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Absurd   Listen
noun
Absurd  n.  An absurdity. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Absurd" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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

... 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 ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... 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

... "You absurd child, what in the world could he be to me? It is easy enough to see he has no eyes for any one ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... 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

... absurd, wholly useless memory came to her from the preceding day. Yes, it would be no more than a prayer, but she would send it out blindly into the air.... ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... 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



Words linked to "Absurd" :   situation, foolish, state of affairs, laughable, cockeyed, absurdness, illogical, ridiculous



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