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More "Absurd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... English, but some nations use it as a vowel— than which nothing could be more absurd. Its original form, which has been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb, jacere, "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape. This is the origin of the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... coarse gibes and exclaim, "What could have induced him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd. I wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only une blague qu'on nous fait?" Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most exquisite painter of blonde light. We stood before the "Turkeys," and seriously we wondered if "it was serious work,"—that chef d'oeuvre! the high ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... so absurd?" said Mother Bear without disturbing herself. "It has been settled for good and all that we are not to harm mankind any more; but if one of them were to put in an appearance here, where the cubs and I have our quarters, there wouldn't ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... not whipped until the 16th. He, the responsible leader of a desperate cause, could not yield as long as there was a ray of hope. Under any ordinary circumstances a commander even of the most moderate capacity must have admitted his campaign a failure the morning after Franklin. It would be absurd to compare the fighting of Hood's troops at Nashville, especially on the second day, with the magnificent assaults at Atlanta and Franklin. My own appreciation of the result was expressed in ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... popularly held: it will appear that in didactic poetry the teaching is not the power, but the resistance. It is difficult to teach even playfully or mimically in reconciliation with poetic effect: and the object is to wrestle with this difficulty. It is as when a man selects an absurd or nearly impracticable subject, his own chin,[49] suppose, for the organ of a new music: he does not select it as being naturally allied to music, but for the very opposite reason—as being eminently alien from music, that his own art will have the greater triumph in taming this reluctancy ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... he never forgot his children: and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his whole body." Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. There is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway slaves; some friend of Poland;[436] some Philhellene;[437] some fanatic who plants shade-trees for the second and third generation, and orchards when he is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some just man happy ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a little upon the subject of literary property, on which he has touched, in my opinion, with proper feeling. Certainly I am a party concerned. I should like to say something upon the absurd purposes of the Literary Fund, with its despicable ostentation of patronage, and to build a sort of National Academy in the air, in the hope that Canning might one day lay its foundation in a more solid manner. [Footnote: Canning had his own opinion on the subject. When the Royal Society ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... above, these indications are perfectly harmonious and effective; but, in the view of the case which this argument supposes, they are all inconsistent and useless.—But, secondly, if this argument proves any thing, it proves too much, and would infer the absurd proposition, that physical and intellectual qualities are superior in value to moral attainments;—a proposition that is contradicted, as we have shewn, by every operation and circumstance in Nature and ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... and should always be avoided. Twenty minutes longer to chew one's dinner is worth a whole box of pills, and no one need expect good digestion who neglects thorough chewing and salivation of the food. This may, with advantage, be increased to an extent which most people would think quite absurd. It has been proved that when all food is chewed until completely reduced to a liquid, its nutritive qualities are so increased that about half as much will suffice. This is of immense importance in all cases of weak digestion, or indeed whenever an absence ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Mongolia, too, a foreigner is often asked to perform absurd, laughable, or impossible cures. One man wants to be made clever, another to be made fat, another to be cured of insanity, another of tobacco, another of whisky, another of hunger, another of tea; another wants to be made strong, so as to conquer ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... entrance gates of the palace park blazing with green lights in a trellis of verdure. The drive and all the paths that wound through the park were bordered with tiny lamps, and Chinese lanterns hung from the trees. There was sure to be a crush, and it seemed absurd to hope that even Nevill's cajoleries could draw serious information from Arab guests in ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about concerning this illustrious man; and his biographer, Captain Jesse, seems anxious to defend him from the absurd stories of French writers, who asserted that he employed two glovers to covers his hands, to one of whom were intrusted the thumbs, to the other the fingers and hand, and three barbers to dress his hair, while his boots were polished ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... a way of doing the most absurd things, from a mechanical standpoint, whenever their motors refused to mote. They would dust talcum powder on the cylinder tops, or tie a piece of baby-blue ribbon on the pet-cock when they had exhausted every other means of making ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... absurd to observe the incredulity of Europeans as to the possibility of cutting off a head with the kinjal: it is necessary to live only one week in the East to be quite convinced of the possibility of the feat. In a practiced hand the kinjal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... very inconclusive, as the numbering of the inhabitants of a great city can furnish no proper test; and the account of births at Bantam, which states the number of girls to be ten to one boy, is not only manifestly absurd, but positively false. I can take upon me to assert that the proportion of the sexes throughout Sumatra does not sensibly differ from that ascertained in Europe; nor could I ever learn from the inhabitants of the many eastern islands whom I have conversed with that they were conscious of any ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... "how perfectly irrational, not to say absurd, to propose to go back hundreds of thousands of years into ancient history, to account for a disease which has been discovered—according to some, invented—within ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... "Somewhat absurd, I will admit," said Mr. Dapper, bowing. "One reverend doctor was not sufficient," he continued, "to look after the education of the prince, and so my Lord Bishop Hayter of Norwich was associated with Doctor ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... grown very hot now, so hot that heat-waves obscured his vision and caused the most absurd forms to take shape. He began to hunt aimlessly for water, but there was none. Evidently this heat had parched the land, dried up the streams, and set the stones afire. It was ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... strode out of the shop without further words, considerably disappointed and displeased with the result of the interview. The chemist apparently took him for a fool. It was absurd to suppose that the sight of any woman, or the mention of any woman, could make a man's heart behave in such a way, and yet he was obliged to admit that the coincidence ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... said, "I—I don't know why I am d-daring to hope for all s-sorts of things. Nothing you have said really warrants it. But somehow I'm venturing to cherish an absurd notion ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... stick at his father's side, pretending to play the violin like the village schoolmaster under whom he was now learning his rudiments. The parent was hugely pleased at these manifestations of musical talent in his son. He had none of the absurd, old-world ideas of Surgeon Handel as to the degrading character of the divine art, but encouraged the youngster in every possible way. Already he dreamt—what father of a clever boy has not done the same?—that ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... a moment). Aren't you ashamed to ask me these absurd questions? Ask me what you need to ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... motive be? The race of heroes is essential to art. But what makes a hero is less the deeds of the figure chosen than the understanding sympathy of the artist with the figure. To say that the hero has disappeared from modern fiction is absurd. All that has happened is that the characteristics of the hero have changed, naturally, with the times. When Thackeray wrote "a novel without a hero," he wrote a novel with a first-class hero, and nobody knew this better than Thackeray. What he meant was that he was ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... privileges, of which they ought never to have been debarred, would, at best, be but a poor compensation for an impeded agriculture and languishing commerce; but it is the only one that can now be offered; and, although it cannot repair the wide ravages which so many years of unmerited and absurd restrictions have occasioned, it may arrest the progress of desolation, and prevent any further increase to the numbers who have already sunk beneath the pressure of an overwhelming system. It is, therefore, to be hoped that the cause of humanity will no longer ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at Sabbath-school. He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. None of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no more questions. She thought of Hugh Alston. Could it be anything to do with him? She could never quite understand the position of Hugh Alston. Of course the talk about a marriage having taken place years ago between Hugh Alston and Joan was absurd, was ridiculous. Joan was proving the absurdity of it even ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... happy to let you know that he has no sympathy with Stanly in his absurd wickedness, closing the schools, nor again in his other act of turning our camp into a hunting ground for Slaves. He repudiates both—positively. The latter point has occupied much of his thought; and the newspapers have not gone too far in recording ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... to them absurd, but they answered very civilly that it was a signal of some sort which could only be interpreted by Indians, and that they had no doubt that it meant some ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... far as expression of doctrine is concerned, these passages from Justin are the developments of the Johannean statements. The statements in St. John contain, in germ, the whole of what Justin develops; but it is absurd to assert that, after Justin had written the above, it was necessary, in order to bolster up a later, and consequently, in the eyes of Rationalists, a mere human development, to forge a now Gospel, containing ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... upset at this absurd notion; and he laughed outrageously. "Why, the fact is, sir," said I, "that my friend Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, boldly, he was in the army. He only assumed ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had offered him an eighteen-dollar-a-week job as a clerk in a retail paint-shop, till he should find something better. Mr. Schwirtz was scornful about it, and his scorn, which had once intimidated Una, became grotesquely absurd to her. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... hussy, and that is one thing I like about her; though I was as near as possible being provoked with her once or twice to-day. There is only one thing I wish was altered she has her head filled with strange notions absurd for a child of her age I don't know what I shall do to get rid ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... rank disclosure of their real poverty. To keep "above board" is everything in the south; and the family not distinguished soon finds itself well nigh extinguished. Hence that ever tenacious clinging to pretensions, sounding of important names, and maintenance of absurd fallacies,—all having for their end the drawing a curtain over that real state of poverty there existing. Indeed, it was no secret that even the M'Carstrow family (counting itself among the very few really distinguished families ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... extent to which the power should be carried. It is a liberal construction of the powers granted in the Constitution by this term to include in it all the powers that were granted in the Confederation by terms which specifically defined and, as was supposed, extended their limits. It would be absurd to say that by omitting from the Constitution any portion of the phraseology which was deemed important in the Confederation the import of that term was enlarged, and with it the powers of the Constitution, in a proportional degree, beyond what ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... Merriman was mildly interested in the thing, but he would never have dreamed of going back to the sawmill to investigate. But Hilliard seemed quite excited about it. His attitude, no doubt, might be partly explained by his love of puzzles and mysteries. Perhaps also he half believed in his absurd SUGGESTION about the smuggling, or at least felt that if it were true there was the chance of his making some coup which would also make his name. How a man's occupation colors his mind! thought Merriman. Here was Hilliard, and because ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... question as to authenticity in details of the Bible is truly singular. What is genuine but the really excellent, which harmonises with the purest reason and nature, and even now ministers to our highest development? What is spurious but the absurd, hollow, and stupid, which brings no worthy fruit? If the authenticity of a Biblical writing depends on the question whether something true throughout has been handed down to us, we might on some points doubt the genuineness ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... some people are! Any scandalous book that comes out they at once put down to me. That silly production, Nemo, they said was mine; and people would have believed them, only the author (Hutten) indignantly claimed it as his own. Then those absurd Letters (of the Obscure Men): of course I was thought to have had a hand in them. Finally, they began to say that I was the author of this book of Luther; a person I have hardly ever heard of, certainly I have not ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... to personal appearance. You say he styles your papa 'plain' as a boy. That is absurd, for his features, like mother's, were as perfect as a piece of Grecian sculpture. 'Tow-head' is also a mis-statement. Brother's hair never was at any time tow-color, and the tinge of orange at the ends existed only in the author's imagination. ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... religion, are scavengers and workers in leather. The sweeper who embraces Islam becomes a Musalli. The Sikh Mazhbis, who are the descendants of sweeper converts, have done excellent service in our Pioneer regiments. The Hindu of the Panjab in his avoidance of "untouchables" has never gone to the absurd lengths of the high caste Madrasi, and the tendency is towards ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... method: public, favor, nabor, hed, proov, flem, hiz, giv, det, ruf, wel, has the plea of antiquity in its favor; and yet I am convinced that common sense and convenience will sooner or later get the better of the present absurd practice." ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... long seclusion; black coachmen and footmen, proud of their masters and their liveries; young cavaliers, booted and spurred, sitting their thoroughbreds with the careless grace of men whose home was the saddle. It was a proud little provincial society, which might seem absurd in its lofty self-appreciation, had it not soon approved itself so ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the Colonel, pursuing her to the door; "the idea seems absurd, to be sure, but still don't you think it barely possible, that, if Betty ran down to the river and caught a few of those snapping-turtles sunning themselves upon the old log, we might boil them into something which would faintly remind Sir Joseph ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... do not quite see that, yet you certainly see how great it is. What, then? Shall we imagine that there is a kind of measure in the soul, into which, as into a vessel, all that we remember is poured? That indeed is absurd; for how shall we form any idea of the bottom, or of the shape or fashion of such a soul as that? And, again, how are we to conceive how much it is able to contain? Shall we imagine the soul to receive impressions ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... street, and pace up and down on that side, taking views of the house at every variety of angle. This was precisely what the boy Bog did daily about an hour and a half later. Now, although Marcus felt, in his heart, that these pedestrian exercises—absurd to everybody but a lover—were perfectly harmless in their purpose and effect, he was aware that, to a man like Mr. Minford, looking at them suspiciously, they would appear to be connected with some stealthy and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... eyes on him. "Fancy your saying that! Fancy your having the impertinence to offer me so absurd a sophistry! At what Calcutta dinner-table did you pick it up?" she said derisively. "Well, it shows that one can't trust one's best friend loose ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... paragraph of your letter in which you do the honors of my heart to my mind, and sacrifice my whole personality to my brain. . . . In your last letters, you know, you have believed things that are irreconcilable with what you know of me. I cannot explain to myself your tendency to believe absurd calumnies. I still remember your credulity in Geneva, when they ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... geography, race, and language, which stand out in marked contrast with anything to which we are used in western Europe. We may perhaps better understand what these phenomena are if we suppose a state of things which sounds absurd in the West, but which has its exact parallel in many parts of the East. Let us suppose that in a journey through England we came successively to districts, towns, or villages, where we found, one after another, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... dear fellow, don't be absurd," remonstrated the baronet. "Where are they? Oh, ah! now I have them," as he brought his glass to bear in the right direction. "By George, they are elephants, though, and monsters into the bargain. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... complete the article but a summary of the story and quotations from it, for which he had left plenty of space. He condemned the book utterly from the point of view of art, and for the silly ignorance of life displayed in it, and the absurd caricatures which were supposed to be people; he ridiculed the writer for taking herself seriously (but without showing why exactly she should not take herself seriously if she chose); he pitied her for her disappointment when she should realise where in literature ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... limit with your silly notions!" said Mrs. Best, really angry for once. "If you fill your heads with absurd ideas about burglars before you go to sleep, of course you can imagine anything. If I hear any more talking in No. 2 another night after the lights are out, I shall separate you, and send each of you to sleep in ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Grimm acquiesced, "but it seems an absurd thing that they should have permitted the life of one man to stand between them and the world power for which they had so long planned and schemed. His Highness, Prince Benedetto d'Abruzzi believed as I do, and so expressed himself." ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... stole to my nostrils—a vague, elusive breath of the East, reminiscent of strange days that, now, seemed to belong to a remote past. Karamaneh! that faint, indefinable perfume was part of her dainty personality; it may appear absurd—impossible—but many and many a time I had ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... approach these facts from the side of Religion, they appear in very different lights, and are taken up with very different results, from their appearance and effect when interpreted by the creed of Unbelief. It would be very absurd then, because Christianity does not instantly abolish, or fully explain, all these strange and darker realities, to fall back upon the opposite ground of skepticism. This is only receding from the best solution ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Agreement is an improvement upon the old and the old was a long, long step in advance of anything which had preceded it. The mere fact that club owners and leagues were so willing to adopt a system better than its predecessor wholly confutes the absurd assertions of the radical element that there is no consideration shown for ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... for many years in the seventeenth century a wife, in the absence of her husband, was not allowed to lodge men even if they were close relatives. Naturally such an absurd law was the source of much bickering on the part of magistrates, and many were the amusing tilts when a wife was not permitted to remain with her father, but had to be sent home to her husband, or a brother was compelled to leave his own sister's ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... cant among the high-feeding, and, as they fancy themselves, high-minded men, about putting down the mob; but all true physicians know that it is better to sweeten the blood than attack the tumour, to apply the emollient rather than the cautery. It is absurd, in a country like England, where there is so much freedom, and such a jealousy of right, for any man to assume an aristocratical tone, and to talk superciliously of the common people. There is no rank that makes him independent ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... "Absurd, isn't it!" she replied, with a weak smile. "I'll get over it directly. I don't think I am going ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, an inimitable satire on the feebleness of our jury system and the absurd pretence of "temporary insanity," must wait for that encyclopaedia. And her "Miss Molony on the Chinese Question" is known and admired by every one, including the Prince of Wales, who was fairly convulsed by its fun, when brought out by ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Further, it seems absurd to venerate what is insensible. But the relics of the saints are insensible. Therefore it ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... off. Better anything than a marriage which would handicap him all his life! But would it be so great a handicap? After all, beauty counted for much! If only her story were not too conspicuous! But what was her story? Not to know it was absurd! That was the worst of people who were not in Society, it was so difficult to find out! And there rose in her that almost brutal resentment, which ferments very rapidly in those who from their youth up have been hedged round with the belief that they and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be good, you absurd little wildcat? Will you?" he demanded, his voice shaking with laughter and triumph. (And you need not be too ready, O exponent of tolerant hearthstone chivalry, to smile at the triumph! V—l, whom Margarita detested, practically refused to sing Siegfried to her Bruenhilde, because, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the more substantial part of the feast had been concluded, a band of dancing-girls and musicians made their appearance; followed by a puppet-show, which might have afforded amusement to a party of children, but which to Reginald's taste appeared absurd in the extreme. He felt far more disgusted with the performances of the nautch-girls, and he resolved to prohibit their introduction ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... Anciens et les Modernes." Swift's work was written in furtherance of the views of his patron, Temple, who had some time before engaged in the controversy as to the relative merits of ancient and modern learning, and who, in the words of Macaulay, "was so absurd as to set up his own authority against that of Bentley on questions of Greek ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... crazy! You are mad! You do not know what you are saying? But if you do know, you are the most consummate liar on the face of the earth! Of all things absurd! Is it possible that you hope by any such preposterous and flimsy fabrication to escape the punishment which will surely and swiftly be meted out to you? Will, you tell that to the Mounted? And will you tell it to the judge and the jury? What will they say when ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... It's the most absurd proposal that was ever made. You might as well ask me whether I would agree that you should go to heaven. Go to heaven if you can, I should say. I have not the slightest objection. But ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... "infinite quantities" of bones of human creatures, who, they took for granted, had been devoured, and of skulls hanging on the walls by way of receptacles for curios. It was the age of universal credulity, and for more than a century after the most absurd tales with regard to the people and things of the mysterious new continent found ready credence even among men of science. Columbus, in his letter to Santangel (February, 1493), describing the different islands and people, wrote: "I have not yet seen any of the human monsters that are supposed ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... if they had allowed the Allies to send raw material to feed the Belgian factories, under the control of neutral powers, and if they had not requisitioned the machines and paralysed industry by the most absurd restrictions. It would have been a most useful move from the point of view of propaganda, and, while posing as Belgium's kind protectors, they might always have reaped the benefit through fresh taxes and new contributions. If they have killed the goose rather than ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... her with a touch of pride in his eyes that made them seem quite boyish. "Yes, isn't it absurd? It's almost as awkward as looking like Napoleon—but, after all, there are some advantages. It has made some of his friends like me, and I hope it will ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... of the Signora Beatrice save that Rappaccini is said to have instructed her deeply in his science, and that, young and beautiful as fame reports her, she is already qualified to fill a professor's chair. Perchance her father destines her for mine! Other absurd rumors there be, not worth talking about or listening to. So now, Signor Giovanni, drink off ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... superiority of the artist even to his greatest achievement in any one art form, means that his personality was but slightly determined by the particular art in question, that he tended to mould it rather than let it shape him. It would be absurd, therefore, to treat the Florentine painter as a mere link between two points in a necessary evolution. The history of the art of Florence never can be, as that of Venice, the study of a placid development. Each man of genius brought to bear upon his art a great intellect, which, never condescending ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... will not have to undergo the ordeal of forcing your sense of honor to link itself with dishonor. To your credit, I believe you would have married me, John, and I am grateful. But there's an end of it. I have come to say good-by. I suppose it is absurd, but I wish we could ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... survive the moment when he could no longer serve it,—when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have sometimes feared ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Hispaniola, to which Ovando had already denied him entrance. They thought this proscription applied to them equally with the admiral, and said among themselves that the governor, in excluding the flotilla from the harbours of the colony, must have acted under orders from the king. These absurd reasonings irritated minds already badly disposed, and at length on the 2nd of January, 1504, two brothers named Porras, one the captain of one of the caravels and the other the military treasurer, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... separated from his and reserved to herself and her children. Since her marriage she had never said a word to him about her money,—unless it were to ask that something out of the common course might be spent on some, generally absurd, object. But now had come the time for squandering money. She was not only rich but she had a popularity that was exclusively her own. The new Prime Minister and the new Prime Minister's wife should entertain after a fashion that had never yet been known even among the nobility of England. Both ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... this to the excited burghers, but they only sneered at me for my trouble, until one of their own doctors coming along had a look at the corpse, and promptly verified my statements. That calmed them considerably, and they looked at the thing in cooler blood, and soon saw that it was really absurd to put the blame of the man's death on the shoulders of the Lancers, though they stoutly maintained that our cavalry were at times guilty of such monstrous conduct. I have often heard them solemnly swear never to give a Lancer a chance to surrender if they once got him ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... as, James, were you present? The noun that is spoken of is the third person; as, James was present."—Adams's System of English Gram., p. 9. What can be a greater blunder, than to call the first person of a verb, of a pronoun, or even of a noun, "the noun that speaks?" What can be more absurd than are the following assertions? "Nouns are in the first person when speaking. Nouns are of the second person when addressed or spoken to."—O. C. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was peace; but at the next tide, once more the waters would engulf her and drag her back to the sparkling, restless ocean. She smiled to herself at the foolish simile even as she thought of it. It was absurd to compare the gay life to which she had been accustomed to an engulfing ocean; but never mind, for once she would give her thoughts a free rein and be honest with herself, and acknowledge that the life she had lived was utterly ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... someone so as to wish good to him. If, however, we do not wish good to what we love, but wish its good for ourselves, (thus we are said to love wine, or a horse, or the like), it is love not of friendship, but of a kind of concupiscence. For it would be absurd to speak of having friendship for wine or for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... inexplicable part of it. The message was absurd and trivial. Ah, my God, it is as ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Scourge; in which he was not only treated with unjustifiable malignity, but charged with being, as he told me himself, the illegitimate son of a murderer. I had not read the work; but the writer who could make such an absurd accusation, must have been strangely ignorant of the very circumstances from which he derived the materials of his own libel. When Lord Byron mentioned the subject to me, and that he was consulting Sir Vickery Gibbs, with the intention of prosecuting the publisher and the author, I advised him, as ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... true,—according to the light in which he saw her position. Had there been nothing between them two but a mutual desire to be married, the reason given by her for changing it all would be absurd. As he had continued to speak, slowly adding on one argument to another, with a certain amount of true eloquence, she felt that unless she could go back to John Gordon she must yield. But it was very hard for her to go back ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Kotzebue (q.v.), Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of "the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples,'' as formulated in the Carlsbad decrees, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support "a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power.''10 He still declared his belief in "free institutions, though not in such as age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions granted in difficult circumstances to tide over a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... what you're talking about," Dorothy replied, with some spirit. "Herr Deichenberg had all he could do to induce me to leave my dressing-room. Let the announcement sound as absurd as it may, I ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... O free and independent franchiser; but does not this stupid pewter pot oppress thee? No son of Adam can bid thee come or go, but this absurd pot of heavy-wet can and does, Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites, and this accursed dish of liquor. And thou pratest of thy 'liberty,' ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province. When he is jocular, he is strong; when he is serious, he is like Samson in a wig. Call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make honey. That he was an extraordinary writer of small poetry, and a diner-out of the highest lustre, I do most readily admit. After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man for ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... undertaken to crush him! Could it be possible that so mean a man should be able to make good so monstrous a threat? The man was very mean, and the threat had been absurd as well as monstrous; and yet it seemed that it might be realised. Phineas was too proud to ask questions, even of Barrington Erle, but he felt that he was being "left out in the cold," because the editor of The People's Banner had said that no government could employ him; and at ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... picture-books the music is not. One must not go to Rimsky-Korsakoff for works of another character. For, at heart, he ignored the larger sort of speech, and was content to have his music picturesque and colorful. The childish, absurd Tsar in "Le Coq d'or," who desires only to lie abed all day, eat delicate food, and listen to the fairy tales of his nurse, is, after all, something of a portrait of the composer. For all its gay and opulent exterior, its pricking orchestral timbres, his work ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... anything in it, and must either pass or throw it out without restriction. When the Bill has passed the Lords and is signed by the king, then the whole nation pays, every man in proportion to his revenue or estate, not according to his title, which would be absurd. There is no such thing as an arbitrary subsidy or poll-tax, but a real tax on the lands, of all which an estimate was made in the reign of the ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... your absurd infatuation for Phrida Shand that prevents you," she said. "Ah!" she sighed. "How grossly that girl ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... "This is absurd!" she exclaimed. "You imagine these grievances, Mary Louise, and I cannot permit you to attack the school and your fellow boarders in so reckless a manner. You shall not stir one step from this school! I forbid you, positively, to leave the grounds hereafter without my express ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... for Jesus in reply to his question, what he should do to inherit eternal life, said he must "keep the commandments." Matt. xix: 16-20.—Is not the Sabbath included in these commandments?—Surely it is! Then how absurd to believe that Jesus, just at the close of his ministry, should teach that the way, the only way, to enter into life, was to keep the commandments, [23]one of which was to be abolished in a few months from that time, without the least intimation from him ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... contained a summary, abusive criticism of "Mathilde" as a book, and ended by presenting to me one of those ludicrous images which I abhor, because, while they destroy every serious or elevated impression, they are so absurd that one cannot defend one's self from the "idiot laughter" they excite, and leave one no associations but grinning ones with one's romantic ideals. Her letters are very clever and make me laugh exceedingly, but I am sorry she has such a ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... me, without knowing me. They said that I was a sorceress, that it was by a magic power I attracted souls, that everything in me was diabolical; that if I did charities, it was because I coined, and put off false money, with many other gross accusations, equally false, groundless and absurd. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Jethro said, "that your forebodings will not be verified. I cannot believe that an absurd suspicion can draw away the hearts of the people from one whom they have ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... obeyed woodenly, stony-eyed, and like an automaton whose face had been painted red. And this resemblance to a mechanical figure went so far that he had an automaton's absurd air of being aware of the machinery ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the apples again. "I am a warning to others, just as thieves and drunkards and gamblers are," she said in a low voice. "What a class to belong to! Do I really belong to them? 'Tis absurd! Yet why, aunt, does everybody keep on making me think that I do, by the way they behave towards me? Why don't people judge me by my acts? Now, look at me as I kneel here, picking up these apples—do I look like a lost woman?... I wish all good women ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... and supplied his own picture by writing in 1791, "You have often heard me blame M. Chastellux for putting too much sprightliness in the character he has drawn of this general. To give pretensions to the portrait of a man who has none is truly absurd. The General's goodness appears in his looks. They have nothing of that brilliancy which his officers found in them when he was at the head of his army; but in conversation they become animated. He has no characteristic traits in his figure, and this has rendered it always ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... all sorts of queer and absurd ideas afloat as to the shape of the earth. Some people thought it was round like a pancake and that the waters which surrounded the land gradually changed into mist and vapor and that he who ventured out into these vapors ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... nature. He accordingly shuns mankind, by shutting himself up in his own house and refusing to have any intercourse with the inhabitants of the place in which he resides. In carrying out his purpose he proceeds to the most absurd extremes. He speaks to no one he meets, returns no salutations, and his relations with the tradesmen who supply his daily wants are conducted through gratings in the door of his dwelling. He dies, and the will which he leaves behind him is found to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... remarked that the Queen works very hard for a lazy King who alone gets all the checks. Umpleby, the retired fishmonger in the chess story declared that he would have been the best player in the world, but for the Knights at chess which jumped about in the most unreasonable and absurd manner without rhyme or reason, here there and everywhere, and the lady who it was said was found engaged and playing with thirty-two men remained single ever afterwards. A rather boasting player ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... the rampage." We find ourselves ever looking at the animal with interest—as he effects his trot, one leg bent. The porch, and horse above it, have a sort of sacred character. I confess when I saw it for the first time I looked at it with an almost absurd reverence and curiosity. The thing is so much in keeping, one would expect to see the coach ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... active, or during sleep. With ordinary mortals sleep and consciousness are so nearly incompatible that the notion of actual mental achievement during sleep is unthought of. Dreams are allowed to run an absurd riot through the brain, disturbing physical rest. The remedy for this universal ailment and waste of time was to be found in "white sleep," a bit of Indian mysticism, purporting to accomplish a partial detachment of mind and body, so that the will, which is always the expression of the link between ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the works of ancient philosophers on the question. He examined mathematical traditions and criticised the opinions of learned professors. He found accounts of those who had asserted the motion of the earth. "Though," he says, "it appeared an absurd opinion, yet, since I knew that in former times liberty had been permitted to others to figure as they pleased certain circles for the purpose of demonstrating the phenomena of the stars, I considered that to me also it might be easily allowed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... that the air must accompany the earth, just as one's coat remains round him, notwithstanding the fact that he is walking down the street. In this way he was able to show that all a priori objections to the earth's movements were absurd, and therefore he was able to compare together the plausibilities of the two rival schemes for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... exactly, that it may be seen how the productions in our volume came originally from the press: but when spelling is modernised, as it is in the ordinary republications of our ancient dramatists, &c., it is just as absurd to print "vile" vild, as to print "friend" frend or "enemy" ennimy.—Mr Collier's note in the edition ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... which, though far less dangerous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are in a great measure under the control of their opinions. The most exquisite art of poetical colouring can produce no illusion, when it is employed to represent that which is at once perceived to be incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for him to abstain from giving such a shock to their understanding as might break the charm which it was his object to throw over their imaginations. This is the real explanation of the indistinctness ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... time, and the hope of something better would help us to endure the worst. But it is not that remote peril which frightens me. I see another danger, nearer and far more cruel; more cruel because there is no excuse for it, because it is absurd, because it can lead to no good. Every day one balances the chances of war on the morrow, every day they ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... shock of surprise; afterward her uncle Laurence reflected that it would have been wise to keep them from her, but the deed was done. She received the news without emotion: she blushed, put up her eyebrows, and smiled as she said, "Then I am a poor young woman again." She saw at once what was absurd, pathetic, vexatious in her descent from the dignity of riches, but she was not angry. She never uttered a word of blame or reproach against her grandfather, and when it was indignantly recalled to her that Mr. Cecil Burleigh was put into possession of what ought to have been ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... don't be absurd," said Innes, keeping a tight hold upon his sleeve. "I will not let you go until I know what you mean to do with yourself; it's no use brandishing that staff." For indeed at that moment Archie had made a sudden - perhaps a warlike - movement. "This has been the most insane affair; ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with these absurd reflections, that when Flossie exclaimed, "There, after all I've forgotten the kitchen hammer," his nerves relaxed their tension, and he experienced a sense of momentary but divine release. And when she insisted on repairing her oversight as they went ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... who governs all things by His Providence, he bows before the horrid phantom of blind chance or inexorable destiny. He is a man who obstinately refuses to believe the most solidly-established facts in favor of religion, and yet, with blind credulity, greedily swallows the most absurd falsehoods uttered against religion. He is a man whose reason has fled, and whose passions speak, object and decide in the ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... planning highways and harbor facilities. Then he gets this idea, about bringing down fire from heaven. At first he dismisses it. But he thinks about the advantages of fire, and begins to believe he could get it. He starts talking to others about it. Every one laughs. It is a little too absurd, you know—this talk about fire from heaven! His fellow businessmen call him a visionary. He of course resents that. He defends his plan, and tries to explain why it's perfectly practicable, but he does it so warmly they begin to lose some of their trust in him. The word goes around ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... they find that an ox was formerly sold for a few shillings, and the price of a quarter of corn calculated in pence, they are led to envy the supposed cheapness of those ages, and to bewail the distressing dearness of the present. Nothing however can be more absurd than the whining complaints founded upon such facts; for since the cheapness of living depends not so much upon the price given for every article of prime necessity, as upon the means by which, to use a common expression, the purchase may be afforded, we must, if we wish to form a proper judgment ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... human development. We know of no parallel instance of a change of opinion so great and sudden, unless it be the marvellous transition of certain modern Rationalists who were wont to ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity as absurd and incomprehensible, but who have now arrived at the conclusion that it is the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the penny and put it upon my own, and having disentangled myself from the crowd in which for foolishness I had become conspicuous, found with relief that thenceforth no one took any notice of me. The old scriptural act of a man carrying his bed struck nobody there as absurd; the streets of our sweated quarters are far more genuine and human than those in which we parade the clothes they make for us. Ah, yes; that statement, at which you show some incredulity, is directly pertinent to my story; for it was an endeavor to trace my clothes to their origin—over ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... Fashion readily wears the opinion. How many productions whose milk-and-water merits, or unintelligible stupidity, have been considered as novelties, have by that means gained the admiration of Criticism and the praise of Fashion, until a more absurd novelty pushed them from their preferments and caused them to be as suddenly forgotten! The vulgar, tasteless jargon of "Dr. Syntax," with all the above-mentioned excellencies to excite public notice from the butterflies of fashion, soon found what it sought, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... "As I was saying, Mr. Dunster," he continued, turning his chair, "our conversation has reached a point at which I think we may safely leave it for a time. We will discuss these matters again. Your pretext of a political mission is, of course, an absurd one, but fortunately you have fallen into good hands. Take