"Absurdity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ordinary Polynesian chooses and presents his gifts. A plain social duty lies before him, which he performs correctly, but without the least enthusiasm. And we shall best understand his attitude of mind, if we examine our own to the cognate absurdity of marriage presents. There we give without any special thought of a return; yet if the circumstance arise, and the return be withheld, we shall judge ourselves insulted. We give them usually without affection, and almost never with a genuine desire to please; and our gift is rather a mark of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... secondary inventor must be obvious, in view of the fact that if the doctrine of mechanical equivalents were applied to his claim, then the fundamental device on which he improved would probably infringe upon it, which would be an absurdity. It is thus seen that the pioneer inventor may have a claim so broad in its terms that its terms cannot be escaped; that he may invoke the doctrine of equivalents and have his claim dominate structures not directly responding to the terms of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... told him where I was to be found. The message of the head of the Republic, requiring a confidential bearer of documents, struck him as affording an opportunity of my liberation; and though the palpable absurdity of my worthy friend Pantoufle prevented any communication with him, no time was lost in proposing my name ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... scrupulous than we are now in our ideas on the subject; and we all said freely that as gunpowder destroyed the feudal system, so the capitalist system could not long survive the invention of dynamite. Not that we are dynamitards: indeed the absurdity of the inference shows how innocent we were of any practical acquaintance with explosives; but we thought that the statement about gunpowder and feudalism was historically true, and that it would do the capitalists good to remind them of it. Suddenly, however, the Federation ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... from ever being altogether empty, whereas in truth the stage was not at all the proper place for the Chorus; or else they have censured it as a superfluous and cumbersome appendage, expressing their astonishment at the alleged absurdity of carrying on secret transactions in the presence of assembled multitudes. They have also considered it as the principal reason with the Greek tragedians for the strict observance of the unity of place, as it could not be changed ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... allowed himself to respond. He had no wish to obtrude his musical and artistic doings upon his father until a more definite modus vivendi had been brought about; but he could no longer lend himself passively to being made an absurdity by the over-enthusiasm of his sister. Fencing, now, was a manly art of which his ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... peculiar sincerity. Her truthfulness, her single-mindedness, the vividness of her emotions and her unrestrained expression of them, were the varied forms which this central characteristic assumed. It was her sincerity which gave her at once her impressiveness, her charm, and her absurdity. She moved through life with the imposing certitude of one to whom concealment was impossible—either towards her surroundings or towards herself. There she was, all of her—the Queen of England, complete and obvious; the world might take her or leave her; she ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... for an old useless pistol without powder or shot. He attempted at first to bluster in his turn, and with most women would probably have gained his point. But with Iligliuk this would not do; she saw at once the absurdity of his bargain, and insisted on his immediately cancelling it, which was accordingly done, and no more said about it. In general, indeed, the husband maintains his authority, and in several instances of supposed bad behaviour in a wife, we ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... tradition of all the great cats—by seizing its throat and breaking its neck; and in the third, a hyaena, sitting down to such a meal, would certainly have begun with calf's head and crunched up every bone of the skull before thinking of sirloin or rumpsteak. But the absurdity of a panther being found in such a region outweighed all this ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... wisdom and natural shrewdness, and a spirit free from vulgarity. The blunders of a fertile but hurried intellect, and the awkward display of the student assuming the man of fashion, fix on him a character for absurdity and vanity which, like the charge of lunacy, it is hard to disprove, however weak the grounds of the charge and strong the facts in opposition ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... inarticulate attempts to prevent The PORTER from laying the case before THE CONDUCTOR, and then stands guiltily smiling, overwhelmed with the hopeless absurdity of his position.] ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... of Lasham the thought of it would have been uppermost in his mind; but Lasham was not his partner or associate, only a brother miner, and his single act of generosity was in the ordinary routine of camp life. If she could think him cold and heartless before, what would she think of him now? The absurdity of her mistake had vanished in the grim tragedy he had seemed to have cruelly prepared for her. The thought struck him so keenly that he stammered, faltered, and sank ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... in all our foreign wars utterly trivial by comparison. The number of deaths in battle in all the foreign wars put together, for the last century and a quarter, aggregate considerably less than one year's death record for our industries. A mere glance at these figures is sufficient to show the absurdity of the outcry ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... true will be found to correspond with it in substance, however it may differ from it in form; and thus, in their statements regarding the power of Affirmation, the exponents of the New Thought broach no new-fangled absurdity, but only reiterate a great truth which has been before the world, though very imperfectly ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... drama without an inevitably fatal ending. Change this obstacle a little, equalize the conditions of the struggle, set two wills in opposition—and we have comedy. And if the obstacle is of still a lower order, merely an absurdity of custom, for instance, we find ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... hae me dee wi' my bairn?" she asked instantly, without sign of perplexity, smiling on the little one as at some absurdity in her arms rather ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... the labour of a porter to my fasting endured for the sake of books. At the little shop near Portland Road Station I came upon a first edition of Gibbon, the price an absurdity—I think it was a shilling a volume. To possess those clean-paged quartos I would have sold my coat. As it happened, I had not money enough with me, but sufficient at home. I was living at Islington. Having spoken with the bookseller, I walked home, took the cash, walked back again, and—carried ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... tells me exactly, but he did speak once about the absurdity of the excess-profits tax. You see, jam is a ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend for to be reason, show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please. But what dignity is derived from the perseverance in absurdity is more than ever I could discern. The honorable gentleman has said well,—indeed, in most of his general observations I agree with him,—he says, that this subject does not stand as it did formerly. Oh, certainly not! Every hour you continue ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... benedicite! What foul absurdity, Folly and foolery Had like to follow me! I and my mates, Like addle-pates, Inviting great states To see our last play, Are hunting the hay, With "Ho! that way The goodly hart ran," With "Follow, Little John! Much, play the man!" And I, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... lecture I shall class together,—occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an honest labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the folly of pride: as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any latent absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their nearest likelihood; and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of events which he was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter terrified himself with his own fiends, and reproved or comforted himself by the lips of his own ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... had with Wauna gave me so much uneasiness that I sought her mother. I cannot express the shock I felt at hearing such youthful and innocent lips speak of the absurdity of religious forms, ceremonies, and creeds. She regarded my belief in them as a species of barbarism. But she had not convinced me. I was resolved not to be convinced. I believed ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... his bobbing up and down above the gay and giddy rout is one of the most ridiculous sights on earth. Are you urging me to furnish a similar absurdity?" ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... inheriting by daughters? Or, lastly, if that law be of human institution, may it not be enacted in any state, with whatever extent or limitation the legislature shall think fit? For the notion of an unchangeable human law is an absurdity in government, to be believed only by ignorance, and supported by power. From hence it follows, that the children of the late Queen of France, although she had renounced, were as legally excluded from succeeding ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... answered Ronayne, "I could not even, amid all my own painful feelings, suppress a smile at its extreme absurdity, for the appearance of three men seeking to defend themselves from what they believed to be fierce and blood-thirsty enemies, with the burnt carcass and limbs of an old turkey-cock, was such a burlesque on the chivalrous, that, knowing as ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... at the absurdity of the suggestion. "You do, don't you? You must! Everybody does. Just wait a minute till ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... that the right to amend the Constitution does not give us the right to enlarge its powers. Why not? And if not, to what things does the right of amendment extend? Such an interpretation makes article fifth an absurdity. This objection springs from the same mischievous doctrine of State sovereignty, which has so outraged the patriotic common sense of the people by the denial of our right to 'coerce' a State, and tends to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gazed at them with his fixed and mournful eyes. He couldn't share your excitement. He drew back his shoulders, bracing himself to bear it; his lips tightened in a hard, bleak grin. He grinned at the absurdity of your supposing that he could be interested in ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the crime in the Arctic wastes with the will he had signed in the Aasvogel Syndicate office, on that fine spring morning, eighteen months ago. His only suspicion, which in nine thoughts out of ten he had almost rejected for its absurdity, was against the man Garnet whose place he had filled in the Expedition. Garnet, who was an author and a vile-tempered fellow even in good health, had gone half crazy because the Expedition was not postponed for a year on his account. He had cursed Alan as a scheming interloper, and so forth, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... revolver shot rang out and something seemed to strike us. We immediately rushed for a green baize door, but saw no one. On returning to the room, the barmaid, who was quite pale, asked "Are you dead?" I answered, "No." At the moment I did not realise the absurdity of the question, or ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... rave as they like about the absurdity of love at first sight; but the young and sensitive always love at first sight, and the love of after-years, however better and more wisely bestowed, is never able to obliterate from the heart the memory of those sudden ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... commonsense (if your schoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinite which you call space—the countless Impalpable which divides earth from the moon and stars—is filled also with its correspondent and appropriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity to suppose that being is crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the immensities of space? The law of the Great System forbids the waste even of an atom; it knows no spot where something of life does not ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in sinuous attitudes, or were posed with a stiffness of idols, little tables set with coffee cups, others round which were gathered Zouaves intent on card games, but ever ready to pause for a caress or for some jesting absurdity with the women who squatted beside them. Some men, dressed like girls, went to and fro, serving the dancers with sweetmeats and with cigarettes, their beards flowing down with a grotesque effect ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... enny tricks on her—can they, Sue? I wish one o' 'em durn'd deetecters would come around, jest tew see heow she'd pull the wool over 'im. I wudn't ax enny better fun;" and he indulged in a fit of loud cachinnation at the absurdity of supposing that anyone could match in sharpness his ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... go and tell him I advise him to relinquish his knight-errant project, or I will expose his absurdity by taking the advantage which the law ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... to listen to nice distinctions that savor of the schools, but to be guided by true good sense and manly reason. After the Statute of Uses, it is much to be lamented that the courts of Common Law had not adopted all the rules and maxims of courts of equity. This would have prevented the absurdity of receiving costs in one court and paying them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with a swinging motion akin to that of a bat when, grappling some object or another with its wings, it hangs suspended in the air. The fact that the man's cap was drawn tightly over his ears caused the latter to stick out almost to the point of absurdity. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... ceremony of the Koraks is especially remarkable for its entire originality, and for the indifference which it manifests to the sensibilities of the bridegroom. In no other country does there exist such a curious mixture of sense and absurdity as that which is dignified in the social life of the Koraks with the name of marriage; and among no other people, let us charitably hope, is the unfortunate bridegroom subjected to such humiliating indignities. The contemplation of marriage ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... The absurdity of this conclusion struck him, however, as he reasoned: "Why, then, should he have paid my fare? Not as a benefit to me, of course, but for his own ends, whatever they might be. Let us see, then, what those ends are. So now for the gentleman of the red ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... master, in the relation of owner to property? Justice and equality on the one hand, and the chattel principle on the other, are naturally subversive of each other—proof clear and decisive that the correlates, masters and servants, cannot here be rendered slaves and owners, without the grossest absurdity and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... as you know, finally declared to be a scientific absurdity in the eighteenth century. But I may say that it is no longer so regarded. I do not ask you to believe anything until you have seen; all I ask is that you maintain the same open mind which the most progressive scientists of to-day exhibit in ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... futility. The boy forced his father to see—what indeed all along he had been seeing more and more clearly. The war, even by the standards of adventure and conquest, had long since become a monstrous absurdity. Some way there must be out of this bloody entanglement that was yielding victory to neither side, that was yielding nothing but waste and death beyond all precedent. The vast majority of people everywhere must be desiring peace, willing ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Sistine Chapel, having procured the "introduction from very high quarters" which, even according to ordinary guide-books, is absolutely necessary,—the "high quarters" in this instance being Monsignor Gherardi. Apart from this absurdity,—this impious idea of needing an "introduction" to a sacred service professedly held for the worship of the Divine, by the Representative of Christ on earth, he had watched with sickening soul all the tawdry ceremonial so far removed from the simplicity of Christ's commands,—he had ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... said Sir Hugh; and Archie could see, by his brother's brow, that Hugh was angry. "You say things that, for folly and absurdity, are beyond belief. If you can't see the peculiarities of Julia's position, I am not going to point them out ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... heavy load for Margaret to bear, after all those years of patient vigil. But the load was to be lightened for her. In consideration of O'Rourke's long service, and in view of the fact that his desertion so near the expiration of his time was an absurdity, the Good President commuted his sentence to imprisonment for life, with loss of prize-money and back pay. Mr. O'Rourke was despatched North, and ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... named to Caracas, South America, or some other remote and unhealthy part of the globe, but when she stopped for a moment, I discovered that the young man was named to Washington. I was really surprised, didn't know what to say at once, when the absurdity of the thing struck me and I answered that Washington was far, perhaps across the ocean, but there were compensations—but she took up her argument again, such an impossible place, everything so primitive, I really think she ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... obligation does my heroine lay on me to do likewise? I don't see the thing. I don't want to pose as a lover. Why should I fall in love with you in real life, because I like you to read my poem about lovers? Can't you see the absurdity of the argument? Life and books are two different spheres. The one is the sphere of thoughts, the other of things, ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... thought of it. But she stepped very lightly and easily, and I am not sure I ever enjoyed a waltz so much. The blue light—that bewitching, intoxicating blue light—paled on us as we danced. The grey conquered it, and I felt that when we looked at each other the whole absurdity would strike us, and I should never be able to face these lovers again without a furious blush. As the day crept on, I stole a glance at Tubal Cain. He was scraping away desperately—with his eyes shut. For us the dance had become weariness, but we went on and on. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Chaleurs, while the abraded highlands of Messrs. Featherstonhaugh and Mudge terminate on its south shore. In fact, there is no step in their argument which might not be adduced to support this claim, nor any apparent absurdity in preferring it which would not find its parallel in one or other ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... as legislation therefore is concerned, the attempt to secure competence by 'collation' is an absurdity. Yet it is an inverted sort of competence useful for indicating the state of a nation's temper. From this it follows that this system is as mischievous in a republic as it would be wholesome in a monarchy. It is ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... to place in a fair light the absurdity of supposing the four Gospels to have been written by the Apostles and first followers of Jesus, I will suppose, a case. Suppose there should appear in the world, four different Lives of Napoleon pretending to have been written by four of his aids de camp, who had constantly ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... the frock is better than the evening or dress-coat. It fulfils the purpose of a garment more completely, and when buttoned up is capable of protecting the chest. The triangular opening in front of the coat and waistcoat is, however, an absurdity. It leaves unprotected from cold and wet the very part which most requires protection. Pictorially, the regularly-defined patch of white seen through it is always offensive; but its whiteness has one merit, if it really be white. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Maurice, but in certain ways he went further than that noble-hearted, if somewhat mystical, divine. It would have been an absurdity to ask my father whether it would not be better to give up Christianity and try instead the faith of Christ. That was always his faith. For him religion meant a way of life, a spiritual exaltation—not going to church, or saying prayers, or being sedulous in certain prescribed devotions. His creed ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... constantly, his friendship with her had never been misunderstood. Frivolous friends of his who did not know her might amuse themselves by being humorous and flippant about Vincy's little Ottleys, but no-one who had ever seen them together could possibly make a mistake. They were an example of the absurdity of a tradition—'the world's' proneness to calumny. Such friendships, when genuine, are never misconstrued. Perhaps society is more often taken in the other way. But as a matter of fact the truth on this subject, as on most others, is always known in time. No-one had ever ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... in truth, are these, when a man of the very lowest birth may indulge in such reveries without the faintest absurdity!" ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... recollection of his drollery will often convulse the face in defiance of the best-bred muscles, no thought arises which the dying need regret. Who can ever forget "The Lost Heir," or remember it but to laugh at its rich breadth of natural, yet farcical, absurdity? The ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... institution. In this conclusion they signally erred. Mr. Adams, by birth, education, all the associations of his life, and the fixed principles of his moral and political character, was an opposer of slavery in every form. No man felt more keenly the wretched absurdity of professing to base our Government on the "self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—of ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... "the little brute deserved it. Good Heavens! to think that 'a little brute' might have married that angel, and actually broke faith to lose her; it is incredible, the crime is diluted by the absurdity." ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... more of it, Eleanor. I will not. It is just absurdity and fanaticism, the whole thing. Why shouldn't those boys go to the regular schools, instead of your giving your time and risking your life to ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... felt a violent desire to break Boniface's head with a wine-bottle. Nevertheless, seeing the absurdity of the situation, he made an effort and ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... this prediction with complacency. He did not reflect upon the absurdity of one number being luckier than another, and congratulated himself that he had been so fortunate as to get a number containing ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... because she falsely claimed nuptials with Jove. Are not these things deserving of a terrible halter, for a stranger to insult us with these insults, whoever he be? But here is another marvel—I see Tiresias the soothsayer, in dappled deer-skins, and the father of my mother, most great absurdity, raging about with a thyrsus—I deprecate it, O father, seeing your old age destitute of sense; will you not dash away the ivy?[16] will you not, O father of my mother, put down your hand empty of the thyrsus? Have you persuaded him to this, O Tiresias? do ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... that lived came amiss to his philosophy or his pleasure. He could talk as brilliantly upon the affairs of the kitchen as upon those of state, he could appreciate gossip as well as verse, he could laugh over an absurdity as easily as he could extol the masterpiece. Romance for him was everywhere—in the slang of the cockney of the Strand as in a symphony by Berlioz, in 'Arriet's feathers as in the "Don Diegos" of the ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... was a year older, and therefore considered himself a man at all events, burst into a loud fit of laughter, in which his companion joined him, at the absurdity of their conversation; of which, although they had spoken in earnest, they were both somewhat conscious. "But I say, old fellow, without any more humbug about love and such like bosh, just look at the dear old craft! how beautifully she sits on the water— what a graceful sheer she has—and how ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the inquiry was still better informed of the true state of the case, and of the truth of the accusation, than were those to whom he might have submitted it, gave him a sense of the hopelessness and also absurdity of the attempt more than ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the bell of the convent, which is in our demesne,—a convent which is suppressed, and where I hear, when I pass in the morning, the humming of a school. At first I tried to count the hour; but when the bell went on to strike seventeen, and even twenty-one o'clock, the absurdity of the thing came over me, and I wondered whether it was some frequent call to prayer for a feeble band of sisters remaining, some reminder of midnight penance and vigil, or whether it was not something more ghostly than that, and was not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... desperate day of all, the vividness of his concern over the outcome of the fight and his utter unconcern about the effect of it upon his own fortunes. She had been reading Kipling aloud, out at the farm, to the boys and Aunt Lucile and a memory of it led her to make a comparison—heedless of its absurdity—between the composer and Kirn's lama. "He isn't, anyhow, tied to the 'wheel of things' any more than that ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... complexion muddy, and he walked about with his hands in his pockets, long flexible lips protruded in a whistle, and a rather shapeless nose well up to show he didn't care. Providence had sought to console him by giving him a keen eye for the absurdity of other people. He had a suggestive tongue, and he professed and practised cowardice to the scandal of all his acquaintances. He was said never to wash behind his ears, but this report wronged him. There had been a time when he did not do so, but his mother had won him to a promise, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... question as untimely, the war could never end until that question was disposed of. And it also became every day more plain that the 'little arrangement' so frequently insisted on, and expressed in the words, 'Conquer the enemy first, and then free the slaves,' was a little absurdity. It was 'all very pretty,' but with the whole North and South at swords-points over this as the alleged cause of war—with all Europe declaring that the North had no intention of removing the cause of the war—with the slave constantly interfering in all our military movements—and, finally, with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... such roads necessary to protect them from injury and defray the expense of repairing them? Surely if the right exists these consequences necessarily followed as soon as the road was established. The absurdity of such a pretension must be apparent to all who examine it. In this way a large portion of the territory of every State might be taken from it, for there is scarcely a road in any State which will not be used for the transportation of the mail. A new field for legislation and internal ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... shoulders began to shake, then he burst into such a paroxysm of noiseless laughter that Erica, fearing that he could not restrain himself, and would be heard in the sick-room, pulled the towel from his forehead over his mouth; then, conquered herself by the absurdity of his appearance, she was obliged to bury her own face in her hands, laughing more and more whenever the incongruousness of the laughter occurred to her. When they had exhausted themselves the profound depression which had been the real cause ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again, in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at the resurrection, be found ready, standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine, but the practice still continues, in compliance ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... for excellencies not their own as to lay on the printer the blame for their own oversights. In one of Artemus Ward's articles he had spoken of a starving prisoner as appealing for something to eat. The proof rendered it something to read. The humorist accepted the substitution as an additional absurdity. The French poet, Malherbe, once welcomed a misprint as an improvement on what he had written. There can be no doubt that, had there been no misprints in Shakespeare's quartos and folios, half the occupation of Shakespeare scholarship would have been lacking. ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... The absurdity of the affair was too much for the visitor. He roared a "Ha, ha!" that caused Abishai to wave a warning ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... are admitted to communications with the spiritual world. For ourselves, while we can suggest no explanation of these phenomena, and while in every attempted explanation of them which we have seen, we detect some such difficulty or absurdity as makes necessary its rejection, we certainly could never for a moment be tempted to a suspicion that there is anything supernatural in the matter. Such an idea is simply ridiculous, and will be ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... blocking, no defying. And with the cough, the absurdity of the whole affair, striking us simultaneously, left us grinning like a trio ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... to court & respect. We are even reduced to the Hutchinsonian Times, if a Citizen shall think himself constraind to malign his old Friend, merely because the Great Man has been prevaild upon to mark him as his Enemy.—But the History of all Ages & all Countrys shows, that there is no Absurdity into which Idolatry will not lead Men. Remember me to My Friend Mr Gerry, & let him know that I have not forgot his Letters, & that I will write to him soon. Adieu ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... Territories be indispensably necessary to enable us to meet and repel the invader, it follows as a necessary consequence not only that we possess the power, but it is our imperative duty to construct such a road. It would be an absurdity to invest a government with the unlimited power to make and conduct war and at the same time deny to it the only means of reaching and defeating the enemy at the frontier. Without such a road it is quite evident we can not "protect" California ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... direct perception is the only authority. They assert that nothing, however true, is existent which is not directly perceivable; or, at least they doubt the existence of those objects. Indeed, such assertions involve an absurdity and they who make them are of foolish understanding, whatever may be their pride of learning. If, on the other hand, thou doubtest as to how the one (indivisible Brahman) could be the cause, I answer that one would understand ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Iliad and the Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have a distinct answer. In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of publication, and an author would have the less scruple in altering or adding to a work which was known only to a few of his friends. There is no absurdity in supposing that he may have laid his labours aside for a time, or turned from one work to another; and such interruptions would be more likely to occur in the case of a long than of a short writing. In all attempts to determine the chronological order of the Platonic ...
— The Republic • Plato
... reckoned in this way: the word CALCULATE gives us an absolute proof of this. According to the theory of the Duke of Argyll, men ages ago used pebbles (CALCULI) in performing the simplest arithmetical calculations because we to-day "CALCULATE." No reduction to absurdity could be more thorough. The simple fact must be that we "calculate" because our remote ancestors ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... that he did not intend to kill Mr. Smith, and was not asked to do so, has a decided look of absurdity when viewed in the light of the various circumstances surrounding the assault. If he simply intended to "lick" Mr. Smith, why did he attempt it in such an unfair and cowardly way? Why did he, when the object of his assault was asleep, attack him with a weapon which might cause death? ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... exemplary remark, combined with the absurdity of repentance taking the form of interest in mining speculations, was almost too much for Richard's sense of humor; but he only nodded with gravity, as became a man who was imbibing information, and inquired further, whether, in addition to these favorers ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... not imprecating future evils on a past time—an impossibility, an absurdity: he is describing the events then transpiring—the whirlwind, the darkness, the mist, the day that does not come, and the leviathan, the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... changed with circumstances; in fact, Mahomet became unbearable, and still he was absolutely necessary, as he was the tongue of the expedition until we should accomplish Arabic. To him the very idea of exploration was an absurdity; he had never believed in it from the first, and he now became impressed with the fact that he was positively committed to an undertaking that would end most likely in his death, if not in terrible difficulties; he determined, under the circumstances, to make himself as disagreeable as possible ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... thoughts to novel-writing. These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine high-sounding periods would assist to make the unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious reasoning, absurdity and nonsense ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... theatrical chaps are so slippery—I won't trust anybody but you to tie the knot for me!" That, of course, was what Ascham would think he was wanted for. Granice, at the idea, broke into an audible laugh—a queer stage-laugh, like the cackle of a baffled villain in a melodrama. The absurdity, the unnaturalness of the sound abashed him, and he compressed his lips angrily. Would ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Things the most absurd in speculation become necessary in practice. Such is the human constitution, and reason excuses them on the account of this necessity. Reason does even a little more, and it is all she can do. She gives the best direction possible to the absurdity. Thus she directs those who must believe because they cannot know, to believe in the laws of their country, and conform their opinions and practice to those of their ancestors, to those of Coruncanius, of Scipio, of Scaevola—not to those of Zeno, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... of that book," said the priest, "was the same who composed the 'Garden of Flowers;' and in good truth I know not which of the two books is the truest, or rather, the least lying: I can only say that this goes to the yard for its arrogance and absurdity." ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... between past images and present revelations, were we forced to acknowledge the improbability of the story, the clumsiness of the style, the awkwardness of the dialogue, the want of Nature in many of the characters, the absurdity of many of the incidents, and the painfulness of some of the scenes. But with all this, a candid, though critical judgment could not but admit that these grave defects were attended by striking merits, which pleaded in mitigation of literary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... bird toward the coquettish in millinery; the lean and haggard intuitively yearned for the picturesque; the harsh and simple aspired to the severely smart. Yet beneath the vain misdirection of impulses there was some obscure principle of attraction which ruled the absurdity of the decisions. Each woman, Gabriella discovered after an attentive hour at the sale, was dressing not her actual substance, but some passionately cherished ideal of herself which she had stored in a remote and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... opened; and thus taken by surprise, whether from the effect of the horror which he felt, acting as it were hysterically on his nervous system, or that at the first moment he lost the sense of the guilt of the proposal in the feeling of its strangeness and absurdity, he flung her from him and burst into a fit of laughter. Irritated by this almost to frenzy, the woman fell on her knees, and in a loud voice that approached to a scream, she prayed for a curse both on him and on her own child. Mary happened to be in the room directly above ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... command from Heaven could hardly have made a stronger impression than did the appeal of the unfortunate Magdalen. Her allusion to his intimacy with the deceased moved him to the soul. During Oliver's life, doubtless, there had been a strain of absurdity in his excessive predilection for Henry, which, considering how very different they were in character, had in it something ludicrous. But all this was now forgotten, and Henry, giving way to his natural ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a strange mixture of absurdity, presumption, and profanity, and I felt relieved to hear his long 'amen,' and to see Joe rise and again approach ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... overturn, at all Adventures, and to the utter Detriment of his Sense and Meaning: But to be so very reserved and cautious, as to interpose no Relief or Conjecture, where it manifestly labours and cries out for Assistance, seems, on the other hand, an indolent Absurdity. ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... the active-trans. verbs are so called in most grammars and dictionaries; the absurdity of this —extent of this class of verbs; their existence in any lang. denied by some grammarians —Neut. verb BE, conjugated —Neuter verbs, made from active-transitives, (am come, is gone, &c.;) ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Von Bloom knew what they were. He knew they were the "wilde-honden," very absurdly named by sapient naturalists Hyena venatica or "hunting hyena," and by others, with equal absurdity the "hunting dog." I pronounce these names "absurd," first because the animal in question bears no more resemblance to a hyena than it does to a hedgehog; and, secondly, because "hunting dog" ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... argued, that the Church in general proclaimed the gospel of the Lord Jesus. But why mention the Church in general, when the method of reasoning used would equally prove that the Church universally did so; and the absurdity of such reasoning must be evident upon a very little consideration of the subject. How absurd to suppose that all mentioned in ver. 1, refers to and comprehends all the members of that church, and that all the thousands and ten thousands belonging ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... others believe that his sovereign power can be subject to controversy or depend on the caprices of the factious. We shall spare our dignity the humiliation of dwelling on all that is monstrous contained in that act, abominable through the absurdity of its origin no less than the illegality of its form and the impiety of its scope; but it appertains to the apostolic authority, with which, however unworthy, we are invested, and to the responsibility which ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... though rivals, used the same poster: a picture of a lady, enormous, decolletee, highly-coloured, stepping into a fiacre, to the cocher's intense alarm. Before one inspected the rival giantesses this community of advertisement had seemed to be a mistake; after, its absurdity was only too apparent, for although the Princess was colossal, Mile. Jeanae was more so. Mile. Jeanne should therefore have employed an artist to ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Verres, there are two matters to interest the reader—indeed, to instruct the reader—if the story were sufficiently well told. The iniquity of Verres is the first—which is of so extravagant a nature as to become farcical by the absurdity of the extent to which he was not afraid to go in the furtherance of his avarice and lust. As the victims suffered two thousand years ago, we can allow ourselves to be amused by the inexhaustible fertility of the man's resources and the singular ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... is hardly necessary to point out the absurdity of the suggestion that the Company intended to seize the Transvaal for itself. The Company could no more have taken the Transvaal than it could have taken Natal. It was for self-government that the insurgent-Uitlanders were to rise, and they ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... like the Alexandrians it had long seemed an absurdity to try to purchase the favor of the god; by blood-offerings. Many philosophical sects, and especially the Pythagoreans, had forbidden such sacrifices, and had enjoined the bringing of offerings not to purchase good fortune, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... address created a "great ferment" in the university. [7:1] It is further reported that Bentley "refused to hear the Respondent who attempted to reply." We might have expected such a deliverance from the prince of British critics; for, with the intuition of genius, he saw the absurdity of recognising these productions as proceeding from a Christian minister who had been carefully instructed by the apostles. Bentley's refusal to hear the Respondent who attempted to reply to him, was exactly in keeping with his well-known dictatorial temper. Does Dr. Lightfoot bring ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... was laboring over a gigantic treadmill, balancing like an equilibrist upon a revolving sphere. Well, it was a simple matter to stop walking, sit down, and allow himself to be spun backward around to the place where Rosa was waiting. He pondered this idea for some time, until its absurdity became apparent. Undoubtedly he must be going out of his head; he saw that it was necessary to keep walking until the back-spin of that ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... days before war was thrust upon us, James Thompson was an architect of distinction. Obviously an architect of distinction can reduce the difficulty of laying out a tennis-court to an elementary and puerile absurdity. For half-an-hour the demonstration was carried on in the garden, and, after Private Thompson had twice been threatened with arrest for using insubordinate language to a superior, it was decided to finish the discussion in my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... regular geometrical solids, and five planets, the distances of the latter were regulated by the size of the solids described round one another. The discovery afterwards of two additional planets testified to the absurdity of this speculation. A description of these extraordinary researches was published, in 1596, in a work entitled 'Prodromus of Cosmographical Dissertations; containing the cosmographical mystery respecting the admirable proportion of the celestial orbits, and the genuine ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... abominations and sham Gothic, so favoured by Horace Walpole and his admirers, can be briefly dismissed. A more rampant piece of absurdity than that of erecting imitations of portions of Greek temples and adapting them for Christian worship it is difficult to imagine, and in the Pavilion at Brighton, Marylebone Church, and the "Extinguisher" Church in Langham Place we even surpassed ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... employed every means to discover the truth. Yet he was not regarded as a good judge of instruction; to contend by tricks with a prisoner was repugnant to him; to lay a snare for a rogue he thought debasing; in short, he was obstinate—obstinate to foolishness, sometimes to absurdity; even to denying the existence ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... not peculiar to the Germans, but it is more prevalent among them than among any other people that I know. In this one respect the German Government is a Government of the people. Some of the diplomatic explanations which have emanated from Berlin during the war have been weird in their absurdity and an insult to the intelligence of those to ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... a moment, struck by the absurdity of his arguing such a question with a mulatto boy. He really must be falling into premature dotage. The proper thing would be to rebuke the lad for his presumption and advise him to learn to take care of horses, or make boots, or lay bricks. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... emperors to our menials. Yet art thou always unhappy in thy attempts of this kind, and never canst make us, who know thee, believe that to be a virtue in thee, which is but the effect of constitutional phlegm and absurdity. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... first exhibition the other night, beginning with florid assurance, speedily degenerating into ludicrous absurdity, and being at last put down ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... simple old lady, full of love for her children, Mildred had despised her mother, she had despised herself for her want of love, and she had envied Harold his sincere love for his mother. He had never, but she had always been aware of her mother's absurdity, and therefore could not grieve quite so sincerely as Harold. She had known all the while that her mother's death did not matter much. Very soon she would be forgotten even by Harold. He could not always grieve for her. She would become a faint memory, occupying less and less of their thoughts, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... admirable history: it is of our friend Lady Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the Prince of Wales said, they were going to court; it was objected that they ought to say to Carlton House; that the only court is where the king resides. Lady P., with her paltry air of significant learning and absurdity, said, "Oh, Lord! Is there no court in England but the king's? Sure, there are many more! There is the Court of Chancery, the Court of Exchequer, the Court of King's Bench, &c." Don't you love her? Lord Lincoln does her daughter—Lady ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... [reason's] voice let the enemies of nature be still, and swallow their serpents' tongues in rage." "The eyes of reason restrain mankind from the precipice of the passions, as her decrees modify likewise the feeling of their rights." Many other passages of equal absurdity could be quoted, full of far-fetched metaphor, abounding in strange terms, straining rhetorical figures to distortion.[22] And yet in spite of the bombast, certain essential Napoleonic ideas appear in the paper much ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... rest. For if this should be denied, it is possible, by the continual gradation of shades, to run a colour insensibly into what is most remote from it; and if you will not allow any of the means to be different, you cannot without absurdity deny the extremes to be the same. Suppose therefore a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... answer immediately. The idea, the amazing, ridiculous idea which had burst upon me suddenly began to lose something of its absurdity. Somehow it began to look like the answer to my riddle. I realized that my main objection to the Campbell prescription had been that I must take it alone ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "What absurdity!" said the other. "You did a thousand things which no one else did. First, when you sat down at the table, what did you do with your napkin?" "My napkin? Why just what every body else did with theirs. I unfolded it entire]y, and fastened it to my buttonhole." "Well, my dear friend," said Delille, ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman |
