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More "Absurdity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circumstances. Because quality and sensation can not be put indiscriminately one for the other, it is supposed that they can not both signify the same thing, namely, the impression or feeling with which we are affected through our senses by the presence of an object; though there is at least no absurdity in supposing that this identical impression or feeling may be called a sensation when considered merely in itself, and a quality when looked at in relation to any one of the numerous objects, the presence of which to our organs excites in our minds that among ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... have only to study the facts of the case, and all these artificial clouds will roll away at once. We have an evil heredity behind us in this matter, for we have inherited all kinds of funereal horrors from our forefathers, and so we are used to them, and we do not see the absurdity and the monstrosity of them. The ancients were in this respect wiser than we, for they did not associate all this phantasmagoria of gloom with the death of the body—partly perhaps because they had a much more rational method of disposing ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... Spanish and answered the questions with the plain intention of making no one laugh. This disgusted everybody, the expected absurdity did not materialize, no one could laugh, and the good friar never pardoned him for having defrauded the hopes of the class and disappointed his own prophecies. But who would expect anything worth while to come from a head so badly combed and placed on ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... and how much form and manners must be sacrificed to efficiency of business. The judge who said that he did not hear the constant objections of the lawyer because he made his objections sitting down was not so much an adherent of good form as a protestor against the absurdity of professional objections. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... the absurdity of these dreams, and wished to keep his heart free from them, he left the next day for Campvallon. After enjoying for seven or eight hours all the comforts and luxuries the Western line is reputed to afford ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... bullets, which appeared to him to come from behind. The Germans declared to him that the inhabitants had fired on them. He protested, and offered to go around the town with them in order to prove the absurdity of this allegation. His proposal was accepted, and as at the beginning of the circuit they came across in the street the body of M. Crombez, the officer commanding the escort said to M. Keller, "You see this body. It is ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... Yet all this crude absurdity, 'from the courtier to the carter,' was the glass reflecting the constantly increasing sea-borne trade, ever pushing farther afield under the stimulus and protection of the sea-dogs. And the Queen took precious good care ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... is the critical. It has been said that an author cannot be at once a first-class critic and a first-class creative artist. To which absurdity I reply: What about William Dean Howells? And what about Henry James, to name no other names? Anyhow, if Swinnerton excels in fiction he also excels in literary criticism. The fact that the literary editor of the Manchester Guardian wrote and asked him to write literary criticism ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... absurdity than the attempt to demonstrate anything from historical evidence, or to frame from it an argument whose cogency shall even approach to a demonstration. Granting the hypothesis that like causes will always produce like effects, we find ourselves unable to show that ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other—he did not necessarily conceive what—would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... not easy for us to understand how such a farrago of absurdity, profanity, and indecency could ever have been gravely produced in a so-called court of justice in England as a state paper—a bill of indictment against a body of noblemen and gentlemen; against an order that for two hundred years had been the right arm of the Church and the defender ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... authorities have evidently been imposed upon by false representations as to the character and status of these gentlemen. I hear that the United States Consul demanded their imprisonment under some extradition treaty. The absurdity of such a claim will of course be apparent to you. We are recognised belligerents; our acts of war are legal therefore, so far as all neutrals are concerned, and it cannot be pretended that any officer ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... not have been prudent to let you suspect that Mademoiselle Madeleine was aware of your sojourn in the metropolis. But, when the postmark induced Maurice to start for Dresden, I saw what a fool I had been. It was just like me to commit some absurdity,—I always do! I could not dissuade Maurice from going to Dresden; but Mademoiselle Madeleine wrote a note which I enclosed to my friend, and desired to have it left at the hotel where Maurice ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... great weight to the guesses of native bonethrowers. It is strange sometimes when a Malay charmer is prosecuted for imposing on the public to find Dutch witnesses giving evidence of the healing powers possessed by the accused and emphasizing the absurdity of prosecuting a man who benefited them and their relatives more than many a certificated ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... undoubtedly fulfilled in the case on hand. It cannot, therefore be denied, that, in spite of this difference, in spite also of the absurdity of one article of the creed ascribed to him, Vardhamana Jnatiputra, the founder of the Nirgrantha—or Jaina community is none other than Buddha's rival. From Buddhist accounts in their canonical works as well as in other books, ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... Dr. Owen Pugh has, in his Dictionary, by arbitrarily selecting certain syllables as the roots of all Cumrian words, done much to foster this overweening conceit. The system was carried to its extreme point of absurdity by the Rev. Edward Davies, who by the help of such syllables expected to unravel the mysteries of all languages. This failure has I hope paved the way for the more sober consideration of the question, which, if worked out fairly, will in my opinion establish the claim of the Cumrian ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... second an usher to the third, and so on through the whole. But why the story of the Dutchman and the owl should remind me of another, in which an old negro and a bellicose ram were the actors, is a matter I do not pretend to understand, unless it be the extreme absurdity of both. A gentleman of my acquaintance long ago (he was a middle-aged man when I was a small boy. He was an upright and a good man. He has gone to his rest, and sleeps in an honored grave, having upon the simple stone above ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... horizontal beam, and thus rendering the arch a subordinate, if not altogether a superfluous, feature. The type of this arrangement has been given already at c, Fig. XXXVI., p. 145, Vol. I.: and I might insist at length upon the absurdity of a construction in which the shorter shaft, which has the real weight of wall to carry, is split into two by the taller one, which has nothing to carry at all,—that taller one being strengthened, nevertheless, as if the whole weight of the building bore upon it; and on the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... conditions seem to me to want mending; but that, I humbly think, is God's matter, and not mine. The world is slowly broadening and improving, I believe. In these days, when we shoot our enemies and then nurse them, we are coming, I believe, to see even the gigantic absurdity of war; but all that side of it is too big for me. I am no philosopher! What I believe we ought to do is to be patient, kind, and courageous in a corner. Now, I will give you an instance. I had a friend who was a good, hard-working clergyman; a brave, genial, courageous creature; ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... easier—you have asserted in round terms that no work was ever written in favor of Slavery. What an absurdity! If you have any information you must know that the southern press groans with publications upon ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... him; the key to the comparative sanity, toleration and modern efficiency of many of his departures; the key to the comparative coarseness, earthiness, cynicism, and lack of sympathy in many others. He was the reverse of an idealist; and he cannot without absurdity be held up as an ideal; but he was, like most of the squires, a type genuinely English; not without public spirit, certainly not without patriotism. His seizure of personal power, which destroyed an impersonal and ideal ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... speak, he only made it secondary to other pursuits. The love of universal knowledge that filled his mind, would not allow him to neglect one branch of science, of which neither he nor the world could yet see the absurdity. He made ample amends for his time lost in this pursuit by his knowledge in physics and his acquaintance with astronomy. The telescope, burning-glasses, and gunpowder, are discoveries which may well carry his fame to the remotest time, and make the world blind to the one spot of folly—the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... never tells me exactly, but he did speak once about the absurdity of the excess-profits tax. You see, jam is a ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... more seconds—say, three steps—they went up like conspirators, trying to move silently and holding to the rail; then the absurdity of the situation appealed to both, and without a word said each stepped forward like a man, so that the ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... source from whence many of our later novelists draw several of their writings: they offer a field for reflection to the contemplative observer of man; and those of Germany, although some are disfigured with a little too much absurdity in their details, are confessedly a mine of wealth to the lover of research in such matters. Here Schiller first drew the sources of his inspiration; here Goethe first electrified mankind with his writings—works which will render both immortal; it is, indeed, a mine which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... expressly debarred themselves from interfering, under whatever circumstances, with its internal administration. The position of the Turkish representative at the Conference was in fact the only logical one. In the Treaty of Paris the Powers had elaborately pledged themselves to an absurdity; and this Treaty the Turk was never weary of throwing in their faces. But the situation was not one for lawyers and for the interpretation of documents. The Conference, after hearing the arguments and the counter-projects ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... and possession saves us from the absurdity of supposing that we do not know what we know, because we may know in one sense, i.e. possess, what we do not know in another, i.e. use. But have we not escaped one difficulty only to encounter a greater? For ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... Luxmore sat in lazy dignity in the communion-chair, apparently satisfied that as things always had been so they would continue to be; that despite the unheard-of absurdity of a contested election, his pocket-borough was quite secure. It must have been, to say the least, a great surprise to his lordship, when, the poll being closed, its result was found thus: Out of the fifteen votes, six were for ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... shamefully, yet (if they have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado. Certainly to men of great judgment, bold persons are a sport to behold; nay, and to the vulgar also, boldness has somewhat of the ridiculous. For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity. Especially it is a sport to see, when a bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... factor in the marvellous, because in it the agents are not visibly before one. The scene of the pursuit of Hector would be ridiculous on the stage—the Greeks halting instead of pursuing him, and Achilles shaking his head to stop them; but in the poem the absurdity is overlooked. The marvellous, however, is a cause of pleasure, as is shown by the fact that we all tell a story with additions, in the belief that we are ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... employed, who have engaged all the coaches, fiddlers, and sweethearts in the town, it is then that Jack is put to his wits'-end; and it is only by buying cocked-hats and top-boots for the boat's-crew, or some such absurdity, that he can get all his cash scattered before he is obliged to return on board. This is a picture of a sailor ashore, but a sailor aground is a different being altogether. An unlucky shot may deprive him of a leg or arm; he may be frost-nipped at the pole, or get a coup de soleil ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... race like the Alexandrians it had long seemed an absurdity to try to purchase the favor of the god; by blood-offerings. Many philosophical sects, and especially the Pythagoreans, had forbidden such sacrifices, and had enjoined the bringing of offerings not to purchase good fortune, but only to honor the gods; and now they saw the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Public Executions are not intended for the benefit of those dregs of society who habitually attend them. This is an absurdity, to which the obvious answer is, So much the worse. If they be not considered with reference to that class of persons, comprehending a great host of criminals in various stages of development, they ought to be, and must be. To lose sight of that consideration is to be ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... the end of the Victorian era had attempted to become realistic—had attempted, that is, the absurdly impossible; and photography exposed the absurdity, For no man can be truly a realist, since it is literally impossible to paint or to describe all that the eye sees. When photography became general, this began to be understood; since it was soon seen that the only photographer who ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... north succeeded in establishing himself upon the Dragon Throne. He set to work to induce Chinese men to wear pigtails and Chinese women to have big feet. After a time a statesmanlike compromise was arranged: pigtails were adopted but big feet were rejected; the new absurdity was accepted and the old one retained. This characteristic compromise shows how much England ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... this Miss Shirley felt Verrian's irony, which he had guarded from any expression with genuine compassion for her. She must feel that to his knowledge of life she and her experiment had an absurdity which would not pass, whatever their success might be. If she meant business, and business only, they ought to have met as two men would have met, but he knew that they had not done so, and she must have known it. All that was plain sailing enough, but beyond this lay a sea of conjecture ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fact, he had a father and mother. It was themselves he could not recollect. How about his schooldays? No, that was a blank. He could not even remember having been flogged. Yet the idea of school was not unfamiliar; how, otherwise, could he laugh as he did at the absurdity of forgetting all about it, especially being flogged? But his brothers, his sisters, how could he forget them? He did, although in their case, as in that of his parents, he somehow knew that some ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... of Scythia, who, for their foul and deadly practices, had been driven from society, had copulated in the desert with infernal spirits; and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable conjunction. The tale, so full of horror and absurdity, was greedily embraced by the credulous hatred of the Goths; but, while it gratified their hatred, it increased their fear, since the posterity of daemons and witches might be supposed to inherit some share ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "all deeps, fire, and hail, snow, and vapour, and stormy wind," are "fulfilling God's word" (which information we are bound to receive as a matter of faith if we be Christians, and as a matter of necessity if we be men of common sense, because it is mere absurdity to suppose that the "stormy winds," etcetera, are not fulfilling God's word—or will), we now know, to a great extent from practical experience and scientific investigation, that the winds blow ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dead, and the living claim our thoughts," sighed the king. "What an absurd thing is the human heart! It will never grow cold or old; always pretending to a spark of the fire which that shameful fellow Prometheus stole from the gods. What an absurdity! What have I, an old fellow, to do with the fire of Prometheus, when the fire of war will soon rage around me," At this instant the door gently opened. "What do you want, Muller? What do you poke your stupid face in here for?" ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... they may be shown. The simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel our belief of the whole thing taken away. There is visibly no possibility of that group even having existed, in any place, or on any occasion. It is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads of ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... They could have nothing to fear from interruptions, in this lonely neighborhood; and as for these four half-grown boys putting up a successful fight against two such hardened characters as they were, was an absurdity that they did not allow to make ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... keep in the fashion. Now they are for the most part as carelessly dressed as a busy business man or a clever young student might have been. They are none the less pretty for that, and far more beautiful. But the fashions have floated away to absurdity. Every now and then through the austere bustle of London in war time drifts a last practitioner of the "eternal feminine"—with the air of a foreign visitor, with the air of devotion to some peculiar cult. She has very high-heeled boots; she shows a leg, she has a ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... might wear a white vest, but not a buff or a figured one. Sumner preferred a buff vest, and insisted on wearing it. When he was reprimanded for doing so he defended his course vigorously, and exposed the absurdity of the regulation in such plain terms that the faculty concluded to let him alone for the future. [Footnote: In 1860 he still continued to wear a buff vest in summer weather.] He was exceedingly fond ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... advances of Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt with less reserve than it was usual to her to manifest to entire strangers. Instead of remaining a mere listener, she answered several remarks of the first, and once or twice she even laughed with him openly at some absurdity of the committee of five. The cautious governess wondered, but half disposed to fancy that there was no more than the necessary freedom of a ship in it all,—for, like a true Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Viefville had very vague notions of the secrets of the mighty deep—she permitted it to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... foundations. One man cannot sign away the faculty of reason in another; much less can one or two individuals do this for a whole people. Therefore the contract was void, both from its injustice and its absurdity; and the party, with whom it was made, must have known it to be so. It could not then but be expected by many that the government would reject it. Moreover, extraordinary outrages against reason and virtue demand ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in their way, but realities and not dreams, after all, were things he must live with. Looking ahead he saw his future stretching smooth and firm, like the flat white turnpike that dragged its solid length into the distance. On that road there was no place for the absurdity of red stockings! And so, in the absence of all elation, only the grim sense of duty in the doing soothed him as he made his ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... affair, for her mother was a genuine power, commanding by turns genuine love and genuine hate, and always, till then, obedience and the respect of reason. It was her father who appeared tragically ridiculous; and, in turn, the whole movement against her grew grotesque in its absurdity. Here was this antique wreck, helpless, useless, powerless—merely pathetic —actually thinking that he had only to mumble in order to make her 'understand'! He knew nothing; he perceived nothing; he was a ferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, out of touch ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... have had paragraphs about Martian canals a hundred miles, or even hundreds of miles, wide! Scientific men have also similarly exaggerated, and made remarks about the absurdity of the supposition ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... weaknesses Malcolm owed to his Celtic blood was an utter impatience of rudeness. In his own nature entirely courteous, he was wrathful even to absurdity at the slightest suspicion of insult. But that, in part through the influence of Mr Graham, the schoolmaster, he had learned to keep a firm hold on the reins of action, this foolish feeling would not unfrequently ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... said. This—certainly looks odd, doesn't it? It can't be a series of coincidences! There must be something back of it, all. But—but what? Rebellion is out of the question, now, and has been for a long time. Revolution? The way we're organized, the very idea's an absurdity! ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... long the able Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts, after pointing out the absurdity of worrying a child's life out, in teaching the A B C, &c., and their doubtful and often-varying sounds utterly destitute of meaning, instead of words which have distinct sounds and distinct meaning, thus winds up:—"Learning his letters, therefore, gives him no new sound; it even restricts his attention ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... spend his fortune upon his tomb would be scarcely so great a fool as he who spends his life on those things in himself which are temporal, to the neglect of those which are eternal. Only think of the absurdity of devoting the splendid energy of youth and manhood, the grand force of will, the skill of genius, and the other gifts which commonly men apply to their own advancement and success, to the adornment, enriching, and ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... council. Had that assembly been properly constituted, there would have been no occasion for the ephors. The gerusia was evidently meant, by the policy of Lycurgus, and by its popular mode of election, for the only representative assembly. But the absurdity of election for life, with irresponsible powers, was sufficient to limit its acceptation among the people. Of two assemblies—the ephors and the gerusia—we see the one elected annually, the other for life—the one responsible to the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blundered badly. This episode of his life was one which he had better forget. It was absolutely out of harmony with all his ideas. He told himself that he was glad Beatrice was gone. Housekeeping with an imaginary sister in this practical world was an absurdity. Sooner or later it must have come to an end. Better now, before it had gone too far—better now, much better! All the same, he knew that he was going to be ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sat down again on his old seat, and leant hard against the alder trunk, as though to steady himself, and keep all troublesome thoughts well in front of him. In this attitude of defense he reasoned with himself on the absurdity of allowing himself to be depressed by the mere accidents of place, and darkness, and silence; but all the reasoning at his command didn't alter the fact. He felt the enemy advancing again, and, casting, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... we accept it though we know it is only a make-believe; it serves its purpose by giving us an impression on our retina which we have learnt to interpret as representing that landscape, but such a picture would indeed be a marvel of absurdity to a being who had perfect sight, such as we have already referred to, and who could appreciate parallel rays; in such a vision there would be no perspective, no ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... seated herself again, weakly. It was true, she knew the fantastic rigmarole, which made absurd the secret dictates of these illiterate desperadoes. But that absurdity meant death, none the less—death for the one she loved. In her misery, she listened almost apathetically as Hodges went on talking in his ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... Hence the absurdity of the interview; the gulf between them was economic as well as spiritual. But several facts passed: Charles pressed for them with an impertinence that the undergraduate could not withstand. On what date ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... gazed at them with his fixed and mournful eyes. He couldn't share your excitement. He drew back his shoulders, bracing himself to bear it; his lips tightened in a hard, bleak grin. He grinned at the absurdity of your supposing that he could be interested in ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... are more independent: we do what we like; we dress as we find most suitable and most convenient; we are totally without the fear of any Mr. or Mrs. Grundy; and having shaken off the trammels of Grundyism, we laugh at the absurdity of those who voluntarily forge afresh and ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... innocent Person look like the Murderer, in the Eye of the Law or Court, which has therefore sometimes proceeded to Death itself; is this Man therefore guilty before God? I have put these two Cases, purely to shew the Absurdity of such kind of Arguments: and I hope they will consider better of it, ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... Calvinism, till the minister himself was often well-nigh obscured thereby. But once dip Archie into the middle of its mighty bosom to search an answer there, and he would never reappear, or, if he haply might, it would be with sorry fragments of divers answers in his hands, incongruous to absurdity. Is not the same true of babbling guides in ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... of the public good to the inordinate cravings of personal ambition or aggrandizement. It is in recognition of this principle of gradual change that the politician of to-day hesitates not to avow and to advocate principles which twenty years ago he deemed the height of political absurdity. It is not abstract truth that has altered, but the necessary modification of theories resulting from the altered condition and exigencies of society. Were this truth not recognized, no statesman could for many years retain his hold upon the popular appreciation, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... ridicule by this movement, but he saw that it would yield a considerable revenue, estimating it at as much as L200,000 a year. Fox, with force, said that a fiscal arrangement dependent on a capricious fashion must be regarded as an absurdity, but the Opposition were unable to defeat the proposal, and the Act was passed. Pitt's powerful rival, Charles James Fox, in his early manhood, was one of the most fashionable men in London. Here are a few ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... told him, was to be his friend. Cluffe, a man of fashion of the military school, eyed the elegant stranger with undisguised disgust and wonder, and Devereux with that sub-acid smile with which men will sometimes quietly relish absurdity. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hard; nevertheless the black brows bending down toward the point where they almost met gave her in repose a look of something like severity, strangely redeemed by the open curves of the mouth. Trent said to himself that the absurdity or otherwise of a lover writing sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow depended after all on the quality of the eyebrow. Her nose was of the straight and fine sort, exquisitely escaping the perdition of too much length. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... exercise all the other acts of sovereignty above stated over such roads necessary to protect them from injury and defray the expense of repairing them? Surely if the right exists these consequences necessarily followed as soon as the road was established. The absurdity of such a pretension must be apparent to all who examine it. In this way a large portion of the territory of every State might be taken from it, for there is scarcely a road in any State which will not be used for the transportation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... Some scouted the absurdity of these acts—alleging that they sprung from personal enmity, or originated in the mob-patriotism of the leperos. It was not so, as we afterwards learned; the government of the country— or, at all events, several of its prominent ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... largely because of its absurdity. It was, in my case at least, so utterly false, and unjustifiable. To the ordinary mind, indeed, any such connection would be practically unthinkable. Even had I been wild enough to dream of such a thing, the gulf existing between myself and Dorothy Fairfax was ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... here interrupted by Astronomia's mother Physica. This dialogue is a specimen of the whole piece: very flat, and very gross. Yet the piece is still curious,—not only for its absurdity, but for that sort of ingenuity, which so whimsically contrived to bring together the different arts; this pedantic writer, however, owes more to the subject, than the subject derived from him; without wit or humour, he has at times an extravagance of invention. As for instance,—Geographus ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... are under the immediate orders of the Secretary of War, who, through them, in fact commands the army from "his office," but cannot do so "in the field"—an absurdity in military ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... you, that the fraternity of the Conards was established at Evreux, as well as at Rouen. Another institution, of equal absurdity, was peculiar, I believe, to this cathedral[41]. It bore the name of the Feast of St. Vital, as it united with the anniversary of that saint, which is celebrated on the first of May: the origin of the custom may be derived ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... been complied with, the state would have been convulsed, and a gate would have been opened through which all property might be sacked and ravaged. Nothing could have saved the public from the mischiefs of the false reform but its absurdity, which would soon have brought itself, and with it all real reform, into discredit. This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people, who would know they had failed in the accomplishment of their wishes, but who, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... not include parents also in their invitations, Others affected anger, and wondered what the "likes of them" had to do coming among poor folk's bairns, and stuffing their heads with their "high and mighty nonsense," whatever style of absurdity such a term might ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... disqualified, by treason, for the office, and might have been hanged as traitors while occupied in preserving unbroken the unity of their State life. In other words, the only persons competent to act constitutionally were the persons constitutionally incompetent to act,—a gigantic practical bull and absurdity, which met Mr. Johnson as the first logical consequence of his fundamental maxim. He accordingly was forced to go to work as if no principle hampered him. He assumed, at the start, the most radical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and a host of other such maxims are of the kind upon which no genius and no depth of feeling can confer a momentary interest. Here and there, indeed, the pompous utterance invests them with an unlucky air of absurdity. 'Let no man from this time,' is the comment in one of his stories, 'suffer his felicity to depend on the death of his aunt.' Every actor, of course, uses the same dialect. A gay young gentleman tells us that he used to amuse his companions by giving them notice of his ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... going?" asked Lady Baldock; and then, when Phineas explained, she begged the Earl to go back to Violet. The Earl, feeling the absurdity of this, declared that Violet knew her way very well herself, and thus ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... observed Pederson, who stood there scowling into space as though at some incredible absurdity. Suddenly Pederson straightened, and there was something strangely different ... his gaze as it met Beardsley's was neither shocked nor accusing but held ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... contrary. We are inspired, it is true, with a very sufficient hatred for the party, but with no detestation at all of the proceeding. Nay, we are apt to urge our dislike of such measures as a reason for imitating them,—and, by an almost incredible absurdity, because some powers have destroyed their country by their persecuting spirit, to argue, that we ought to retaliate on them by destroying our own. Such are the effects, and such, I fear, has been the intention, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... were Poleon. He—" In spite of herself she glanced towards her room as if to flee; she writhed at the utter absurdity of her appearance, and knew the Lieutenant must be laughing at her. But flight would only make it worse, so she stood as she was, having drawn back as far as she could, till the table checked her. Burrell, however, was not laughing, nor ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... replied Owen, feeling inclined to laugh at the absurdity of the question. 'It will need a little ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... attended by his staff, and his guard of light horse, set off for Wills' Creek by the way of Winchester, the road along the north side of the Potomac not being yet made. "This gave him," writes Washington, "a good opportunity to see the absurdity of the route, and of damning it very heartily." [Footnote: Draft of a letter, among Washington's papers, addressed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... sat gazing at this announcement for some moments in silent astonishment. Then Esther and I, tickled by the absurdity of the thing, burst out laughing, but my father pulled the ponies' heads round, and drove home with compressed lips and the cloud of much wrath upon his brow. I have never seen the good man so thoroughly moved, and ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more necessitous? That they should scrupulously refrain from making inroads on the possessions of their richer neighbours, while they themselves are suffering under the influence of progressive penury? Under such circumstances it would be the very height of absurdity to expect an increase of virtue and honesty. Wherever it is not within the compass of industry to provide for its wants, a recourse to crime in order to make up the deficiency is inevitable to a certain extent even in a moral country. What ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... risk in leaving the Fram than in remaining in her. It is a laughable absurdity to say, as Greely did after Nansen's almost miraculous return, that he had deserted his men in an ice-beset ship, and deserved to be censured for doing so.[13] The ship was left in the command of Sverdrup. Johansen was chosen to be Nansen's one companion, and we shall hear of him again in the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... that no fraud was committed, and that none was possible. Since that time the Board has been controlled by trustees, some of whom are thorough experts in bridge building, and the others men of such high character that the suggestion of malpractice is improbable to absurdity. ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... Early Welsh for son, and those to whom Mr. Skeat's modified maqui seems absurd will be pleased to find its absurdity indicated, if not proved, by a Greek author of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... Providence has provided. He looks upon himself as one of the instruments of Providence and he sincerely believes that the policies which he has supported since his early experience with the reformers are responsible for the happiness and prosperity of many a family. He would consider it the height of absurdity for any of these poor, worthy, but ignorant people to expect the comforts which they have enjoyed without the protection afforded their ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... carried on with some show of annoyance by my Father. He had never gone quite so far as she did in regard to this question of praying for material things. I am not sure that she was convinced that I ought to have been checked; but he could not help seeing that it reduced their favourite theory to an absurdity for a small child to exercise the privilege. He ceased to argue, and told me peremptorily that it was not right for me to pray for things like humming-tops, and that I must do it no more. His authority, of course, was Paramount, and I yielded; but my faith in the efficacy of prayer was ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... all this was very great. From being at the very mouth of the furnace, quivering with fear and captive to morbid imaginings, Bacon's dry intonation brought them all back to earth again. They perceived something of the absurdity ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Europe and of Asia, and it is more than probable that the Greeks transferred to the festival of John the Baptist, who is also held in high esteem among the Mahomedans, a part of their Bacchanalian mysteries, an absurdity of a kind which is but too frequently met with in human affairs. How far a remembrance of the history of St. John's death may have had an influence on this occasion, we would leave learned theologians ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... critics whose cant is simply can't, and who, being unable or unwilling to surrender themselves to these simple sources of enjoyment, are grandiloquent upon the dignity of manhood, and the absurdity of full-grown men in playing monkey-tricks with their bodies. Full-grown men? There is not a person in the world who can afford to be a "full-grown man" through all the twenty-four hours. There is not one who does not need, more than he needs his dinner, to have habitually one hour ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... head down on his knees and shook with laughter. The absurdity of it all—of their preparations, of his own terrors, of the disturbance they had made, all to end in this flat and futile over-sleeping, seized upon him so that he could not control himself. He laughed till he cried, while ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... This absurdity was very properly ridiculed in the City Mouse and Country Mouse of Montague and Prior; and, in the detection and censure of the incongruity of the fiction, chiefly consists the value of their performance, which, whatever ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... achieved. He had not been prudent. He had stood, not only for East Mickleham, but for a principle. It was an unpopular principle, and he knew it, and he had stuck to it all the same, with obstinacy and absurdity, in the teeth, the furiously gnashing teeth, of his constituency. You couldn't detach Mr. Higginson from his principle, and as long as he stuck to it a parliamentary career was closed to him. It was sad, for he had a passion for politics; ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... outgrowth of marriage; all morality comes from the ideal marriage—the union of Wisdom and Love. To imagine that a function, so vitally important to our exterior life, should have no place in the phases of life which we know as "higher," is a manifest absurdity, and comes from those attenuated concepts of what constitutes spirituality, which Theology has postulated; concepts which, entrenched behind the walls of "thus saith the Lord," ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... "Realizing the absurdity of this speech, she blushed. Whereupon her rescuer, feeling that the situation warranted him in turning the matter to ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in Eastern tales mostly come from the true seducer—Eve. Europe and England especially, still talks endless absurdity upon the subject. A man of the world may "seduce" an utterly innocent (which means an ignorant) girl. But to "seduce" a married ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Greek romances, it seems almost inevitable that all the male characters should fall in love with the heroine, and all the females with the hero; and, this is, in some of them, carried to a ludicrous degree of absurdity.] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... not been for his thorough knowledge of Nat Burns's character he would have laughed at the absurdity of the thing and thrown the message ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... threatened with being "pitched out o' window" by Mr. Jack Hopkins, said to the latter, "I should like to see you do it, sir," Jack Hopkins curtly retaliating—"You shall feel me do it, sir, in half a minute." The reconciliation of the two attained its climax of absurdity in the Reading, when Mr. Noddy, having gradually allowed his feelings to overpower him, professed that he had ever entertained a devoted personal attachment to Mr. Hopkins. Consequent upon this, Mr. Hopkins, we were told, replied, that, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... about me on that wind-swept, sandblown, flimsy, dirty, sprawling camp they called a city, with its half dozen "magnificent" brick buildings that any New England village could duplicate, and have laughed wildly until the tears came, over the absurdity of it. I was young. I did not know that a city is not bricks but men, is not fact but the vitality of a ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Anthony, and then Lady Aylmer had determined that an air of business should be assumed. Clara, as she was marched off into the back drawing-room followed by her lover with more sheep-like gait even than her own, felt strongly the absurdity and the wretchedness of her position. But she was determined to go through ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... desire becomes instinctive, necessarily takes on the form of the sexual impulse, for there is no other instinctive mechanism by which it can possibly express itself. A "reproductive instinct," apart from the sexual instinct and apart from the maternal instinct, cannot be admitted; it would be an absurdity. Even in women in whom the maternal instincts are strong, it may generally be observed that, although before a woman is in love, and also during the later stages of her love, the conscious desire for a child may be strong, during ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and ideas." Dr. Drill does not in his review concern himself with this charge. He remarks in passing that it is quite possible for a tradesman to be a hero and for a minister of war to be a tradesman, and then goes on to point out the futile absurdity of all such general charges. He cites an amusing attack on German culture by a lecturer at Bedford College. "We smile over his attack," says Dr. Drill. "May we not be afraid that educated Englishmen do the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... progress of idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the bottomless pit. And yet there are many believers in the gospel of force, who have brought themselves to think that cruelty can be cured by greater cruelty—that the only way to win an antagonist away from inhuman acts is to surpass him in inhumanities. Absurdity of absurdities! ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... mind and heart." "A short time after his departure from Ferrara," adds the Frenchman, maliciously, "he composed his 'Lament of Tasso,' a mediocre result from such inspiration." No doubt all this is colored, for the same author adds another tint to heighten the absurdity of the spectacle: he declares that Byron spent part of his time in the cell in writing upon the ceiling Lamartine's verses on Tasso, which he misspelled. The present visitor has no means of judging of the truth concerning ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... indiscriminately. Such treatment, of course, has only proven itself to be a monument of rashness to those who employed it. Such sedatives may reduce the pulse, but do not shorten the disease. Indeed, if it is possible to prove the absurdity of anything more clearly by mere enumeration of these medicines as cures for rheumatism, I do not know of it. Do digitalis and aconite act in the same manner? This is just one expression of the folly which surrounded the use of digitalis at the time of its discovery. Then every affection ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... real author of the charge seems to have been James Buchanan, and Kremer was simple-minded and credulous enough to be made the catspaw in the business. Clay was taken aback. Kremer significantly made no reference to the "code of honor"; and since a duel with such a personage would be an absurdity, Clay substituted a request that the House make an immediate investigation of the charges. A committee of seven was appointed. But when it summoned Kremer to give his testimony, he refused to appear, on the ground—which in ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... I attempt to tell you what an Indian thinks, I fear you will never fully forget what you know, and thus you will be led to give too deep a meaning to a savage explanation; or, on the other hand, contrasting an Indian concept with your own, the manifest absurdity will sound to you as an idle tale too simple to deserve mention, or too false to deserve credence. The third difficulty lies in the attempt to put savage thoughts into civilized language; our words are so full of meaning, carry with them so many ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... not easy to define the popular theory of the Bible. Like its kindred theory of Papal Infallibility, it is a true chameleon, changing constantly in different minds, always denying the absurdity of which it is made the synonym, ever qualifying itself safely, yet never ceasing to take on a vaguely miraculous character. Various theories are given in the books in which theological students are mis-educated, all ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... as beasts of instinct nor as carved figures of alabaster fit only to adorn a tomb. This typical nature of the characters has given rise to a theory recently propounded that the play should be regarded as an allegory illustrative of certain aspects of love[267]. So regarded much of the absurdity, alike of the characters and of the action, is said to disappear. This may be so, but does it really mean anything more than that abstractions not being in fact possessed of character at all, and being as ideals unfettered by any demands of probability, absurdities pass unnoticed in their case ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... organization of the local government? Or is it all these combined with the people who possess them? Destroy the people, and yet not make war upon the State! To state the proposition is to answer it, by reason of its very absurdity. It is like making desolation, and calling it peace. There being, as it is admitted on every hand, no power to coerce a State, I ask what is the use of a garrison within a State where it needs no defense? The answer from every candid mind must be, there is none. The answer from every patriotic ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... performances must also be recorded. Upon my signifying my desire that he should pluck me the young fruit of some particular tree, the handsome savage, throwing himself into a sudden attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of the request. Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on his countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will, and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he stands on tip-toe, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... of a boat, for the rowers to place their feet against, that they may communicate greater effort to their oars. Also, cross-pieces placed between a boat's sides to keep them apart when hoisted up and griped. Colloquially, a stretcher means a lie exaggerated to absurdity. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... over our own Territories be indispensably necessary to enable us to meet and repel the invader, it follows as a necessary consequence not only that we possess the power, but it is our imperative duty to construct such a road. It would be an absurdity to invest a government with the unlimited power to make and conduct war and at the same time deny to it the only means of reaching and defeating the enemy at the frontier. Without such a road it is quite evident we can not "protect" ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... add, that under no circumstances should the dictatorship last long. Not only would it be an absurdity to attempt to make it hereditary, but the man who should think of exercising it perpetually would be insane. A sick patient allows himself to be bound by the surgeon who is about to save his life; but when the operation ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... herself more learned than I, although she would, every minute, utter some absurdity. Another was always low-spirited, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... family which "was still distinctly in business." But he betrayed, at the same time, strong Radical leanings. Indeed, through him I first became aware that Radicalism meant more than some perverse absurdity of the ignorant. He completely bewildered and at the same time amused his pupils by taking in a paper called The Beehive, one of the earliest of the "Labor organs" of England; and from this mine of wisdom he would on occasion quote. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... denying that a new "shape or configuration" of an article, whereby utility or convenience is promoted, is the proper subject of a patent under the acts referred to, the Office would seem to have involved itself in the absurdity that if a design is useless it may be patented; whereas, if it be useful, it is entitled to ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... amused herself, by giving loose to half a hundred of her most comical caprices. He had some wit and drollery of his own, which sometimes rendered his sallies very amusing; but, where his friends laughed with him once, they laughed at him a thousand times, for he had a fund of absurdity in himself that was more pleasant than all the wit in the world. He was as proud as a peacock, as wicked as an ape, and as silly as a goose. He did not possess one single grain of common sense; but, in revenge, his ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who have a vested interest in Mr. Darwin's reputation as a philosopher still try to fog our outlook. Professor Mivart was, as I have said, among the first to awaken us to Mr. Darwin's denial of design, and to the absurdity involved therein. He well showed how incredible Mr Darwin's system was found to be, as soon as it was fully realised, but there he rather left us. He seemed to say that we must have our descent and our ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... substances and their modifications (as appears from Ax. i. and Deff. iii. and v.). Now (by the last Prop.) substance cannot be produced by another substance, therefore it cannot be produced by anything external to itself. Q.E.D. This is shown still more readily by the absurdity of the contradictory. For, if substance be produced by an external cause, the knowledge of it would depend on the knowledge of its cause (Ax. iv.), and (by Deff. iii.) it would ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... would not come to him. Fraeulein blushed and snickered and ran off to tell her mother about Herr Kirtley and his German. He was frightened. What absurdity had he uttered? He got to his dictionary as soon as he could and found he ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... flotation. "They've never been given such value," he said, "for a dozen years." But Ewart, with his gesticulating hairy hands and bony wrists, his single-handed chorus to all this as it played itself over again in my memory, and he kept my fundamental absurdity illuminated for me ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... DRAGON, HISTORY OF, one of the books of the Apocrypha, a spurious addition to the book of Daniel, relates how Daniel persuaded Cyrus of the vanity of idol-worship, and is intended to show its absurdity. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... himself by no means always succeeded. There is often an affectation in his lighter love-scenes which destroys the impression of sincerity. Even in life one may see how at any time the note of sentiment may be turned to absurdity by the least discordant element. The lover whose tender expressions are wholly pleasing to his lady may become an object of ridicule before an uninvited audience. Everyone can remember some occasion when a whole company of persons, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... as a condition of election to their corps of instructors. That one who is not a college graduate should be appointed to a professorship or instructorship in a college or university might seem to a college man of the old school very near an absurdity. Yet as matters now stand it would be impossible to fill the collegiate musical departments with holders of the A.B. degree. The large and increasing number of college graduates who are entering the musical profession, especially with a view to finding a home in higher educational ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... economy. She had always been accustomed to such and such things. There was no possibility of living without them. Her relations would be perfectly astonished if she did not appear in the style in which she had always lived before her marriage. Provoked by the insolent absurdity of such arguments, Mr. Germaine insisted with the authoritative voice of a husband who was conscious that he had both reason and power on his side. Hence arose daily altercations, more bitter even than those which ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... that a crown settle down over the tip of the nose. And the very fact that for quite inadequate kings men's hands do leap to the salute, instinctively, does but make us, on reflection, the more conscious of the whole absurdity. Even than a great man on a throne we can, when we reflect, imagine something—ah, not something better perhaps, but something more remote from absurdity. Let us say that Umberto's father was great, as well as extraordinary. He was accounted great ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... even whipping, but 'correction' And as if hypocrisy and malignity were on the rack to outwit each other, even that weak word must be still farther diluted; so 'moderate' is added: and, to crown the climax, compounded of absurdity, hypocrisy, and cold-blooded murder, the legal definition of 'moderate correction' is covertly given; which is, any punishment that KILLS the victim. All inflictions are either moderate or immoderate; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... were greatest—or the most ludicrous, it would be hard to determine. For some time they merely looked at each other, without speaking—the priest, probably, because he could not articulate—and his guest, perhaps, because his mouth was full—till the absurdity of the whole affair apparently striking them both at once, they mutually broke out into laughter, the violence of which threatened to convulse them. From this, however, the padre was the first to recover, when the intruder, mastering his muscles, ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... character of the prayers and ejaculations which issued from the lips of the motley group that scrambled, and crushed, and screamed, on their knees around the well. In the midst of this ignorance and absurdity, there were visible, however, many instances of piety, goodness of heart, and simplicity of character. From such you could hear neither oath nor exclamation. They complied with the usages of the place modestly and attentively: though not insensible, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... is necessary to a recognition of the full absurdity of intolerance. One of the greatest absurdities of it is evident when we are annoyed and caused intense suffering by our intolerance of others, and, as a consequence, blame others for the fatigue or illness which follows. ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... was not considered decorous for a student to wear a colored vest. He might wear a white vest, but not a buff or a figured one. Sumner preferred a buff vest, and insisted on wearing it. When he was reprimanded for doing so he defended his course vigorously, and exposed the absurdity of the regulation in such plain terms that the faculty concluded to let him alone for the future. [Footnote: In 1860 he still continued to wear a buff vest in summer weather.] He was exceedingly fond of the Greek and Latin authors, and quoted from them in his letters at this time, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... music, but is chiefly used for that which is mental and spiritual. Delicious has a limited use in this way; as, a delicious bit of poetry; the word is sometimes used ironically for some pleasing absurdity; as, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... working man with a family, that even in starving times he is obliged by paid demagogues to refuse work and wages unless he will give the least labour for the most pay, as the worst of his mates are glad to be forced to do: while the wicked absurdity of strikes, smashing factory windows and destroying machinery in order to coerce unfortunate masters to pay higher wages than they can afford, is climaxed by those brigand processions of idle roughs who go about bawling, "We've no work to do, and wouldn't do it if we had." The British workman ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... popular legends of a country, which are the source from whence many of our later novelists draw several of their writings: they offer a field for reflection to the contemplative observer of man; and those of Germany, although some are disfigured with a little too much absurdity in their details, are confessedly a mine of wealth to the lover of research in such matters. Here Schiller first drew the sources of his inspiration; here Goethe first electrified mankind with his writings—works which will render both immortal; it is, indeed, a mine which has been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... But the worst absurdity of all in the tariffist reasoning on this topic is the assumption that in no other respect than wage-rates is German industry affected by the fall of the mark. The wiseacres who point warningly to the exchanges as a reason for firm action on fabric gloves never ask how a falling currency relates ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... Napoleon III. is the modern (and very Gallic) Caesar Augustus, the avenger of his ill-used uncle, and the crusher of the Junii and the Crassi, and all the rest of the aristocrats, who overthrew him, and caused his early death. It is not necessary to point out the utter absurdity of this attempt to justify modern despotism by referring to the action of men who lived and acted in the greatest of ancient revolutions; and those men who admire Julius Caesar, but who are not disposed to see in his conduct a justification of the conduct of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Burr, assuming the power to order the tellers to count the vote of this State and reject the vote of that, and so boldly and shamelessly reverse the action of the people expressed at the polls, and step into the presidency by force of his own decision. Sir, this is a reduction of the thing to an absurdity never dreamed of until now, and impossible while this shall remain a ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... vanity would not allow of his telling Snap. The fact was, that she had once accompanied her sister-in-law to Messrs. Tag-rag and Company's, to purchase some small matter of mercery. Titmouse had served them; and his absurdity of manner and personal appearance had provoked a smile, which Titmouse a little misconstrued; for when, a Sunday or two afterwards, he met her in the Park, the little fool actually had the presumption to nod to her—she having ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the secondary inventor must be obvious, in view of the fact that if the doctrine of mechanical equivalents were applied to his claim, then the fundamental device on which he improved would probably infringe upon it, which would be an absurdity. It is thus seen that the pioneer inventor may have a claim so broad in its terms that its terms cannot be escaped; that he may invoke the doctrine of equivalents and have his claim dominate structures ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... which any biological study would arouse except as the scientist perceives that indignation is, for him, beside the point and the religionist believes that it proceeds from not seeing far enough into the process. This is why there is an essential absurdity in any naturalistic system of ethics. Even ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... side, and doubt on the other,—if she would persistently adhere to some safe rule. Her rejection of Mr. Gilmore ought to have been unhesitating and certain from the first. She was sure of that now. She had been guilty of an absurdity in supposing that because the man had been in earnest, therefore she had been justified in keeping him in suspense, for his own sake. She had been guilty of an absurdity, and also of great self-conceit. She could do nothing now but wait till she should hear from him,—and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... world the individual members of which bear a close family likeness to one another, that is the family of Master Bruin. Indeed, so like are the different species, that other learned anatomists have gone to the opposite extreme of absurdity, and asserted that they are all one and the same! However, we shall see as we become acquainted with the different members of this distinguished family, in what respects they differ from each other, and ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... sentiments. Her flowing style, so pleasant to read, carries us swiftly and easily through her dissertations in print, before we have time to tire of them. On the stage such colloquies soon appear lengthy and unnatural. The climax of absurdity is reached in Flaminio, where we find the adventurer expatiating to the man of the world on "the divinity of ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... much in them, but in addition to that they tell you it would be impossible for the men to divide the produce of the fishing among themselves if it was paid in cash at the station, because it would require a man conversant with accounts; so that it is an absurdity to say that they are an intelligent race, and yet cannot adjust the proportions which would go to the different men in a boat's crew if they were paid ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... had come up close behind us before we perceived him, and at once pushed into the conversation. "'One half our soil has walked the rest,' Lorton? That's a palpable absurdity! We'll take England to be three hundred miles long and two hundred broad, on an average; and, allowing a uniform depth of twelve feet throughout for cultivable soil, that calculation will give us some—let me see, three hundred by two hundred, multiplied ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for the exercise of patience, temperance, and other virtues, which he saw must receive from God a recompense after this life. He ardently set about learning what God is; and after some researches into the nature of the Supreme Being, quickly discovered the absurdity of polytheism, or a plurality of gods; and was convinced that there can be only one God, and that the same is eternal, unchangeable, all-powerful, the first cause and author of all things. Full of these reflections, he met with ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... said Septimius, rather startled, for the queer absurdity of the position struck him, if he should so exhaust and wear himself as to die, just at the moment when he should have found out the secret of everlasting life. "But though I look pale, I am very ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... orphans" phrase had appeared in his speech on the bill, and not in the proposed bill itself. "It's completely absurd," he said, with commendable calm, "to consider this method of filling an artificial lake." Unfortunately, the absurdity was now contained in the bill, which would have to go back to committee for redefinition, and probably wouldn't come up again in the present session of Congress. Judging from the amount of laughter ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the sense to see that the real Michael was speaking. When people were being unreal, when they were pompous or adopting attitudes, she could attend to nothing but their absurdity, which engrossed her altogether. But she never laughed at real things; real things were not funny, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Job is not imprecating future evils on a past time—an impossibility, an absurdity: he is describing the events then transpiring—the whirlwind, the darkness, the mist, the day that does not come, and the leviathan, the demon, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... that your throne was built by war and rests on force. Force only, military prestige only, can uphold you. The rebels of labor have crept close to your throne now. Ten more years of peace, and you are cast out overnight, to wander over Europe, a homeless absurdity, a king without a chair to ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... very absurd," said Mollie, "But your absurdity has been amusing. I have—yes, positively—I have enjoyed your Eden comedy. But now you must not come any further with me. My aunt might not approve. Here is my path to Orchard Knob farmhouse. There, I presume, is yours to Sweetbriar Cottage. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... her face under the sheet. The absurdity of little Dotty's ideas had driven the sleep out ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... garments have something of the dark motley of night-moths. Above all, the mystery of their tiny slits of eyes, drawn back and up so far that the tight-drawn lids can scarcely open; the mystery of their expression, which seems to denote inner thoughts of a silly, vague, complacent absurdity, a world of ideas absolutely closed to ourselves. And I think as I gaze at them: "How far we are from this Japanese people! how ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... concerning the processes of Nature, which, though interesting, were unprofitable. They also showed a curious tendency to mingle their scientific speculations with ancient and base superstitions. They were often given to the absurdity commonly known as the "black art," or witchcraft, and held to the preposterous notions of the astrologists. Even the immortal astronomer Kepler, who lived in the sixteenth century, was a professional astrologer, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... rule, wrought on trivial occasions, with either no end in view but the display of supernatural power, or with a positively unlawful end, whence it not unfrequently happens that their impiety rivals their absurdity. Many samples of both these characters could be given, but the general reader may ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... exclaimed, almost in relief at the absurdity. "No, but it might be some business—some claim ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... expectation that when he has made his fortune with a patent back-action apple-corer, you will marry him." Should he say something to this purport? And in Heaven's name what right had he, Ferris, to say anything at all? The horrible absurdity, the inexorable delicacy of ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... at this new angle, the talk didn't run smoothly. Because, precisely as the half-back forgot his terrors and the hopes that had prompted them, and the absurdity of both—precisely as he began to feel, after all, that it was a very superb and grown-up thing to be a familiar friend of a married woman with a limousine and a respectful chauffeur, and wonderful clothes ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... travellers, Ulloa among others, have affirmed that the plumage of the condor is invulnerable to a musket-ball. This absurdity is scarcely worthy of contradiction; but it is nevertheless true that the bird has a singular tenacity of life, and that it is seldom killed by fire-arms, unless when shot in some vital part. Its plumage, particularly on the wings, is very strong and thick. The natives, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... a wife does seem to be an absurdity," said Madame Max, who had passed some years of her life ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... denied the benefit of trade, to manage their lands in such a manner as to produce nothing but what they are forbidden to trade with,[83] or only such things as they can neither export nor manufacture to advantage, is an absurdity that a wild Indian would be ashamed of; especially when we add, that we are content to purchase this hopeful commerce, by sending to foreign markets ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... condemned to lose his head. Upon notice of this sentence, the friars of Cuzco flocked to prison, and persuaded the unfortunate prince to receive baptism, on which he assumed the name of Don Philip. Though the Inca earnestly entreated to be sent to Spain, and urged the absurdity and impossibility that he could ever intend to rebel against the numerous Spanish colonists who now occupied the whole country of Peru, seeing that his father with 200,000 men was utterly unable to overcome only 200 Spaniards ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... that women should take no interest in the blood that circulates through their bodies because they are not physicians, or in the air they breathe because they are not chemists. The people who are most fond of repeating this absurdity, are, it may be observed, the very people who are most furious with women for not acquiescing at once in any absurdity which they may think proper to promulgate as an incontrovertible truth. Ill ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... influence, owing to the sarcastic tone in which the author attacked his calmer adversary. In the honest conviction of profound knowledge, the clever, vigorous champion of materialism endeavoured to brand the opponents of his dogmas with the stigma of absurdity, and those who flattered themselves with the belief that they belonged to the ranks of the "strong-minded" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... uncertainly towards the dais, and ill that a crown settle down over the tip of the nose. And the very fact that for quite inadequate kings men's hands do leap to the salute, instinctively, does but make us, on reflection, the more conscious of the whole absurdity. Even than a great man on a throne we can, when we reflect, imagine something—ah, not something better perhaps, but something more remote from absurdity. Let us say that Umberto's father was great, as well as extraordinary. He was accounted great enough to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of Queen Anne, repeated complaints were made of the prevalence of duelling. Addison, Swift, Steele, and other writers, employed their powerful pens in reprobation of it. Steele especially, in the "Tatler" and "Guardian," exposed its impiety and absurdity, and endeavoured, both by argument and by ridicule, to bring his countrymen to a right way of thinking. [See "Spectator," Nos. 84. 97, and 99; and "Tatler," Nos. 25, 26, 29, 31, 38, and 39; and "Guardian," No. 20.] His comedy of "The ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Another absurdity of the Polish constitution was the famous "liberum veto," a kind of gentlemen's agreement among the magnates, whereby no law whatsoever could be enacted by the Diet if a single member felt it was prejudicial to his interests, and ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... plead for mercy, as the reward of their own righteousness, are guilty of gross absurdity. They may claim to employ the mercy which they have earned: why plead with the God of justice for that to which they consider themselves in justice entitled? God will give to all that to which they are entitled, without ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... jumble as any other creed. Look at their priests, their yogis, and chelas, and such-like humbugs! They say their Buddha is as divine as our Christ. Maybe he is—to them! But what strikes me is the absurdity of trying to get into another life while one has to live this. Fasting and sitting under a tree, and starving out all fleshly desires and impulses until the human body, instead of being handsome and ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the State governments extends over the several States. To be fearful of investing Congress, constituted as that body is with ample authorities for national purposes, appears to me the very climax of popular absurdity and madness. Could Congress exert them for the detriment of the people, without injuring themselves in an equal or greater proportion? Are not their interests inseparably connected with those of their constituents? By the rotation of appointment, must they not mingle frequently ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... and warning, were, "Never trust a nigger with a gun;" and accustomed to chafe each other into a fever heat of excitement over any matter of public interest, were ready to give credence to any report—all the more easily because of its absurdity. On the other hand, the colored people, hearing these rumors, said to themselves that it was simply a device to prevent them from voting, or to give color and excuse for a ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Manichean system, but imputes to it an absurdity, from which, amidst all its absurdities, it seems to be free, and adopts the system of Mr. Pope. "That pain is no evil, if asserted with regard to the individuals who suffer it, is downright nonsense; but if considered as it affects the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... me, Aunt Mable! I laugh at the absurdity of the stories. Look at this, for instance, where a gentleman falls in love with a shadow. Now I see no substantial foundation for such an extravagant passion as that. Here is another, who is equally smitten ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... frowning silence was a deadlier rebuke to the slayers and oppressors than secession. Unfortunately for this ingenious explanation of the embarrassing fact of a merciful man standing silent before merciless doings, there are at least two facts that show its absurdity. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... probably he at last imposed a tax on those who did not perform sacrifice. At the same time he saw the necessity of a total reformation in paganism, if it was to revive as the rival of Christianity; and planned, as Pontifex Maximus, a scheme for effecting it, which involved the concealment of the absurdity of its origin by allegorical interpretation, together with the establishment of a discipline and organisation similar to the Christian, and special attention on the part of the priesthood to morality and to public ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... word, though Malcolm put it in no such definite shape: Why should a fisher lad find himself in danger of falling in love with the daughter of a marquis? Why should such a thing, seeing the very constitution of things rendered it an absurdity, be ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Cesare had murdered his brother, and that the Pope knew it. In this you have some more of what Gregorovius terms "inexorable logic." He kissed him, but he spake no word to him; therefore, they reason, Cesare murdered Gandia. Can absurdity be more absurd, fatuity more fatuous? Lucus a non lucendo! To square the circle should surely present no difficulty to these ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... impressed on it, instantly assumed at once loco-motive power and a sort of ubiquity, so as to flutter and buz in the ear of the public to the sore annoyance of the said mysterious personage. But what gives an additional and more ludicrous absurdity to these lamentations is the curious fact, that if in a volume of poetry the critic should find poem or passage which he deems more especially worthless, he is sure to select and reprint it in the review; by which, on his own grounds, he wastes as much more paper than ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... makes the excellent point noted, Mr. Godfrey very inconsistently fails to do this in connection with his theory of slabs, otherwise he would have perceived the absurdity of any method of calculating a multiple-way reinforcement by endeavoring to separate the construction into elementary beam strips. This old-fashioned method was discarded by the practical constructor many years ago, because he was forced ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... have been so much better favoured, yet have neglected to teach them, than on those who, whilst they are sinning, know not what they are doing. To say a negro is incapable of instruction, is a mere absurdity; for those few boys who have been educated in our schools have proved themselves even quicker than our own at learning; whilst, amongst themselves, the deepness of their cunning and their power of repartee are quite surprising, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... took no account of the sufferings of humanity; the Buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of existence itself,—since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin misery. As a religion Buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. Its weak points, practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... not speak of Rouen; Pomponius Mela, does not mention it in his Geography; Ptolemy is the first author who has noticed it. This observation alone will shew the absurdity of the numerous etymologies assigned to its name of Rothomagus, of which we have made Rouen. The least unlikely are those which have been taken from the primitive language of the country; but, even then we can only form conjectures more or less vague, ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... that unconsciously his fingers had twined themselves about the little handkerchief in his pocket. He drew it out and made a sudden movement as if to toss it overboard. Then, with a grunt expressive of the absurdity of the thing, he replaced it in his pocket and began to walk slowly toward ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... either, will be led into many mistakes. The fact is, that some of the foregoing examples, though perhaps not all, are perfectly right; and hundreds more, of a similar character, might be quoted, which no true grammarian would presume to condemn. But what have these to do with the monstrous absurdity of supposing objective adjuncts to be "parts of the actual nominative?" The words, "part," "number," "train" and the like, are collective nouns; and, as such, they often have plural verbs in agreement with them. To say, "A number of men and women were present," ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... predicable of that which is. And in like manner he made away with any possible assertions as to the finite or infinite, the eternal or created, nature of that which is. Logic could supply him with alternative arguments from whatever point he started, such as would seem to land the question in absurdity. Hence his first position was (he claimed) ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... had inflamed Jattne's breast the night before swelled and expanded into a raging passion. He longed to engage in mortal combat this stranger who was alienating the affection that should be his. The element of absurdity in the situation no longer was apparent to him. In truth, as he reasoned, the situation was not absurd. To all intents and purposes he was two people and it was the other one of him, not himself at all, who was winning Rose's interest, perhaps her ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... to the title. The Prussian king set up as a Caesar in 1871; Queen Victoria became the Caesar of India (Kaisir-i-Hind) under the auspices of Lord Beaconsfield, and last and least, that most detestable of all Coburgers, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, gave Kaiserism a touch of quaint absurdity by setting up as Czar of Bulgaria. The weakening of the Bourbon system by the French revolution and the Napoleonic adventure cleared the way for the complete ascendancy of the Germanic monarchies in spite of the breaking away of the United States ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... Dolly was to have one half and the other was to be employed in paying off Mr Longestaffe's debts to tradesmen and debts to the bank. It would have been very pleasant to have had this at once,—but Mr Longestaffe felt the absurdity of pressing such a man as Mr Melmotte, and was partly conscious of the gradual consummation of a new era in money matters. 'If your banker is pressing you, refer him to me,' Mr Melmotte had said. As for many years past we have exchanged paper instead of actual money ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... when she reached the ranchhouse, and very tired, physically. Agatha's questions irritated her, and she ate sparingly of the food set before her, eager to be alone. In the isolation of her room she lay dumbly on the bed, and there the absurdity of Levins' story assailed her. It must be as Corrigan had said—her father was too great a man to descend to such despicable methods. She ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... all those massive timbers, all that ponderous mass of rock, had only availed to capture one very small Ute pappoose. At the thought of it, the builder of the trap was astounded. He laughed aloud at the absurdity. In silence he threw off the rock and lid and seated himself on the edge of the open trap. Captor and captive then gazed at each other with gravity. The errant infant's attire consisted of a calico shirt of gaudy hues, a pair of little moccasins, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... fusion—or, if you prefer it, a confusion—of the two words and the leading ideas. When an absurdity can amuse Paris, which devours as many masterpieces as absurdities, the provinces can hardly be deprived of them. So, as soon as the lion paraded Paris with his mane, his beard and moustaches, his waistcoats and his eyeglass, maintained in its place, without ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... be successful in its action, must be reasonably proportioned in volume to the amount of material to be disinfected, whether this be a liquid or clothing or the air of a room. It is the height of absurdity, for instance, to pretend to disinfect the air of a large room by burning a tablespoonful of sulfur on a shovel in the center of a room without even taking the trouble to close the door. It is absurd to attempt to disinfect the bed linen in a single pailful of hot water, since even if the water ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... see that I could ride. Fences and ditches, rough or smooth, he never interfered with my wildest pace. I could not extract from him a look of surprise, far less the admiration that I wanted. What was a girl's riding to him? He knew a pace—all the paces—that I could never follow. I felt the absurdity of our mutual position, its utter artificiality, and how ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... rendering the arch a subordinate, if not altogether a superfluous, feature. The type of this arrangement has been given already at c, Fig. XXXVI., p. 145, Vol. I.: and I might insist at length upon the absurdity of a construction in which the shorter shaft, which has the real weight of wall to carry, is split into two by the taller one, which has nothing to carry at all,—that taller one being strengthened, nevertheless, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... privilege of seeing every thing and sparing nothing. Royalty was never put in the focus of eyes so critical. Her comments upon this visit are very brief. She expresses her detestation of what she saw, saying, "It gives me the feeling of injustice, and obliges me every moment to contemplate absurdity." ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... a story is her forte, you put her below Wilkie Collins or Mrs. Oliphant; if you say her object is to give a picture of English society, she is surpassed by Bulwer and Trollope; if she be called a satirist of society, Thackeray is her superior; if she intends to illustrate the absurdity of behavior, she is eclipsed by Dickens; but if the analysis of human motives be her forte and art, she stands first, and it is very doubtful whether any artist in fiction is entitled to stand second. She reaches clear in and touches the most secret and ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... having citadels built, with the condition that they should for two years constantly keep four of their principal citizens at court as pledges of their fidelity. All promises of abjuration were declared null and void. Amnesty was proclaimed, and, to cap the climax of absurdity, the brave Huguenots who had defended their homes for months against Charles were solemnly declared to be held the king's "good, loyal, and faithful subjects ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... of a satisfied policeman at the fixed price. The original coin represented the difference between what the butter woman was willing to accept and what the authorities thought she ought to get. That experiment in municipal control of prices lasted about a month. Then the absurdity of the thing became too obvious. The French are much saner than the English in this. They do not go on pretending to do things once it becomes quite plain that the things cannot ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... ivy to cluster about the external edifice; for they are the historical and biographical record of each successive age, written with its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mistakes, and none the less solemn for the occasional absurdity. Though you entered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only of the illustrious, you are content at last to read many names, both in literature and history, that have now lost the reverence of mankind, if indeed they ever really ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... violation of historical truth as a "hideous misrepresentation of the virtuous Eleanor of Castile.... The 'Edward I.' of Peele is a gross tissue of absurdity with some facility of language, but nothing truly good." Nobody but Professor Wendell has ever even intimated that ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... as at an affront, and glared. Next moment, he saw the absurdity of the situation. He relapsed into his chair, smiling. "She's the Warden's niece," he said. "I dined at ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... effect produced on John Barton by the great and mocking contrasts presented by the varieties of human condition. Before he could find suitable words to explain his meaning, Mr. Carson spoke. "You mean he was an Owenite; all for equality and community of goods, and that kind of absurdity." ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... may be allowed to allude to a branch of the external evidence of Christianity which has not received all the notice to which it is entitled. When surveying from the tower of the Capitol the ruins of ancient Rome, I felt strongly the absurdity—the almost idiotcy—of denying the historic truth of Christianity. On such a spot one might as well deny that ancient Rome existed, as deny that Christianity was preached here eighteen centuries ago, and rose upon ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... rave as they like about the absurdity of love at first sight; but the young and sensitive always love at first sight, and the love of after-years, however better and more wisely bestowed, is never able to obliterate from the heart the memory of those sudden and vivid impressions made upon it by the first ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... district, contrived to give to the beginning of operations the air of absurdity that ever hung round his path. Although he was the senior officer on the whole frontier, the Department had not notified him of Brown's orders. This vicious practice of managing the campaign from a point as distant as Washington then was, ignoring any local centre ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... another, throwing their muskets about awkwardly, prodding at the air with their bayonets, trotting twenty paces here and backing ten paces there, wheeling round in uneven lines, and looking, as they did so, miserably conscious of the absurdity of their own performances, I have always been inclined to think how little the world can have advanced in civilization, while grown-up men are still forced to spend their days in such grotesque performances. Those to whom the "pomps and circumstances" are dear— nay, those by whom ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... work of a moment. The moment in which she slammed the door on the protesting clerk, the moment in which also she felt the shock of awaking from her frenzied zeal that would have beaten down all obstacles to save this man's life, to the perception that her zeal would in his eyes seem an absurdity; that her presence there was superfluous if not impertinent; that she had made a ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... 'popular science' has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... highest power of the mind, he must offer himself to God in sincere humility. In subordination to the passive intellect, the external faculty, the active reason, is also to be cultivated; it deserves care, like the skin. Evil consists in the absurdity that the creature, who apart from God is nothing, ascribes to himself an ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... The account which so candid a writer as Mosheim gives of them is worth noticing, on account of its sweeping character. "All the nations of the world," he says, "except the Jews, were plunged in the grossest superstition. Some nations, indeed, went beyond others in impiety and absurdity, but all stood charged with irrationality and gross stupidity in matters of religion." "The greater part of the gods of all nations were ancient heroes, famous for their achievements and their worthy deeds, such as kings, generals, and founders ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... world, but his ideas of politics were almost childishly simple—whereas many people said that his principles in relation to his fellows were fiendishly cynical. He was certainly not a very good man; and if he pretended to no reputation for devoutness, it was probable that he recognised the absurdity of his attempting such a pose. But politically he believed in Cardinal Antonelli's ability to defy Europe with or without the aid of France, and laughed as loudly at Louis Napoleon's old idea of putting the sovereign Pontiff at the head of an Italian federation, as ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... The absurdity of the claim that these cruel Indians felt love is made more glaringly obvious if we take a case nearer home; imagining a neighbor guilty of torturing harmless captive women with the obscene cruelty of the Indians, and yet attributing to him a capacity for refined love! The ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... would have been only part of the general plan to give the widest scope to Jim's detractors, and to take no part in counter-plotting any more than she would ally herself with her father's villainous advisers. The utter absurdity of my joke, I firmly believe, would have appeared plainly to her had the real danger of the fire not been apprehended by her intuitions, far keener than she suspected, and so interpreted to her will as to lead her without fear to the very spot ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... the two men faced each other silently, the one amused by the news he was imparting, the other staggered by its seeming absurdity. Then Fairholme flung himself back into ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... rendering it criminal in the laity to attend divine worship, when such profane priests officiated at the altar [h]. This point was a great object in the politics of the Roman pontiffs; and it cost them infinitely more pains to establish it, than the propagation of any speculative absurdity which they had ever attempted to introduce. Many synods were summoned in different parts of Europe before it was finally settled; and it was there constantly remarked, that the younger clergymen complied cheerfully ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... of the matter is that there are probably tens of thousands of such positions, but to be conservative I will assume that there are only one thousand, and reducing it still further to almost an absurdity, I will figure that only ten per cent of those reply to my advertisement. In other words, at the lowest possible estimate I should have one hundred replies on the first day. I knew it was foolish to run it for three days, but the fellow insisted that that was the ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... occurred to him to connect the crime in the Arctic wastes with the will he had signed in the Aasvogel Syndicate office, on that fine spring morning, eighteen months ago. His only suspicion, which in nine thoughts out of ten he had almost rejected for its absurdity, was against the man Garnet whose place he had filled in the Expedition. Garnet, who was an author and a vile-tempered fellow even in good health, had gone half crazy because the Expedition was not postponed for a year on his account. He had cursed Alan as a scheming interloper, and so forth, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... I ask you, with a dark workman, who digs fifty feet under the ground, with a weaver sitting with stiffened joints before the loom, with a savage who emerges from the sea and sometimes reddens it with his blood? Why should one think of things so sad, so ugly? What an absurdity! ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... summer is of course impossible. Any weather expert will tell you so. Weather Bureau Chief Botts was certain no such absurdity could occur. And he would have been right except for one thing. It snowed ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... there should be anything which would be contrary to this love, that thing would be contrary to that which is true; consequently, that, which should be able to take away this love, would cause that which is true to be false; an obvious absurdity. Therefore there is nothing in ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... to have been derived from Italy. Italian needlework of this time abounds with it, and, it must be admitted, of a superior design, and style to that which was known here as "stump" work. Until the eighteenth century English work was more or less archaic in every branch. Personally, I see no more absurdity in the queer doll-like figures than in contemporary wood-carving. It was a period of tentative effort, and was, of course, beneath criticism. English Art has ever been an effort until its one bright burst of genius in the eighteenth century, while the continental nations appear to have ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... stroke of fright succeeded the hot flush of rage as Captain Rozario saw the absurdity of ordering him to march his company out for company drill. How in the name of all the Holy Saints could he march his company out with six companies planted in front of him? Let them be cleared away first. To his men ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... ROBERT DEVERELL, who privately printed, in 4to., Andalusia; or Notes tending to show that the Yellow Fever was well known to the Ancients? The book seems a mass of absurdity; containing illustrations of Milton's Comus, and ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... he wrote, "and start an account. Try and put away a certain amount each week." This sentence was stroked out, vetoed by saner afterthought. The father doubtless realized the absurdity of asking a young man away from home earning five dollars a week to save. "Keep yourself if possible," said the letter, "on the salary you draw; but if you run shy I am always ready to help you out." Evan thought of his tailor's bill, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... degrading necessity.—All there participate in, and have a share of, Nature's gifts. These, scanty though they be, are open to all. Experience here has proved, and the history of the aborigines of other countries has shown, the absurdity of expecting that any men, "as free as Nature first made man," will condescend to leave their woods, and come under all the restraints imposed by civilisation, purely from choice, unless they can do so on terms of the most perfect equality. ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... evident that all the "idees Napoleoniennes" are the ideas of the undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for the allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of its death struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to spooks. But this parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free the mass of the French nation from the weight of tradition, and to ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... "physical laws ought not to be confounded with laws of human conduct;" that "these we always must obey, and those we may often, without deserving blame, boldly disregard;" and that "by commingling distinct classes of 'natural laws,' Mr. Combe introduces into his system dangerous error and gross absurdity." ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... position which the artist, or merchant,—whom in my present lecture I shall class together,—occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an honest labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the folly of pride: as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any latent absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their nearest likelihood; and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of events which he was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter terrified himself with his own fiends, ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... he would have been guarded, had he had our problem before his eyes in its universality. For he would then have perceived that, according to his own argument, there likewise could not be any pure mathematical science, which assuredly cannot exist without synthetical propositions a priori—an absurdity from which his good understanding ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... me, "Why do you not become a Christian—for our religion is certain?" I assured them I was a sort of Christian; but they would not hear of it—appealing to my own words, "Do not your padres, your very bishops, marry?" The absurdity of a bishop having a wife particularly struck them: they scarcely knew whether to be most amused or ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a marvelous country where everything was mysterious, from the Nile that had created it to the hieroglyphs engraved upon the walls of its gigantic edifices.[10] At the same time they were shocked by the coarseness of its fetichism and by the absurdity of its superstitions. Above all they felt an unconquerable repulsion at the worship of animals and plants, which had always been the most striking feature of the vulgar Egyptian religion and which, like all other archaic devotions, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... unlearned for accepting the creed of the Church to which they belong, just as they have to accept the opinions of a lawyer or of a physician in matters of health and business. They must not, indeed, accept what shocks their consciences, nor allow 'an intelligible absurdity' to be passed off as a 'sacred mystery.' The popular doctrines of hell and of the atonement come under this head; but he still refers to Coleridge for an account of such doctrines, which appears to him ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of his visitor's manner, touched by the unexpected poetry of his appeal, and yet keenly alive to the absurdity of an incomprehensible blunder somewhere committed, the editor gasped ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... nine-century-old name. There's a title, too, been lying loose in the family since sixteen hundred and I forget what year. But I want her to be sure of herself. As for the study with Josef, it will be good for her, but the idea of Katrine on the stage is an absurdity. I've a cousin in Paris—the Countess de Nemours, a very great lady, though I say it as shouldn't," he said, with a laugh, "whom I am hoping to interest in the little girl. She's no longer young. By-the-way, perhaps you've met her! Her miniature hangs ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the hounds. As he jumped into it he was suddenly aware of a yelling crowd of men and boys, who seemed, with nightmare unexpectedness, to fill all the lane behind him. He knew what they were there for, and oblivious of the lamentable absurdity of his appearance, he turned and roared out a defiance as he clattered at full speed down the stony lane. It seemed like another and almost expected episode in the nightmare when he became aware ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... many. Read the systems as founded, and you find an old-time philosophy, rejuvenated with some little addition of cap or bell better to adapt it to the modern time. The much-lauded Hegelian philosophy is the system of Democritus, with the addition of a little more absurdity in the assertion of the identity of contradictories. The multitudinous philosophies may thus be reduced to a single quaternion, and the reputed inaugurator of a new philosophy is like to be a charlatan. So history ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag'd in went on ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... enumerating all the terrors of the night; at length he is wrought up to a degree of frenzy, that makes him afraid of some supernatural discovery of his design, and calls out to the stones not to betray him, not to declare where he walks, nor to talk.—As he is going to say of what, he discovers the absurdity of his suspicion, and pauses, but is again overwhelmed by his guilt, and concludes, that such are the horrors of the present night, that the stones may be expected to ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... The degree of absurdity to which a portion of society must have attained before such scenes as the above could become possible may serve as a commentary and an explanation to half the literature which flooded the stage and the press in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
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