good care of Mr. Dunster, Meekins. I can see that he is a very important personage. We must be careful not to lose ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... taken the ascendant before I had fairly entered the plain. Then, it being yet but morning, I entered from the north the town of Lucca, which is the neatest, the regularest, the exactest, the most fly-in-amber little town in the world, with its uncrowded streets, its absurd fortifications, and its contented silent houses—all like a family at ease and at rest under its high sun. It is as sharp and trim as its own map, and that map is as clear as a geometrical problem. Everything in Lucca ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... took off one shoe, on the plea that it hurt her, and there the trifling article lay, fragile, gleaming and absurd. Mr. Prohack appreciated it even more than the hats. He understood, perhaps better than ever before, that though he had a vast passion for his wife, there was enough emotion left in him to nourish an affection ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the other hand, showed an instant interest in the appearance of Mr. Staff. You might have thought that he had been waiting for the latter to come in—absurd as this might seem, in view of the fact that Staff had made up his mind to book for home only within the last quarter-hour. None the less, on sight of him this other patron of the company, who had seemed till then to be of two minds as to what he wanted, straightened up and bent a freshened interest ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... such a state that in the evening he saw two moons instead of one. Nobody liked to contradict him, but the elders of Israel, to harmonise their leader's vision, declared that it comprised the sun and the moon, instead of two moons, which were clearly absurd. The court poet improved on this explanation, and composed the neat little poem which is partially preserved by the Jewish chronicler, who asks "Is not this written in the book of Jasher?" The waggish laureate Jasher is supposed by some profane speculators ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... nations are we exempt from the profound truth enunciated by Washington—seared into his own consciousness by the bitter futilities of the French alliance in 1778 and the following years, and by the extravagant demands based upon it by the Directory during his Presidential term—that it is absurd to expect governments to act upon disinterested motives. It is not as an utterance of passing concern, benevolent or selfish, but because it voiced an enduring principle of necessary self-interest, that the Monroe doctrine has retained its vitality, and ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Avenue Book-club, and habitually figured in the society column of the "Banner" as one of the intellectual leaders of Hanaford, there were moments when her self-confidence trembled before Justine's light sallies. It was absurd, of course, given the relative situations of the two; and Mrs. Dressel, behind her friend's back, was quickly reassured by the thought that Justine was only a hospital nurse, who had to work for her living, and had really never "been anywhere"; but when ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... society, these things occur. Oftener in New York than in Boston, and oftener in London and Paris than in New York. Indeed, we may sneer, as we often do, at the primitive customs of the lowly, and at their absurd phrase of "keeping company." It makes a delightful jest. But beneath it is a greater regard for the rights of a man or woman in love than one is apt to find higher in ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... mention this? I don't know why. Perhaps I have been writing too long, and my head is beginning to fail me. Perhaps Mr. Bashwood's manner of admiring me strikes my fancy by its novelty. Absurd! I am exciting myself, and troubling you about nothing. Oh, what a weary, long letter I have written! and how brightly the stars look at me through the window, and how awfully quiet the night is! Send me some more of those sleeping ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... England. But we had travelled since then, in more senses than one. We had known comfort and we had known the mute impressive numbness of despair. We had made "scoops" at times and celebrated them with joyous junketings. Once we had dined at Delmonico's, a meal of which the memory is still an absurd chaos. We had, moreover, confronted America with a blank wall of unyielding British prejudice. We had entrenched ourselves behind our conception of the thing to do and stupidly refused to do anything else. And we had been beaten to our knees. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Grammont, to whom it was a death-blow. All her courage forsook her; she shed bitter tears, and displayed a weakness so much the more ridiculous, as it seemed to arise from the utmost despair. She repaired to madame Adelaide, before whom she conducted herself in the most absurd and extravagant manner. The poor princess, intimidated by the weakness she herself evinced, in drawing back after she had in a manner espoused the opposite party, durst not irritate her, but, on the contrary, strove to justify her own change of conduct towards me, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... 224-244) is the Two Noble Ladyes, or the Converted Conjurer. This "Tragicomicall Historie often tymes acted with approbation at the Red Bull in St. John's Streete by the company of the Revells," is a coarse noisy play. The comic part consists of the most absurd buffoonery, and the rest is very stilted. But there is one scene—and one only—which shows genuine poetic power. It is where Cyprian, the sorcerer, having by his magical arts saved Justina, a Christian maiden, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... Oh filthy lust, absurd furie, disordinate and vaine desire, building nests with errours, and torments for vvounded harts, the vtter destroyer, and idle letting goe by of ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... then as shadow of himselfe? Adorne his Temples with a Coronet, And yet in substance and authority, Retaine but priuiledge of a priuate man? This proffer is absurd, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... indignantly that it was my wont to win success, not by routine, but by ability. I added that I would abandon the test altogether unless they would agree not to put off their attendance at my lecture. In truth at this first lecture of mine only a few were present, for it seemed quite absurd to all of them that I, hitherto so inexperienced in discussing the Scriptures, should attempt the thing so hastily. However, this lecture gave such satisfaction to all those who heard it that they spread its praises abroad with ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... Butch, it's no use!" quoth he, with ludicrous indignation, as big Tug Cardiff, the behemoth shot-putter, through a huge megaphone imitated a Ballyhoo Bill, and roared his absurd announcement to the hilarious crowd of collegians in the stand. "Old Bannister will never take my athletic endeavors seriously. Here I have won two second places, and a third, in the high-jump this season, and have a splendid show to annex first place and my track ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... was the testy reply; "I am not in the habit of annoying my neighbours. Well now, look here, what I want to know is, what is the meaning of this absurd journey ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... over the partition between Existence in itself and the changeful, temporary, existing things which the senses give us notions of. But whatever the connection may be, if there is a connection, he is convinced that nothing would be more absurd than {40} to make the data of sense in any way or degree the measure of the reality of existence, or the source from which existence ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... I ought to be obliged to you for being so considerate. But no one would pay heed to my aunt's ravings. Every person in the house knows that the statement is absurd. Mr. Hilton was in his room. I myself saw him go upstairs after exchanging a few words with his father in the hall, and he came down again instantly when ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... my fellow-student, overcome by the torment of mosquitoes, and having no curiosity about tanagers to make him endure them, had yielded to his emotions and sneezed. Away went the tanager family, and, laughing at the absurd accident, away we went too, happy at having discovered the nest, and planning to come the next day. We came next day, and many days thereafter, but never again did we see the birds near. They abandoned ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... gamblers and the greatest of men. Some are would-be Cagliostros and Michael Scotts. You see the stupid, brainy European, devoid of superstition as he thinks, and yet eaten up with natural superstition. You see also the emotional turbulent soul developing abnormality and mania on absurd stakes for money, the mad, unpractical Russian staking on zero or on the slenderest chance for the greatest of gains. The Russians and the Jews and the Americans ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... at a round trot. Colonel Philibert, impatient to reach Beaumanoir, spurred on for a while, hardly noticing the absurd figure of his guide, whose legs stuck out like a pair of compasses beneath his tattered gown, his shaking head threatening dislodgment to hat and wig, while his elbows churned at every jolt, making play with the shuffling gait of his spavined ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... that I was performing these strange feats, I knew them to be highly absurd, yet the impulse to perform them was irresistible—a mysterious dread hanging over me till I had given way to it; even at that early period I frequently used to reason within myself as to what could be the cause of my propensity to touch, but of course I could come to no satisfactory ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... I was angry, because I didn't believe a word of them, and because I wanted to see you punished for slandering my brother. I—I still don't believe a single word of them. But I believe you told them to me in good faith, and that you were misinformed by the Federal agents who cooked up the absurd story. And—and I don't want to see you punished, Mr. Brice," she faltered, unconsciously tightening her clasp on his arm. "Milo is terribly strong. And his temper is so quick! He might nearly kill you. Take me as far as the end of the path, and then go across ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... nearly all night on a fool's errand, and spoiled my best horse, in absolute uncertainty how I shall get another till my uncle of Pembroke and I shall be reconciled; or, lastly, if you desire to be totally absurd in your wrath, direct it against this worthy minstrel on account of his rare fidelity, and punish him for that for which he better deserves a chain of gold. Let passion out, if you will; but chase this desponding gloom from the brow of a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the question, its irrelevancy, made Mary-Clare start. For a moment the words meant absolutely nothing to her and then because she was bared, nervously, to every attack, she flushed—recalling with absurd ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation, from the same mouth, that those who did the two things, alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were inconsistent better than we—better than he who affirms ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... home to the western halls of his forefathers. But the rumour went that Minas Cottage would go in the female line to a second cousin, who had married a cloth merchant in Galway city, to whom nor to her husband did Mr. Morris ever speak. There might be something absurd in this, but there was nothing injurious to his neighbours, and nothing that would be likely to displease ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... desuetude, and become confounded with the polytheistic hierarchy of the confusing religion. Just as the grand oneness and simplicity of the Christian religion has been permitted to deteriorate into many petty sects, each with its absurd limitations, and its particular little method of worshipping the ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... priesthood,—an educated and trained body of men, who had every spiritual and worldly motive to accept the prohibition, and were, moreover, brought up to regard asceticism as the best ideal in life,[453]—we may realize how absurd it is to attempt to gain the same end by mere casual prohibitions issued to untrained people with no motives to obey such prohibitions, and no ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... point in the society of Tarr Farm, or rather in the human scenery, for society there is none, is the absurd mingling of inharmonious material. As in the toy called Prince Rupert's Drop, a multitude of unassimilated particles are bound together by a master necessity. Remove the necessity, and in the flash of an eye the particles scatter never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... had watched Harlan's face while he had been talking. There was no doubt that he was in earnest, and there was likewise no doubt that he was concerned for her safety. But why? It seemed absurd that Harlan, an outlaw himself, should protect her from other outlaws. Yet in Lamo he had ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... restored by the timely aid thus unconsciously afforded you by PUNCHINELLO. If any SALTER could save your bacon for you, surely "SALLY" was the one to do it; only you shouldn't have tried to pass her off as one of your own SALLIES. The jackdaw decked out in peacock's feathers was a bird truly absurd, though not a whit more so than a Solar Dodo like yourself with a PUNCHINELLO ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... Yet for ages it has been claimed that the Atonement is not divinely intended for all. How universal love, united with infinite power and infinite wisdom could act in this way is to me an everlasting mystery. So absurd does this position now appear, that a majority of the churches idea—perhaps unconsciously—with a decision and force not warranted by the original. Therefore I think I am justified in laying no great stress on passages of ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... tribunate, feeble as it was, displeased the first consul; not that it was any obstacle to his designs, but it kept up the habit of thinking in the nation, which he wished to stifle entirely. He put into the journals among other things, an absurd argument against the opposition. Nothing is so simple or so proper, was it there said, as an opposition in England, because the king is the enemy of the people; but in a country, where the executive government is itself named by the people, it is opposing the nation to oppose its representative. ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... on the wrong tack, Eben," said the lad, scornfully, "and let me tell you that you've been talking a lot of nonsense. I don't see why I should tell you. It's absurd to accuse me of being a spy and informer. Do you suppose we up at the Den want to be on bad terms with all the fishermen ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... agree with Mr. Fergusson in thinking (both for this and other reasons) one of the chief errors of the Greek schools; and, more decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft ornament, almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed, which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder joints, as in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many other buildings in London; or in rusticating portions of the shafts, or wrapping fleeces about them, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... he insisted that his future philosopher-king should, after fifteen years' study, go for fifteen years into the "cave" or world to learn to deal with men and affairs. The "mere theorist" is often an absurd if not a dangerous character; the practical man may come to make the wheels go round without ever ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... to a right estimate of the strength of conformity, we shall, I think, be more kindly disposed to eccentricity than we usually are. Even a wilful or an absurd eccentricity is some support against the weighty common-place conformity of the world. If it were not for some singular people who persist in thinking for themselves, in seeing for themselves, and in being comfortable, we should all collapse into a ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... from ignorance or inexperience, before putting the intended teachers to the test, commit their sons to the charge of untried and untested men. If they act so through inexperience it is not so ridiculous; but it is to the remotest degree absurd when, though perfectly aware of both the inexperience and worthlessness of some schoolmasters, they yet entrust their sons to them; some overcome by flattery, others to gratify friends who solicit their favours; acting just as if anybody ill in body, passing over the experienced ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... shown herself to be contemptuous in reviewing the little I had done. She was blind to the glory of to-morrow and more than filled with absurd crotchets, and yet there was but one woman in America who could make my heart run away from control. If it couldn't be Patsy Dale ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... gentleman was a prodigious favourite with me, so long as his opinions were not in opposition to my own; but an accident happened, which brought his love of power and mine into direct competition, and then I found his peremptory mode of reasoning and his ignorance absurd and insufferable. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... What hurts me most is that they should prevent your working, for that rejoices your ill-wishers, and confirms them in what they have always gone on preaching about your habits." He proceeds to tell him how absurd it is to suppose that Baccio Bandinelli is preferred before him. "I cannot perceive how Baccio could in any way whatever be compared to you, or his work be set on the same level as your own." The letter winds up with exhortations to work. "Brush these cobwebs of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... by the confederates in their plot, or by a hireling rabble. Just as if there were only rogues and villains in this city, and none throughout all Italy.—Just as if audacity cannot effect the greatest things there, where the means of defence are the smallest. Wherefore his plan is absurd, if he fear peril from these men. And if he alone, in the midst of consternation so general, do not fear, the more need is there that you and I do fear them. Wherefore, when you vote on the fate of Publius Lentulus and the rest, hold this assured, that you are voting also on the fate ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... is not to be derived from external possessions, but from wisdom, which consists in the knowledge and practice of virtue; that the cultivation of virtuous manners is necessarily attended with pleasure as well as profit; that the honest man alone is happy; and that it is absurd to attempt to separate things which are in nature so closely united ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... he knows? He didn't before. He wanted me to stay as a kind of Mascotte for the Cure—simply sit still while he drew influence out of me or something. It was absurd." ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... which the name is held to represent. "You tell us," he says to a man of this order, "that there is no devil; that to think or talk of him in any personal sense, say in the sense that Milton incarnates him in Paradise Lost, is mischievous and absurd. That sounds formidable, but to what does it amount? The word, or name, 'devil,' you, tell us, simply connotes a principle. Very well, take the initial letter from the word, and what have you left? You have 'evil,' and that is the only thing about which you and I need concern ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... injustice offered to their creed, or, which is the same thing, to themselves on account of that creed,—is it reasonable, I say, to suppose that such a people could rest satisfied with a man who acts towards them only through the medium of his fierce and ungovernable prejudices? Is it not absurd to imagine for one moment that property can be fairly administered through such hands, and, if not property, how much less justice itself. You may judge of my astonishment, as an Englishman, when I find that the administration of justice ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... sufferings of Christ, to his death on Calvary, were only typical of what he suffers in the body of every believer. This was as contrary to the express declaration of Holy Writ, 'He was ONCE offered' (Heb 9:28), as is the absurd notion of the Papists in the mass, or continual sacrifice of Christ. What impious mortal dares pretend to offer ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bladders of warm water placed to the left side, the soles of the feet rubbed with salt, and a little white wine dropped on the tongue. The patient should then be left in a quiet state till able to drink a little warm wine, or tea mixed with a few drops of vinegar. The absurd practice of rolling persons on casks, lifting the feet over the shoulders, and suffering the head to remain downwards, in order to discharge the water, has occasioned the loss of many lives, as it is now fully and clearly established, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... ordain'd the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head 260 What if the head, the eye, or ear repined To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? Just as absurd for any part to claim To be another, in this general frame; Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains, The great directing Mind ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... impossible to lift the veil, and I have no intention of affording even the slightest preliminary peep behind the scenes of that dramatic affair. The wheels of God grind slowly, and they ground exceeding small almost before the absurd exultation of Nationalist relief over the Pigott episode had abated. It is almost time to treat the whole affair from the historical point of view, and then the idol of Home Rule will be pulverised. However, that is another story in which I have ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... The Catholic-romantic school, of which he was the most distinguished member, furnishes the chief objects of the author's ridicule. Novalis, Goerres, and F. Schlegel are the most prominent; but at p. 128. is an absurd ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... memory of her quiet yesterday in the sun; the drowsy yesterdays which preceded it; with the picture of this very man who in the past had never stood to her for anything but a pleasant companion at tea, the present situation seemed absurd and unreal. What was she that her insignificant actions should be of such moment? She had but one object in mind: to place Danbury without the power of all this strife, and she was even balked in that. For the first time she realized fully what a serious crisis he had precipitated. But it was ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Foulet's story had restored my self-confidence somewhat—but I was still sore. Of course Foulet connecting my vanishing man with that disappearing airplane was absurd—but where had the man gone? Was my supposition that he had jumped to a lower roof, climbed a wall and run through the maze of alleyways in half a minute in any ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... this overwhelming majority should be potential." He repelled in strong language the wrongfulness of allowing the South to multiply the votes of those freemen by the master's right to count three for every five slaves, "because it is absurd and anti-republican to suffer property to be represented as men, and vice versa, because it gives the South an unjust ascendancy over other portions of territory, and a power which may be perverted on ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... yes, we understand each other. I see perfectly clearly what attracts you to M. Joyeuse's, nor has the warm welcome you receive there escaped me. You are rich, you are of noble birth, no one can hesitate between you and the poor poet who carries on an absurd trade in order to gain time to attain success, which will never come perhaps. But I won't allow my happiness to be stolen from me. We will fight, monsieur, we will fight," he repeated, excited by his rival's unruffled tranquillity. "I have loved Mademoiselle ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... never more enviable than on the occasion when he was introduced, at some absurd tea-party to the lady known as the Commissioner's stepsister. The face! It took possession of him. It haunted his artistic dreamings from the same day onwards. He had always cherished ambitious designs—none more ambitious than a certain piece of work conceived in the bold ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... cordially concur with me in the principle of K Hs that we must find the meaning of the poems in the poems themselves, instead of accepting the interpretation of them given by we know not whom, and to follow which would reduce many of them to absurd enigmas. ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... many, who were blissfully slumbering upon their faith in progress, a progress from which there was to be no looking back, the awakening has been rude. Without transition, such persons have passed from the absurd excesses of slothful optimism to the vertigo of unplumbed pessimism. They are not used to looking at life except from behind a parapet. A barrier of comfortable illusions has hidden from them, hitherto, the chasm above which, clinging to the face of the ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... 5—and I am sorry to observe that you are both becoming anxious just because you have not heard from me for a day or two. You really must not do this. Circumstances may easily arise at any time out here which would prevent my writing for a week or two; it is absurd to put a bad construction on everything. I always write when I can. By the way, blotting paper would be a great aid to writing. But some is probably on the way by now. I received a parcel from home ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... it was absurd for a mere boy just out of college, with scarcely a cent to his name—and not a whole name to call his own—to think of attempting to attack the great problem of the people single-handed; but still he felt he was called to do it, and he meant ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... the easy freedom, not to say gusto, with which he depicts, those who succumb to similar temptation. Only by supposing the workings of some subtle influence of this kind is it possible to explain, even in so capricious a humour as Johnson's, the famous and absurd application of the term "barren rascal" to a writer who, dying almost young, after having for many years lived a life of pleasure, and then for four or five one of laborious official duty, has left work anything but small in actual ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... from a policeman's club, and there was an enforced and temporary suspension of the inane chatter. The attendant youth tried to assume the incensed and threatening look with which an ancient gallant would have laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. But some animals and men only become absurd when they try to appear formidable. It was ludicrous to see him weakly frowning at the sturdy Teuton who had already forgotten his existence as completely as he might that of a buzzing mosquito he had ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... detest the very name of a Spaniard. And, indeed, I am not surprised at it, for they are kept under such subjection, and such a laborious slavery, by mere dint of hard usage and punishments, that it appears to me the most absurd thing in the world that the Spaniards should rely upon these people for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... heart prompts you to do it. I don't know what to think of your suggestion that in writing for young converts I should impress it upon them to speak the truth. It seems to me just like telling them not to commit murder; and that would be absurd. Do Christians cheat and tell lies? I have a great aversion to writing about such things; if children are not trained at home to be upright and full of integrity, it can't be that books can rectify that loss. You may reply ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... myself in the glass, I have said, 'Is this a face likely to take a child's fancy? Do you bear much resemblance to the hero of her storybooks?' My dear"—(stopping before me)—"you cannot think my presumption more absurd ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... a poetical work is, ceteris paribus, the measure of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition sufficiently absurd—yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size, abstractly considered—there can be nothing in mere bulk, so far as a volume is concerned, which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "All very absurd, you will agree, and you may get some inkling as to my state of mind while I walked over those same dark hills. I seemed a part of that darkness. I looked up to the stars. They were merely like the pages of a book. I named them off hand, one after the other, and ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... conversation with him. Now that the painter had been definitely cut that bound him to the safe and conventional, and he had set out on his own account to lead the life adventurous, he was conscious of an absurd diffidence. New York looked different to him. It made him feel positively shy. A pressing need for a friendly native in this strange land manifested itself. Smith would have ideas and advice to bestow—he was notoriously ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the Archbishop of Halifax, Dr. Connolly. Who is the Archbishop of Halifax? In either of the coast colonies, where he has laboured in his high vocation for nearly a third of a century, it would be absurd to ask the question; but in Canada he may not be equally well known. Some of my honorable friends in this and the other House, who were his guests last year, must have felt the impress of his character as well as the warmth ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... parting advice. "When you reach Hongkong," said he, "never venture into the sun without an umbrella, and never go snipe shooting without top boots pulled up well over the thighs." As no snipe have ever been seen on Hongkong, the last bit of counsel was as absurd as the first ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... their hands. I wish England too well to like to see it, but one of these days they will get into some scrape in the same way. The foolish accusation that we are doing all we can to break up the French Alliance is certainly the most absurd of all; if anything can be for our local advantage, it is to see England and France closely allied, and for a long period—for ever I ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... once, it occurred to me how very absurd was my behavior in thus tormenting myself with crazy hypotheses as to what was going on within that drawing-room, when it was at my option to be personally present there, My relations with Zenobia, as yet unchanged,—as a familiar friend, and associated ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... must ask himself why mensa means one table, and mens many tables; why I love should be amo, I am loved amor, I shall love amabo, I have loved amavi, I should have loved amavissem. Until very lately two answers only could have been given to such questions. Both sound to us almost absurd, yet in their time they were supported by the highest authorities. Either, it was said, language, and particularly the grammatical framework of language was made by convention, by agreeing to call one table mensa, and many tables mens; or, and this was Schlegel's ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... for itself a new set of objective experiences, or, to say the same thing in other words, it has no punarjanmam. It is such an entity that can appear in seance-rooms; but it is absurd to call it a disembodied spirit.* It is merely a power or force retaining the impressions of the thoughts or ideas of the individual into whose composition it originally entered. It sometimes summons to its aid the Kamarupa power, and creates ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the Jews from massacre; but they absolutely and persistently refused to trouble themselves with any attempt to understand their doctrines or enter into their disputes. The tradition that Gallio sent some of St. Paul's writings to his brother Seneca is utterly absurd; and indeed at this time (A.D. 54), St. Paul had written nothing except the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. (See Conybeare and Howson, St. Paul, vol. i. Ch. xii.; ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... a small emblem worn on top of a knight's helmet. A tower with a lily stuck in it would have been unwieldy and absurd. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... to Pindar no fewer than five times, and the best judges in Greece gave her the preference; yet whatever were her powers, and beyond a question they were extraordinary, we may assure ourselves that she stood many degrees below Pindar. Nothing is more absurd than the report that the judges were prepossessed by her beauty. Plutarch tells us that she was much older than her competitor, who consulted her judgment in his earlier odes. Now, granting their first competition to have been when Pindar ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... new objects which at once provoke and fail to meet them. Everything, therefore, is potentially comical and, in the course of human history, few things can escape a laugh; some curious mind is sure, sooner or later, to bring them under a new idea against which they will be shown up to be absurd. The sanctities of religion, love, and political ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... the tidings that met me there were such as to drive the strongest mind distracted. The landlord told me that my wife had fled with the butler of the house. At first I laughed in his face at anything so absurd, but when he flew into a towering passion and accused me of having brought disgrace upon his house by living there unlawfully with a woman who was not my wife, I began to think there must be some truth in his statements. In vain I denied the charge; he would not listen to me, ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... will ride with us, and I trust that you will come also. We shall first go to Cliffe, which will be on our road, and, indeed, I believe that for some distance Albert's lands join mine. Then we shall go on to my castle—it sounds absurd, doesn't it, father?—and doubtless we shall be able to stay in Hoo, or if not, 'tis but two or three miles to Stroud, where we are sure to ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... old, familiar language! Were one of Plato's fellow-pilgrims here, or a follower of Epicurus—or fifty others—each would tell me that I should never get to Corinth except in his company. One must therefore credit all alike, which would be absurd; or, what is far safer, distrust all alike, until one has discovered the truth. Suppose now, that, being as I am, ignorant which of all philosophers is really in possession of truth, I choose your sect, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... year 1418, and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... good sense," she remarked to her son. "Any other legacy to Lady Northlake would have been simply absurd. Yes, Mr. Mool? Perhaps ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... pretty! I should hardly have thought it was the Thames, though. It isn't muddy enough. In fact, the whole scheme of colour is much too clean for London. Quite absurd! Not a bit like it! Eh, my dear, what was I saying? Oh yes, I like the effect of the sunlight on that brown sail immensely. It's really ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... and disinterested convictions of others are as respectable as our own: again we must tolerate. To credit Montaigne with that sublime liberality which is summed up in the most sublime of all Christian aphorisms—"Judge not, and thou shalt not be judged"—would be absurd. Montaigne was a Pagan, and his high conception of tolerance and humanity was derived entirely from the great pagan philosophers. Of them he was a profound and sincere disciple, so it is not surprising that his ideas were far in advance of those of his age, and of ours. For instance, he hated ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... when they saw some other youths like themselves get on, they put their pride in their pockets, and each mounted a tricycle. How they did waggle from side to side; and how impossible it was not to laugh and shout at the absurd feeling of the thing! ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... him. "After all," he murmured, "it was absurd to expect to find a settlement of white men here. How could I think that any but Indians had ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... to the third day of the wedding-feast, which is the most interesting of all, and has been retained in full vigor down to our own day. We will say nothing of the slice of toast that is carried to the nuptial bed; that is an absurd custom which offends the modesty of the bride, and tends to destroy that of the young girls who are present. Moreover, I think that it is a custom which obtains in all the provinces and has no peculiar features ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... of serious thoughts, and the readiest inlet to all sorts of licentiousness; and he accounted the encouraging, and even permitting, assemblies or meetings, whether among those of high or low degree, for this fantastic and absurd purpose, or for that of dramatic representations, as one of the most flagrant proofs of defection and causes of wrath. The pronouncing of the word dance by his own daughters, and at his own door, now drove him beyond the verge ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and hostile; most of them ridicule what they have to say. The press has been practically unanimous every morning in making fun of the piece and the author. If I enter a reading room I cannot pick up a paper without seeing: "Absurd as 'Hernani'; silly, false, bombastic, pretentious, extravagant and nonsensical as 'Hernani'." If I venture into the corridors of the theatre while the performance is in progress I see spectators issue from ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... indeed, may admire such things; but the judicious few whose opinion you despise will always laugh at what is absurd, incongruous, and inconsistent. Everything has a beauty peculiar to itself; but if you put one instead of another, the most beautiful becomes ugly, because it is not in its proper place. I need not add, that praise is agreeable ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... distance between the two continents and the intermediate islands has suggested the utilisation of the latter as supports for a leviathan railway bridge, a theory which (as Euclid would remark) is obviously "absurd." For no bridge could withstand the force of the spring ice in Bering Straits for one week. On the other hand, the boring of a tunnel from shore to shore is not entirely without the range of possibility, but of this, and of other matters dealing with the construction ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... man. By his work at the forge he had strengthened his muscles till they were like iron. So was Kit a strong boy, but it would be absurd to represent him as a match ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... as he saw her in the line of passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he embraced her, and announced, "Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look fine, you look fine." Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something, this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him, believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she squealed, he was for the moment come back to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... happens in the sequel of such sudden and mournful events, the most absurd rumours did not fail to be circulated on the subject of Charles's death. According to one, the Duchess of Portsmouth had poisoned the King with a cup of chocolate; another asserted that the Queen had poisoned him with a jar of ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... (to Culver, still holding him). I'm very annoyed with you. It's perfectly absurd the way you work. (To Tranto.) Do you know he was at the office all day Christmas Day and all day Boxing Day? (To Culver.) You really ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... This is another absurd opinion peculiar to the Irish, and certainly one of the most pernicious that prevail among them. Indeed, I believe there is no country in which ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... no poetry whatever about it. But what hurt the feelings of Herr Burkhardt most of all, was the utter contempt Clare showed for the delights of Vauxhall. The tinsel and the oil-lamps, the wooden bowers and paper flowers, struck Clare as perfectly absurd, and he expressed his astonishment that people should go and stare at such childish things, with a world of wonder and of beauty lying all around it in the green fields. The worthy jeweller of the ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... the conditions have entirely changed, we have not adapted the electoral machinery to the change. The system of single-membered electorates was rational in the fourteenth century, because there was only one party. Is it not on the face of it absurd to-day, when ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... convinced of the contrary. A populace which could dare to mock at the divine Caesar, the guest of their city, with such gross audacity, must be made to smart under the power of Rome and its ruler. The deposed magistrate had lost his place for the absurd measures he had proposed, and Aristides was in danger ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was quite absurd that it should be so, but this statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a complete stranger—even to deceive him was quite within her rights; but, though ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... was to prevent it? I want to know more about it, and I am going to, if I have to travel to the Gold Coast myself. I will tell you frankly, Mr. Cuthbert—I suspect Mr. Scarlett Trent. No, don't interrupt me. It may seem absurd to you now that he is Mr. Scarlett Trent, millionaire, with the odour of civilisation clinging to him, and the respectability of wealth. But I, too, have seen him, and I have heard him talk. He has helped me to see the other man—half-savage, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hundred winds and draughts down the chimney, or sputters out for want of feeding. And then—and then it is Chloe, in the dark, stark awake, and Strephon snoring unheeding; or vice versa, 'tis poor Strephon that has married a heartless jilt, and awoke out of that absurd vision of conjugal felicity, which was to last for ever, and is over like any other dream. One and other has made his bed, and so must lie in it, until that final day when life ends, and they ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and should be sick of the advantage of birth or ancestry, if this was the natural fruit of it. "For a man," said her ladyship, "to come to his nephew's house, and to suffer the mistress of it to be closetted up (as he thinks), in order to humour his absurd and brutal insolence, and to behave as he has done, is such a ridicule upon the pride of descent, that I shall ever think of it.—O Mrs. B.," said she, "what advantages have you over every one that sees you; but most over those who pretend to treat you unworthily!" I expect to be called ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... REGNET, "The only grievance of which I ever heard them complain," says Mr. Barrow, "and which appears to be a real inconvenience to all who inhabit the remote parts of the colony, is a ridiculous and absurd law respecting marriage: and as it seems to have no foundation in reason, and little in policy, except, indeed, like the marriage-acts in other countries, it be intended as a check to population, it ought to be repealed. By this law, the parties are both obliged to be present at the Cape, in order ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... indirectly by force of public opinion, or were it even by open alehouses, landlords' coercion, popular club-law, or whatever electoral methods, is always an interesting phenomenon. A mountain tumbling in great travail, throwing up dustclouds and absurd noises, is visibly there; uncertain yet what mouse or monster it will ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... believe," said Sancho; "for all that about lovers pining to death is absurd; they may talk of it, but as for doing it-Judas ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "It may seem absurd to you," Arnold protested, "but it's my duty for the present, anyhow, and I am going to do it. I shall have to work ten hours a day and I shall have no time for dreams. I am going to stay in the atmosphere I ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... yet a more absurd figure can hardly be imagined, than that of Poor Peter clattering along as fast as his huge boots would permit him, and resembling nothing so much as a flying scarecrow; while the thin emaciated form of Nanty Ewart, with the hue of death on his cheek, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... they threaded the way homeward, those young men, whom the world, in its bated breath, had called rich and fortunate! Now that they thought it over, how absurd had been this gambling venture! They should lose every sou. They had, for a blind chance, exhausted the patience of their creditors, and made away with their last collateral—their last crust, and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... Yet, if their own accounts were to be credited, their affluence and power were unbounded. All truth is sacrificed to this feeling of vanity and vain glory; and considering that in most cases they hold truth in great reverence, they render themselves truly ridiculous by their absurd practice of boasting; every circumstance around them tending to contradict it. In the case of the Landers, however, these toasters had to deal with strangers, and with white men, and perhaps it may be considered as natural, amongst simple barbarians, to court admiration and applause, even ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... talking around the question," she said. "Mr. Pierce undertook to manage the sanatorium, and to try to manage it successfully. He can not do that without making some attempt at conciliating the people. It's—it's absurd ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reason to say his countrymen had met with extraordinary encouragement in the service. 'When a South and North-Briton (said he) are competitors for a place or commission, which is in the disposal of an English minister or an English general, it would be absurd to suppose that the preference will not be given to the native of England, who has so many advantages over his rival. — First and foremost, he has in his favour that laudable partiality, which, Mr Addison says, never fails to cleave to the heart of an Englishman; secondly, he ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... carried on the slave-trade, that it may be inferred the inhabitants of Paria visited by Christopher Columbus and by Ojeda, were not of the same race as the Chaymas. I doubt much whether the custom of blackening the teeth was originally suggested, as Gomara supposed, by absurd notions of beauty, or was practised with the view of preventing the toothache. * This disorder is, however, almost unknown to the Indians; and the whites suffer seldom from it in the Spanish colonies, at least in the warm ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Bertie. It is evident that I must write. As to their paying twenty thousand pounds, the thing is absurd; if he had mentioned two thousand they might have considered the matter. What I hope is that they will not send up anything. I feel certain that we shall be able to get away from here within a month; and if they were to send up one or two thousand pounds, we should probably miss ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... often been a timid surrender of much that can alone give authority to Christian testimony. If Jesus Christ was not competent to decide the truth or untruth of the Divine revelation, which He fully and constantly endorsed as such, how absurd it is to suppose that any eulogies of His character can save Him from the just contempt of all fearless thinkers, no matter to what nationality ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Unless we dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrication of Mr. Wace, we have to believe one of two things: either that Mr. Cave's crystal was in two worlds at once, and that, while it was carried about in one, it remained stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it had some peculiar relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar crystal in this other world, so that what was seen in the interior of the one in this world was, under suitable conditions, visible to an observer ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... morning practice; "both" horns of a dilemma; "both God and mammon"; did ever a nation possess a more marvellous water-tight compartment method of believing and honoring opposites! But in all this unconscious hypocrisy the American is perhaps not worse—though he may be more absurd!—than other men. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... storing it in your memory with such cherished comrades of the fancy as Mark Tapley and Uncle Toby. There is but little human nature in Acres as Sheridan has drawn him, and what there is of human nature is coarse; but as embodied by Jefferson, while he never ceases to be comically absurd, he becomes fine and sweet, and wins sympathy and inspires affection, and every spectator is glad to have seen him and to remember him. It is not possible to take that sort of liberty with every author. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... enchanted with the slight, graceful gesticulation of her gloved hand. When he finally brought himself to look at her eyes he was not disappointed; deep blue were they, steady, benignant, and of a heart-disquieting wistfulness. Other items, by the way, were a little straight nose, absurd and lovable, and lips fresh and bright as a child's. All the men were standing about her with deferential bared heads, and the finest thing (in Stonor's mind) was that she displayed no self-consciousness in this trying situation; none of the cooings, the gurglings, the flirtatious flutterings ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... Catalogue). "The absurd ambulations of this antique person, and the equally absurd antics of her dog, need no recapitulation." Here's "Jack the Giant Killer" next. Listen, BOBBY, to what it says about him here. (Reads.) "It is clearly the last transmutation ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... seemed absurd to him for the old man to keep up the pretense of ignorance. In fact, Hastings was ignorant—of the details. He was not quite the aloof plutocrat of the modern school, who permits himself to know nothing of details beyond the dividend rate and similar innocent looking results of causes ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... this conversation long before parties were formed here, it must appear to every impartial person, that it could not have been the mere invention of my own "brain," suggested in the spirit of party; and it is still more absurd to suppose, that I could have foreseen that you, who then thought as I did concerning the essential objections to the constitution of Pennsylvania, should refuse the appointment of Chief Justice, because you could not, in conscience, take the oath of office; that Mr. Wharton (the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... trade which is being studied, then it is best to divide the job into elements which are rudimentary. In some cases this subdivision should be carried to a point which seems at first glance almost absurd. ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... perhaps be thought absurd, but it at least bore evidence of the pleasure caused by the return of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... worth together perhaps one hundred and fifty pounds a year. His business, then more flourishing than ever, produced an annual profit, as before computed, of two thousand pounds; bringing up his income to the troublesome and absurd amount of nearly three thousand pounds; three times the revenue ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... true it is exquisitely pretty and touching; if not, it is highly absurd and ridiculous, but the same may be said of many hypothetical historical incidents. At all events, the financial arrangements which followed upon the discovery of the MS. and the price demanded for it by the Wagnerian housemaid convinces ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is pretty, and there is something taking in her name. Old people, and very precise people, call her Margaret Boyne. But you do not: it is only plain Madge; it sounds like her, very rapid and mischievous. It would be the most absurd thing in the world for you to like her, for she teases you in innumerable ways: she laughs at your big shoes, (such a sweet little foot as she has!) and she pins strips of paper on your coat-collar; and time and again she has worn off your hat in triumph, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... A back-woods pedagogue! That I was. That I must be to the end. My place was in the school-house. My place was on the store bench, set away there with a lot of other broken antiquities. That I should ask a woman to link her life with mine, was absurd. A fair ship on a fair sea soon parts company with a derelict—unless it tows it. A score of times I had fought this out, and as often I had found but one course and had set myself to follow it, but there was that in Mary's quiet eyes that shook my resolution. ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... feasting and mirth when Milton arrived back in town accompanied by his bride and various of her kinsmen. In all marriage festivals there is something pathetically absurd, and I never see a sidewalk awning spread without thinking of the one erected for John Milton and Mary Powell, who were led through it by an Erebus that was not only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... them all, and yet even in her orbit she is a good deal nearer to the sun at one time than another. Would you be surprised to hear that she is nearer in our winter and further away in our summer? Yet that is the case. And for the first moment it seems absurd; for what then makes the summer hotter than the winter? That is due to an altogether different cause; it depends on the position of the earth's axis. If that axis were quite straight up and down in reference to the earth's path round the sun we should have equal days and nights all the ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... souls, and taking in a new cargo of white-ribboned men, who talked in loud voices or spat ruminatively over the floors. Sommers sank back listless. It was well that he had taken this way of entering the new life. To have galloped south through the cool parks would have been absurd, like playing at charity. This was the life of the people,—not the miserably poor, but the mean and small, the mass in this, our prosperous country. Through the dirty, common avenues, without one touch of beauty, they were destined to travel all their days, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... glee. Their hot tongues rasped busily over his face. This was the great tickling game. Remembering his theory of conserving energy, he lay passive while they rollicked and scrambled, burrowing in the bedclothes, quivering imps of absurd pleasure. All that was necessary was to give an occasional squirm, to tweak their ribs now and then, so that they believed his heart was in the sport. Really he got quite a little rest while they were scuffling. No one knew exactly ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... he explained, "that it strikes one as a bit absurd that any man should travel up here for pleasure. If you take my advice you will come ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... of course, of the tactics of his wife, which he had deplored at the time, though he had been unable to bring her to a better frame of mind; but since the young people liked each other, and since madam was in her grave, it seemed absurd to let a shadow stand between them and their happiness. Perhaps if left to herself Gertrude would reach that conclusion of her own accord, and the Master Builder rose to go without ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... (Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. vii. N.S.), by W. Harry Rylands, F.S.A., may be consulted with advantage. The latter declares that "the Runic theory is as unlikely and as untenable as that which places the origin of these marks in the absurd alphabets given by Cornelius Agrippa, who died early in the 16th century." Victor Didron copied some 4000 during a tour in France in 1836 and pointed out their value ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the use of money. Money is power. Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power; money has powers; and for a man to say, "I do not want money," is to say, "I do not wish to do any good to my fellowmen." It is absurd thus to talk. It is absurd to disconnect them. This is a wonderfully great life, and you ought to spend your time getting money, because of the power there is in money. And yet this religious prejudice is so great that some people think it is a great honor ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... abolition of the death penalty; and possibly the futility and absurdity of such a punishment may finally strike the persons whom we have picked out as the wisest and ablest among us, and have put in our legislatures to tell us what to do and not to do. Absurd though legal killings may be, they are not so absurd as the persuasion that death is the worst thing that can happen to a man. It involves little or no suffering, and is over in a moment. Imprisonment involves ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... waited, Judge Gaylor paced quickly to and fro. "I've had to deny some pretty silly stories about Mr. Hallowell," he said, "but of all the absurd, malicious—There's some enemy back of this; some one in Wall Street is doing this. But I'll find him—I'll—" he was interrupted by the entrance of the butler and Dr. Rainey, Mr. ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... in fine, seemed a man dressed in a mask that was unable to deceive. His lean face was almost absurd in its irregularity, its high cheek-bones and deep depressions, its sharp nose, extensive mouth and nervous chin. But the pale blue eyes that were its soul shone plaintively beneath their shaggy, blonde eyebrows, and even ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... sight behind hills and houses, and bang away if his opponent showed as much as the tip of a bayonet. Monsieur Bloch seemed vindicated, and Little War had become impossible. And there was something a little absurd, too, in the spectacle of a solitary drummer-boy, for example, ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... They thought this proscription applied to them equally with the admiral, and said among themselves that the governor, in excluding the flotilla from the harbours of the colony, must have acted under orders from the king. These absurd reasonings irritated minds already badly disposed, and at length on the 2nd of January, 1504, two brothers named Porras, one the captain of one of the caravels and the other the military treasurer, placed themselves at the head of the malcontents. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... it was not their object to dispose of their daughters, as it is called, to the best advantage. The arts which are commonly practised for this purpose they thought not only indelicate, but ultimately impolitic and absurd; for men in general are now so well aware of them, that they avoid the snares, and ridicule and detest those by whom they are contrived. If, now and then, a dupe be found, still the chance is, that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... although it would have been absurd in Willie to rack his brain for some scheme by which to restore such a grand building as the Priory, he could yet bethink himself that the hundredth room did not come next the first, neither did the third; the one after the first ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... plague, or St. Vitus' dance,[60] in the year 1418, and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his having been arrested, or, at least, detained by order of the king at Stockholm. In a few days, however, Sir John made his appearance on board the Victory; when it was found that his Swedish Majesty had made several absurd propositions to him, such as an attack on Copenhagen and upon Cronstadt, for which his force was inadequate, especially since the arrival at the former place of several regiments of French and Spanish troops, and at the latter of the flotilla ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... the seat in which he had listened with evident impatience to this long outline of the prisoner's history. "Gentlemen," addressing the court, "that is the very stranger who was in my apartment last night,—the being with whom the prisoner is evidently in treacherous correspondence, and all this absurd tale is but a blind to deceive your judgment, and mitigate his own punishment. Who is there to prove the man he has just described was the same who aimed at Captain de ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of the Commons at the States-General. All these concessions were acts of the Crown, yielding to dictates of policy more than to popular demand. It is said that power is an object of such ardent desire to man, that the voluntary surrender of it is absurd in psychology and unknown in history. Lewis XVI. no doubt calculated the probabilities of loss and gain, and persuaded himself that his action was politic even more than generous. The Prussian envoy rightly described him in a despatch of July 31, 1789. He says that the king was willing to weaken ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the Cantons of Switzerland, prove the contrary by their universal religious toleration. Now I could mention, if I thought I had space enough on this sheet, numbers of Protestant divines, who, in their writings, have strongly inculcated the absurd doctrines of ruling our consciences by the authority of the Civil Magistrates. See then, how strange it is that they seek to condemn us for doctrines which we abhor, and which they practice, even to this day. Mark that for ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... watched the sway of his shoulders and the unhampered tread of his unshod feet he could not but recall the days when he, too, had gloried in going barefoot. He smiled at the memory which now seemed so absurd. ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... by-the-by, very closely allied to canker) exclaiming against this habit of referring everything which we do not rightly understand to some ill-humour of the body. The wisdom his words contain justifies us in giving them mention here. 'It is a very foolish and absurd Notion,' he says, 'to imagine a Horse full of Humours when he happens to be troubled with the Grease. But such Shallow Reasoning will always abound while Peoples' Judgments are always superficial. Therefore, to convince ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... years afterwards, when he was informed that the American Indians were a remnant of the Israelites, and that certain prophetical writings of the Jews were buried in a spot from which he was destined to rescue them. The absurd story goes on to say that Joseph Smith accordingly found in a stone box, just covered with earth, in Ontario, the "Record," consisting of gold plates engraven with "Reformed Egyptian" characters. Although discovered in 1823, ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... going to carve him, and paint him, and possibly spoil him. The creating of a man—of one who knows how to handle life—is so much more wonderful than creating absurd pictures or statues or stories. I'll nag him into completing college. He'll learn dignity—or perhaps lose his simplicity and be ruined; and then I'll marry him off to some nice well-bred pink-face, like ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... on cushions in the launch reading "A Little Book of Profitable Tales" that had just been sent me by its author. I started to smile at the tale of The Clycopeedy. Then I caught sight of the peak of Mount Ophir through a notch in the jungle and all sorts of absurd hypotheses in regard to its authenticity flashed through my mind. All this takes time to relate, but those who have stood in mortal peril will know how short a time ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... not the right of free meeting, free speech or a free press. Before a paper or book can be published it has to pass the censor. This censorship is carried to an absurd degree. It starts with school books; it goes on to every word a man may write or speak. It applies to the foreigners as well as Koreans. The very commencement day speeches of school children are ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... restricting their usefulness to any one family, would strike dismay through a whole community. Nobody would be so unprincipled as to think of such a thing as having their services more than a week or two at most. Your country factotum knows better than anybody else how absurd ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... removed, by a judicious division of its parts. Set apart regular portions of time to be employed in writing. Let these seasons be as frequent as may consist with your other duties, and observe them strictly. Do not indulge the absurd notion that you can write only when you feel like it. Remember your object is to discipline the mind, and bring it under the control of the will. But, to suffer your mind to be controlled by your feelings, in the very act of discipline, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... lavished kindness upon this pretentious and absurd Italian. He was appointed to the place of master-gardener, and lodgings in a house in St. James's Park, to be afterwards known as Carlton House, were set apart for his use. Here he was visited by Evelyn, who records that 'the famous Italian painter' was 'settled in His Majesty's ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of London, made over his estates to his son, and carried arms about his person. His best arms, however, were his sagacity and his self-command. The plot in which he had been an unwilling accomplice ended, as it was natural that so odious and absurd a plot should end, in the ruin of its contrivers. In the meantime, Cecil quietly extricated himself and, having been successively patronised by Henry, by Somerset, and by Northumberland, continued to flourish under the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fathers and fathers! And, besides, he was in such a frenzy.... He really may have done nothing but swing the pestle in the air, and so knocked the old man down. But it was a pity they dragged the valet in. That was simply an absurd theory! If I'd been in Fetyukovitch's place, I should simply have said straight out: 'He murdered him; but he is not guilty, hang it ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... richest, and also the best of our noblemen," continued Maria; "and I never heard of anything so absurd as what they did to him. It made me blush when Don — told me." Don Tomas, I thought ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... effective candidate! I have roamed about the State, and I have made some very good friends here and there among the hill farmers, like Mr. Jenney. Mr. Redbrook is one of these. But it would have been absurd of me even to think of a candidacy founded on personal friendships. I assure you," he added, smiling, "there was no self denial ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him, the change in her, yet he was conscious that she still retained her strong attraction for him. With nerves relaxed, content, he had an absurd notion that he could sit beside her on that rock indefinitely, without speaking, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... seems absurd in connection with the translator who had to choose what was within his reach, and who, in many cases, could not sit down in undisturbed possession of ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... Entranced, he felt time flowing on toward him, endless in sweep and fulness. There is only one success, he said to himself—to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it. Youth, youth is the only wealth, for youth ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... speculation, and Captain Nemo's strange facial seizure kept haunting me. I was incapable of connecting two ideas in logical order, and I had strayed into the most absurd hypotheses, when I was snapped out of my mental struggles by these ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... eastern side the fauna are non-Asiatic. Yet somehow into Australia with its queer monotremes and marsupials entered triumphant man—man and the dog with him. Haeckel has suggested that man followed the dog, playing as it were the jackal to him. But this sounds rather absurd. It looks as if man had already acquired enough seamanship to ferry himself across the zoological divide, and to take his faithful dog with him on board his raft or dug-out. Until we have facts whereon to build, however, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... fire blazed in Jonathan; you almost heard it roaring softly as he explained, described and dilated on the new thing; but a moment later it had fallen in and there was nothing but ashes, and Jonathan went about with a look like hunger in his black eyes. At these times he exaggerated his absurd manner of speaking, and he sang in church—he was the leader of the choir—with such fearful dramatic intensity that the meanest hymn ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... a cynic, which means a sly dog, was indeed absurd; but it is fair to say that in comparison with Dickens he felt himself a man of the world. Nevertheless, that world of which he was a man is coming to an end before our eyes; its aristocracy has grown corrupt, its ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... a complementary depression for its accommodation. When the insect is motionless it is difficult to detect. By its long posterior legs, stiffly held aloft, it proclaims to every bird—"Do not be so absurd as to imagine these dry twigs to be legs, belonging to a body good to eat." And if the bird does not take the resemblance for granted and is inquisitive and approaches too familiarly, it finds that instead of a dinner it has discovered a snake. The ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... an elephant's palate is extraordinary, and the whims of the creature are absurd in the selection or rejection of morsels which it prefers or dislikes. I once saw a peculiar instance of this in an elephant that belonged to the police at Dhubri on the Brahmaputra. This animal had a large ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... comprehend. I was merely a baffled old woman of the world. Now I begin to see. I believe her as you do. The world and the law will laugh at us because we have none of the accepted reasons for our belief. But I believe her as you do—absurd as it will seem ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... around the other way faster than the world could revolve. How would you keep Sunday then? Suppose we ever invent any thing that can go 1,000 miles an hour? We can just chase Sunday clear around the globe. Is there anything that can be more perfectly absurd than that a space of time can be holy! You might as well talk about a pious vacuum. These pious evasions. I heard the other night of an old man. He was not very well educated, you know, and he got into the notion that he must have reading of the bible and have family worship; and there was ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... was opening the jar she concluded that Henry Perkins was an angel—a conclusion which, in view of the well-known facts, was manifestly absurd. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... is simply absurd," says the young man, taking now the superior tone that is meant to crush the situation by holding it up to ridicule. "You forget, perhaps, that we shall have to meet sometimes. I suppose the people down here give balls occasionally, and tennis-parties, and that; ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... her on the steps of the hotel, that she would dine with him. But she shook her head. She had her packing to do. She could have managed it; but something prudent and absurd had suddenly got hold of her; and he went away with much the same look in his eyes that comes to a dog when he finds that his master cannot ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... says that in his opinion this talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality, from the point of view of British statesmen, is absurd, because as long ago as 1870 the plans for the use of Belgium, both by France and by Germany—in other words, the violation of its neutrality—were in the British War Office, and that Mr. Gladstone rose in his place and said he ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... drama. However absurd it may appear in my rendering (which I have endeavored to make as impartial as possible), I may confidently say that in the original it is yet more absurd. For any man of our time—if he were not under the hypnotic suggestion that this drama is the height ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... to hesitate, laughed; and Harvey felt the conviction that, by absurd sincerity, he had damaged himself in the girl's eyes. What did ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... "Well?" she said. "Is there anything you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou" the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... South Africa that patience was being mistaken for weakness, and that the credit of Britain was being lowered all over the world, and even among the peoples of India, by her forbearance towards the Transvaal. Absurd as this notion may appear, it was believed by heated partizans on the spot. But outside Africa, and especially in Europe, the forbearance of one of the four greatest Powers in the world towards a community of seventy thousand people was in no ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Transylvania, Wallachia, Servia, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Tyrol, and all the rich and populous States of the Netherlands. Naples, Sicily, Mantua and Milan in Italy, also recognized his sovereignty. To enlightened reason nothing can seem more absurd than that one man, of very moderate capacities, luxuriating in his palace at Vienna, should pretend to hold dominion over so many millions so widely dispersed. But the progress of the world towards ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... moment it sufficed to know that she was loved, and that she loved. She was no fool. At the back of all her wonder lay the certainty that in the world's eyes such love as hers was absurd; that it must end where it began; that Raoul could never be hers, nor she escape from a captivity as real as his. But, perhaps because she knew all this so certainly, she could put it aside. This thing had come to her: this happiness to which, alone, in darkness, depressed by every look ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... American book—whether the Open Door policy is being enforced even now; to ask it of any one in Manchuria is to be laughed at. I tried it once in a Standard Oil office and the man in front of me roared, and an unnoticed clerk at my back, overhearing so absurd a question, was also unable to contain his merriment. It is not a question of the fact of the shutting-up policy, Chinese and foreigners in Manchuria will tell you; it is only a question as to ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... retired with Margaret to the latter's room, he began to feel disturbed in spite of his firm belief that his cause was wholly that of justice victorious. Margaret had insidious ways of stating a case; and her point of view, no matter how absurd or unjust, was almost always adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Schofield ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Anglo-Saxon understanding, of course, the theory of divine right has long appeared untenable, obsolete, and, as Macaulay says, absurd. Many people to-day would go farther and argue that there is no such thing as a divine right at all, since "rights" are a purely human idea, possibly a purely legal one. But it is at least doubtful that ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... with regard to objects, which is not so with regard to perceptions. But it is intelligible and consistent to say, that objects exist distinct and independent, without any common simple substance or subject of inhesion. This proposition, therefore, can never be absurd with regard ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... never lived consistently on the level of his best original ideas: savages also have endless myths of Baiame or Daramulun, or Bunjil, in which these personages, though interested in human behaviour, are puerile, cruel, absurd, lustful, and so on. Man will sport ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... So should they learn to speak English undefiled from their earliest utterance. "How," demanded Sir Oracle, "can a mother reasonably expect her child to learn correct speech, when she continually accustoms its impressionable gray matter to such absurd expressions and distortions of our noble tongue as thoughtless mothers inflict every day on the helpless creatures committed to their care? Can a child who is constantly called 'tweet itty wee singie' ever attain to any ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dreary person on the stage, Who mouthed and mugged in simulated rage, Who growled and spluttered in a mode absurd, And spoke an English SOWLS ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... also been the absurd suggestion that the impediment was Swift's knowledge that both he and Stella were the illegitimate children of Sir William Temple—a theory which is absolutely disproved ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... remainder which we cannot make intelligible without calling to our aid the concept of ends. Assuming that it were possible to carry the explanation of life from life, from ancestral organisms (for the generatio aequivoca is an absurd theory) so far that the whole organic world should represent one great family descended from one primitive form as the common mother, even then the concept of final causes would only be pushed further back, not eliminated: the origin of the first organization will always resist mechanical ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... mention John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water Lane.' 'Why, sir,' cried Johnson, 'that was because he knew the strange color would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat of so absurd a color.'" ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... covers, relishes, confectionery, and small sweets. Garnishing of dishes has also a great deal to do with the appearance of a dinner-table, each dish garnished sufficiently to be in good taste without looking absurd. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... wars in the States are a grand feature—grand in the sense that they produce great results, some of them very absurd. One line tries to swamp the other by lowering its rates; the other retaliates, and quotes still lower figures. The first comes down more still, and the second follows suit. This goes on for months, to the advantage of the ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... plenty of water and food. Their principal difficulty lay in getting through the ranges to the south, and the interminable creeks and gullies which they got into and had to retrace their steps from. This was a small matter of exploration, and might at the present day appear absurd; but then there were doubts where the Angas was, and whether the Onkaparinga in Mount Barker District was not the Angas, and when beyond the hills they did not know whether Mount Barker was not Mount Lofty, and whether Mount Lofty was not some other mount. It was, however, done, and, ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... Exile's story; if my wits Are not at fault, his curious record fits Neatly as sequel to the tale we've heard; Not wholly wild the fancy, nor absurd That this our island hermit well might be That story's hero, fled from over sea. Come, Number Seven, we would not have you strain The fertile powers of that inventive brain. Read us 'The Exile's Secret'; there's enough Of dream-like fiction and fantastic ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... most unfeminine pantaloons, which, being carefully tied above the ankle in a frill, were allowed to fully display that treasure of treasures, that most valued of charms, the beautiful little foot and ankle. In addition to this absurd dress, which conceals the graceful form of perhaps the handsomest race of women in the world, the fair creatures have a style of riding which, to Europeans accustomed to the side-saddle, certainly seems more peculiar than elegant; ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... absurdities. The most amazing efforts were made to trace back everything to the sacred language. English and Latin dictionaries appeared, in which every word was traced back to a Hebrew root. No supposition was too absurd in this attempt to square Science with Scripture. It was declared that, as Hebrew is written from right to left, it might be read either way, in order to produce a satisfactory etymology. The whole effort in all ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... personal relations with him had ceased, and I had become only an occasional correspondent, living in Italy. But to make his decline the consequence of the use of chloral, even when it was finally become habitual, as some do, is absurd. It had been prescribed for him by a competent physician, because some remedy for his malady had become necessary. Even before I had recommended his first experiment with it he had been incapacitated from work by sleeplessness, and was in a very precarious condition ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... there is much difficulty. If a revelation were given to an ignorant people, in accordance with the reality, it is quite clear that they would not be in a condition to receive it, and would therefore, probably, reject it as absurd; but if the description were given according to the appearance presented, then no difficulty would be felt. The question, however, is pressed—whether such a mode of representation is consistent with the truthfulness which may be ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... you like it. I sometimes wish I could get hold of the man who built this house, though, and give him a piece of my mind. The rooms on this floor are so high studded they give me the shivers, while all the chambers are so low they are absurd. Did n't you notice it ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... Sloppy as an extraordinarily good joke, and he threw back his head and laughed with measureless enjoyment. At the sight of him laughing in that absurd way, the dolls' dressmaker laughed very heartily indeed. So they both laughed till ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... excuse me. Others may drop one if they feel like it; but as for me, I decline. The early managers of this institootion were a bad lot, and their crimes were trooly orful; but I can't sob for those who died four or five hundred years ago. If they was my own relations I couldn't. It's absurd to shed sobs over things which occurd during the rain of Henry the Three. Let us be cheerful," I continnered. "Look at the festiv Warders, in their red flannil jackets. They are cheerful, and why should it ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... It seemed absurd to bury one's self in an uninhabited waste, when life held forth so much to be grasped. Her friends told her so—thus confirming her own judgment. But she could never quite bring herself to put it in ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... duty bound, I called upon various persons in authority and delivered Cetewayo's message, leaving out all Zikali's witchcraft which would have sounded absurd. It did not produce much impression as, hostilities having already occurred, it was superfluous. Also no one was inclined to pay attention to the words of one who was neither an official nor a military officer, but ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... resentment; his great concern being to make every one at his ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... to hear them talking like that about Miss Reade and Mr. Dale," she answered vehemently. "It's really all so beautiful—but they make it seem silly and absurd, somehow." ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sounds absurd. I know it is absurd. She is n't the kind to allow her emotions to get away from her like that. But I'll say this much, Covington: that if we three were to start fresh, I'd stand a mighty poor chance ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... plump neck and arms. There was something almost indecent about the girl's enjoyment of her soda. Hardly a man in the shop but was watching her. Anderson gazed at her also, but with covert disgust and a resentment which was absurd. He scowled at the young fellow with her. He felt like a father whose daughter has been flouted by the man of her choice. "What the devil does the boy mean, taking soda here with that Van Dorn girl?" he asked himself. He felt ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... claw-like hand. "Kindly do not interrupt. Stiff, fanatic, inhuman, callous, cold, half mad and wholly rash, without military capacity, ambitious as Lucifer and absurd as Hudibras—I ask again what is this person doing at the head of this army? Has any one confidence in him? Has any one pride in him? Has any one love for him? In all this frozen waste through which he is dragging us, you couldn't find an echo to say 'One!' ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... sovereigns, statesmen, north and south, Rose up in wrath and fear, And cried, protesting by one mouth, "What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just Deed—and not for pay? Absurd,—or insincere." ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... bad of these is by Lancre, a man of some wit, whose evident connection with some young witches gave him something to say. The accounts of the Jesuit Del Rio and the Dominican Michaelis are the absurd productions of two credulous ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... "The first absurd thing he did was to purchase a yacht, and when a storm arose that forced the hardy fishermen to take shelter in port, he went out to sea, and it is quite a miracle that he escaped drowning. Then, if there were a ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... thus adding some years to his appearance, so that the subalterns of the newly-arrived regiments looked boyish beside him. The responsibilities of his work had steadied him, and though he retained his good spirits, his laugh had lost the old boyish ring. The title of Bimbashi, which had seemed absurd to him seven months before, was now nothing out of the way, for he looked as old as many of the British subalterns serving with that rank in ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... The root idea round which all else grouped itself was that of the agency of indwelling powers like unto man's, but endowed with wider activities, and unhampered by many human limitations. The forms of expression adopted often appear to us to be almost gratuitously absurd; but when we put ourselves as nearly as may be at the primitive point of view, we realise that they were not even illogical. The marvel is that out of the seething chaos of sensations and emotions there could ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his—plague and pestilence, being final, are the will of God—and, upon my soul, it is an absurd comedy of ills!" At that he had a fit of coughing, and I gave him a glass of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... warm there, with the heater at her back; better than the little room with the sagging bed and the doors covered with wall paper. Her feet had stopped aching, too, She could have sat there for hours. And—why evade it?—she was interested. This whimsical and respectful young man with his absurd talk and his shabby ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... birth, have been paupers. The very peculiar circumstances attending my case, only made me more anxious to know my parentage. I was now old enough to be aware of the value of birth, and I was also just entering the age of romance, and many were the strange and absurd reveries in which I indulged. At one time I would cherish the idea that I was of a noble, if not princely birth, and frame reasons for concealment. At others—but it is useless to repeat the absurdities and castle buildings which were generated in my brain ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... in London, the law still prohibits them, while they continue to reside there, from employing any portion of their capital in the same business in any other part of the kingdom, where it might be more beneficially conducted. Now, Sir, absurd as these laws must appear to be to every man, the attempt to repeal them did not, as far as I recollect, altogether succeed. The weavers were too numerous, their interests too great, or their prejudices too strong; and this notable instance of protection and monopoly still exists, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... changed since then; the customs of his day are not the customs of ours. Of course I wouldn't suggest that you go counter to your sister's wishes, but"—he turned away from her, huffy, head high, a gentleman flouted in his pride—"it's rather absurd from my point of view. Oh, well, we'll ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... muslin again; it's full of darns, up to my knees, and all out of fashion. So is my sacque; and as for my hat, though it does well enough here, it would be absurd ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... crossed the Rubicon, the rogue must brazen things out— which he did by starting a cat out of one of the dingy laurels, chivvying her some way into the house, and returning to shake himself on the front doorstep and bark in absurd triumph. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the lines, shall think them tant soit peu coarse and brutal, the fault must not be ascribed to Mr. Punch, but to the brilliant young author. Moreover, Mr. Punch begs leave to say, that squeamishness of that kind is becoming more and more absurd every day under the influence of the New Poetry and ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892 • Various
... am going to say is absurd, papa, and yet I don't see my way out of it—logically, I suppose you would call it. What is the use of taking any trouble about them if they are in God's hands? Why should we try to take ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... containing a solution of sugar, or any form of syrup or vegetable juice to the air, in order, after a comparatively short time, to see all these phenomena of fermentation. Of course the first obvious suggestion is, that the torula has been generated within the fluid. In fact, it seems at first quite absurd to entertain any other conviction; but that belief would most assuredly be ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... resumed Pryer, "does all this point to? Firstly, to the duty of confession—the outcry against which is absurd as an outcry would be against dissection as part of the training of medical students. Granted these young men must see and do a great deal we do not ourselves like even to think of, but they should adopt some other profession unless they are prepared for this; they may even get inoculated with poison ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... been absurd if I had asked where we were going, so I held my tongue, for at such moments a man should take heed to his words. Branicki was silent, and I thought the best thing I could do would be to engage ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Vienna if he chose; laying all flat. Infallible," say the Schmettau people. "He had the fire of head to contrive it all; but worn down and grown old, he could not execute his great thoughts." Which is obviously absurd, Friedrich's object not being to lay Austria flat, or drive animosities to the sanguinary point, and kindle all Europe into war; but merely to extract, with the minimum of violence, something like ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... marks for keeping it on. Thus the proceedings appropriately began. William tried in vain to learn the terms of the law under which he was arrested, maintaining that he was innocent of any illegal act. Finally, after an absurd and unjust hearing, the jury, who appreciated the situation, brought in a verdict of "guilty of speaking in Gracious Street." The judges refused to accept the verdict, and kept the jury without food or drink for two days, trying to make ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... day, but at dark will manage to get on some high perch and flop down on your shoulder or head when you least expect it and least desire it, too. The little uncanny thing cannot fly, really, but the webs enable it to take tremendous leaps. I expect that it looks absurd for us to be taking across the country a small menagerie, but the squirrels were presents, and of course had to go, and the chickens are beautiful, and give us quantities of eggs. Besides, if we had left the chickens, Charlie might not have gone, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Candida here, and Candida there, and Candida everywhere! (She licks the envelope.) It's enough to drive anyone out of their SENSES (thumping the envelope to make it stick) to hear a perfectly commonplace woman raved about in that absurd manner merely because she's got good hair, ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... Jews acted in admitting or rejecting books into their Scriptures it might be difficult for us to determine. In some cases we know that they were fanciful and absurd. But the grounds on which the Christians proceeded in making up their canon we ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... South Meeting-House is not to be passed without mention. It is among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days. Neither its architecture not its age, however, is its chief warrant for our notice. The absurd number of windows in this battered old structure is what strikes the passer-by. The church was erected by subscription, and these closely set large windows are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the wealthiest citizens of the period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... libraries of comic verse; yet, with diligent search, no humorous poems by women have been found which are of merit sufficient to give them claim to a place in a collection like this. That lively wit and graceful gayety, that quick perception of the absurd, which ladies are continually displaying in their conversation and correspondence, never, it seems, suggest the successful epigram, or inspire ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... pique myself upon my hair. There was but one opinion about that. I have often heard even grown-up people remark, 'How ingeniously that doll's wig is put on, and how nicely it is arranged!' while at the same time my rising vanity was crushed by the insinuation that I had an absurd smirk ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... The letters were signed "Snodgrass," and there are but two of them. The second, dated exactly four months after the first, is in the same assassinating dialect, and recounts among other things the scarcity of coal in Cincinnati and an absurd adventure in which Snodgrass has a baby left on ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Impassive, remorseless, sinister, it was content to wait, well aware that all suspense was in its favor. Then I said to myself that I would cross the room, and so attain my object. I made a step—and drew back, frightened by the sound of a creaking board. Absurd! But it was quite a minute before I dared to make another step. I had meant to walk straight across to the other door, passing in my course close by the occupied chair. I did not do so; I kept round by the ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... that one grape should be the grape for this immense country of ours; the sooner we try to adapt the variety to the locality—not the locality to the variety—the sooner we will succeed. The idea is absurd, and unworthy of a thinking people, that one variety should succeed equally well or ill in such a diversity of soil and climate as we have in this broad land of ours. It is in direct conflict with the laws of vegetable physiology, as well ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... police regulations are, others are very absurd. If a person is wounded or otherwise injured, no one may go near him; for, if the wounded man should die, the person who went to help him would be carried off to prison, and certainly be tried for the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... to her, and offering to relieve Mr. Brooks of all the trouble and responsibility that might be incurred by the journey. She would send her son and her family physician. Witherspoon grunted at so absurd a request and was surprised that Brooks should grant it. The old woman might die on the train, and besides, what possible pleasure could she extract from such a visit? It ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... is something absurd about all this," said Helen. "A man with such a discovery, such powers, using them in such a manner, for such a ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... there will be a clear advantage in fostering the natural disposition of the father to associate his child's welfare with his individual egotism, and to dispense some of his energies and earnings in supplementing the common provision of the State. It is an absurd disregard of a natural economy to leave the innate philoprogenitiveness of either sex uncultivated. Unless the parents continue in close relationship, if each is passing through a series of marriages, the dangers of a conflict ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... 'Illegal and impossible, it will spell disgrace and misfortune to us all. The Emperor will interfere, for this is going too far. We must hinder this farcical ceremony; his Highness cannot marry two wives! It will be Moempelgard over again! Think how absurd, Graevenitz! Cannot you see that this farce ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... time great cruelties were practised to compel uniformity. To that absurd shrine many thousand invaluable lives were sacrificed. Blessed be God, that happier days have dawned upon us. Antichrist can no longer put the Christian to a cruel death. It very rarely sends one to prison for refusing obedience to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... small schoolboy shrugged his shoulders and went home, to be made a great fuss over by his mother and sisters, which he thought absurd; but he liked the quiet look of pleasure his father gave him when he came in after hearing the news in the town, though he only said, 'Good business, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... in Dorsham 'street,' no single person went up it or down, without the fact being known sooner or later—generally on the instant—to every dweller therein; and for four strangers, newly come to live in the place, to expect to escape notice was absurd. ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... watched the old man, prematurely bent by labour, eating his hard crust, cheerful and contented, after giving to others the fruit of his many years of toil, I thought, 'If man were nothing but an animal, such a life would be not only absurd, but impossible.' Another glass of wine made my host and cook still more talkative. He told me that not long ago he had walked from this village to Tulle, distant about thirty-five miles, to see a soldier son who was ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... government, almost in despite of which he had conquered kingdoms for France. He therefore regarded now with little sympathy the aspirations after republican organisation which he had himself originally stimulated among the northern Italians. He knew, however, that the Directory had, by absurd and extravagant demands, provoked the Pope to break off the treaty of Bologna, and to raise his army to the number of 40,000,—that Naples had every disposition to back his Holiness with 30,000 soldiers, provided any reverse ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Rather an absurd little person, Mrs. Bough. Yet, a tragic little person, in Saxham's eyes at least, by the time she had ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... irrepressible glee.] The servant! Why, how absurd you are, Hedda. It's only my old Berta! Why, I'll tell ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... that this was one for Larry and at least ten for Kid Twist, Nosey Murphy, and Bert Rhine. I'll not be so absurd as to say that the mate is afraid of those gangsters. I doubt if he has ever experienced fear. It is not in him. On the other hand, I am confident that he apprehends trouble from these men, and that it was for their benefit he ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... street-fakirs, peered into shop-windows, threw himself upon the grass of the public squares and stared up at the blue sky. He had very little personal consciousness; he seemed to have lost track of himself. He had an absurd feeling that he had come away from somewhere and left behind a vital ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the young man was saying, he was thinking of Biddy; he hardly thought of anything else but her now; she was absorbing the mind of his entire parish, she interrupted the Mass, he could not go into his church without being accosted by this absurd old woman, and this young man, a highly cultivated young man, who had just come from Italy, and who took the highest interest in architecture, would not be able to see his church in peace. As soon as they entered it they would be accosted by this old woman; she would follow them ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... words that by the Creator he intends an unintelligent power, undirected force, or necessity, then he has put his case so as to invite disbelief in it. For then blind forces have produced not only manifest adaptions of means to specific ends—which is absurd enough—but better adjusted and more perfect instruments or machines than intellect (that is, human intellect) can contrive and human skill execute—which no ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... how absurd!" she exclaimed. "I've known him for years and years, and he's one of the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... this condition is called, syphilis fills the whole horizon. If they have not been too seriously disturbed by the idea, a simple statement of the facts does wonders toward relieving their minds. A few of them cling with the greatest tenacity to the most absurd notions. For those victims of the disease who are the prey of morbid anxiety the assurance that it is one of the most curable of all the serious diseases, and that if they are persistent and determined to get well, they can scarcely help doing so, usually sets their minds at rest. The idea ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... man that infatuates—that blinds one's judgment, certainly," said Papalier. "His master, Bayou, spoiled him with letting him educate himself to an absurd extent. I always told Bayou so; and there is no saying now what the consequences may be. It is my opinion that we have not heard the last of ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... at first of doing what the little boys did; but when they saw some other youths like themselves get on, they put their pride in their pockets, and each mounted a tricycle. How they did waggle from side to side; and how impossible it was not to laugh and shout at the absurd feeling ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... regard to one of the most ingenious Divines, our Metropolis has to boast of. One Reason may perhaps be alledged, for such an unexpected Alteration of Sentiment, viz. That tho' we disbelieve these Doctrines, because they are absurd, yet we hold at the same time, others, equally repugnant to Reason, and to Common Sense; and certainly we may as reasonably embrace the one as retain the other. Besides, with what reasonable Expectation of Success could such a Man as this sit down to argue with another of absurd Principles, ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... "could scarcely believe," as he said repeatedly, "that Harry was so mad, or such a fool. As to Moriarty, a few guineas would have settled the business, if no rout had been made about it. Sitting up all night with such a fellow, and being in such agonies about him—how absurd! What more could he have done, if he had shot a gentleman, or his best friend? But Harry ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... North Pole," 1774, of Constantine John Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, is gently ridiculed, and so also some incidents from Patrick Brydone's "Tour through Sicily and Malta" (1773), are, for no obvious reason, contemptuously dragged in. The exploitation of absurd and libellous chap-book lives of Pope Clement XIV., the famous Ganganelli, can only be described as a low bid for vulgar applause. A French translation of Baron Friedrich von Trenck's celebrated Memoirs appeared at Metz in 1787, and it would certainly seem that ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... is, indeed, difficult to avoid one, call it what you will, and quite as difficult to find a more absurd name than that adopted, unless, indeed, (why the machine goes but five miles an hour,) it is called a diligence from not being diligent, as the speaker of our House of Commons may be so designated from not speaking. It consists of three bodies, carries eighteen inside, and is not unfrequently ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... that," said Uncle John. "I will admit, in advance, that a daily paper in such a place is absurd. None of us quite understood that when we established the Tribune. My nieces thought a daily the only satisfactory sort of newspaper, because they were used to such, but it did not take long to convince me—and perhaps them—that in spite of all our efforts the Millville ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... it's absolutely absurd, Richard," began one of these, as they approached—"your putting such notions into ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... come of that stealthy raid which had exposed neither rule breakers nor spies, still Tom thought about it all day, more or less, and he was glad that Uncle Sam was so watchful and thorough. It made him realize, all the more, how absurd and preposterous it would be for him, the captain's mess boy, to concern himself or ask questions or say anything about serious matters which were ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... You shut your frontiers to strangers in war time; you may close them to your citizens. A city is legally put in a state of siege during a sedition. We can put the nation in a state of siege in case of external danger co-existent with internal conspiracy. By what absurd abuse of liberty can a state be constrained to tolerate on a foreign soil gatherings of citizens armed against itself, which it would not tolerate in its own land? And if these gatherings should be culpable without, why should the state be interdicted ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... How did it happen? Who's going? Edith's story sounded so absurd to me I could make precious little out of it. She insisted that ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... force at the beginning and end of the campaign would show the number of killed and permanently disabled. The absence of data as to the additions to his field force through the means which I have analyzed, shows how absurd a result was drawn from his premises. The reports of casualties are not unfrequently faulty, but with all their faults they would be much more valuable if a complete series existed which could be compared and tested. It would require a minute ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... as it began, the storm ceased. The hail stopped, the thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and the sun burst out merry and radiant over a world so changed that it seemed an absurd thing to think that a scant three quarters of an hour could have effected ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... confidently follow? Has he the genius and the will to solve the problem before him, to reconcile liberty with authority? Posterity alone will be able to pronounce with unanimity. For ourselves, we must answer in the negative. We do not denounce him, we believe it absurd to denounce him, as a conspirator or a usurper. If he was a conspirator, France was his accomplice. There cannot be a doubt that the nation not only was ready to accept him, but sought him; not indeed for his personal qualities, not as recognizing its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... in the half-earnest, half-joking tone which always used to make Charles laugh, "it will really be too absurd to advertise: 'According to an amicable agreement, from such and such a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... of six thousand metres (two miles fourteen furlongs) which now bears his name, and also the Great St. Leger at Doncaster. He was beaten but once—in the Cambridgeshire, where he was weighted at a positively absurd figure, and when, moreover, the track was excessively heavy. After his retirement from the turf he was sold in 1871 for breeding purposes in England for two hundred thousand francs, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... a pretty fair subject for ridicule: it seems rather too absurd to teach a bee anything! Nevertheless, it is worth while to think of it a little. Most of us know that by injudicious training, horses, cattle, dogs, &c., may be rendered extremely vicious. If there is no perceptible analogy between these and bees, experience ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... "You absurd girl! what a question! Well, to be candid, I saw much to approve and much to disapprove. One thing I did not like—that was the young ladies invariably flirted with the married gentlemen, and vice versa,—anything I despise in this world ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... your boy might come out on to the stairs when one is going up or down. It would be unfortunate that he should see them at all, but if it were but a boy he caught sight of he would not at any rate associate them with your party. These precautions may seem to you absurd, but it is often by little accidents that things are discovered when as it seemed everything had been ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... right or wrong, the baggage-carrying animals did their best when Griggs was near them, and a few absurd words from his powerful lungs stopped kicking, biting, and squealing when a revolution seemed to be on the way, and a fight of heels had begun, to the imminent risk ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... not to be found in books. The press is the means by which intelligent men now converse with each other, and persons of all classes and all pursuits convey each the contribution of his individual experience. It was, therefore, he said, as absurd to hold book-knowledge at present in contempt, as it would be for a man to avail himself only of his own eyes and ears, and to aim at nothing which could not be performed exclusively by his own arms. The use and necessity ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... another place (p. 15) he suggests that "our God, the Captain of Mankind," may one day enable us to "pierce the black wrappings," or, in other words, to get behind the veil. There is nothing, then, unreasonable or absurd in man's incurable inquisitiveness as to God, in the non-Wellsian sense of the term. God simply means the key to the mystery of existence; and though the keys hitherto offered have all either jammed or turned round and round ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... was admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying. After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her: and she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to listen to a proposal patiently; whistling ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... for cast-off clothing, waistcoats, buckles, cotton socks and sugar-plums. The boy had no suspicion of the importance of his gossip. Violette in his reports blackened all Michu's actions and gave them a criminal aspect by absurd suggestions,—unknown, of course, to the bailiff, who was aware, however, of the base part played by the farmer, and took delight in ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... ancients. Some suppose that they were intended as places for secret meetings, magazines for corn, or lighthouses; but their structure, and great distance from the sea, are sufficient refutations of these absurd hypotheses. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... superior skill, but by observing certain signs which usually precede them. There is often so little apparent connection between the sign and the event, that men who value themselves on their wisdom are apt to slight such warnings as impertinent and absurd. But they had better enquire diligently into facts, and neither receive nor reject them too hastily. In the present case, it is a clear matter of fact that the sea, in the latitude of 18 deg. N. between Africa and America, is frequently covered with weeds to a great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Munster, solemnly. "On the whole, sire, no one here believes in the absurd old story, and I am sure no one knows of the White Lady otherwise than ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... the paper and put it back. "The evidence will clear him," said Allan. "It must. The very doubt is absurd." ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Is it my will to go?—is not used except to repeat another's question. It would be absurd for one to ask ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... by unscrupulous creditors, to say that all debt obligations are obliterated in the United States, and now we commence anew, each possessing all he has at the time free from incumbrance? These propositions are too absurd to be entertained for a moment by thinking or honest people. Yet every delay in preparation for final resumption partakes of this dishonesty, and is only less in degree as the hope is held out that a convenient ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... soldier, rough-rider, riding-master, or any horseman whatever, who turned his horse, single-handed, on the proper rein. But I may assert that it is an exceedingly nice and delicate art. It is the opera-dancing of riding. And it would be as absurd to put the skill of its professors in requisition in common riding or across country, as to require Taglioni to chasser over a ploughed field. For single-handed indications, supposing them to be correctly given—which, as I have said, I have never known; but supposing them to be ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... English strong enough. And "must" is absurd, so long as your liberty is in your own power. If ever I "don't choose," as you say, it will be because ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... of reality in this which transcends ordinary conceptions of what is called genius. To deem a woman requisite aid in such intellectual labor—for so we may well call the system of the Templars—would at that era have been incomprehensibly absurd to any save the worshippers of the bi-sexed Baphomet and the disciples of the House of Wisdom, with whom the equal culture of the sexes was a leading aim. The extraordinary tact with which Scott has contrived to make Bois Guilbert repulsive to the mass of readers, while at the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... questioningly, her eyes like blue flower cups, a strange little mixture of solemnity and bubbling mirth, of shyness and impulsiveness. She had fat legs that creased above the tops of the absurd little boots that looked to be too tight; sometimes she rolled and tumbled in an ecstasy of abandon, and again she would sit motionless, as though absorbed in dreams. Her hair was like corn silk in the sun, twisting up into soft ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "What an absurd idea," said the hen. "You have nothing else to do, therefore you have foolish fancies. If you could purr or lay eggs, they ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... negotiator and friend on the part of Thalermacher, and who felt himself deeply compromised by the imputations put forth against his principal, declared publicly that the military court which had condemned the Herr von Thalermacher, after hearing only his accuser, was a one-sided and absurd tribunal, and that it was not ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... his manner that he was very much disturbed. Indeed, he fancied that his worst fears were realised, and that Faustina was really trying to extract information from him for his own conviction. Her thoughts were actually very far from any such idea. She would have considered it quite as absurd to accuse the poor wretch before her as she had thought it outrageous that she herself should be suspected. Her father had always seemed to her a very imposing personage, and she could not conceive that he should have met his death at the hands ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... day when Catholicism is no longer considered by intelligent men to be too evidently absurd to be argued with. Definite reasons are given by those who stand outside our borders for the attitude they maintain; definite accusations are made which must either be allowed ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... members of a ring who divided their ill-gotten gains. These increases ranged from $1,000 to $100,000 each, aggregating a loss to the State of many hundreds of thousands of dollars. "The corruption is so enormous," said the World, "as to render absurd any attempt ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... in the days prior to the American Revolution, occupied a similar position that the monopolists, and wealthy do in politics to-day. They were the aristocrats, and for the common people to clamor for political freedom was absurd. The idea of republicanism was as loathsome to them and watched with as much jealousy as an important labor movement is to-day. The royalists called the men who clamored for civil and religious liberty fanatics, just ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... their costume, and wearing, to complete the comic effect, a most ultra-serious expression of countenance, and he will easily believe that it was impossible for me to be very devout in their presence. The attire of the females, though not quite so absurd, was by no means picturesque; some wore white, or striped men's shirts, which did not conceal their knees, and others were wrapped in sheets. Their hair was cut quite close to the roots, according to a fashion introduced by the Missionaries, and their heads covered by little European chip ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... satisfied with this mere caricature of the 'apologetic' argument? Having set up a man of straw, he has no difficulty in knocking him down. He has only to declare that 'the identification of an eye-witness by details is absurd.' It would have been more to the purpose if he had boldly grappled with such arguments as he might have found in Mr Sanday's book for instance [15:1]; arguments founded not on the minuteness of details, but on the thorough naturalness with which the incidents develop themselves, on the subtle ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... precautions for maintaining the men in health and strength to do their work, it is obvious that the observance of these abstinences or taboos after the work is done, that is, when the game is killed and the fish caught, must be wholly superfluous, absurd, and inexplicable. But as I shall now show, these taboos often continue to be enforced or even increased in stringency after the death of the animals, in other words, after the hunter or fisher has accomplished his object by making his ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to guaranty and protect a revived State Government, constituted in whole, or in preponderating part, from the very element against whose hostility it is to be protected, is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the sound; and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... Did you let her go?' came pestering remarks, too absurd for replies if they had not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Christianity" for those who have passed the age of childhood. Many of his Unitarian brethren will hardly agree with his radical Rationalism. Belonging to the extreme Left Wing, he holds that it is the province of liberal Christians to slough off the absurd doctrines now prevalent,—"not to remould the age,—to recast it, to regenerate it, to cross it or struggle with it, but to penetrate its meaning, enter into its temper, sympathize with its hopes, blend with its endeavors. The life of the time appoints the creed of the time, and modifies ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... that swell the big man's heart to bursting find rather absurd expression in his savage objurgation of the innocent brown charger. But Captain Bingo, when he stoops over the camp-bed where lies Beauvayse, kisses him solemnly and clumsily upon the forehead, and then goes heavily striding out of the death-chamber with his ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... were wilful, absurd originals, with a happy obstinacy of temper, whether derived from Mowbray or Scrogie I know not, but which led them so often into opposition, that the offended father, Reginald S. Mowbray, turned his recusant son Scrogie fairly out ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... judge was rather spry— Oh yes, he was! You'd not have thought him half so spry, But oh, he was! He said, "Why really, on my word! Disqualify that shocking bird!— Absurd!" ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice
... to start now, Stanley. I think it is absurd waiting any longer, for there is never any saying what might take place. That Burmese general, who seems to be an obstinate beggar, might take it into his head to place a guard on the top of the hill; and then all your labour will ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... George was in a mood for any adventure having action in it, for he was nearly out of money. He did not suspect the real purpose of the absurd wager, and after a moment's consideration of the forty pounds ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... humour in the situation, which is very absurd of her, and, as I point out, merely reflects on herself. Surely she doesn't wish to admit that it is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... that implies folly; La Rochejaquelein is a superb sub-lieutenant; Silz is an officer good for the open field, but not suited for a war that needs a man of expedients; Cathelineau is a simple teamster; Stofflet is a crafty game-keeper; Berard is inefficient; Boulainvillers is absurd; Charette is horrible. I make no mention of Gaston the barber. Mordemonbleu! what is the use of opposing revolution, and what is the difference between ourselves and the republicans, if we set barbers over the heads of noblemen! The fact is, that this beastly revolution ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... had no pity. "Stand up, you hound!" he commanded. The command was absurd, and he laughed savagely, tickled by its absurdity even in his fury, while he smote again and again. He showered blows until, between blow and blow, he caught his breath and panted. Mr. Silk's screams had sunk to blubbings and whimpers. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... on chastity, as a charge of conceited foolishness. An English woman who typifies the begueule may be spotless as snow; but she is presumed to have snow's other quality, and at the same time to be a thoroughly absurd and intolerable creature. Well, here is the point of difference. Fastidiousness of speech is not a direct outcome of Puritanism, as our literature sufficiently proves; it is a refinement of civilization following ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... a soldier—lofty, haughty, seemingly overbearing, yet, at heart, noble and generous, and to his friends accessible in the extreme. To his military notions, nothing could be accomplished without soldiers, and for the people to carry a revolution against soldiers seemed to him absurd." ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... a state of constant activity. Moreover, they observed that he had a habit of arbitrarily taking up two or three words here and there, and repeating them again and again from sheer haste. He seemed to be stumbling over himself. Sometimes this appeared absurd, but then he laughed and it was forgotten. The school-master and the father sat watching to see if any of the old thoughtfulness was gone; but it did not seem so. Oyvind remembered everything, and was even the one to remind the others that the boat ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Vitellius and you to myself. Your house has received the insignia of a triumph.[400] You have two young sons, one of whom is already old enough to fill the throne, and in his first years of service made a name for himself in the German army.[401] It would be absurd for me not to give way to one whose son I should adopt, were I emperor myself. Apart from this, we shall stand on a different footing in success and in failure, for if we succeed I shall have such honour as you grant me: of the risk and the dangers we shall share the ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... she interrupted. "I don't mean that at all, and you know it! But for a great, tall fellow like you to be so unreasonably jealous of a little ten-year-old does seem absurd. I love Doodles, of course; everybody does. But, David, you ought to know that's all there is ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... his own cipher, and advise him "to let no one in the world see his letter." Whereupon Card. La Bourdaisiere rather irreverently observes: "Je croy que le bonhomme pense que le roy dechiffre luy mesme ses lettres!" a supposition singularly absurd in the case of Henry, who hated business of every kind. La Bourdaisiere conceived it, on the other hand, to be for his own interest to take the first opportunity to give private information of the entire ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... symbol continually diminishing values, we are led up to a state of things in which the formula has what is called a critical value; and if we inquire into the state of things the instant before, we find that the formula becomes absurd. ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... else she had met and flirted with since her school-days, during which period of sincerity and immaturity she had had several acute attacks of what she imagined to be the "grand passion." But as the objects were as absurd as her emotions, and the malady soon ran, its course, she began to regard the whole subject as a jest, and think, with her fashionable mother, that the heart was the last organ to be consulted in the choice of a husband, as it was almost sure to lead to folly. While her heart slept, it was easy ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... newspaper in his own palace, which is in the highest degree absurd and laughable. It does not treat of politics or the occurrences of the day, but exclusively of domestic incidents, conversation and relative affairs. It states, for example, "that the sultan's wife, A., owed the laundress, B., three rupees, and that the laundress ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... outside the palace began to hear of this absurd fashion. Mothers bound the feet of their little girls, in such a manner as to stop their growth. The bones of the toes were bent backwards and broken, so eager were the elders to have their daughters ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... into the little body are poisonous. They are the result of degenerative changes—diseases—in the bodies of rabbits, horses, cows and other animals. Nature's law is that health must be deserved or earned. Health means cleanliness, so it really is absurd to force into the body these products of animal decay. Statistics can be given, showing how beneficial these agents are, but they are misleading. In the days of public and official belief in witchcraft it was not difficult ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... already remorseful. After all, what business of his was it to interfere, especially when he knew that she attached such absurd importance to his opinion? "I hardly know," he said, "but there must be something; I am ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... beyond dispute. An everlasting hell is in the nature of things a contradiction, for the finite cannot eternally bar the way of the infinite reality whose uprising is the cause of its pain; if it could, it would itself be infinite, which is absurd. Sin is essentially the endeavour to live for the finite, the separative, the divisive, as opposed to the infinite, the whole-ward, the All. Which will win in ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... be no difficulties on the ground of race," Terence said. "We are fighting in a common cause, against a common enemy; and dissensions between ourselves are as absurd ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... the attitude of Albuquerque, his desire to earn the friendship of Hindu rulers and his unrelenting enmity to all Muhammadans. He had not the absurd notion which Almeida attributed to him of desiring to establish a direct Portuguese rule all over India. He wished rather to pose as the destroyer of Muhammadanism and the liberator of the natives. In return for this service Portugal ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... not love disputes, and shall not argue with you about Bruce; but, if you like him, you shall not choose an author for me. It is the most absurd, obscure, and tiresome book I know. I shall admire if you have a clear conception about most of the persons and matters in his work; but, in fact, I do not believe you have. Pray, can you distinguish between ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... with trembling fingers, almost falling, she was looking for her veil; I saw that another word of courageous truth, and the terrible vision would vanish never to appear again. But some stranger within me—not I—not I—uttered the following absurd, ridiculous phrase, in which, despite its chilliness, rang so much jealousy ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Mrs. Hotchkiss is like one of those magic keys in fairy stories? All doors open to her. Between you and me I have been thinking Aiken's floating population snobbish, purse-proud, and generally absurd. And instead, the place seems to exist so that kindness and hospitality may not fail on earth. Of course I'm not up to genuine sprees, such as dining out and sitting up till half-past ten or eleven. But I can go to luncheons, and watch other people play tennis, and poke about ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and I trust that you will come also. We shall first go to Cliffe, which will be on our road, and, indeed, I believe that for some distance Albert's lands join mine. Then we shall go on to my castle—it sounds absurd, doesn't it, father?—and doubtless we shall be able to stay in Hoo, or if not, 'tis but two or three miles to Stroud, where we are sure ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... best munitions of war had been sent south. Of the rifled cannon belonging to the United States not one was left. Only a handful of regular troops were within call, and the resignations of their officers came in daily. The plight of the navy and treasury was no better. Amazing coolness and the absurd prejudice against coercing States largely possessed even the loyal masses. The attack on Sumter was thus ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... of all the commotion was this. There had appeared in a morning paper a reprint of a highly disrespectful report made to the Academie of Florence upon Astier-Rehu's 'Galileo' and the manifestly apocryphal and absurd (sic) historical documents which were published with it. The report had been sent with the greatest privacy to the President of the Academie Francaise, and for some days there had been considerable excitement at the Institute, where Astier-Rehu's ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... proposition expressed in concrete language. This is a very frequent mode, not only of pretended proof, but of pretended explanation; and is parodied when Moliere (Le Malade Imaginaire) makes one of his absurd ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... nothing without tangible proof, were the best remedy for a dreamy romantic tendency to the weakness and credulity which are in the present day termed poetry and faith. It is curious to observe how these vague theories reduce themselves to the absurd when brought into practice. There are two Miss Wellwoods here, daughters of that unfortunate man who fell in a duel with old Sir Guy Morville, who seem to make it their business to become the general subject of animadversion, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... taken of the circumstances as above, these indications are perfectly harmonious and effective; but, in the view of the case which this argument supposes, they are all inconsistent and useless.—But, secondly, if this argument proves any thing, it proves too much, and would infer the absurd proposition, that physical and intellectual qualities are superior in value to moral attainments;—a proposition that is contradicted, as we have shewn, by every operation and circumstance in Nature ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... and to the youngest student was exactly the same: and to all he showed the same winning courtesy. He would receive with interest the most trifling observation in any branch of natural history; and however absurd a blunder one might make, he pointed it out so clearly and kindly, that one left him no way disheartened, but only determined to be more accurate the next time. In short, no man could be better formed to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... there exists no Report;—for it would be absurd to dignify with that appellation the meagre and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... troubling you again?" he said. "How absurd! Are you going to cheat the poor creatures you attend ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... sea-captain as truth—these are sentiments and emotions copied from a healthy and worthy model. Matthew Merrygreek, an unmistakable 'Vice' ever at Ralph's elbow, is of all Vices the shrewdest striker of laughter out of a block of stupidity: it is from his ingenious brain that almost every absurd scene is evolved for the ridiculing of Ralph. Thoroughly human, and quite assertive, are the lower characters, the maid-servants and men-servants, Madge Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace, Truepenny, Dobinet Doughty and the rest. Need it be added that the battle in Act IV is pure fooling? ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... first sentence of this passage is an absurd truism; but the proposition in question can be resolved into—An animal is rational or it is irrational. Again, "the former does not belong to pure categoricals," it is simply disjunctive. MR. INGLEBY falls into ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... is hypercritical, that the name of Don Juan is a mistake. Every one knows Don Juan, and to imagine him arguing in the fashion of this poem is absurd. He would instantly, without a word, have left Elvire, and abandoned Fifine in a few days. The connection then of the long discussions in the poem with his name throws an air of unreality over the whole of it. The Don Juan ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... avoiding her of late, a natural reaction from the strain of too-excessive gratitude. A man cannot be continually humble before the young! And it was no pleasure to be reminded by her candid eyes of his late misfortunes and of her absurd ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... We consider an inference logically drawn from established premises to be true. Yet in millions of cases men have been wrong in the inferences they have thought thus drawn. Do we therefore argue that it is absurd to consider an inference true on no other ground than that it is logically drawn from established premises? No: we say that though men may have taken for logical inferences, inferences that were not logical, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... into our set. Mrs. Lyndsay was a great favourite with all of us, charming manners,—perfectly correct, too,—thorough Vipont, thorough gentlewoman, but artful! Oh, so artful! She humoured poor Mrs. Darrell's absurd vanity; but she took care not to injure herself. Of course, Darrell's wife, and a Vipont—though only a Vipont Crooke—had free passport into the outskirts of good society, the great parties, and so forth. But there it stopped; even ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are to be introduced here and there, and the intervals between them to be filled up in the delivery, is the surest of all ways to produce constraint. It is like the embarrassment of framing verses to prescribed rhymes; as vexatious, and as absurd. To be compelled to shape the course of remark so as to suit a sentence which is by and by to come, or to introduce certain expressions which are waiting for their place, is a check to the natural current of thought. The inevitable ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... went up it or down, without the fact being known sooner or later—generally on the instant—to every dweller therein; and for four strangers, newly come to live in the place, to expect to escape notice was absurd. ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... men; we went up Kettle Hill together. Then came the Philippine troubles, then that Chinese affair. Then I did staff duty, and could not stand the inactivity and resigned. They had no use for me in Manchuria; I tired of waiting, and went to Venezuela. The prospects for service there were absurd; I heard of the Moorish troubles and went to Morocco. Others of my sort swarmed there; matters dragged and dragged, and the Kaiser never ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... that Joan would accompany Reid in the night to Swan Carlson's house on any pretext he could devise in his crafty mind was absurd. It was all a bluff, Reid playing on Swan's credulity to induce him to hand over the money, when he would make a dash for the ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... still holding him). I'm very annoyed with you. It's perfectly absurd the way you work. (To Tranto.) Do you know he was at the office all day Christmas Day and all day Boxing Day? (To Culver.) You really must ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... applied to a body that not only makes, but which executes, the law, is so palpably absurd, that I am surprised any man can presume to use it. But, Mr. Bragg, you have seen documents that cannot err, and know that the public has not the smallest right to this bit ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... sense of the ludicrous was not shared with his admirers. On the contrary, the women saw nothing absurd in drowning him with flowers and the men in "chairing him." Henry Villard relates that he saw him battling with his supporters literally, and beseeching them who bore him shoulder-high, with his long limbs gesticulating like a spider's, for them ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Squire;' a title which has been accorded to the head of the family since time immemorial. I think it best to give you these hints about my worthy old father, to prepare you for any little eccentricities that might otherwise appear absurd." ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... in his death, was alone more than sufficient to nullify the vague rumours brought against him. Richard himself in a few scornful words disposed of this accusation. The accusation that he, Richard of England, would stoop to poison a man whom he could have crushed in an instant, was too absurd to be seriously treated. ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... Jew of the time a Samaritan was more unclean than a Gentile of any other nationality. It is interesting to note the extreme and even absurd restrictions then in force in the matter of regulating unavoidable relations between the two peoples. The testimony of a Samaritan could not be heard before a Jewish tribunal. For a Jew to eat food prepared ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... happiness. 'Il me faut des geants.' An essential aspect of this question of heroic comedy is the question of drama in rhyme. There is nothing that affords so easy a point of attack for the dramatic realist as the conduct of a play in verse. According to his canons, it is indeed absurd to represent a number of characters facing some terrible crisis in their lives by capping rhymes like a party playing 'bouts rimes.' In his eyes it must appear somewhat ridiculous that two enemies taunting each other with insupportable insults should obligingly provide ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... and yet, absurd to say, I have tried the fellow, and believe him perfectly trustworthy—at least ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... pressing it to the lips of the sufferer, "it'll set you up like a new pin." So the schoolmaster drank and was comforted, and Coristine took a nip also, and they felt better, and laughed and joked, and said simultaneously, "It's really too absurd about ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... continued their protests after the vote had been taken, declaring it false and absurd to present the address when it did not express the sentiment of the House, but only of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 35, July 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... my first impressions in this absurd place of education; and, to be frank, they were far from disagreeable. As long as I was rich, my evenings and afternoons would be my own; the clerk must keep my books, the clerk could do the jostling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery. Being obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 90. The absurd doctrine of Redemption, and the frequent exterminations attributed to Jehovah, impress one with the idea of an unjust and ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... to have the opportunity of meeting you, Mr. Cleek," he said. "At first I thought Mr. Narkom's insistence upon my making the journey here blindfolded singularly melodramatic and absurd. I can now realize, since you are so little similar to one's preconceived idea of a police detective, that you may well wish to keep everything connected with your residence and your official capacity an inviolable secret. ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Rising Sun," delightful "Third Kingdom of Merry Dreams," of you I'm amorous. Must that exclude me from the Wreath? Absurd! I'm prettily pious, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... what my orders were. This officer was, as I before observed, a man who had no friends, and was therefore entirely dependent on the captain for his promotion, and was afraid to act contrary to his lordship's orders, however absurd. I told him, that whatever might me the captain's orders, I would ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... no subject on which it is more difficult to find a common ground than this. To some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the question—on what are your moral standards based? To others what we call our "moral standards" are so obviously absurd and "unnatural" that the question has for them no meaning. And between these extremes there are so many varieties of opinion that one can take nothing as generally ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
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