"Absurdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to her only, he communicated the daily intelligence which he received from a spy who had introduced himself into all their secrets; and Elizabeth had the firmness to hasten nothing, though a picture was actually shown her, in which the six assassins had absurdly caused themselves to be represented with a motto underneath intimating their common design. These dreadful visages remained however so perfectly impressed on her memory, that she immediately recognised one ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Absurdly enough, he resented in secret this amiability on the part of M. Villefort toward his own wife. He was quite prepared to be severe upon the reading, but was surprised to be compelled to acknowledge that M. Villefort read wondrously ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... close 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 faces growing hard ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... for example. If the pillar is too massive for the load supported, it gives you the unsatisfactory impression of doing something absurdly small for your powers. If on the contrary the pillar is too slender for the load that seems to rest upon it, you get the feeling of strain and insecurity; but if it is rightly proportioned, you get the feeling of a worthy task successfully accomplished. The pillar, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... eighty-seven degrees. Had his instrument been more precise, and had he been able to take account of all the elements of error, he would have found it eighty-seven degrees and fifty-two minutes. The difference of measurement seems slight; but it sufficed to make the computations differ absurdly from the truth. The sun is really not merely eighteen times but more than two hundred times the distance of the moon, as Wendelein discovered on repeating the experiment of Aristarchus about two thousand years later. Yet this discrepancy does not in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... you couldn't spare any to call here—I see!' said Flossie. 'George,' she added, with a sudden diversion, 'I wonder you aren't afraid of catching cold! How can you go about in such absurdly thin ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... 'It's so absurdly easy and simple that there is no chance of the old heathen rumbling it. Anyway, if we're caught, ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... 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 ...
— 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
... theatrical point of view, than the monarch who had a large part in the making of the Russian people. The Roman censorship prevented us long ago from making the acquaintance of the Gustavus of Sweden whom Ankerstrom stabbed to death at a masked ball, by transmogrifying him into the absurdly impossible figure of a Governor of Boston; and the Claudius of Ambroise Thomas's opera is as much a ghost as Hamlet's father, while Debussy's blind King is as much an abstraction as is ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... fashion, Holmesy," returned the young lieutenant almost stiffly. "Corporal Overton is a mighty fine young soldier, and a good soldier never needs to be his officer's pet; he can stand on his own merits. But what's the trouble with Overton? Is he still absurdly suspected of relieving that ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... censor art do not at least underestimate this influence. They generally misunderstand it, and almost always they are absurdly bent on preventing other people from discovering anything not sanctioned by them. But at any rate, like Plato in his argument about the poets, they feel vaguely that the types acquired through fiction tend to be imposed on reality. Thus there can be little doubt that ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... a plate of food in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. The expression on his face was absurdly like that of a mother yearning over a sick child. "Mein liebes Kind—mein liebes Kind," he stammered when she came out, so woebegone, so crushed, so utterly unlike any Priscilla of any one of her moods that he had ever seen before. Her eyes were ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Lascelles at the awkward places; and on the way through the woods, nothing would serve him but that I should set the pace, that we might all keep together. Judge therefore of my surprise when he came to my room, as I was dressing for the absurdly early dinner which is the one blot upon Riffel Alp arrangements, with the startling remark that we "might as well run straight ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... while, reached me from my boy. It had been written the day after the child's birth apparently. I have it here. After some private matter he says: "Our little son is a fine fellow, very dark, and his thick black hair has the 'Sarreco streak' very visible, which Inez is absurdly delighted at. The English nurse has jungle fever, and is kept away, but Pahna, the Karen woman, is a splendid substitute: she is the wife of my faithful native servant. Pahna is devoted to 'Bebe Ingalay.' Her English is curious; Inez she usually called 'Missee ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... nether world; it was upper earth, and—her husband beckoned; he had been laughing incontinently. He saw nothing but a crowd of queer looking people doing things they were not made to do and appearing absurdly happy over it. It ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... not only 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 although the testing of the cable went ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... himself? In consequence of a whim of Shakespeare—or perhaps it may have been a revenge, like that of Beaumarchais on Bergasse (Bergearss)—Falstaff is, in England, a type of the ridiculous; his very name provokes laughter; he is the king of clowns. Now, instead of being enormously pot-bellied, absurdly amorous, vain, drunken, old, and corrupted, Falstaff was one of the most distinguished men of his time, a Knight of the Garter, holding a high command in the army. At the accession of Henry V. Sir John Falstaff was only thirty-four years old. This general, who distinguished himself ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... the Roman Catholic worship. One of these is Bateman, a solemn bore, who takes great interest in "candlesticks, ciboriums, faldstools, lecterns, ante-pend turns, piscinas, roodlofts, and sedilia": wears a long cassock which shows absurdly under the tails of his coat; and would tolerate no architecture but Gothic in English churches, and no music but the Gregorian. Bateman is having a chapel restored in pure fourteenth-century style and dedicated to the Royal Martyr. He is going to convert ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of a new life at the failure of each. These leases, in course of years, have been found extremely disadvantageous to the landlord, the property having risen so much in value that the original rent was absurdly disproportioned. ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... to a sentimental old bachelor," he said, with his winning smile. "But these ghosts were bad for me. I was in danger of becoming absurdly self-centered, almost morbidly introspective. Mac, whose heart is the biggest I know, and who laughs away more troubles than I ever dreamed of, rallied me about it, and showed me that I ought to turn my disappointment to ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... representing Canada, and the Belgian Minister to Washington, M. Delfosse, as chairman, awarded Canada and Newfoundland $5,500,000 as the excess value of the fisheries for the ten years the arrangement was to run. The award was denounced in the United States as absurdly excessive; but a sense of honor and the knowledge that millions of dollars from the Alabama award were still in the Treasury moved the Senate finally to acquiesce, though only for the ten-year term fixed by treaty. In Canada the award was received with delight as a signal ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... left the road, and climbed over the fences into fields to let us pass; and then, after we had passed, turned, and looked after us as far as they could see. Had we been carrying destruction to all human kind, they could not have acted more absurdly. We went to a friend's house and stayed for the rest of the day, and until nine o'clock that night, when we set ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... scheme for remodelling the mind of Europe, he failed hopelessly—almost absurdly. He believed, himself, that his work was spoilt by the Reformation; but, in fact, under no conditions could any more have ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... When the absurdly dressed man with long hair reached deck, he performed the drollest antics. For a moment he would stand upright, chest out, like a recruit, the next instant bow profoundly, or take aim, as if hunting; and all the time he ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the means were thus made abundant, the letter to Miss March was not then written. Lawrence finally determined that it was simply impossible for him to write to the lady, until he knew more. What Keswick had told him had been absurdly little, and he had hurried away before there had been time to ask further questions. Instead of sending a letter to Miss March, he would write to Keswick, and would put to him a series of interrogations, the answers to which would make him understand better the ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... of finger-prints 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
... bears an absurdly large share of the family burden, nevertheless it cannot be said that her lot is an unhappy one, because she is not the slave of the man, as is the case, for instance, with the Australian savages. From time immemorial their society has known no other conditions, and the married ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... turn in my chair and to say, not without a semblance of lightness, 'Aha, come in!' Dread was indeed rather blunted in me by his looking so absurdly like a villain in a melodrama. The sheen of his tilted hat and of his shirt-front, the repeated twists he was giving to his moustache, and most of all the magnificence of his sneer, gave token that he was there only ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... ready for publication, there was no necessity, in their opinion, for the present paper being brought to light. But since an attempt has been made in some quarters to minimize the effect of Mr. Ramaswamier's evidence by calling it most absurdly "the hallucinations of a half-frozen strolling Registrar," I think something might be gained by the publication of perfectly independent testimony of, perhaps, equal, if not greater, value, though of quite a different character. With ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... a terrible part in the history of cowardice and of unsuccessful love. No man can be brave without blood to sustain his courage, any more than he can think, as the German materialist says, not absurdly, without phosphorus. The fainting lover must recover his circulation, or his lady will lend him her smelling-salts and take a gallant with blood in his cheeks. Porphyro got over his faintness before he ran away with Madeline, and Cesar Birotteau was an accepted lover when he swooned ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he did not touch. He had a better use for his energies, he said: he was full of great ideas of himself and would not content himself with ordinary things. And he was thoroughly capable—he was quite absurdly talented for a poor man. And at once he wanted to begin turning everything topsy-turvy. Just because he was begotten among the cliffs and crags by an old toil- worn stone-cutter, he behaved like a deity of the rocks; he brushed long-established experience aside, and introduced novel methods ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... remarkable manner the diseased state of political feeling then existing in England. It was a small copy of the Irish rebellion,—marked by the same cut-throat policy,—having in view a similar overwhelming revolution, with the same absurdly inadequate means. Fortunately for the United Kingdom, the chief actors in both succeeded only in bringing upon themselves the destruction with which they ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... resourceful specimen of his tribe, cries down, under the same mysterious influence, the pseudo-antiques he is selling, and so intrigues his old friends the dealers that, with a curious naivete, they make absurdly high bids in the belief that the auctioneer is up to some profitable little game. Mr. Alfred Burton himself becomes at a stroke a famous author just by merely writing what he sees and seeing true. (But wouldn't his readers also need a nibble at the bean?) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... sea-tortoise, disturbed, slid off the sand-bank where he had been sunning himself and paddled sulkily away. A blue heron flapped up from the thicket, and with a frog in its bill awkwardly took flight, its long neck crooked, legs dangling absurdly. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... at me for being so foolish, but I have become absurdly excited over this story. Scott was well called the 'Wizard of the North.' What a spell he weaves over his pages! When reading some of his descriptions of men and manners in those old chivalric times, I feel that I have been born some ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... notions that he is really a 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 ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... really interested in it, and I could, consistently, give you some information regarding it, it would give me great pleasure to do so. But you are not interested in it- -you do not believe in it; many of you think it absurdly transcendental, as your topic indicates. Thus you have nothing but ridicule for it. So you can understand that what is very sacred to me I could not discuss in such an ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... mass of ruin down beside the river, and it was fenced about jealously and locked up from their invasion. After dinner Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont went for a walk in the mingled twilight and moonlight up the hill towards Chepstow. Both of them were absurdly and nervously pressing to Belinda to come with them, but she was far too wise to take this sudden desire for her company seriously. Her dinner shoes, she said, were too thin. Perhaps she would change and come out a little later. "Yes, come ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... A fire was opened upon him at long range so soon as he was discovered, and at the same time the sergeant-major of his regiment and an equerry of Prince Maurice started in pursuit, determined to bring him off if possible, before his life had been thus absurdly sacrificed. Fortunately for him they came to the rescue in time, pulled him from his horse, and succeeded in bringing him away unharmed. The sergeant-major, however, Sinisky by name, while thus occupied in preserving the count's life, was badly wounded in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... worked faithfully, had given great satisfaction to his employers, and presently had a clerical position in a prominent trust company offered to him. It seemed an advance. The salary was larger, even if absurdly small, and he ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... this opportunity of observing, that nothing could have been more absurdly unfounded than the statement which I have seen repeated in various sketches of his Life and Manners, that he habitually abstained from conversation on literary topics. In point of fact, there were no topics on which he talked more openly or ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... quantity and kind of food. Many suffered from dysentery, which the medical officer considered to be aggravated by the state in which the maize was prepared. The sweet potato, which mixed with the meal so greatly improved the diet, was no longer attainable; pork was absurdly issued instead of vegetables; and the deficiency of proper food—a greater grievance than any amount of severity—provoked their murmurs ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous—among them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the effects brought absurdly low prices, realised L12,000—a smaller sum probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... that Lerroux was not only base, but obtuse and absurdly wanting in human feeling and revolutionary sympathy, when he concurred in the execution of the stoker of ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... instinct, and afterwards to walk by the same power, while in adult man the 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. ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sleep in the same room. In most cases the woman knows nothing of the man's working life and he knows nothing of her working life (he calls it her home life). It is remarkable that the very people who romance most absurdly about the closeness and sacredness of the marriage tie are also those who are most convinced that the man's sphere and the woman's sphere are so entirely separate that only in their leisure moments ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... and then as the "really" seemed an absurdly banal beginning for a rejection of an offer of stolen money, he said with a curl of the lip and a swagger, "Oh, hell! I'd feel pretty rotten to take money from one of the good pals. And besides, I didn't ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... bridesmaids, Peyton and his ushers, on a lawn, in the wide flowered hats of summer and identical boutonnires, stood on a table against the wall; and beyond was an early girlish picture of Fanny, in clothes already absurdly out of mode. She had a pure hovering smile; the aspect of innocence time had been powerless to change was accentuated; and her hands managed to convey an impression of appeal. He had been, in the phrase now ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... being a fool, she knows she is well-favoured—much as you do, no doubt. I mean that you cannot shave yourself every morning without being conscious that you are in the Greek mould. I could show you the engraving of a statue by Praxiteles which is absurdly like you. But this accident of nature has not ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... How absurdly easy it is for a legend to arise in a lonely countryside! I examined him as to the reasons for his weird belief. It seems that from time to time sheep have been missing from the fields, carried bodily away, according to Armitage. That they could have wandered away of their own accord and ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lip. His forehead sloped back like a cat's, and his scanty, sandy hair was brushed into a shining pompadour, while white eyelashes gave an uncanny expression to his face. Abortive lumps of flesh stuck on at careless intervals sufficed for ears, and his scrawny neck with its absurdly correct collar and wild necktie seemed like an old, old man's when he dresses for his golden-wedding anniversary. Everything about Gaylord seemed old, exhausted, quite ineffectual. His mother had never tired boasting that Gaylord had had mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, St. Vitus ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... 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
... With them, there is boundless, though not very assured hope; with you, a very sure and very unqualified despair. The terms of alliance from the Dissenters offer a representation of the commons, chosen out of the people by the head. This is absurdly and dangerously large, in my opinion; and that scheme of election is known to have been at all times perfectly odious to me. But I cannot think it right of course to punish the Irish Roman Catholics by an universal exclusion, because others, whom ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... brief parley set me quite at ease with my landlady. Even, the Carthaginian patois became intelligible to me after a little experience. I found that I could have a cosy, cleanly chamber, and be fed and cared for upon terms that seemed absurdly small, even to a person of my limited means. My cordial hostess brought me a meal which was positively luxurious; broiled ham and poached eggs, such as one scarcely hopes to see out of a picture of still life; crisp brown cakes fresh from that wonderful oven whose door I had seen yawning open in ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs—to sleep so soundly, and to awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing to get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage been flung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the hand inserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had not the slightest idea ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... train had khaki hankies and sweets; they simply loved them. They are all, except the infectious cases, just out of the trenches, and such things make them absurdly happy; you would hardly believe it. I am keeping the writing-cases and bull's-eyes for the next lot. There were just enough mufflers to muffle the chilly necks of those who hadn't ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Inventor," he said, and hope rose in the heart of each heated Principle. "It's really absurdly simple. All the Pilot has to do is to touch a button, and at his will, VARY the area of the Surface, the Angle of Incidence, and the Camber! And there you are—Maximum Climb or Maximum Speed as required! How does ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... thousand books all catalogued within easy reach. There's a private staircase too. You can breakfast in your room and slip down in your dressing gown if you want to." She laughed. My spirits took a turn upwards as absurdly ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... of development. Nowhere else is the struggle for life so fierce; nowhere else is the enemy so goaded by hunger and thirst to desperate measures. It is a place for internecine warfare Hence, all desert plants are quite absurdly prickly. The starving herbivores will attack and devour under such circumstances even thorny weeds, which tear or sting their tender tongues and palates, but which supply them at least with a little food and moisture: so the plants are compelled in turn to ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... remarked, chuckling at my surprise,—"so absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may serve to define the limits of observation and of deduction. Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering to your instep. Just opposite the Seymour Street Office they have taken up the pavement and thrown ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... towards her absurdly superstitious assumption that the death of the Vicar of Saint Peter's could increase the seriousness of George's case. And he feebly succeeded in being condescending. Nevertheless he could not meet his auntie's gaze without self-consciousness. For her emphasis had been double, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... agree with what the Speaker writes about our 'absurdly late hours.' I have no strong feeling upon the Wednesday question, and perhaps the Speaker is right, although I think the point is alluded to in a manner not too strong nor too 'disparaging' to the fixed hour, as I only recommend that a division, instead of an adjournment, either upon main ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the spirit of their charter, the true intent of which is, that all who are fit should be allowed to promote natural knowledge in association, from and after the time at which they are both fit and willing. It is also working more absurdly from year to year; the tariff of fifteen per annum will soon amount to the practical exclusion of many who would be very useful. This begins to be felt already, I suspect. But, as appears above, the body of the Society has the remedy in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Geoffroy in 1861, and by M. Mounet Sully in 1881[9]. With reference to the latter performance, which was continued throughout the autumn season, M. Francisque Sarcey wrote an article for the Temps newspaper of August 15, 1881, which is full of just and vivid appreciation. At the risk of seeming absurdly 'modern', I will quote from this article some of the ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... cases was nearly full. Reginald watched him with something like admiration, inwardly wondering if he would ever be able to find his way about this labyrinth of boxes, and strongly of opinion that only muffs like printers would think of arranging the alphabet in such an absurdly haphazard manner. The lower case being full up, Gedge meekly suggested that as he was yet several feet from his full size, they might as well lift the upper case down while it was being filled. Which done, the same process was repeated, only with more apparent regularity, and the case ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... English structure may, in the nature of things, be equally good. But if you allow that the English language is established, he is wrong. My name might originally have been Nicholson, as well as Johnson; but were you to call me Nicholson now, you would call me very absurdly.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... wait. To me it seemed absurdly hopeless. The flying field was on a slight rise. Below us spread the dark shadow that was Constantinople. There was no moon to give it form and substance—it was just a lake of deeper darkness, a spreading mass of silent roof-tops and minarets. ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... to pray. No man could speak as eloquently to empty seats, or to a dummy audience, as to a hall filled with intelligent people, yet Thoreau's ropes and hogsheads and pulling and pushing truckmen absurdly misrepresent the true relation that exists between a speaker and his hearers. Of course a speaker finds it uphill work if his audience is not with him, but that it is not with him is usually his ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... found he had left, and followed him to his rooms. The minute I saw him I experienced the same nasty feeling of lost or bewildered individuality which always overcame me in his presence. He was so absurdly like me. I felt as if I were looking into a mirror where my reflection persisted in doing things I didn't do, thereby producing a most ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... The Biographie Universelle, after giving 1738 as the date of Naigeon's birth, absurdly attributes to him the article on Ame in the Encyclopaedia, which was published in 1752, when Naigeon ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... for some shadow of dire repentance looming in the distance, I am deeply free to walk as I will. The choice of pleasure for a principle of morals was particularly unfortunate in the British utilitarians; it lent them an air of frivolity absurdly contrary to their true character. Pleasure might have been a fit enough word in the mouth of Aristippus, a semi-oriental untouched by the least sense of responsibility, or even on the lips of humanists ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... expression of anxiety. His body was a poor affair, his legs thin and uncertain, an incipient stomach causing his waistcoat suddenly to fall inwards somewhere half-way up his chest, his feet in ill-shapen boots, and his neck absurdly small inside his high stiff collar. His stiff collar jutting sharply into his weak chin was perhaps his most striking feature. Most Russians of his careless habits wore soft collars or students' shirts that fastened tight about the neck, but ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... wife—"are coming on to commencement, and then of course you'll all meet them. Mother is so jolly—she knows just what girls like, and she enters into all the fun, just like one of us. Of course she is absurdly young," laughed Eleanor, as if the stepmother's youth had never been her most intolerable ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... little boy to play with, Lu and I, or rather Lu,—because, though he never took any dislike to me, he was absurdly indifferent, while he followed Lu about with a painful devotion. I didn't care, didn't know; and as I grew up and grew awkwarder, I was the plague of their little lives. If Lu had been my sister instead of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... He felt absurdly pleased. There was a note of regret too in her tone. Then, as though with some effort she addressed ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... attain the rank of baron of the realm [a]. These facts are so apparent from the whole tenour of the English history, that none would have been tempted to deny or elude them, were they not heated by the controversies of faction; while one party was ABSURDLY afraid of those ABSURD consequences, which they saw the other party inclined to draw from this event. But it is evident that the present rights and privileges of the people, who are a mixture of English and Normans, can never be affected by a transaction, which passed seven hundred ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... track led to Maple Copse, an isolated little wood with several dug-outs in it, and on to Sanctuary Wood, which we found 400 yards further East. Here in dug-outs lived the Supports, for whom at this time was no fighting accommodation except one or two absurdly miniature keeps. At the corner of the larger wood we passed the Ration Dump, and then, leaving this on our left, turned into Armagh Wood on ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... experiences, shared by Maud, were absurdly delightful to Howard. She was rather alarmed by ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... prison bars, called again and again from the playground, while slowly but surely up the roof crawled the ever-increasing flames. But 'Mazin' Grace heard nothing, saw nothing; she lay unconscious on the roof, an absurdly pitiful little figure in her ragged dress ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... that he should be the dull boy of yesterday. He was speaking to the exhorter and appeared not to have her in sight or mind, although, in fact, her untimely levity ran him through like a dart. His absurdly deep voice was rich with a note not of mere forbearance but of veritable comradery, yet his eyes, as they held the offender's, were as big and dangerous as she had ever seen her mighty father's and she laughed ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... men Prince 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, should be carried out. He was ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... aunt didn't like me overmuch, I believe; and I wasn't here often. My mother and I lived far down the street. A big apartment-house stands there now, I noticed as I was walking out here this afternoon—the 'Verema,' it is called, absurdly enough!" ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... of the road was perfect—it had received no hurt; but on the roof lay the earth and stones. Still, we had almost no feeling of danger. The chances were a thousand to one that the picture-frame maker would get safely away with his goods; and he did. But it seemed odd—to an absurdly sensitive, non-Teutonic mind it seemed somehow to lack justice— that the picture-framer, after having been ruined, must risk his life in order to snatch from the catastrophe the debris of his career. Further on, within ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... or something." George assented with a nod, as the easiest course open to him. He did not take a hand at bridge after dinner: his provisions' for Fanny's happiness refused to extend that far, and at the table d'hote he was a rather discouraging boarder. He was considered "affected" and absurdly "up-stage" by the one or two young men, and the three or four young women, who enlivened the elderly retreat; and was possibly less popular there than he had been elsewhere during his life, though he was now nothing worse than a coldly polite young man who kept to himself. After dinner he ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Distracted between the coaxings and menaces of Sotillo and his Staff, the miserable commander of the steamer kept her moving with as much prudence as they would let him exercise. Some of them had been drinking heavily, no doubt; but the prospect of laying hands on so much wealth made them absurdly foolhardy, and, at the same time, extremely anxious. The old major of the battalion, a stupid, suspicious man, who had never been afloat in his life, distinguished himself by putting out suddenly the binnacle light, the only one allowed on board for the necessities of navigation. He could ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... conduct. Now I said to myself that she had certainly a look of greater sedateness than before. But her expression of dislike to Geoffrey Brotherton had more effect upon me than anything else, inasmuch as there Vanity found room for both the soles of her absurdly small feet; and that evening, when I went wandering, after my custom, with a volume of Dante in my hand, the book remained unopened, and from the form of Clara flowed influences mingling with and gathering fresh power from those of Nature, whose feminine front now brooded over me half-withdrawn ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... 