"Absurdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before 1254, it passes to Oxford, and remains there till the Grey Friar's Convent is dissolved by Henry VIII. Then there is a gap of a generation at most. Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, acquires it (believing it, absurdly enough, to have belonged to Archbishop Theodore in the seventh century), and bequeaths it to his college of Corpus ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... kind of huddled attitude, as if he was very cold. He had drawn his knees close to his chest, and held them in that position with thin, clasped fingers. His hair, which he wore rather long, was in a wild tangle, and his neat eye-glasses with their black cord looked absurdly out of keeping with his general dishevelment. The groom, never strong or robust, looked as if he had shrunk. The bride, too, looked as if she had shrunk, and I certainly felt as if I had. But, however strong the contrast between us three small humans and the vast stretches of empty ocean ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... be the matter," she observed, a little anxiously Gifford thought. Then she laughed. "I dare say it is nothing; Stent is becoming absurdly fussy; and all the alarms and discoveries we have had lately ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... cent.—'But, sir, medical history; the report to the Institute; the proven facts!'—I distrust the facts and the inferences. Temperament is the veto or limitation-power in the constitution, very justly applied to restrain an opposite excess in the constitution, but absurdly offered as a bar to original equity. When virtue is in presence, all subordinate powers sleep. On its own level, or in view of nature, temperament is final. I see not, if one be once caught in this trap of so-called sciences, any escape for the man from the links of ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... being likened to a Scottish divine, I made all kinds of inquiries—in vain. I abandoned hope of unearthing the top-hatted antiquarian and had indeed concluded him to be a myth, when a friend supplied me with what may be absurdly familiar to less bookish people: "The Nooks and By-ways of Italy." By Craufurd Tait Ramage, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... exemplified in the celebrated Ascension, in the Pieta de Tarchini, at Naples, by Luca Giordano, in which the body of Christ is so much foreshortened, that the toes appear to touch the knees, and the knees the chin. This art is one of the most difficult in painting, and though absurdly claimed as a modern invention, was well known to the ancients. Pliny speaks expressly of its having been practised by Parrhasius and Pausias. Many writers erroneously attribute the invention to Correggio; but ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... on his feet, but with his head in the clouds as though the whole town belonged to him. Brandy he did not touch. He had a better use for his energies, he said: he was full of great ideas of himself and would not content himself with ordinary things. And he was thoroughly capable—he was quite absurdly talented for a poor man. And at once he wanted to begin turning everything topsy-turvy. Just because he was begotten among the cliffs and crags by an old toil- worn stone-cutter, he behaved like a deity of the rocks; he brushed long-established experience aside, and introduced novel methods of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... positive and imperial declaration that the decrees, so far as regarded the United States, were absolutely revoked; for this recent assertion of Bassano, that they were still in force, put the United States in an attitude both towards France and England utterly and absurdly in the wrong. Barlow represented that, should the revocation be extended only to the United States, Great Britain would not for that alone repeal her orders. In that case France would lose nothing of the advantage ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... below at the house—a doll's house; at the toy corrals and tiny sheds and stables. Slim, walking down the hill, was a mere pigmy—a short, waddling insect. At least, to a girl unused to gazing from a height, each object seemed absurdly small. Flying U coulee stretched away to the west, with a silver ribbon drawn carelessly through it with many a twist and loop, fringed with a tender green of young leaves. Away and beyond stood the Bear Paws, hazily blue, with splotches of ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... Reformers. But how do they discover these footsteps, or how ascertain these attainments? Are they recorded in the Bible? No. Are they to be found elsewhere but in uninspired history? Certainly no where else. Yet all these parties absurdly reject uninspired history from their bonds of fellowship! and still venture to tell the world, they are holding fast these attainments!! This is solemn trifling, profane mockery. Second. This position is unsound and false in the light of reason. All civilized ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her to light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply. It was trembling absurdly. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Her head felt absurdly like one of those noddling manikins in the Hong-Kong curio-shops. Jiggle-joggle, jiggle-joggle...! For each pause she was grateful. Whenever Ah Cum (whose normal stride was sufficient to keep him at the side of her chair) pointed out something of interest, she had to strain the cords ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... he had set himself vigorously to the task of uprooting his cowardice. Realizing that his parish had always been lawless, it occurred to him that the office of sheriff would compel an exercise of whatever courage he had in him. It had been absurdly easy to win the election, but afterward—the memory of the bitter fight which followed often made him cringe. Strangely enough, his theory had not worked out. He found that his cowardice was not a sick spot which could be cauterized or cut out, but rather that it was ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... pocket-handkerchief must be in one of my pockets: and if you do not find it, or if you have touched it—" He reflected for a moment. To make a state matter of the loss of the handkerchief, would be to act too absurdly, and he therefore added, "There was a letter of some importance inside the handkerchief which had somehow got among the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... cheap restaurants, places where one may obtain a full course dinner, of sorts, and a small bottle of alleged claret included, for an absurdly small sum; but a carton of biscuits, a tin of sardines and a can of condensed milk are usually in evidence on the littered tables of the studios, and, together with the odor of stale coffee, bespeak an economy of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... in reality been so weak, never has it had so many uncompromising assailants, never has it been so filled with doubt and consternation, never has it been so near its downfall, as at this moment. Upon the face of it, this statement looks absurdly paradoxical; but it is true, nevertheless. We are groping in thick darkness; but it is that darkest hour which is said to precede the dawn ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... schooled his face to wear an absurdly transparent look of gloom as he entered the drawing-room, but it was quite wasted on Nelly, who didn't look at him. She had a screen between her face and the fire as she sat in her fireside chair, and her little pale, hurt, haughty profile showed up clearly ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... went down, the rush from the direction of the village green came round the corner. The first to appear was the proprietor of the cocoanut shy, a burly man in a blue jersey. He was astonished to see the lane empty save for three men sprawling absurdly on the ground. And then something happened to his rear-most foot, and he went headlong and rolled sideways just in time to graze the feet of his brother and partner, following headlong. The two were then kicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed by quite ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... When Tog was eight weeks old his end was foreseen. He was then little more than a soft, fluffy, black-and-white ball, awkwardly perambulating on four absurdly bowed legs. Martha, Jim Grimm's wife, one day cast the lean scraps of the midday meal to the pack. What came to pass so amazed old Jim Grimm that he dropped his splitting-knife and ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... after giving 1738 as the date of Naigeon's birth, absurdly attributes to him the article on Ame in the Encyclopaedia, which was published in 1752, when Naigeon ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... seat near Miss Willard, to whom I was then introduced by some one who knew us both. I wore my hair short in those days, and I had a little fur cap on my head. Though I had been preaching for several years, I looked absurdly young—far too young, it soon became evident, to interest Mr. Moody. He was already moving about among the men and women who had responded to his invitation, and one by one he invited them to speak, passing me ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... intellect is one of the commonest assumptions in the world. Although when you state the belief as I have, it sounds absurdly pretentious, yet the boastfulness is closer to the child's who stretches out its hand for the moon than the romantic egotist's who thinks he has created the moon and all the stars. Whole systems of philosophy have ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... spheres, and a smatch of the knowledge of the mathematics; but when you come to inquire into their knowledge, how short-sighted are the wisest of their students! They know nothing of the motion of the heavenly bodies; and so grossly, absurdly ignorant, that when the sun is eclipsed, they think it is a great dragon has assaulted and run away with it; and they fall a-cluttering with all the drums and kettles in the country, to fright the monster away, just as we do to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... course, made suggestions. One in particular knew "the very thing you want, and really absurdly cheap." She was enthusiastic in description. Then the rental was named—fifteen dollars a month more than the budget allowed. David made a great show of taking the address and promised to inspect the ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... not have two movings of them; I must take care of my men. And your boxes, I understand, are heavy, quite absurdly so. It would look better in a young person not to have so much to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... business will this be, which our Continental friends, groping this long while somewhat absurdly about it and about it, call 'Organisation of Labour;'—which must be taken out of the hands of absurd windy persons, and put into the hands of wise, laborious, modest and valiant men, to begin with it straightway; to proceed with ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... came in this morning," continued Mrs Winn, "quite excited about her invitation. She wanted to know what I meant to wear. Julia's so absurdly frivolous, she thinks as much of her dress as a girl of sixteen. 'At our age, my dear Julia,' I said to her, 'we need not trouble ourselves about that. You may depend on it, no one will notice what ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... a poem of more wit than any other in the language. The rhymes have as much genius in them as the thoughts; but there is no story in it, and but little humour. Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously: wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature. The fault of Butler's poem is not that it has too much wit, but that it has not an equal quantity of other things. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... little market town, the total of whose population in the census records sounds absurdly small; yet it is a complete world in itself; a capital city, with its kingdom and its ruler, for the territory is practically the property of a single family. Enter Fleeceborough by whichever route you will, the first object that fixes the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... little puzzling you recognise there the relics of a familiar verse from a Latin psalm Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, and the rest: inscribed as well as may be in Greek characters. Prior Saint-Jean caused it to be so inscribed, absurdly, during ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... are often occupied in speculating upon the delicious surprises which existence may hold for you; the age, in sum, that is the most romantic and tender of all ages—for a male. I mean the age of fifty. An age absurdly misunderstood by all those who have not reached it! A thrilling ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... my previous remarks on the subject (p. —-) I would point out that the Queste and Grand Sainte Graal versions repeat the Maimed King motif in the most unintelligent manner. The element of old age, inherent in the Evalach-Mordrains incident, is complicated and practically obscured, by an absurdly exaggerated wounding element, here devoid of its original significance. [24] Heinzel, op. cit. p. 13. [25] For an instance of the extravagances to which a strictly Christian interpretation can lead, cf. Dr Sebastian Evans's theories set forth in his translation of the Perlesvaus (The High History ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... explanation, was the only surviving child of a wealthy merchant in one of the sea-ports in the southern part of Massachusetts. He had received a liberal education, as a collegiate course of studies is at present, and in many instances most absurdly, called. Morton could, however, lay a just claim to be called liberally educated. He went to college without contemplating to pursue either of the three learned professions, but merely to acquire a more ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... "I behaved absurdly. Just because I saw that he wasn't quite himself I ran away from him and made a scene. Truly, Mr. Hudson, he had not said or done anything the least bit horrid. He'd been sensible and nice and friendly—Oh, dear!" For she saw ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Flanagan, "Mr. Fogg's project was absurdly foolish. Whatever his punctuality, he could not prevent the delays which were certain to occur; and a delay of only two or three days would be ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... observations, all desired him to be their leader, except a certain Apollonides, who resembled a Boeotian in his manner of speaking; this man said that "whoever asserted they could gain safety by any other means than by obtaining, if he could, the king's consent to it, talked absurdly;" and at the same time began to enumerate the difficulties surrounding them. 27. But Xenophon, interrupting him, said, "O most wonderful of men! you neither understand what you see, nor remember what you hear. Yet you were on the same spot with those here present, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... absorption in Irish affairs. But he was not writing a formal history, and these points did not appeal to him at all. He drew with inimitable skill a picture of the despised and fantastic Jew, vain as a peacock and absurdly dressed, alien in race and in his real creed, smiling sardonically at English ways, enthusiasms, and institutions, until he became, after years of struggle and obloquy, the idol of what was then the proudest ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... unbelievable for so long that these four had almost learned that everything is possible. Which, if you come to think of it, and no matter how absurdly you learn it, is a thing immeasurably worth realizing in this world of possibilities. It is ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... winter, and on the Grand Canal in summer, they are costly enough, but they are to be found on nearly all the squares at reasonable rates. On the narrow streets, where most native bachelors have them, they are absurdly cheap. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... so absurdly easy and simple that there is no chance of the old heathen rumbling it. Anyway, if we're caught, ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... attentively, and he was surprised to observe the extraordinary mixture of garments which formed his dress. Although he could not have been less than eighteen or nineteen years old, and was tall for that age, he wore a skeleton suit, such as is usually put upon very little boys, and which, though most absurdly short in the arms and legs, was quite wide enough for his attenuated frame. In order that the lower part of his legs might be in perfect keeping with this singular dress, he had a very large pair of boots, originally made for tops, which might have been once worn by some stout farmer, but were now ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... story of Spanish Christianity within the present boundaries of the United States is absurdly brief compared with the vast extent of space, the three centuries of time, and what seemed at one time the grandeur of results involved in it. But in truth it has strangely little connection with the extant Christianity of our country. It is almost as completely severed from historical ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of the fear that he should be murdered, and partly of vexation that he was not,—Kant, on the other hand—who had no ambition in that way—had a narrower escape from a murderer than any man we read of, except Des Cartes. So absurdly does fortune throw about her favors! The case is told, I think, in an anonymous life of this very great man. For health's sake, Kant imposed upon himself, at one time, a walk of six miles every day along a highroad. This fact becoming known to a man who had his private reasons for committing ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... aptitude. A little later he had given his card to the servant at the door and was waiting in a darkened and most depressive library for the coming of the master of the house. The five minutes of waiting nearly finished him. As the absurdly formal clock between the book-cases ticked off the leaden-winged seconds, his plan for the rescue of Pacific Southwestern took the form of a crass impertinence, and only the grim determination to see a lost cause decently coffined and buried kept the enthusiast ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Germans of the sixteenth century. They were conscious of a common language which was already becoming a vehicle of literary expression. They were conscious of a common tradition and of a common nationality. They recognized, in many cases, the absurdly antiquated character of their political institutions and ardently longed for reforms. In fact, the trouble with the Germans was not so much the lack of thought about political reform as the actual conflicts between various groups concerning the method and goal ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... It was an absurdly small room as compared to the great rooms below, and very bare. There was one chair which Beryl, scowling, pushed forward, at the same time sitting upon the bed. Her eyes said plainly: "What do ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... coincidence. The new water-bringer was as scandalously late in his delivery of the precious fluid as his predecessor! An hour passed and he did not return. His unfortunate partners, toiling away with pick and crowbar on the burning ledge, were clamorous from thirst, and Bray was becoming absurdly uneasy. It could not be possible that Eugenia's accident had been repeated! Or had she met him with inquiries? But no! she was already gone. The mystery was presently cleared, however, by the abrupt appearance of Parkhurst running towards them, but WITHOUT HIS PAIL! The cry of consternation ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... other puppy would be rolled backward, full of gurgling and futile protestation, and Finn would resume the picked place. Whatever was best in the way of warmth, and food, and comfort, that Finn obtained, even at this absurdly rudimentary stage, by token of superior weight, energy, and vitality. Also, though the last to be born, Finn was the first to approach the achievement of standing, for an instant, upon his own little ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... unsigned. But Aubrey didn't seem to care the least whether it was or no. If Beryl wished him to raise the question again with his father, of course he would; otherwise he greatly preferred to leave it alone. And as Beryl had no will or wishes but his, and was, in Alice's opinion, only too absurdly and dependently in love, the sleeping dogs were very much asleep; and the secret of Mannering's future disposal lay hid impenetrably in the ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... obstinate British optimist, is disfigured by trophies, fountains, columns, and statues so puerile, disorderly, and hideous that a lover of the arts must hang the head of shame as he passes, to see our dear old queen city arraying herself so absurdly; but when all is said and done, we can show one or two of the greatest sights in the world. I doubt if any Roman festival was as vast or striking as the Derby day, or if any Imperial triumph could show such a prodigious muster of faithful people as our young Princess saw ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spectacles, unless prematurely dimmed by the student's lamplight, and hair that seldom showed a thread of silver. Age, wedded to the past, incrusted over with a stony layer of habits, and retaining nothing fluid in its possibilities, would have been absurdly out of place in an enterprise like this. Youth, too, in its early dawn, was hardly more adapted to our purpose; for it would behold the morning radiance of its own spirit beaming over the very same spots of withered grass and barren sand whence most of us had seen it vanish. We had very young ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... purpose, than to show that I came prepared to speak well; a thing especially unbecoming a man of my profession. The preparation begets a great deal more expectation than it will satisfy; a man very often absurdly strips himself to his doublet to leap no further than he would have done in his gown.' [Perhaps the reflecting scholar will recollect to have seen an instance of this magnificent preparation for saying something to the purpose, attended with similarly lame conclusions; ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... into the spiral, descending aisle. It seemed strange to have weight again, even as little as this. Cochrane weighed, on the moon, just one-sixth of what he would weigh on Earth. Here he would tip a spring-scale at just about twenty-seven pounds. By flexing his toes, he could jump. Absurdly, he did. And he rose very slowly, and hovered—feeling singularly foolish—and descended with a vast deliberation. He landed on the ramp again feeling absurd indeed. He saw Babs grinning ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the check into five and ten dollar bills, and, as Carter was far too excited to work, made an absurdly ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... a Wilson Avenue girl now. You saw her in and out of the shops of the district, expensively dressed. She was almost thirty-six. Her legs, beneath the absurdly short skirt of the day, were slim and shapely in their chiffon hose, but her upper figure was now a little prominent. The scant, brief skirt fore-shortened her; gave her a stork-like appearance; a combination of girlishness and matronliness ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... my chair and to say, not without a semblance of lightness, 'Aha, come in!' Dread was indeed rather blunted in me by his looking so absurdly like a villain in a melodrama. The sheen of his tilted hat and of his shirt-front, the repeated twists he was giving to his moustache, and most of all the magnificence of his sneer, gave token that he was there ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... had made in the Protestant-Papist way. Finding Anton Ulrich still continue Protestant, she wrote to him out of Spain:—"Why, O honored Grandpapa, have you not done as you promised? Ah, there must be a taint of mortal sin in it, after all!" Upon which the absurdly situated old Gentleman did change his religion; and is marked as a Convert in all manner of Genealogies and Histories;—truly an old literary gentleman ducal and serene, restored to the bosom of the Church in a somewhat ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the language in which they express their thoughts; and yet very few of them can write or read, whereas the peasantry of our own country, whose education is in general much superior, are in their conversation coarse and dull almost to brutality, and absurdly ungrammatical in the language which they use, though the English tongue, upon the whole, is more simple in ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... nervous fingers of the artist or the enthusiast. The head was grotesquely oversized, though essentially beautiful; but it seemed like some sculptor's masterpiece placed upon a ridiculous figure, or some fine boulder rock balanced absurdly on a narrow, crooked flower-stem. The face arrested attention immediately; it was beautiful, finely chiselled and of classic line, without a hint of deformity or disease on its glowing health. The eyes were large, liquid, appealing, yet painfully watchful, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... must have, and they find it close at hand in the Roman basilicas. Uncertain, from the result of woful experiments, of arches of great span, they pack their columns close together and surmount them with sturdy little arches that have scarcely any thrust. This arcade of heavy columns carrying absurdly disproportionate arches is their only motive, and applied inside between aisles and nave, and outside in successive stories rising one above another. As the masons begin better to understand their ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... their cheerful little house. One or two sketches of the pair, as they appeared in their later days, have been left by contemporaries. Chorley, an intimate friend, observes that, like all the sceptics he ever approached, they were absurdly prejudiced, and proof against all new impressions. 'Neither of them, though both were literary and musical, could endure German literature and music, had got beyond the stale sarcasms of the Anti-Jacobin, or could admit that there is glory for such ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... is the Kerkri of Abulfeda, and signifies in Turkish forty men. Some call the place Kyrk, and the Poles name it Kirkjel. It is situated on an inaccessible mountain, and was one of the castles belonging to the Goths who dwelt in those mountains, absurdly called Jews by some authors; of whom some traces remained not long ago, as their language contained many ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... anatomy out of sheer joy and pride in the arched necks and the frail driver with the black curls under the broad brimmed English sailor hat handling the reins. She had pulled off her heavy buckskin gloves; and she never knew how absurdly like matches her fingers looked to the big one-time miner beside her; nor how the exhilaration brought the tints of the painters' flower to her cheeks and the light of the Alpine pools to her eyes. Every man on the street turned and looked back, while the gold ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... fantastic confession to you," he said. "It will open doors. If all were as the law foolishly demands it should be—if she were safe in the ordinary way—absurdly incredible or not as the statement may seem—I should now be at ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not cultivate the country enough to conquer it, for one must work on the land if one would take possession of it. They left it waste and abandoned it to the soldiers of fortune by whom it was ravaged and exhausted. Their garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had conquered. The English had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an ox. That they were too few and that France was too big had been plainly seen after Crecy and after ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... a paper read by Mr. Cotter Morison before the Browning Society. "Its proper province," he writes, "would seem to be the exhibition of fanciful power by the artist; not beauty or truth in the literal sense at all, but inventive affluence of unreal yet absurdly comic forms, with just a flavour of the terrible added, to give a grim dignity, and save from the triviality of caricature."[38] With the exception of The Heretic's Tragedy, Caliban upon Setebos is probably the finest piece ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... seconds looking towards him with shining, radiant eyes. Then she moved forward. Merefleet's eyes were fixed upon her. He could not have looked away just then. He was absurdly uncertain of himself. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... at Suzee as she stood before me. The figure, so exquisite in its lines when unclothed, looked too soft and shapeless under the cloth coat. She appeared absurdly short, too, beside the American assistant, who stood at least five feet eleven. I could not bear to see my little Suzee so disfigured. However, that she looked far more ordinary could not be disputed. She would attract less attention now, and that ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... him on his way to the morning's lecture, with his plump childish face, his round innocent eyes, his absurdly non-prehensile fat hand carrying his cap, his grey trousers braced up much too high, his feet a trifle inturned, and going across the great court with a queer tripping pace that seemed cultivated even to my naive undergraduate eye. Or I see him lecturing. He lectured walking ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... speaking of acquiring the French language—a matter the difficulty of which they thought had been absurdly overrated. Then the second Harry: 'Of course it is! Suppose you're in a Caffy, and want some wine; you just call to the ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... delighted to get a letter from you again. As soon as I can I will come to Beaconsfield and see you. I'm absurdly busy in bringing together the Rulers of the country and the scientific people of whom they are totally ignorant. Lloyd George has never heard of Ramsey—and so on, and the hash and muddle and quackery on our technical side is appalling. It all means boys' lives in Flanders and horrible waste ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... is amusing because so absolutely destitute of humor, and her style, a feminine Johnsonese, is absurdly hifalutin ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... absurdly unselfish, Pete!" She moved a chip along the ground with her foot, but Pete failed to notice this ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... charming Italians on board, a father and son—the father absurdly youthful, the boy incredibly wise. They operate a chain of banks through the Levant. They watched the game but did not play. The father explained this to me. "My dear son is a born gambler," he said. "So, in order that I may set him an example, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... reasoning, to understand that the manifestations of the same consciousness in finer matter, astral or mental, are equally worthy, and no more worthy, of development, of consideration. You will not find yourself in the absurdly illogical position of declaring it a good thing to train the physical plane consciousness, while it is dangerous to cultivate the astral and mental plane consciousness. You will understand that all psychism is of the same kind, that on each plane the development ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... that he broke in upon Reade. Reade had passed an absurdly useless afternoon. He had not stirred from the study. For all that it would have mattered to him, it might have been raining hard the whole afternoon, instead of being, as it had been, the finest afternoon of the whole term. In a word, and not to put too fine a point on the matter, he had ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... swim by jumping into deep water," says Henry James. A young man in the Art Department of an absurdly punctual periodical, before the Era of the Halftone, just had to draw, and that was all there ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... hardware establishment on rue Saint-Martin. He became, in 1822, the second clerk of a Parisian notary, Maitre A. Crottat. He had then as a comrade in study and in pleasure Amaury Lupin. At this time Marest's vanity made itself absurdly apparent in Pierrotin's coach, which did service in the valley of Oise; he hoaxed Husson, amused Bridau and Lora, and vexed the Comte de Serizy. Three years later Georges Marest had become the chief clerk of Leopold Hannequin. He lost ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... live where the ships are. He used to bring his young shipmates to see us, and they were like himself. Their eyes were downcast. They showed no self-reliance. Their shyness and politeness, when the occasion was quite simple, were absurdly incommensurate even with modesty. Their sisters, not nearly so polite, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... perhaps most miracles do—very slowly and gently, without his perceiving it; quite trivially, too, and even absurdly. It started within him, upon a thought that wren-pie was a foolish dish after all! His mother, who prided herself upon making it, did but pretend to enjoy it after it was cooked. His father did not even pretend: the mass of little bones ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shadows grows involved,' I thought. But I was experimenting with rhetoric. For the thing was absurdly simple. Hate still animated my phantom. And this was her revenge. She was about to give herself to the black dwarf Goliath. She was about ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... sprawling in doorways and corners. Mr. Arthur Balfour, weedy and willowy, was remarked with interest as a young man of great possessions, who had written an unintelligible book but might yet do something in Parliament; while Lord Rosebery, though looking absurdly youthful, was spoken ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the amount, sir," I said, absurdly trying to get the paper-weight into my waistcoat pocket, and then putting it down in great confusion. "I—I have an account at Monceau's ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... during the weeks when Grady's threatened catastrophe was imminent, but now that the big shadow of the little delegate was dispelled, it was easier to see that the huge warehouse was almost finished. There was still much to do, and the handful of days that remained seemed absurdly inadequate; but it needed only a glance at what Charlie Bannon's tireless, driving energy had already accomplished to make the rest look easy. "We're sure of it now. She'll be full to the roof before the year is out." As Max went over the job with his time-book next morning, ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... On September 30th twenty-six military trains left Pretoria and Johannesberg for the Natal border; and that same day saw 16,000 Boers thus early massed near Majuba Hill. Yet at that very time the British forces in South Africa were absolutely and absurdly inadequate not merely for defiance but even for defence. On October 3rd, a full week before the delivery of the Ultimatum, the Transvaal mail train to the Cape was stopped at the Transvaal frontier, and the English gold it carried, valued at L500,000, was seized by the Transvaal Government. ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... emotion enhanced his good looks. What I had done had not been done for his benefit. I had not jeopardized my happiness to make him more attractive, to give fire to his eyes, and an expression of manly self-control striving with passion, to his already absurdly perfect features. Though, plainly, he was undergoing some mental crisis, he held his feelings so well in leash that no outsider could have judged whether he were the saddest or the happiest of men, and his sisters watched him anxiously, hoping to receive a guiding ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... him, even to his absurdly contrasting title of grand equerry, amused the good-natured king, Charles X., and made him laugh,—although the Duc d'Herouville justified his appointment in the matter of being a fine horseman. Men are like books, often understood and appreciated ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... you think of me now?" she explained, pouring the tea into absurdly small cups, one of which she ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the name was an outrage; it reeked of popularity; it suggested—absurdly and abominably—a certain cheap drink of sudden and ephemeral effervescence. He never let his mind dwell on those dreadful syllables any longer than he could help; he never thought of her as Poppy Grace at all. He thought of her in undefined, extraordinary ways; now as some nameless aerial spirit, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... both, each, every, either, neither—"are much more properly articles than any thing else."—Hermes, p. 234. But, in spite of this opinion, it has somehow happened, that these definitive adjectives have very generally, and very absurdly, acquired the name of pronouns. Hence, we find Booth, who certainly excelled most other grammarians in learning and acuteness, marvelling that the articles "were ever separated from the class of pronouns." To all this I reply, that the, an, and a, are worthy ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... word "her" with a fervour which, in conversation with a mother, was absurdly indiscreet. Hardly a maternal heart within the four seas could, in such circumstances, have helped being irritated at that ill-timed betrayal of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... burst out into his first horse laugh, in which I chorused him most heartily, having in truth been in convulsions, between the queerness of his lingo, and the absurdly grotesque attitudes into which he threw himself, in imitating the persons concerning whom his story ran. After this, jest succeeded jest! and story, story! 'till, in good truth, the glass circling ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... something in the fire. The knight will not come till they put out the torch, for that is the signal they have arranged, and they will not put out the torch till the hunting party is far away. You see they are still so absurdly secret about it! The maid tells the princess that she might better not put out the torch at all, for a treacherous friend of the knight has watched them, suspects their love, and has told the King; that the hunting party is only a ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... discovery was curious—may seem curious to us, at least—but the fact is, it suddenly noticed that the size of its front teeth had grown out of all proportion to the size of the island. Looking over its shoulder this fine day, it realised how absurdly small the island was in comparison with its teeth—and grasped the horrid truth. In a flash it understood what was happening. The island was getting wetter ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... an honorable one, and that the mass of detectives have only one ambition in life, and that is to ferret out the criminal and to bring him to justice. To denounce detectives as a class appears to most persons as absurdly unreasonable. To speak of them with contempt is to convey the impression that detectives stand in the way of some evil schemes of their detractor. Fiction of a peculiarly American sort has built up among ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... over him at the thought that Leyden could get such a picture. Then he thought it possible that the picture had been bought; for native photographers are not beyond taking money for pictures they have no right to sell; and the thought pleased him. He turned the card over, and was again absurdly pleased to find no signature ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... repent very much indeed, because she knew the value of money. Still, it was probable that the blind man was overestimating the value of his work. Gentlemen, she knew, were absurdly particular about their things. She giggled as a nervous housemaid giggles when she tries to explain the breakage ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... are as absurdly romantic as a school-girl! Surely people of our age ought to know better than still to believe in fairyland; but, as I have told you before, you are dreadfully young for your ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... liked. And the younger man, after finding his face flush a bit on being accused of wishing to make a dramatic impression with Sheila's entrance into London society, laughed in an embarrassed way, and said, "It is impossible to be angry with you, Ingram, and yet you do talk so absurdly. I wonder who is likely to know more about the character of a girl ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the author was acquainted with Shakespeare's historical plays. Dick Bowyer's puns on the sentinels' names (ii. 1) were certainly suggested by Falstaff's pleasantries with the recruits in Henry IV., Part II. Winstanley absurdly ascribes the piece to William Wager, who flourished (?) when Shakespeare was a child. If I were obliged to make a guess at the authorship, I would name Chettle or Munday, or both. It is not altogether improbable that the Tryall of Chevalry may be the play by Chettle and Wentworth Smith, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... hoped to force Montenegro into the correct path. His idea of education was primitive. He despised every form of game, exercise, and gymnastics as waste of time, and had never done any himself. "That is why you are so absurdly neurotic and you have never learnt to keep your temper." I chaffed him. He retorted: "Fishblood, fishblood." An interesting ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... He felt absurdly pleased. There was a note of regret too in her tone. Then, as though with some effort ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... absurdly untrue to say, as the Dearborn Independent does, that "the Jews of Russia came up in a perfect phalanx" after the overthrow of tsarism. Throughout the revolutionary period the Jews in Russia have presented about the ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... daughter. Strictly speaking, I suppose her social position is superior to our own. I know for a fact that she has been to county balls. She seemed anxious to cultivate an intimacy with us, so I gathered. I was not absurdly pleased about it. One has one's dignity. Besides, at the office we frequently see people far above Miss Sakers. A nobleman who had called to see one of the partners once remarked to me, "Your office is a devilish long way from everywhere!" There was no particular reason why he should ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... am clear in this, that his principle again is the same. [Greek: Idiotaes] is in error, however, in calling St. Vincent's "a geometrical treatment" of it. He indeed uses lines to represent the spaces passed over; and their discussion occurs in a chapter on what is universally (but very absurdly) called "geometrical proportion." It is yet no more geometrical than our school-day problem of the basket and the hundred eggs in Francis Walkinghame. Mere names do not bestow character, however much philosophers as well as legislators may think so. All attempts of the kind have been, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... Although absurdly ignorant, as his own letters prove, of a country of which he had once been nominally king, Philip knew rather more probably about the circumstance of the case than Saunders, and he met these insinuating suggestions coldly. A fleet in the end was fitted out ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... indefinitely, and shouting up one's courage begins to lose its efficacy if long continued. One big-lunged mutineer had held out with his firing and bellowing until the nerves of the rest could stand it no longer. They then rudely suppressed him. He sounded so absurdly and pathetically foolish. He was typical of their own status. "One nigger shootin' a bluff at de whole United States Army!" They realized that with fifty it was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... public that having "absolute and supreme power," I was absurdly lenient towards Abou Saood, whom I knew to be so great a villain. I confess to one fault. I should have arrested and transported him to Khartoum when he first arrived at Gondokoro with the cattle stolen from the Shir; which caused the subsequent massacre ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... is quite right, Christine. Torvald is so absurdly fond of me that he wants me absolutely to himself, as he says. At first he used to seem almost jealous if I mentioned any of the dear folk at home, so naturally I gave up doing so. But I often talk about such things with Doctor ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... the Priests had no choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly the course of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... friendly gaze, now; there was more than dawning alarm in it—an irritated curiosity which grew more intense as the seconds throbbed out, absurdly timed by a most remarkable obligato ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... 'bachelor habits' within six months of marriage; and more than once—waking in the small hours to find herself alone—she had slipped on her dressing-gown and boldly invaded his study; a disarming vision enough, her face flushed with sleep, looking absurdly young in a halo of tumbled hair, her eyes alight with tenderness and enjoyment of her own daring. On each occasion she was reproved without severity; established herself in the deck-lounge of old days; fell asleep promptly, and ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... arm. On the stairs Nicolovius said: "These Southern manifestations interest me because, though extreme, they are after all so absurdly typical of human nature. I have even seen the same sort of ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that results from such cell-union is no mere mixture or addition, but a process of selective organization. To put it very absurdly, one does not find a pair of two-legged parents having a child with legs as big as the two sets of legs together, or with four legs, two of them of one shape and two of another. In other words, of the possibilities ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... glance Carlisle's trained eye, going over him, took in his sartorial eccentricities: in particular the "shined" shoes, the large brass shirt-studs, and the "full-dress-suit" (exactly that) so obviously made for a much stouter person. She saw that the man looked absurdly out of place here, at his own uncle's. Against this background of gaiety and glitter, of music, powder and decollete gowns, he really looked quite like a stray from some other world: only the more so in that he himself appeared quite unconscious ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... interesting and artless autobiography to be read than William Hutton's, the famous bookseller and historian of Birmingham. Hutton has been somewhat absurdly called the English Franklin. He is not in the least like Franklin. He has none of Franklin's supreme literary skill, and he was a loving, generous, and tender-hearted man, which Franklin certainly was not. Hutton's first visit to London was ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... expression; and which, therefore,—there being much obstinate originality in his mind,—produces strange varieties of dwelling, frequently rendered still more preposterous by his love of display; a love universally felt in England, and often absurdly indulged. Wealth is worshiped in France as the means of purchasing pleasure; in Italy, as an instrument of power; in England, as the means "of showing off." It would be a very great sacrifice indeed, in an Englishman ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... criminal annals of the period, illustrates in a remarkable manner the diseased state of political feeling then existing in England. It was a small copy of the Irish rebellion,—marked by the same cut-throat policy,—having in view a similar overwhelming revolution, with the same absurdly inadequate means. Fortunately for the United Kingdom, the chief actors in both succeeded only in bringing upon themselves the destruction with which they had menaced a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... at once opened the whole question of those physico-psychological phenomena to which the name of spiritualism has been so absurdly applied. Mr. Arnold was profound in his contempt of the whole system, if not very profound in his arguments against it. Every one had something to remark in opposition to the notions which were so rapidly gaining ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... new wrong meanings into perfectly obvious statements in the Bible. He was a series of circles—round head with smooth gray hair that hung in a bang over his round forehead; round face with round red cheeks; absurdly heavy gray mustache that almost made a circle about his puerile mouth; round button of a nose; round heavy shoulders; round little stomach in a gray sack-suit; round dumplings of feet in congress shoes that were never quite fresh-blacked ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... girl half-witted?" she thought. "She must be, or she would not be so absurdly enthusiastic! The man plays well,—but it is his profession to play well—it's no good praising these sort of people,—they are never grateful, and they always impose upon you." ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... English birth, but those after the Restoration, and many who came hither even since the Revolution, are looked upon as perfect Irish; directly contrary to the practice of all wise nations, and particularly of the Greeks and Romans, in establishing their colonies, by which name Ireland is very absurdly called. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... of teacup politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic idealism, absurdly unaware of the complexity of things; as when he perpetually repeated (as with a kind of flat-footed stamping) that people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote Stevenson's phrase, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... anything, are a bit duller than those of men; their muscular coordinations are surely no prompter. One finds quite as many obvious botches among them; they have as many bodily blemishes; they are infested by the same microscopic parasites; their senses are as obtuse; their ears stand out as absurdly. Even assuming that their special malaises are wholly offset by the effects of alcoholism in the male, they suffer patently from the same adenoids, gastritis, cholelithiasis, nephritis, tuberculosis, carcinoma, arthritis ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... necessary, why, I should be forced to do it, and, with any good to her memory and fame, my own pain in the attempt would be turned into joy—I should do it at whatever cost: but it is not only unnecessary but absurdly useless—and, indeed, it shall not be done if I can stop the scamp's knavery along with ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... familiar English words, I feel assured that so interesting and valuable a department of instruction would not have been neglected. But our memories were strained by being made to say off "by heart," as it was absurdly called, whole batches of grammatical rules, with all the botheration of irregular verbs and suchlike. So far as I was concerned, I derived little benefit from my High School teaching, except that I derived one lesson which is of great use in after life. I mean as regards ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... other hand, each convoy is usually provided with some guard of its own, though it is often absurdly inefficient. These valleys and ravines which branch out of the main pass are alive with Afridis and Pathans, who are keen robbers as well as religious fanatics. I wonder they don't swoop down on some of our caravans. They could ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person beloved," said Bacon; "and therefore it is well said that it is impossible to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... after it had become solidified and hard as stone. It must be admitted that they underwent considerable discomfort in memory of their relatives. It took all the influence we could bring to bear to break up these absurdly superstitious practices, and it looked as if no permanent improvement could be effected, for as soon as we got them to discard one, another would be invented. When not allowed to burn down their tepees or houses, those poor souls who were in a dying condition would be carried out to the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... said to myself that she had certainly a look of greater sedateness than before. But her expression of dislike to Geoffrey Brotherton had more effect upon me than anything else, inasmuch as there Vanity found room for both the soles of her absurdly small feet; and that evening, when I went wandering, after my custom, with a volume of Dante in my hand, the book remained unopened, and from the form of Clara flowed influences mingling with and gathering fresh power from those of Nature, whose feminine front now brooded over me half-withdrawn ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... a fine big glittering tobacco tin. Others had invented elaborate topiary designs in their hair, shaving their heads so as to leave strange tufts, patches, crescents on the most unexpected places. Of the intricacy of these designs they seemed absurdly proud. Various sorts of treasure trove hung from them-a bunch of keys to which there were no locks, discarded hunting knives, tips of antelope horns, discharged brass cartridges, a hundred and one valueless trifles plucked proudly from the rubbish heap. They ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... clutching at any straw to excuse her room-mate's conduct. "That's quite likely. Or, Miss Bowes, I've been thinking that perhaps it was a queer kind of loyalty to me. You know Rona's very fond of me, and she was quite absurdly angry because Stephanie's pendant was to go to the exhibition and not mine. She may have changed them, hoping it wouldn't be noticed and that mine would be packed up, and perhaps she intended to put Stephanie's back in the studio when the parcel had safely gone. Rona ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... the first place, it is clear that the delegates to the Convention of 1787 represented, not the people of the United States in mass, as has been most absurdly contended by some political writers, but the people of the several States, as States—just as in the Congress of that period—Delaware, with her sixty thousand inhabitants, having entire equality ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... asked. She moved a little and wiped her eyes with an absurdly tiny, lace-edged square of linen. One corner, he noticed, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... really a greater man than Johnson and occasionally blasphemes against his idol, but who in the intervals is truly Boswellian. In the second place, he has usually hitherto been not criticised at all, but either somewhat sneered at or else absurdly over-praised. In the third place, as both Scott and Byron recognised, he is probably the most remarkable example we have of absolute self-education, or of no education: for Burns was an academically instructed ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of her anger swept her fear that this strange woman was telling the truth farther and farther out of her thoughts. She rose, absurdly majestic as she steadied herself with one slender arm against the quaint carved post of the bed. She pointed toward ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... sent an ambassador to Paris to arrange a treaty of alliance. Bonaparte's hopes seemed likely to be more than fulfilled. An attempt made on his life on December 24, which many Frenchmen absurdly believed to have been abetted by the English government, gave him the opportunity of crushing his domestic foes. England, the object of his passionate hatred, was bereft of her Austrian ally; he was pressing Spain to invade ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... black-gowned floor clerk, deep in murmured conversation with the valet, and she had seemed not to see Sophy at all as she groped subconsciously for the key along the rows of keyboxes. She had seen the workmen in their absurdly baggy corduroy trousers and grimy shirts strolling along arm in arm with the women of their class—those untidy women with the tidy hair. Bareheaded and happy, they strolled along, a strange contrast to the glitter ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Morton think players were really worse off before the latest refinements in make-up were invented? Some of the greatest acting triumphs of the world were accomplished when the players dressed their parts absurdly, trusting almost exclusively ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... always finding fault with me," she complained. "It's either money, or my clothes, or Graham, or something." Her eyes filled. She looked young and absurdly childish. But a talk he had had with the rector was still in his mind. It was while they were still at the table, and Nolan had been attacking the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... There was nothing either very frivolous or very serious about the woman of the Restoration. She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and compounded, so to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families led the domestic life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose connubial couch was exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or three kept up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer women with something like disgust. The great lady of the new school exercised no influence at all over the manners of the time; and yet she might have done much. She might, at worst, have ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... trifle. There is a class of men in Bristol monstrously prejudiced against Blandly. They go the length of declaring that this honest creature would do anything for money, that the Hispaniola belonged to him, and that he sold it me absurdly high—the most transparent calumnies. None of them dare, however, to deny the merits ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Princess," was visible, he went on, would the servant tell her that M. de Chauxville was waiting in the library to assure her that there was absolutely no danger to be anticipated in the day's sport. The princess, it would appear, was absurdly anxious about the welfare of her husband—an experienced hunter and a ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... frightening them. I found this out a little later, for it got into Richard's room, and I found him, the Russian Consul, and the Vicomte de Perrochel all sitting on the divan with their legs well tucked under them, clutching their sticks, and looking absurdly uncomfortable at the affreuse bete, as ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... sharply. "Mr. Barnes had nothing whatever to do with it. All he did was to get himself handcuffed and run about absurdly trying to ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... in it. I speak in this way because I do not know what may come to pass next. I have always loved my fellow-men, and desired their good opinion, and the idea of forfeiting it, either through my own fault or theirs, is painful to me. But men judge so absurdly! They look only at the outside. They are so easily deceived by appearances! Do you know, that of late I have thought there was a great deal of confusion in the ordinary way of men's thinking? But I see clearly the cause ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... a healthier and stronger frame both in the mother and in the child. A good figure is also insured to the Indian woman, from her contemning, perhaps at the bid of necessity, arising from her poverty, though, I verily believe, from a well-grounded conception of their deforming tendencies, the absurdly irrational measures, which, adopted by many among ourselves to promote symmetry, only ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie |
