"Absurdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elsewhere, who had come to the conclusion that the colonization of New Zealand was near at hand, and were buying up preposterously large tracts of land on all sides. Most of the purchases were either altogether fictitious, or else were imperfect and made for absurdly low prices. Many of the deeds of sale may be dismissed with the brief note, "no consideration specified"! A hundred acres were bought for a farthing. Boundaries were inserted after signature. Some land was bought several times over. No less ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... City, laughing and talking nonsense all the time. Once when they made a little purchase at a shop the shopwoman looked astonished at the freedom with which they carried themselves, and after that they felt inclined to go into every shop in the street and behave absurdly everywhere. In the course of two hours they had accomplished all the innocent follies possible to the intoxication of youth, and were ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... dark mounds that had the appearance of neglected graves. Nothing had been done all through the night and he hadn't been missed. He stood motionless and perfectly astounded to find the world outside as he had left it; there was the sea, the ship—sleeping men; and he wondered absurdly at it, as though he had expected to find the men dead, familiar things gone for ever: as though, like a wanderer returning after many years, he had expected to see bewildering changes. He shuddered a little in the penetrating freshness of the air, and hugged himself forlornly. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... of a real woodchuck. It was stuffed with something soft to make it round and fat, and its eyes were two glass beads sewn upon the face. A big boy woodchuck wore knickerbockers and a Tam o' Shanter cap and rolled a hoop; and there were several smaller boy and girl woodchucks, dressed quite as absurdly, who followed after their mother ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... "How absurdly you talk, Harry, as if a man's character signified who has nothing to do but to stand behind my carriage! A pretty figure he'd made there beside Thomas, who is ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... our nature to be free. Unlimited obedience is due only to the universal father of heaven and earth. My parents may be mad and foolish; may be wicked and malicious; may be erroneously religious, or absurdly scrupulous. I am not bound to compliance with mandates, either positive or negative, which either religion condemns, or reason rejects. There wanders about the world a wild notion, which extends over marriage ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... speak in this way because I do not know what may come to pass next. I have always loved my fellow-men, and desired their good opinion, and the idea of forfeiting it, either through my own fault or theirs, is painful to me. But men judge so absurdly! They look only at the outside. They are so easily deceived by appearances! Do you know, that of late I have thought there was a great deal of confusion in the ordinary way of men's thinking? But I see clearly the cause of the errors ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... require spectacles, unless prematurely dimmed by the student's lamplight, and hair that seldom showed a thread of silver. Age, wedded to the past, incrusted over with a stony layer of habits, and retaining nothing fluid in its possibilities, would have been absurdly out of place in an enterprise like this. Youth, too, in its early dawn, was hardly more adapted to our purpose; for it would behold the morning radiance of its own spirit beaming over the very same spots of withered grass and barren ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with sovereign contempt upon the hackney author. One little indication is the love of mystifications, or what were entitled 'bites.' All the Wits, as we know, combined to tease the unlucky fortune-teller, Partridge, and to maintain that their prediction of his death had been verified, though he absurdly pretended to be still alive. So Swift tells us in the journal to Stella how he had circulated a lie about a man who had been hanged coming to life again, and how footmen are sent out to inquire into its success. He made a hit by writing a sham account of Prior's mission to Paris supposed to come ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... follow with great alertness even to the summits of the most rugged steeps; and when he had frightened them, and made them scamper to his satisfaction (for he never attempted to injure them), he constantly came back wagging his tail, and appearing very happy at those caresses which we, perhaps absurdly, bestowed ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... which he was moving loomed sterilely before him. His love itself seemed a feverishly sterile thing. His work upon the magazine, his incessant exchange of intolerant adjectives with admiring strangers—these became absurdly petty gestures, absurdly insufficient. There was something else to do. As he had longed for Rachel in the black days before their coming together, he longed now for this something else. Without name or outline, it haunted him. Another face of stars, but this time beyond his power ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... extreme in the frequent use of abstract and often absurdly pretentious expressions in place of the ordinary ones which to these poets appeared too simple or vulgar. With them a field is generally a 'verdant mead'; a lock of hair becomes 'The long-contended honours of her head'; and a boot 'The shining ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... to the sun by life on the water or in the plain. Their head hair is sometimes nearly straight, usually wavy and occasionally quite curly. These rather unusual characteristics of the Ilongot have led to some absurdly exaggerated ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. When, in the battle of Germantown, General Washington's army was annoyed from Chew's house, he did not hesitate to plant his cannon against it, although the property of a citizen. When he besieged Yorktown, he leveled the suburbs, feeling that the laws of property ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... being accused of wishing to make a dramatic impression with Sheila's entrance into London society, laughed in an embarrassed way, and said, "It is impossible to be angry with you, Ingram, and yet you do talk so absurdly. I wonder who is likely to know more about the character of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... foreground of the picture, just in front of the wash-tub, and he holds a great sunflower in his tiny hand. Beside this picture of such bright and happy aspect, the most perfect example of that genre known as la peinture claire, invented by Manet, and so infamously and absurdly practised by subsequent imitators—beside this picture so limpid, so fresh, so unaffected in its handling, a Courbet would seem heavy and dull, a sort of mock old master; a Corot would seem ephemeral and cursive; a Whistler would seem thin; beside this picture of such elegant and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... writer hastens to denounce the horrid heresy on the brink of which he finds himself hesitating, by adding that he sees "no ground whatever for holding such a view," though "in the light of modern research it scarcely looks so absurdly improbable as before."[9] It is curious that the writer in question does not seem to have been in any way influenced by the eliminative argument so potent in connection with the discussion on Vitalism. We ask for an explanation ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... more than that both were celebrated comic dramatists. Plautus was no parallel to Will. Yet "surely Plautus is the author to whom he should have been compared" by Davies, says Mr. Greenwood. If Davies tried Plautus, the comparison was bad; if Terence, it was "curious," as Terence was absurdly accused of being the "nom de plume" of some great "concealed poets" of Rome. "From all the known facts about Terence," says a Baconian critic (who has consulted Smith's Biographical Dictionary), "it is an almost unavoidable inference that John ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... and splendid photograph of Miss Mangan, that had been a sort of corollary of the Dublin trousseau. Tishy was all right. Tishy was a topper! He said it aloud, and, with that, another tune, the old nigger-tune, "Nelly was a Lady," fitted itself absurdly to the words. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... warm, fierce, reckless-natured boy of fourteen could have hit upon such an absurdly quixotic way of deciding a quarrel. Indian combats between Red Indians in the Far West, the deeds of Sir Kenneth, Saladin, and Coeur de Lion in his favourite "Talisman," and the entire character of Drake's reading, had joined with and gathered romance from his late ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... lips to hide if possible her inclination to be angry, and to laugh at the same time. And in truth her dislike of the Count did not exaggerate the ridiculousness of the appearance of the tall ungainly figure—large-boned and stiff-backed—that now stood before her—with a nose so absurdly aquiline that it would have done for a caricature—coarse-skinned cheeks, and a stare of military impudence that shocked and nearly frightened the high-bred, elegant-looking beauty on whom it was fixed. And yet this individual, such as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... me how I would otherwise explain these stories, I will frankly avow, that it appears to me neither impossible, nor absurdly improbable, that the soul, or the nervous system, as you like, of the dying man, should have put itself into direct communication with the thoughts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... But a patient observer will even then detect the essential identity under superficial differences; and in the majority of cases, as in that of Macaulay himself, the talking and the writing are palpably and almost absurdly similar. The whole art of criticism consists in learning to know the human being who is partially revealed to us in his spoken or his written words. Whatever the means of communication, the problem is the same. The two ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... a holy heart. They want a man to speak less of what he believes and more of what he feels. The expectation of bringing the people again to endure prolonged metaphysical discriminations, spun out of commonplace minds, cobwebs to cloak their own nakedness and universal inaptitude, if indulged, is absurdly indulged. The whole Church is sick of such trifling. She knows well that it has made her most unsavory to those who might have found their way into the temples of God, or kept their places there, but for the memory of an immense amount of wearisome readings from the pulpit,—too ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a few more absurdly impossible ideas of this kind as I went along the yard, feeling horribly guilty and ready to give up my undertaking. The very silence and solitariness of the place startled me, but I went on and turned ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... crimson bed-slippers peeped from under the bed, another pair, absurdly small, outrageously high-heeled, buckled and crimson, made a splash of colour near the dressing-table. Her little hands were gently folded under the ruffles of priceless lace of her cashmere night-attire as she lay quite still, trying to find a way out ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... asking," said Mr. Britling. "They are fixing the upward age for recruits at thirty; it's absurdly low. A man well over forty like myself is quite fit to line a trench or guard a bridge. I'm not so bad ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... a laugh, was to pull her down upon his knee and hug her up tight in his arms. They looked rather absurdly alike in those two white bathrobes, though this was an appearance neither of them was capable of observing. She disengaged herself presently from his embrace and went to find him some cigarettes, refraining from taking one herself from a feeling that he would ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... chum excitedly, extending the square of doe-skin with its red ink tracings. "It's really absurdly simple," he continued. "According to the captain, the chief talked about leaving me riches of some sort. I took that circumstance for my key and tried to think what a race as poor as the chief and his ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... me along to a European missionary's house. There, also, with his playing and singing, his caresses of the missionary's little girl and his unstinted admiration of the little booted feet of the missionary's lady, he would enliven the gathering as no one else could have done. Another behaving so absurdly would have been deemed a bore, but his transparent simplicity pleased all and drew them to ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... a sudden mood so ludicrous, so absurdly unreasonable that Ann herself stopped to laugh at it. Yet it was real, and it hurt. He had come to New York thinking of Sylvia, yearning for Sylvia. He had come to New York with one desire: to find Sylvia. And the first pretty woman that ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... the body upon the floor, felt for the heart, turned up the dropped eyelids, even shook the inanimate stiffening form of his pet. He knew it was in vain—that never again would she jump trustingly upon him, never again would she appear absurdly with one of his slippers in her wide mouth that always seemed to smile at the joke, coming down the drive to greet him; that never again would he have her for his untiring companion on his walks or upon the plateau where he was wont to lie and look into her wise eyes and talk to her without ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry, determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those present, evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself, nursed no hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan, formed on a theory arrived at by years of toil, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... happened to be an impression between two "states"—a detail which none but a true amateur could savour. The prison depicted was a terrible place of torment, but it was beautiful, and the view of it made Mr. Prohack fancy, very absurdly, that he too was in prison, just as securely as if he had been bolted and locked therein. His eye ranged about the room and saw nothing that was not lovely and that he did not admire. Yet he derived little or no authentic ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... young students. Before going to see a play of Shakespeare's I used to form—in a very juvenile way—a theory as to the working out of the whole drama, so as to correct my conceptions by those of the actors; and though I was, as a rule, absurdly wrong, there can be no doubt that any method of independent study is of enormous importance, not only to youngsters, but also to students of a larger growth. Without it the mind is apt to take its stamp from ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... of course, made suggestions. One in particular knew "the very thing you want, and really absurdly cheap." She was enthusiastic in description. Then the rental was named—fifteen dollars a month more than the budget allowed. David made a great show of taking the address and promised to inspect ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... plane roared above the city, settling slowly; banked steeply and circled upon its farther side, and dipped down toward what seemed an absurdly small area, which sprang into a pinkish glow on their descent. That area spread but as the descent continued, though, and was a wide and level field when the ship flattened out and checked and lumbered to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... ambiguity. In one sense it states a platitude—a truth, indeed, which is not excluded from an absolute or teleological conception of life. But if it is implied that the world, because it is in process of production, may violate reason and take some capricious form, the idea is absurdly false, so long as we are what we are, and the human mind is what it is. The real must always be the rational. All enterprise and effort are based on the faith that we belong to a rational world. Though we cannot predict what form ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... be bold enough to make her way into your house. Renew your promise to keep the great calamity of my life a secret, on your honor and on your oath. 'Those were his words, as nearly as I can remember them. I tried to treat the thing lightly; I ridiculed the absurdly theatrical notion of 'renewing my promise,' and all the rest of it. Quite useless! He refused to leave me; he reminded me of his unmerited sufferings, poor fellow, in the past time. It ended in his bursting into tears. You love ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... achieved but expected, was somewhat absurdly brought out by the electrician in the cable-house at Bombay, who one day complained to the operators on board the Great Eastern that the reply to one of his questions had been from three to twelve seconds late! It must be understood, however, that ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... examination. He makes Atotarho the hereditary title of a monarch, like Pharaoh or Caesar, and states that thirteen potentates bearing that title had "reigned" between the formation of the confederacy and the discovery of America by Columbus. The duration of each of these reigns he computes, absurdly enough, at exactly fifty years, which, however, would give altogether a term of only six hundred and fifty years. He supposes the discovery of America to have taken place during the reign of the thirteenth Atotarho; and he adds that the conquest ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... his reverie. Another of the party is marked for one of those well-dressed continental adventurers, who, being unable to live in their own country, annually pour into this, and with no other requisites than a quick eye, an adroit hand, and an undaunted forehead, are admitted into what is absurdly ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... turn to the teaching of Jesus Himself, that He had so little to say concerning a subject of which His disciples have said so much. It is true that the Gospels, without exception, relate the story of Christ's death with a fullness and detail which, in any other biography, would be judged absurdly out of proportion. But this, it is said, reveals the mind of the evangelists rather than the mind of Christ. And those who love that false comparison between the Gospels and the Epistles of which so much is heard ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... for police purposes resolves itself into the problem of classification. It would be an impossible task to compare myriads of records each time. The system employed was absurdly simple to put into execution. In five minutes Green had the finger-prints of the two hands classified into "loops" and "whorls" and had made a ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... rabbit made a horrible discovery. The way it made the discovery was curious—may seem curious to us, at least—but the fact is, it suddenly noticed that the size of its front teeth had grown out of all proportion to the size of the island. Looking over its shoulder this fine day, it realised how absurdly small the island was in comparison with its teeth—and grasped the horrid truth. In a flash it understood what was happening. The island was getting wetter because it was ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... to be avoided is the outgrown idea that heavenly magic attends completely to these matters. It is earthly wisdom and unselfishness and good intent that are needed in this as in all the great decisions of life. Hence, there can be nothing more absurdly out of drawing with a rationalized civilization than any law which forbids the serious discussion of this most vital of social questions or one that forbids the full dissemination of scientific knowledge needed by those who would do the right thing in the parental ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... chiefly to bewilderment, the discomfort of strangeness and an annoying sense of my own extreme insignificance. I was a new boy. I wanted to behave properly, to do the right thing, and I had no way of knowing what the right thing was. I was absurdly anxious not to "cheek" anybody, and thereby incur the kind of snubbing, I scarcely expected the kicks, which I had endured long ago when I found myself a lonely mite in a corner of the ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... and children. Shakespeare feels this, too, and therefore finds other reasons natural enough; but the first of these reasons, "his own good," is not especially characteristic of Macbeth, and the second, while perhaps characteristic, is absurdly inadequate: men ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... herself had bestowed the name of Scrooge on the successful draper, to whom, as far as his personal appearance went, it was absurdly inappropriate. ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... all at once absurdly young and a little frightened—this tall and stately Penelope—while a faint blush-rose colour ran swiftly up beneath the pallor of her skin, and her eyes—those nice, humorous brown eyes of hers that always looked the world ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... them charming in the eyes of their husbands, and secure the affection of those gentlemen as long as they lived. What good did my Rose and my Ring do these two women? None on earth. From having all their whims indulged by their husbands, they became capricious, lazy, ill-humored, absurdly vain, and leered and languished, and fancied themselves irresistibly beautiful, when they were really quite old and hideous, the ridiculous creatures! They used actually to patronise me when I ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... names who, by their embellishments, informed the world that they hailed respectively from Goteborg and Helsingborg. They also sported large rectangles, painted in vertical stripes of yellow and blue, while close behind them, a Dane, with an absurdly attenuated funnel and long ventilators sticking at all angles out of her hull like pins from a pincushion, ambled stolidly along like a weary cart-horse. She, scorning other decoration, merely showed the scarlet ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... should respect his character's secrets. "You are only taking credit for a natural phenomenon," said the letter, "and trying to advertise yourself by your letter to the Times. You and your Boomfood! Let me tell you, this absurdly named food of yours has only the most accidental connection with those big wasps and rats. The plain fact is there is an epidemic of Hypertrophy—Contagious Hypertrophy—which you have about as much claim to control as ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... in a minute, dear, but I can't leave my business just now. It has increased alarmingly of late and it needs my constant attention to keep up with it. Indeed it is becoming so ridiculously successful that unless I can check it we shall soon be absurdly rich people." ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... most prominent case of instinct is supposed to be, the powers possessed by savage races to find their way across a trackless and previously unknown wilderness. Let us take first the case of the infant's sucking. It is sometimes absurdly stated that the new-born infant "seeks the breast," and this is held to be a wonderful proof of instinct. No doubt it would be if true, but unfortunately for the theory it is totally false, as every nurse and medical man can testify. Still, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... saffron, edged with fur, high-waisted according to the mode, and fitted closely to the gently swelling bust, was cut low to display the white perfection of her neck. Her softly rounded face looked absurdly childlike under the tall-crowned hennin, from which a wispy veil floated behind her ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Brayfield and settled into the house that was to be their home. It stood on a low cliff overlooking the sea; a broad green lawn, on which during the season a band played and people promenaded, lay in front of it. Beyond, the waves danced in the sunshine. The situation of the house was almost absurdly cheerful, and the house itself was new and prettily furnished. But the life into which Lily entered was strangely at variance with the surroundings, strangely antagonistic to the brightness of the sea, the sweetness of the air, the holiday gaiety that pervaded the little town ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... absurdly simple now. There he sat at his desk. The police might have walked in and arrested him. But if you begin figuring that way the whole thing was absurd. What differs it if men march coming from work, swinging along shoulder to shoulder or shuffle aimlessly along, and what harm can come out ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... the acknowledged beauty referred to in the opening lines of this chapter, whose love Eugene had been lucky enough to secure. Had Eugene not been absurdly rich himself, he might have been congratulated further on the prospective enjoyment of a nice little fortune as well as ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... feeling absurdly well, there was a good deal of bravado in his tone and manner, for he ate but little, and soon sank back ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... dun-colour—could a wife escape the infection? What it meant giving up was more vague, but it floated before her as the rose-coloured dream of her youth—the hero, the earnest, ardent hero, who was to light all life to rapture and significance. And, absurdly, while the drift of glamour and regret floated by, and while she sat with Franklin's arm about her, her hand in his, it seemed to shape itself for a moment into the gay, irresponsible face of Gerald Digby. Absurd, indeed; he was neither ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Every one dons evening-attire for this meal; and so strong a feeling obtains on this point that if, in case of his luggage going wrong or other accident, a man is compelled to join the party in morning-clothes, he feels painfully "fish-out-of-waterish." We know, indeed, of a case in which a guest absurdly sensitive would not come down to dinner until the arrival of his things, which did not make their appearance for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... to his absurdly contrasting title of grand equerry, amused the good-natured king, Charles X., and made him laugh,—although the Duc d'Herouville justified his appointment in the matter of being a fine horseman. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... been absurdly called "Protestant Jesuits," but the two orders are exactly opposite in spirit, principle, purpose, and method. All that they have in common is that they are both secret societies, which makes it plain that the opposition of the Latin church to Masonry is not on ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... few steps, he paused idly a moment on the verge of this green 'God's-acre' to read a perpendicular slab on a wall, and his face broadened into a smile as he followed the absurdly elaborate biography of a rich, self-made merchant who had taught himself to read, 'Reader, go thou and do likewise,' was the delicious bull at the end. As he turned away, the smile still lingering about his lips, he saw a dainty figure tripping down the stony graveyard path, ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... I picked up in Portugal," explained Charles. "You can get them absurdly cheap out there. Let's see, dear; ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... place it by the side of no matter what ordinary antique, would greatly fall short of what we call sculpturesque beauty; and many of the others, old humanists and priests and lawyers, are emphatically ugly: snub or absurdly hooked noses, retreating or deformedly overhanging foreheads, fleshy noses, and flabby cheeks, blear eyes and sunk-in mouths; and a perfect network of wrinkles and creases, which, hard as it is to say, have been scooped out not merely by age, but by low mind, fretting and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... along the difficult pathway rather than take advantage of modern improvements, excited great mirth among our wiser brotherhood. We greeted the two pilgrims with many pleasant gibes and a roar of laughter; whereupon they gazed at us with such woful and absurdly compassionate visages that our merriment grew tenfold more obstreperous. Apollyon also entered heartily into the fun, and contrived to flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own breath, into their faces, and envelop them in an atmosphere of scalding steam. These little ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fellow-citizens; and, by a strange perversion of the laws, the same degree of guilt and punishment was applied to a private quarrel, and to a deliberate conspiracy against the emperor and the empire. The edicts of Arcadius most positively and most absurdly declares, that in such cases of treason, thoughts and actions ought to be punished with equal severity; that the knowledge of a mischievous intention, unless it be instantly revealed, becomes equally criminal with the intention itself; [19] and that those rash men, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... himself that in seeking to speak with Vera, he was making only a natural choice between preventing the girl from perpetrating a fraud, or, later, for that fraud, holding her to account. But when she actually stood before him, he recognized how absurdly he had deceived himself. At the mere physical sight of her, there came to him a swift relief, a thrill of peace and deep content; and with delighted certainty he knew that what Vera might do or might not ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... find nests in places absurdly wrong? Wonderfully and skilfully constructed nests are attached to supports obviously weak, and eggs are laid on the ground right in the track of man and less considerate animals. Some birds seem to lay eggs and rear young solely that snakes may not ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... nothing but in love. Neither is it merely in the phrase; for whereas it hath been well said, that the arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self; certainly the lover is more. For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise. Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved; but to the loved most of all, except the love be reciproque. For it is a true rule, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... commenced the practice of systematically traducing our order of country gentlemen. His picture of Squire Western is not only a malicious, but also an incongruous libel. The squire's ordinary language is impossible, being alternately bookish and absurdly rustic. In reality, the conventional dialect ascribed to the rustic order in general—to peasants even more than to gentlemen—in our English plays and novels, is a childish and fantastic babble, belonging to no form of real breathing life; nowhere ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... It is absurdly untrue to say, as the Dearborn Independent does, that "the Jews of Russia came up in a perfect phalanx" after the overthrow of tsarism. Throughout the revolutionary period the Jews in Russia have presented about the same political divisions as the Russian population ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... al-Sawari" the Pillar of Masts, which is still the local name of Diocletian's column absurdly ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... almost tempted to envy the wooden horse for being unable to feel pain; but the creature was so absurdly unnatural that he decided he would not change places with it ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... wherever we sat, helped at the same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with wind and water—such wind ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... help smiling, perhaps laughing, at the odd mixture of Rome and rats, of Olympiads and Esquimaux. But the underlying idea of the interdependence of all that exists in nature is far from ridiculous. Emerson says, not absurdly or extravagantly, that "every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for whose friendship all men sigh? Why, Leone, forgive me for using the word—life will be quite different to me if we are to be friends, if I may see your face sometimes in the home that should have been yours. It will make all the difference in the world, and I am absurdly happy at the ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... pass his door if she so desired, and that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. The argument was only slightly adequate. But Alan was not interested in mysteries, especially when they had to do with woman—and such an absurdly inconsequential ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... an approaching storm and an inhospitable country, where his name and country would shut every door against him, and every peal of thunder would be supposed justified by the daring intrusion of a heretic in the dwelling of an old Christian, as the Spanish Catholics absurdly term themselves, to mark the distinction between ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... cautiously along the top of the wall and found a place where I could put my feet; Simmonds followed me, and then came Godfrey. His was the difficult part, to draw up the ladder and lower it again. As for me, it was all I could do to keep from falling. I felt absurdly as though I were standing on a tremulous tight-rope, high in the air; but Godfrey managed it somehow and ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... had come down, after the Easter term had been in progress for a fortnight, to play for an Oxford A team against the school. The match had resulted in an absurdly easy victory for the visitors by over forty points. Clowes had scored five tries off his own bat, and Trevor, if he had not fed his wing so conscientiously, would probably have scored an equal number. As it was, he had got through twice, and also dropped a goal. The two were now having a late tea ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... for him there must have been a great novelty in finding himself obliged to pay for travelling—for sea travelling which was the normal state of life for the family—from the very cradle for most of them. I could see he grudged prospectively every single shilling which must be spent so absurdly. It was rather funny. He would become doleful over it, and then again, with a fretful sigh, he would suppose there was nothing for it now but to take three second-class tickets—and there were the four children to pay ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... scarcely perceptible track to the left, and came in half a minute to an old lichenous stone wall. It seemed exactly the bit of wall he had known so well. It might have been but yesterday he was in that place; there remained even a little pile of wood. It became absurdly the same wood. The bracken perhaps was not so high, and most of its fronds still uncoiled; that was all. Here he had stood, it seemed, and there she had sat and looked down upon him. Where was she now, and what had become of her? He counted the years back and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... whereas the whereabouts of Fortune La Pearle was no longer an insistent problem. There was gold in the creek beds and ruby beaches, and when the sea opened, the men with healthy sacks would sail away to where the good things of life were sold absurdly cheap. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... This was absurdly too much. I then and there opened on Boogles, opened flooding gates of wrath and scorn on him—for him and for his idol of clay who, I flatly told him, could not be the real doughnuts of any sort. As for his being ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... it is. The pastor, either vain By nature, or by flattery made so, taught To gaze at his own splendour, and to exalt Absurdly, not his office, but himself; Or unenlightened, and too proud to learn, Or vicious, and not therefore apt to teach, Perverting often, by the stress of lewd And loose example, whom he should instruct, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... behind or the inner court of the house, then gradually drawing nearer and nearer, till at last there appeared the figure of an old man with a long beard, thin and emaciated, with chains on his hands and feet. The house was finally abandoned, and advertised to be let or sold at an absurdly low price. The philosopher Athenodorus read the notice on his arrival in Athens, but the smallness of the sum asked aroused his suspicions. However, as soon as he heard the story he took the house. He had his bed placed in the front court, close to the main door, ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... revealed that he could apply philosophy to daily life: he exercised regularly in the open air, took long walks, was absurdly exact about his cold baths, and like Kant, served the neighbors as a chronometer, so they set their clocks at three when they saw him going forth for a walk. And in the interests of truth, we will ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... very kindly, "don't alarm yourself so absurdly. I have not the honor of Mr. Bruce's confidence; and if I had, how could I tell him of an affair where I have been most to blame? I'll speak to Foster; he must not show his disappointment even before Uncle Henry. You will be quite safe, you see. But, mind, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... seaman felt an almost irresistible inclination to burst into a hearty fit of laughter, there seemed something so absurdly solemn in this cumulative stare, but good feeling fortunately checked him; yet he walked with his host along the lane with such a genuine expression of glee and good-will on his manly face that a softly uttered but universal and emphatic "Huk!" assured him ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... and which is now sustaining, my own heart. Can any man do more? Is not every man who feels any certainty in him whatever bound to do as much? What matter if the wise folk scoff, if even at times, and in a certain sense, one seems to one's self ridiculous—absurdly lonely and powerless! All great changes are preceded by numbers of sporadic, and as the bystander thinks, impotent efforts. But while the individual effort sinks, drowned perhaps in mockery, the general movement quickens, gathers force we ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to repent very much indeed, because she knew the value of money. Still, it was probable that the blind man was overestimating the value of his work. Gentlemen, she knew, were absurdly particular about their things. She giggled as a nervous housemaid giggles when she tries to explain the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... nothing was changed. Patty would never tell Storm that she'd engaged herself to me to save him from being turned out of the Piping Rock Club. She'd be too proud for such a confession, and, besides, she'd hate to upset his feelings to that extent. When she's not in a temper she's almost absurdly kind, and when she is in a temper, it generally seems to be with me. But I shall change that, later. There was still danger, however, from Mrs. Sam. I had warned her to pull Storm off his perch; now I must ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... that I rule my life by absolute ideals; I admit that everything is relative. There is no such thing as goodness or badness, in the absolute sense, of course. Perhaps I am absurdly inconsistent when—though knowing my work can't be first rate—I strive to make it as good as possible. I don't say this in irony, Amy; I really mean it. It may very well be that I am just as foolish as the people I ridicule for moral and religious superstition. This habit of mine is superstitious. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... previous remarks on the subject (p. —-) I would point out that the Queste and Grand Sainte Graal versions repeat the Maimed King motif in the most unintelligent manner. The element of old age, inherent in the Evalach-Mordrains incident, is complicated and practically obscured, by an absurdly exaggerated wounding element, here devoid of its original significance. [24] Heinzel, op. cit. p. 13. [25] For an instance of the extravagances to which a strictly Christian interpretation can lead, cf. Dr Sebastian Evans's ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... cheap, he was walking across the market-place to buy one: there, in the middle of it, stood an odd-looking little man, actually selling umbrellas. Here was a chance for him! When he drew nearer, he found that the little man, while vaunting his umbrellas to the skies, was asking such absurdly small prices for them, that no one would venture to buy one. He had opened and laid them all out at full stretch on the market-place—about five-and-twenty of them, stick downwards, like little tents—and ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... utterly base. Could anything be more inconsistent than to let his joy at the prospect of his brother's recovery be clouded, because the result was not wholly due to himself? Could anything be more absurdly foolish than to conceive a dislike for a woman whom Greif must marry to be ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... rotundities and a reddishness of complexion that was presently to purple, at this stage his chin was undoubted and as square as a spade, and, as so often happens to chins of this potentiality, punctuated absurdly with a dimple, and he wore a little clipped edge of black mustache ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... not been rather amiable, it would have been absurdly droll. His wife at once withdrew her touch; but it was plain she had to exert some force. Thereupon the young man coloured and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... absurdly liberal in spite of his blue Southern blood; and a man's man wandering alone at the age of forty was almost foredoomed to disaster. No doubt the poor man had been homesick ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... simply, a great fool, Who, born to perish, reared in suffering, Proclaims his lot a happy one, And with offensive pride His pages fills, exalted destinies And joys, unknown in heaven, much less On earth, absurdly promising to those Who by a wave of angry sea, Or breath of tainted air, Or shaking of the earth beneath, Are ruined, crushed so utterly, As scarce to be recalled by memory. But truly noble, wise is he, Who bids his brethren boldly look Upon our common misery; ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... bundle of rags or haunch of venison hurled back from a wolf-pursued sleigh to divert the pursuer even temporarily from the main issue. While Flame's Mother paused to consider the particularly flavorous sweetness of that entreaty,—to picture the flashing eye, the pulsing throat, the absurdly crinkled nostril that invariably accompanied all Flame's entreaties, Flame ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... is disfigured by trophies, fountains, columns, and statues so puerile, disorderly, and hideous that a lover of the arts must hang the head of shame as he passes, to see our dear old queen city arraying herself so absurdly; but when all is said and done, we can show one or two of the greatest sights in the world. I doubt if any Roman festival was as vast or striking as the Derby day, or if any Imperial triumph could show such a prodigious muster of faithful people as our young Princess ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... uninviting. Colonel Lewis discovered that he had absurdly under-rated the strength and discipline of the Dervish force. It had been continually reported that the defeats at Gedaref had demoralised them, and that their numbers did not exceed 2,000 men. Moreover, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... at the normal school after several years of close study, much of the time out of school; never attended balls or parties; sank into a low state of health at once with depression. Was very absurdly allowed to marry while in this state, and soon after became violently insane, and is likely ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... extremeness of whose folly was in some measure concealed by the horrid exquisiteness of their cruelty. We are still in the nonage of the species, and see human society sowing its wild oats in a thousand various ways, very absurdly often, and often very wickedly; but matters seem to have been greatly worse when, in an age still more immature, the grimly-bearded, six-feet children of Orkney were laying down their stone-circles on the green. Sir Walter, in the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... a great, huddled, furry mass that crouched and cowered in a corner of the cage. A huge ape, Thorpe concluded, and it moaned and whimpered absurdly like ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... on the cargo-deck of the Belle Julie. For the propaganda, there was his book; for the demonstration, he would put the sacred fund into some industry where the weight of it would give him the casting vote in all questions involving the rights of the workers. It was absurdly simple, and he wondered that none of the sociological reformers whose books he had read had anticipated him in the discovery of such an obviously ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the people of the place and myself, and had resolved to amuse herself at my expense; for one evening, after some jesting and raillery, she, somehow or other, provoked me to attempt to kiss her. But she was well defended from any assault of the kind. Her countenance became, of a sudden, absurdly hideous; the pretty mouth was elongated and otherwise amplified sufficiently to have allowed of six simultaneous kisses. I started back in bewildered dismay; she burst into the merriest fit of laughter, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Images." This is an evident mistake (due to some ignorant copyist or reciter of the story) of the same kind as that to be found at the commencement of the story of Ghanim ben Eyoub, (see my Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol I. p. 363 et seq.), where the hero is absurdly stated to have been surnamed at birth the "Slave of Love," a sobriquet which could only have attached itself to him in after-life and as a consequence of his passion for Fitoeh. Sir R. F. Burton suggests, ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... clearing in the heart of the great wilderness things had been happening which, to her amazement, she could not understand. Hitherto she had found an explanation, clear at least to herself, for everything that befell her in these silent backwoods which other folks seemed to find so absurdly mysterious. Armed with her self-confidence she had been able, hitherto, to deal with every situation that had challenged her, and in a manner quite satisfactory to herself, however the eternal verities may have smiled at it. But now, at last, she ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Minoret had enjoyed up to this time a life of unmixed happiness,—if we can call pure materialism happiness. A physiologist, observing the rolls of flesh which covered the last vertebrae and pressed upon the giant's cerebellum, and, above all, hearing the shrill, sharp voice which contrasted so absurdly with his huge body, would have understood why this ponderous, coarse being adored his only son, and why he had so long expected him,—a fact proved by the name, Desire, which was given to ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... "Well, you are absurdly melancholy, Tess. I have no reason for flattering you now, and I can say plainly that you need not be so sad. You can hold your own for beauty against any woman of these parts, gentle or simple; I say it to you as a practical man and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... that goal which he fancied (absurdly, no doubt) to be deliverance, toward the darkness from which he was now barely thirty paces distant. He pressed forward faster on his knees, his hands, at full length, dragging himself painfully along, and soon entered the dark portion of this ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... took Terry home and laid him on her bed, she had wailed absurdly for the lost lover in him. Through the night her cry had been, "Ah, Terry, Terry,—ye gev me manny a haird blow, darlin', but ye kep' th' hairdest ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... who had invented science, and that there was no such thing as sound reasoning before the time of Queen Elizabeth. Of course you say, that cannot possibly be true; you perceive, on a moment's reflection, that such an idea is absurdly wrong, and yet, so firmly rooted is this sort of impression,—I cannot call it an idea, or conception,—the thing is too absurd to be entertained,—but so completely does it exist at the bottom of most men's minds, that ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... hops brought it opposite to my post of observation. Here it halted as though it seemed to see me. At any rate it sat up in the alert fashion that hares have, its forepaws hanging absurdly in front of it, with one ear, on which there was a grey blotch, cocked and one dragging, and sniffed with its funny little nostrils. Then it began to talk to me. I do not mean that it really talked, but the thoughts which were ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... from you" I replied; "at least I have not been given to understand so. My errand is merely to deliver certain papers into the hands of a certain individual ashore here, and then rejoin the ship as early as possible. The task would be absurdly easy, were it not for the unsettled state of the country, which seems to be all up in arms, what with the French, the insurgent Corsicans, and the banditti, the latter being, I am ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... genial persons; but, seriously, Mrs. Blake's list of misdemeanours seems absurdly trifling. She is very handsome; that is misdemeanour number one, ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... disfigured with awkward looking windows and common place lintels. Indeed, it might easily have been mistaken for a charity hospital; and in the absence of a front, discovering the slightest architectural grandeur, bore no small resemblance to an absurdly constructed barracks. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... minutely point by point. Then he passes to this general lesson of the purpose of the apparent veil which He had cast round the truth, by throwing it into a parabolic form. In effect He says: If I had meant to hide My teaching by the form into which I cast it, I should have been acting as absurdly and as contradictorily as a man would do who should light a lamp and immediately obscure it.' True, there is the veil of parable, but the purpose of that relative concealment is not hiding, but revelation. 'There is nothing covered but that it should ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... ever attain to understand and find his proper place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus? His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... but by the lowest of the people, which are found sufficient to hold mankind together in little fraternities and copartnerships: weak ties indeed, and what may afford fund enough for ridicule, if they are absurdly considered as the real principles of that union: but they are in truth merely the occasions, as anything may be of anything, upon which our nature carries us on according to its own previous bent and bias; which occasions therefore would be ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... what to look for, it was absurdly simple. They couldn't see the port open, but they saw the white flash of dry ice as it dropped from the ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... feelings correctly during their conference in the parlour. At dinner, she had seen in him merely a pleasant, quiet-spoken old man, a typical "hick" farmer, who wore baggy, absurdly large clothing—"for the sake of his circulation," he said—and whose appearance in no way corresponded to his reputation as a learned psychologist and investigator of crime. Now, however, she responded warmly to his charm, felt the sincerity ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... be noticed, further, that this interpretation of sensation during sleep is uniformly a process of exaggeration.[89] The exciting causes of the feeling of discomfort, for example, are always absurdly magnified. The reason of this seems to be that, owing to the condition of the mind during sleep, the nature of the sensation is not clearly recognizable. Even in the case of familiar external impressions, such as the sound of the striking of a clock, there appears to be wanting that simple process ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... they halted there in the open solitude, silently stroking and soothing their frightened beasts, before either could speak. Then "Forty-niner" found his voice and burst forth, absurdly: ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... what he means. If, said I, he says one thing and means another, then I never shall understand what he means, but he speaks plainly enough for me to see what he says. And if what he says is that luxurious men are not to be blamed if they are wise men, he talks absurdly; just as if he were to say that parricides are not to be found fault with if they are not covetous, and if they fear neither gods, nor death, nor pain. And yet, what is the object of making any exception as to the luxurious, or of supposing any people, who, while living luxuriously, would ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the other; he never indulged himself so far as to go every week), and it gave him happiness enough to tide over all the dull moments between: and if anything came in his way and detained him even from his usual to a later train, he was ridiculously, absurdly angry. What right had he to feel so in respect to another man's wife? What right had he to watch the child—the child whom he disliked so much to begin with—developing its baby faculties with an interest he was half ashamed of, but which ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... virtue's self is made to shine, other characters must of necessity suffer. Posthumus, Imogen's husband, appears weak and impulsive, foolish in making his wife's constancy a matter for wagers, and absurdly quick to believe the worst of her. His weakness is, however, in part atoned for by his gallant fight in defense of his native Britain, and by his {201} outburst of genuine shame and remorse when perception of his unjust treatment of Imogen comes to him. Cymbeline, the aged king, has all ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... logical development. It was an absurdly simple device, and not in the least like a brain. But to the surprise of everybody, including its inventor, a Mahon-modified machine did more than stay warmed up. It retained operative habits as no complex device had ever done before. In ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... man does not know, Herr Hackh, what he may be. Once I haf piano, and viola my own, yes, and now haf I diss small, laffing, sick teufel!" He rose, and faced Heywood with a trembling, passionate gesture. "But diss yong man, he stand by der oldt fellow!" The streaming eyes blinked absurdly. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... "It is so absurdly radical," said the American Minister, "that it carries with it its own antidote. I am sure there can arise no harm from Captain W—— singing it to our English friends, who are monarchy men sufficiently staunch to ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... interpretation: [Hebrew: atN amr ii vaqiM ha ivmia ldvd mwiH dcdqh] "Behold the days shall come, and I will raise up to David the righteous Messiah, (not [Hebrew: dcdqia] 'the Messiah of the righteous,' as many absurdly read), saith the Lord." Eusebius (compare Le Moyne, de Jehova justitia nostra, p. 23), it is true, refutes the interpretation which refers it to Joshua, the son of Josedech; but we are not entitled to infer from this circumstance, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... whip-hand I have of you. Remember you could, if you chose, say some unpleasant things about me, and I don't want that any more than you do just now. But, you see, whilst I hold in my power what would, if necessary, effectually ruin you, and probably Bellamy too—for this country society is absurdly prejudiced—I have little cause for fear. Perhaps in the future you may be able to render me some service for which you shall have the letters—who knows? You see I am perfectly frank with you, for the simple reason that I know that it is useless ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... but a glimpse of the Captain's broad good-humored face heartily smiling, dispelled his anger. There was no ground upon which to maintain a quarrel with a person so persistently genial and so absurdly frank. And in fact Hamilton was not half so bad as his choleric manifestations seemed to make him out. Besides, Helm knew just how far to go, just ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... much penetration, this French schoolmaster. "Homme de zele et de conscience, il possede a un haut degre l'eloquence du bon sens et du coeur." Fierce and despotic in the exaction of obedience, yet tender of heart, magnanimous and tyrannical, absurdly vain and absolutely unselfish. His wife's school was a kingdom to him; he brought to it an energy, a zeal, a faculty of administration worthy to rule a kingdom. It was with the delight of a botanist discovering a rare plant in his garden, of a politician detecting a future statesman ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... appear to the public that having "absolute and supreme power," I was absurdly lenient towards Abou Saood, whom I knew to be so great a villain. I confess to one fault. I should have arrested and transported him to Khartoum when he first arrived at Gondokoro with the cattle stolen from the Shir; which caused the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic idealism, absurdly unaware of the complexity of things; as when he perpetually repeated (as with a kind of flat-footed stamping) that people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote Stevenson's phrase, that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey. Yet, though his general ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... to his bosom, and went on, still praising Blossy,—this innocent old gentleman,—heedless of Angy's gentle tug at his coat-tail; while Blossy buried her absurdly lovely old face in the pink flush of a wild-rose spray, and the other old ladies stared from him to her, their ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... ask that there shall be a reason." Miss Sakers is the vicar's daughter. Strictly speaking, I suppose her social position is superior to our own. I know for a fact that she has been to county balls. She seemed anxious to cultivate an intimacy with us, so I gathered. I was not absurdly pleased about it. One has one's dignity. Besides, at the office we frequently see people far above Miss Sakers. A nobleman who had called to see one of the partners once remarked to me, "Your office is a devilish long way from everywhere!" There ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... people of Clark township. It would have given them something to think and talk about. Into this still pool Elder Hankins threw the vials, the trumpets, the thunders, the beast with ten horns, the he-goat, and all the other apocalyptic symbols understood in an absurdly literal way. The world was to come to an end in the following August. Here was an excitement, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... conversation, and the purity of the language in which they express their thoughts; and yet very few of them can write or read, whereas the peasantry of our own country, whose education is in general much superior, are in their conversation coarse and dull almost to brutality, and absurdly ungrammatical in the language which they use, though the English tongue, upon the whole, is more simple in its grammar ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... greater man than Johnson and occasionally blasphemes against his idol, but who in the intervals is truly Boswellian. In the second place, he has usually hitherto been not criticised at all, but either somewhat sneered at or else absurdly over-praised. In the third place, as both Scott and Byron recognised, he is probably the most remarkable example we have of absolute self-education, or of no education: for Burns was an academically instructed student in comparison with Hogg. In the fourth, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... many rather ludicrous mistakes, inevitable to one who had just taken a first canter through the vast field of French art; mistakes in names and dates, in the order of men and generations. And when he made a blunder he was apt to stick to it absurdly, or excuse it elaborately. She soon gave up correcting him, even in the gentle, hesitating way she at first made use of. She said nothing; but there was sometimes mischief, perhaps mockery, in her eyes. Fenwick knew it; and would either make fresh plunges, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bloom knew what they were. He knew they were the "wilde-honden," very absurdly named by sapient naturalists Hyena venatica or "hunting hyena," and by others, with equal absurdity the "hunting dog." I pronounce these names "absurd," first because the animal in question bears ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... felt on reflection that they had acted absurdly. They were also disturbed by learning that the King, to whom they looked up with superstitious reverence, was greatly provoked. They made haste, therefore, to atone for their offence. In the House, they unanimously reversed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Christine. Torvald is so absurdly fond of me that he wants me absolutely to himself, as he says. At first he used to seem almost jealous if I mentioned any of the dear folk at home, so naturally I gave up doing so. But I often talk about such things with Doctor Rank, because ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... variety, and except for a difference in the arrangement of classes there seemed no distinction between one and the other. She was a machine wound up to work steadily from Monday morning until Friday night, and absurdly ready to run down when ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... absolutely without evidence upon this point. In regard to the Polak, all that can be said is this, that it was a most unfortunate occurrence. The attempt to connect the prisoner with this man's death has utterly failed. In regard to the man Rosenblatt, dismissing his absurdly tragic story, what evidence has been brought before this court that there was any deliberate attempt at murder? A blow was struck, but by whom? No one knows. What was the motive? Was it in self-defence warding ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... derision. Her own charms, compared with Birdie's generous ones, seemed absurdly meager, as she watched the older girl blow rings from the cigarette which she held daintily between her first ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... show it in their every discussion of him, particularly when they discuss him in camera. It is the secret but general view of the French, we are informed by confidential agents, that he is a fellow of loose life and not to be trusted with either a wine-pot, a virgin or a domestic fowl—an absurdly inaccurate generalization from the aberrations of soldiers in a far land, cut off from the moral repressions that lie upon them and colour all their acts at home. It is the view of the English, so we hear upon equally reliable authority, that he is an earnest but extremely inefficient oaf, ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... single day, Harry Mule appeared to recognize his young driver, and gave him a cordial greeting as he entered the stable. At least he threw up his head and uttered a tremendous bray, which went "Haw! he-haw, he-haw, he-haw!" and sounded so absurdly like a laugh that Derrick laughed from sympathy until the tears ran down his cheeks. The mule gazed at him with a look of wonder in his big eyes, and stood so meek and quiet while his harness was being put on that Derrick thought perhaps his feelings had been hurt. To soothe them he ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... care for any of them except The Imitation of Christ and Robinson Crusoe. The Bible was spoilt for her by incessant services and Sunday School classes; The Heir of Redclyffe and Ministering Children she found absurdly sentimental and unlike any life that she had ever known; Mrs. Beeton she had never opened, and Longfellow and Kingsley's Natural History she found dull. For Robinson Crusoe she had the intense human sympathy that all lonely people feel for ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... appreciation for much beyond money-making, and no doubt they were merely taking a passing glimpse at the ruins; the man on some money-making quest, and the girls just to be able to say they had seen them. His eyes rested on the temple wall, and he felt suddenly absurdly resentful that these rich pleasure-seekers should come even there to gape and stare. He had grown to love the ruins dearly, until that moment he had scarcely known how dearly, and to him it seemed for the moment like showing some treasured ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... account for this second lover? Kate, of course, knew all about it; but how could Alice be made to understand that she, Mrs Greenow, was not to blame,—that she had, in sober truth, told this ardent gentleman that there was no hope for him? And even as to Kate,—Kate, whom her aunt had absurdly chosen to regard as the object of Mr Cheesacre's pursuit,—what sort of a welcome would she extend to the owner of Oileymead? Before the wheels had stopped, Mrs Greenow had begun to reflect whether it might ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... the change absurdly. Nevertheless, that a change had taken place was palpable. The arresting radiance, the vivid physical perfection of her, had gone. She was thin, and with the thinness had come lines—lines of fatigue, and other, more lasting lines born of endurance and self-control. The pliant symmetry of her ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... last reached a condition when everything seemed waving up and down in regular undulations before his eyes. It was unpleasant and made him feel sick. His face wore an expression of childish bewilderment and foolish enthusiasm. Trying to say something, he smacked his lips absurdly and bellowed. Chelkash, watching him intently, twisted his mustaches, and as though recollecting something, still smiled to himself, but ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... was to be his last day at the castle—he was to start the next morning for Constantinople, with all instructions regarding the spy Speridionides, and he desired to make a favourable impression on Lady Maude before he left. Though intensely, even absurdly vain, Atlee was one of those men who are so eager for success in life that they are ever on the watch lest any weakness of disposition or temper should serve to compromise their chances, and in this way he was led to distrust what he would in his puppyism ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett as Falstaff, may actually seem to be the character assumed by virtue of a transforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that getting into a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habits and associations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruity and ridiculousness of most of our modern acting. Whether what is called the "legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, but the advocates of it appear to think that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... case, it has been generally, but absurdly imagined, that the gout is translated, or recedes from the extremities to some internal part: the term of retrocedent gout has therefore been applied to occurrences of this nature. From the explanation which has been given, it ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... and listening with great sharpness for the answer, "as if to imply that he rather thought Mr. Winkle's natural taste for perjury would induce him to give some name which did not belong to him." Giving in, absurdly, his surname only; and being asked immediately afterwards, if possible still more absurdly, by the Judge, "Have you any Christian name, sir?" the witness, in the Reading, more naturally and yet more confusedly even it seemed than in the book, got that eminent functionary into a great bewilderment ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... was one of our hands, and—and—well, you understand, she had a pretty face, and I was foolish about her. I never meant anything serious; but, you see, if Gladys gets to know about it, she is so absurdly quixotic, she is quite fit enough not ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... little narrative. It sticks rather closely to facts, and has a slight plot, which shows, or is made to show, the consequences of drinking, stealing, or some other sin. Usually it is either brutally realistic or absurdly exaggerated; but that it can be given literary charm is proved by Hawthorne's use of it. Maria Edgeworth is easily the "awful example" of this class, and her stories, such as "Murad the Unlucky" and "The Grateful Negro," are excellent ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett |
