"Absurd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tone of the assurances in them that the writer was innocent. He knew that trick; every prisoner invariably protested the same thing. But these protestations were unusually strong. They were of such strength that they actually produced in his own hardened and experienced mind a passing doubt, absurd of course, and not for one moment to be considered, whether the Stralsund authorities might not have blundered. It was a dangerous notion to put into people's heads, that the Stralsund authorities, of whom he was one, could blunder. Blunders meant a reproof from headquarters ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... "How very absurd!" said Zenobia; "a mere nickname. As if there could be any opinion but that of the Sovereign and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... wholly unknown there not many years ago, was first introduced by strangers, and has since met with several variations at their hands. The idea of a criminal flying from Mohra to Mansfeld, which was only a few miles off, and was equally subject to the Elector of Saxony, is absurd, and in this case is strangely inconsistent with the honourable position soon attained, as we shall see, by Hans Luther himself at Mansfeld. Moreover, the very fact that Witzel's spiteful remark was long known to Luther's enemies, coupled ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... literature. The only new development it takes, consists in the exaggeration of the heroic element, of which there was enough already in many an Elizabethan novel; it consists, in fact, in the magnifying of a defect. The imitation of France only resulted in absurd productions which were so successful and filled the literary stage so entirely that they left no space for other kinds of romances. In vain did a few intelligent persons, such as the authors of "The Adventures of Covent Garden" and of "Zelinda," attempt to bring about a ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... torch shews the figure to be emblematic, if it had been designed to represent a real person in the act of dying there had been no necessity for the expiring torch, as the dying figure alone would have been sufficiently intelligible;—it would have been as absurd as to have put an inverted torch into the hand of a real person at the time of his expiring. Besides if this figure had represented a real dying person would not the other figures, or one of them at least, have stretched out a hand to support her, to have eased her fall among loose ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... It is absurd to suppose that anywhere to-day the nationalisms, the suspicions and hatreds, the cants and policies, and dead phrases that sway men represent the current intelligence of mankind. They are merely the evidences of its disorganization. Even ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... is the only exception, that I can think of, of an accurate describer of species, at least in the Invertebrate Kingdom, who has disbelieved in permanent species, but he in his absurd though clever work has done the subject harm." ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... absurd truism with a wave of his hand so solemn that Donnegan was chilled; as though the fat man were actually conversant with ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... abatement—and the elder one declared that we were evidently going to be such a sociable group that it was too bad to have to stay at home. She asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if there were any one else in our party, and when our hostess mentioned her son—there was a chance of his embarking but (wasn't it absurd?) he hadn't decided yet—she returned with extraordinary candour: "Oh dear, I do hope he'll go: that would be ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... is not to be passed without mention. It is among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days. Neither its architecture not its age, however, is its chief warrant for our notice. The absurd number of windows in this battered old structure is what strikes the passer-by. The church was erected by subscription, and these closely set large windows are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the wealthiest citizens of the period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass was used. If the building could ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was attended with ceremonies of the most absurd description, which were continued till the time of the revolution. They are detailed at length in the Histoire de Dieppe I. p. 68; and a brief account has lately been given of them in English, in Turner's Tour ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... into my head: "I neither love nor esteem sadness, although the world has invested it, at a given price, with the honor of its particular favor. They dress up in it wisdom, virtue, conscience. Stupid and absurd adornment." ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Uniformity, which is said to be enacted by the "Queen's Highness," with the assent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, is a testimony, at once unanswerable and unprecedented. We have dwelt with the more anxiety on this part of Dr Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete answer to the absurd opinions concerning the English Church, which it has been of late the object of a few bigots, unconsciously acting as the tools of artful and ambitious men, to propagate, and which would lead, by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... absurd notions as to what the Talmud was, given credence in the Middle Ages, one was that it was a man! The mediaeval priest or peasant was perhaps wiser than he knew. Almost, might we say, the Talmud was Man, for it is a record ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... on "what the other fellow thinks," which is the main secret in his published writings. If the view of him as a "sentimentalist" (which nobody, unless it is taken offensively, need refuse to accept) is strengthened by them, that absurd other view, which strangely prevailed so long, of his "cynicism" is utterly destroyed. We see the variety of his interests; the keenness of his sensations; the strange and kaleidoscopic rapidity of the changes ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Kotzebue (q.v.), Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of "the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples,'' as formulated in the Carlsbad decrees, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support "a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power.''10 He still declared his belief in "free institutions, though not in such as age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... agnostic days it may sound a little strange, and perhaps to some seem quite absurd, that the authorities of Harvard in 1791 felt obliged publicly to deny that Gibbon's History was used as a text-book at the University. But with the exception perhaps of Tom Paine, no one in this country had then ventured to assail the literal interpretation ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... "It is absurd," admitted Jane, "but Maudie, all students are not scientifically inclined as you are. What about the ghost? Who is he and ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... was my motive. A demand upon an American citizen to found a British air fleet is extravagant—in a sense, absurd. But I was anxious to offer Mr. Oppner one more opportunity of distributing some of the vast sum which he has locked up for his ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... companion of her childhood, and who probably would have married her had not the general come in the way! Here was, no doubt, the real enemy, while they had all been thinking of Colonel Keith. A man only now expecting his company! It would sound more absurd. Yet Rachel was not wont to think how things would sound! And this fresh intense dislike provoked her. Was it the unsuitability of the young widow remarrying? "Surely, surely, it must not be that womanhood in its contemptible side is still so strong ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stood motionless there for fully a minute. It seemed absurd, preposterous, the conviction that was being forced home upon him—that there were no rooms on the right-hand side of the corridor at all! But that was not like the Tocsin, accurate always in the most minute details. The room must be still farther ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... construction, though, from the character of the parties, we should think collusion was, in the highest degree, improbable; and the experiments, although not conclusive, were very curious, and some of them not easy of explanation. In the third case, transparent and absurd as the experiments seemed to us, and as the account of them will probably appear to our readers, the doctor, from his position and practice, must have been seriously injured by his mesmeric experiments; and therefore there is fair reason to believe, that he was not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... confused, she followed him to an inconspicuous table in a corner of the dining room. Then the dreamlike unreality and beauty of their hours together began again. Cherry felt adjusted, untrammelled, at ease; she felt that all the uncomfortable sensations of the past two hours were absurd, forgotten. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... 'I have lived in this house for thirty years at least, and, as for your father and mother—why, if you are really Urashima Taro, they have been dead three hundred years; and that is absurd. Do you want me to ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... calling a number of rude fellows the innkeeper took his revenge upon the crazy knight by the mistreatment of Sancho Panza who was tossed in a blanket until the company could toss him no more for weariness and the laughter that his absurd plight awoke in them. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... the Romany patteran?" she broke off to ask. "I've always thought of it as patter, or patois, the Gypsy patois, and somehow it strikes me as absurd to follow a language over the world—a sort ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... alluding to the print of Hogarth, where a black boy follows his mistress with a teakettle in his hand.... In stature Garrick was short.... A fact which conveys a high notion of his powers is, that he was able to act out the absurd stage-costume of those days. He represented Coriolanus in the attire of Cheapside. I remember hearing from Sir G. Beaumont, that while he was venting, as Lear, the violent paroxysms of his rage in the awful tempest scene, his wig ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete novice in the life comme il faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent spirit of universal skepticism was a general laxity of morals. The Aleibiades, of the "Symposium," is the ideal representative of the young aristocracy of Athens. Such was the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... absurd," Ranulph went on, stroking the feathers of the little dun pigeon Rien-du-Tout, "for a bird to outdo a man. Perhaps some day we shall even sail the air as now we sail the seas. Picture to yourself a winged galleon with yourself at the helm—about to discover a world beyond the sunset. It ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... he was Tommy, and at first even to think of leaving Elspeth was absurd. Yet it would be pleasant to leave Aaron, who disliked him so much. To disappear without a word would be a fine revenge, for the people would say that Aaron must have ill-treated him, and while they searched the pools of the burn for his ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... with its vast grounds and its deserted quadrangles torn up by the savage conflict, became to us curiously oppressive—almost ghostlike in the bright sunshine. It seemed absurd to imagine that forty or fifty rifle-armed sailors, a band of priests and many thousands of converts had been ringed in here by fire and smoke for weeks, and had lost dozens and hundreds at a time through mine explosions. It seemed, also, equally ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... would happen to you," he growled, "and I wanted to stop you. I never saw a person climb in such an utterly absurd way." ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... in chorus, while one of the party played on a cow's horn, and the trees were well rapped with the sticks which they carried. This ceremony is thought to have been a relic of some heathen sacrifice, and it is quite absurd enough ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... could make you think such a thing? What an absurd idea! You cannot imagine how kind she was to me when ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... he was his close friend, cicerone, and companion. Allowing for the Aretine biographer's well-known inaccuracies in matters of detail and for his royal disregard of chronological order—faults for which it is manifestly absurd to blame him over-severely—it would be unwise lightly to disregard or overrule his testimony with regard to matters which he may have learned from the lips of Titian himself ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... do," the poor lady exclaimed. "How absurd of you, Harold, to ask such a question! I met him at a party when Joan and I were in London at the beginning of this week." She caught again at her fleeting courage. "So I invited him, and he's coming this afternoon. I shall send the motor ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... she was so beautiful in person and alluring in manner, that even that head-dress, and the accompanying costume with which she was deformed, could not eclipse her charms for those who had become at all accustomed to the absurd disguise which she assumed. But it was the woman that was beautiful, not the costume; and the woman was so beautiful, in spite of the costume, that she was able to light up even its forbidding features with the reflection of her own loveliness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... denounces this attitude in the presence of a young girl who loves him and is loved by him, but who belongs to the category of women under discussion. When he learns her history, he struggles vainly to resist the feelings of distrust and jealousy which he had declared absurd a little while earlier. And the two are forced at last to walk their different ways. Unfortunately the dialogue is heavy and stilted. The play is a tract rather than a piece of art, and the tirades of Fedor are equally unconvincing when he speaks for or against ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... Wisconsin, her home, she had bought a copy of Science and Health. When she reached M——, she met a minister from the North, whom the M. D.'s had sent there because of consumption,—they had given him two months to live. She gave him Science and Health, and while doing so, felt it was all absurd. The minister read it, and was healed immediately. Was not this a beautiful demonstration of the power of Truth, and good evidence that Science and Health ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... supernatural power of emitting more ideas and bringing to the surface more recollections than, under any ordinary use of her faculties, she could put forth in the course of a whole day. The poignant tale of her monologue may be abridged into a few absurd sentences, as contradictory and bare of ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... deserted mansion. The scent of the orange blossoms was not so insistent as it had been on the previous evening. The land appeared normal; it exhibited none of the disturbing influence of which he had been first conscious. Last night's mood seemed absurd. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and his reputation, perhaps; yes, and come to England and marry this American, and break poor Hetty's heart—would her father wish that? Let us spare further arguments, and not be so rude as to hint that Mr. Lambert was in the right in calling a fond wife by the name of that absurd splay-footed bird, annually sacrificed at the Feast of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... labor conditions and demands I shall always be glad to make. The thing I am trying to bring home to you is that the men have gotten an absurd impression that you are in sympathy with them.... Young men sometimes come home from college with unsound notions. Possibly you have picked up some socialistic nonsense. You will have to rid yourself of it. Our family has always arrayed itself squarely against such indefensible ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... space, he impales like a butterfly the human type, mostly in a moment of folly or wickedness.... The least definition of surrounding would blunt his (the artist's) keenness, and make his vehemence absurd." ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... the last of what—of what it pleases him to call our Line. It is all most foolish, most absurd. But I cannot tell you here. Since chance has brought you our way again, and as you may take up your residence in the neighbourhood—have you decided yet?—I feel I must make some explanation of how you find us, my brother and myself. Can you row? ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... staid and serious, was quite transformed by his joy and pride in her, and would not have seen a thousand blunders on her part. The consensus of opinion, among his friends, was that Carey was "really a little absurd, don't you know?" and that Mrs. Carey was "quite deliciously odd," and that Duncan was "too wonderful—poor, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... feat the while;—March into Mahren, on to Vienna if he chose; laying all flat. Infallible," say the Schmettau people. "He had the fire of head to contrive it all; but worn down and grown old, he could not execute his great thoughts." Which is obviously absurd, Friedrich's object not being to lay Austria flat, or drive animosities to the sanguinary point, and kindle all Europe into war; but merely to extract, with the minimum of violence, something like justice from Austria on this Bavarian matter. For which end, he may justly consider ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... silly, stupid, fatuous, fungus-grown, doddering, drivelling dolts anywhere, past or future, I alone am far and away ahead of the whole lot of 'em in silliness and absurd behaviour! Damnation! I'm ashamed! The idea of my being made a fool of twice at my time of life ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... Shakespear, Goethe, Ibsen, and Tolstoy, not to mention our own contemporary playwrights, is as much in place in Mr Redford's office as a pickpocket is in Bow Street. Further, it is not true that the Censorship, though it certainly suppresses Ibsen and Tolstoy, and would suppress Shakespear but for the absurd rule that a play once licensed is always licensed (so that Wycherly is permitted and Shelley prohibited), also suppresses unscrupulous playwrights. I challenge Mr Redford to mention any extremity of sexual misconduct which any manager in his senses would risk presenting on the London stage that ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... shout 'eggs' at him, to remind him that he was an enthusiast on the subject and had a collection to which he ought to seize this excellent opportunity of adding. The only question was, where to go. The surrounding country was a Paradise for the naturalist who had no absurd scruples on the subject of trespassing. To the west, in the direction of Stapleton, the woods and hedges were thick with nests. But then, so they were to the east along the Badgwick road. He wavered, but a recollection that there was water in the Badgwick direction, and that he might with luck beard ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... ourselves,' although condemning the expression as absurd. Intemperance, improvidence, timidity are morally wrong. Still, as in other cases, a man is not truly virtuous on such points, till he loves them for their own sake, and even performs them without an effort. These prudential ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... etc. The specialties of the Florentine character are popularly supposed to be embodied in "Stenterello," who comes on the Florentine stage, in pieces written for the purpose, every Carnival, to the never-failing delight of the populace. Stenterello is an absurd figure with a curling pigtail, large cocked hat, and habiliments meant to represent those of a Tuscan citizen of some hundred years or so ago. He is a sort of shrewd fool, doing the most absurd things, lying through thick ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe from the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared for any rush. It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility; but the world was full ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... disturbing. They seemed not so much intent as meditative, and not so much watchful as interested. When the sergeant and his guest moved past them, the unrhythmic waverings of the small yellow lights seemed to change hopefully, as if the machines anticipated being put to use. Which, of course, was absurd. Mahon machines do not anticipate anything. They probably do not remember anything, though patterns of operation are certainly retained in very great variety. The fact is that a Mahon unit is simply a device to let a machine stand idle without losing the ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... it his plain duty to explain to Scott that the road ahead of him was likely to be an open one and easy. If he kept on as he had begun, in time he might be head of a department on his own account. Absurd for a fellow with a mind like his to be spending his time over rhetoric and the classics! Science was his line, pure science; ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... bring ourselves to act accordingly. But the subject must admit of diversity of colouring; it must receive a colour on that side. In the House of Commons there are members enough who will not vote what is grossly unjust or absurd. No, Sir, there must always be right enough, or appearance of right, to keep wrong in countenance.' BOSWELL. 'There is surely always a majority in parliament who have places, or who want to have them, and ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... like snow shoes, bearing them up on the wind-packed surface. Their tufted ears stood straight up, alert for any unwonted sound. Their absurd stub tails, not four inches long, and looking as if they had been bitten off, twitched with eagerness. Their big round eyes, of a pale greenish yellow, and with the pupils narrowed to upright, threadlike black slits by the blinding glare, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... an hour, and then I was convicted and sentenced to execution, with an intimation from the judge that it would be perfectly absurd of me to dream, for one moment, of a remission of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... from the Free States are being driven out and murdered for pretended complicity in a plot the evidence for the existence of which has been obtained by means without a parallel since the trial of the Salem witches, and the stories about which are as absurd and contradictory as the confessions of Goodwife Corey. Kansas was saved, it is true; but it was the experience of Kansas that disgusted the South with Mr. Douglas's panacea of ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... favourite dog, and constantly longs to marry a peasant girl; a third talks love to the moon, sends kisses to the stars, and wishes to press the heavenly orbs to his bosom! For a time the public would read nothing but absurd productions of this sort, and Karamzin, the great literary authority of the time, expressly declared that the true function of Art was "to disseminate agreeable impressions in the region of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was kept at a distance, prevented from studying the real character of the woman. I required to put her into play. And I ask you whether any more innocent way of doing so could be found than talking to a woman, and letting her talk, about an absurd fancy she had for a couple of ancestors of hers of the time of Charles I., and a poet whom they had murdered?—particularly as I studiously respected the prejudices of my host, and refrained from mentioning the matter, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... knew old Barclay, as she called him, well enough—that is, not at all, and had never shown him any cordiality, anything, indeed, better than condescension. To treat him like a gentleman, even when he sat at her own table, she would have counted absurd. He had never been to the castle since the day after her husband's funeral, when she received him with such emphasized superiority that he felt he could not go again without running the risk either ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... example which I quote because it is so absurd. The rooms I live in were owned by a prim old woman who for more than twenty years was my landlady. She and I were great friends, indeed she tended me like a mother, and when I was so ill nursed me as perhaps few mothers would have ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... and roebucks were killed. The space in which these poor animals had to run was inclosed by netting, in order that the monarchs might shoot them at pleasure, without disturbing themselves while seated in the windows of the pavilion. I have never seen anything more absurd than hunts of this sort, which, nevertheless, give those who engage in them a reputation as fine shots. What skill is there in killing an animal which the gamekeepers, so to speak, take by the ears and place ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a complete stranger—even to deceive him was quite within her rights; but, though Sam appreciated this, he ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... or the answer to Boswell's fears that if he were in Parliament he would be unhappy if things went wrong, "That's cant, sir. . . . Public affairs vex no man." "Have they not vexed yourself a little, sir? Have you not been vexed at all by the turbulence of this reign and by that absurd vote of the House of Commons, 'That the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished'?" "Sir, I have never slept an hour less, nor eat an ounce less meat. I would have knocked the factious ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... doubt partly due to his inability to reconcile himself to Johnson's table manners. It can hardly be denied that he was unnaturally sensitive to surface impressions. He was a great observer of manners, but not a great portrayer of character. He knew men in their absurd actions rather than in their motives—even their absurd motives. He never admits us into the springs of action in his portraits as Saint-Simon does. He was too studied a believer in the puppetry of men and women to make them ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... inconclusive, as the numbering of the inhabitants of a great city can furnish no proper test; and the account of births at Bantam, which states the number of girls to be ten to one boy, is not only manifestly absurd, but positively false. I can take upon me to assert that the proportion of the sexes throughout Sumatra does not sensibly differ from that ascertained in Europe; nor could I ever learn from the inhabitants of the many eastern islands whom I have conversed with that they were conscious ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... one old judge was rather spry— Oh yes, he was! You'd not have thought him half so spry, But oh, he was! He said, "Why really, on my word! Disqualify that shocking bird!— Absurd!" ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice
... various commodities, their dealings with us were fair and upright, though latterly they were by no means backward nor inexpert in driving a bargain. The absurd and childish exchanges which they at first made with our people induced them subsequently to complain that the Kabloonas had stolen their things, though the profit had eventually been a hundred-fold in their favour. Many such complaints were made, when the only ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... that I can never get an answer when I ring? Here have I been ringing for the last half-hour. I have rung twenty times." (This is a falsehood. You have rung only six times, and the "half-hour" is an absurd exaggeration; but you feel the mere truth would not be adequate to the occasion.) "I think it disgraceful," you continue, "and I shall complain to the Company. What is the use of my having a telephone if I can't get any answer when I ring? Here I pay a large sum for having this thing, and ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Denis, who are stopping over to Deephaven for the summer." Kate and I turned as we heard this introduction; we were standing close by, and I am proud to say that I never saw Kate treat any one more politely than she did that absurd, pitiful creature with the gilt crown and many bracelets. It was not that she said much, but there was such an exquisite courtesy in her manner, and an apparent unconsciousness of there being anything in the least surprising or uncommon about ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... called Daemoniaques, that is, possessed by the Devill, such as we call Madmen or Lunatiques; or such as had the Falling Sicknesse; or that spoke any thing, which they for want of understanding, thought absurd: As also of an Unclean person in a notorious degree, they used to say he had an Unclean Spirit; of a Dumbe man, that he had a Dumbe Devill; and of John Baptist (Math. 11. 18.) for the singularity of his fasting, that he had a Devill; and of our Saviour, because he said, hee that keepeth his sayings ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... exactly say, preaching from a cathedral pulpit, that chanting should be abandoned in cathedral services. By such an assertion he would have overshot his mark and rendered himself absurd, to the delight of his hearers. He could, however, and did, allude with heavy denunciations to the practice of intoning in parish churches, although the practice was all but unknown in the diocese; and from thence he came round to the undue preponderance ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the laughing stock of Europe, if its defence is to depend upon an apocryphal Army of the Loire, marines from the Navy, peasants from the provinces, and the National Guards of the wealthy quarters. To talk of the heroic attitude of Paris, when the Parisians have not been under fire, is simply absurd. As long as the outer forts hold out, it is no more dangerous to "man the ramparts" than to mount guard at the Tuileries. I saw to-day a company of mounted National Guards exercising. Their uniforms were exquisitely clean, but I asked myself of what earthly use they were. Their commander ordered ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... firm in this decision,—however absurd or obscure their conclusions,—and Jackson, after his first flash of indignation, felt a certain relief in their departure. But strangely enough, while he had hesitated about keeping the property when they ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... was horrible. But he shook it off at last and called himself a fool for his pains. He had never harboured thought of murder in his life. He had detested Tom, but he had never gone the length of wishing him dead. The whole idea was absurd. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... which seems an arbitrary net, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without these rules, since without them it ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... his wife, "I know no more about the little thing than you do. Some neighbor's child, I suppose. Our Violet and Peony," she added, laughing at herself for repeating so absurd a story, "insist that she is nothing but a snow-image, which they have been busy about in the garden, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a book on so large a matter, finished hastily enough amid the necessities of an enormous national crisis, it would be absurd to pretend to have achieved proportion; but I will confess to some attempt to correct a disproportion. We talk of historical perspective, but I rather fancy there is too much perspective in history; for perspective makes a giant a pigmy ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... unfair to blame them for missing marriage certificates. True, his father had never committed a theft, but there was no necessity for a man to steal if he had an income of six thousand crowns and could please himself. The act would be absurd or abnormal in ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... mind, not without its illustrations in history, to "decorate with legend" the early history of great men. In reply, it may be enough here to say that legends analogous to the pagan legends of the births of heroes, false and absurd legends, did gather round the infancy of Jesus Christ. The Apocryphal Gospels are full of such legends. They tell us how the idols of Egypt fell down before Him; how His swaddling-clothes worked miracles; and how He made clay birds and turned boys ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... which her words caused me made me look quite absurd in my own eyes, and with the sudden consciousness that I had been making a fool of myself, pondering over such shadowy improbabilities, as they seemed to me now, I turned sharply and impatiently from the spot where I had been ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... superstitious protest, my wife put a penny on one eye and half-a-crown on the other. Mary seemed to regard this as a desecration, or at best as unlucky. Then they bound up the jaw of that body with one of my handkerchiefs. I thought I had never seen anything more wantonly absurd. Their trouble in straightening the arms—the legs were quite straight—infuriated me. I wanted to weep in my tragic vexation. It seemed as though tears would ease me. But I could ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... way bore a resemblance to fire—for the woman, after getting over her first terror of the dancing flames, kept pointing to them and then to her wounds in a most suggestive way. This, however, as Grom rather scornfully pointed out, was too absurd. There was nothing that could be in the least like fire itself; and the wounds of the fugitives had no likeness whatever to the corrosive bites of the flame. A-ya took the correction submissively, but held her own thought; and when a day or two later, events proved her to have been right, she discreetly ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... agent to farm. She was tired of the long highly-coloured descriptions of Canadian scenery and the tales of Vincent's adventures, and she had got into the way of skipping his vain repetitions of all the absurd things he had said to her on the night of his departure; but the postscript stirred strange feelings in her breast. His mother was married a second time, but to Audrey's certain knowledge Vincent had no little half-sisters; ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. 1930 SHAKS.: Hamlet, Act ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... lines. Here he has trusted to the ground as it looked from his side of the field, when, in reality, it presented few difficulties from yours. Some experience in the world has led me to believe that if a salesman has come to the opinion, even in the most absurd manner, that he can sell a certain man goods, he can do it, almost beyond the chance of a doubt. I once knew a successful solicitor who seemed to do all his work at his desk. He would sit in the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... come it will be hard to bear," said he; "and yet I am an idiot, for what have I to do with the opinion of people I do not know?" but much as he might repeat that his alarms were absurd, he could not get over them, or free himself from the fear ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... repeated Maria inquiringly. "Why, how absurd! And, after all, what is the matter with the girl?" Dropping the curtain, she came over to the fire, and sat listening attentively while Miss Saidie told, in spasmodic jerks and pauses, the foolish story ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... honour's appearance and custom. Allow that it would be a pity to suffer pride to stand in the way of the talents with which Providence has blest me; to scorn the little delicacies of art, which I execute so well, would, in my opinion, be as absurd as for an epic poet to disdain the composition of a perfect epigram, or a consummate musician, the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... boating on fine rivers in the sunlight, or walking about in the dawn, to the music of Creation, evolving the philosophy of revolutions and building beautiful worlds. You get no hint of this from the absurd propagandist play, yet this is what the heart of man craves. When he does not get it, he cannot explain what he wants; but he knows what he does not want, and he goes away and keeps his distance. The play has missed fire, and the playwright and his hero are ridiculous. Let ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... universal republic founded on the principles enunciated in the Lord's Prayer! Thrones, armies, navies, frontiers, national barriers, all to be abolished! So simple! So easy! So childlike! But alas, so absurd! So entirely oblivious of the great principles of political economy and international law, and of impulses and instincts profoundly sculptured in the heart ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... vagueness and indefiniteness with which this story abounds is not, therefore, that impressive obscurity which springs from the mysterious; it is, on the contrary, the obscurity of the unintelligible and absurd. In all of Cooper's novels, it is a fault that the characters are often represented as acting without sufficient motive. In the story of adventure this can be pardoned, or at least overlooked; for freak plays ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... God require Naaman to dip seven times in Jordan? Why did Jesus put his hands the second time upon the blind man of Bethsaida before he saw clearly? Why does God redeem a soul by two works of grace? These questions are equally absurd. But you say, God does the thing most reasonable. That he does, and redemption by two works of grace is the very most reasonable and natural way to restore the soul to its normal condition. Man was holy in his nature in creation. By sin he ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... apology like what we should now call a gentleman, without first subjecting himself to the fire of his wrongfully accused antagonist. So the Duke and the Earl went out with their seconds and met at Wimbledon. The victor of Waterloo was not destined to kill or be killed in this absurd contest. When the parties to the duel were placed on the ground and the word was given. Lord Winchilsea reserved his fire, the bullet from the Duke's pistol passed him without doing any harm, and Lord Winchilsea then discharged his ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... A petition to Parliament against the railway was not brought to me, as it was well known that I would not sign it; but some little girls undertook my case; and the effect of their parroting of Mr. Wordsworth, about "ourselves" and "the common people" who intrude upon us, was as sad as it was absurd. The whole matter ended rather remarkably. When all were gone but Mrs. Wordsworth, and she was blind, a friend who was as a daughter to her remarked, one summer day, that there were some boys on the Mount in the garden. "Ah!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... far off. I should like to. I should like to try quite a new life-mode. This is finished in me—and yet perhaps it is absurd to go further. I'm rather sick of seekers. I hate ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... to make so loud a report," said I, smiling; "but I protest against your doctrine. Why, according to that, an author is accountable for all the opinions of his dramatis personae, however absurd ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... of indulgences contains such insipid, antiquated, and absurd crimes, that it is impossible to turn it to much account. It was composed in stupid and barbarous times; and it is now highly necessary to make a new tariff of sin, for which Rome herself can furnish the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... charged with one offence or two similar offences; one boy is from the upperworld, the other from below the line. The same magistrate fines the two boys an equal amount; the one boy pays, or his friends pay; but the other goes of a certainty to prison. Is it not absurd! rather, is ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... not. What an absurd little goose you must be to ask such a thing! Servants are kept ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the crown by his descent from Thomas of Woodstock has been already adverted to;—it seems never to have awakened the slightest jealousy in the mind of Elizabeth; but the absurd vaunts of some of his followers, commented upon by the malicious ingenuity of his enemies, had sufficed to excite sinister suspicions in the bosom of the king of Scots. For the purpose of counteracting these, lord ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... not to be found in our modern general maps, though certainly infinitely better for all the uses of geography than the absurd appellations so much in use ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... to cure Jack. I administered one dose of medicine and he at once began to fill out and get strong and chesty in a manner almost absurd, whereon there was much twitting of our Kate who, in her old way, rated me soundly in public and crept up to me in private, and kissed me and wept gladly in ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... have been the case. What misfortune was to be apprehended in consequent of this event we could not learn; but he spoke of it in a kind of agony, and was evidently labouring under the influence of some powerful though absurd superstition respecting it. Towards night he suffered a dreadful bleeding at the nose, followed by much sickness at the stomach, which, together with the phanton of Arnalooa, that still haunted his imagination, combined to make him extremely unwell for some hours. The ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the power of Congress, or, in other words, of the national legislature, shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... smile crept into Agatha's eyes. The mere idea that the sunny-tempered, brilliant young man to whom she had given her heart could have changed or degenerated in any way seemed absurd to her. Winifred, ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... who has carried the use of the microscope into researches so wide and so profound. M. Martout had desiccated and resuscitated thousands of little worms, rotifers and tardigrades; he held that life is nothing but organization in action, and that the idea of reviving a desiccated man has nothing absurd about it. He gave himself up to long meditations when Professor Hirtz sent from Berlin the following document, the original of which is filed among the manuscripts of ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Erastian, Socinian, Sabellian, Eutychian, Nestorian, Monothelite, &c., not to mention Protestant, whose fate is yet uncertain, will be convinced of the truth of this observation. It is thus a system becomes absurd in the end, merely from its being reasonable and philosophical ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... of Talleyrand—how, giving his autograph to a lady, he wrote it at the top left-hand corner of the sheet, so that she could write above or before it, neither an order for money nor a promise of marriage: yielding to an absurd impulse, he did the same. The baronet burst into loud laughter, which, however, ceased abruptly: he had not gained ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... now that Jim was thoroughly wonderful—nor that she, the county superintendent, was quite as thoroughly a little fool. She to be put in authority over him! It was too absurd for laughter. Fortunately, she hadn't hindered him much—but who was to be thanked for that? Was it owing to any wisdom of hers? Well, she had decided in his favor, in those first proceedings to revoke his certificate. Perhaps ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Again the roads and paths leading away over the green hills were dark with lines of pedestrians; but a number of those whose homes lay nearest to Hundwyl lingered to drink and gossip out the day. A group of herdsmen, over whose brown faces the high stove-pipe hat looked doubly absurd, gathered in a ring, and while one of them yodelled the Ranz des Vaches of Appenzell, the others made an accompaniment with their voices, imitating the sound of cow-bells. They were lusty, jolly fellows, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... correctly?" said I; "or are you only playing off some new freak upon me? Answer me frankly one question, and I shall be better able to comprehend the meaning of your mysterious menace. Are you—but I know it is absurd, I feel that the question is very ridiculous, only that your reply to it will, perhaps, set us both right—do you love Astraea? I really can not conceive any thing short of some such ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... may stumble upon it, who do not know, till they meet it, that there is any view of Jesus Christ but that which is presented in the widely circulated issues of the Tract Society and similar institutions. Our attention has already been called to one very absurd and unjust attack upon it, in a Philadelphia paper, intended to catch the prejudices of such persons. But the views by which we found this attack accompanied, in the same journal, led us to suspect that some political prejudice against the author's anti-slavery had more to do with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... is reached by a miniature railway leading from St. Helier's to the fishing village of Gorey. By this time the young people were all well accustomed to the absurd little narrow gauge tramways with their leisurely trains. But if the train into St. Helier's crawled, the one to Gorey snailed, to quote Roger. Time was ample to note the pretty stuccoed houses, pink, cream or brown, with gardens and climbing vines that even in December made them spots of ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... an old rail fence and replacing it with wire. Archie's task was the rather more disagreeable one of trundling gravel in a wheelbarrow and distributing it in holes staked for his guidance in the road that ran from the highway gate to the barn. The holes were small; it seemed to Archie absurd to spend time filling such small cavities; and a wheelbarrow filled with gravel is heavy. The foreman explained the job and departed, reappearing from time to time for the pleasure of criticizing Archie's work. When Archie suggested that there would be an economy of time ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... how discipline gets into a man's bones, the pride, the indignant pride of obedience! At that hour I swore that I should myself be the governor of that Company one day,—the boast of loud-hearted youth. I had angry visions, I dreamed absurd dreams, but I did not think of disobeying. It was an unheard-of journey at such a time, but I swore that I would do it, that it should go into the records of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... signet—Oh! you mean that with the three monstrous legs, which I supposed was devised as the most preposterous device, to represent our most absurd Majesty of Man.—The signet—I have not seen it since I gave it to Gibbon, my monkey, to play with.—He did whine for it most piteously—I hope he has not gemmed the green breast of ocean with ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... gathered in the Netherlands, resolved to invade England and demand the crown. He believed that a large part of the nation would look upon him as representing the cause of Protestantism, and would therefore rally to his support. He landed at Lyme on the coast of Dorsetshire (1685), and there issued an absurd proclamation declaring James to be a usurper, tyrant, and murderer, who had set the great fire of London (S474), cut the throat of Essex (S480), and poisoned ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... duty well done. They are the logical recompense for effort and sacrifice. Individual happiness is not the chief object of existence in this life. To work efficiently is the supreme obligation. It is naturally to desire happiness and to labor for it; but it is absurd to be annoyed and angry because we do not find it. Happiness through marriage is never attained except by never-ending ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... of his name and influence, was in the eyes of the French nobility, who considered it a dishonourable thing to concern oneself with art or industry, nothing more than a rich merchant, with whom it would be absurd to stand upon any very strict ceremony. So Charles VIII received him on horseback, and addressing him with a haughty air, as a master might address a servant, demanded whence came this pride of his that made him dispute his entrance into Tuscany. ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... adhere to their religion. ADDISON'S Goddess has prevailed over the fathers and the canons; and men not only make a difference in the price regulated by the difference in the mode of payment; but it would be absurd to expect them to do otherwise. They must not only charge something for the want of the use of the money; but they must charge something additional for the risk of its loss, which may frequently arise, and most frequently does arise, from ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... of those absurd wrangles as to whether or not Aunt Harriet would go to Jennie's in the rather remote contingency of Uncle James' becoming twenty years younger and ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... His feet were like flat-irons turned the wrong way, and his legs seemed to be slipped into the middle of them, like the handles of two queer-shaped hoes. His intense, magnificent importance, and the bombastic way he swaggered about the deck, were so perfectly absurd, that we three youngsters should probably have never had any feeling towards him but that of contempt, if it had not been that we were now quite enough of seamen to appreciate the skill with which he took us safely on our dangerous and intricate passage into harbour. How we ever got through ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... takes us to Gatwick and Sandown—(or rather the train takes us—another absurd expression)—the last day of the latter Meeting being devoted to "Jumping Races," which is the contemptuous way some people speak of the winter branch of our National Sport!—forgetting that it demands the two most desirable qualities in a horse, speed and endurance—whereas the modern flat-racing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... Kentuckians, is absurd. The Kentucky vanity is as irritable, although not as radical, as the Virginian, and sees a slight in every thing short of a caress. He appointed some fifteen general officers from Kentucky, and he permitted the Kentucky loafers to secure their ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... felt himself deeply compromised by the imputations put forth against his principal, declared publicly that the military court which had condemned the Herr von Thalermacher, after hearing only his accuser, was a one-sided and absurd tribunal, and that it was not competent to give ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... humor is rather more enjoyable to the British taste than wit, though there is, indeed, no lack of the latter. But the people delight most in absurd situations that appeal to the risibilities without any injury to the feelings of others. For example, Dickens relates an anecdote concerning two men, who were about to be hanged at a public execution. When they were already on the scaffold in preparation for the supreme ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... and cannot be there really, because the brain is the sole seat of consciousness; and, further, because evidence, as strong as that in favour of the sensation being in the finger, can be brought forward in support of propositions which are manifestly absurd. ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... absurd outbreak of superstition, things are looking rather more cheerful. The pack which was forming to the south of us has partly cleared away, and the water is so warm as to lead me to believe that we are lying in one of those branches of the gulf-stream which run up between Greenland and Spitzbergen. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of soap. I have known of cases where parents claimed that their children were not fond of such things. Believe them not. I liked pie, but not pudding; the rich, heavy fruit-cake of weddings, good, honest gingerbread, the brisk, crispy heat of the brittle ginger-snap, but not "plain cake,"—absurd viand! It is of the essence of cake not to be plain. As well say, acid sweetness. Nor did I like the hereditary election-cake of my ancient State and city. Fat pork I could not swallow; nor onions nor cabbage,—gross, indelicate vegetables! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the question," Tommy agreed with emphasis. "To begin with, it means waiting, which is absurd; and in the second place I object to any attempt to travel first-class. It's silly and snobbish, to put the kindest construction on it. If I've got to join this excursion I'm willing to go where they like to put me, and if necessary I'll ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... the doctrine of a personal Devil, is not to endorse the grossly absurd caricatures conjured up by morbid imaginations, and popular theology,—a being with bat's wings, horns, hoofs, and a dart-pointed tail. Yet upon such pictorial fables he doubtless looks with complacency; as they are calculated still further to destroy faith in his existence, and enable him the ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... mighty few of them are pure by the time they're through college, by the time they're through High School, perhaps! It's all queer, for that involves girls and women, too, thousands of them! And how absurd it would be to bring such a charge as this against a man, ten years after it happened, when he was ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Jethro said, "that your forebodings will not be verified. I cannot believe that an absurd suspicion can draw away the hearts of the people from one whom they have so respected ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... buildings made of stone, grotesque and hideous; a pseudo-Gothic chapel with a tower of surpassing loveliness; and four laboratories of the purest factory design. But despite the conglomerate and sometimes absurd architecture—a Doric temple neighbored a Byzantine mosque—the campus was beautiful. Lawns, often terraced, stretched everywhere, and the great elms lent a dignity to Sanford College that no architect, however stupid, could ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... am not ordinary in anything, my dear sir," laughed Aristide, in his large boastfulness. "If I were, do you think I would have agreed to your absurd proposal? Voyons, I only wanted to show you that in dealing cards I am your equal. Now, the letters——" The Count threw a small packet on the table. "You will permit me? I do not wish to read them. I verify only. Good," said he. "And ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... questioner. "Since you have set the example of expressing opinions without regard to considerations of common courtesy," he said, shortly, "I may say that your theory, if it can be called one, is manifestly absurd." ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... absurd things I might have said, I cannot tell; but we were at the fort and I had to wrap the tartan disguise about myself. Stooping, I picked a bunch of dog-roses growing by the path, then felt foolish, for I had not ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... a moment. It would sound very absurd to the captain for him to say that there was a passenger on the ship whom he desired very much not to meet, and yet, after all, that was what made the thought of the voyage so ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... corral; "it extends from my corral to Fair Plains. That is claimed by the sisters' title, and, as things appear to be going, if a division of the land is made it will be theirs. It's bad enough to have this best grazing land lying just on the flanks of the corral held by these rascals at an absurd prohibitory price, but I am afraid that it may be made to mean something even worse. According to the old surveys, these terraces on different levels were the natural divisions of the property,—one heir or his tenant ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... absurd to say that the whole party did not feel the full danger of their position; but they were brave men, and had strung up their nerves to encounter whatever might happen; the expected interview they saw would prove as critical as any part of their adventure, and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... our "young ladies" are sorry specimens of feminality; and palpitators, cosmetics and all the modern paraphernalia are required to make them appear fresh and blooming. Man is equally at fault. A devotee to all the absurd devices of fashion, he practically asserts that "dress makes the man." But physical deformities are of far less importance than ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... puppyism. After the American has got done bragging about his independence, and his "free and equal" prerogatives, he begins to see how these things run into impertinence and forwardness; and the Englishman, in visiting us, escapes from his social bonds and prejudices, to see for a moment how absurd ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... this appears to me absurd, wrong, foolish, And quite repugnant to my scheme of life, Yet, if you're so much ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... absurd, or it would involve the most profound ignorance of the history of literature in general, to claim that the principle of this invention had its origin here. It had already been in use, in recent and systematic use, in ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... magistrates often interfered to protect the Jews from massacre; but they absolutely and persistently refused to trouble themselves with any attempt to understand their doctrines or enter into their disputes. The tradition that Gallio sent some of St. Paul's writings to his brother Seneca is utterly absurd; and indeed at this time (A.D. 54), St. Paul had written nothing except the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. (See Conybeare and Howson, St. Paul, vol. i. Ch. xii.; Aubertin, Seneque et ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the performance of a play through thick glass or with closed ears has much the same absurd effect that is produced by also stopping the ears while at a ball and watching the apparently objectless capering of the dancers, without the aid of musical accompaniment. Diderot, in his Lettre sur les sourds muets, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Absurd—isn't it?—that one should have to cloak one's interest in a stranger's soul under such a convention as the offer of a paper. Why couldn't I have said to him straight out, "Look here, what's the ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... there in a bright patch of moonlight looking up into his face, seeing every line of it in the rich flood of light from the full moon, wondering dully if she had lost her sense of the real and the unreal. It seemed to her so rankly absurd, so utterly preposterous that he should seek to pretend with her. For, now that she had seen the limping gait of his big sorrel, was she more than certain that this was the man whom she had seen following her in the afternoon. And as she noted again the sinewy ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... OBSERVATION 1. The following absurd phrases so common in the sacred desk and elsewhere, should be carefully avoided by all who regard common sense:—"Sing the two first and three last verses." Just as if there could be more than ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... sermon-paper than sacrifice the interest of your hearers. But it is a silly thing for a man in a prayer-meeting or pulpit to stop merely because a certain number of minutes have expired while the interest is deepening—absurd as a hunter on the track of a roebuck, and within two minutes of bringing down its antlers, stopping because his wife said that at six o'clock precisely he must be home to supper. Keep on hunting till your ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... which that of the European always possesses. This peculiarity must be attributed to the absence of pigment cells which, when present, always present a more or less dark color. The theory that climate alone is capable of producing all these diversities is simply absurd. The Esquimaux, who live in Greenland and the arctic regions of America, are remarkable for the darkness of their complexion. Humboldt remarks that the American tribes of the tropical regions have no darker skin than the mountaineers of the temperate ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... absolutely silly," said Imogen, with her eyes full of tears. "What extraordinary things fevers are! I declare, I am as bad as any child. It is absurd, but the mere idea of having to give you up makes me quite cold ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... apprehend what it is, yet you see what kind of thing it is, or if you do not quite see that, yet you certainly see how great it is. What, then? Shall we imagine that there is a kind of measure in the soul, into which, as into a vessel, all that we remember is poured? That indeed is absurd; for how shall we form any idea of the bottom, or of the shape or fashion of such a soul as that? And, again, how are we to conceive how much it is able to contain? Shall we imagine the soul to receive ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... absurd; impossible. He had seen her get into the cab at the Union Station. There, in the front of the car, was her suit-case; but she had gone—disappeared completely, ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... It IS so absurd to be an engaged orphan and it IS so absurd to have the girls and the servants scuttling about after one, like mice in the wainscot; and it IS so absurd to be ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... into the error of supposing that all eyes and ears are fixed upon them, to observe how awkwardly or how gracefully they move, and how well or how ill they converse. This is the result of a mental egotism combined with love of admiration, and usually produces awkward diffidence or absurd affectation. Too often the first weakness is overcome, or covered up, most unwisely, by exchanging bashfulness for impertinent boldness; while the vanity and self-consciousness of the second very rarely result in manners or Conversation either sensible ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... walked across the room and looked out into the Duchesse's rose garden. Really, Markham's importance in her scheme of things was getting to be intolerable. It infuriated her that this obsession was warping her judgment to the point of imagining impossibilities. Hermia and Markham? The idea was absurd. And yet somehow it persisted. She turned on her heel and paced the floor of the room rapidly two or three times. She paused for a moment at her dressing-table and then with a quick air of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... diligently, for even he, had he not been blinded by zeal, might have seen that it was something too ornate to appeal to a rather practical young lady of twenty-five. It was much too ornate, that is certain; and it alone would have made him absurd had not fate joined forces against him and at precisely this point prompted Harry, who was for once impatient with his progress, to try to reproduce the larger music coursing through his soul. This ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... mongrel makeshift man[oe]uvre. Any absurd attempt to substitute a bad contrivance for what the custom of the sea ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... "An absurd idea!" cried M'Nicholl. "But probably Kepler never knew the real dimensions of these craters. Barbican knows the trouble and time required to dig a well in Stony Hill only nine hundred feet deep. To dig out a single lunar crater would take hundreds ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Pugh could no longer be mistaken. The conviction of his intentions grew upon his sister, first from a mere absurd notion, banished from her mind with derision, then from a misgiving angrily silenced, to a fixed expectation, confirmed by the evident opinion of all around her, and calling for decision and self-command on her ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and she fifteen— Ah, me! how fair I thought her. She treated with disdainful mien The homage that I brought her, And, in a patronizing way, Would of my shy advances say: "It's really quite absurd, you see; He's very ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various |
