"Preposterously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who carelessly splashes in. Instead, he is liable to be mired in black mud and see nothing so good as his way out again, nor will he even notice the elfin laughter of black crickets and green grasshoppers who rub their preposterously long hind legs together in glee at the joke, so eager will he be ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... they change. I know— None better—how one's feelings grow Distinctly kin to mutiny, To see one's assets limping in, All too preposterously thin To stand a ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... in long, straight gowns of black cloth, and unsightly three-cornered hats—so preposterously big that, in putting them on, the reverend fathers seemed to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... there joined the group an old Spaniard, gentle and inoffensive of aspect. He was lame, and leaned on the arm of an old native woman, smothered in curls and frizzes, preposterously powdered, and in European dress. With relief every one turned to salute them. It was Doctor de Espadana and his wife, the Doctora Dona Victorina. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... vision—as to which she had it a couple of years ago; I was thoroughly with her in her deprecation of the idea that Peggy should be sent, to crown her culture, to that horrid co-educative college from which the poor child returned the other day so preposterously engaged to be married; and, if she had only been a little more actively with me we might perhaps between us have done something about it. But she has a way of deprecating with her long, knobby, mittened hand over ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... the peg-top figure, bulgy at the bust and shoulders, and tapering off at the waist. She had also squeezed her feet into boots that were much too small for them, and fluffed her hair out till her head seemed preposterously large—by which means she had achieved the appearance known to her set ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... its materials are borrowed from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the legends of the Talmud, and the traditions and fables of the Arabian and Persian mythologies. Confusion of ideas, obscurity, and contradictions destroy the unity and even the interest of this work. The chapters are preposterously distributed, not according to their date or connection, but according to their length, beginning with the longest, and ending with the shortest; and thus the work becomes often the more unintelligible by its singular arrangement. But notwithstanding ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... side as she spoke, and slid her hand through his arm, as though realising that for the moment her presence was the most welcome of all refreshments. She wore a smartly cut tweed coat and skirt, and a soft felt hat with a pheasant's wing, and her brown shoes looked quite preposterously small and bright. In some indefinable way she looked older and more responsible than the Pixie of two years before, and Stephen noticed the change and wondered as to ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... in my hands a gold or silver bar that belonged to me? Don't you know that it's all talk and no cider so far? Don't you know that people who always feel jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them—who have the organ of hope preposterously developed—who are endowed with an uncongealable sanguine temperament—who never feel concerned about the price of corn—and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the bright side of a picture—are very apt to go to extremes, and exaggerate ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Kimberley, preposterously overdressed and thoroughly ashamed of himself, was trying to talk business in Mr. Begg's office, the Earl of Windgall was announced. There was nothing in the world that could have terrified him more. And when the father of his ideal love, Lady ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... compelled Mrs. Morgan to walk every third quarter of a mile. At the end of an hour the sorrel refused positively to get up, and, so, was abandoned. Thereafter, Mrs. Morgan rode the roan alternate quarters of miles, and between times walked—if walk may describe her stumbling progress on two preposterously tiny feet with a man supporting her on ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... even to the naked eye through the ports of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be jetting into existence from four separate points, two a little ahead of the others. They came out from Earth at a rate which seemed remarkably deliberate until one saw with what fury the rocket-fumes ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... and worry; and then in the midst of this active life there stands the chapel with its summons to us to pause and give the reflective life its chance. That is one of the chief offices of religion in this preposterously busy age. Religion gives one at least a chance to stop and let God speak to him. It sends the multitudes away and takes one up into the solitude of the soul's communication with God. One of our Cambridge naturalists told me once of an experiment he had made with a pigeon. The ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... be, doing nothing she ought to have done, because her mind was so full of all the things she was going to do. What she feared was that she would never be able to wake herself in time, and she went to bed at a preposterously early hour, and sat long in her night-dress, thinking how to manage it. At last it occurred to her that if she tied her great toe to the bed-post with a piece of string, it would give her a jerk when she moved, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... "How preposterously you talk, my dear friend!" said he. "These people are your greatest enemies; they would rejoice to see you annihilated. And, now that you have taken up the Lord's cause of being avenged on His enemies, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... they spent their mornings out-of-doors in the sun, lunched, parted until tea, met at dinner again, and said good night at a preposterously early hour. And they could not have said whether they amused or interested or merely comforted each other. Perhaps they did all three. At any rate, it was an idyll of its kind, and of more genuine beauty than many ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... above strange: A nymph of her feature and lineament, to be so preposterously rude! well, I will but cool myself at yon ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... very simple and, what may be styled, a home-made apartment. The walls, floor, and ceiling were of unpainted wood, but the wood was perfectly fresh, and smelt pleasantly of resin. The window was preposterously small, with only four squares of glass in it, and it was curtained with mere calico, but the calico was rose-coloured, which imparted a delightfully warm glow to the room, and the view from the window of pine-woods and cliffs, and snow-fields, backed by ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... was also looking into a face! Ross swallowed, his hand grasping one of the strings of chair webbing for support. Perhaps because in some ways it did resemble his own, that face was more preposterously nonhuman. The visage on the screen was sharply triangular with a small, sharply pointed chin and a jaw line running at an angle from a broad upper face. The skin was dark, covered largely with a soft and silky down, out of which hooked a curved and shining nose set between two large round ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... comparison, beyond measure, beyond all bounds; incalculably, infinitely. [in a supreme degree] preeminently, superlatively &c. (superiority) 33. [in a too great degree] immoderately, monstrously, preposterously, inordinately, exorbitantly, excessively, enormously, out of all proportion, with a vengeance. [in a marked degree] particularly, remarkably, singularly, curiously, uncommonly, unusually, peculiarly, notably, signally, strikingly, pointedly, mainly, chiefly; famously, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... gente flamenca, imitates him so far as its means allow. A famous matador is as well paid as in England a Cabinet Minister or a music-hall artiste. This is his costume: a broad-brimmed hat with a low crown, which is something like a topper absurdly flattened down, with brims preposterously broadened out. The front of his shirt is befrilled and embroidered, and his studs are the largest diamonds; not even financiers in England wear such important stones. He wears a low collar without a necktie, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham |
