—and jokes! How tired she got of their jokes, which were mostly preposterous badinage, expressed with entire solemnity ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... that I do not seem able to join my spirit to God.... God have pity on me, for they have burdened me with food. Oh, how thoughtless of them!' His words cannot be translated. Naif in the extreme, they become ludicrous in English. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... cheerful statement was ludicrous; the latter part was true, but the process was so lengthy that the war ended leaving it still incomplete! What actually happened at the time stated was that a return was demanded from the various units in ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... was a severe one. "An obscure painter of the Flemish school," wrote Clinton to his friend and confidant, Henry Post, "has made a very ludicrous and grotesque representation of Jonah immediately after he was ejected from the whale's belly. He is represented as having a very bewildered and dismal physiognomy, not knowing from whence he came nor to what place bound. Just so ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... laughing at you, but, under the circumstances I really could not help it. Your ignorance of the true state of affairs strikes me as so positively ludicrous. You forget, my good sir, that I am behind the scenes—in your secret, you know," he added, seeing a look of bewilderment at the other expression. "Why, man, you and all your people are absolutely at our mercy. You look surprised, but I assure you such is the fact. I really ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... the stage lights going at almost full tilt in the dungeon scene of "Fidelio," the effect of Florestan's exclamation, "Gott! welch' Dunkel hier!" upon an audience fully three-fourths of which was composed of Germans or descendants of Germans the ludicrous effect may be imagined. Many stories were current among the artists of the blithe indifference of the occupants of the boxes to artistic proprieties when they interfered with the display of gowns and jewels. One of them was that the chairman of the amusement ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... born and who live, no matter how quietly, in the security of a perfectly good ledge above and away from the social ladder's rungs, the evidence of one frantically climbing and trying to vaunt her exalted position is merely ludicrous. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... and shook hands with every new arrival with all the warmth and cordiality of old friendship. While thus he inquired for various absent individuals, and asked most affectionately for sundry aunts and uncles not forthcoming, a slight incident occurred which by its ludicrous turn served to shorten the long half-hour before dinner. An individual of the party, a Mr. Blake, had, from certain peculiarities of face, obtained in his boyhood the sobriquet of "Shave-the-wind." This hatchet-like conformation had grown with his ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... referebam"] ... Could I then upbraid you with blindness who did not know that you were blind,—with personal deformity who believed you even good-looking, chiefly in consequence of having seen the rather neat likeness of you prefixed to your Poems [Marshall's ludicrous botch of 1645 which Milton had disowned] ... Nor did I know any more that you had written on Divorce. I have never read that book of yours; I have never seen it ... I will have done with this subject. That book is not mine. I have published, and shall yet publish, other ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... magnificence in the public scene ever before Spenser's imagination; and its quaintness, because the whole outward apparatus of representation was borrowed from what was past, or from what did not exist, and implied surrounding circumstances in ludicrous contrast with fact, and men taught themselves to speak in character, and prided themselves on keeping it up by substituting for the ordinary language of life and emotion a cumbrous and ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... the chief command was given to Chrzanowski, a Pole, who did not know Italian, had not studied the theatre of the war, and was so little favoured by nature that, to the impressionable Italians, his appearance seemed ludicrous. This deplorable appointment was made to satisfy the outcry against Piedmontese generalship; as if it was not enough, the other Polish general, Ramorino, accused of treachery by the revolutionists in 1832, but now praised to the skies by the democratic party, was placed ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... some of our electric exhibitions produce mirth. For instance, the effect of electricity on the monkeys in Montalluyah—who are very sagacious, having faces white like a human being, and talking like parrots—is ludicrous in the extreme. When engaged in chewing and eating their favourite nuts, they find themselves, in spite of their cunning, raised to a great height, without seeing the man underneath their pedestal, who impels them ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... attempted later, if at all. His chief concern now was for the soldier he had thrown. And now he made his way back, and found to his dismay that the man was beginning to recover his senses. As Fred came back he stretched, yawned, and sat up, with the most ludicrous mixture of fright and wonder in his eyes. Fred had his gun, and at the sight of that the soldier ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... glance at the two ludicrous figures that approached him, the policeman first listened to the excited explanation of the boy indifferently, then with incredulity, and ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... words, and guessing their meaning, by degrees he put together the following sentence: "I drink to the health of my beloved darling, and kiss her little foot a thousand times, and am impatiently expecting her arrival." He pictured the pitiable, ludicrous part he would play if he had agreed to go to Nice with his wife. He felt so mortified that he almost shed tears and began pacing to and fro through all the rooms of the flat in great agitation. His pride, his plebeian fastidiousness, was revolted. Clenching ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ever beheld the stupendous absurdities attendant on 'A message from the Lords' in the House of Commons, turn upon the Medicine Man of the poor Indians? Has he any 'Medicine' in that dried skin pouch of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and butting their ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker? Yet there are authorities innumerable to tell me—as there are authorities innumerable among the Indians to tell them—that the nonsense ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... hardly help for laughing, poor Dinny's aspect was so ludicrous; but by dint of placing the broken dissel-boom up to where he was sitting, and crawling up to him, Dinny was aided ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... complaining of the campaign waged against motor-cars by humorous artists, who never seem to tire of depicting accidents. "One common and ludicrous error in many drawings," he said, "is the placing of the driver on the wrong side of the car." But surely, in an accident, that is just ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... —[For a ludicrous description of Menou see the Memoirs of Marmont:— "Clever and gay, he was an agreeable talker, but a great liar. He was not destitute of some education. His character, one of the oddest in the world, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... combining extreme irreverence of form with a total lack of irreverence of spirit toward the real spiritual mysteries of religion. He burlesques saints and devils alike, mocks the swarm of miracles of the mediaeval Church, makes salient all the ludicrous aspects of mediaeval religious faith in its devout credulity and barbarous gropings; yet he never sneers at holiness or real aspiration, and through all the riot of fun in his masques, one feels the sincere Christian and the warm-hearted man. But he was evidently troubled by the feeling ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... which were piled on trays in front of the throne. I remember noting an incident. An old fellow with a lame leg stumbled and upset his tray, so that the contents rolled hither and thither. His attempts to recover them were ludicrous and caused the monarch on the throne to relax from his dignity and smile. I mention this to show that what we witnessed was no set scene but apparently a living piece of the past. Had it been so the absurdity of the bedizened old man tumbling ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... curtain there were a number of other choice pictures by artists of ancient days. Here was the famous cluster of grapes by Zeuxis, so admirably depicted that it seemed as if the ripe juice were bursting forth. As to the picture of the old woman by the same illustrious painter, and which was so ludicrous that he himself died with laughing at it, I cannot say that it particularly moved my risibility. Ancient humor seems to have little power over modern muscles. Here, also, was the horse painted by Apelles ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
