"Absurdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought someone was listening, was coming in. We are always talking of spies till one gets absurdly nervous and imagines all sorts of foolish things. I have never said so to anyone else, but there is always the feeling of being watched. It is so difficult to know who is for and who against us, and so easy to give evidence without meaning to be a traitor. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... faithful to the republic, without king, sovereign, or lord." Under pretext of having taken this monstrous oath, Lord Clancharlie was living out of the kingdom, and, in the face of the general joy, thought that he had the right to be sad. He had a morose esteem for that which was no more, and was absurdly attached to things ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... greatest diversion the country affords, is an indication of the distinct superiority of the quick-witted Celt to the dull Saxon hind. An Irish peasant cultivator is a being of greater faculty of expansion than Wessex Hodge. He is profoundly ignorant and absurdly superstitious, but he is naturally keen-witted, and his innate gifts are brightened by contact with his fellow man. He is not a ploughman, for he often cultivates with the spade alone, and he has, ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... plate of food in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. The expression on his face was absurdly like that of a mother yearning over a sick child. "Mein liebes Kind—mein liebes Kind," he stammered when she came out, so woebegone, so crushed, so utterly unlike any Priscilla of any one of her moods ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... my gloves, my shoes, my flowing sash. My wonderful dress, in which I had taken so much satisfaction, gave me the most trouble. I was suddenly paralyzed by a conviction that it was too short, and it seemed to me I stood on absurdly long legs. And ten thousand people were looking up ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... soldiers trundling a breadwagon by a rope, Stewart stood on the pavement and dodged verbal brickbats of Viennese idioms and German epithets. He drew his chin into the up-turned collar of his overcoat and waited, an absurdly patient figure, until the hail of consonants had subsided into a rain of tears. Then he took the girl's elbow again and led her, childishly weeping, into a narrow side street beyond the prying ears and eyes ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of his time downstairs. He was no sinner turned saint. He still let the lash of his tongue play over the household, but his old zest in it seemed gone. He made, too, small tentative overtures to Lily, intended to be friendly, but actually absurdly self-conscious. Grace, watching him, often felt him rather touching. It was obvious to her that he blamed himself, rather than ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the block may be heavier, or perchance may be more light, than the outside. How then may I with ease satisfy the scholar as to the quantity of wood that hath been cut away?" This at first sight looks a difficult question, but it is so absurdly simple that the method employed by the carpenter should be known to everybody to-day, for it is a very ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... dearest, how absurdly you talk!" interrupted her husband. "You know well that without that my act would be commonplace, that no manager would want either it or me. And how, pray, should we live if that were ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the avenue, through a city humming with the first reviving breath of winter. They were at the great hotel, and Rachael was laughing in Elinor Vanderwall's embrace. The linen shop, the milliner, a dinner absurdly happy, and one of the new plays—a sunshiny morning when she and Elinor breakfasted in their rooms, and opened box after box of gowns and hats—the hours fled ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... councils will insure us solid advantages from the establishment of the proposed judiciary, without exposing us to any of the inconveniences which have been predicted from that source. PUBLIUS. 1 Article 3, sec. I. 2 This power has been absurdly represented as intended to abolish all the county courts in the several States, which are commonly called inferior courts. But the expressions of the Constitution are, to constitute "tribunals INFERIOR TO THE SUPREME COURT''; ...
— The Federalist Papers
... glad to see him getting his deserts. What fun we are going to have when you get back to Shadywell, and we lay our plans for a new John Grier! I feel as though I had spent this past year learning, and am now just ready to begin. We'll turn this into the nicest orphan asylum that ever lived. I'm so absurdly happy at the prospect that I start in the morning with a spring, and go about ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... as that renowned writer to dogmatise and issue autocratic ukases, after she has herself suffered so cruelly and undeservedly at the hands of blind bigotry and social prejudice in her lifelong struggle for freedom of thought seems, to say the least, absurdly inconsistent." After quoting my paragraph she went on: "Until proofs to the contrary, we prefer to believe that the above lines were dictated to Mrs. Besant by some crafty misrepresentations from Madras, inspired by a mean personal revenge ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... and romantic desire. There's an amusing scene when Burton's chief, a thoroughly resourceful specimen of his tribe, cries down, under the same mysterious influence, the pseudo-antiques he is selling, and so intrigues his old friends the dealers that, with a curious naivete, they make absurdly high bids in the belief that the auctioneer is up to some profitable little game. Mr. Alfred Burton himself becomes at a stroke a famous author just by merely writing what he sees and seeing true. (But wouldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... look of triumph about him, evasive. He went past her and into the room. Her inside burned with love for him: so elusive, so beautiful, in his silent passing out of her sight. She wiped her dishes happily. Why was she so absurdly happy, she asked herself? And why did she still fight so hard against the sense of his dark, unseizable beauty? Unseizable, for ever unseizable! That made her almost his slave. She fought against her own desire to fall at his feet. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... of brick much disfigured with awkward looking windows and common place lintels. Indeed, it might easily have been mistaken for a charity hospital; and in the absence of a front, discovering the slightest architectural grandeur, bore no small resemblance to an absurdly constructed barracks. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... a farming community, brought up on the farm, naturally become farmers, yet in the interim, between babyhood and farmer life, they go to school. How absurdly easy the task of the school—to determine that they shall be intelligent, progressive, enthusiastic, up-to-date farmers. The girls, too, marry farmers, keep farmers' homes and raise farmers' sons. How ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... a department for the making of children's fancy costumes, of which Claribel was to be in charge. At first the woman named a salary so low that she would not have dared propose it, had she not thought that necessity had driven the girl to such a step. She was used to beating down her employees to absurdly low wages. Then it was that the pride of all her ancestors seemed to blaze out of Claribel's eyes, and ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Elsie must have had in her life to be so absurdly grateful as she is," she said to herself. "And what a life those women must have led her to make her so ready to refuse what meant so much to her if it came to her as ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... interfered in their character of philanthropists. The native tribes in the vicinity, instigated by European hatred and jealousy, began to inflict upon the defenceless authorities of the settlement a series of those monkey-like impertinences which, absurdly as they may read in a narrative, are formidable and ominous when they indicate that savages feel their power. These barbarians, who had hitherto commanded as much rum and gunpowder as they cared to have by selling their neighbours ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... insulting letter. It was an anonymous letter, and an author should respect his character's secrets. "You are only taking credit for a natural phenomenon," said the letter, "and trying to advertise yourself by your letter to the Times. You and your Boomfood! Let me tell you, this absurdly named food of yours has only the most accidental connection with those big wasps and rats. The plain fact is there is an epidemic of Hypertrophy—Contagious Hypertrophy—which you have about as much ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... from a pair of absurdly tiny brocaded shoes past slender white ankles to the embroidered edge of a wonderful mandarin robe decorated with the figures of peacocks; upward again to a little bejewelled hand which held the robe confined about the slender figure ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... revealed that he could apply philosophy to daily life: he exercised regularly in the open air, took long walks, was absurdly exact about his cold baths, and like Kant, served the neighbors as a chronometer, so they set their clocks at three when they saw him going forth for a walk. And in the interests of truth, we will have to make the embarrassing admission that the great Apostle ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... a place where I could put my feet; Simmonds followed me, and then came Godfrey. His was the difficult part, to draw up the ladder and lower it again. As for me, it was all I could do to keep from falling. I felt absurdly as though I were standing on a tremulous tight-rope, high in the air; but Godfrey managed it somehow and ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... their cattle, of their sheep and goats and horses could be vastly improved, that if their land were sanely treated it could be rendered much more fertile, and that their system of fruit cultivation is absurdly primitive.... And with Djakovica and the whole region of Kossovo being treated as we have shown by the Yugoslavs I think it will be almost as great a surprise to the reader as it was to the local population when he learns that in a memorandum of April 26, 1921, the Tirana Government ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... too, do we find nests in places absurdly wrong? Wonderfully and skilfully constructed nests are attached to supports obviously weak, and eggs are laid on the ground right in the track of man and less considerate animals. Some birds seem to lay eggs and rear ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... have striven with all their power to keep the fact a secret and forbidden their employees to breathe a word about it to any one. But now the case was different. All the morning papers had long accounts of the transaction. They were absurdly inaccurate, but all agreed as to the extreme cleverness of the manager, and noticed how he had suspected, etc., while poor Elder, who both expected and really deserved all the glory, was not even mentioned ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Grumps fell asleep, very absurdly overcome by liquor, we extremely regret to concede, but nobly sure to do his soldierly duty as soon as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... surprised, Elfreda indifferent, and Anne amused. The word "woman" seemed absurdly out of place from the lips of this girl who looked as though she had just been promoted ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... to the French Canadians, informing them of the success of the arms of France against the allied powers of Europe, and calling upon them to rally round the standard of the Republic. The response to this appeal in the Province of Lower Canada was absurdly feeble. The greatest power in all Canada—the Church—shrank in horror from the blood-stained banner of regicide France; and zealous always for the monarchy, the Catholic hierarchy indignantly spurned the overtures of a republic whose most cherished principle was atheism—which had abandoned ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... mystery-making "priest-physician" concerning whom a French writer—I forget his name—has wisely discoursed. I once recommended a young woman who was bleeding at the nose to try the homely remedy of a cold key. I thought she would have died of laughing! The expedient was too absurdly simple ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... me how I would otherwise explain these stories, I will frankly avow, that it appears to me neither impossible, nor absurdly improbable, that the soul, or the nervous system, as you like, of the dying man, should have put itself into direct communication with the thoughts of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... She seemed absurdly small. Incredulity infected Lanyard's mind. Nothing so tiny, so insignificant, so make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could conceivably be that great liner, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... rate, had ceased to expect much affection in his wife for him; but he thought she was sensible, and equal to any complexity of circumstances, or even to disaster. He thought this, not on any positive evidence; but he concluded, somewhat absurdly, that her coldness meant common sense and capacity for facing trouble courageously and with deliberation. He had now to find out his mistake, and to learn that the absence of emotion neither proves, nor is even a ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... and when he had frightened them, and made them scamper to his satisfaction (for he never attempted to injure them), he constantly came back wagging his tail, and appearing very happy at those caresses which we, perhaps absurdly, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... millions of acres of the coveted iron, coal and timber lands for practically nothing. At that very time the Government was selling coal lands in Colorado at $10 to $20 an acre, and it was recognized that even that price was absurdly low. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... appearance and his taste; the club steward's unmarried sister declared the senora's manners to be rustic and her voice loud; the woman in the carpenter's family would lend no ear to such a scandal because the subject of it was dumpy, shapeless, and dressed absurdly, even for the wife of a stonemason. Howbeit, the little woman was now in grief, for her husband lay in jail awaiting trial on the gravest charge that could be brought against a Cuban,—the charge of treason. In that day, as on many sad days that were to follow, to be charged with disaffection toward ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... answered. "I guess I'm absurdly early, but I thought I ought to give the young lady an opportunity to get acquainted with me before starting out alone ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... a model of Canterbury Cathedral once, she was so insistent, and Porthos gave me his mind about it when we got home. He detests the kindergarten system, and as she is absurdly prejudiced in its favour we have had to try other shops. We went to the Lowther Arcade for the rocking-horse. Dear Lowther Arcade! Ofttimes have we wandered agape among thy enchanted palaces, Porthos and I, David and I, David and Porthos and I. I have heard that thou art vulgar, but I cannot see ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... change and rest, and had called twice a day when Leonie was really ill, and four times when she was convalescent; so upon fair Devon had they decided, Leonie cajoling and smiling until she had obtained a year's lease, at an absurdly low rent, of the little cottage on the left of Lee harbour as you ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... facts would throw light either for or against the view of related species being co-descendants from a common stock. A long searching amongst agricultural and horticultural books and people makes me believe (I well know how absurdly presumptuous this must appear) that I see the way in which new varieties become exquisitely adapted to the external conditions of life and to other surrounding beings. I am a bold man to lay myself open to being thought a complete fool, and a most deliberate one. From the nature of the grounds ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the whole thing was so absurdly twisted. The care of his children occupied his entire time now, so that his work, in seeking that which was required to support them, had to be entirely neglected. He had fifty dollars between him and starvation for his children. Nor could he see ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... proceeding with his purpose ... ten dollars, perhaps fifteen; revolvers were highly priced in the turbulent distant wild. Could he afford to lose that amount from his slender store of dollars? Intact it was absurdly inadequate. He debated the choice—on one hand the peril of gambling unarmed, on the other his desperate need for money. Once more he considered Clare: in the end his arrogance of manhood brought a decision—he would preserve the money for play. He was, he thought ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... expecting him and dodged the attack. I was quite calm now, but pretty helpless. The man had a gorilla's reach and could give me at least a couple of stone. He wasn't soft either, but looked as hard as granite. I was only just from hospital and absurdly out of training. He would certainly kill me if he could, and I saw nothing ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... will add that even as "there is beauty in a blade of grass" there were and are good qualities and virtues in many individual Mexicans, but we cannot but wonder at the contrast of the two first periods of our state's history, and at the difference so vast between two races and characters so often absurdly confused. Here, we must mention perhaps the most deplorable incidents of this period, incidents to which in spite of ourself we have so often alluded, namely the Acts of Secularization of the missions. First, we will mention that some writers accuse Spain ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... back to Holston changed the color of my mood. I began to feel more cheerful. The meal we ate was scant enough—biscuits and steaks of broiled venison with a pinch of salt; but, starved as we were, it was more than satisfactory. Herky and Bill were absurdly eager to serve me. Even Bud was kind to me, though he still wore conspicuously over his forehead the big bruise I had given him. After I had eaten I began to gain strength. But my face was puffed from the heat, my injured arm was stiff and sore, and my legs ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... however, went thinking anew. She had no apprehensions about this marriage. She felt perfectly sure that it was the best thing she could do for her girl. Not a young woman on the island but was envying Avice at that moment; for Jocelyn was absurdly young for three score, a good-looking man, one whose history was generally known here; as also were the exact figures of the fortune he had inherited from his father, and the social standing he could claim—a standing, ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... injustice and wrong? Are we to join the ignorant and brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as monsters of wickedness, gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and innocently peaceful society? No! We hate murder with a hatred that may seem absurdly exaggerated to apologists for Matabele massacres, to callous acquiescers in hangings and bombardments, but we decline in such cases of homicide, or attempted homicide, as those of which we are treating, to be guilty of the cruel injustice of flinging the whole responsibility ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... every available portion of his body. His round face was cleanly shaven and shiny, as though its flabby surface were frequently polished with some sort of luminous grease instead of the customary soap. His mouth was absurdly small and pursy for so broad a countenance,—his nose seemed endeavoring to retreat behind his puffy cheeks as though painfully aware of its own insignificance,—and he had little, sharp, ferret-like eyes of a dull ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... to become a Roman Catholic and a nun?" he exclaimed, feeling, absurdly perhaps, almost afraid ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... where his progenitors stood a thousand years ago. All our material welfare has been brought about by men of enterprise. I feel almost ashamed of writing down so trite a remark. Even if we were a nation of entrepreneurs—such as absurdly exaggerated accounts make us out to be—we should not require another nation to live on. We do not depend on the circulation of old commodities, because we ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... especially upon the origin of animal forms, and was led into the idea of the transformation of species and so into a theory of evolution, which in some important respects anticipated modern ideas. He definitely, though at times absurdly, conceived the production of existing species by the modification of their predecessors, and he plainly accepted one of the fundamental maxims of modern geology—that the structure of the globe must be studied in the light of the present course ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... "It is so absurdly radical," said the American Minister, "that it carries with it its own antidote. I am sure there can arise no harm from Captain W—— singing it to our English friends, who are monarchy men sufficiently staunch to disallow any ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... there is a boat every Monday and Thursday from Ancona. Sampaolo is an extremely interesting spot,—interesting by reason of its natural beauty, its picturesque population, and (to me, at least) by reason of its absurdly romantic, serio-comic, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... chap called Larcher, a boy of eighteen, with fair hair and blue eyes, who looked quite absurdly young. His people live somewhere round here, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... herself an object of jealousy to all these persons. After a time she and her brother received no invitations, but they still persisted in paying evening visits. Satirical persons made fun of them,—not spitefully, but amusingly; inveigling them to talk absurdly about the eggs in their cornice, and their wonderful cellar of wine, the like of which ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... was no longer an insistent problem. There was gold in the creek beds and ruby beaches, and when the sea opened, the men with healthy sacks would sail away to where the good things of life were sold absurdly cheap. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... Virgil could have no faults, because they were ancient; Milton and Tasso could have no merit, because they were modern. And I could almost have said, with regard to the ancients, what Cicero, very absurdly and unbecomingly for a philosopher, says with regard to Plato, Cum quo errare malim quam cum aliis recte sentire. Whereas now, without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as it is at present; that men were but ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... when they made a little purchase at a shop the shopwoman looked astonished at the freedom with which they carried themselves, and after that they felt inclined to go into every shop in the street and behave absurdly everywhere. In the course of two hours they had accomplished all the innocent follies possible to the intoxication of youth, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... declaration that the decrees, so far as regarded the United States, were absolutely revoked; for this recent assertion of Bassano, that they were still in force, put the United States in an attitude both towards France and England utterly and absurdly in the wrong. Barlow represented that, should the revocation be extended only to the United States, Great Britain would not for that alone repeal her orders. In that case France would lose nothing of the advantage of her present position, while everything would ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... placed between our host and his nephew. The latter comes in for a good deal of my conversation, as most of my remarks have to be taken up and rebellowed by him with a loud emphasis, that contrasts absurdly with their triviality; and even then they mostly miscarry, and turn into something ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... manners. His work, of which he did not talk, and his ambitions, of which he also did not talk, bore fruit early, and at twenty-six he had become a portrait-painter of international reputation. Then the French government purchased one of his paintings at an absurdly small figure, and placed it in the Luxembourg, from whence it would in time depart to be buried in the hall of some provincial city; and American millionaires, and English Lord Mayors, members of Parliament, and members of the Institute, masters of hounds in ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... variegations of the East and West, the main feature of the town was the street car. It was an open-air structure of spacious dimensions, as though benches and a canopy had been erected rather haphazard on a small dancing platform. The track is absurdly narrow in gauge; and as a consequence the edifice swayed and swung from side to side. A single mule was attached to it loosely by about ten feet of rope. It was driven by a gaudy ragamuffin in a turban. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... situation and circumstances it is impossible they should be ever truly and properly represented there. The inhabitants of this country in all probability in a few years will be more numerous, than those of Great Britain and Ireland together; yet it is absurdly expected by the promoters of the present measures, that these, with their posterity to all generations, should be easy while their property, shall be disposed of by a house of commons at three thousand miles distant from them; and who cannot be supposed ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... come down, after the Easter term had been in progress for a fortnight, to play for an Oxford A team against the school. The match had resulted in an absurdly easy victory for the visitors by over forty points. Clowes had scored five tries off his own bat, and Trevor, if he had not fed his wing so conscientiously, would probably have scored an equal number. As it was, he had ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... what wrath and sadness overcome your whole soul when a great idea, which you have long cherished as holy, is caught up by the ignorant and dragged forth before fools like themselves into the street, and you suddenly meet it in the market unrecognisable, in the mud, absurdly set up, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of foolish louts! No! In our day it was not so, and it was not this for which we strove. No, no, not this at all. I don't recognise it.... Our day will come again and will turn all the tottering ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... going back—they had been brilliantly sure of it—Oliver had only to finish his novel that was so much better already than any novel Nancy had ever read—sell a number of copies of it that seemed absurdly small in proportion to the population of America—and then they could live where they pleased and Oliver could compose Great Works and Nancy get ahead with her very real and delicate talent for etching instead of having to do fashion-drawings ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... use the words "slave" and "slavery" in a very lax way. Thus, when protesting against the so-called "Subjection of Women," they absurdly apply those terms to the condition of the wife in the modern society of the west—designations which are inappropriate even in the case of the inmate of Indian zenanas; and they speak of the modern worker as a "wage-slave," even though he is backed ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... which had been obliged to put into Rio Janeiro to refit for her voyage to Europe, and was most ungenerously denied what was needful by the Portuguese government, for eight months. The viceroy seems to have been of an unfeeling and absurdly consequential disposition, of which some instances have been already related in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... amused, but also a little bored. Ever since the dinner at the Savoy, now a fortnight ago, Raggett had been showing furtive signs of a wild admiration for her, at the same time hedging absurdly by asking her to tell him when he might call and giving no address, and by (for instance) pretending he had plucked the flowers himself, evidently not knowing that they had been sent with her address written on a card printed ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... are talking absurdly, aren't we?" she said, and although she laughed she still looked towards the distant hills. "Of course, I could never marry a man I didn't love, and to have a man chosen for you would naturally prevent your loving ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... with it as Major Lessing suggested, and keep things very much as they are; but I find that I shall have little independent income apart from the property. To keep things in really working repair I shall probably have to raise the rents—which are absurdly low—which, of course, will be a very unpopular movement; and my being willing to live as simply as any of my tenants, will not in the least soften their feeling towards me. I shall not do anything in a hurry, but I shall first try and master my position. After so many years of a non-resident ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... religions-philosophie, with the heart's battles translated into conceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the religious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly little technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working philosophy, individual Germans should preserve any spontaneity of mind at all. That they still manifest freshness and originality in so eminent a degree, proves the indestructible ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... attempt to canvass the writers of the United States is absurdly inadequate and fragmentary. It was the unpaid work of women, each of whom had her own occupation in life, in such spare time as they could get during the year. These writers represent only twenty-one ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... probable that this Jamie Dove was the first man, since the world began, who had entertained the till then absurdly preposterous notion that the fatal Bell Rock was "land," or that it could be made a place of even ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ladies, and their faces were as different as possible from those of their lovers. So were the dainty little coral feet, for alas! the masculine shoes were the pinker and prettier; and the males, even the baby ones, were absurdly like English judges ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Alleghenia? The very fact that such a body of men exists among us is in the nature of a guarantee, it seems to me, that we shall come out all right in the end. Have you noticed their faces?—many of them so absurdly boyish, all of them so honest, and manly, and—and—American, John! They are the personifications of your ideal of that afternoon in the library—Americans, and something more—Alleghenians! And, to prove it, they are freely giving a portion of their time and their strength, in order that there ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... hastens to denounce the horrid heresy on the brink of which he finds himself hesitating, by adding that he sees "no ground whatever for holding such a view," though "in the light of modern research it scarcely looks so absurdly improbable as before."[9] It is curious that the writer in question does not seem to have been in any way influenced by the eliminative argument so potent in connection with the discussion on Vitalism. We ask ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... ornaments. At imminent peril of being robbed, she brought to the country, and carried about everywhere with her, an amazing number of jewels, wearing two or three different sets at different times of the day—displaying them on the most absurdly improper occasions—at a fete champetre, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... When the absurdly dressed man with long hair reached deck, he performed the drollest antics. For a moment he would stand upright, chest out, like a recruit, the next instant bow profoundly, or take aim, as if hunting; and all the time he ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... like poison,—except me," said Brooke. "I never knew people so absurdly hostile as are your aunt and my uncle Barty. Each thinks the other the most wicked ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... round hat which even an Irish carman might decline to wear. What their jokes were about it was impossible to tell. One would say something, and then the other would answer him, and both would burst into the most absurdly noisy roar, turning back to back to support each other, then clinging together, rising, and falling, and twisting, and turning, and finally rolling over on the ground, as if completely overcome. It seemed a matter of constant occurrence, for no one stopped even to ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Sunday School books, have gone far into the opposite extreme, and have been wont to regard the Indian as the Noble Savage who never forgets a kindness, who is ever ready to return good for evil, and who is so absurdly credulous as to look upon the pale-faces as the natural friends and benefactors of his species. Until within the last few years, no pen has ventured to write impartially of the Indian character, and no one has attempted to separate the wheat from the chaff ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... day; and in no greater respect than in this which we are now considering. All students recognize in many writings, vedic and post-vedic, profound seriousness and a sometimes strange depth of spiritual apprehension coupled with an other-worldliness which, to the western mind, seems absurdly impractical. Indeed, the naturally mystical bent of the Hindu mind has been regarded, and, doubtless, rightly regarded, as one of the chief obstacles to a true and easy understanding of much that is in their sacred writings by the too practical Westerner. We should not be blind ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... "We're absurdly young. And love's young dream is out of date, Jon. Besides, it's awfully wasteful. Think of all the fun you might have. You haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... because he was fit for anything—tragedy, comedy, farce, a hornpipe, and, if need be, a comic song, in which making faces at the audience was an indispensable accomplishment. His greatest hit, we are told, was in the absurdly extravagant song, "I am such a Beautiful Boy;" when he used to say that in singing one verse, he opened his mouth so wide that he had difficulty in closing it; but it appears he had neither difficulty nor reluctance in closing his engagement. Getting tired of his new profession, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... This was absurdly too much. I then and there opened on Boogles, opened flooding gates of wrath and scorn on him—for him and for his idol of clay who, I flatly told him, could not be the real doughnuts of any sort. As for his ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... get it seen to. I was this morning trying to look at it by the aid of a small hand-glass, when somehow my elbow caught against the edge of the chest of drawers and knocked the glass out of my hand and smashed it. Carrie was in an awful way about it, as she is rather absurdly superstitious. To make matters worse, my large photograph in the drawing-room fell during the night, and the ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... belonging to Don Quixote who was the romantic and absurdly chivalric hero of a satirical Spanish novel entitled The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight Errant, Don Quixote of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... fire going, for the wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us both, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... townsmen and allies stated, there seemed to be no doubt about the desirableness of the city house which David Townsend had purchased and the fact that he had secured it for an absurdly low price. The whole family were at first suspicious. It was ascertained that the house had cost a round sum only a few years ago; it was in perfect repair; nothing whatever was amiss with plumbing, furnace, anything. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... a moment, absurdly over-estimating poor Zuleika's skill, he supposed himself a victim of legerdemain. Another moment, and the import of the studs revealed itself. He staggered up from his chair, covering his breast ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... populousness, those with which we were familiar. The order of Jesuits had furnished an example of all the errors and excellencies of such a scheme. Their plan was founded on erroneous notions of religion and policy, and they had absurdly chosen a scene [*] within reach of the injustice and ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... was made to negotiate the bill. He had done the whole thing in the most absurdly and innocently wrong way. The person whose name he had used was a stanch friend of his, and a relation of his wife's—a good man as well as a rich one. He had influence with the chief creditor, and he used it nobly. ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... were sent to a down-town auction room. All but four, which I withdrew, I saw sold at absurdly low prices. The four and the hall clock, representing a cost value of twenty-seven hundred dollars, were taken by Charlie Wood in cancellation of a debt of five hundred and seventy-five dollars, borrowed money. He ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... up to be kissed, and having been duly kissed she retired again among the children, having only expressed one wish of her own,— namely, that Joe Mixet might not have anything to do with the affair. But the day could not be fixed without her, and she was summoned. Crumb had been absurdly impatient, proposing next Tuesday,—making his proposition on a Friday. They could cook enough meat for all Bungay to eat by Tuesday, and he was aware of no other cause for delay. 'That's out of the question,' Ruby had said decisively, and as the two elder ladies had supported her Mr Crumb yielded ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... you see I know something about this young man at home. His mother doesn't count. She has her younger children, and they make her happy. And of course she is absurdly proud of Douglas. But the father and this son Douglas are of the same stuff. They have a deal more brains and education than their forbears ever wanted; but still, in soul, they remain our feudal lords and superiors, who have a right to the services of those beneath them. And everybody ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... more. She felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring wealth and prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old house, if its owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest, so absurdly in love with Eleanor Milbourne's statue-like face, so insanely intent upon periling life and limb in the service of the viceroy of Egypt. The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her hair before the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... dead, suffocated in the mud and water. The poor mare had unfortunately been unable to procure his help—though she tried her best—in time to save her foal. This touching instance of maternal affection is a very interesting example of the way in which the "dumb" animals—as they are somewhat absurdly called—make up for the want of speech. The mare's strange cry and her extreme restlessness were as ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... Great, absurdly great among the uneducated, as is the importance attached to a due performance of the rites of burial in the present day, it is as nothing compared to the interest which was felt on this subject by the Romans; and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... slid off the sand-bank where he had been sunning himself and paddled sulkily away. A blue heron flapped up from the thicket, and with a frog in its bill awkwardly took flight, its long neck crooked, legs dangling absurdly. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... colony exercise a humane influence. Among the natives exists a domestic slavery so cruel and barbarous that the lot of the American plantation Negro seemed paradise in comparison. Life and limb are held of such small value that severe mutilation is the penalty of absurdly slight transgressions, or is imposed at the arbitrary displeasure of the master, while more serious offenses are punished by death in atrocious form: as when the victim is buried alive with stakes driven through his quivering body.[16] The institution ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... "You are absurdly unreasonable," replied Mrs. Mayhew in an aggrieved tone. "Sibley is only sowing his wild oats now as you did in the past. I don't know why he is not as good as your friend Mr. Van Berg, who, as far as I can make out, is more of an infidel than anything ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Mr. Keller, more furiously than ever. "My good Engelman, you never were more absurdly mistaken in your life! I am delighted. Exactly what I expected, exactly what I predicted, has come to pass. Put down your pipe! I can bear a great deal—but tobacco smoke is beyond me at such a crisis as this. And do for once ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... "dictes" were taken mainly from a MS. collection by one Hanna Misk, ex-dragoman of the British Consulate (Damascus), a little recueil for private use such as would be made by a Syro Christian bourgeois. Hereupon the critic absurdly asserted that the translator a voulu s'occuper de la langue classique au lieu de se faire * * * l'interprete fidele de celle du peuple. My reply was (The Nights, vol. viii. 148) that, as I was treating of proverbs familiar to the better educated order of citizens, his critique ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... sorts, everything; you refuse everything. With them, there is boundless, though not very assured hope; with you, a very sure and very unqualified despair. The terms of alliance from the Dissenters offer a representation of the commons, chosen out of the people by the head. This is absurdly and dangerously large, in my opinion; and that scheme of election is known to have been at all times perfectly odious to me. But I cannot think it right of course to punish the Irish Roman Catholics by an universal ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and, while she too began to blush absurdly, would not help him, and her head bent lower than ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... they did come most of the dinner was already eaten up. The Chancellor is said to have made an admirable speech at the meeting of savans, full of dignity, propriety, and eloquence, and the savans spoke one more absurdly than another. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Reginald watched him with something like admiration, inwardly wondering if he would ever be able to find his way about this labyrinth of boxes, and strongly of opinion that only muffs like printers would think of arranging the alphabet in such an absurdly haphazard manner. The lower case being full up, Gedge meekly suggested that as he was yet several feet from his full size, they might as well lift the upper case down while it was being filled. Which done, the same process ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... departure as a great deliverance. He was to be a man immediately; not for him that absurdly dilatory condition of pimples and hobbledehoy boots that mark a transition period. Dawson's had been the most insignificant sojourn in the tent of the enemy, and the world, it was implied, had lamented his enforced absence. But, as the end of term flung its shadows in front of it in the form of ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... in the appearance of the bulls as they lumbered along in their heavy gallop; their small hindquarters, covered with short hair, being absurdly disproportioned to the enormous front with its hump and shaggy main. As they galloped along, their fringed dewlaps and long beards swayed from side to side, and their little eyes glanced viciously as they peeped from out a forest of hair at the pursuing foe. One of the bulls suddenly took it into ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tints, that he might paint a picture of it later. He made the sketch, saying: 'If I attempted to represent truly what we see before us, the painting would be rejected by the good people at home as absurdly unreal, or as the work of a hopeless lunatic.' There was such a high wind that our small tents had a narrow escape of being blown away. That night the water was frozen in our jugs, and it was quite ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... positively state the amount, sir," I said, absurdly trying to get the paper-weight into my waistcoat pocket, and then putting it down in great confusion. "I—I have an account at Monceau's in the Rue ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... a hand for Mrs. Lascelles at the awkward places; and on the way through the woods, nothing would serve him but that I should set the pace, that we might all keep together. Judge therefore of my surprise when he came to my room, as I was dressing for the absurdly early dinner which is the one blot upon Riffel Alp arrangements, with the startling remark that we "might as well run straight with ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... compared with Rabelais before him and with Voltaire or Sterne—with both, perhaps, as a counsel of perfection—after him. He is a smaller man, both in literature and in humanity, than Master Francis; but the phrase which Voltaire himself rather absurdly used of Swift might be used without any absurdity in reference to him. He is a "Rabelais de bonne compagnie," and from the exactly opposite point of view he might be called a Voltaire or a Sterne de ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... beat joyously again. He ran up his steps, delighting in the commonplace performance of putting a latch-key into a lock. The cold and drizzle were shut outside, and Madeline waited in the warmth and light of the hall to insist on helping him off with his overcoat, a task so absurdly difficult that when it was finished they laughed and kissed each other in mutual delight at their ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... effective family phrase) under opposition is a grand magnifier; and it was not difficult to erect poor Captain White into a hero, his wife into a patient sufferer, and Alethea's kindness to his daughter into a bosom friendship; while the aunts seemed to be absurdly fastidious and prejudiced. 'I don't wonder at Aunt Ada,' she said to herself; 'I know she has always been kept under a glass case; but I thought better things of Aunt Jane. It is all because Kalliope goes to St. Kenelm's, and ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worked infernally hard, and, I recall, we worked with a very decided enthusiasm, not simply on my uncle's part but mine, It was a game, an absurd but absurdly interesting game, and the points were scored in cases of bottles. People think a happy notion is enough to make a man rich, that fortunes can be made without toil. It's a dream, as every millionaire (except one or two lucky gamblers) can testify; I doubt if J.D. Rockefeller in ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and beg me to go in with him; he had a feeling that there was somebody in the studio. He remembered how often he had waited for a minute or two on the landing to get his breath after the ascent, and how absurdly his impatience to see Blanche had taken it away again. To see her was a delight that never staled, and even though he had not been out an hour he was as excited at the prospect as if they had been parted for a month. Suddenly he could not believe ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham |
