"Ridiculous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interrupted eagerly, "we all went over the situation and we've made up our minds to a mode of action. You are such an impractical old chump, Rog! It's ridiculous for you to waste your time trying to make an engine out of a junk pile while the main idea of your invention, the real selling part, is neglected." He ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... to have arrived at some extreme height of feeling. There were two modes of descent open to him—a burst of rage or a surrender to the ridiculous. He chose wisely; and the empty hall ...
— Options • O. Henry
... project Mrs. Ormonde exhausted herself in eloquent if contradictory argument: but finding she made no impression, suddenly changed the subject. "That is a very expensive school you have chosen for the boys, Katherine. 'Duke thinks it ridiculous. Sixty pounds a year for such a little fellow as Cis! and now Charlie ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... father ten thousand dollars, or anybody else ten thousand dollars! Why, that is perfectly ridiculous. Who says he did?" ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Irish village— pigs, fowls, and children equally noisy and filthy, and the parents wild, ignorant, and impulsive—may have some notion of this kind of thing. You never get a true account, much less a true illustration of the real thing. Did you happen to see a ridiculous engraving on one of the S. P. Gr. sheets some years ago, supposed to be me taking two Ambrym boys to the boat? (Footnote: No such engraving can be found by the S. P. Gr. It was probably put forth in some other publication.) ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... replied the Doctor. 'Don't you know it's always somebody's birth-day? Did you never hear how many new performers enter on this - ha! ha! ha! - it's impossible to speak gravely of it - on this preposterous and ridiculous business called Life, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... masses. Whether the masses will think certain things wrong, cruel, base, unjust, and disgusting; whether they will think certain pleas and demands reasonable; whether they will regard certain projects as sensible, ridiculous, or fantastic, and will give attention to certain topics, depends on the convictions and feelings which at the time are dominant in the mores. No one can predict with confidence what the response will be to any stimulus which may be applied. The fact that ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... even from infidels; for, in this case, all reasoning became superfluous, when opposed to a plain fact, attested by three-and-twenty witnesses. To assert the doctrine of the fixed laws of nature, was ridiculous, when there were so many people of credit to prove that they might be unfixed. Years rolled on; the story ceased to engage attention, and it was forgotten, unless when occasionally ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... the room and speaking seriously to her brother.] Really, Morris, you are very rude. And it's quite ridiculous to be rude. This gentleman was only practising some tricks by himself in the garden. [With a certain dignity.] If there was any mistake, it was mine. Come, shake hands, or whatever men do when they apologize. Don't be silly. He won't turn ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... of old days to enclose their old bones from neighbourhood. In one, under a sort of shrine, we found a forlorn human effigy, very realistically executed down to the detail of his ribbed stockings, and holding in his hand a ticket with the date of his demise. He looked most pitiful and ridiculous, shut up by himself in his aristocratic precinct, like a bad old boy or an inferior forgotten deity under a new dispensation; the burdocks grew familiarly about his feet, the rain dripped all round him; and the world maintained the most entire indifference as to who he was or whither he had gone. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a meaning had, Sister Helen! It gave strange force to a weird ballad. But refrains have become a ridiculous 'fad', Little brother. And Mother Carey, mother, Has a bearing on nothing in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... in his day. It is ridiculous to compare him with Burr, which is often done by persons who should know better, because they have all the evidence upon which to predicate a conclusion. The occasion was open to both, equally, to discover to the world what abilities they possessed. They equally filled eminent ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... black, and in the other Mr. Platitude; "there they are; have a good look at them, while I go and get ready." The man in black and Mr. Platitude were walking up and down the yard, Mr. Platitude was doing his best to make himself appear ridiculous, talking very loudly in exceedingly bad Italian, evidently for the purpose of attracting the notice of the bystanders, in which he succeeded, all the stable-boys and hangers-on about the yard, attracted by his vociferation, grinning at his ridiculous ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... had said one night after their return. "It makes us ridiculous in the eyes of anybody but fools." And Jack had flared up about it, and declared that he knew what he could afford, and she had retorted that as for her she would not countenance it. And Jack had attempted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... three pistols, all of which he put in his belt, and finished this hostile array by adding a huge butcher-knife to the collection. He looked formidable enough to fight a whole army; but he intended only to make a prudent display of force. Mollie thought it was rather ridiculous for a small boy like him to load himself down with so many weapons, which could not avail him, if a conflict became necessary, against sixteen savages, full grown, and accustomed to fighting. But Noddy was general-in-chief of the forces, and she did not remonstrate any further than to ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... great man's censure of the ridiculous—particularly his attacks on the Proboscidae; but, alas! he has no reverence for the Marsupials, and laughs at our way of carrying our young in ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... hero looked more ridiculous than anyone could look by simply putting on a nightcap. He had armed himself with an old rusty knife that his father had used in ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... how ridiculous it is of you to be jealous of a horse? Have you ever heard of anyone else behaving ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Surely you realize how ridiculous the whole affair is. It is only slightly less nauseating than the plot used in the stories of advanced civilizations where the hero is conducted on a sight-seeing tour by the individual in whose path he popped upon entering this new world. I can't believe that more than a handful of my fellow ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... "I shall be ridiculous as the Alighieri, and you must forgive me, Mamie, if I say that one scarcely sees in you a reincarnation ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... missed being what I should have been; doing what I should have done—by a hair's breadth. I did pretty well in college, but thereafter, when things begin to count! Law? I never got over the humiliation of my first ridiculous failure. Business? I made a fortune in six weeks, lost it in a month, and was lucky to get out without having to mortgage a farm. Politics? Wharton won by a dozen votes. I just missed being what my brother is now—I ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... spinning around and around in the water, and banging about among the other furniture as if it had never been at sea before, and finally bringing up against the tea-table with a crash in the stupidest way imaginable, and knocking the tea-set and all the cups and saucers into the water. Dorothy felt very ridiculous as you may suppose, and, to add to her mortification, the Stork ferryman suddenly reappeared, and she could see him running along the roofs of the houses, and now and then stopping to stare down at her from the eaves as she sailed by, ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... full of happiness. His bosom's lord sat lightly on its throne. Natt's face was excruciatingly ridiculous, and Paul laughed at the sight of it. Then Natt laughed, and they both laughed together, each at, neither with, the other. "I don't know nothing, I don't. Oh, no!" chuckled Natt, inwardly. Once he ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... fear from Romanism? But a few days since a gentleman of learning and intelligence when speaking of this subject, exclaimed, "What have we to do with the Jesuits? and what is the Inquisition to us? The idea that we have aught to fear from Romanism, is simply ridiculous!" In reply to this, allow me to quote the language of the Rev. Manuel J. Gonsalves, leader of ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... often makes use of the Talmudic jargon peculiar to Rabbinical scholars, whom he has the skill to transfer to his canvas down to their slightest gestures and mannerisms. But he does not restrain his wit in showing up the ridiculous side of the moderns as well. His best-known novels, which have been translated into Russian and into German, are "Doctor Alfasi", "Mordecai Kisowitz", "The Beginning and the End of a Quarrel", etc. Brandstatter also wrote satires in verse. He has not a few points of resemblance to the painter of ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... advanced cautiously to examine the gate. It occurred to him that it must be fly-time in this region, and he did not wish to make himself ridiculous before all these strangers by trying to bolt through an invisible mesh like the one that had baffled him when he was a little chap. Yet there were no screens, and despair entered his soul. What bitter punishment these poor beasts must ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... outwitted by evil, which is in its turn outwitted by wisdom. There is nothing new in it except the charming exposition which Goldsmith's genius has given to the subject. Thackeray ridiculed "The Sorrows of Werther," and in the light of matured judgment the tale appears ridiculous; but it strikes home to the heart, because we all learn wisdom through such experiences, of which young Werther's is an extreme instance. It was only another example of the close relation that subsists between comedy ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Sunday, dressed up in Sunday clothes, trying to impress her. And he looked ridiculous. She clung to the ridiculous effect of his stiff, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... quadruped, and man eats the remaining one tenth; therefore, if we want to get clear of the possibility of a crop being overproduced, let us grow something the beast can eat. To say that we will never overproduce food crops for man is ridiculous. It is quite possible, for instance, that we may produce too many Persian walnuts for man's food, but the tree that will produce nuts to feed the beasts is on a firm basis. Pigs are going up and they are going to stay up. If we can get something that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... prevent a gossip from maligning a woman who loves? What measures can be taken to stop a public rumor? If they say that I ill-treat her, it is for me—to prove the contrary by my conduct with her, and not by violence. It would be as ridiculous to seek a quarrel with Mercanson as to leave the country on account of gossip. No, we must not leave the country; that would be a bad move; that would be to say to all the world that there is truth in its idle rumors, and to give excuse to the gossips. We must neither go ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sun ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... against Caroline for her repeated refusals suddenly subsided; his attachment revived with redoubled force. He protested that he loved her the better for having lost her fortune, and he reiterated this protestation more loudly, because his father declared it was absurd and ridiculous. The son persisted, till the father, though not subject to make violent resolutions, was wrought to such a pitch as to swear, that if Buckhurst should be fool enough to think seriously of a girl who was now a beggar, he would absolutely refuse his consent ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... patience, discrimination, and a certain amount of self-denial before we can discover the grains of solid gold in the dark mines of Eastern philosophy. It is far easier and far more amusing for shallow critics to point out what is absurd and ridiculous in the religion and philosophy of the ancient world than for the earnest student to discover truth and wisdom under strange disguises. Some progress, however, has been made, even during the short span of life that we can remember. The Sacred Books of the East are no longer ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... thunder-clap. They have, of course, at once cried out that, should it receive the sanction of Congress, it would still amount to nothing, because no legislature of a slave State will accept it; an argument as ridiculous as it is trivial. That the South would, for the present, treat the proposal with scorn, is likely enough. But the edge of the wedge has been introduced, and emancipation has been at least officially recognized as desirable. While such a possible means ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... possessed of few ideas, circumscribed in their mental faculties, stupid, brutal, and ferocious, conducting themselves nevertheless, in matters of importance to the community, by the general maxims of reason and justice; and their treaties are always founded upon good sense, conveyed in a very ridiculous manner. Their language is guttural, harsh, and polysyllabical; and their speech consists of hyperbolical metaphors and similies, which invest it with an air of dignity and heighten the expression. They manage their conferences by means of wampum, a kind of bead formed of a hard shell, either ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... June exclaimed vindictively, her anger for the moment getting the better of her sense of the ridiculous, "they 'dealt' in us! More than likely they played poker to decide how to divide us up—to see who should love you and which should love me! As if the heart of a woman can be made to run in a groove cut to order by the hand of any masculine—insect!" she finished, ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... that always seems wrathful, I came very near replying to him, "I salute you, sir," as to a man. I told my father afterwards, at home: "I don't understand it; Stardi has no natural talent, he has not fine manners, and his face is almost ridiculous; yet he suggests ideas to me." And my father answered, "It is because he has character." And I added, "During the hour that I spent with him he did not utter fifty words, he did not show me a single plaything, he did not laugh once; yet I liked to ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... person and office of the Laureate. "The Rehearsal" was acted in 1671. The hero, Mr. Bayes, imitated all the personal peculiarities of Dryden, used his cant phrases, burlesqued his style, and exposed, while pretending to defend, his ridiculous points, until the laugh of the town was fairly turned upon the "premier-poet of the realm." The wit was undoubtedly of the broadest, and the humor at the coffee-room level; but it was so much the more effective. Dryden affected to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... attainable on the subject, urge them on no account to compromize themselves without the security of an authentic wedding ring. They cite the example of George Eliot, who formed an illicit union with Lewes. They quote a saying attributed to Nietzsche, that a married philosopher is ridiculous, though the men of their choice are not philosophers. When they finally give up the idea of reforming our marriage institutions by private enterprise and personal righteousness, and consent to be led to the Registry or even to the altar, they insist on first arriving ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... clothes—fairly tall and slim, and apparently dark- haired, but stooping so much that he looked almost hump-backed: how different from Aunt Emma, with her womanly figure, and her upright gait, and her sweet old white head! Why, it was clearly ridiculous. ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... don't mean to say that you intend to go on with that ridiculous affair; when, if you marry at all, it ought to be one who will bring ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... absolute fool saying those things; they were ridiculous notions. Imagine a man thinking himself from one place to another! But—I had been on ...
— Pythias • Frederik Pohl
... she went on, "since I saw you lying between life and death in your bed at the inn. How can you talk of keeping the appointment, in your state of health? An appointment with a shadowy Something in your own imagination, which appears and disappears, and leaves substantial writing behind it! It's ridiculous, George; I wonder you ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... compendium, despite the fact that whenever Keane discovers intelligence in an African he immediately discovers that its possessor is no "Negro." The articles in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica are of some value, except the ridiculous article on the "Negro" by T.A. Joyce. Frobenius' newly published Voice of Africa is broad-minded and informing, and Brown's Story of Africa and its Explorers brings together much material in readable form. The compendiums by Keltie and White, and Johnston's ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... by circuitous styles of expression, seems indeed a born quality of the common people everywhere, evidenced by nick-names, and the inveterate determination of the masses to bestow sub-titles, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes very apt. Always among the soldiers during the secession war, one heard of "Little Mac" (Gen. McClellan), or of "Uncle Billy" (Gen. Sherman.) "The old man" was, of course, very common. Among the rank and file, both armies, it was very general ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... say, it was considerate, but this Ruth is very ungrateful. She was actually ridiculous enough to think they ought to have had a fortune, and I believe blames papa for the way things ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... off in the middle of the enormous sentence to say a most ridiculous and unnecessary thing. "Come in," he said, just as though there was some one knocking at the door. But no single head was turned. If there was an ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... man come out to do either, in a chariot and pair, you ridiculous old vampire?' said ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... ones swim about like the tadpoles of the water newt. Now, to suppose that these utterly useless gills were specially designed is to suppose design without any assignable purpose; for even the far-fetched assumption that a unity of ideal is the cause of organic affinities, becomes positively ridiculous when applied to the case of embryonic structures, which are destined to disappear before the animal is born. Who, for instance, would have the courage to affirm that the Deity had any such motive in providing, not only the unborn young of specially created salamanders, ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... has been indelicate enough to tell you about our family affairs. Of course you have sufficient discretion to disbelieve such ridiculous stories." ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... to make it pleasant, or even tolerable. This is slavery indeed, and where is the man, come from God, who will show us a remedy? I look at the free blacks of the North and South. I say again, this is Abolition! How worthless, how degraded they are, after they imbibe these ridiculous notions. When I behold the Southern country, and am convinced that it is impossible to manumit the slaves, I conclude that here, at least, they are in their natural condition. Heretofore, I feel ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... course you know. When that simple old priest proposed that ridiculous compact I agreed, but I knew quite well that it would soon break down. Not on my side, though. Why should it? A man can afford to wait. But I felt sure you would soon tire of your resistance. And you have, haven't you? Oh, I'm not blind. I've seen what's been going ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... "Yet, Oh! how ridiculous; how empty is all mere human philosophy! This same philosopher who speaks so eloquently again and again of the contempt of riches, was all his life immersed in them; and at his death left thousands behind him. Does it not seem to you ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Governments in the world in combination, let alone bankrupt Germany, could at the present time raise this amount of new money (that is to say, for other purposes than the funding or redemption of existing obligations) from investors in the world's Stock Exchanges is ridiculous. ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... see she is in a fury with you; and really it is too ridiculous. You told a fib; that is the mighty matter, I do believe. No, it isn't; for you have told her a hundred, no doubt, and she liked you all the better; but this time you have been naughty enough to be found out, and she is romantic, and thinks ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Crompton after dinner. His extreme obesity, though it deprived him of some advantages in the way of "reach," was, upon the whole, a benefit to him. His antagonists lost the sense of his superiority of skill in their enjoyment of the ridiculous and constrained postures in which he was compelled to place himself, and he was well content to see them laugh and lose. None but a first-rate player could have held his own among that company, whose intelligence had been directed to this particular pursuit for most of their natural ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Loo said. "But not pro-American either. I find much that is ridiculous in the propaganda of both the ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... reached the mocker himself and froze the gibes on his lips; for all at once the thought arose that this was a human creature to whom Nature had forbidden any expression of love or tenderness, since such expression could only be painful or ridiculous to the woman he loved. In the presence of such misfortune a Frenchman is silent; to him it seems the most cruel of all afflictions—to be unable ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... an immediate millennium, and of the return of his Master surrounded with divine splendour, judging mankind and adjusting the balance between good and evil. It was a baseless dream, and the enlightened may call it ridiculous. It is anything but that, it is the very opposite of that. Putting aside its temporary mode of expression, it is the hope and the prophecy of all noble hearts, a sign of their inability to concur in ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... common, is the love of finery and a mean and foolish ambition to appear better dressed than becomes their station, in hopes of imposing upon the world as persons of much higher rank than they really are. This inconsiderate, ridiculous pride brings along with it such a numerous train of bad consequences that of necessity it makes the person inflamed by it unhappy and often miserable for life. In the case now before us a was still more fatal by adding a violent ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... that he had told her a rather stupid fairy story. She was too old for such ridiculous things as ladies in their shining hair on a leopard. She remembered clearly seeing one of the latter at a zoological garden. It had yellow eyes, but no one would care to ride on it. Her mother, she was certain, knew more about love than any man. His words faded ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... name me. My name is Mr. O'Mahony." And Mr. O'Mahony was not a man who could be happy when he was quarrelling with all around him. He was soon worked into a violent passion, in which he made himself ridiculous, but when he had subsided, and the storm was past, he knew he had misbehaved, and was unhappy. And, as he was thoroughly honest, he could not be got to obey his leaders in everything. He wanted to abolish the ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... is a strikers' parade, sir. I heard that they were to organise a march-out to-night. It is rather a ridiculous thing." ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... get up!" she almost screamed, "this is ridiculous in the extreme; if you will not get up, I must really call for some one. I cannot allow you to ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Joan. "A baronetcy has become the distinction of the middle class; a physician, our physician for example, is a baronet; and I dare say some of our tradesmen; brewers, of people of that class. An attempt to elevate them into an order of nobility, however inferior, would partake in some degree of the ridiculous." ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... myrtle warblers, savanna sparrows, tree swallows, purple martins, a few meadow larks, and the ubiquitous turkey buzzard. The boat-tails abounded along the river banks, and, with their tameness and their ridiculous outcries, kept us amused whenever there was nothing else to absorb our attention. The prairie lands through which the river meanders proved to be surprisingly dry and passable (the water being unusually low, the boy said), with many cattle pastured upon ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... 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 ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... said in a faint voice so subdued and contrite as to be ridiculous, "Mickey-lovest, won't you please to rub hard! Rub ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... his own hands and hers was marked enough to be almost ridiculous. Hers were tiny, soft and white. His were large, brown and calloused. He thought to himself, "It is as if two little white mice were playing about an enormous trap which in a moment ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... have followed Luttrell's version of Temple's last words. It agrees in substance with Clarendon's, but has more of the abruptness natural on such an occasion. If anything could make so tragical an event ridiculous, it would be the lamentation of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ridiculous in the expression 'master of himself;' for the master is also the servant and the servant the master; and in all these modes of speaking the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... creature with something like reverence for the nobility which I now could read so plainly in every line of her face—the nobility which can attach itself only to decency of life and thought and action. In my brief interview with her in the twilight of the evening before I had heard only the ridiculous jargon of a woman without a palate, and I had seen only an old crone with a soot-smeared face. But now the maimed voice echoed in my ears like the sound of the little old melodeon with the broken strings—which ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the city. It was on a scaffolding in front of it that Barneveldt, the grand pensionary of Holland, was beheaded, in 1618, at the age of seventy-two. We also saw the gateway of the tower in which Cornelius De Witt was confined, in 1672, on the ridiculous charge of conspiracy against the Prince of Orange. The populace feared his acquittal, and they by a manoeuvre induced his brother John De Witt, the grand pensionary, to visit him in prison. They then broke in, dragged them forth, and tore them to pieces under the gateway. We went ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... been, though he had lived and wrought through ten thousand summers and winters. This is what Emerson means when he says, "Give me a book, health and a June day, and I will make the pomp of kings ridiculous." When the Athenian youth, beloved of the gods, went forth upon his journey, one friend brought him a wondrous armor, proof against arrows; another brought a horse of marvelous swiftness; another brought a bow of great size and strength. Thus armed, the youth ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... man, who was more quaintly attired than she in the very extreme of that style of dress. I thought to myself that in France, as in England, it is the provincials who carry fashion to such an excess as to become ridiculous. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... can't bear what's said about us any longer —and I don't wonder! He done his best, and so's we all. The public have just gone daft—in the West End, that is, to-day. As for the papers, well, they're something cruel—that's what they are. And the ridiculous ideas they print! You'd never believe the things they asks us ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... what a man's wits are, and why he has them, and therefore is able to invent and to improve, while even the cleverest ape has none, and therefore can invent and improve nothing, and therefore cannot better himself, but must remain from father to son, and father to son again, a stupid, pitiful, ridiculous ape, while men can go on civilising themselves, and growing richer and more comfortable, wiser and happier, year by year—how that comes to pass, I say, is to me a wonder and a prodigy and a miracle, stranger than all the most fantastic marvels you ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... lofty and god-like being; and so, from the earliest times, human vanity has been pleased to believe in our origin from gods or demi-gods. The Church, with that sophistic reversal of ideas of which it is a master, has succeeded in representing this ridiculous piece of vanity as "Christian humility"; and the very men who reject with horror the notion of an animal origin, and count themselves "children of God," love to prate of their "humble sense of servitude." In most of the sermons that have poured out from pulpit ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... ridiculous, Aunt Susan," said Ethel, "for you to keep growing so much younger and more ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... the gospels, has been considered in the 16th ch. of my work; and which may further appear from these circumstances, that Irenaeus considered the Book of Hermas an inspired Scripture as much as he did the four gospels, and that Tertullian contended stoutly for the inspiration of the ridiculous book of Enoch, one of the most stupid forgeries that ever was seen,) the quotations and supposed allusions in the earlier fathers are uncertain, since it is acknowledged by Dodwell, and also by others, that it cannot be shown with any certainty, ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... that had passed. Mrs. Lascelles agreed with Cecilia that they were in no danger of insult; and as they talked over the matter they at last began to laugh; there was a novelty in it, and there was something so ridiculous in all the gentlemen being turned into smugglers. Cecilia was glad that she could not tell her aunt, as she wished her to be so frightened as never to have her company on board the yacht again; and Mrs. Lascelles was too glad to annoy her for many and various insults received. The matter was ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... clear proof that his own eyes and ears had led him astray. Romanes, who had propounded the forgotten theory of physiological selection, charged Wallace with adopting it as his own. This was not only untrue, it was ridiculous; and Wallace, after telling him so and receiving no apology, dropped him out of his recognition. During Romanes' illness Mr. Thiselton-Dyer wrote to Wallace and sought to bring about ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... is in reality a discourse on the philosophy of life and human nature, more suggestive than many approved treatises expressly devoted to that subject'. Well, for the second half of this pronouncement—constat. 'You see, my friend,' writes Goldsmith's Citizen of the World ,'there is nothing so ridiculous that it has not at some time been said by some philosopher.' But for the first part, while a priori Mr. Ireland ought to be right—since Hazlitt, as we have seen, came to literary criticism by the road of philosophical ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the last final argument, that women do not themselves want the franchise, has in the light of recent events become ridiculous. On June 13, 15,000 suffragists paraded through the streets of London and it is said that the woman suffrage meeting of June 21 was the largest public meeting ever held for any cause. Fifty thousand women have just stormed Parliament.... No one now doubts that the women of England want ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... the queen is gone, and the message gone, and yet England standeth not a rush the better. Of which message I thus say, answering again to Gardiner, per inversionem Rhetoricam, that, as he sayeth, it was the greatest—so I say again, it was the lightest—legacy; the most ridiculous trifle, and most miserablest message, of all other that ever came, or ever shall come, to England, none excepted, for us to be reconciled to an outlandish priest, and to submit our necks under a foreign yoke. What have we to do more with him than with the great Calypha of Damascus? ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... followers that they can hypnotize to do their will. They instinctively set themselves off into classes, and while this is useful as a protection from invasion, conditions in India show the evils of class-caste distinctions carried to a ridiculous extreme. The vast, surging, unyielding predatory classes on this earth consist of those who have but lately—comparatively—emerged from the animal kingdom, and have not yet been put through the mill of reincarnation times enough to rid them ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... give me the ring, although I said it was ridiculous for a girl to be engaged without one. He always made some excuse, and only to-night—— But I have him safe now," she added, with a fierce abruptness, ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... British regiments, when not on duty, used to fling themselves into the arms of our venerable chair. Fancy one of them, a red nosed captain, in his scarlet uniform, playing with the hilt of his sword, and making a circle of his brother officers merry with ridiculous jokes at the expense of the poor Yankees. And perhaps he would call for a bottle of wine, or a steaming bowl of punch, and drink confusion to ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work nothing outre can be allow'd—but those ornaments can be allow'd that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary to the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... defence could be made for Shadrach, that there would be a probability of his getting off upon the proof, there were two or three persons standing about, and some one of them said there might be an interference on the part of the colored people. Mr. Sewall said that would be perfectly ridiculous, and I said so too. It was in that connection, I think, that I said there were but few persons outside. I had come from a meeting of the persons ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... performed the part of Tactus at Cambridge: and some who have written the life of that great man have fixed upon this speech as what first gave him ideas of sovereignty. The notion is too vague to be depended upon, and too ridiculous either to establish or refute. It may, however, not be unnecessary to mention that Cromwell was born in 1599, and the first edition of this play [was printed in 1607, and the play itself written much earlier]. If, therefore, the Protector ever did represent this character, it ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... very happy. For the electric engine which can be run by waterpower is a clean and companionable servant of mankind but the "heat-engine," the marvel of the eighteenth century, is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking that it be fed with coal which has to be dug out of mines at great inconvenience and risk to thousands ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... a whole history of strange events since the herb-gatherer, Matt Peke, had befriended him on the road,—and the most curious impression of all was that he had somehow lost his own identity for ever. It was impossible and ridiculous to think of himself as David Helmsley, the millionaire,—there was, there could be no such person! David Helmsley,—the real David Helmsley,—was very old, very tired, very poor,—there was nothing left for him in this world save death. He had no children, no friends,—no one who cared for ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Westminster? We who write, if we want the talent, yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urged in their defence, who, not having the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere wantonness take pains to make themselves ridiculous? Horace was certainly in the right, where he said, "That no man is satisfied with his own condition." A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented, because the poets will not admit them of their number. Thus the case ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... dodged her and went right through the molasses on the floor. All her four paws were covered. Wherever she stepped she left an imprint. And when the excited Ruth grabbed for her again, she capped her ridiculous performance by leaping right into ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... fall backwards in a divarication posture, to intimate thereby unto us the reality of their consent to the supposed motion of our tacit demands. Or if they should chance to make any countersigns responsory to our propositions, they would prove so foolish, impertinent, and ridiculous, that by them ourselves should easily judge their thoughts to have no excursion beyond the duffling academy. You know very well how at Brignoles, when the religious nun, Sister Fatbum, was made big with child by the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and it is only a steppe (a thousand miles wide) between Tomsk and Tumen. Travelers from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg consider their journey pretty nearly accomplished on getting thus far along. The Siberians make light of distances that would frighten many ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... indiscretion were ingrained, had gossiped to this lady, what then? Why should he be frowned on by Miss Lawrence, or anybody else? That malicious talk at Simla had soon exhausted itself. His present appointment was a triumphant answer to it all. His slanderers—including Aileen's ridiculous guardians—could only look foolish if they pursued the matter any further. What "trap" was there—what mesalliance? A successful soldier was good enough for anybody. Look at the first ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the head of the two-car train that was waiting at the junction, and, in a little while, after the passengers for Crawford, the terminal station of the road, were all aboard, they pulled out with a great snorting and roaring that amused the girls immensely. But, ridiculous as they looked, the little engines were up to their work, and they took the sharp, steady climb ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... reign appeals poured in from the Pope against his various enemies, from some barons of Apulia against the great Roger of Sicily, from the citizens of Lodi against the tyranny of Milan. These, together with the ridiculous proffer of the imperial crown from the lately formed Republic of Rome, seemed to open an opportunity for the successful recovery of imperial rights. And, much as the Italians resented the spasmodic ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... the presence of his congregation; and even that other fiery orator, Patrick The Great, might have lost his balance had his new peach-colored coat split up the back, when he was hurling death and destruction upon tyrants and pleading for liberty or death. To be ridiculous with equanimity is ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... to be put off. "Why, Joe Mauser, you've acquired a theme song, or whatever you call it. I didn't know you were that well known amount the nit-wits who follow the fracases. Why next they'll be forming those ridiculous buff-clubs." Her laughter tinkled. ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... ships, and the Dutch as many; and that Smith is to command them, who is allowed to have the better of Holmes in the late dispute, and is in good esteem in the Parliament, above the other. Thence home, and there, in favour to my eyes, stayed at home, reading the ridiculous History of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife, which shews her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... remain in that felicitous condition until he chose to awake. His order to be "called" in the morning had reference merely to hot water; for at the time of which we write men were still addicted to the ridiculous practice of shaving—a practice which, as every one knows, is now confined chiefly to very old men—who naturally find it difficult to give up the bad habit of a lifetime—and to little boys, who ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... hard-hearted worldliness. Then the highest and holiest part of our nature has a bashfulness of its own. It is a heavenly stranger, and easily shamed. A nimble-tongued, skilful woman can so easily show the ridiculous side of what seemed heroism; and what is called common-sense, so generally, is only some neatly put phase of selfishness. Poor John needed the angel at his elbow, to give him the caution which he is represented as giving to ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is as elaborately be-metaphored as an island of the Hebrides, with a wilderness of red-deer, Celts, ptarmigan, and other wild animals upon it. Now, this is out of all rule. An elephant's trunk can raise a pin as well as uproot an oak, but it would be ridiculous to employ the same effort for one as for the other. Robins—with reverence to so great a name, be it spoken—does not attend to this. He has yet to acquire the light and graceful touch of the finished artist." Thereupon Bon Gaultier proceeds to illustrate his views by the following, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... relate the most amazing of adventures. Our train, for instance, had been held up in the night by a band of robbers in black masks, and rescued by a traveller who bore a striking resemblance to my Cousin Robert Breck. He had shot two of the robbers. These fabrications, once started, flowed from me with ridiculous ease. I experienced an unwonted exhilaration, exaltation; I began to believe that they had actually occurred. In vain the astute Julia asserted that there were no train robbers in the east. What had my father done? Well, he had been very brave, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for him was that no one could laugh more at the whole thing than he himself. No one could find it more ridiculous. His mother's ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... hand in keeping the left hand ignorant of its doings. This has happened through the general decay of snobbishness among us, perhaps. It is certain that there is no longer the passion for a knowledge of the rich, and the smart, which made us ridiculous to Mr. Homos. Ten or twelve years ago, our newspapers abounded in intelligence of the coming and going of social leaders, of their dinners and lunches and teas, of their receptions and balls, and the guests who were bidden to them. But this sort ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... a particular pleasure in quickly giving the lie to the inspired prophet, so we have the affair of Charleston, and some other small disasters. Oh, why has Congress forgotten to pass a law forbidding Seward, for decency's sake, to make himself ridiculous? Among others, hear the following query: Whether this unconquerable and irresistible nation shall suddenly perish through imbecility? etc. O Mr. Seward! how can you thus pointedly and mercilessly criticise your own deeds and ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... influence, they could not have done better. The chronic jealousy and distrust of the time were deepened. And all this was aggravated by what went on in private. A system of espionage, whisperings, backbitings, and miserable tittle-tattle, sometimes of the most slanderous or the most ridiculous kind, was set going all over Oxford. Never in Oxford, before or since, were busybodies more truculent or more unscrupulous. Difficulties arose between Heads of Colleges and their tutors. Candidates for fellowships were closely examined as to their opinions ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... is ridiculous, anyway, and I don't know why I ever agreed to it. Scientific? Nonsense. Where are our controls? For it to make any sense we'd have to work with scores of subjects. Suppose we do agree that the manner in which Don Crowley has reacted is quite harmless. Does that mean ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... lady, and looked at each other in dismay. To Mr. Fogo the tableau might have borne a ridiculous likeness to that scene in Cymbeline where Guiderius and Arviragus stoop over the unconscious Imogen. But Mr. Fogo, as he stood neck-high in water, was far beyond drawing any such comparison; and Peter, instead of adjuring Miss Limpenny to fear no more the heat o' the sun, accinged ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the work, calls on Whittier, death of Luc. Mott, persuades Mrs. Stn. to vote, 525; suggests Natl. Con. be omitted, owns Mrs. Stn. persuaded her, 526; trib. to Luc. Mott, day at her home, her hosts in Philadelphia, ridiculous account of Skye terrier, 527; N. Y. Graphic on terrier, her disgust, 528; love for Mrs. Nichols, wd. not spare parents for children's sake, 529; did not carry out theory, pushing the history, bound to have Rose and Nichol's pictures, 530; valuable work done by Hist. Wom. Suff., ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper |