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 which he ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... had been friends but a 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 ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... imagined God to be deaf, and that he could not hear them without their making this shocking noise. It would appear to you like the grossest blasphemy were I to repeat to you some of their exclamations; but one or two were so absurdly ridiculous, that I cannot help giving them as I ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... tempted to produce Alan Craig's will and finish the business. All the nonsense about the clock and the postponed division could not prevent our taking possession of the house and everything in it. Why, even that absurdly costly clock would be ours.... And yet there's always the ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... that the child shall not be sent back to him, stands treat for the crowd. The child's life in the convent is material for some good satiric writing upon the question of his salvation. The picture is absurdly over-drawn so far as its effectiveness against conventional charity is concerned, but it touches the question of religious bigotry surely and strongly. Indeed the method of treatment here verges closely upon the Rabelaisian, as where the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Street, in consequence of his dislike and harshness, and he had looked into her chamber in just the same way. The present room was much humbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of books lying everywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that supported them seem absurdly disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must have been recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to buy in reason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate passion so extensively in proportion to the narrowness of their income. For the first time he felt a little hurt by ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... be protected in such a manner, absurdly on my dignity; and the refusal, together possibly with some air of contemptuous independence in the tone of it, brought the squire to a climax. 'You won't go out and walk with her? You shall go down on your knees to her and beg ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... puppy-coat of wavy mahogany-and-white caught a million sunbeams, reflecting them back in tawny-orange glints and in a dazzle as of snow. His forepaws were absurdly small, even for a puppy's. Above them the ridging of the stocky leg-bones gave as clear promise of mighty size and strength as did the amazingly deep little ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... was old Mrs. Powers in her place, absurdly light and elastic, treading the floor in her flat, old-woman's shoes ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... re-assuming his mock-serious air, "there should be a dreadful duel, in which the hero is shot in his hyacinthine curls, falls mortally wounded, dripping all over with gory blood, and is borne to his ladye-love on a shutter! You have none of these fine points. Then the names of your characters are absurdly commonplace. Mortimer Walters should be Montaldo St. Clare: Daisy Snarle, (how plebeian!) should be Gertrude Flemming: John Flint, Clarence Lester, and so on to the end of the text. How Mrs. Mac Elegant will turn ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... not the same substance by any means. Both of them are made of the milky juice of trees, but of entirely different trees. The gutta-percha milk is collected in an absurdly wasteful manner, namely, by cutting down the trees and scraping up the juice. When this juice reaches the market, it is in large reddish lumps which look like cork and smell like cheese. It has to ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... rector of the parish, Dr. Jeffreys and an absurdly young wife whom he had recently married, a fluffy-headed little thing with round eyes and a cheerful, perky manner. The two of them together looked exactly like a turkey-cock and a chicken. I remembered him well enough and to my astonishment he remembered me, perhaps because Lady Ragnall, ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... effective family phrase) under opposition is a grand magnifier; and it was not difficult to erect poor Captain White into a hero, his wife into a patient sufferer, and Alethea's kindness to his daughter into a bosom friendship; while the aunts seemed to be absurdly fastidious and prejudiced. 'I don't wonder at Aunt Ada,' she said to herself; 'I know she has always been kept under a glass case; but I thought better things of Aunt Jane. It is all because Kalliope goes to St. Kenelm's, and won't ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 breakage of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... they set out for their homeward tramp, and found the bicycle, as Desmond had prophesied. He refused to ride on; and Roy limped beside him, feeling absurdly elated. The godlike one had come to earth indeed! Only the remark about his mother still rankled; but he felt shy of returning to the subject. The change in Desmond's manner had puzzled him. Roy glanced admiringly at his profile—the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... it," she said. "I think you were quite fond of me once. You have such absurdly old-fashioned ideas or I think that you would be fond of ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... example, is made of brass. The lips of the player protruding into the cup can effect certain changes in shape, and changes also can be made in the tube between the mouthpiece and the bell of the instrument by pistons or valves. But these changes are absurdly small in number compared with the structural changes of which the vocal tract is capable, and commonplace in character compared with the refined and subtle minuteness of the latter. For this reason, while there ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... sympathies are sometimes accused, absurdly enough, of trying to prove that the medieval period was perfect. In truth the whole case for it is that it was imperfect. It was imperfect as an unripe fruit or a growing child is imperfect. Indeed it was imperfect in that very particular fashion which most modern ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... account of its absorption in Irish affairs. But he was not writing a formal history, and these points did not appeal to him at all. He drew with inimitable skill a picture of the despised and fantastic Jew, vain as a peacock and absurdly dressed, alien in race and in his real creed, smiling sardonically at English ways, enthusiasms, and institutions, until he became, after years of struggle and obloquy, the idol of what was then the proudest ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the youth in her train misery and mortification shone on his chubby countenance. For a boy he had been absurdly fond of dress, but he had also a keen sense of what was fit and he knew his present costume was not that. However, all this trivial unpleasantness passed, as the entering pair were greeted by the ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... though I didn't know it from the very first," he answered slowly. His heart beat hard, for he could not guess how she should know of Kathleen. It was absurdly impossible that she should know. "But many have loved you!" she said proudly. "They have not shown it," he answered grimly; then added quickly, and with aching anxiety: "When did you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in proportion as he waxed wealthy and fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's popularity increased, he became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious of husbands, he was absurdly jealous. If he did not interfere with his wife's social liberty, it was because it was maliciously whispered that his first and only attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him into silence. Much of this kind of gossip came from ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... they got hold of a good one. Besides, if she weren't mistaken for Esme O'Brien, that wretched Bedr might have made up a plot to have her kidnapped for ransom. It was the thing Monny's father was always afraid of—absurdly afraid of, I used ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... different farm in the country where this plant might happen to be cultivated, would be more difficult, it has been supposed, than to levy one upon its importation at the custom-house. The cultivation of tobacco has, upon this account, been most absurdly prohibited through the greater part of Europe, which necessarily gives a sort of monopoly to the countries where it is allowed; and as Virginia and Maryland produce the greatest quantity of it, they share largely, though with some competitors, in the advantage of this monopoly. The ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... dumb-bell is to be determined entirely by the manner in which it is used. If only lifted over the head, one or two pounds would be absurdly light; but if used as we employ them, then one weighing ten pounds is beyond the strength of the strongest. No man can enter one of my classes of little girls even, and go through the exercises with dumb-bells weighing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... fatality, from which it is the great privilege of 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 more than over any other transaction. If Miss **** followed a trade, would ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Skimpin, in propounding this inquiry, inclining his head on one side 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
... through the street in black holaku—as the dress is called—with a long necklace, or le, of bright scarlet or brilliant yellow flowers, bare and untrammeled feet, and flowing hair, surmounted often by a low-crowned felt hat, compares very favorably with a high-heeled, wasp-waisted, absurdly-bonneted, fashionable white lady. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... impossible to deal with the subject, save in an absurdly incomplete fashion, without discussing living persons. To doing this, in a book, I have an unfashionable but unalterable objection. The productions of such persons, as they appear, are, by now established custom, proper subjects for "reviewing" in accordance with the decencies ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury |
