"Ridiculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abominably wicked by nature and a savage abuser of his power, gave him such poisonous medicines, as though they did not kill him indeed, yet made him lose his senses, and run into wild and absurd attempts and desire to do actions and satisfy appetites that were ridiculous and shameful. So that his death, which happened to him while he was yet young and in the flower of his age, cannot be so much esteemed a misfortune as a deliverance and end of his misery. However, Philip paid ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... battle-axes on long poles in their hands, and helmets on their heads. What use they were of it was difficult to say, for they certainly could not have run after a thief, much less have knocked one down. The signs, also, in front of the shops appeared very ridiculous. Instead of the display of articles made by an English tradesman in his windows, there were large boards over the doors and windows, and their sides, and under the windows, painted with gigantic designs representing the chief articles to be found within. Huge gloves and stockings, and cravats ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... of his work, has the power to call a tear to the eye of sensibility, his sentiment, divested as it is of the Italian's subtle sensuousness, appears perfectly innocuous and at times not a little ridiculous. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... something still more ridiculous than my piece," said Beaumarchais himself; "that is, its success." Mademoiselle Arnould foresaw it the first day, and exclaimed, "It is a production that will fail fifty nights successively." There was as crowded an audience ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... statutes to hold his court by his own fireside, providing the doors stand open. He was considerably over fifty, tall, and very thin, with bent shoulders. His clothes were rather old-fashioned in cut, but by no means ridiculous. The expression of his face was gentleness itself; but it would not have done to presume upon this gentleness, for his glance was keen and piercing—like the glance of all who are expert in diving into consciences, and discovering the secrets hidden there. Moreover, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... arrest with which he was threatened, after having written to urge Murat to action with fatal effect, Joseph joined Napoleon in Paris, and appeared at the Champ de Mai, sitting also in the Chamber of Peers, but, as before, putting forward ridiculous pretensions as to his inherent right to the peerage, and claiming a special seat. In fact, he never could realise how entirely he owed any position to the brother he wished to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... history of his own times; a science which, Fontenelle observes, is almost distinct from any other. It is the result of an active curiosity, which takes a lively interest in the tastes and pursuits of the age, while it saves the journalist from some ridiculous blunders. We often see the mind of a reviewer half a century remote from the work reviewed. A fine feeling of the various manners of writers, with a style adapted to fix the attention of the indolent, and to win the untractable, should ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... repeatedly forced to admit to himself that he had been unable to find any real ground for his tremors. He had never once felt himself in actual danger of being deposed from his position of high priest in that ridiculous temple. When a man is in love with a woman, he cannot be expected to judge her actions or her meaning wisely, and the Baroness's platonics, with the little flashes of earthly fire in amongst them here and there, had always seemed to him to indicate ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... on hand, and they bent their entire energies to their accomplishment. General Sandford held the arsenal, an important point, indeed a vital one, and let him claim and receive all the credit due that achievement; but to assume any special merit in quelling the riots in the streets is simply ridiculous. That was the work of the police and the military under the commissioners and ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... fan-tan place—and he heard of them every day—he must investigate, see that it was closed and the keepers, if he was lucky enough to catch them, duly punished. And the players as well. Now to eradicate gambling from amongst the Chinese is a difficult task, futile and ridiculous, a good waste of time and money. He wondered why his Government should attempt it. Foolish thing for his Government to do—yet what would become of Lawson if the undertaking were abolished? Taste tea, probably—apprentice himself to ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... such an acquisition for the Church, resolved that the young and fatherless maiden, who had no one to defend her cause, should yield, and that she should become the bride of Jaghellon. They declared that it was ridiculous to think that the interests of a mighty kingdom, and the enlargement of the Church, were to yield to the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... exclaimed emphatically. "I can't bear them, silly old things nodding there, with their ridiculous answers to Perseus, saying old things were better than new—and their day better than his—I should have thrown their eye into the sea if I had been he. Do all old people do that?—pretend their time was the best?—do ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... stripped himself of her parcels and her companionship and hobbled home, profusely perspiring, and lame from so much walking on pavements in tight patent-leather shoes. He was weary and footsore; he had had no golf, and, though forgiven, was but a wreck. She had made him ridiculous all the morning with his frock-coat and top-hat and his porterages, and if forgiveness entailed any more of these nightmare sacraments of friendliness, he felt that he would be unable to endure the fatiguing accessories of the regenerate ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... everybody concerned," said the Major, "that we're brought up short. We'd simply have made ourselves publicly ridiculous if we'd ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... everyday life it is not necessary to have the butter sauce so rich, still it is simply ridiculous to thicken a pint of milk, or a pint of water, with a little butter and flour, and then call it butter sauce or melted butter. Suppose we have a large white cabbage, like those met with in the West of England, and we are ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... I heard a husband call his wife: "Ma berline!" She was delighted with it, and saw nothing ridiculous in it: she called her husband, "Mon fiston!" This delicious couple were ignorant of the existence of such things ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... without that safety-valve which a people fully conscious of enjoying their rights can give. And while thus employed, Smooth does not forget that it is a well laid down rule that many small Presidents may talk very large and yet cut very ridiculous figures: hence his first talk with Mr. Pierce, who is well known for general and very respectable characteristics, may be productive of great good to mankind in a mass. In New England educated, (that land where niggers may be white men, and white men too often turn niggers), loving universal ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... perpetually dancing round the Baronet in a chorus of praise. "Was there ever such a man, my Harriet, so good, so just, so noble in his sentiments?" "Ah, my Lucy, dare I hope for the affection of the best of men?" Some people would have begged their friends to cease making them ridiculous, but ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... it was that, after many ridiculous protests, Uncle Remus sat down on the steps, and proceeded to tell his story of the war. Miss Theodosia listened with great interest, but throughout it all she observed—and she was painfully conscious of the fact, as she afterward admitted—that Uncle Remus spoke ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... fell away the crowd which had followed me. I was left, very giddy and dazed, to confront Laputa and his chiefs. The whole scene was swimming before my eyes. I remember there was a clucking of hens from somewhere behind the kraal, which called up ridiculous memories. I was trying to remember the plan I had made in Machudi's glen. I kept saying to myself like a parrot: 'The army cannot know about the jewels. Laputa must keep his loss secret. I can get my life ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... "Make yourself ridiculous, I dare say," interrupted Eugenia, adding, that "there was more than one Mrs. Elliott in the world, and she'd no idea that so elegant a lady as Mr. Hastings's sister ever troubled herself to look after ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... all its wrongs and woe. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... and wiser persons have failed to do,—learned the lesson, which I hope has been learned for your lifetime, that there is no fun in things, however written or spoken, that hurt other's feelings. I have seen you many times thoughtful and tender, when your face was alive with the ridiculous thing you saw or heard. Kate, I feel so much safer to let you go from me now than I should have six, even three months ago. Tell me, will you try ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... and comprehensive; containing a much larger circle of incidents, and introducing a greater variety of characters. It differs from the serious romance in its fable and action, in this; that as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous: it differs in its characters by introducing persons of inferior rank, and consequently, of inferior manners, whereas the grave romance sets the highest before us: lastly, in its sentiments and diction; by ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... should propose to the English a Federal union between the two nations, or an Incorporating union. The first was most favoured by the people of Scotland, but all the Scots Commissioners, to a Man, considered it ridiculous and impracticable, for that in all the Federal unions there behoved to be a supreme power lodged somewhere, and wherever this was lodged it henceforth became the States General, or, in our way of speaking, the ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... be irremediable causes of the irregularity and inconvenience of their final formations or plans—and until this illustrious age of magnanimous projects and improvements, it would have been thought ridiculous to offer any radical expedient for a general improvement in the plans of cities; but now that we see new cities growing round the metropolis, and new towns planned for the distant dominions of Great Britain, it seems to be a convenient season ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... the most ridiculous and most annoying thing in the world happened to me. For four months everything had been going on perfectly; I felt perfectly safe, and I was really very happy, when suddenly, last Monday, the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... must use his emotions to pay his provision bills; he has no other means; society does not propose to pay his bills for him. Yet, and at the end of the ends, the unsophisticated witness finds the transaction ridiculous, finds it repulsive, finds it shabby. Somehow he knows that if our huckstering civilization did not at every moment violate the eternal fitness of things, the poet's song would have been given to the world, and the poet would have been cared for by the whole human ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... charm—a distinguished carriage, a contempt for poses, and, more than all else, mental tranquillity. Her prettiness was not unlike her gowns, of inexpensive materials, but cut according to the style of the day-rags, if you will, but rags of which fashion, that ridiculous but charming fairy, had regulated the color, the trimming, and the shape. Paris has pretty faces made expressly for costumes of that sort, very easy to dress becomingly, for the very reason that they belong to no type, and Mademoiselle Sidonie's ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... strictness in the outward observance of the Sabbath, as a day of entire rest. The Scribes had elaborated from the command of Moses, a vast array of prohibitions and injunctions, covering the whole of social, individual, and public life, and carried it to the extreme of ridiculous caricature. Lengthened rules were prescribed as to the kinds of knots which might legally be tied on the Sabbath. The camel-driver's knot and the sailor's were unlawful, and it was equally illegal to tie or to loose them. A knot which ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... colonel. He meant to play his trump cards now, and convince the other that the charge made against them was ridiculous, to ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... This ridiculous pre-occupation of Eileen's gave Lady O'Gara something she did not complain of. She had more of her son than otherwise she would have had. Terry had never looked for better companionship than his mother's, but he grumbled about ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... been alone, or if Cutler had not been an attache to the embassy, before whom she was afraid of making herself ridiculous, I am confident that Mrs. Berry would have fainted away on the spot; and that all Berry's courage would have tumbled down lifeless by the side of her. So she only gave a martyrised look, and left the room; and while we partook of the very unnecessary ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A ridiculous thing it is, in fact, that man or woman, endowed with the same nature as Buddha's, born the lord of all material objects, is ever upset by petty cares, haunted by the fearful phantoms of his or her own creation, and burning up his or her energy in a ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... been stated, it will be seen that the Printer's Mark plays a by no means unimportant part in the early history of illustration,—whether the phase be serious or grotesque, sublime or ridiculous, we find here manifold examples, crude as well as clever. Although it cannot be said with truth that the Mark as an institution reached, like typography itself, its highest degree of perfection at its inception, some of the ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... of the long spear shaft in his hand and the sight of the tree beyond the lion gave the lad an idea—a preposterous idea—a ridiculous, forlorn hope of an idea; but there was no time now to weigh chances—there was but a single chance, and that was the thorn tree. If the lion charged it would be too late—the lad must charge first, and to the astonishment of Akut and none the less ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... gave a grudging summary of the reasons Walter had advanced for wishing to go there, and made them appear rather ridiculous reasons. He also produced again such of the arguments he had advanced at breakfast-time as seemed most weighty, and managed to work himself up into a fair return of his morning's feeling of ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... disarmed us. However wicked he might be, one felt it would be ridiculous to imprison this schoolboy. A sound flogging and a month's deprivation of wine and cigarettes was the obvious punishment designed for him ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... a national misfortune if you didn't give us a stiff job," he said, with an airy good-humour which at once made the other's blustering look ridiculous. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ungodly sinners; if he do not walk upon the grounds of his own extreme necessity, and Christ's sufficiency, he cannot come to Jesus Christ. There is a conceit among people, which, if it were not so common as it is, I would not mention it, it is so ridiculous—how can I come to Christ so unclean and so guilty, nothing but condemnation in me? If I were such and such, I would come to him. Alas! there can nothing be imagined more absurd, or contrary even to sense and reason. If thou wert such and such, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... foreign princes to send her their portraits, rings, and jewels, and sometimes to come and see her, but she never made up her mind to take them. And as to the gentlemen at her own court, she liked them to make the most absurd and ridiculous compliments to her, calling her their sun and goddess, and her hair golden beams of the morning, and the like; and the older she grew the more of these fine speeches she required of them. Her dress—a ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he abandoned when he saw her moving; no white woman could imitate that Indian trot, nor would remember to attempt it if she were frightened. The idea that she was a captive white, held by the Indians, became ridiculous when he thought of the nearness of civilization and the peaceful, timid character of the "digger" tribes. That she was some unfortunate demented creature who had escaped from her keeper and wandered into the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... I don't wish to be hard on you; I'm only laughing at the ridiculous figure you cut," he said, giving way to a burst of rough merriment. By the time it was over we reached the door of the berth, where the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... plan, and Roger, with his peculiar sensitiveness toward being discovered with his car at a disadvantage, said seriously: "I see a racing machine coming, and when it passes us I hope you people will act as if we had stopped here only to lunch, and not because this ridiculous belt chose ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... this was a convenient method adopted for splitting up the Sahu group when it became so large as to include persons so distantly connected with each other that the prohibition of marriage between them was obviously ridiculous. As the number of Sundis in the Central Provinces is now insignificant no detailed description of their customs need be given, but one or two interesting points may be noted. Their method of observing the pitripaksh or worship of ancestors ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... ridiculous, Mr. Terwilliger," replied the earl. "I'd look well marrying a draught from a dark cavern, as you call it, now wouldn't I? To say nothing of the impossibility of a Mugley marrying a cook. ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... fellows,—they had been gazing lazily at us, singly and in battalions, in the intervals of their rigorous idleness, for the last four and twenty hours,—suddenly taken a languid interest in us about one hour before our departure. The landlord said he was "simply ridiculous." On another occasion, a waiter in a hotel recognized the Russians who were with us as neighbors of his former master in the days of serfdom. He suggested that he would arrange not to have our passports called for at all, since they ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... "Ridiculous, my dear boy—ridiculous! Just look on me as being In your father's place. No, no, Hamilton, there's room for all of us. There's a reasonable profit for all of us in the business—if only we'll be ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... peculiarities, all unreasonable, many ridiculous, attending the demeanour of a man in love. Not the least eccentric of these are his predatory instincts, his tendency to prowl, his preference for walking over other modes of conveyance, and inclination to subterfuge of every kind as to his ultimate destination. Tom Ryfe was going ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... and Saltash spent the next half-hour pacing the deck, cursing himself, the youngster, and the insane and ridiculous Fate that had ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... acquitted for lack of evidence; but now, here was the proof! The women themselves, leaders of the malcontents, promulgated and pressed their claim to bifurcated garments, and the whole tide of popular discussion was turned into that ridiculous channel. ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... impalpable distrust, which classed him with the "new fathers" of certain children; and he had a feeling that was at the same time painful and ridiculous, that he was on trial. In olden days the matter might have been settled by a good thrashing, but now things had to be arranged so that they would be lasting; he could no longer buy cheaply. When helping Lasse Frederik in organizing ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... that she could be quite contented with a lover such as Mr. Saul. When he had first proposed to her she had almost ridiculed his proposition in her heart. Even now there was something in it that was almost ridiculous—and yet there was something in it also that touched her as being sublime. The man was honest, good and true—perhaps the best and truest man that she had ever known. She could not bring herself to say to him any word that should banish him forever from the place he loved ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... emphasis, accompanied by a sweep of the fingers across the strings. With serious face and deep earnestness Fritz in his broken English would attempt these lines, while his teacher would bend over and hold his sides with laughter at each ridiculous effort. Without intending it, Fritz had his revenge. One day his tormentor's hand was caught in the press when the German boy was turning the wheel. Sam called to him to stop, but the boy's mind was slow to grasp the situation. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... father, in a changed and hostile tone. Lydia gave a satisfied nod; Pa was taking a stand at last. "You didn't have to say that you would marry Clifford," he went on sternly. "You did so as a responsible woman, of your own accord! Now you propose to make him and your family ridiculous, just for a whim. I sent you money to come on here, after your husband's death, and all your life I have tried to be a good father to you. What is my reward? You run away and marry the first irresponsible scamp that asks you; you show no sign of repentance or feeling until you are in ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... himself into an easy-chair, and crossed his legs: "I am not setting him up as a martyr in the least, but I think that, situated as we are, it is ridiculous to defy this man as you do, from morning till night." She took a cigarette from the mantel-piece, lighted it, and replied: "But I do not defy him, quite the contrary; only, he irritates me by his stupidity ... and I treat him as he deserves." Limousin continued impatiently: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... laughed easily, not glancing toward me, but permitting her eyes to rest upon the bewildered face of Captain Grant. "Why, that idea is perfectly absurd. Did you tell my father so ridiculous a ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... romantic, ridiculous; from Don Quixote, the hero of a celebrated fictitious work, written by Cervantes, a distinguished Spanish writer, and intended to reform the tastes and ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... like that of murder!" exclaimed Donna Tullia. "Go on with your painting, Gouache, and do not be ridiculous." ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... drop it," said Mrs. Petulengro; "I do not wish to raise my voice, and to make myself ridiculous. Young gentleman," said she, "pray present my compliments to Miss Isopel Berners, and inform her that I am very sorry that I cannot accept her polite invitation. I am just arrived, and have some slight domestic ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... If they be constructed so that water cannot find its way through either walls or floors, where is the necessity of a drain? Surely the floors can be kept clean by the use of so small an amount of water that it would be ridiculous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... reckon with us; the affair is a ridiculous one in which to involve the United States, and I shall not feel proud of my part, if forced to make the appeal; but General Yozarro will find it is no child's play in which he engages when he attacks us. We have not a very full supply of small arms on board, ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... said. "If he were to look out and see us again, it would be too ridiculous! Come and sit under the plane-tree in the old place. Do you remember how you stared at the trunk and would not answer me when I tried to make you speak, ever so long ago? Do you know, it was because you would not say—what I wanted you to say—that I let myself think that I could ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... mouldering in old churchyards. The blue sandstone monuments, on which Dr. Garlick cut inscriptions fifty years since, are still to be seen in the early cemeteries of the Western Reserve; some are touching enough, but not a few are more ridiculous than mournful. When Nathan Perry became so prosperous that he proposed to remove the old wooden store on the corner of Water and Superior streets and replace it with a brick one, he concluded to expend something upon ornament. He ordered two oval stone signs to be made and to be built into the walls ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... her, asking her to pay me a visit while you girls were here," stated Arline, "but she wrote back voluminous and ridiculous thanks and said the reunion was about as much ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... fear, for that a man with a drawn sword in his hand had stood over them the whole time. A rascally lawyer, whom the party employed, suggested this story; and as the sentry at the cabin door was a man with a drawn sword, the Americans made no scruple of swearing to this ridiculous falsehood, and commencing prosecutions against him accordingly. They laid their damages at the enormous amount of L40,000; and Nelson was obliged to keep close on board his own ship, lest he should be arrested for a sum for which it would have been impossible to find bail. The ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... years of age, assemble in a crowd, and burn an uncouth effigy, which they denominate a "holly boy," and which they obtain from the boys; while in another part of the village the boys burn an equally ridiculous effigy, which they call an "ivy girl," and which they steal from the girls. The oldest inhabitants can give you no reason or account of this curious practice, though it is always a sport ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... they were gay good-byes. Helen Adams, to be sure, almost broke down When she kissed Betty and whispered, "Good-bye and thank you for everything." But the next minute they were both laughing at K.'s ridiculous old telescope bag. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... speaks for itself, and I can see exactly what sort of a child she is, in proof of which I send her my love and a kiss herewith. It is possible I may be the first (unseen) gentleman from whom she has had so ridiculous a message; but I can't say she is the first unseen child to whom I have sent one! I think the most precious message of the kind I ever got from a child I never saw (and never shall see in this world) was to the effect that she liked me when she read about ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... a mean trick!" cried Darry hotly; and then he began to laugh as the ridiculous features of the situation appealed ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... cannot say I envy them their eternal youth. However, we are not much concerned with tales of this class on the present occasion. Very few of the novelle selected by Painter for translation depend for their attraction on mere naughtiness. In matters of sex the sublime and the ridiculous are more than usually close neighbours. It is the tragic side of such relations that attracted Painter, and it was this fact that gave his book its importance for the history of English literature, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... "How ridiculous to make herself and other people suffer. If you are her friend you can relieve her of her misery, her illness, and her collapse of strength. The old lady has broken down the arbour, but she has not destroyed passion, and passion will break Vera. You ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... imperfect representation, may every thing be made equally ridiculous. He that gazed with contempt on human beings rubbing stones together, might have prolonged the same amusement by walking through the city, and seeing others with looks of importance heaping one brick upon another; or by rambling into the country, where he might observe other creatures of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... very considerably annoyed by the State negro recruiting-agents. Your letter was a capital one, and did much good. The law was a ridiculous one; it was opposed by the War Department, but passed through the influence of Eastern manufacturers, who hoped to escape the draft in that way. They were making immense fortunes out of the war, and could well afford to purchase negro recruits, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... after several meals. It is generally called the miraculous berry, and whoever eats of it in the morning, must be content at least for that day to forego the flavour of every kind of food, whether animal or vegetable, for all will be alike saccharine to the palate, and the most ridiculous effect is often produced by playing tricks upon those, who are not aware of its peculiar property. Lander himself was one of the dupes, and he relates, that the first time he partook of one of these berries, he thought himself under the influence of witchcraft—the fowl of which he ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... native has no notion of the proper treatment of ponies, his idea being, generally, that this highly nervous animal can be managed by brute force and the infliction of heavy punishment. Sights, as painful as they are ridiculous, are often the result of this error. Unfortunately, the lower-class native feels little attachment to any animal but the Buffalo, or Carabao, as it is called here, and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... take it and die of it. Mr. Hardcastle found he was too busy at home to have time for neighborly visits, and went around the block rather than pass a door where he saw the doctor's gig. When one has a family, one owes it duties that should not be neglected. Mrs. Upjohn declared the panic to be ridiculous. She shouldn't be scared away by a red flag, like a crow from a cornfield. There had never been a case of typhoid known in Joppa, and places were like people, they never broke out with diseases that were not already in their constitutions. It was all arrant nonsense. However, she was ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... there more who have undergone the same fate, of whom we have no memorial extant. Since, therefore, the opinion of witchcraft is a mere stranger unto Scripture, and wholly alien from true religion; since it is ridiculous by asserting fables and impossibilities; since it appears, when duly considered, to be all bloody and full of dangerous consequence unto the lives and safety of men; I hope that with this my Discourse, opposing an absurd and pernicious error, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... justifiable, and under ordinary circumstances any such pretence on my part would be ridiculous. But you must remember, monsieur, that I came here from London possessed of special information which was not known even to the police authorities in that city. I am working solely in the private interest of persons high in English Society, and it would not serve ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... of its characters were of no higher rank than Sharpers, it was imagined that (whatever good company they may find admittance to in the world) their speaking blank verse upon the stage would be unnatural, if not ridiculous. But though the more elevated characters also speak prose, the judicious reader will observe, that it is a species of prose which differs very little from verse: in many of the most animated scenes, I can truly say, that I often found it a much greater difficulty to avoid, than to write, ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... said in the ears of the minister by a Parisian wit. Thiers was at the foot of the column—the statue of Napoleon at the top. The height of the column is one hundred and thirty-two feet. Said the wit aloud, "There are just one hundred and thirty-two feet from the ridiculous to the sublime!" ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... unacquainted with the principles of natural justice and the rights of nations, they will bring with them that false taste which they have been for years acquiring, but nothing worthy of the public ear, nothing useful to their clients. They have succeeded in nothing but the art of making themselves ridiculous. The peculiar quality of the teacher [a], whatever it be, is sure to transfuse itself into the performance of the pupil. Is the master haughty, fierce, and arrogant; the scholar swells with confidence; his eye threatens prodigious things, and his ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... to appearance so totally inaccessible, that I expected to have been pulled up by a rope; and sincerely repented having gratified my curiosity to behold my Daughters at the expence of being obliged to enter their prison in so dangerous and ridiculous a manner. But as soon as I once found myself safely arrived in the inside of this tremendous building, I comforted myself with the hope of having my spirits revived, by the sight of two beautifull girls, such as the Miss Lesleys had been represented to me, at Edinburgh. But ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... be honest with children and not put them off with ridiculous explanations. Their questions about such matters are generally much more sensible than their ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... absurd and ridiculous to suppose that any person, however great, or learned, or wise, could employ language correctly without a knowledge of the things expressed by that language. No matter how chaste his words, how lofty ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... put round he would find a way of slipping it into Mamma's hand. At once my anxiety subsided; it was now no longer (as it had been a moment ago) until to-morrow that I had lost my mother, for my little line was going—to annoy her, no doubt, and doubly so because this contrivance would make me ridiculous in Swann's eyes—but was going all the same to admit me, invisibly and by stealth, into the same room as herself, was going to whisper from me into her ear; for that forbidden and unfriendly dining-room, where but a moment ago the ice itself—with burned nuts in it—and the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... in the various State conventions, was based upon expediency among the masses and constitutionality among the few. In the light of the dangers which have confronted the people during a century of experience, some of the objections to the Constitution seem ridiculous. But the objectors were sincere in their apprehensions, being just emerged from a despotic government, and jealous of their hard-earned liberty. It was the old story of individualism fearing to trust its welfare to the general body. That liberty ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... his sympathies were touched ... but that he could hardly be dissuaded from the fulfilment of his good intent. His Nationalism was like a cleansing fire; it consumed every impure thing that might penetrate his life. It was so potent that he did ridiculous things in asserting it.... It was typical of him that he should gaelicise his name, and equally typical of him that he should be undecided about the correct spelling of "John" in the ancient Irish tongue. He had called himself "Sean" Marsh, and then had called himself ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... sapphire, trimmed with silver-fox fur; and my head crowned with a mob-cap, concerning which I am in doubt, and should be nervously glad to have the boys here to enlighten me as to whether it is very becoming or rather ridiculous. The object of the mob-cap is to approximate my age to Roger's, and to assure all such as the velvet and fur leave in doubt, that I am entitled to take my stand among the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... part and member of the whole) so to co-operate with him, that whatsoever thou doest, shall turn to the furtherance of his own counsels, and resolutions. But be not thou for shame such a part of the whole, as that vile and ridiculous verse (which Chrysippus in a place doth mention) is a part of the comedy. XXXVIII. Doth either the sun take upon him to do that which belongs to the rain? or his son Aesculapius that, which unto the earth doth properly belong? How is it with every one of ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... loyal citizens, the delighted Duchess, swelling in sweeping feathers and almost obliterating the diminutive Princess, read aloud, in her German accent, gracious replies prepared beforehand by Sir John, who, bustling and ridiculous, seemed to be mingling the roles of major-domo and Prime Minister. Naturally the King fumed over his newspaper at Windsor. "That woman is a nuisance!" he exclaimed. Poor Queen Adelaide, amiable though disappointed, did her best to smooth things down, changed the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... his pedigree Cellini tells a ridiculous story about a certain Fiorino da Cellino, one of Julius Caesar's captains, who gave his name to Florence. For the arms of the Cellini family, see ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... The ridiculous and inadequate reply drew the girl still deeper into the discussion. She began to reason with him quite earnestly. She had always walked a great deal; she loved it. Walking was jolly fun. Everybody knew she was not as dependent upon being taken as the ordinary ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... surname of Desired to a prince, whom the nation had neither called nor expected, moved, that the title of Saviour should be decreed to Napoleon, who had come to save France from regal slavery. This ridiculous motion, smothered by ironical laughter, gave rise to a multitude of sarcasms and offensive reflections, which were reported to Napoleon, and which, without personally wounding him, for he had too high a sense of his glory, to think it affected by such clamours, injured him ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... to nibble at the fish, we might get some food from them," suggested Madden with American delight in the ridiculous. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... borders of Tyrone and Fermanagh. It was surrounded with wild and barren mountains, and was almost inaccessible by horsemen even in summer time, on account of great bogs, rocks, and precipices which environed it. The popular tradition concerning it is as ridiculous as is to be found in any legend of the Romish Martyrology. After continuing in great credit many years, it began to decline; and in the 13th of Henry the Seventh was demolished with great solemnity, on St Patrick's Day, by the Pope's express order. It, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... "Don't be ridiculous," retorted Betty, with an angry blush. "Of course, he had a right to stop me, and perhaps he did me a good turn by keeping me inside the clearing, though I cannot imagine why he hid behind the bushes. But he might have been polite. He made me angry. He ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... fitness and propriety of his character, in connection with that of Imogen. He is precisely the kind of man who would be most intolerable to such a woman. He is a fool,—so is Slender, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek: but the folly of Cloten is not only ridiculous, but hateful; it arises not so much from a want of understanding as a total want of heart; it is the perversion of sentiment, rather than the deficiency of intellect; he has occasional gleams of sense, but never a touch of feeling. Imogen describes herself not only as "sprighted with a fool," but ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... replacement centers throughout the United States, to adopt the expedient of mixing black and white inductees in the same units for messing, housing, and training. As the commander of Fort Jackson, South Carolina, put it, sorting out the rapidly arriving inductees was "ridiculous," and he proceeded to assign new men to units without regard to color. He did, however, divert black inductees from time to time "to hold the Negro population ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... he only get free of them altogether! But he could n't—his feet were large. He took a lesson from the foe and jumped—jumped this way and that way, and round about, while large drops of perspiration rolled off him. The small dogs displayed renewed and ridiculous ferocity, often mistaking Dad for the marsupial. At last Dad became exhausted—there was no spring left in him. Once he nearly went down. Twice he tripped. He staggered again—down he was going—down—down, down and down he fell! But at the same moment, and, as though they had dropped ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... in rhyme and song; but an old belief in the mysteriously disappearing bird gave an opportunity to children to await its return in the early summer, and then address to it all kinds of ridiculous questions. ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... revengeful, nor arrogant, nor malignant. He was kind and affectionate to his wife and children, and did his best to be obedient to the Duke of Lerma. Occasionally he liked to grant audiences, but there were few to request them. It was ridiculous and pathetic at the same time to see the poor king, as was very frequently the case, standing at a solemn green table till his little legs were tired, waiting to transact business with applicants who never came; while ushers, chamberlains, and valets were rushing up and down the corridors, bawling ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ignoble calumnies. This is how passion without reason passes through the furnaces of love and hatred, dragging after it all the artificial scaffolding of what man imagines to be his right based on logic, but which is in reality only a tissue of ridiculous contradictions, the automatic and inept product of his emotional state. Such contrasts are so frequent that we can easily recognize the expression of a psychological law, due to the mirages of the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... everything for you, or else going without... why she'd be working now, a happy, useful woman, bringing up two or three adopted children in a decent home she'd made for them with her own efforts... instead of making her loving heart ridiculous over a cat...." ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... have broken out and strangled somebody. But on every other point I—weakly enough—sacrificed my own feelings to those of Jansenius. I let him have his funeral, though I object to funerals and to the practice of sepulture. I consented to a monument, although there is, to me, no more bitterly ridiculous outcome of human vanity than the blocks raised to tell posterity that John Smith, or Jane Jackson, late of this parish, was born, lived, and died worth enough money to pay a mason to distinguish their bones ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... away her ruined, ridiculous headgear with her free arm. The other, in his, was giving more support to him, she felt, than ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... authorities, I can find no historical foundation. The fiercer Pompeians very nearly killed him for refusing to stay and command them; his life was in fact only saved by the intrepid moderation of Cato; and this is surely not a proof that they deemed his presence worthless. Once more, orators were not ridiculous in the eyes of antiquity. Cicero accepted, and, in a certain sense, served under the dictatorate of Caesar; though he afterwards rejoiced when it was overthrown, and the constitution, the idol of his political worship, was restored; just as we may suppose a French constitutionalist, not of stern ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... haunted by the footsteps of his murdered sweetheart, which even ascended the pulpit stairs behind him, and pattered furtively about him when he knelt to pray for pardon of his sin. He filled his mind with visionary terrors, but they seemed remote or even ridiculous to him, and he said to himself that they were the clever inventions of imaginative people. They were worked up. They were moulded into conventional stories. They pleased the magazines of their time. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... bit, Burger," said Kennedy; "this is really a ridiculous caprice of yours to wish to know about an old love-affair which has burned out months ago. You know we look upon a man who kisses and tells as the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... objected to would be over in a few days. His opinion was that de Baville might stifle the expression of his dissatisfaction for a little, to bring about a great good. "More than that," added the marechal, "the impatience of the priests is most ridiculous. Besides your remonstrances, of which I hope I have now heard the last, I have received numberless letters full of such complaints that it would seem as if the prayers of the Camisards not only grated on the ears of the clergy but flayed them alive. I should like above everything to find out ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so widely from the traditions of his youth, still, this prevailing gloom was lightened, often at very unexpected moments, by flashes of delicious humour, sarcastic but not savage. No one excelled him in the art of making an opponent look ridiculous. Careless critics called him "cynical," but it was an abuse of words. Cynicism is shamelessness, and not a word ever fell from Lord Salisbury which was inconsistent with the highest ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... many people about who idolized Shakespear as American ladies idolize Paderewski, and who carried Bardolatry, even in the Bard's own time, to an extent that threatened to make his reasonable admirers ridiculous. ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... justly celebrated, struck by that fate which may reach us all; but that I cannot recognize a sovereign prince in a general of the Prussian army. After his conduct toward France he cannot expect me to exercise toward him a ridiculous ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... whenever she chose. She told herself grimly that if her aunt died she should be thankful that she had done this duty; yet when, after a journey of several hours, she knew that Dunport was the next station, her heart began to beat in a ridiculous manner. It was unlike any experience that had ever come to her, and she felt strangely unequal to the occasion. Long ago she had laughed at her early romances of her grand Dunport belongings, but the memory of them ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... exactly what he would have to say to Mr. Guiseley, and what Mr. Guiseley would have to say to him. He thought, if the young man were really going down for good, as he had understood this morning, it was only his plain duty to say a few tactful words about responsibility and steadiness. That ridiculous auction would ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... on her that there was actually an official intention to keep her out of France. This stupefied her for a time. One day it came over her that she was herself suspect. This seemed ridiculous beyond words in view of her abhorrence of the German cause in large and in detail. Ransacking her soul for an explanation, she ran upon the idea that it was because of her association ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... your wide-skirted coats and buckled shoes'—this was a sly dig at my worthy uncle, the Captain, sir. 'Ha!' cries he, flapping his empty sleeve at me again, 'and nice figure-heads you made of yourselves with your ridiculous stocks and skin-tight breeches,' and indeed," said his Lordship, stooping to catch a side-view of his imprisoned legs, "they are a most excellent fit, I ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... him any other than "bon enfant." Nevertheless, for some time the popularity of Lafare, established as it was by agreeable antecedents, was fast lowering among the ladies of the court and the girls of the opera. There was a report current that he was going to be so ridiculous as to become a well-behaved man. It is true that some people, in order to preserve his reputation for him, whispered that this apparent conversion had no other cause than the jealousy of Mademoiselle de Conti, daughter of the duchess, and ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... includes lovely lakes, magnificent mountains, pleasant flower gardens, decidedly superior to anything in the physical world; though on the other hand it also contains much which to the trained clairvoyant (who has learned to see things as they are) appears ridiculous—as, for example, the endeavours of the unlearned to make a thought-form of some of the curious symbolic descriptions contained in their various scriptures. An ignorant peasant's thought-image of a beast full of eyes within, or of a sea of glass mingled with fire, is naturally often ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... wanted, Jon, to convince them, don't you see? If we're just as bad when you come back they'll stop being ridiculous about it. Only, I'm sorry it's not Spain; there's a girl in a Goya picture at Madrid who's like me, Father says. Only she isn't—we've got a copy ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... once, at one glance, and not by a process of reasoning, at least to a certain degree. And thus it is rare that mathematicians are intuitive, and that men of intuition are mathematicians, because mathematicians wish to treat matters of intuition mathematically, and make themselves ridiculous, wishing to begin with definitions and then with axioms, which is not the way to proceed in this kind of reasoning. Not that the mind does not do so, but it does it tacitly, naturally, and without technical rules; for the expression of it is ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... sitting-room and debated the matter. It was a sense of diffidence, the fear of making herself ridiculous, which arrested her. Otherwise she might have flown into the room, declaimed her preposterous theories and leave these clever men to work out the details. She opened the door and with the ticket clenched in her hand stepped ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... have given the matter another moment's consideration, and I should be much better pleased if the king had not done so, either, instead of telling the colonel about it, and the colonel speaking to the officers, and such a ridiculous fuss ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... A still more ridiculous incoherency of the same sort is displayed in the logical department of Huxley's Physical Basis of Life; where, after trying to persuade us to put our feet on the ladder which leads in the reverse direction from Jacob's, and to descend with him into ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... yourself ridiculous, Mr. Caudle; I can't say a word to you like any other wife, but you must threaten to get up. DO ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... perfectly, and was aware that the absence of a mercenary spirit on her part made his suit appear almost ridiculous. If her clear young eyes would not see him through a golden halo, but only as a man and a possible mate, what could he be to her? Even gold-fed egotism could not blind him to the truth that she was looking at HIM, and that the thought of bartering herself for ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... effect. He discovers that Lespel is a Torified Whig; but that does not make him a bit more alert. It's to say smart things. He speaks, but won't act, as if he were among enemies. He's getting too fond of his bow-wow. Here he is, and he knows the den, and he chooses to act the innocent. You see how ridiculous? That trick of the ingenu, or peculiarly heavenly messenger, who pretends that he ought never to have any harm done to him, though he carries the lighted match, is the way of young Radicals. Otherwise Beauchamp would be a dear ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... after three hours of laborious investigation, after having undergone the infliction of all the gossip of the country, after receiving evidence the most contradictory, and listened to commentaries the most ridiculous, the following is what appeared the most ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... now gleaned an inkling of the truth. And it was so utterly ridiculous that he felt as though he must soon burst into ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... known is of the essence of knowledge, and that reverence and devotion—to go no further—are of the essence of a right attitude towards God, the idea of holding a formal examination in religious knowledge seems scarcely less ridiculous than the idea of holding a formal examination in unselfishness or brotherly love. The phrase "to examine in religious knowledge" has no meaning for me. The verb is out of all relation to its indirect object. What the Diocesan Inspector attempts to do cannot possibly be done. The ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes |
