"Absurdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to have been able to slip off quietly to the manse. He told himself so over and over again, till he believed it. This process is easy. But he saw very well that he could not rise from the lee of the whin bush without being in full view of this eminently practical and absurdly attractive young woman. So he turned to his Hebrew Lexicon with a sigh, and a grim contraction of determined brows which recalled his father. A country girl was nothing to the hunter after curious roots and the amateur of finely shaded ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... further advances towards self-government can be considered is bound to fail: you cannot give political concessions by a stop-watch; the advance will either be much more rapid or much slower than the scheme anticipates. Again, the present basis of election is absurdly small, but any attempt to broaden it must tend towards adult suffrage, which in itself would appear impracticable with a ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... indeed—of the credit; I thought it gave a sort of adventitious charm, and contributed, its part to the success, but that the real object of commendation—what extracted the cheers—was those other qualities. Why, I have been absurdly self- satisfied, and come very near believing them when they called me the one and only real Greek, and such nonsense. But behold, my gold is turned to ashes; my fame, after all, is little different from that enjoyed ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to her feet and was watching the glasses, as the old woman stirred the white syrup in the water with an old-fashioned, long-handled spoon. She did not wish to seem absurdly suspicious, and yet she distrusted her enemy. She took one of the glasses, went to his side, and held it to his lips as one gives ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Mr. Skimpin, in propounding this inquiry, inclining his head on one side and listening with great sharpness for the answer, "as if to imply that he rather thought Mr. Winkle's natural taste for perjury would induce him to give some name which did not belong to him." Giving in, absurdly, his surname only; and being asked immediately afterwards, if possible still more absurdly, by the Judge, "Have you any Christian name, sir?" the witness, in the Reading, more naturally and yet more confusedly even it seemed than in the book, got that eminent functionary ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... of grief which caused Jehan at Agra to erect the Taj Mahal in memory of a dead wife and a cold hearthstone, so the Bon Ton hotel, even to the pillars with red-freckled monoliths and peacock-backed lobby chairs, making the analogy rather absurdly complete, reared its fourteen stories of "elegantly furnished suites, all the comforts and none of the discomforts ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... life, and plucking up courage hurled at him a number of frank, young expostulations, which really put into friendly shape all that was being said about Langham in his College and in the University. Why was he so self-distrustful, so absurdly diffident of responsibility, so bent on hiding his great ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mimosa—in February! ... New York, reflected Esther, was in the clutch of a blizzard. She could picture it now, with its stark ice-ribbed streets, its towering buildings, a mausoleum of frozen stone and dirty snow. As for flowers—why, even a spray of that mimosa in a frosty florist's window would be absurdly expensive; ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... of his most vigorous essays, Brunetiere joined issue with this little group of French novelists, and told them sharply that they had better consider anew the theatrical practises and prejudices which seemed to them absurdly out-worn, and which they disdained as born of mere chance and surviving only by tradition. He bade them ask themselves if these tricks of the trade, so to style them, were not due to the fact that the dramatist's art is a ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... 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 ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the summits of the most rugged steeps; and when he had frightened them, and made them scamper to his satisfaction (for he never attempted to injure them), he constantly came back wagging his tail, and appearing very happy at those caresses which we, perhaps absurdly, bestowed ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Malayans exposed to the sun by life on the water or in the plain. Their head hair is sometimes nearly straight, usually wavy and occasionally quite curly. These rather unusual characteristics of the Ilongot have led to some absurdly ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... lines that could well be dispensed with. On an imperfect figure it is excusable, when associated with a form of bodice that seems to require to be confined, such as the loosely plaited or gathered bodice sometimes worn. Over a tight bodice the belt has no reason for being, and is absurdly out of place. For this and also sanitary reasons we feel inclined to ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Suffering keenly, absurdly, I sat with hanging head going over and over the problem, trying to formulate an easy way of letting them know my predicament. There was but one way of escape—and I took it. As the woman stepped out of the room ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... carried his mind to the subject of miracles, apparitions, ghosts, and mathematical impossibilities such as squaring the circle and doubling the cube—and to his amazement he found that the impossible of yesterday had become the possible—nay, the almost absurdly obvious of to-night. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... a layman's best, they always get quenched by the cold water of the Rigby element. It is hard for boys to feel the reality of what is treated with such business-like indifference, and set forth so feebly, not to say absurdly." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... got wet, scratched, and plastered with mire all over our nether garments. Fyne fell suddenly into a strange cavity—probably a disused lime-kiln. His voice uplifted in grave distress sounded more than usually rich, solemn and profound. This was the comic relief of an absurdly dramatic situation. While hauling him out I permitted myself to laugh aloud at ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Scots, who slowly retreated, till they were entangled between the Esk and a morass, and lost their formation and their artillery, with 1200 men: a few were slain, most were drowned or were taken prisoners. The raid was no secret of the king and the priests, as Knox absurdly states; nobles of the Reforming no less than of the Catholic party were engaged; the English had full warning and a force of 3000 men, not of 400 farmers; the Scots were beaten through their own ignorance of the ground in which they had been burning and plundering. As to ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... in the door—a stubby, grossly stout man, thin-legged, thick-necked, all body and beard: clad below in tight trousers, falling loose, however, over the boots; swathed above in an absurdly inadequate pea-jacket, short in the sleeves and buttoned tight over a monstrous paunch, which laboured (and that right sturdily) to burst the bonds of its confinement, but succeeded only in creating a vast confusion of wrinkles. His attitude was that of a man for the moment amazed beyond utterance: ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... had in James Binnie!" cries the little civilian with his most comical face. "But that is not the question. My opinion, Colonel, is, that young Scapegrace will give you a deal of trouble; or would, only you are so absurdly proud of him that you think everything he does is perfaction. He'll spend your money for you: he'll do as little work as need be. He'll get into scrapes with the sax. He's almost as simple as his father, and that is to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... carried them with him. Since all his life he had loved to play a deceiver's part and played it with varying luck, now he was condemned to play through to a desperately sad end with his harlequin-like manners. He played miserably and absurdly enough—but at least the role corresponded to himself, and the former poseur now for the first time came on the stage without his mask, not to his advantage. The realization of the infinite and the eternal, the longing for the inexpressible, innate in this soul as in others but neglected ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Silvaplana to Sils-Maria another quarter of an hour. Helen had to consult her watch and force herself to admit that the horses were trotting fully seven miles an hour before she realized that distances could be so deceptive. The summit of the lordly Corvatsch seemed to be absurdly near. She judged it within the scope of an easy walk between breakfast and afternoon tea from the hotel on a tree covered peninsula that stretched far out into Lake Sils-Maria, and she wondered why anyone should fall and break his leg during ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... to think that the best in his nature was derived from his mother, who was a most gentle, sensitive and refined spirit. Such a woman married to a man old enough to be her father is not likely to be absurdly happy. This has been said before, but it will bear repeating. Yet disappointment has its compensation, since it drives the mind on to the ideal, and thus is a powerful stimulant for the imagination. Deprive us of our heritage here, and we will conjure forth castles ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... appearance and his taste; the club steward's unmarried sister declared the senora's manners to be rustic and her voice loud; the woman in the carpenter's family would lend no ear to such a scandal because the subject of it was dumpy, shapeless, and dressed absurdly, even for the wife of a stonemason. Howbeit, the little woman was now in grief, for her husband lay in jail awaiting trial on the gravest charge that could be brought against a Cuban,—the charge of treason. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... fancy when I saw you with her," Lady Ruth said slowly. "She is very good-looking—and not so absurdly young." ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which is the gift of walking about on their hind legs in a singularly human fashion. Those in the London Zoological Gardens invariably attract a crowd. They struggle together in a playful way, standing on their hind legs to wrestle. They fall and roll, and bite and hug most absurdly. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... feet. He paced up and down, then halted and began to spout at Aten and the Keeper of Foodstuffs. He gesticulated, fumbling for words, and hunted absurdly for the ones he wanted among his written lists, and finally was drawing excitedly on Aten's black-metal tablet. Smithers got up and looked ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... baby-Tantalus, catching glimpses, over the unveiled shoulder, of the Micawberian fount he cannot reach, stretches his little brown arms, bites, kicks, and squalls,—while a small female apprentice, by way of chorus, in costume and gesture absurdly caricaturing her prima donna, (a sort of Cossitollah marchioness, indeed, for some Dick Swiveller of the Sahibs,) shuffles rheumatically with her feet, or impotently dislocates her slender arms, or pounds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Billy's tongue wouldn't do at all. None of them. What he did say was absurdly stiff and constrained. "You were ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... myself; he made no remark but took me by the hand and led me out on to the landing, and there he found two chairs in the orthodox position. Into one of these he wriggled himself by a backward and upward movement, and I sat in the other. How absurdly easy it is for a grown-up to sit down! I waited for Thomas to make a remark; I might be waiting still, if I had not made a beginning. He looked at me under his eyelashes, and tried not to smile. It was an effort, I could see, and I could tell just where the dimples would come. When ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... time was granted me, and I spent some hours with pleasure there. It is an absurd little gallery, absurdly imitating the Louvre, with just such compartments and pillars as you see in the noble Paris gallery; only here the pillars and capitals are stucco and white in place of marble and gold, and plaster-of-paris busts of great Belgians are placed ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... another man. But, bless your soul! she'd hardly got into second mourning before she began to pursue Mr. McFadden, and got him. Now, look at it. One woman, no better'n I am, has had the property of eight women and a half, and here I am single and getting on in life, with the chances growing absurdly small. No civilized country ought to tolerate such a thing. It's worse than piracy. You may scuttle a ship or blow her up or run her against the rocks, and no great harm is done, because timber's plenty ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... religion. No woman ought to separate the two—love of God, love of husband in God. Sooner or later, all women learn it. Then the mornings are naturally occupied with the house and the children. They have Miss Meadows; but she is young and absurdly inconsequent. I don't see how you can expect a girl in her teens to work miracles. In fact, I don't want her to, and am at hand to see ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... you. Remember you could, if you chose, say some unpleasant things about me, and I don't want that any more than you do just now. But, you see, whilst I hold in my power what would, if necessary, effectually ruin you, and probably Bellamy too—for this country society is absurdly prejudiced—I have little cause for fear. Perhaps in the future you may be able to render me some service for which you shall have the letters—who knows? You see I am perfectly frank with you, for the simple reason that I know that it is useless ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... had been brilliantly sure of it—Oliver had only to finish his novel that was so much better already than any novel Nancy had ever read—sell a number of copies of it that seemed absurdly small in proportion to the population of America—and then they could live where they pleased and Oliver could compose Great Works and Nancy get ahead with her very real and delicate talent for etching instead of having to do fashion-drawings of slinky simperers in Lucile dresses or appetite-arousing ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... rush, owing to the popular notion that the Hajj el-Gumma (pilgrimage of the Friday) is seven times blessed, or even equivalent to making it seven times in ordinary years. As any beggar in the street could tell a man this, it may give you some notion of how absurdly people make theories out of nothing for want of a ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... strong enough to be risky," said Mr Frewen; and he signed to me to go with him to his cabin, where he opened his medicine-chest, and after a little thought, carefully weighed out, from a stoppered bottle, an absurdly small portion of a whitish powder and placed it in a square of ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... excitedly, extending the square of doe-skin with its red ink tracings. "It's really absurdly simple," he continued. "According to the captain, the chief talked about leaving me riches of some sort. I took that circumstance for my key and tried to think what a race as poor as the chief and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... pathos. I hate to see anyone disappointed. A person offering flowers in the street for sale, and people not buying them—the men in London showing off little toys by the pavement, which nobody wants—I can't bear that. It makes me feel absurdly wretched to see anyone hoping to please, and not pleasing. And if the people who do it look old and frail and unhappy, I'm capable of buying the whole stock. The great uncomforted! It's silly, of course, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food; and, also, calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... females. Every 43d boy and every 213th girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen has been punished by fine or imprisonment. This does not mean that the Germans are criminal or disorderly, but, on the contrary, it shows how absurdly petty are the violations of the law punished by fine ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... to get a cab, I asked her a few questions. Her answers showed that she was suffering from some terrible nervous excitement. She asked me if I knew any baronet—any from Hampshire—and seemed almost absurdly relieved when I assured her I did not. In the course of our conversation, as we walked towards St. John's Wood, I discovered a curious circumstance. She knew Limmeridge ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... extraordinary a nature; one so unlikely, under the circumstances, to have happened; one so calculated to baffle ordinary calculations concerning the course of events, that the reader may well disbelieve what I am going to tell him, and treat it as absurdly improbable. In short, not to keep him in suspense, Gammon positively discovered evidence of the death of Harry Dreddlington in his father's lifetime; by means of just such a looking tombstone as he had long imaged to himself; and as he had resolved that old Quirk should have got prepared, before ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... said I, he says one thing and means another, then I never shall understand what he means, but he speaks plainly enough for me to see what he says. And if what he says is that luxurious men are not to be blamed if they are wise men, he talks absurdly; just as if he were to say that parricides are not to be found fault with if they are not covetous, and if they fear neither gods, nor death, nor pain. And yet, what is the object of making any exception as ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Johannesburg. Moreover, when the revolt at Johannesburg was postponed, on account of a disagreement as to which flag they were to rise under, it appears that Jameson (with or without the orders of Rhodes) forced the hand of the conspirators by invading the country with a force absurdly inadequate to the work which he had taken in hand. Five hundred policemen and three field guns made up the forlorn hope who started from near Mafeking and crossed the Transvaal border upon December 29th, 1895. On January 2nd they ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rather amiable, it would have been absurdly droll. His wife at once withdrew her touch; but it was plain she had to exert some force. Thereupon the young man coloured and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it ceased suddenly. For the door was thrown open with such violence that it made Jane Cody's wax flowers shake apprehensively under their glass bell, and a figure stalked out such as might haunt a dream—long, gaunt, awkward, inescapably boyish, yet absurdly feminine, now that the dark calico wrapper flapped at its big, awkward heels and bound and ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... visit to the Cottage (sometimes one, and sometimes the other; he never indulged himself so far as to go every week), and it gave him happiness enough to tide over all the dull moments between: and if anything came in his way and detained him even from his usual to a later train, he was ridiculously, absurdly angry. What right had he to feel so in respect to another man's wife? What right had he to watch the child—the child whom he disliked so much to begin with—developing its baby faculties with an interest he was half ashamed of, but which went on increasing? Another man's ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Robert Morris ventured to say in the Assembly of Pennsylvania, that America had not as yet produced a good poet. Great surprise and indignation, when this speech reached the eyes of the Connecticut men! Morris might understand banking, but in taste he was absurdly deficient. No poets! What did he call John Trumbull of Hartford, and Joel Barlow, author of "The Vision of Columbus"? "We appeal to the bar of taste, whether the writings of the poets now living in Connecticut are not equal to anything which the present ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... and looked 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, ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... hitherto had little appreciation for much beyond money-making, and no doubt they were merely taking a passing glimpse at the ruins; the man on some money-making quest, and the girls just to be able to say they had seen them. His eyes rested on the temple wall, and he felt suddenly absurdly resentful that these rich pleasure-seekers should come even there to gape and stare. He had grown to love the ruins dearly, until that moment he had scarcely known how dearly, and to him it seemed for the moment like ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... dear?—good for what?" said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... hearts. It was a delicious day, and the early freshness had not yet dried out of the air, when they were walking home to breakfast. Each girl had slipped a hand under his arm. 'It's like Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel thought absurdly Memory had complete hold of her. All the old days! Nursery hours on Sundays after tea, stories out of the huge Bible bound in mother-o'pearl, with photogravures of the Holy Land—palms, and hills, and goats, and little Eastern ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... didn't speak, he didn't budge. He just sat there, holding his handsome old head up, immovable, and almost bigger than life. It was extremely fine. Mr. Stonor's presence reduced poor old Jermyn to a mere shabby wisp of a man, and made the talkative stranger in tweeds on the hearthrug look absurdly boyish. The latter must have been a few years over thirty, and was certainly not the sort of individual that gets abashed at the sound of his own voice, because gathering me in, as it were, by a friendly glance, he kept it going ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... indeed, do I see why a man should lose his temper while he does all he can to refute an opponent. I think ridicule may be fairly used against an infidel; for instance, if he be an ugly fellow, and yet absurdly vain of his person[1295], we may contrast his appearance with Cicero's beautiful image of Virtue, could she be seen[1296]. Johnson coincided with me and said, 'When a man voluntarily engages in an important controversy, he is to do all he can to lessen ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... idea that heavenly magic attends completely to these matters. It is earthly wisdom and unselfishness and good intent that are needed in this as in all the great decisions of life. Hence, there can be nothing more absurdly out of drawing with a rationalized civilization than any law which forbids the serious discussion of this most vital of social questions or one that forbids the full dissemination of scientific knowledge needed by those who would ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... people who labour in the abominable quarters of the town would be absurdly insignificant in comparison with what these men might do. The vulgar influence of half-taught revolutionists, social and religious, might be counteracted; an incalculable change for good might be made ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the ministry in the career of terrorism and oppression upon which they had entered. Looking back upon these trials, at this distance of time, one cannot but feel a conviction that the fears of the Government and the nation were absurdly exaggerated. The foundations of English society and British institutions were too firmly fixed to be easily shaken, even when the whole continent of Europe was convulsed from one end to the other. But the London Corresponding Society still continued its efforts, till its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that the Indian has been absurdly pampered by the Government, and that it would be as sensible to try to change the arrangement of seasons as to attempt to prevent the survival of the fittest, or, in other words, to interfere with the gradual, but in their opinion ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Man ever attain to understand and find his proper place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus? His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither see this world in the dark, nor glimpse any of the scores of ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... sandy hair dragged the hose under the nose of the plane to take it to the other wing tank. Close by the nose wheel he slipped and steadied himself by the shaft which reaches down to the wheel's hub. His position for a moment was absurdly ungraceful. When he straightened up, his arm slid into the wheel well. But he dragged the hose the rest of the way and passed it on up. Then that tank was full and capped. The refueling crew got down to the ground and fed the hose back to the pit which devoured it. That was ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... necessary service, that the profession is 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 the people an exalted conception of the sleuth. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... a sordid, narrow-minded, and somewhat arrogant man; bustling rather than active; prone to meddle with matters of which he was profoundly ignorant, and absurdly unwilling to have ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Saxo, even covered with beetles, bookworms, mould, and dust. So stubbornly had all the owners locked it away." A worthy prior, in compassion offered to get a copy and transcribe it with his own hand, but Christian, in respect for the prior's rank, absurdly declined. At last Birger, the Archbishop of Lund, by some strategy, got a copy, which King Christian the Second allowed to be taken to Paris on condition of its being wrought at "by an instructed and skilled graver (printer)." Such ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... apparatus, and points rather to the latter when automatism is desired. In the early days of the industry it would have been impossible to speak so favourably of automatic carbide-to-water generators, for they were at first constructed with absurdly complicated and unreliable mechanism; but now various carbide-feed gears have been devised which seem to be trustworthy even when carbide not in cartridge ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... even remark upon it. Now James's little weakness, or one of them, let us say, was that he could not resist a cutting phrase, when the thing did not matter. Therefore—she reasoned—Francis Lingen, absurdly enough, did matter. That he should, that anything of the sort should matter to James was one more sign to her of the promise, just as the weather was one. The Spring was at hand, and soon we should all ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... he will often show at disadvantage, and seem ignorant and stupid, from seeing more and knowing more, and having a clearer perception of things than another has. I recollect once hearing such a young man, in the course of an examination, asked very absurdly what 'his opinion' was of Lord Chatham. Well, this was like asking him his view of 'things in general.' The poor youth stuck, and looked like a fool, though it was not he. The examiner, blind to his own absurdity, went on to ask him 'what were the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... say that I should have known you," answered the storekeeper. They were all absurdly silent, thinking of nothing to say and admiring the boy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... spark of your soul a perpetual process. On the apex of your personality, spirit ever gazes upon Spirit, melts and merges in it: from and by this encounter its life arises and is sustained. But you have been busy from your childhood with other matters. All the urgent affairs of "life," as you absurdly called it, have monopolised your field of consciousness. Thus all the important events of your real life, physical and spiritual—the mysterious perpetual growth of you, the knitting up of fresh bits of the universe into the unstable body which you confuse with yourself, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... he had been spoiled. The girl's bearing hurt him absurdly, and a little of the hurt may have betrayed itself in his face as he turned away, for she came toward him with a swift ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... from a pair of absurdly tiny brocaded shoes past slender white ankles to the embroidered edge of a wonderful mandarin robe decorated with the figures of peacocks; upward again to a little bejewelled hand which held the robe confined ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... him, and if you can manage to get past the Three Bears, you will find the rest as ABSURDly easy as A.B.C. and probably meet many ...
— Mother Hubbard Picture Book - Mother Hubbard, The Three Bears, & The Absurd A, B, C. • Walter Crane
... exercise a humane influence. Among the natives exists a domestic slavery so cruel and barbarous that the lot of the American plantation Negro seemed paradise in comparison. Life and limb are held of such small value that severe mutilation is the penalty of absurdly slight transgressions, or is imposed at the arbitrary displeasure of the master, while more serious offenses are punished by death in atrocious form: as when the victim is buried alive with stakes driven through his quivering body.[16] The institution is of course a difficult one ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... little squirrel showed his bushy tail, bang! went the old "king's arm," and the feathers or the fur were set flying like so much chaff. Now that same old man,—the mortal that was called by his name and has passed for the same person for some scores of years,—is considered absurdly sentimental by kind-hearted women, because he opens the fly-trap and sets all its captives free,—out-of-doors, of course, but the dear souls all insisting, meanwhile, that the flies will, every one of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of a girl whom he had loved at a garden called Vauxhall, and, for my own part, I spoke to him of little Coralie, of the Opera. He took a lock of hair from his bosom, and I a garter. Then we nearly quarrelled over hussar and dragoon, for he was absurdly proud of his regiment, and you should have seen him curl his lip and clap his hand to his hilt when I said that I hoped it might never be its misfortune to come in the way of the Third. Finally, he began to speak about what the ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flowing sash. My wonderful dress, in which I had taken so much satisfaction, gave me the most trouble. I was suddenly paralyzed by a conviction that it was too short, and it seemed to me I stood on absurdly long legs. And ten thousand people were looking up at me. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... 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 Rank, because he ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... dubious and wildering track struck out by those innovators and visionaries who absurdly endeavor to teach modern English, by rejecting the authority and sanction of custom, and by conducting the learner back to the original combinations, and the detached, disjointed, and barbarous constructions of our ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... gates; I would take some book with me—Keidanov's Course, for instance—but I rarely looked into it, and more often than anything declaimed verses aloud; I knew a great deal of poetry by heart; my blood was in a ferment and my heart ached—so sweetly and absurdly; I was all hope and anticipation, was a little frightened of something, and full of wonder at everything, and was on the tiptoe of expectation; my imagination played continually, fluttering rapidly about the same fancies, like martins about a bell-tower ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... discontented till he is a man; every attainment and every possession pails as soon as it is reached, and we still sigh for something that we have not. It is simply in analogy with all this that the Christian and every other religion says (absurdly, if you will, but certainly with a deeper knowledge of human nature than you), that, as every little present has its little future for which we live, so the whole present of this life has its great future, which must, all the way through, be made the supreme object of forethought and solicitude; ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... of bacon, there were sodden biscuits and a broken-nosed pitcher holding molasses. A cup of roiled coffee stood ready poured beside each plate, and that was the breakfast upon which Joe cast his curious eyes. It seemed absurdly inadequate to the needs of two strong men, accustomed as Joe was to four eggs at a meal, with the stays of life which ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... dislodge and of the rough love these men showed of a liberty including license, they would huddle in their storied buildings, crowd in their trammelled streets, work and worry in their little offices absurdly, harmfully to the rights of proper men. Like other mountaineers Joe had small realization of the advantages of easy interchange of thought and the quick commerce which come with aggregation. He thought ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... have found considerable amusement in looking over the artists who are usually employed in copying or studying from the celebrated pictures in the different galleries; but I have been taught discretion on such occasions by a ridiculous incident which occurred the other day, as absurdly comic as it was unlucky and vexatious. A friend of mine observing an artist at work in the Pitti palace, whom, by his total silence and inattention to all around, she supposed to be a native Italian who did not understand a word of English, went up to him, and peeping ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... commission from God: in his infallible statutes, having fixed standing rules of vocation to the ministry, by the mediation of men, God gives us no command, no encouragement, to hope for an immediate call, till the end of time. Absurdly then we allow any to have such a call, till we see the signs of an apostle wrought in him. It is not sufficient he be sound in his doctrine, exemplarily holy in his life, active in his labors, disinterested in his ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... the revolution of 1848 at Dresden, and Liszt produced the work at Weimar in 1850. From that time forward Liszt was the mouthpiece of the new school, or rather he was a sort of godfather to it, ministering to Wagner's impecuniousness often and again out of resources which were absurdly small when we consider the rank of genius which the salary covered. Liszt's salary at Weimar ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... than to make the legerdemain of human speech, and the clever shuffling of the black spots in the human heart, the first study of our politic youth. Again, the Ethics of Aristotle, though containing some shrewd talk, interesting for an old reader, are yet so absurdly illogical and sophistical, that if a young man has once read them with any faith, it must take years before he recovers from the induced confusions of thought and false habits of argument. If there were the slightest dexterity or ingenuity in maintaining the false theory, there might ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Puttick and Simpson's and Hodgson's, is without any manner of doubt, but not to any extent worth mentioning. Where the system is in vogue is at sales held in private houses, and at auction-rooms where books are not generally sold. At such places books are usually knocked down at absurdly low figures, until the private person steps in, when the prices begin to go up with a bound; they then realize oftentimes figures far above those at which they may be acquired at the shops. After the private bidder ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... development cut off entirely from all social intercourse with the remainder of our planet, and turned upon itself, like the German philosopher, to evolve its own plants and animals out of its own inner consciousness. The natural consequence was that progress in Australia has been absurdly slow, and that the country as a whole has fallen most woefully behind the times in all matters pertaining to the existence of life upon its surface. Everybody knows that Australia as a whole is a very peculiar and original ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... with excellent comedy, the portrait of Sara Cavendish would not have been unworthy of Thackeray. The selfishness concealed by her demure exterior and great beauty, and the absurdly excessive estimate of her virtues made by the Reverend Francis Lydiat, are a warning to all susceptible young men. Lydiat was a passenger by the ship which carried Sara and her parents to Australia. When he gave his weekly sermons during ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... gathered herself together, and hobbled back to her own quarter of the dingy house, leaving Mr. Froud to bemoan the absurdly easy terms he had made with ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... eighteenth century, and are mainly, if not wholly, the production of one mind.' And this one mind, he thinks, was probably that of Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw, the acknowledged forger of the ballad Hardyknute, which deceived so many. Chambers, of course, was absurdly mistaken. ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... 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 words ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... his master's leg below the knee, the worthy Grandchamp was about to hold forth in praise of lead as absurdly as he had in praise of the horse, when he was forced, as well as Cinq-Mars, to hear a warm and clamorous dispute among some Swiss soldiers who had remained behind the other troops. They were talking ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... began again suddenly, starting out of reverie, 'really are absurdly blind; and just a little bit absurdly kindly stupid. How many times have I been at the point of laughing out at my brother's delicious naive subtleties. But you do, you will, understand, Mr Lawford, that he was, that we are both "doing our best"—to ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... utterly base. Could anything be more inconsistent than to let his joy at the prospect of his brother's recovery be clouded, because the result was not wholly due to himself? Could anything be more absurdly foolish than to conceive a dislike for a woman whom Greif must marry to be saved from ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... detail of soldiers trundling a breadwagon by a rope, Stewart stood on the pavement and dodged verbal brickbats of Viennese idioms and German epithets. He drew his chin into the up-turned collar of his overcoat and waited, an absurdly patient figure, until the hail of consonants had subsided into a rain of tears. Then he took the girl's elbow again and led her, childishly weeping, into a narrow side street beyond the prying ears and ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... quantity and kinds of work to be done, and when these estimates were published by the commissioners, the favoured contractor, learning through collusion what materials would actually be required, bid absurdly low prices for some and unreasonably high rates for others. After the contract was let, changes made in accordance with the previous secret understanding required only the higher priced materials. Thus the contractor secured the work without ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the care and attention of Haven had got removed, he expressed high delight, but he soon became dissatisfied with the clean plain clothing in which he was dressed; boys of any rank at that time being absurdly decorated with ruffles and lace, and such like trumpery; and as if human folly had wished to caricature its own ridiculous extravagance, some of the children were even introduced into company with ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of Gabriel. The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... coming. The young girl turned a shy, blushing face toward him, and her cheeks, mantling under the full rays of the lamp, rendered the exquisite purity of her complexion all the more apparent. He also began to feel that he was flushing absurdly, but he carried it off with ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... there any one, knowing anything of the facts of life, who will censure me when I admit that I—with deliberation—simply tided him over, did not make for him and present to him a fortune? What chance should I have had, if I had been so absurdly generous to a man who deserved nothing but punishment for his selfish and bigoted mode of life? I took away his worst burdens; but I left him more than he could carry without my help. And it was not until he had appealed, in vain to all his social friends to relieve him of the necessity ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... of view. A fire was opened upon him at long range so soon as he was discovered, and at the same time the sergeant-major of his regiment and an equerry of Prince Maurice started in pursuit, determined to bring him off if possible, before his life had been thus absurdly sacrificed. Fortunately for him they came to the rescue in time, pulled him from his horse, and succeeded in bringing him away unharmed. The sergeant-major, however, Sinisky by name, while thus occupied in preserving the count's life, was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... instinct is supposed to be, the powers possessed by savage races to find their way across a trackless and previously unknown wilderness. Let us take first the case of the infant's sucking. It is sometimes absurdly stated that the new-born infant "seeks the breast," and this is held to be a wonderful proof of instinct. No doubt it would be if true, but unfortunately for the theory it is totally false, as every nurse and medical man can testify. ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the Eastern States; and this time he got as far as San Francisco. I have before me a letter which I received a few days after his arrival, from which I venture to give an extract: "You know, my dear boy, that I have always believed that gambling, as it is absurdly called, is still in its infancy in California. I have always maintained that a perfect system might be invented, by which the game of poker may be made to yield a certain percentage to the intelligent player. I am not at liberty at present to disclose ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... with the maternal instinct—and as a necessary supplement to it. This instinct is more or less futile in most women because they are more or less ignorant of the realities as to wise and foolish expenditure. But it is found in the most extravagant women no less than in the most absurdly and meanly stingy. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... a meeting of landowners and farmers held at Aghada, in the County Cork. Mr. Fitzgerald, a landowner, attacked the Board for doing unprofitable work. They had, he said, a staff of incompetent officers, who were, moreover, absurdly numerous, there being, he asserted, an officer for every workman in the works at Whitegate. The reply to this attack is obvious enough. If the Board of Works were doing unprofitable work, they could not help it, they ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... don't know that any of us have ever been so absurdly foolish as I have,—throwing away what was of the greatest value in the world for the sake of something that seemed to be precious, just for a moment." It was very difficult, and he already began to feel that the nature of the girl was altered ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... he must be satisfied by his superior. He now wishes Mr. Brien Moon would evince more exactness in holding inquests, and less anxiety for the fees. Mr. Winterflint depends not on his own decisions, where the laws relating to debtors are so absurdly mystical. "Rest here, boy," he says; "I won't be a minute or two,—must do the thing straight." He seeks the presence of that extremely high functionary, the gaoler (high indeed wherever slavery rules), ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... are talking absurdly. Of course I just shamed Mr. Vinston into doing it. I'd like to come ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... this is most curious— most absurdly whimsical. Five-and-a-quarter! No one would think it to look at me! RUTH: You are glad now, I'll be bound, that you spared us. You would never have forgiven yourself when you discovered that you had killed two of your comrades. FREDERIC: My comrades? KING: (rises) ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Universelle, 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 was ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Warwick, and most of our numerous race-grounds and race-towns, are scenes of destructive and universal gambling among the lower orders, which our absurdly lax police never attempt to suppress; and yet, without the slightest approach to an improperly harsh interference with the pleasures of the people, the Roulette and E.O. tables, which plunder the peasantry at these places for the benefit of travelling sharpers (certainly equally respectable ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... 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 Poitiers. Then, after ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... my good. And indeed, I have seen him but this once," she added, as she threw herself upon the bed, "and now I think of it, I consider him very bold to dare to speak to me. I am almost inclined to laugh at him. How confidently he brought out his nonsense, how absurdly he rolled his eyes! They are really very fine, those eyes of his, and so is his mouth, and his forehead and his hair. He does not suspect that I noticed his hands, which are really very white, when he raised them to heaven, like a madman, as he walked up and down by the sea. Come, come, is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
