"Ludicrously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Durward was in reality a woman of over forty, mother of a grown-up son who, according to all the usages of custom, should be settling down into the drab and placid backwater of middle age, but she realized that the description went ludicrously wide of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... confused,—some of them ludicrously so. Here, as always and everywhere, diplomacy, by its essence, is virtually statu quo; if not altogether retrograde, is conservative, and often ultra conservative. It is rare to witness diplomacy ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... which the island is said to have been peopled in ancient times. However, Miss Edgeworth's Irish postilion and “Knockecroghery,” could scarcely have afforded us more amusement than our Sarde driver and his horse, whose good qualities he ludicrously vaunted, alternately cursing and glorifying, thumping and coaxing, the vicious beast, while we heaved at the wheels. Our united efforts at length succeeded in extricating the vehicle from the sandy hollow; ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... from the plate a little, and again bat and ball met squarely, an inshoot being sent humming over the head of Cooper, who made a ludicrously ineffective jump for it, the ball passing at least ten feet above his outstretched hand. But Piper, leaping forward and speeding up surprisingly, made a forward lunge at the last moment, and performed a shoestring catch ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... magistrates in London and the great cities of the provinces in vain endeavoured to prevent or moderate. Cardinal Wiseman and the Pope were carried about the streets in effigy, and the figures by which they were ludicrously caricatured, were burnt amidst the acclamations of vast crowds, not always confined to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Apart from crosses in an infinite variety of forms, and to which reference will presently be made, by far the most popular form of religious devices consisted of what may, for convenience sake, be termed angelic. Pictorially they are nearly always failures, and often ludicrously so. The same indeed might be said of the work of most artists who have essayed the impossible in this direction. An extraordinary solemnity of countenance, apainful sameness and extreme ugliness, are the three dominant features ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... season advances and other herbage more palatable is to be met with, it is left with its beautiful blue flowers and broad foliage to rob the soil and adorn our fields, to the regret of the farmer. It grows wild in great abundance in Battersea fields, where my late friend Mr. Curtis used ludicrously to say that bad husbandry was exhibited to perfection. This plant is there continually seen in the greatest abundance, where the ground has not been lately disturbed, even under the noses of all the ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... travelled onwards from Montrose, we had the Grampion hills in our view, and some good land around us, but void of trees and hedges. Dr. Johnson has said ludicrously, in his Journey, that the hedges were of stone[228]; for, instead of the verdant thorn to refresh the eye, we found the bare wall or dike intersecting the prospect. He observed, that it was wonderful to see a country so divested, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... approved manuals of geography the Don figures as one of the principal European rivers, and its length and breadth give it a right to be considered as such; but its depth in many parts is ludicrously out of proportion to its length and breadth. I remember one day seeing the captain of a large, flat-bottomed steamer slacken speed, to avoid running down a man on horseback who was attempting to cross his bows in the middle of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... preceding year had surpassed all expectation. The two millions which he had undertaken to find had been raised with a rapidity which seemed magical. Yet for bringing the riches of the City, in an unprecedented flood, to overflow the Exchequer he was reviled as if his scheme had failed more ludicrously than the Tory Land Bank. Emboldened by his unpopularity, the Old East India Company presented a petition praying that the General Society Act, which his influence and eloquence had induced the late Parliament to pass, might be extensively ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the momentary manifestation of dumb horror which she had seen in her husband's face, than to the cheerfulness which followed it, and which was now gradually developing into jubilant hilarity. The Rabbi cocked his cap comically, first on one ear, then on the other, pulled and twisted his beard ludicrously, and sang the Agade texts as if they were tavern-songs; and in the enumeration of the Egyptian plagues, where it is usual to dip the forefinger in the full wine-cup and flip off the drops that adhere, he sprinkled the young girls ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... seized hold of an outlying sack and tried to lift it, a ludicrously impossible feat, at witnessing which a cripple leaner than his crutches laughed boisterously, saying, "Och, good luck to you, granny. You're makin' a great offer at it entirely. Is it often you do be liftin' up the Hill of Howth? More power to your elbow." ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... of his breeches-pocket and stuck it in his back hair for a scratch, giving his hat a tilt over his nose, his one method of invoking wisdom. He stared at the ground with a ludicrously puzzled look, and presently looked up and met East's eyes. That young gentleman slapped him on the back, and then put his arm round his shoulder, as they strolled through the quadrangle together. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... an octagonal cupola superimposed over a central structure, which looks to this day as though it were originally intended as one of a battery of three uniform spires. The general plan of this facade is the masterpiece of design of the building, and, except for the ludicrously diminutive clock-face, could withstand nobly the cavil of the most exacting pedant who ever read or studied architectural forms, solely out of books. In the immediate foreground falls the before mentioned street of steps. Many old tumble-down houses ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... stirring in the bed beside her, the movement of some living thing. She looked and there, squeezed into the edge of the pillow was a miniature head of a little old man—wrinkled, copperish. Yet the face was fat—ludicrously fat. A painfully homely face with tears running from the closed eyes, with an open ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... the still luminous sky that it seemed even nearer. A human figure, but so disheveled, so fantastic, and yet so mean and puerile in its extravagance, that it seemed the outcome of a childish dream. It was a mounted figure, but so ludicrously disproportionate to the pony it bestrode, whose slim legs were stiffly buried in the dust in a breathless halt, that it might have been a straggler from some vulgar wandering circus. A tall hat, crownless and rimless, a castaway of civilization, surmounted by a turkey's feather, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... less remote eras, were produced in great variety and in copious abundance. The presence in blazon of animated beings of whatsoever kinds, whether real or fabulous, led to rambling disquisitions in the most ludicrously unnatural of imaginary Natural History. From every variety also of inanimate figure and device, the simplest no less than the more elaborate, after the same fashion some "moral" was sought to be extracted. The technical language, too, of the early Heralds, had its expressive ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... cent of "pagans, I regret to say" the alternative of death or Christianity but for a vague impression that these lost ones are all being converted gradually by the missionaries. But no statesman can entertain such ludicrously parochial delusions. No English king or French president can possibly govern on the assumption that the theology of Peter and Paul, Luther and Calvin, has any objective validity, or that the Christ is more than the Buddha, or Jehovah more than Krishna, or Jesus more or less human than ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... to help unroll as if from a mummy, the multitudinous bandages of fine paper; the passive bronze visage of the idol was revealed, and by degrees, the seated figure, ludicrously prone. They moved the temple to the end of the room, where two pictures were taken down and a sofa pushed away to make room for it; the Bouddha was hoisted, with difficulty, on to its lotus, and there, dark on its glimmering background of gold, it ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and wrought like filigree work to the last point of conscious and perfected art. He was not a great thinker; the thoughts which he embodies in his philosophical poems—the Essay on Man and the rest, are almost ludicrously out of proportion to the solemnity of the titles which introduce them, nor does he except very rarely get beyond the conceptions common to the average man when he attempts introspection or meditates on his own destiny. The reader in search of philosophy will find little ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... that, as I possessed neither oars nor other means of propulsion, it would be difficult to move the boat from its mooring if chance or acuteness of scent should lead the creature to my place of concealment. In short, this, with various suggestions of fancy, some of them ludicrously exaggerated, speedily made me apprehensive of imminent danger. Nor was my suspicion unfounded, for a crisis was ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at last, letting into the room a flood of light, and with the light three men who entered with levelled arms. The foremost, an officer girt with a huge tricolour scarf, stopped abruptly, his jaw dropping ludicrously as his eyes fell on the placid group before him. "Citizen Achille Mirande?" he said interrogatively. "Yes? I am empowered to arrest you in the name of the Committee of Safety; you, your daughter also present I think—and a guest. This I presume ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... meanings, and the phrase is oftentimes ludicrously mistaken by many individuals. A friend with whom we once travelled thought he was roughing it daily for the space of three weeks, because he was obliged to lunch on cold chicken and un-iced Champagne, and when it rained he was forced to seek ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... shot up to the roots of Greg's hair, suffusing his face. But Mr. Brayton had already turned to another candidate whom he found in a ludicrously bad position. After some minutes of this attempt to instruct the candidates in the seemingly simple matter of standing correctly, Brayton gave the ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... around in his chair so that he might better stare at this new foe in the field. His little red mouth was open ludicrously. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... civilized comfort, of which the proudest palaces in the Eternal City cannot boast. The stairs are very steep, however, and I should not wonder if some of us broke our noses down them. Narrowness of space within doors strikes us all rather ludicrously, yet not unpleasantly, after being accustomed to the wastes and deserts of the Montanto Villa. It is well thus to be put in training for the over-snugness of our cottage in Concord. Our windows here look out on a small and rather quiet piazza, with an immense palace on the left hand, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... expression stern and quiet, and very solemn, the attitudes and draperies always majestic in the single figures, and in those of the groups which are not in violent action; [Footnote: All the effects of Byzantine art to represent violent action are inadequate, most of them ludicrously so, even when the sculptural art is in other respects far advanced. The early Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement, but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... ludicrously operated in the usually elegant costume of two young English officers,—for such they were,—might have been expected to afford scope to the pleasantry of their companions, and to call forth those sallies which the intimacy of friendship and ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... least. I enjoy it excessively. Besides, the shower is just over.—What church is that, Monsieur, with the very disproportionate steeple?" inquired Miselle, pointing to a square gray box, surmounted by a ludicrously short and obtuse spire, expressive of a certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... glad to find it no worse that he wasted a moment in embracing the dog, whose delirious joy at the prospect of this probably dinnerless and supperless expedition was ludicrously exaggerated. Then he took up the rope and trundled the chariot gently down a side ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... objects of my veneration. I remembered that at Yale one of my class was wont to arouse shouts of laughter by his droll imitations of the prayers of the leading professors— imitations in which their gestures, intonations, and bits of rhetoric and oratory were most ludicrously caricatured. I remembered, too, how a college pastor, a man greatly revered, was really driven out of the university pulpit by a squib in a students' paper, and how several of his successors had finally retreated into professorships in the Divinity School; and I felt that leading men coming from ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... preparation of the present work. In a letter to Mr. Montague, in 1752, he tells him, that "his memoirs of last year are quite finished," but that he means to add some pages of notes, "that will not want anecdotes;" and in answer to Montague, who had ludicrously menaced him with a messenger from the Secretary's office, to seize his papers, he says, "I have buried the memoirs under the oak in my garden, where they are to be found a thousand years hence, and taken perhaps for a Runic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... argument he draws upon the vast wealth of Swedenborg, and herein, as we conceive, he has done a rare service to our literature. Both the popular and ecclesiastical conception of Swedenborg would be ludicrously, if they were not shamefully inadequate. He has been known but little, except as a ghost-seer, or as a Samson grinding painfully in sectarian mills. Mr. James has done something like justice to his broad humanity, and his incomparably profound and exhaustive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... intricacies and contradictions of such a character! Horror at his father's end, and dread of a like fate for himself! Robert did not know very much of the squire, but he knew enough to feel sure that this confiding indulgent theory of Meyrick's was ludicrously far from the mark as an adequate explanation of Mr. Wendover's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He jerked at the reins, causing the horses to start and swerve. Was it possible that, as old Jackie Deeds said, God Almighty had His jokes too, jokes at the expense of His own creation? That in cynical abuse of human impotence, as a wanton pastime, He sent human beings forth into the world thus ludicrously defective? The thought was unformulated. It amounted hardly to a thought indeed,—was but a blind terror of insecurity, which, coursing through the boy's mind, filled him with agonised and angry pity towards all disgraced fellow-beings, all enslaved and captive beasts. Dimly he recognised ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of Mexico, and the West-Indies, where we should suppose it to be a very common and noxious weed, from the name there given it of Fico del inferno, or the Devil's Fig: it has long been introduced to this country; GERARD, who cultivated it with success, ludicrously attributes its nickname to a different source: "The golden Thistle of Peru, called in the West-Indies, Fique del inferno, a friend of mine brought it unto me from an iland there, called Saint Johns ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... half-dozen States; and that movement not only is not dead, but in many communities is gaining strength. What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listlessness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in due time the country ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... mock-heroic comedy of this period—the -Amphitruo- of Plautus—there breathes throughout a purer and more poetical atmosphere than in all the other remains of the contemporary stage. The good-natured gods treated with gentle irony, the noble forms from the heroic world, and the ludicrously cowardly slaves present the most wonderful mutual contrasts; and, after the comical course of the plot, the birth of the son of the gods amidst thunder and lightning forms an almost grand concluding effect But this task of turning the myths into irony was innocent and poetical, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the rickety washstand was familiar to her and she knew exactly how to dodge the waves in the mirror which distorted her reflection ludicrously. She was leaving behind her the shabby kid slippers in which she had danced so happily—was it centuries ago? And the pink frock hung limp and abandoned ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... beside him, went his wild and formidable companion, holding the end of it in his hand, and eyeing him from time to time with a look of stupid but determined ferocity. Skinadre's appearance and position were ludicrously and painfully helpless. His face was so pale and thin that it was difficult to see, even in those frightfuf times of sickness and famine, a countenance from which they were more significantly reflected. ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... vacant a proprietor receives innumerable applications for the vacant office, often from persons ludicrously ignorant of its duties. Thus, some time ago a seeker of such an office accompanied his application—he was a retired army officer—by a sketch of a sort of watch-tower whence he proposed to watch the tenantry, and fire upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... success with that helpless creature added amazingly, ludicrously, to that dangerous elation which, as I can now see, had been growing in me ever since the day Roebuck yielded so readily to my demands as to National Coal. The whole trouble with me was that up to that time I had won all my victories by the plainest kind of straightaway hard work. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... at a restaurateur's in the Rue St. Honore, near the Palais Royal, to take one of our daily rambles. On going out we saw approaching, in the direction of the market, a mob, which Bonaparte calculated at five or six thousand men. They were all in rags, ludicrously armed with weapons of every description, and were proceeding hastily towards the Tuilleries, vociferating all kinds of gross abuse. It was a collection of all that was most vile and abject in the purlieus of Paris. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... tap on the door was followed by the entrance of two men, both of whom, in general size, strength, and uncouthness, were ludicrously inconsistent with their diffident announcement. They proceeded in Indian file to the centre of the room, faced Mrs. Rightbody, acknowledged her deep courtesy by a strong shake of the hand, and, drawing two chairs opposite to her, sat ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... floor was a sea of torn and trampled papers and magazines, like an immense waste-paper basket. Burrows and his companion were almost up to the knees in them, as in a drift of dead leaves. And Greenwood had his leg stuck right through a sheet of the Pall Mall Gazette, which clung to it ludicrously, like some ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... essentially, almost ludicrously, modern about the creation of Norway's new king. Not that it is the first time a sovereign has been, so to speak, "custom-made." An eligible foreign prince is tendered a seat upon an ancient throne; the form is old, but the spirit, how new! Republican though she ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... Budapest newspaper, "Pesther Lloyd," a fine figure of a man, long-bearded and benevolent, like an ancient sage. He pondered. "I think we have one," he said. On the other hand, there are many German and Austrian papers on which there is only one Jew. And in any case the real meaning of the cry is ludicrously untrue. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... investigated, and the scheme of the Royal Flying Corps was prepared. Meantime the Air Battalion, in view of its probable speedy extinction, received very little support. The number of aeroplanes supplied to the flying camp at Larkhill was almost ludicrously small, and a large proportion of the time spent in training was devoted to ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... "modern ideas" all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost ALL human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed—a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! What they would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a family" of a dozen small boys and henceforth finds her life "crammed with human interest." The ludicrously funny and sometimes pathetic doings of the little, untamed feudists, moonshiners, and hero worshippers, form ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... combinations spoilt by English commanders who in this way have combined extreme offensiveness with conscious affability; and I have watched their allies—Spaniards and Portuguese of the first nobility—raging inwardly, while ludicrously impotent to discover a peg on which to hang ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... mean like the dream presented to my mind when under the influence of the night-mare. This is most ludicrously ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... them at this point, and Bill surlily remarked: "If you'd been alone, young feller, I'd 'a' give you a chase." His resentment of the outsider's growing favor with the girl was ludicrously evident. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... arrival of the Spaniards, he is filled with sad forebodings, which the amusements fail to dispel. In the second act, Hernando Cortez appears, with soldiers. While the costumes of the indians were gay, and more or less attractive, those of these European warriors were ludicrously mongrel and unbecoming. The new-comers demanded that Montezuma acknowledge the authority of the King of Spain and the cross of Christ. Conversations, demands, replies, tableaus, sword-dances, etc., ensued. Finally, Montezuma and his warriors yielded, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... ex-officer is said to be gravely compromised in the Insurrection, but the number of British subjects engaged in it appears to have been ludicrously exaggerated:—not 20 have had ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... of a year or perhaps more. She had readily picked up a good many French words, in the course of her sojourn; but her Gallic pronunciation was blended with all the other dialects, among which the brogue of her own mother tongue ludicrously enough predominated. ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... Wordsworth, he in middle life changed his political and other opinions. But in his dealings with Lord Byron, Southey had "eaten of the insane root." He attacked a man of incomparably superior powers, for whom his utter want of humour—save in its comparatively childish forms—made him a ludicrously unequal match, and paid the penalty in being gibbeted in satires that will endure with the language. The strife, which seems to have begun on Byron's leaving England, rose to its height when his lordship, in the humorous observations ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... grave in spite of the fact that the squirrel, the long-tailed monkey, the parrot, and the bullfinch took great pains to distract him and lead him into the right path. The goose would tell fairy-tales, and in the midst of them the brook would tinkle a ballad; a great heavy stone would caper about ludicrously; the rose stealing up affectionately behind him would creep through his locks, and the ivy stroke his careworn forehead. But his melancholy and his gravity were obstinate. His parents were greatly grieved; they did not know what ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... minute—one long, sickening minute—to grasp the full meaning of it all. He stared at the massive figure before him, his mouth ludicrously open, his eyes round, his breath for the moment suspended. Then, in a ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... dress, from natural impatience, thinking nothing of their "dignity." When Astolfo blows the magic horn which drives every body out of the castle of Atlantes, "not a mouse" stays behind;—not, as Hoole and such critics think, because the poet is here writing ludicrously, but because he uses the same image seriously, to give an idea of desolation, as Shakspeare in Hamlet does to give that of silence, when "not a mouse is stirring." Instead of being mere comic writing, such incidents are in the highest epic taste of the meeting of extremes,—of the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... ploughed alongside of his; deep in the bows and yawing their sterns ludicrously. They carried a gun apiece, and the artillerymen had laded them too far forward. To the 46th they were a sufficiently good joke to last for miles. "Look at them up-tailed ducks a-searching for worms! Guns? Who wants guns on this trip? Take 'em home before they sink and the General loses his ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as he looked into Diane's face, it seemed to him that here at last was one as honest as air and as straightforward as light. But no experienced woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower. She must either avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing it. It took him a few minutes to perceive that Diane had chosen the latter course, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... thread of silk with the point of a needle till it becomes floss. (A.S. slefan, to cleavedivide.) This, I think, explains the 'sleeveless errand' in 'Troilus and Cressida' so inadequately, sometimes so ludicrously darkened by the commentators. Is not a 'sleeveless errand' one that cannot be ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... penny chroniclers of the market acquire an infelicitous adroitness in the phraseology of deceit. And yet nowhere on earth is ignorance so carefully counseled and so almost ludicrously warned as in this place of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the Gospels. And I venture to say that any explanation professing to account for Him which leaves out His coming from an unseen world, and His possession of powers above this world of sense and nature, is ludicrously inadequate. Suppose you had a chain which for thousands of years had been winding on to a drum, and link after link had been rough iron, and all at once there comes one of pure gold, would it be reasonable to say that it had been dug from the same mine, and forged in the same fires, as its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... last, their shadows thrown far beyond them on the moist sand and mingling ludicrously as ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Gammon enjoyed anything more exquisitely than the scene which I have been describing. To a man of his practical sagacity in the affairs of life, and knowledge of human nature, nothing could appear more ludicrously contemptible than the conduct of poor Tag-rag. How differently are the minds of men constituted! How Gammon despised Tag-rag! And what opinion has the acute reader by this time ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... ludicrously in the air attracted the attention of Carl, who could not refrain from ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... coming thumping down on her board out of time — that an opera-dancer? Pooh! My dear Walter, the great difference between my time and yours, who will enter life some two or three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out of tune; the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody can like to look at them. And as for laughing at me for falling asleep, ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... his wife that was unnatural and offensive. Half the clinging-vine love with which women entwine their husbands is not love at all, but a nameless anxiety due to their sense of helplessness. Transpose the conditions of each and the same beseeching look so often seen in women's faces will be ludicrously mixed with the whiskers on the faces of their lords. The only ineradicable difference between men and women is gender. They are singularly alike in every other particular. Give a woman liberty, and she will go a man one better in license. Take a man's liberty ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... be glad to avail myself of your offer," he said, in a voice that for meekness was ludicrously at variance ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... fading; she was notoriously subject to that confusion of ideas, or, to say the least, of speech, to which age and garrulity are liable. The slight, the very slight, confusion apparent in these expressions is manifest, and is ludicrously easy of correction. 'Aye, aye,' quoth she, and it will be observed that no emendation whatever is necessary to be made in these two initiative remarks, 'Aye, aye! This lantern was carried by my forefather'—not ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Lamb and Coleridge (I think) thought that Second Part should not have been written; why then did I—not for contradiction's sake, I am sure—so much prefer it? Old Hallam, in his History of Literature, resolved me, I believe, by saying that Cervantes, who began by making his Hero ludicrously crazy, fell in love with him, and in the second part tamed and tempered him down to the grand Gentleman he is: scarce ever originating a Delusion, though acting his part in it as a true Knight when led into it by others. {108b} A good deal however might well be left out. If you have Jarvis' ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... to remark how the professions fare when they appear in these tales. The Church cannot be said to be treated with respect, for 'Father Lawrence' is ludicrously deceived and scurvily treated by the Master-Thief, No. xxxv; nor does the priest come off any better in Goosey Grizzel, No. xxxiii, where he is thrown by the Farmer into the wet moss. Indeed, it seems as if the popular mind ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... terms of subscription. It was proposed, for example, to substitute a profession of belief in the Bible for a subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles. But the House of Commons sensibly refused to expose itself by venturing upon any theological innovations. A body more ludicrously incompetent ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of the plainest description; in fact, ludicrously simple. A shabby box contained his precious Guarnerius fiddle, and served also as a portmanteau wherein to pack his jewelry, his linen, and sundry trifles. In addition to this he carried a small traveling-bag and a hat-box. Mr. Harris tolls us that Paganini was in eating ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... trying to spread a little substance over a vast surface,—in the desperate endeavor to make a little money go a very long way. Every few months we notice in a daily newspaper the offer of a money-prize for the best bill of fare for a company-dinner for six people, to be prepared upon a ludicrously-small allowance. The number of contestants for this prize proves, not only the general interest felt in the subject, but also testifies to the urgent need of the reward on the part of the various would-be winners. The probabilities are that few of these writers have ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... fingers, and my mood toppled ludicrously. Why had I been rejoicing? We were in the deuce of a mess! So far I had simply won a half hour's respite to be followed by the deluge; for if Blenheim had been ruthless before, what ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... a reflection ludicrously inappropriate to the occasion passes from guest to guest under the same safe wrapper. Here you have the pleased beatitude of Leonard Astier, who has this very morning received the order of Stanislas (second class), as a return for presenting to His Highness a copy of his speech with the autograph ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to me, therefore, that to call in the aid of a new and mysterious power to account for savages being able to do that which, under similar conditions, we could almost all of us perform, although perhaps less perfectly, is almost ludicrously unnecessary. ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... done very well. Yes, you have a very pretty way, and would have made a very decent, grave speaker;" and here she began to imitate Esmond's way of carrying himself, and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see there was some likeness in the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which I believe was 'born but to die[599].' Johnson was, I think, not very happy in the choice of his title, The Rambler, which certainly is not suited to a series of grave and moral discourses; which the Italians have literally, but ludicrously translated by Il Vagabondo[600]; and which has been lately assumed as the denomination of a vehicle of licentious tales, The Rambler's Magazine. He gave Sir Joshua Reynolds the following account of its getting this name: 'What must be done, Sir, will be done. When I was to begin ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... for keeping these discordant elements in check were ludicrously inefficient. The whole military establishment during the greater part of this century consisted of some 80 archers, and about 40 "spears;" the whole revenue amounted to a few hundred pounds per ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... apparition so unusual as foreign visitors, and we submitted to their curious but entirely respectful scrutiny, wishing that our aspect might give them half the satisfaction we had in watching their eager faces and noting their droll costumes. Ludicrously high stocks and "swallow-tail" coats of brown homespun made the dress of the men different from that of corresponding rustics in America. The chief peculiarity in the women's attire was a straw hat, of which the towering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... and the society of the beach was a little changed. In charge of the Catalina's house was an old Scotchman, Robert, who, like most of his countrymen, had some education, and, like many of them, was rather pragmatical, and had a ludicrously solemn conceit of himself. He employed his time in taking care of his pigs, chickens, turkeys, dogs, &c., and in smoking his long pipe. Everything was as neat as a pin in the house, and he was as regular in his hours as a chronometer, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... at this time, which forcibly and even ludicrously struck Madame Roland's mind, as she reflected upon the wonderful changes of life, and the peculiar position which she now occupied. Some French artists had been imprisoned by the pope at Rome. The Executive Council of France ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... every principal street And obscure alley and lane Of the intricate brain With brimming rivers of light and breezes sweet Of the primordial heat; Till, unto view of me and thee, Lost the intense life be, Or ludicrously display'd, by force Of distance; as a soaring eagle, or a horse On far-off hillside shewn, May seem a gust-driv'n rag or a dead stone. Nor by such bonds alone— But more I leave to say, Fitly revering the Wild Ass's bray, Also his hoof, Of which, go where ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... long time. I've watched your career, Langrishe. I know pretty well all about you. You'd never give me credit for half the cunning I've got." The General rubbed his hands softly together and tried to look Machiavellian, failing ludicrously in the attempt. "There's no man I would more willingly trust my girl to. Why, I went after you to Tilbury when you were going out—to find out what you meant. I'll tell you ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... value of money in Shakespeare's time and in our own. The money value of corn then and now is nearly identical; but other necessaries of life—meat, milk, eggs, wool, building materials, and the like—were by comparison ludicrously cheap in Shakespeare's day. If we strike the average between the low price of these commodities and the comparatively high price of corn, the average price of necessaries will be found to be in Shakespeare's day about an ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... cabin-boy's words passed from mouth to mouth; a little chuckle was heard here and there; the men's faces became more and more ludicrously uneasy, and their suppressed laughter was on the point of bursting forth. Then the steersman was seen to nudge ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... head of this family," said Martin, dropping his chin and looking ludicrously impressive. But as a matter of precaution he thought it best to leave the conflict to be fought out by Miss Bowyer. He feared that if he stayed he might find himself deposed from the only leadership that had ever fallen to his lot in life. So he executed a strategic ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... the temples, partly with anger, partly with the shock of mingled surprise and fear. He was guilty, and the guilt showed in his eyes and paralyzed his tongue, so that he sat there before Alice with his under jaw sagging ludicrously. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... took considerable persuasion to prevail upon them to withhold their hands. There was no such difficulty about restraining them in the laboratory. They were afraid to touch any apparatus, and they gave the invention a ludicrously wide berth. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Atlantic, may well look back with shame to the time—and it was no matter of days or weeks, but a period of about four years together—when the loudest and most accepted voices in England exulted over the now ludicrously delusive proposition that the United States were a burst bubble, and slavery the irremovable corner-stone of an empire. It may be a lesson to nations against the indulgence in rancor, the abnegation of the national conscience, and the dear delight of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... aureole is ready to be fitted on, some horrid graduate (Litterae inhumaniores) inks the statue. Anticipating something of the kind, Mr. Benson is careful to insist on the divergence between Rossetti and Pater, and on page eighty-six says something which is ludicrously untrue. If self-revelation can be traced in Gaston, it can be found elsewhere. There are sentences in Hippolytus Veiled, the Age of the Athletic Prizemen, and Apollo in Picardy, which not only explode Mr. Benson's ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... "Peccavi." On the very evening of our arrival at Glass Town the youth Kanga brought me a noble specimen of what he called a Nchigo Mpolo, sent by Forteune's bushmen; an old male with brown eyes and dark pupils. When placed in an arm-chair, he ludicrously suggested a pot-bellied and patriarchal negro considerably the worse for liquor. From crown to sole he measured 4 feet 10 3/4 inches, and from finger-tip to finger-tip 6 feet 1 inch. The girth of the head round ears and eyebrows was 1 foot 11 inches; of the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the failing of Goldsmith, in an eminent degree: that of believing he could do every thing better than any other person. This propensity exhibited itself ludicrously enough on one occasion, when a violent influenza prevailed in Dublin. A friend who happened to meet him, mentioned a particular acquaintance, and observed that he had had the influenza very bad. "Bad!" exclaimed the other, "I don't know how bad he has had it, but I am sure I have had it quite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... advice as best we could. Jacotot, who was attending to his little stove below when the squall struck us, popped up his head with his white nightcap on, and his countenance so ludicrously expressive of dismay that, in spite of the danger we were in, Trundle burst into a fit of laughter. The Frenchman had not time to get out before the vessel righted. He now emerged completely, and frantically seizing his cap, tore it off his head and threw it into the boiling ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... a rude old-fashioned table, upon which figured several black bottles and various ill-looking drinking vessels of every shape and material, sat Fred Power; on his right was placed the skipper, on his left the doctor,—the bronzed, merry-looking, weather-beaten features of the one contrasting ludicrously with the pale, ascetic, acute-looking expression of the other. Sparks, more than half-drunk, with the mark of a red-hot cigar upon his nether lip, was lower down; while Major Monsoon, to preserve the symmetry of the party, had protruded his head, surmounted by a huge red nightcap, from ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... ermine, which, together with the low square cap or coronet that he wore, gave him something of a regal appearance. A leash of hounds crouched at his feet. Before and below him the heralds and officers of the household arranged themselves, amongst whom Adam de Dutton was conspicuous by his ludicrously-solemn attitude and appearance. The whole scene had the aspect of a military tribunal, especially when Roger de Lacy (by which name we shall now distinguish him) ordered that silence should be proclaimed, and that the Dean of Whalley should ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... around. The man's head is tied up in a piece of white muslin, his eyes are closed, and his face and posture are expressive of the most intense misery. He turns the crank slowly, and the organ groans and moans in the most ludicrously mournful manner. At one side of the queer instrument sits a woman with a babe at her breast, on the other side sits a little boy, and a second boy squats on the ground in front. Not a sound is uttered by any of the group, who are arranged with genuine ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... at him curiously; turned and glanced along the line where, presently, I recognized his two familiars, Heinie Baum and Pick-em-up Joe Brady with whom he had started off to "Parus" on a month's summer junket, and with whom he had stumbled so ludicrously into the riff-raff ranks of the 3rd Foreign Legion. Doubtless the 1st and 2nd Legions couldn't stand him and his two friends, although in one company there ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... returned, fully dressed in clothes that were ludicrously large for him, the room had been straightened up, and his four friends were finishing their meal. He took his place among them quietly and lighted ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... said Toby, snuffing and winking ludicrously. "Why shouldn't a cullud pusson hab de right to be honest, well as white folks? If you's gwine to tank anybody, ye better jes' tink and tank yersef! Who gib ol' Toby his freedom, an' den 'pose to pay him wages? Reckon if 't hadn't been fur dat, massa, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... above all things may be said to exist by nature. And this can only be on the supposition that the soul is prior to the body. Shall we try to prove that it is so? 'By all means.' I fear that the greenness of our argument will ludicrously contrast with the ripeness of our ages. But as we must go into the water, and the stream is strong, I will first attempt to cross by myself, and if I arrive at the bank, you shall follow. Remembering that you are unaccustomed to such discussions, I will ask and answer the questions ...
— Laws • Plato
... prevalent superstition that the Greeks of the day of Perikles had a class of intelligent women known as hetairai, who were capable of being true companions and inspirers of men; but I shall show, in a later chapter, that the mentality of these women has been ludicrously exaggerated; they were coarse and obscene in their wit and conversation, and their morals were such that no man could have respected them, much less loved them with a pure affection; while the men whom they are supposed ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... take care of themselves. Those he dealt with were to him rather as enemies than friends—not enemies to be prayed for, but to be spoiled. Malcolm's doctrine of honesty in horse-dealing was to him ludicrously new. His notion of honesty in that kind was to cheat the buyer for his master if he could, proud to write in his book a large sum against the name of the animal. He would have scorned in his very soul the idea of making a farthing by it himself through any business quirk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... inextricable conflict, a great battleaxe stood out against the dusky foliage of an autumn tree; and a stag with his fore feet in the air, ramped in the foreground, looking over his shoulder. It was a ludicrously bad piece of work, picked up no doubt by some former Lieutenant who knew more of military than artistic matters, and had ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Also he was ludicrously tentative. If she'd wanted to let herself go she could have laughed rather hysterically about that. She disengaged herself from his hands, decisively, indeed, yet without any ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... is noteworthy, for Wordsworth's lyric range, especially so far as tune is concerned, was always narrow. His sense of melody was painfully dull, and some of his lighter effusions, as he would have called them, are almost ludicrously wanting in grace of movement. We cannot expect in a modern poet the thrush-like improvisation, the impulsively bewitching cadences, that charm us in our Elizabethan drama and whose last warble died with Herrick; but Shelley, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... (8s.); eighteen fowls, a rupee (2s.); a fish, weighing several pounds, an anna (1.5d.); eight eggs, an anna; twenty oranges, two annas (3d.); a pound of fine bread, three beis (ld.); and yet, in spite of these ludicrously cheap prices, the captain charged each passenger three rupees (6s.) a-day for his board, which was not even passable! Many of the passengers made purchases here of eggs, new bread, and oranges, and the captain was actually not ashamed to let these articles, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... trying to find some one answer in all that chaos of questions. It was impossible for him to take his eyes from the shoes. A thought seized him. Ludicrously he dropped upon his knees in front of the row and with a face growing hotter each moment examined them all. But he wanted to know. And the discovery he made was that most of the footwear had been worn, some of it so slightly, ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood |
