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More "Preposterous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through their representatives or vakils at the agencies, from all the native chiefs round about, and on all occasions of visits or return visits, durbars, religious festivals, or public ceremonials, he claims and receives preposterous fees. The Rajas, whose dignity is always exceedingly delicate, stand in great fear of the chuprassies. They believe that on public occasions the chuprassies have sometimes the power of sicklying them o'er with the pale ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... met his so frankly, so proudly, were turned from him. He saw it, and it troubled him with a trouble the more perplexed that he could assign to himself no reason for it. That it could be caused by any interest felt for a Chasseur d'Afrique by the haughtiest lady in all Europe would have been too preposterous and too insulting a supposition for it ever to occur to him. And he did not dream the truth—the truth that it was her withholding, for the first time in all her life, any secret from him which caused her pain; that it was the fear lest he should learn that his lost friend was living ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... idea!" he vociferated, his hands deep in his pockets, his face scarlet. "It's—it's preposterous, Blix! I won't let you TALK about it even—I won't touch a nickel of that money. But, Blix, you're—you're—the finest woman I ever knew. You're a man's woman, that's what you are." He set his teeth. "If you loved a man, you'd be a regular pal to him; you'd back him up, you'd ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... elected by them would be worthy representatives of such constituents, and, of course, that they would require no aid in conceiving and maturing the measures which the circumstances of the country might require. And it is preposterous to suppose that a thought could for a moment have been entertained that the President, placed at the capital, in the center of the country, could better understand the wants and wishes of the people than their own ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... which, for want of a proper English word, I must call the songish part, must abound in the softness and variety of numbers; its principal intention being to please the hearing, rather than to gratify the understanding. It appears, indeed, preposterous at first sight, that rhyme, on any consideration, should take place of reason; but, in order to resolve the problem, this fundamental proposition must be settled, that the first inventors of any art or science, provided they ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... not sit down to dream and brood away the future. She could never hope for Graydon Muir's love. He would soon return to New York, and the idea that Miss Wildmere or any other girl would remain cold to his suit was preposterous. Yet if she lived she must meet Graydon again, and she now felt that she would live. The decision she had manifested at the crisis of her life was kindling her nature. She was conscious of a growing inclination ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... always misconceiving me, Mr. Lascelles," interrupted Miss Dundus, impatiently; "I did not advance one word against the language; I merely remonstrated with Phemy against her preposterous attentions to the man we hire ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... preposterous statement even than this was that the question involved in these suits was the right of editors to criticise the productions of authors. In not one of these trials was the literary judgment passed by the reviewer ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... that the interpretation of the words now in favour is at all satisfactory. It tells us that the expression is to he taken as in apposition with the exclamation 'My father, my father'; and that both the one phrase and the other mean—Elijah! Yet what a preposterous and strange metaphor it would be to call a man a chariot and pair, or a chariot and cavalry! It seems to me that the very statement of this explanation, in plain English, condemns it as untenable. It is surely less probable that Elisha in that exclamation was describing Elijah than ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... built a fence of strong fortresses called bastilles around Orleans—fortresses which closed all the gates of the city but one. To the French generals the idea of trying to fight their way past those fortresses and lead the army into Orleans was preposterous; they believed that the result would be the army's destruction. One may not doubt that their opinion was militarily sound—no, would have been, but for one circumstance which they overlooked. That was this: the English soldiers were in a demoralized condition ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... office where they had spent so many pleasant hours, and then thought that they were to lose all this and imbitter their lives for a whim, a sudden burst of passion, the whole situation appeared to him so preposterous that he almost burst ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... would make a liberal gift, but her fortune could not be more than a million, perhaps not half so large. Her generosity could not save the day even if she gave half of all she possessed, a supposition of course preposterous. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... supposed to be non-existent. Every so-called educational campaign in the field of politics brings out the same truth. The capacity for hard thinking and sound judgment which resides in the working class is surprising to us, only because in our preposterous pride we had supposed them to be baked of different clay than we are. In the matter of artistic endowment, too, what wonderful discoveries do we constantly make among poor children, even among children that come from the lowest dregs of society! What fine ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... had warm defenders—who affirmed that the Marquis of Arondelle would never seek a peasant girl to win her affections, unless he intended to make her his marchioness—which was an idea too preposterous to be entertained for an instant—therefore there could be no truth ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... earth could he climb that? And if he did there would be his exposed hinder-parts inviting a shot from some malevolent gentleman among the trees. He reflected that he would give a large sum of money to be out of this preposterous adventure. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... example of humour—provoking to smiles while touching to tears—with a wonderful introductory piling up of definitions: "A Poor Relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature,—a piece of impertinent correspondency,—a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,—an unwelcome remembrancer," and so on. "This theme of poor relations is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... was brought almost to sigh that he might see the man who had lent him the sovereign, and his wish was hardly formed, when Nicodemus Sedgett approached, waving a hat encircled by preposterous wooden figures, a trifle less lightly attired than the ladies of the ballet, and as bold in the matter of leg as the female fashion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to hand, and foot to foot, in a fair and temperate discussion relative to that event. It was his imperative duty, he exclaimed, to speak upon French affairs, and to point out the danger of extolling, upon all occasions, that preposterous edifice, the French constitution; an edifice which the right honourable gentleman had termed the most stupendous and glorious which had been erected on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country. Our own ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... which catches and imbeds whatever it touches. When you excavate in it you find, as in a buried city, all sorts of objects ludicrously entangled in each other. Anything can be related to anything else, provided it feels like it. Nor has a mind in such a state any way of knowing how preposterous it is. Ancient fears, reinforced by more recent fears, coagulate into a snarl of fears where anything that is dreaded is the cause of anything else that ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... the axiom of science and is admitted by every one who has the slightest pretensions to be considered a competent authority," [77] it is preposterous to suppose man an exception, whatever be the difficulties. [78] And so Mr. Laing, assuming axiomatically that man and the ape have a common ancestor, is interested to make the differences between them deeply marked, and that, as far back as he can, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... and am being touched up (or down) by the doctors. Whether the irritation of mind I had to endure pending the discussions of a preposterous clerical body called a Convocation, and whether the weakened hopefulness of mankind which such a dash of the middle ages in the colour and pattern of 1866 engenders, may have anything to do with it, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... for this preposterous scheme—this product of ignorance and audacity—that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these writers with one another, brought them to their proper ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... believe you'll succeed. I intend to rebuild my gun at once, though I may make some changes in it. I am sure I shall succeed the next time. But as for you—a mere youth—to hope to rival men who have made this problem a life-study—it is preposterous, sir! Utterly preposterous!" and he uttered these words much as he had declared that it was impossible for his gun to burst, even ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... wavy black hair, of raven black, a dark olive complexion, flushed, in spite of haphazard nourishment and nights spent on the stone floor of the reeking scullery, with the warm blood of health, great liquid black eyes, and the exquisitely delicate features of a young Praxitelean god. It was this preposterous perfection which, while redeeming him from ridiculous beauty by giving his childish face a certain rigidity, differentiated him outwardly from his fellows. Mr. Button, to whom the unusual was anathema, declared that the sight of the monstrosity made ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... caressing our hero in the solitude of her bed-room. Mr. Carey, however, arranged the whole matter very quickly. The dower must be L2,000, out of which the widow must find her own house. Sir George must be well aware, said Mr. Carey, that the demand made was preposterous. Sir George said one or two very nasty things; but the dower as fixed by Mr. Carey was accepted, and then everything ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... house, and the keeping up of such a garden and establishment, did not leave too much available of the wealth Lady Martindale had brought, nor was the West Indian property in a prosperous state; the demand was preposterous; and Theodora found herself obliged to defend poor Violet, who, her aunt declared, must have instigated it in consequence of the notice lavished upon her; while, as Theodora averred with far more truth, 'it was as much as the poor thing did to know the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of life is an enormous accident—a dice-throw of eternity in the vapours of time and space. Why not then, with him we love by our side, make richer and sweeter the nonchalant gaiety of our amusement, in the great mad purposeless preposterous show, by the "quips and cranks" of a companionable scepticism; canvassing all things in earth and heaven, reverencing God and Caesar on this side of idolatry, relishing the foolish, fooling the wise, and letting the world drift on ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... holdings not exceeding one acre we must add 62,000 of from 1 to 5 acres. In the face of these facts, the assumption that "all agricultural land"—as defined in the Return—will be sold, is not only unsound but preposterous. ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... amusing ourselves with Lady Morgan's Princess, exceedingly amusing, both by its merits and its absurdities,—that harlequin princess in her blouse is wonderfully clever and preposterous,—a Belgian Corinna. Mr. Butler has detected various errors in her historical remarks and allusions, but that it is excessively entertaining nobody can deny. The hero is like one of the seven sleepers not quite awakened, or how could ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... strength, and fire, to soar, On Fancy's wing above this vale of tears; Where dark cold-hearted sceptics, creeping, pore Through microscope of metaphysic lore: And much they grope for truth, but never hit. For why? their powers, inadequate before, This art preposterous renders more unfit; Yet deem they darkness light, and their vain ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... if only in memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom. Who, he asks—who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cape St. Martin? Anybody can, nowadays. The place is encrusted with smug villas of parvenus (wherein we include the Empress Eugenie), to say nothing of that preposterous hotel at the very point, which disfigures the country for leagues ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... anxious, went to my head a little, I suppose. Oh, yes, she was lovely. Of course that was a factor. If she had been past her first youth and skimpy as to hair, and dowdy, I don't pretend that I should ever have mixed myself up in the preposterous coil. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... got away; So they yelled at him in chorus, Which he minded not a whit; And they pelted him with cocoanuts, Which didn't seem to hit; And then they gave him reasons, Which they thought of much avail, To prove how his preposterous Attempt was sure ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... 'genius' and 'brilliant' which have been freely applied to him are entirely misplaced. Branwell was thirty-one years of age when he died, and it was only during the last year or two of his life that opium and alcohol had made him intellectually hopeless. Yet, unless we accept the preposterous statement that he wrote Wuthering Heights, he would seem to have composed nothing which gives him the slightest claim to the most inconsiderable niche in ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Instinct, but its range is widened in proportion as it blends with Intellect. To imagine that the acceptance of the gospel of Intuition means the setting aside of all valuation in regard to the Intellect and its work would be preposterous. Bergson, however unguarded his language at times has been, does not mean this. He does not mean that we must return to the standpoint of the animal or that we must assume that the animal view, which ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... adults and thus serving an apprenticeship; in part, it is indirect, through the dramatic plays in which children reproduce the actions of grown-ups and thus learn to know what they are like. To savages it would seem preposterous to seek out a place where nothing but learning was going on in order that one ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... ready, as you see, but not willing," she answered, bridling up with a scornful air. "Very much the reverse indeed. The more I think over it the more outrageous and preposterous your behaviour seems. Where are we going? I insist upon knowing. I must have a plain categorical answer or I will not move an inch." Her dogged, determined air was belied by her dress and the obvious ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... good thing to try and turn two hansom cabs into one four-wheeler. Turning ten nations into one empire may happen to be as feasible as turning ten shillings into one half-sovereign. Also it may happen to be as preposterous as turning ten terriers into one mastiff. The question in all cases is not a question of union or absence of union, but of identity or absence of identity. Owing to certain historical and moral causes, two nations may be so united as ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... this fiend, one hour of life, even one moment of it, shall ever (which is an idle and futile supposition) be so sweet that his heart shall desire it to linger, then, indeed, he will surrender himself eternally to this at present preposterous Mephistopheles, whom his mood, his magic, and the revulsion of his moral ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... minority in the will of the majority, properly expressed; and, above all, the military must be kept, according to the language of our bill of rights, in strict subordination to the civil authority. Wherever this lesson is not both learned and practiced there can be no political freedom. Absurd, preposterous is it, a scoff and a satire on free forms of constitutional liberty, for frames of government to be prescribed by military leaders and the right of suffrage to be exercised at ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... about old Brookes, and I remember the lean boy you used to bring here, and judging from some slight traces that Eton had not succeeded in effacing, I think I can guess what the rest of the family is like; indeed, the old gentleman's preposterous demand that I should settle ten thousand pounds on his daughter throws a sufficient light on his character, and in some measure reveals what sort of manner of man he is. But let all this be waived. I admit that with some show of reason, you ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... that. Remember also that gas is half-a-crown a thousand. And understand that we're most economical; we're always turning the lights down, my wife and I. Now then; in spite of this the rascals want me to pay on sixty thousand feet! It's preposterous. We couldn't have got through so much if we had never let a burner or a stove go out day or night. And we're economical! What do you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... and surmounted was enumerated one after the other. It was urged that an enterprise undertaken in the midst of a winter even more than usually severe, must be disastrous, and that it was absolutely preposterous to think it possible to make an impression on a fortress furnished with 230 pieces of cannon and defended by 43,000 men, the half of whom were Janissaries, with a force that amounted to no more than 28,000—little more than half their ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... of sensation or consciousness, constituting the fundamental distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Here all idea of mere complication of structure producing the result is out of the question. We feel it to be altogether preposterous to assume that at a certain stage of complexity of atomic constitution, and as a necessary result of that complexity alone, an ego should start into existence, a thing that feels, that is conscious of its own existence. Here we have the certainty ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to her. Instead of letting the bull alone, now she was safe, Uxmoor was sticking to him like a ferret. The bull ran, tossing his nose with pain and bellowing: Uxmoor dragged by the tail and compelled to follow in preposterous, giant strides, barely touching the ground with the point of his toe, pounded the creature's ribs with such blows as Zoe had never dreamed possible. They sounded like flail on wooden floor, and each blow was accompanied with a loud ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... you see, Mister Brown," Cried the youth, with a frown, "How wrong the whole thing is, How preposterous each wing is, How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is— In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis? I make no apology; I've learned owl-eology, I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any deflections Arising from unskillful ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... have scarcely passed since he first broached such an apparently preposterous notion, as people of limited views universally esteemed it; and yet he nearly lived to see an uninterrupted steamboat communication from England to Lake Superior—a consummation which those who laughed at him then never even dreamt of—and now a railroad ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... content." Fielding had a different opinion of his merits: "He who would call the ingenious Hogarth a burlesque painter would in my opinion do him very little honour, for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of man on canvas. It hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures seem to breathe, but surely ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... perfect John Rogers of a man, with nine little motherless children, her brother Raguet ('Rag,' as we called him at school, on account of his prim stiffness, so that 'limber as a rag' seemed a most preposterous saying in his vicinity). He is handsome, however, and intelligent, a perfect gentleman, but on the mourners' bench just now, like some others you know of"—heaving a deep sigh. "His wife, poor thing, died last autumn—a pretty girl in her day was Cornelia Huger! I was ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... will you give in return? No, no, my lad; your demand is a preposterous one; besides, you wouldn't know how ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... cannot tell you how much your letter surprised me. What you say seems preposterous. There must be a mistake. It cannot be this man. I know him quite well, and seems as straight as a string and a gentleman, too. His son, you know as well as I. There isn't a better fellow in the world! Mr. B. has ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... couldn't. But I said nothing. None of us said anything. We sat about that big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation. I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not been saved from that impropriety by poor Fyne becoming preposterous. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... mile and half! You shall drink your reward at Christmas time," said one of the dealers to his porters, who, stout, strong men as they were, showed a disposition to grumble at their task. Encouraged by large promises, they shouldered sullenly the Nuernberg stove, grumbling again at its preposterous weight, but little dreaming that they carried within it a small, panting, trembling boy; for August began to tremble now that he was about to see the future ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... say that he lived all alone in a cabin like a savage, and all that sort of thing, and was a friend of a dubious woman in the locality, whom the common people made a heroine of,—Miggles, or Wiggles, or some such preposterous name. But look at John there; can you conceive it?" The listener, glancing at a very handsome, clean-shaven fellow, faultlessly attired, could not conceive such an absurdity. So I therefore simply give the opinion of Joshua Bixley, Superintendent of the Long Divide Tunnel ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... confused, through a hundred pathless glens and dells till already gold had begun to dim the swelling moon's bright silver, and by the freshness and added sweetness of the air it seemed dawn must be near, when, on a sudden, a harsh, preposterous voice broke on my ear, and such a see-saw peal of laughter as I have never tittered in sheer fellowship with before, or since. We stood listening, and the ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... collection of peculiarities gathered here would be little less than marvellous. That they are found in so many American villages as to justify their being attributed to American villages in general is preposterous. Certainly, this picture does not daguerreotype New England, however it may be in New York,—and though New England is small and provincial and New York is large and cosmopolitan, still we respectfully submit that any characteristic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Wingfield were sent to Spain with proposals for the exclusion of Francis and his children from the French throne and the dismemberment of his kingdom.[474] It is doubtful if Wolsey himself desired the fulfilment of so preposterous and iniquitous a scheme. It is certain that Charles was in no mood to abet it. He had no wish to extract profit for England out of the abasement of Francis, to see Henry King of France, or lord of any French provinces. He had no intention of even ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... be a terrible risky business; but compared to facing the "girls of the period" it would be the merest play. I was weary of a life that was all mistakes. "Better throw it away," I thought, bitterly, "and give my scalp to dangle at a redskin's belt, than make another one of my characteristic and preposterous blunders." ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... had, several times in the past, brought the fundamental principles of the Constitution into question, and the country itself to the brink of ruin, was once again at work. Former friends had become deadly enemies: the community was rent with dissensions and poisoned with suspicions. Preposterous falsehoods were freely scattered and readily snatched at on both sides: the side of M. Venizelos and the side of M. Gounaris. Politicians who had been eclipsed by the Cretan's brilliance, came forth now to regain their lustre at his expense. For like all men who have played leading parts ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... perfect gradation in some departments, that some naturalists have thought that in some large divisions, if all existing forms were collected, a near approach to perfect gradation would be made. But such a notion is preposterous with respect to all, but evidently so with mammals. Other naturalists have thought this would be so if all the specimens entombed in the strata were collected{109}. I conceive there is no probability whatever of this; nevertheless it ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... inventions; he is something of an artist and not a little of a fighter. A man of that type is always capable of being wildly wrong, especially in the sectarian atmosphere of America; and Mr. Ford has been wrong before and may be wrong now. He is chiefly known in England for a project which I think very preposterous; that of the Peace Ship, which came to Europe during the war. But he is not known in England at all in connection with a much more important campaign, which he has conducted much more recently and with much more success; a campaign ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... name—Konstantine Feodorovitch Krylov. He was large and stout, a true Russian type, with a merry laughing face. He had the true Russian spirit of unconquerable irrational merriment. He laughed at everything with the gaiety of a man who finds life too preposterous for words. He had all the Russian untidyness, kindness of heart, gay, ironical pessimism. "To-morrow" was a word unknown to him: nothing was sacred to him, and yet at times it seemed as though life were so holy, so mysterious, that the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... or four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England, and who in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that increasing, too; for me to think of such a voyage was the most preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the most amazing tales that we have ever read. The gradual augmentation of the spook's power is one of the most preposterous, the most laughable histories in the whole literature of spoofing. Lieut. Jones has given us a wonderful book—even a ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... the throng, pushed her way towards the crowded counters, waited a preposterous time for her change, and then hurried off to another department to go through the same struggle once more. Deliberately she threw herself into the Christmas feeling, turning her thoughts from herself, considering only how she could add to the general happiness. She bought presents for ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of command and accusation they roared and bellowed at me, aiming to break down my defense with the suddenness of the onslaught. They succeeded for a moment. I couldn't rally my scattered and worn-out wits to think what the basis of this preposterous charge might be. ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... contrary to all human experience to suppose that Henry was in all cases in the right, while his opponents and his victims were as invariably in the wrong. If there ever had lived and reigned a man who could not do wrong, it was preposterous to look for him in one who had been a wife-killer, a persecutor, the slayer of the nobility of his kingdom, the exterminator of the last remnants of an old royal race, the patron of fagots and ropes and axes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... asked, What part of the chest, in particular, ought to be kept warm? The upper part needs it most. It is in the upper part of the lungs that tubercles (consumption) usually first make their appearance; and is it not preposterous to have such parts, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... do I care for his little two-by-four village? What does anyone care, save the poor wretches who must live there? And yet he insisted on boring me for one mortal hour with his preposterous schemes. It appears that he has raised an advertising fund of a thousand dollars, and means to open a ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the inventor. "Tom would never think of robbing the bank. Besides, he has all the money he wants. The charge is preposterous! I demand to be confronted ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... figures, derived from official documents, of the existence of which it is probable Senor Marliani was not aware, it will be observed at once how extremely light and fallacious are the grounds on which he jumps to conclusions. What more preposterous than the vague assumption founded on data little better then guess-work, that one-fourth of the whole exports of British cottons to Italy and the Italian islands, say L.500,000 out of L.2,000,000, go to Spain, when, in point of fact, not one-tenth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... question, as it regards individual and private manners. There is a fine illustration of the effects of preposterous and affected gentility in the character of Gertrude, in the old comedy of Eastward Hoe, written by Ben Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in conjunction. This play is supposed to have given rise to Hogarth's series of prints of the Idle and Industrious ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... seemed to Joe as if life were torn to bits, as if the world's end had come. It was unbelievable, impossible—his eyes belied his brain. That all those years of labor and dream and effort were going up in flame and smoke seemed preposterous. And only a few moments before he and Myra had stood on the heights of the world; had their mad moment; and even then his life was being burned away from him. He felt the hoarse sobs lifting up through ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... suddenly loomed up before Armand's mind with all its terrible difficulties. How could Percy—a marked man if ever there was one—go from prison to prison to inquire about Jeanne? The very idea seemed preposterous. Armand ought never to have consented to such an insensate plan. The more he thought of it, the more impossible did it seem that Blakeney could ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... "This is preposterous!" exclaimed my uncle Timothy at my side. And the Reverend Lettuce-Spray managed to find his voice. "Sir, whoever you are, leave ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... a wealthy suitor whom his wife, and therefore all the world, would approve of, here he was listening to a farmer's son, with the consciousness that he must yield, and not wholly unwilling to do so. Moreover, this preposterous young man, so far from showing any awe of him, had almost defied him from the start, and had plainly stated that the father's wealth was the only objection to the daughter. Having seen the drift of events, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... outcome of any charter of the constitution, that however much a Liberal may be disposed to complain of them, as of treason against those sublime ideas with which the ambitious plebeian is apt to cover his designs, he would none the less think it a preposterous notion that M. le Prince de Montmorency, for instance, should continue to live in the Rue Saint-Martin at the corner of the street which bears that nobleman's name; or that M. le Duc de Fitz-James, descendant of the royal house ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... thou sayest thou art righteous, but they are but vain words. Knowest thou not that thy zeal, which is the life of thy righteousness, is preposterous in many things. What else means thy madness, and the rage thereof, against men as good as thyself. True, thy being ignorant that they are good, may save thee from the commission of the sin that is unpardonable, but it will never keep ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Ferdinand had signed it only because he never expected the voyage to be successful; and that now, when men were beginning to believe Americo's assertion that a whole continent lay off in the west, it was preposterous that one family should hope to be its governor and viceroy and to control its trade. No, Columbus could only go on reiterating that it was so written down in Granada, away back ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... surely very imprudent in Mrs. Sommers, and everybody said it was very imprudent. "What! admit as a visitor in her family a person whom she had never seen in her life before, and who, for anything she knew, might be a swindler or a Jew! There was never anything so preposterous—a woman, too, of Mrs. Sommers's judgment and propriety! It was very—very strange." But whether it was very strange or not, the fact is that the stranger soon spent most of his time at Violet Cottage; and what ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... "Matrimonia Segreto." But in the meanwhile there is a check in the diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of humour. He has said publicly,—and the words are portentous,—"The silly girl is as mad as her father; what she asks is preposterous!" Conference follows conference; the Cardinal talks to the poor child very solemnly in his closet,—all in vain. Naples is distracted with curiosity and conjecture. The lecture ends in a quarrel, and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... would swing to the side of the Labour extremists and revolutionists. Failing that, the battle was an even chance. The Government with a loyal army and police force behind them might win—but at a cost of great suffering. But Tommy nourished another and a preposterous dream. With Mr. Brown unmasked and captured he believed, rightly or wrongly, that the whole organization would crumble ignominiously and instantaneously. The strange permeating influence of the unseen chief held it together. Without him, Tommy believed an instant panic would set in; and, the honest ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... mind [211] with reference to the matters they deal with. Mr. Froude is free to perceive that no special religion patched up from obsolete creeds could be acceptable to those with whose sentiments the thoughts of the writer just quoted are in true racial unison. It is preposterous to expect that the same superstition regarding skin ascendency, which is now so markedly played out in our Colonies in temporal matters, could have any weight whatsoever in matters so momentous as morals and religion. But granting even the possibility of any ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... rarely upon practical considerations, but almost always upon already accepted political opinions. Incessant conflict, continuous passionate excitement, are therefore the second consequence of this preposterous system. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... was discovered by the Padre, face upwards, in a bed of mignonette, and he was vehement in claiming a fresh deal, on the grounds that the card was exposed. Miss Mapp could not speak at all in answer to this preposterous claim: she could only smile at him, and proceed to declare trumps as if nothing had happened.... The Major alone failed to come up to the full measure of these enjoyments, for though all the rest of them were as angry with him as they were with ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... pleasanter way of passing an evening. I could tell you stories, sir; I served the King in his wars, but I scorn a braggart, and all these glories are over. I am now a man of peace, and, as I told you, on my way to be married. Am I wise? I do not know, but I sometimes think it preposterous that a man who has been here and there about the world, and could, if he were so meanly-minded, tell a tale or so of success in gallantry, should hamper himself with connubial fetters. But a man must settle, to be sure, and since the lady is young, and not wanting ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the necessity of meeting Alden again, then made a wry face at her own foolishness. "Ridiculous," she said to herself, "preposterous, absurd!" No matter what her own nightmares might be, he slept soundly—of course he did. How could healthy youth with a clear conscience ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... degree. But to make it the exclusive literary diet, as some do,—to devour the garbage with which the shelves of circulating libraries are filled,—and to occupy the greater portion of the leisure hours in studying the preposterous pictures of human life which so many of them present, is worse than waste of time: it is positively pernicious. The habitual novel- reader indulges in fictitious feelings so much, that there is great risk of sound and healthy feeling ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... "What absolute preposterous nonsense!" Wallace replied. "I never heard of such a thing. The Bank always provides furniture ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... girl, think how unreasonable, how untrue, how preposterous it all is in a case like yours? God made your marriage? Yours? God married you to that notorious ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... fact—a foolish avowal of his own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards—that he had heard the vanished guide call "for help." He omitted the singular phrases used, for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous language. Also, while describing how the man's footsteps in the snow had gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal's plunging tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a wholly incredible distance. It seemed a question, nicely ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... coincidence. It's preposterous to imagine for a moment that reputable managers would lend themselves to anything of the kind. You happened to come across a scoundrel—that's all. Broadway's full of such human vultures—more's the pity—and ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... two or three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, and told me that a public insult had been put upon me in the next room. I inquired its nature. It seemed that an impertinent fellow had dressed himself up as a preposterous parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good for me, and in a flash of folly I decided to see the situation through. Consequently it was to meet the glare of the company and my own lifted eyebrows and freezing eyes that ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... himself inelegantly. His actions are all ungraceful; so that, with all his merit and knowledge, I would rather converse six hours with the most frivolous tittle-tattle woman who knew something of the world, than with him. The preposterous notions of a systematical man who does not know the world, tire the patience of a man who does. It would be endless to correct his mistakes, nor would he take it kindly: for he has considered everything deliberately, and is very sure that ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... on a flat rock. He was white, and shaking a little. He wanted more than anything else in the wide world to kill George Dalton. Of course in these days such things were preposterous. But he had murder in ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... art righteous; but they are but vain words. Knowest thou not that thy zeal, which is the life of thy righteousness, is preposterous in many things? What else means thy madness, and the rage thereof, against men as good as thyself. True, thy being ignorant that they are good, may save thee from the commission of the sin that is unpardonable; but it ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... to refuse as many hundreds of would be subscribers; and, when my design was made public by the Press, these and others at once applied to me. "To issue a thousand still more objectionable copies by another and not a better hand" (notice the quip cursive!) may "seem preposterous" (p. 180), but only to a writer ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... sir," he was assured, "I would just as soon fight my grandfather. The thing is preposterous." The Marques gasped for air, but Manvers continued. "Had your friend's age been anywhere near my own, I doubt if I could have gratified him after what took place the other day. He caused a man of his to stab me in the back as I was walking ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... two extremes of opinion at the South. The first is certainly the more reasonable and truthful, though it implies that all the blame rests upon the whites, which is not the case; the second, preposterous as it will appear to Northern readers, is religiously believed by large numbers of the "unreconciled." Between these two extremes there is an infinite variety of theories, all more or less governed by the political ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... description sounded ludicrous. The fashionable way of putting things was utterly unknown to her. To think of Traill as quaint, in the sense of the word as she understood it, seemed preposterous. She could not realize that the Society idea of quaintness is anything which does not passably imitate or become ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... been mistaken in believing that we could live happier lives in the country than in town? A year and a half of outdoor life and freedom from professional responsibilities had wrought a great change in me. I could now eat and sleep like a hired man, and it seemed preposterous to claim that I was going to the country for my health. My medical adviser, however, insisted that I had not gotten far enough away from the cause of my breakdown, and that it would be unwise for me to take up work again for at least another ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... nearly always either men, or women who have married young and happily and borne many children, and had a very full and interesting outside life as well! Such women will assure me with the utmost complacency that the sex-instincts of a woman are very easily controllable, and that it is preposterous to speak as if their repression really cost very much. I think with bitterness of that age-long repression, of its unmeasured cost; of the gibe contained in the phrase "old maid," with all its implication of a narrowed life, a prudish mind, ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... more tormented mind than the mind of Peter Gudge had ever been put in that black hole. It was the more terrible, because so utterly undeserved, so preposterous. For such a thing to happen to him, Peter Gudge, of all people—who took such pains to avoid discomfort in life, who was always ready to oblige anybody, to do anything he was told to do, so as to have'an easy time, a sufficiency of food, and a warm corner to crawl into! What could ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... changing methods the manager should realize that at no time during the introduction of the system should any broad, sweeping changes be made which seriously affect a large number of the workmen. It would be preposterous, for instance, in going from day to piece work to start a large number of men on piece work at the same time. Throughout the early stages of organization each change made should affect one workman only, and after the single man affected has become used to the new ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a way out of it for the moment. "We will never get any of our comrades to serve as seconds. It's preposterous." ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... even an air of heroism, crushed under foot the little South African Republics, and hounded down every Englishman who withstood the madness of the crowd. The great, free intelligent people of the United States went to war against Spain with a childlike faith in the preposterous legend of the blowing up of the Maine. There is no country which has not some such shameful page in its history, the record of some moment when its moral and intellectual prestige was besmirched in the eyes of the whole world. It pays for its momentary madness, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of this, I was going to forbid your writing; but you care not for my forbidding. As long as you think it possible to reconcile me to your views and make me a partaker in your infamy, you will harass me with importunity, with feigned penitence and preposterous arguments. But one thing at least is in my power. I can shun you, and I can throw your unopened letters into the fire; and that, believe ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... most preposterous ass!—and that last, look you, is more valuable than all the others. Solomon, I think, says something about a wise man being truly wise who knoweth ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... be so good as to give Dr. Berkeley notice immediately; but if his Grace was satisfied that there was no danger, there was no occasion to give any answer. No answer came." Scottish Church Review, i. 113. In view of all these facts and circumstances, how utterly preposterous is the gossiping story retailed ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... as he had loved the little woman now sleeping in her grave, who had scattered flowers with an errant fancy, he would have thought it preposterous to object to an order so calmly spoken, so evidently intended for execution. There was something in the tone of Miss Johns in giving directions that drew off all moral power of objection as surely as a good metallic conductor would free an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... laughter. "It is preposterous," he cried. "Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am I—in this damned twilight—I never knew a dream in twilight before—an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that I am myself, ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... wanting who sought other modes of distinguishing themselves. Milton, who must not be named in the same paragraph with others, although he had not yet meditated the sublime work which was to carry his name to immortality, disdained, even in his lesser compositions, the preposterous conceits and learned absurdities, by which his contemporaries acquired distinction. Some of his slighter academic prolusions are, indeed, tinged with the prevailing taste of his age, or, perhaps, were written in ridicule of it; but no circumstance in his life is more remarkable, than that "Comus," ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... that we could inform them before-hand, by means of a perpetual almanack, that an eclipse of the sun or moon would take place on the very day when it happened. Their notion of the cause of an eclipse is the most preposterous and ridiculous, that ever entered into the head, even of an heathen. They say, that the devil is come to devour the sun or moon, and falls to work to gnaw off the edge; that therefore it is necessary he should be driven away; consequently all the sorcerers ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... restore the analogy; and, though we may be mistaken in much detail, in a general way, at least, we become plausible. In comparison with Myers' way of attacking the question of immortality in particular, the official way is certainly so far from the mark as to be almost preposterous. It assumes that when our ordinary consciousness goes out, the only alternative surviving kind of consciousness that could be possible is abstract mentality, living on spiritual truth, and communicating ideal wisdom—in short, the ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... protest. Surely there was a time for all things, and this was the time for coffee and tobacco, not for disconcerting risks and detestable noises. I wanted never to hear our four-inch gun again by day. The idea of its shaking the peace of night to bits was preposterous. Yet a light was reported ahead, a moving light on the lake itself. 'You haven't much time, Craig,' I heard the lieutenant cry to our captain. The engine-room bells rang ominously, there was much puffing ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... poppycock, mummery, monkey trick, boutade [Fr.], escapade. V. play the fool &c 499; talk nonsense, parler a tort et a travess [Fr.]; battre la campagne [Fr.]; hanemolia bazein [Gr.]; be absurd &c adj.. Adj. absurd, nonsensical, preposterous, egregious, senseless, inconsistent, ridiculous, extravagant, quibbling; self-annulling, self- contradictory; macaronic^, punning. foolish &c 499; sophistical &c 477; unmeaning &c 517; without rhyme or reason; fantastic. Int. fiddlededee!, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... exclaimed Colonel Belford. "To be sure you cannot believe your ears. Do you not see that this is a preposterous lie, and that he is telling it to you to ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... 29. Our luck in weather is preposterous. I roused the hands at 2.30 A.M., intending to get away at 5. It was thick and snowy, yet we could have got on; but at breakfast the wind increased, and by 4.30 it was blowing a full gale from the south. The pony wall blew down, huge drifts collected, and the sledges were quickly buried. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... have sent for the other hundred pounds from England; and who, in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that increasing too; for me to think of such a voyage, was the most preposterous thing that ever man, in such circumstances, could be ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... week had its miracle; and the hats, and the embroidered whiteness, and the smart street suit and the adorable kitchen ginghams accumulated as if by magic. Bert's mother sent delightfully monogrammed bed and table-linen, almost weekly. Nancy said it was preposterous for poor people to start ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... almost savage ceremonies used at sea on crossing the equator have been so often described that a voyager, at this time of day, may be well excused for omitting any minute account of such wild proceedings. The whole affair, indeed, is preposterous in its conception, and, I must say, brutal in its execution. Notwithstanding all this, however, I have not only permitted it to go on in ships which I commanded, but have even encouraged it, and set it agoing, when the men themselves were in doubt. Its evil is transient if any evil ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... on to these words, both for her own comfort in Arthur's loss, and for the quieting of her conscience, which told her that it was preposterous that he should leave Donkey Street so that she could keep Ellen at Ansdore. Of course, if she did her duty she would pack Ellen off to the Isle of Wight, so that Arthur could stay. The fact was, however, that ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... It was instinct not to show alarm. Actually, he didn't feel it. This was too preposterous! He tried to grasp the situation and fearfulness does not ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... write a drama, cast it, and rehearse it properly for Monday night. Furthermore, you have no pictorial printing as yet. These two gentlemen, whom you have with you, have never been on the stage, and they certainly must have time to study their parts. It is preposterous to think of opening on Monday night, and ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... such huge proportions, that Martin, but two inches less than six feet, himself, felt like a pigmy in comparison. The man's outline was vague and enhanced by the gloom; Martin, a-tingle with the unexpected collision, had the first thought it was a preposterous apparition. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... her when she held her head high, and I wouldn't advise any one to say much against her now she's in throuble—unless he wished to quarrel with me." And Tony McKeon closed his fist as much as to show that if any one did entertain so preposterous a wish he could be little better than a ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... a whisper, of Mr. PUNCH how the latter very staid individual came to be there, I understood that, of all the absurd men of this century, he was selected as the most representatively preposterous. The PRINCE OF WALES was not asked, lest his morals might be hurt by something that was said. And it is so important, you know, for the British nation—(for the rest, see the Saturday Review.) And then Madame GEORGE SAND was to be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... likely I can ever be positive; and so long as there is a doubt, however small, it would be preposterous to give up what otherwise must come to my children, if not to me; but I will not wrong her more than ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation—not from God—but from the church. Had the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have been but one church, and that church never could have advanced. It might have retrograded, because it is not necessary to think, or investigate, in order to forget. Without heresy there ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of serfdom as a result aimed at in the present Polish struggle, is not only rash but preposterous, and has no foundation except in a fixed purpose to direct all sympathy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... existing in the Territory of Utah, and have asked for definite legislation to correct it. That polygamy should exist in a free, enlightened, and Christian country, without the power to punish so flagrant a crime against decency and morality, seems preposterous. True, there is no law to sustain this unnatural vice; but what is needed is a law to punish it as a crime, and at the same time to fix the status of the innocent children, the offspring of this system, and of the possibly innocent plural wives. But as an institution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... attention to what I was saying. He merely murmured that it was all normal, quite normal, under the circumstances. So, after all, I'm just an ordinary, everyday woman! But the man of medicine has ordered me to stay in bed for twelve days—which Olga regards as unspeakably preposterous, since one day, she proudly announced, was all her mother ever asked for. Which shows the ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... by its dictates, we shall find its justification there: if we review the experience we have had, or contemplate the history of nations, there too we shall find ample reasons to prove its expediency. It would be preposterous to depend for necessary supplies on a body which is fully possessed of the power of withholding them. If a government depends on other governments for its revenues; if it must depend on the voluntary contributions of its members, its existence ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... meanly of me as to suppose that I would attend this Regatta pour rire. But I know enough to be sure that the Eights were slow, the Fours deficient in pace, the pairs on the minus side of nothing, and the scullers preposterous. Rowing must be in a bad way when it can boast no better champions (save the mark!) than those who last week aired their incompetence, and impeded the traffic of the people upon the Thames. Time was when an oarsman was an oarsman, but now he is a miserable cross between a Belgravian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... brought them from their rude shielings among the hills or beside the bogs, would have passed for a dark jest. But in this remote spot, the notion of overthrowing the hated power by means of a few score pikes, stiffened by half as many sailors from the Spanish ship in the bay, did not seem preposterous, either to these poor folk or to their betters. Cammock, of course, knew the truth, and the Bishop. Asgill, too, the one man cognisant of the movement who was not here, and of whom some thought with distrust—he, too, could appraise the attempt ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... somehow strangely unreal to the young man. In a night the face of the world had changed for him; its features loomed weirdly blurred and contorted through the mystical grey-gold atmosphere of the land of Romance, wherein he really lived and moved and had his being. The blatant day was altogether preposterous: to-day was a dream, something nightmarish; last night he had been awake, last night for the first time in twenty-odd years of existence ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... indignant with everything, still rankling, in spite of all Sam had said, with the thought that she had been made a mere part of a commercial transaction. Why, it was like those barbarous countries she had read about, where wives are bought and sold! Preposterous and unbearable! ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... therefore, can have a greater right to break off from the bargain than the other or others have to hold them to it.... It is high time that the claim to secede at will should be put down by the public opinion." What,—he writes to another friend,—"what can be more preposterous than to say that the States, as united, are in no respect or degree a nation, which implies sovereignty, ... and on the other hand, and at the same time, to say that the States separately are completely nations and sovereigns?... ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... horse that he was, had already pricked up his ears, and determined to lend his tongue or his sword, as his state might require. That a fight could go on in the Union so long as Virginia or himself kept out of it, seemed to him a possibility little less than preposterous. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... to the bridles; and a gleam from the lantern showed Marion his face. His mouth was open, his eyes staring with incredulity and alarm. She was seized with a preposterous desire to laugh at that comical visage, made grotesque by the wavering light of the lantern that danced in the fellow's hand. She was on the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... ever have asked you to come to me with such an incredible assertion? Surely, you must know how preposterous the very idea is! I do not boast or brag, but it is common knowledge that my father was the richest man in the city, in this entire part of the country, in fact. The thought of such a thing is absurd. Who could have attempted to perpetrate such a senseless hoax, a ridiculous ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... exasperated inspector. "Your story is preposterous anyway. Pure romance. Nevertheless I have instructed Sergeant Plaskett to continue the search. If any such girl should be found, which would surprise me, she will be ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... a preposterous order of the woordes contrarye to the good order of speakyng, as: He fell from of the wall, for he fel of from ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... with much impatience, "spare me a eulogy on your establishment: I have no doubt it is very respectable; and for grisettes and epiciers may do extremely well. But the Vicomte is a man of birth and connections. In a word, what he contemplates is preposterous. I know not what fee Monsieur Love expects; but if he contrive to amuse Monsieur de Vaudemont, and to frustrate every connection he proposes to form, that fee, whatever it may be, shall be ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Ballarat are from a hundred to an hundred and sixty feet deep in hard ground, and yet people in Ceylon expect to find heavy gold in mere mud, close to the surface. The idea is preposterous, and I conceive it only reasonable to infer from the present appearances that gold does exist in large quantities in Ceylon. But as it is reasonable to suppose such to be the case, so it is unreasonable to suppose that private individuals will invest capital in so uncertain a speculation ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... first breathings to old age in its last, every resource of the materia medica, of the reason, judgment, and of the soul itself, was to be called in in every grave case, and to be held to a responsibility measured by preposterous faith in medicines. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... want of habit, did it not seem preposterous, judging from precedent, that aught save the most efficient effrontery could be ever expected in connection with my subject—for I will not conceal from you that I mean to talk about Art. Yes, Art—that has of late become, as far as much discussion and writing ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... but the provincial woman—never! If her waist is too short and her figure ill balanced, well, she makes up her mind to the worst, and her adorers—or they do not adore her—must take her as she is, while the Parisian always insists on being taken for what she is not. Hence the preposterous bustles, the audacious flatness, the ridiculous fulness, the hideous outlines ingeniously displayed, to which a whole town will become accustomed, but which are so astounding when a provincial woman makes her appearance ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... believed, just as she begged me not to believe, that the cause of her distress and anxiety was more imaginary than real. But that something was troubling George Taylor I had felt certain for a good while. The idea that he did not love Nellie I knew was preposterous. That was not it. There was something else, but what I could not imagine. I wanted to help the girl if I could, but how could I ask George to tell me his secrets? I, with a secret of ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... concrete, gradually condenses its filmy vapours into a solid element.... He suggests the casting. "What do you think of X. for the old man?" asks the producer. The author is staggered. Is it conceivable that so renowned a producer can have so misread and misunderstood the play? X. would be preposterous as the old man. But the producer goes on talking. And suddenly the author sees possibilities in X. But at the same time he sees a different play from what he wrote. And quite probably he sees a more glorious play. Quite probably he had not suspected ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... was a failure; both lads are swallowed up in the Australian bush, but I don't believe they are dead, and I am convinced that Alick will never come back without tidings of his cousin. Their affection for each other was absurd, preposterous, ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... a brisk passage of arms between the two men of opposite party in the group by the fire, and Mrs. Cricklander incited them to further exertions. It had arisen because Mr. Derringham had launched forth the abominable and preposterous theory that the only thing the Radicals would bring England to would be the necessity of returning to barbarism and importing slaves—then their schemes applied to the present inhabitants of the country might all work. The denizens in the casual wards, having a vote and a competence provided ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... fear this preposterous and sacrilegious claim to-day, as in all the past, paralyzes the will and discourages the personal efforts of millions of men and women. Between that blind credulity which makes personal effort unnecessary, and the miracle and dogma which make it seem useless, the upward and onward ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... perturbation of conscience, and some internal qualms, the conversation of the previous evening. I felt relieved, however, after two spoonfuls of carbonate of soda, and a glance at the newspaper, wherein I perceived the announcement of no less than four other schemes equally preposterous with our own. But, after all, what right had I to assume that the Glenmutchkin project would prove an ultimate failure? I had not a scrap of statistical information that might entitle me to form such an opinion. At any rate, Parliament, by substituting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... he say nothing about it at present, and trust to chance to discover the sacrilegious hider? Could it possibly be Cherry herself, guilty of the same innocent curiosity that had impelled her to buy the "Ham-fat Man"? Preposterous! Besides, the cards had been used, and she could not play ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... as anything but a doubtful privilege. First awakening to consciousness in this state, it was with effort and only lately she had comprehended that there could be any other: a different condition from one in which Miss Emma was mistress and she was maid seemed at first preposterous, then fabulous, and still unnatural: nevertheless, there was a flavor of wicked pleasure in the thought. Flor looked with a sort of contempt on the little tumbling darkies who had never entertained it. Ever since she was born, however, she had frequently fancied she would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... and whippoorwills twittered in the long grass. But even these dissonances hardly rippled the clear torrent of the mocking-birds' notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs and trees. It would not have been preposterous for one to tiptoe and essay to touch the stars, they hung ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... long will you continue to act in this absurd and preposterous manner? It is incumbent on you to make a decision in favor of one thing or the other. If you think that you are able to contend with me, stop, and let us engage. If not, then acknowledge me as your superior, and submit ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... had turned everything and everybody topsy turvy. When we left the country, party animosities were pitched to a high key, but the possibility of a gigantic civil war as a solution of political problems would have been regarded as preposterous. On our return, however, the country was wild with excitement over an armed struggle, the eventual magnitude of which no one had yet dreamed of. Newly equipped regiments were constantly passing in our vicinity for the seat of war, the national ensign and other emblems of loyalty were ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... was already gathering. There was Tom Brangwyn, and there was Kurt Fawzi and his wife, and Lynne. And there was Senta herself, fat and dumpy, in one of her preposterous red-and-purple dresses, bustling about, bubbling happily one moment and screaming invective at ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... head compassionately over the preposterous state of mind betrayed by such a demand, and with a fresh burst of abuse of his brother, and an assurance to the vicar's wife that he meant to 'gie that oald man nawtice when he got haum; he wasn't goan to hev his bisness spiled for nowt by an oald ijiot wi' a hed ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... agriculture. According to them, as he says,[282] this fund or rent constitutes the whole national wealth. In his first edition he had defended the economists against some of Adam Smith's criticisms; and though he altered his views and thought that they had been led into preposterous errors, he retained a certain sympathy for them. Agriculture has still a certain 'pre-eminence.' God has bestowed upon the soil the 'inestimable quality of being able to maintain more persons than are necessary to work ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... stated, four blessed pages of it! All vital, earnest, palpitating with youthful energy, preposterous in premises, precipitate in conclusions,—yet irresistible and convincing to every woman in their illogical sincerity. There was not a word of love in it, yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration; there was not an epithet or expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... for that is always referred to the next meeting, that so men may not rashly and in the heat of discourse engage themselves too soon, which might bias them so much that, instead of consulting the good of the public, they might rather study to support their first opinions, and by a perverse and preposterous sort of shame hazard their country rather than endanger their own reputation, or venture the being suspected to have wanted foresight in the expedients that they at first proposed; and therefore, to prevent this, they take care that they may rather ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies. At the time of the framing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... whatever, and he would ruin my life as well as his own. No, thank you. However, I am convinced that you are altogether mistaken, and Cuthbert Hartington would no more dream of asking me to be his wife than I should of taking him for a husband—the idea is altogether preposterous." ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... project of marrying her, Paolina Foscarelli, had suggested itself, or had been suggested, to her at any time during those eight months,—would at once have replied to her own heart or to any other person, that such an idea was utterly preposterous and out ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... I have seen these often in the peasantry, in the poor. It is your middle classes, with their incessant flutter, and bluster, and twitter, and twaddle; with their perpetual strain after effect; with their deathless desire to get one rung of the ladder higher than they ever can get; with their preposterous affectations, their pedantic unrealities, their morbid dread of remark, their everlasting imitations, their superficial education, their monotonous commonplaces, and their nervous deference to opinion;—it is your middle classes ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... are rather meagre," he said; "but I'll find a hansom first, and then we'll invent something." He led her through the throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced girls in preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with paper bundles and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged to the same race? The dinginess, the crudity of this average section of womanhood made him feel ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... hesitated to reject all overtures from that quarter. We thus learn that the most desperate measures are in agitation—weak and preposterous too as they are desperate, and must in the end prove ruinous. Antiochus, we doubt not, is a tool in the hands of others, but he stands out as the head and centre of the conspiracy. There is a violent and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... really the most ignorant, and it is only from the arrieros, or muleteers, and the correos, or runners, that any knowledge of this kind can be obtained, and then only in a very confused form, and with most preposterous and contradictory estimates of distances ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... precise point of Mercury's elevation on the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we live, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticed that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such a thunder-plump falls down in a deluge, that, returning home by water and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... short time and because of the daily contact which their business relations required, she was beginning to know Winnington, to realise something of his life and character. And as for the love borne him in the neighbourhood—it was really preposterous—bad for any man! Delia pitied herself, not only because she was Winnington's ward against her will, but because of the silent force of public opinion that upheld him, and ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... It seemed almost too preposterous to quite credit that she was uttering naked truth.—And yet—! After a second's gaze at her be repeated what he had said ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to all those childlike souls which pass through the world with the honest eyes of purity: and around her there would pass a procession of friendly beggars and harmless eccentrics, all in pursuit of their touchingly preposterous cranks and whims,—and at their head the fond genius of dear Dickens, laughing and crying together at his own dreams. At such times, when she looked out of the window, she would recognize among the passers-by the beloved or dreaded figure of this or that personage ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... unwelcome—being nothing less than requests from a number of tenants to the "Good Sir Adrian," "the real master come to his own again"—for a substantial reduction of rent; a step towards which the master's heart inclined, but which his sober reason condemned as preposterous. But Rene's countenance, as he entered, betrayed news of such import that Sir Adrian instantly adjourned the matter on hand, and, when the bailiff had retired, anxiously turned to the new-comer, who stood in the doorway mopping ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... him, jus' come to him that minute, like a flash," said the old man, reflectively, the pathos of his sweet, tremulous voice lending unspeakable melody to the preposterous stanza. ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... respectively took cognisance of the theocratic and of the civic life of the nation, and at the time when His life hung on the decision of the two, were the causes of His judicial sentence. The people who allege that Jesus never made the preposterous claims for Himself which Christians have made for Him, but was a simple Teacher of morality and lofty religion, have never fairly faced the simple question: 'For what, then, was He crucified?' It is easy for them to dilate on the hatred of the Jewish officials and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... and holly, which decorate the pews, give a date to the period, and determine this preposterous union of January with June, to have taken place ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... according to all romantic precedents, this conduct was preposterous in Asenath, Floracita, in the novel, never so far forgets the whole duty of a heroine as to struggle, waver, doubt, delay. It is proud and proper to free the young fellow; proudly and properly she frees him; "suffers in silence"—till she marries ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the voyage and discovery, word for word, without acknowledgment. [Footnote: Hist. de la Nouvelle France, p. 27, et seq. (ed. 1609). In a subsequent portion of his history (p. 244) Lescarbot again refers incidentally to Verrazzano in connection with Jacques Cartier, to whom he attributes a preposterous statement, acknowledging the Verrazzano discovery. He states that in 1533 Cartier made known to Chabot, then admiral of France, his willingness "to discover countries, as the Spanish had done, in the West Indies, and as, nine years before, Jean Verrazzano (had done) under the authority ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... never!" I was shouting, ignoring her hand. How she had misjudged me! What a shame she had put upon me! I could not credit. "You shall not—I tell you, you sha'n't. I won't have it—it's monstrous, preposterous. You sha'n't go, I sha'n't go. But wherever we go we'll go together. We'll stand them off. Then if they can take us, let 'em. You make a coward of me—a dastard. You've no right to. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... sequels, the Historical Register had neither the vogue nor the wit of its predecessor. It was only half as long, and it was even more disconnected in character. "Harmonious Cibber," as Swift calls him, whose "preposterous Odes" had already been ridiculed in Pasquin and the Author's Farce, was once more brought on the stage as Ground-Ivy, for his alterations of Shakespeare; and under the name of Pistol, Theophilus Cibber ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... utmost resentment the determination of the war to come to Leesville, in spite of all his labours to keep it out. Take the most preposterous thing you could imagine—the most idiotic thing on the face of the earth—take German spies! When Jimmie heard people talking about German spies, he laughed in their faces, he told them they were a bunch of fools, they belonged in the nursery; ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... and he took counsel of his assistants, who having walked over it twice, first with their toes pointed out, and then with their toes pointed in, decided that it came from some greedy person who wanted five. They thought this because there was a large five printed on it. 'Preposterous!' cried Solomon in a rage, and he presented it to Peter; anything useless which drifted upon the island was usually given to Peter ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... thing as a railroad, seemed to excite everybody's risibilities. His railroad was called the Hat Line, even in the debates, and coarse people and negroes were hired by wits in the lobby to attend the Legislature with petitions for the Eastern Shore railroad, the whole delegation wearing antique and preposterous hats, gathered up from all the old counties and from the slop-shops of Baltimore; and in that day queer hats were very common, as animal skins of great endurance were still ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... was a little pause. The archdeacon hardly knew how to begin his story. In the first place he was in doubt whether Lady Lufton had ever heard of the preposterous match which his son had proposed to himself to make. In his anger at Plumstead he had felt sure that she knew all about it, and that she was assisting his son. But this belief had dwindled as his anger had ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... hold more than two enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus which could now no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot): that this utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box, had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers, sketched by a masterly hand, in the highly varnished lithographic plan hanging up in the agent's counting-house in the city of London: that ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... has told me that you have a new servant, and that she is so preposterous as to wish to take her meals with you, but that he does not intend to allow it. Now, I say to you, as I said to him, that if she expected to sit at the table before I came, she must do it now. I am used to that sort of thing, and ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... to occupy the editorial chair during a brief absence. He did so, changing its politics at once, and furnishing funny articles which later appeared as "Phoenixiana," and ranked him with Artemus Ward as a genuine American humorist. Here is his closing paragraph after those preposterous somersaults and daring pranks ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... not a word had been heard from Stuart and his cavalry, and this seriously disturbed the mind of our great commander. The positions of the enemy, moving against our rear and flank, necessitated a battle or a withdrawal, and to fight a great battle without the aid of cavalry simply seemed preposterous. General Stuart has been greatly censured for his conduct during these stirring times, just on the eve of this, the greatest battle fought ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... purpose to defend myself," he said, coldly. "If you are bent upon filling your mind with such matters, go to Dr. Perrin. He will tell you that he, as a physician, knows that the charge against me is preposterous. He will tell you that even granting that the cause of the blindness is what Mrs. Abbott guesses, there are a thousand ways in which such an infection can be contracted, which are perfectly innocent, involving no guilt on the part of anyone. Every doctor ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... and vain pretence, Those loud seditious clamours that engage Only inhuman, brutish souls, By barb'rous Scythians only understood, Who cruelly their flowing bowls At banquets intermix with streams of blood. Dreadful, preposterous, merriment! Our hands all gayly innocent, Ought ne'er in such confusion bear a part, Polluted with a savage ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... a champion of orthodoxy in these days, is questionable in taste, if it be meant as a jest, and more than questionable in morality, if it is to be taken in earnest. To pretend that you believe any doctrine for no better reason than that you doubt everything else, would be dishonest, if it were not preposterous. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... does all this mean? How very wrong of you, Dorante, to expose me to the preposterous ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... seeing. He is the particular friend of Eudoxie, the most beautiful girl in my whole establishment and more amorous and lascivious than all of them put together. She is lately from France, and does not speak a word of English. She is perfectly crazy when enjoying the sexual act and acts in the most preposterous manner. Her naked body is worth going a hundred miles to see, she is so gloriously beautiful. But come, let us get to her room first for it is best not to miss the slightest preliminary ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... with impatience. Already it was close upon five o'clock, and in another hour the sun would set and the Angelus would toll the knell of Mademoiselle's preposterous suspicions, unless in the meantime I had speech with Canaples, and led him to employ a father's authority to keep his ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... upstairs with her head very stiff. So her mother, and Miss Raeburn too, thought it necessary to keep watch on her. How preposterous! She thought of her free and easy relations with her Kensington student-friends, and wondered when a more reasonable idea of the relations between men and women would begin to ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... honorable friend from Oregon [Mr. Williams] thinks this is entirely preposterous. I have no doubt he does, and I give him all credit for honesty and sincerity in the remarks that he has made; but the trouble with him is, and with a great many others—perhaps it is with myself upon some subjects—is that he directs his gaze too long upon a particular ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... who have put the statement forth, to deter others from embarking in the formation of a Canal across the Isthmus of Panama; for the recommendation of a Tunnel of 5,350 metres (about three miles) in length, and 100 feet in height, is not only preposterous in itself, as applied to a Ship Canal, but is wholly at variance with M. Garella's own letter to the Governor of Panama (ante p. 26), and with the statement of his opinions in the Article in the Moniteur Parisien ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... gig. "Surveying?" he asked, reining in his horse. "No, sir; I am looking at a bird in the tree yonder." I wished him to go on, and thought it best to gratify his curiosity at once. He was silent a moment; then he said, "Looking at the old sugar house from there?" That was too preposterous, and I answered with more voice, and perhaps with a touch of impatience, "No, no; I am trying to see a bird in that pine-tree." He was silent again. Then he gathered up the reins. "I'm so deaf I can't ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... district courts have a power of commanding the executive government to abandon superior duties and attend on them, at whatever distance, I am unwilling, by any notice of the subpoena, to set a precedent which might sanction a proceeding so preposterous. I enclose you, therefore, a letter, public and for the court, covering substantially all they ought to desire. If the papers which were enclosed in Wilkinson's letter may, in your judgment, be communicated without injury, you will ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... goodness, how polite we are!' exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand. 'What a world of gammon and spinnage it ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... A preposterous and affected statue to our left, with the immortal name of Shakespeare below it, has distracted the eyes of our friends, and comments are freely made when we tell them how nearly the bones of the sweet Swan of Avon were brought from Stratford to this burial-place ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... their own hearts in consequence, but they never even imagine that David really had it in his. Deeper and grander things still, uttered by this same shepherd-warrior, do they read, and yet in their wisdom will declare it preposterous that any Scotch lad should have such a feeling towards God as I have represented! "Doth God care for oxen?" says St. Paul. Doth God care for kings? I ask, or for Jew-shepherds? Or does he not care all over for all of us—oxen and kings and sparrows ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the American Legation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington, and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise from the application of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act of 1881 to American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell's preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States, but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in Ireland by the administration of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... with free and easy cessions of American lands, Clarendon, Albemarle, and Shaftesbury were among the first and luckiest in the scramble. When the representatives of themselves and their partners arrived in Carolina in 1670, bringing with them that pompous and preposterous anachronism, the "Fundamental Constitutions," contrived by the combined wisdom of Shaftesbury and John Locke to impose a feudal government upon an immense domain of wilderness, they found the ground already occupied with a scanty and curiously mixed population, which had taken on ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... on so critical a question, and derange vast transactions and arrangements in the corn trade by its premature divulgement; and, above all, constitute the Globe newspaper their confidential organ upon the occasion, should alone have satisfied the most credulous of its unwarrantable and preposterous character. We acquit the Globe newspaper of intentional mischief, but charge it with great thoughtlessness of consequences. To return, however, for a moment, to that topic in the new Tariff most important to farmers. We believe that, since the day (9th ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... regret the attention which has thus been given to a very important piece of history, too long neglected in the rush of more petty affairs. We take the occasion, however, to enter our protest once more against this preposterous system of 'Resolutions,' in which, as it were in echo to every niaiserie of every hired pen in the country, the House degrades itself to the work of the common scavenger, orders at immense expense an investigation into some ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... for instance, as a sum of two hundred thousand livres, a written promise of a regiment for her son, and for herself an appointment in the establishment of the future . This was the point aimed at by all the ambitious courtiers. Comte Jean thought these conditions preposterous. He had a from me, and desired M. Morand to offer the lady one hundred thousand livres, and to add an assurance that the king should be importuned to place young Bearn advantageously, and to station the mother to her wishes; and thereupon my brother-in-law ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Belford. "To be sure you cannot believe your ears. Do you not see that this is a preposterous lie, and that he is telling it to you to tease and ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... and the fifty-yard line friend and foe were mingled, and to win through seemed a preposterous undertaking. And yet first one and then another of the enemy was passed, team-mates formed hasty interference for the runner and, suddenly, to the consternation of the Brimfield stand, the quarter, ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... there are some who maintain that the rich glow of health which at present mantles o'er Canada's virgin cheek will soon be replaced by the pallid hues of the corpse. To such pusillanimous propagandists of a preposterous pessimism, I answer, Mr. Speaker with all confidence, never! never!" As a rhetorical effort this is striking, though there seems a lack of ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... the first place, on what ground of right, or on what principle, such irrational and preposterous distinctions could, or ought to be made; and what pretensions any man could have, or what services he could render, to entitle him to a million a year? They would go farther, and revolt at the idea of consigning their children, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... could give was, that the young man was tipsy, and fell in consequence, and that he had nothing whatever to do with the matter. This answer would not be satisfactory to the gentleman who had brought the challenge. Still, it seemed too preposterous that he should allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel, against his will, by hair-brained young men who had lost the few wits they possessed by drinking. His own high sense of honour had never before been called in question—his gallantry ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the order to kill children was ever issued by a Pharaoh. They also point to the fact that the Israelites were a source of profit—a valuable asset to the Egyptians. And moreover, the proposition that the Egyptians killed the children to avoid trouble is preposterous, since no possible act that man can commit would so arouse sudden rebellion and fan into flame the embers of hate as the murder of the young. If the Egyptians had attempted to carry out any such savage cruelty, they ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of the trustees to my sister. He did mention it; though, just like me, I never thought of it until this minute. Is it likely that he would speak of trustees if he meant to cut off that poor darling with a shilling? Oh! it's preposterous, preposterous. But I'll sleep over it. We'll think how best ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... which I had booked in advance, also under a false name. It would be plainly the crime of a man without money, and for some reason desperately in want of it. As for my account of the affair, it would be too preposterous. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... sir, I was just about to enter to call on my friend, Mr. Elsworth, to sip an afternoon glass with him, when a big-booted fellow cried out, halt. Now, sir, the idea of asking a man well in both legs to halt, is preposterous. So I said, and walked on as straight as I could, when bang, bum, whiz, came one, two, three bullets scattering ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... been inclined to laugh at him. What struck him most forcibly was Joseph, the servant. The idea of a man swaggering up an African river with a European man-servant was so preposterous that it could only be met with ridicule; but the thing seemed so natural to Jack Meredith, he accepted the servitude of Joseph so much as a matter of course, that after a time Durnovo accepted him also as part and ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... stimulating way upon the sciences of society; the great increase in the number, complexity and intensity of social problems has proved a strong incentive to social science; The Darwinian hypothesis has rendered preposterous any conception of a wholly static social system. However, the modern social sciences in our capitalistic order meet much the same resistance from the 'vested interests' that theological radicalism encountered in the Middle Ages, and social science has in no way approached ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... stock one hasn't paid for!) and all the while your names never appeared in the transaction; if ever you took the stock at all, you took it in other people's names. Now you see, you had to know one of two things; namely, you either knew that the idea of all this preposterous generosity was to bribe you into future legislative friendship, or you didn't know it. That is to say, you had to be either a knave or a—well, a fool —there was no middle ground. You are not a fool, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ran away from the table. It seemed to her as though she could not sit and listen to another of his preposterous stories. It would be on the tip of her tongue to declare her disbelief in his accuracy. How and where he had gained access to Cap'n Abe's store of nautical romances she could not imagine; but she was convinced ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... the aggressors upon the party aggrieved is simply preposterous, and, of course, will be treated as it deserves. We shall next have the Company, or rather, as I hope and believe, the Company's Solicitors, demanding us to cut all our corn within 100 yards of the line before it becomes ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... alarm and treachery of the Mexican authorities were both strongly exhibited. A deputation came out to negotiate; but the intent was merely to gain time for strengthening the defences. The terms proposed by the Mexicans were preposterous when viewed in the light of the situation. General Scott, who did not consider his army vanquished, rejected the proposals with scorn. He, however, rested his men until the seventh of September before renewing hostilities. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... RODDAM SPENCER STANHOPE, one of the lesser pre-Raphaelites and the painter of dreams referred to in the title—these all make up an agreeable pot-pourri with an old-world fragrance which ought to be able to charm you out of the preposterous nightmare of the present. But it makes one feel old to see that the conscientious author thinks that DICKY DOYLE now needs a footnote to let the present generation know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... fall, but rested steadily on his face. Under this clear gaze his remark appeared to him preposterous. She seemed to show him how precipitate, unformed,—crude, as she said,—all his acts were. Instead of answering his question, she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... expression, however preposterous it sounds, might perhaps be justified, if we were inclined to justify an Irishman by the example, not only of poets comic and tragic, but of prose writers of various nations. The evidence in favour both of the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... and open countenance bespoke a frank, generous, and resolute nature. His features were regular, and finely-formed; his complexion bright and blooming,—a little shaded, however, by travel and exposure to the sun; and, with a praiseworthy contempt for the universal and preposterous fashion then prevailing, of substituting a peruke for the natural covering of the head, he allowed his own dark-brown hair to fall over his shoulders in ringlets as luxuriant as those that distinguished the court gallant in Charles the Second's ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in an act so puerile and preposterous that I should not venture to record it if it did not throw some glimmering of light on the subject which I have proposed to myself in writing these pages. My mind continued to dwell on the mysterious question of prayer. It puzzled me greatly to know why, if we were God's children, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... be dreadful and you must be honest with me. You know you asked me to go to you the middle of the week to stay over the fete. May I come now—today? I cannot tell you why I ask now, but when I do you will be interested. May I? I know I am preposterous." ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... a tribe in America, but believed in the existence of a Deity; yet were their ideas of the nature and attributes of God, not only obscure, but preposterous and absurd. They believe also in the existence of many inferior deities, whom they suppose to be employed as assistants in managing the affairs of the world, and in inspecting the actions of men. Eagles and Owls are thought by some to have been placed here as observers of the actions of men; and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... year 1906, to give a national verdict on the question of education, the man who split the firewood in that school was asked for his opinion about it, while those ladies were deemed to be absolutely unfit to pass any judgment on it at all. That is a preposterous and barbarous anachronism, and so long as it lasts our democracy is one-sided and incomplete. But it will not last long. No franchise bill can ever again be brought forward in this country without raising the whole problem of whether you are going ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... hear such preposterous ignorance!" exclaimed one; "why, old aunty, who has been ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... been suppressing a laugh during the greater part of Gwen's confidence, but this last announcement startled him into sobriety. A very faint misgiving stirred in his soul. What if—but no; it was preposterous. He thrust it ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... moment, a strange dread had gripped the meeting, paralysing thought, but it passed, and while some remained perplexed the majority began to resent vehemently the suggestions of Hammer. I could hear those immediately behind me insisting that the view was sheer rubbish. It was preposterous. It was pure lunacy. With these phrases, constantly repeated, they threw off the startling effect of Hammer's speech, and fortified themselves in the conviction that the Blue Disease was merely a new malady, similar to other maladies, and that ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... is all perfectly preposterous. I don't believe you mean a word you are saying—it is some ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... family, no feeling of duty to them. Nothing but—I am ashamed to say it, Helene, and you can deny it if it is not true—some silly sentimental fancy which carries your eyes and thoughts to that old farm over there. Ah, I see I am right. When did this preposterous nonsense begin? Why, the question is not worth asking, for you have hardly even spoken to that cousin of yours, and I will do him the justice to say that he, on his side, has no such ridiculous idea. He does not sit staring at Lancilly as you do at La Mariniere! ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... no sooner done quoting, however, than his mother peered into the room, claiming the business talk that had been promised. From that talk George emerged irritable and silent. His mother's extravagance was really preposterous!—not to be borne. For four years now he had been free from the constant daily friction of money troubles which had spoilt his youth and robbed him of all power of respecting his mother. And he had ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cumbrous supposition of Ptolemy. He showed, moreover, that the latter supposition must attribute an almost infinite velocity to the stars, so that the rotation of the entire universe around the earth was clearly a preposterous supposition. The second great principle, which has conferred immortal glory on Copernicus, assigned to the earth its true position in the universe. Copernicus transferred the centre, about which all the planets revolve, from the earth to the sun; and he established the somewhat humiliating truth, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the next point where the refugees would be cared for. On either side of the road, as far as eye could stretch, trenches had been dug, barricades thrown up, blockades and wire-entanglements constructed. It all lay very quiet beneath the sunlight. It seemed a kind of preposterous pretence. One could not imagine these fields as a scene of battle, sweating torture and agony and death. I looked back at the city, one of the most beautiful in France, growing hazy in the distance with its spires ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... one God, there is but one true religious experience, but under a multitude of names, under veils and darknesses, God has in this manner come into countless lives. There is scarcely a faith, however mean and preposterous, that has not been a way to holiness. God who is himself finite, who himself struggles in his great effort from strength to strength, has no spite against error. Far beyond halfway he hastens to meet the purblind. But God is against the darkness in their eyes. The faith which is ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... brushed the sham diamond pendants and bracelets under their very noses, and still there was no result. It is true that the silver spoons dwindled in number and that a stray candlestick or salt-cellar would now and again 'report absent'; that the tradesmen's bills were preposterous and that the tea consumed in a week would have impaired the digestion of a Lodge of Good Templars. But that was all. No aspirant for museum honors made his appearance. The concussor became dusty with disuse; the safe in the dining-room remained neglected and untouched, and as for ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... back to prison, and they did so to a man, and took their punishment. The government, it will be seen, is not by votes. Still there are votes for local councils, and women have them equally with men. Any other arrangement would have seemed merely preposterous to the Nairs; and perhaps if any exclusion had been contemplated it would have been of men rather than ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... will drawn up in London by a firm of eminent solicitors, and preserved ever since by the testator's bankers. It would then be for his lordship to decide whether in the public interest he should recommend the Crown to prosecute on a charge of forgery the clumsy fabricator of this preposterous document. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... interview with that most singular man, Mendizabal, whom it is as difficult to get nigh as it is to approach the North Pole. I have obtained his promise that when matters are in some degree settled in this country, he will allow us to commence our operations; but the preposterous idea, which by some means or other he has embraced, that we have been endeavouring to foment disturbances amongst the slaves of Cuba, prevents his looking upon us ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... heard that Mr. Irving, an American gentleman of parts and elegance, had wrote the fellow's life. To make a hero of that man, my dear sir, 'twas ridiculous! You followed in the fashion, I hear, and chose to lay a wreath before this queer little idol. Preposterous! A pretty writer, who has turned some neat couplets. Bah! I have no patience with Master Posterity, that has chosen to take up this fellow, and make a hero of him! And there was another gentleman of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... historically the lesson is taught only by the cruel suffering of the innocent and the guilty together, it is, in fact, indelibly stained. "Ah!" said the most benignant of men, "it was a delightful discourse, but preposterous from beginning ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... think," said Jimmy, "of one man; and even in his case the idea is too horrible—too preposterous to be entertained." ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... high life would be as preposterous as a lawyer's bag crammed with truth, or his wig decorated with coquelicot ribbons! No—it is not comfort and selection that is sought, but numbers and confusion! So that a fashionable party resembles Smithfield market,—only ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... loftier pretensions be still contested; if the theory of the gifted creature who wrote that the works of the master wizard are 'like summer fruits brought forth abundantly in the full blaze of sunshine, which do not keep'—if this preposterous fantasy be generally accepted, there will yet be much in Dumas to venerate and love. If Antony were of no more account than an ephemeral burlesque; if la Reine Margot and the immortal trilogy of the Musketeers—that 'epic of friendship'—were ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
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