"Absurd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saddle. Let us welcome even ghosts when they rise. Away with our stares and grimaces. The New Zealander's tattooing is not a prodigy; nor the Chinaman's ways an enigma. No custom is strange; no creed is absurd; no foe, but who will in the end prove a friend. In heaven, at last, our good, old, white-haired father Adam will greet all alike, and sociality forever prevail. Christian shall join hands between Gentile and Jew; grim Dante ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... injected into the little body are poisonous. They are the result of degenerative changes—diseases—in the bodies of rabbits, horses, cows and other animals. Nature's law is that health must be deserved or earned. Health means cleanliness, so it really is absurd to force into the body these products of animal decay. Statistics can be given, showing how beneficial these agents are, but they are misleading. In the days of public and official belief in witchcraft it was not difficult to prove ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all existences infesting that haunted wood—a body without a soul! In its blank stare was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence—nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. "An appeal will not lie," he thought, with an absurd reversion to professional slang, making the situation more horrible, as the fire of a cigar might light ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... decisively. "Besides, it is a profession that is out of date now. Men don't go wilily to work in these days; but if they did, the notion of poor George, who could not keep a secret or tell a lie with easy grace if it were to save his life—the notion of making him a diplomatist is very absurd. No doubt statesmen are better without original ideas—their business is to pick out the practical ideas of other men and work them well—but George wants ability, poor fellow! They ought to have put him into the Church: he reads well, he could have read other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... How many productions whose milk-and-water merits, or unintelligible stupidity, have been considered as novelties, have by that means gained the admiration of Criticism and the praise of Fashion, until a more absurd novelty pushed them from their preferments and caused them to be as suddenly forgotten! The vulgar, tasteless jargon of "Dr. Syntax," with all the above-mentioned excellencies to excite public notice from the butterflies of fashion, soon found what it sought, though some of the plates or illustrations ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... sought this mission to the South, but had accepted it thinking that I might do the country some service. I pointed out to him that the charge that I had reported to the newspapers instead of to the President was simply absurd; that I had written to the President a series of elaborate reports; and, though I had, indeed, written a few letters to a newspaper, that it was well understood by the Secretary of War that I would do this when he made the arrangements for my journey. The compensation set out for me, I ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... have to put out the sage to please the fool, and so on. We'll keep it up, once the precedent is established, until finally it will become a class club entirely—a Plumbers' Club, for instance—and how absurd that would be in Hades! No, gentlemen, it can't be done. The poets must ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... a man absurd in what they understand, they may conclude the same of him in what they ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... "It is absurd," admitted Jane, "but Maudie, all students are not scientifically inclined as you are. What about the ghost? Who is he ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... usually refer to its superior power of explaining reality. And if it be objected that therefore no morally educative agency would remain if religion were discarded, the answer is simple. A system of moral idealism founded on science—it is absurd to call it science—does exist, and might at any time be enlarged to the proportions of a national or international educative agency. As yet it is left to individual cultivation or crystallised in a few tiny associations, such as ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... English readers have perhaps been satiated with writings about Art. But rather more than 100 years ago there had been comparatively little of it and hardly anything, if anything at all, of this quality. And it may not be absurd to draw attention to the differences between these descriptions and those in ornate prose that we have had since from Mr. Ruskin and others. Most of the latter are essentially prose though often very beautiful prose: Shelley's, though pure prose in form, are as it were scenarios ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... "that the other boy would not leave his sister and his father." He roused himself suddenly. "Perhaps I do Ken injustice. I want to meet the gallant commander of the Flying Dutchman. It seems absurd that such close neighbors have not yet met. Bring him—and Felicia, when you come again. We'll drink to the success of the Sturgis Water Line. And don't dare to tell me, next time, that you never heard of the scale of A flat major, ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... superstitious," replied Krantz; "and yet I must say that, to me, the appearance was not like a reality. No vessel could carry such sail in the gale; but yet, there are madmen afloat who will sometimes attempt the most absurd things. If it was a vessel, she must have gone down, for when it cleared up she was not to be seen. I am not very credulous, and nothing but the occurrence of the consequences which you anticipate will make me believe that there ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Nazareth, and staid but a little while. The people said, "This the Son of God! Why, his father is nothing but a carpenter. We know the family. We see them every day. Are not his brothers named so and so, and his sisters so and so, and is not his mother the person they call Mary? This is absurd." He did not curse his home, but he shook its dust from his feet ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and this with so great alacrity, as you could hardly put on the like, in case our metropolis had called you to her assistance against barbarians. And if I had perceived that your army was composed of men like unto those who invited them, I had not deemed your attempt so absurd; for nothing does so much cement the minds of men together as the alliance there is between their manners. But now for these men who have invited you, if you were to examine them one by one, every one of them would be found to have deserved ten thousand deaths; for the very rascality and offscouring ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... only fooling, dearie; it's all going to be lovely, and I'm going into that conservatory just as valiantly as the Rough Riders charged up old San Juan! Only, Marmee, don't ask me to wear white—that would be too absurd! Frankly, I'm susceptible to color. You've heard about the little boy who whistled in the dark to keep his courage up?" Mrs. Warren smiled through her tears. "Well, I'm going to wear my red—red is cheerful, and not too innocent, and—and courageous—I mean," Nancy explained, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... absurd! Of course not. Only I was afraid by giving way to this you might drift on into a worse state of mind. She's all safe, I fancy, surrounded as she is by so many guardians. It is you that I'm ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... now wanders over the battlefield of Castillon can hardly realize how his country grieved at the defeat of Talbot far away here amidst the southern vines. To-day it seems so absurd, so contrary to the policy of common-sense, that England, then so thinly populated, should have striven so hard and so long in order to be a Continental power; when now, with her dense population, half subsisting ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... more absurd than usual over this incident. It pretends that he swam with one hand, and carried his Commentaries, holding them above water, with the other. As if a general would take his MSS. with ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... through his mind with importunate distinctness, but he dismissed it as absurd and unworthy of himself. A king would be more likely to offer to share his throne with a beggar than this girl would be to invite him to enjoy the sweet follies of love-making with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... also been the absurd suggestion that the impediment was Swift's knowledge that both he and Stella were the illegitimate children of Sir William Temple—a theory which is ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... reasonably imagined. To suppose, as has been put forward, that birds are endowed with a migratory instinct for the express purpose of keeping down their numbers, in order, that is, that they may perish in crossing the sea, is really too absurd for serious consideration. If that were the end in view, it would be most easily obtained by keeping them at home, where snow would speedily starve them. On the contrary, it will appear to any one who walks about ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... vindictiveness against woman suffrage and the astounding amount of misinformation there is everywhere here in the East concerning its practical operation. I have been equally amazed and indignant at the many brazen assertions I have seen in the papers and heard that are perfectly absurd and without the slightest foundation in fact, and I have had many heated discussions on the subject during the past three years. When I hear men and women who have never spent a week and most of them not an hour in an equal suffrage State attempt to discuss the subject ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... we can make a hearty Meal of a Piece of roast Beef for all that. Is it possible, Sir, that your Country-men should act so absurdly, as to pay an Ox the Tribute of divine Worship, said the Indian? Absurd as you think it, said the other, the Ox has been the principal Object of Adoration all over Egypt, for these hundred and thirty five thousand Years, and the most abandon'd Egyptian has never been as yet so impious as to gain-say it. Ay, Sir, an hundred ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... well mounted, some ill, but all flying along as best they might, the subaltern as good as the general, jostling and pushing, spurring and driving, with every thought thrown to the winds save that they should have the blood of this absurd fox! Truly, they are an extraordinary people, ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... love you?" repeated the divinity student. "Come now, that's absurd! No woman is annoyed by an offer. I swear I love you reverently. I can put you at the head of this society—the wife of a clergyman. Busy tongues shall be stilled at your coming and going, and the shadow of this late tragedy ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... Portuguese authors, as I have read nearly all that are to be found in print of Mr. Southey's authorities, and some that he does not mention; but Mr. Southey had been so faithful as well as judicious in the use he has made of his authors, that it would have been absurd, if not impertinent, to have neglected his guidance. From the time of the King's arrival in Brazil, or rather of his leaving Lisbon, I am answerable for all I have stated: it is little, but I hope ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... nothing to be done," said Dahl to him; "but don't be ashamed of your pain; groan, it will ease you." "No," he replied, interruptedly; "no,... it is of no ... use to ... groan;... my wife ... will ... hear;... 'tis absurd ... that such a trifle ... should ... master me,... I will not."—I left him at five o'clock in the morning, and returned in a couple of hours. Having observed, that the night had been tolerably quiet, I went home with an impression almost of hope; but on my return I found ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... "How absurd!" exclaimed the officials with whom I talked. "We holding King Nicholas a prisoner? The idea is preposterous. So far as France is concerned, he can return ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... conferences was an agreement between England and France to effect the exchange of Sardinia and Sicily just mentioned, recompensing Spain by giving her Parma and Tuscany in northern Italy, and stipulating that the emperor should renounce forever his absurd but irritating claim to the Spanish crown. This arrangement was to be enforced by arms, if necessary. The emperor at first refused consent; but the increasing greatness of Alberoni's preparations at last decided him to accept so advantageous an offer, and the accession of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... aboard the steamer had told him about the sportsmanlike rules that obtain at Avalon, it seemed absurd to Colin for any one to try and catch so heavy a fish as the tuna seemed to be, with a rod and line that would be thought light ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to Marois Bay, none of us dreamed that he was a man with a hidden sorrow in his life. There was something about the man which made the idea absurd, or would have made it absurd if he himself had not been the authority for the story. He looked so thoroughly pleased with life and with himself. He was one of those men whom you instinctively label in your mind as 'strong'. He was so healthy, so fit, and had ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the population. There is yet but one considerable building completed, a most surprising thing to be seen in this wild Region. It is of stone and built as if to last forever. It is large as a Courthouse of one of your usual Towns, and might seem absurd in this country did it not suggest a former civilization instead of one yet to come. It is full large enough for any Town of several thousand people. This is the property of the Co. that is building the Ry. It is said that ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... say to these results? If true, what a wonderful antiquity is here unfolded for the human race, and what a wonderful lapse of time is included in what is known as the Paleolithic Age! How strikingly does it impress upon our minds the slow development of man! Is such an antiquity for man in itself absurd? We know no reason for such a conclusion. Our most eminent scholars nowhere set a limit to the time of man's first appearance. It is true, many of them do not think the evidence strong enough to affirm such an antiquity, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... whole the three girls got along excellently, but if there was any hint at disturbance it generally arose from Lilias, whose pride would be up in arms at the most absurd trifles. She was annoyed that Carmel was asked to give away the prizes at the village sports, and showed her dissatisfaction so plainly that her sweet-tempered cousin, rather than have any fuss, solved the situation by asking Cousin Clare to perform the ceremony instead, considerably ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... succeeding days, artillery disappeared and the emblems of peace and commerce took its place—cats, hacks, sausages, tugs, fire engines, pianos, guitars, rocks, gardens, flower-pots, landscapes—whatever was wanted, he flung it in; and the more out of place and absurd the required object was, the more joy he got out of fabricating it. The pirates were delighted, the customers applauded, the sex began to flock in, great was the prosperity of the firm. Tracy was obliged to confess to himself that there was something ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... defense, those who knew that they were the cause of dissatisfaction spread the report that a race war was in progress and that the Katipuneros were planning the massacre of all of the white race. It was a sufficiently absurd statement, but it was made even more ridiculous by its "proof," for this was the discovery of an apron with a severed head, a hand holding it by the hair and another grasping the dagger which had done the bloody work. This emblem, handed down from ancient days as an object lesson of faithfulness ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... Quite a cultured town. There is a theatre, a museum, a town garden with a band, a good hotel.... No hideous fences, no absurd shop-signs, and no waste places with warming placards. There is a tavern called "Taganrog"; sugar costs twenty-four kopecks a pound, pine kernels six ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... all a big man's tenderness and sweetness, and everyone liked him. Susan and he quarreled with and criticized each other, William imitating her little affectations of speech and manner, Susan reviling his transparent and absurd ambitions, but they had been good friends for years. Young Oliver's mother had been Mrs. Lancaster's housekeeper for the most prosperous period in the history of the house, and if Susan naturally felt that the son of a working housekeeper was seriously handicapped in a social sense, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... from the imperfect seed, by discovering and separating the seed of metals, and bringing that seed under the conditions which alone are suitable for its growth. Metals must have seed, the alchemists said, for it would be absurd to suppose they have none. "What prerogative have vegetables above metals," exclaims one of them, "that God should give seed to the one and withhold it from the other? Are not metals as much in His sight ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... was absurd for a mere boy just out of college, with scarcely a cent to his name—and not a whole name to call his own—to think of attempting to attack the great problem of the people single-handed; but still he felt he was called to do it, ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... vast woods, that infinite summer sky—they were giving her a new and far from practical point of view—especially upon the petty trickeries and posturings of the ludicrously self-important human specks that crawl about upon the earth and hastily begin to act queer and absurd as soon as they come in sight of each other. She found herself rapidly developing that latent "sentimentality" which her grandmother had so often rebuked and warned her against —which Lucia had insisted was her real ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... was cruelly assassinated. An officer in the Russian army, named Mirovitch, conceived an absurd plan of liberating Ivan from his captivity, restoring him to the throne, and consigning Catharine II. to the dungeon the prince had so long inhabited. Mirovitch had command of the garrison at Schlusselburg, where Ivan was imprisoned. Taking advantage of the absence of the empress, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... frequently made to herself and Arthur. The excitement of finding a sister in Miggie, had in a measure overturned Nina's reason again, and for many days after the disclosure she was more than usually wild, talking at random of the most absurd things, but never for a moment losing sight of the fact that Edith was her sister. This seemed to be the one single clear point from which her confused ideas radiated, and the love she bore her sister ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... to the method which is irrational—regardless of reason, and therefore leading to conclusions erroneous and absurd. Rationalism is opposed to ultraism, to vehement, officious and extreme measures—while it would seek more excellent ways, it holds fast ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... or Giotto, these are just the kind of persons likely to be there: as much as the angel is likely to be there also, though you will be told nowadays that Giotto was absurd for putting him into the sky, of which an apothecary can always produce the similar blue, in a bottle. And now that you have had Shakespeare, and sundry other men of head and heart, following the track of ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... nothing but a mutual suspicion and espionage; if only there was anything to spy out and to hide! It is pure trifles with which they worry themselves, and I find these diplomatists with their airs of confidence and their petty fussiness much more absurd than the member of the Second Chamber in his conscious dignity. Unless some external events take place, and we clever men of the Diet can neither direct nor foresee them, I know already what we shall bring about in one or two or three years, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... the boy's first wild infatuation—as mad, unreasoning, absurd, yet intense as was ever that of Arthur Pendennis for the lovely Fotheringay. Margaret Garrison had never seen or known the like of it. She had fascinated others for a time, had kindled love, passion and temporary devotion, but this—this was worship, and it was something so sweet to ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... is absurd," she replied dreamily, "and I am not so silly as to believe it. But I don't think I should ever be able to take any pleasure in that kitchen if it were built out of that lumber. Besides, I think the kitchen would look better and last longer if ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... desperadoes were planning to attack the command, the very next morning while crossing the Judith Mountains, with a hope, of course, of getting the animals. He also told Faye that one of them would be in camp that evening to ask permission to go with him to Maginnis. Faye said the whole story was absurd, particularly the attack, as those horse thieves would never dare attack government troops. Besides, he had over fifty good men with him, and probably there were only ten or twelve horse thieves. So not much attention was paid to what ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... He was, as he said, willing to aid her; but the idea of the principal personage of the house of Sands & Co. walking through the streets of the great city with such an ill-dressed young lady was absurd, and not to be tolerated. Master Sneed reflected. It is undoubtedly true that "where there is a will there is ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... these performances with open mouth. Secretly the fat boy aspired to imitate Davy in some of his antics; though Giraffe always scoffed loudly at the absurd idea of a heavy weight like Bumpus trying to play the part of ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... "How perfectly absurd of me, Mr. Addison!" she said. "You will certainly think I am more than eccentric to sit here fulfilling the part of a ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... causes most of us to drop the poem after a single canto; its affected antique spelling; its use of fone (foes), dan (master), teene (trouble), swink (labor), and of many more obsolete words; its frequent torturing of the king's English to make a rime; its utter lack of humor, appearing in such absurd lines as, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of this ballad is found in Arndt's Murchen, Berlin, 1816. The ballad appeared first in St. Nicholas, whose young readers were advised, while smiling at the absurd superstition, to remember that bad companionship and evil habits, desires, and passions are more to be dreaded now than the Elves and Trolls who frightened ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... whom the shadow of suspicion could by any possibility fall were Lapierre and Jonathan Perry. Well, so far as the latter was concerned the idea was too absurd for serious consideration. To begin with, Jonathan was seventy-six years of age, feeble and almost decrepid. Then, he was a man of excellent character, and, notwithstanding his humble station in life, was ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... the result that it now resembles the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, and can no longer be re-arranged on the original Varronian plan. The difficulty is increased by the etymologies and explanations which they offer of the divine names, which, as a rule, are even more absurd than the divinities themselves.[338] ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... portion of aconitine to his prescriptions. The drug was a deadly one, he said, and the toxic dose was still to be determined. He could not push it in the case of a relative who trusted himself to his care. I tried to shake him in what I regarded as his absurd squeamishness—but in vain. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of manoeuvring a balloon in a wind, and poising it in the manner suggested, is, of course, preposterous; and when one considers the attempt to aim bombs from a moving balloon high in air the case becomes yet more absurd. Any such missile would partake of the motion of the balloon itself, and it would be impossible to tell where it would strike ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... founded their families, when those ancestors would have disclaimed them as puny nonentities. Their ideas were wholly provided for them, precisely as were their clothes and every artistic thing that gave them "background." They would have made as absurd a failure of trying to evolve the one as the other. Yet they posed—and were widely accepted—as the superiors of those who made their clothes and furniture and of those who made their ideas. And she had thought Dory partly insincere, partly ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... article of food; but in this, as in all other similar instances, they are very unwilling to confess their ignorance of a thing, and rather than do so will often invent a tradition. Hence many intelligent persons have raised most absurd theories and have committed ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... don't mean that at all, and you know it! But for a great, tall fellow like you to be so unreasonably jealous of a little ten-year-old does seem absurd. I love Doodles, of course; everybody does. But, David, you ought to know that's all there is ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... so kind as to interest yourself so warmly in my favour, I cannot resist the temptation of writing you a few lines. Till these two days, I was convinced the Congress would unanimously have rescinded the absurd, shameful sentence of the court-martial; but, within these two days, I am taught to think that equity is to be put out of the question, and the decision of the affair to be put entirely on the strength of party; and, for my own part, I do not ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the way of such an attempt comes the prompt objection that the Articles were actually drawn up against "Popery," and therefore it was transcendently absurd and dishonest to suppose that Popery, in any shape,—patristic belief, Tridentine dogma, or popular corruption authoritatively sanctioned,—would be able to take refuge under their text. This premiss I denied. Not ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Requests.—Holborn.—A case of rather a curious nature, and which was characterised rather by the absurd credulity of the parties than by its novelty, came before the Commissioners on Thursday last. A man of the name of O'Regan attended the Court, to show cause against a summons which had been issued, calling upon him to pay a debt of eighteen ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... such "history" ought to be self evident. Imagine, if you can, a brigade of infantry following Sheridan on his wild ride of "twenty miles" and then rushing to attack an army which, according to the tradition of which I have spoken, had just whipped four army corps. Of course, the statement is an absurd one. No brigade came from Winchester. No brigade could have come from Winchester; and had such a thing been possible, it would have constituted but a ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... outworn "van to van," ship to ship, dogma; but Rodney is said to have expressed himself in more emphatic terms subsequently, as follows: "During all the commands Lord Rodney has been entrusted with, he made it a rule to bring his whole force against a part of the enemy's, and never was so absurd as to bring ship against ship, when the enemy gave him an opportunity of acting otherwise." Though not distinctly so stated, it would seem that his first movement on the present occasion had failed because of the long distance between the fleets permitting the enemy to succor ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... could not believe that this laboriously written record could have been compiled for his sole benefit; and this one entry which he had lit upon by mere chance was only one of hundreds of stupid, absurd entries, most of which meant nothing at all, and which seemed more like the symptoms of a disease than the healthy productions of a ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the mind of man, to keep up society. And it is certain, that earnest desire has been the cause of the greatest events; and this ought to instruct us that the world stands in need of a great many instincts, which, examined according to the ideas of our reason, are ridiculous and absurd. For there is nothing so opposite to reason as to torment ourselves in this life, that we may be praised after we are dead, since neither philosophy, nor experience, nor faith, nor any thing whatsover, makes it appear, that the praises given us after death can do ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... Brissot de Warville took exception, and supplied his own picture by writing in 1791, "You have often heard me blame M. Chastellux for putting too much sprightliness in the character he has drawn of this general. To give pretensions to the portrait of a man who has none is truly absurd. The General's goodness appears in his looks. They have nothing of that brilliancy which his officers found in them when he was at the head of his army; but in conversation they become animated. He has no characteristic ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... absurd meaning in her little side-glance, which at another time would have put me on my guard. But just then I was engrossed with my own vague fears. I forgot even to remove my hand from her arm. So we were standing, when a moment later the silence was broken by the sound of a galloping ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... after he came here from abroad. I have seen the little creature run furiously at the great animal when gnawing a bone, who instantly turned himself submissively over on his back, with all his legs in the air, whilst Raith, seizing the bone, would make the most absurd and unavailing attempts to bestride the enormous head of his subdued companion, with the most ludicrous affectation of the terrible growling, that might bespeak the loftiest description of dog-indignation. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... three of the best hours of a morning; the difficulty of early rising he finds to consist less in rising early than in satisfying himself that the practice is wholesome; his mind is torn for a whole forenoon in an absurd contest with himself, whether he ought to indulge a strong wish to exercise his horse before dinner. Every page of his diary is a register of the symptoms of this unhappy disease. When the Revolution came, he was absolutely forced, by the iron necessity of the case, after certain perturbations, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... constraint seemed to have vanished, and she let it be seen that she had sincere pleasure in renewing the acquaintance. King himself began to realize how large a place the girl's image had occupied in his mind. He was not in love—that would be absurd on such short acquaintance—but a thought dropped into the mind ripens without consciousness, and he found that he had anticipated seeing Irene again with decided interest. He remembered exactly how she looked at Fortress Monroe, especially ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... well. We have two cracker jacks as guides—John Goff, my old guide on the mountain lion hunt, and Jake Borah, who has somewhat the Seth Bullock type of face. We have about thirty dogs, including one absurd little terrier about half Jack's size, named Skip. Skip trots all day long with the hounds, excepting when he can persuade Mr. Stewart, or Dr. Lambert, or me to take him up for a ride, for which he is always begging. He is most affectionate and intelligent, but when ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... that swell the big man's heart to bursting find rather absurd expression in his savage objurgation of the innocent brown charger. But Captain Bingo, when he stoops over the camp-bed where lies Beauvayse, kisses him solemnly and clumsily upon the forehead, and then goes heavily striding out of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... at hers. But certainly she was not going to quit England, not going to quit home at all, while her husband remained there, and while Mrs. Peacocke was an inmate of the school. It was not that she was jealous. The idea was absurd. But she knew very well what Mrs. Stantiloup ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... by Cardinal Paleotti. These were an Ecclesiastical History, a treatise on the Hebrew Commonwealth, and an edition of Sulpicius Severus. The MSS. were returned to him, accused of unsound doctrine, and scrawled over with such remarks as 'false,' 'absurd.'[125] ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... but the young professor had forgotten the heat and the grime of the workshop. He was wholly absorbed in the making of a nondescript machine, a sort of crude harmonica with a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. It was a most absurd toy in appearance. It was unlike any other thing that had ever been made in any country. The young professor had been toiling over it for three years and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot afternoon in June, 1875, he heard an almost inaudible sound—a faint TWANG—come ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... This was an absurd, ridiculous threat, for in the first place Pista, if he had really attempted to execute it, would have stifled and roasted himself before the mansion received the slightest injury, and besides, as examination afterwards proved, he had neither matches nor tinder with him; but ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... was his father's voice that he now heard, lofty and bitter reason which, though it had fled, at present came back in all sovereignty. As he had done already after Lourdes, he protested against the glorification of the absurd and the downfall of common sense. Reason alone enabled him to walk erect and firm among the remnants of the old beliefs, even amidst the obscurities and failures of Science. Ah! Reason, it was through her alone that he suffered, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... commissions. I entered into a treaty with a house in Hamburg, which I authorised, in spite of the Berlin decree, to bring cloth and leather from England. Thus I procured these articles in a sure and cheap way. Our troops might have perished of cold had the Continental system and the absurd mass of inexecutable decrees relative ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... blanket, the half of a shelter tent, and one wooden tent pole in two sections. The rifle could be used as a tent pole—so say men I talk with on the subject. On this expedition overcoats are a superfluity, and it is absurd that troops should be sent to the tropics in summer wearing exactly the same uniform they would be using throughout the winter on the frontiers of Canada. This war will, no doubt, produce a change after English models. At present the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... 'An Autobiography' at one stage of its inception, although he wished to repudiate the autobiographical nature of his story at another. Dr. Knapp in his anxiety to prove that Borrow wrote his own memoirs in Lavengro and Romany Rye tells us that he had no creative faculty—an absurd proposition. But I think we may accept the contest between Ben Brain and Thomas Borrow, and what a revelation of heredity that impressive death-bed scene may be counted. Borrow on one occasion in later life declared that his favourite hooks were the Bible and the Newgate ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... to rather an important matter. Rent. It is up to you to say how much you want; but let me give you one word of warning. Don't be absurd. You aren't dealing now with one of those profiteers who remained (with honour) in his own country. And you can have our flat in exchange, if you like—well, it isn't ours really, it's the landlord's, but we will introduce ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... represents, and it has in return enjoyed a degree of national favor never granted to any other. The object of Cervantes in writing it was, as he himself declares, "to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry." The fanaticism for these romances was so great in Spain during the sixteenth century, and they were deemed so noxious, that the burning of all copies extant in the country ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... so that you can say you've been, but it's very simple. It's absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first turning to the right. We'll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go and get ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... particularly his "Elegies;" Thomson; "Man of Feeling"—a book I prize next to the Bible; "Man of the World;" Sterne, especially his "Sentimental Journey;" Macpherson's "Ossian," &c.; these are the glorious models after which I endeavour to form my conduct, and 'tis incongruous, 'tis absurd to suppose that the man whose mind glows with sentiments lighted up at their sacred flame—the man whose heart distends with benevolence to all the human race—he "who can soar above this little scene of things"—can he descend to mind the paltry concerns about which ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... this dark age is enough to make one feel as if among children. Want and ignorance and wars interminable had impoverished the mind of man and starved his moral nature. The scanty, slashed, ridiculous garments of the nobles and the wealthy betray an absurd poverty of taste and weakness of intellect.[49] One of the most striking characteristics of these small minds is their triviality; they are incapable of attention; they retain nothing. No one who reads the writings of the period ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... frame from a cabinet, and, with an absurd assumption of devotion, dropped a kiss on it before she gave it to Gladys. Gladys sat up, and, holding the photograph up between the light, looked at it earnestly. It was the portrait of a man in hunting dress, standing by his horse, and certainly no fault could be found with his ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... space toward the enemy ship, Emmett felt overcome with an absurd sensation of freedom. Completely surrounded by billions of motionless, pin-point stars and securely hidden by the vast blackness of space, the aliens and the problem of survival seemed ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith
... width of all the glacial markings he discovers. On the U.S. Government maps the stream flowing through Glen Alpine basin is marked as Eau Claire Creek. To the proprietors of Glen Alpine, and the visitors, the French name is absurd and out of place. No Frenchman has ever resided here, and if it was desired to call it Clear Water Creek, why not use good, understandable, common-sense English. At the request of those most intimately concerned, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... two gods we got the chiffre, and the rebus is still to seek. In the case of Quetzalcoatl or CUKULCAN, the rebus was the means of getting the name; and if the names of this divinity had not been equivalent in the two tongues, our results would have led us to the (almost absurd) conclusion that a god of certain attributes was called by his Aztec name in ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... W. Hewer away home. I not sorry for it much did go to White Hall, and got my Lord Bellasses to get me into the playhouse; and there, after all staying above an hour for the players, the King and all waiting, which was absurd, saw "Henry the Fifth" well done by the Duke's people, and in most excellent habits, all new vests, being put on but this night. But I sat so high and far off, that I missed most of the words, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the Duke of Hereward! What on earth could a gentleman have to say to a charge as absurd as it was infamous, thus made upon him by a disreputable person in ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... as the writings of Moses. All the efforts between Moses and David are without regular form—a mass of rearranged tradition, both fabulous and corrupt; long after the times of David the pages of writers regarded authentic, are loaded with absurd and ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... respect? What is your influence upon young men? Do you not think it would be better for you to exercise a little self-denial! People wondered why George Briggs, Governor of Massachusetts, wore a cravat but no collar. "Oh," they said, "it is an absurd eccentricity." This was the history of the cravat without any collar: For many years before he had been talking with an inebriate, trying to persuade him to give up the habit of drinking and he said to the inebriate, "Your habit is entirely unnecessary." "Ah!" replied the inebriate, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... cooler heads among the revolutionists, especially those who were living abroad in personal safety, had come to understand that the Socialist ideal could not be attained by popular insurrection, terrorism, or conspiracies, and consequently that further activity on the old lines was absurd. Those of them who did not abandon the enterprise in despair reverted to the idea that Autocratic Power, impregnable against frontal attacks, might be destroyed by prolonged siege operations. This change of tactics is reflected in the revolutionary ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... knowledge, what acuteness of scientific criticism, can touch this, if any one possessed of knowledge, or acuteness, could be absurd enough to make the attempt? Will the progress of research prove that justice is worthless and mercy hateful; will it ever soften the bitter contrast between our actions and our aspirations; or show us the bounds of the universe and bid us say, Go to, now we comprehend the infinite? ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... gibbering idiocy. There are ten little boys whom you wish to provide with ten top-hats; and you find there are only eight top-hats. To a simple mind it would seem not impossible to make two more hats; to find out whose business it is to make hats, and induce him to make hats; to agitate against an absurd delay in delivering hats; to punish anybody who has promised hats and failed to provide hats. The modern mind is that which says that if we only cut off the heads of two of the little boys, they will not want hats; and then the hats will exactly go round. The suggestion that heads ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... only paper that put the news in half a column of ordinary type, took a judicial attitude, called upon the city authorities to tear down the posters, and hinted that "this absurd person, Cosmo Versal, who disgraces a once honored name with his childish attempt to create a sensation that may cause untold harm among the ignorant masses," had laid himself ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... lacked the necessary conviction. After all I was the average citizen, with the average incredulity of the far-fetched, the melodramatic, the absurd. To connect the head waiter's panic at my departure with the episode in my room, to declare that the floor clerks had been called from their posts for a set purpose, and the halls deliberately cleared ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... supporter of John Sherman's policy at any period of its crucial test. We did not believe that his gigantic experiment could be brought to a successful conclusion. The absurd currency theories which were from time to time set up in antagonism to his policy never impressed us; our disbelief was based upon our fear that the commercial and industrial wreckage, consequent upon an increase of forty per cent. in the purchasing ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... why we shouldn't participate," said another bush. "Here we are, covered with fruit, and it's all just as free as ever it was. That's absurd, after a big war. The duty of a war is to make things ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... it is no mistake," exclaimed the general, impatiently. "Look at the inscription, 'The Reward of Fidelity!' To whom should that apply but to you? Put the money in your pocket, Walter, and let us have no more absurd doubts ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... makes superstition less to be wondered at, particularly amongst the vulgar; and when two facts, naturally unconnected, have been accidentally coincident, it is not singular that this coincidence should have been observed and registered, and that omens of the most absurd kind should be trusted in. In the west of England, half a century ago, a particular hollow noise on the sea-coast was referred to a spirit or goblin, called Bucca, and was supposed to foretell a shipwreck. The philosopher knows that sound travels much faster than currents in the ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... how they can, of course," said Theodora. "It is absurd to try and make any one else happy in one's own way, but oh, I hope I shall not have to pass the time like that, ever! I don't think I could ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... Wren. "Don't be silly like Turkey Proudfoot. He's making himself miserable because the Peacock has a tail that sticks up higher than his. How absurd," she cried, "to be proud like Turkey Proudfoot, just because your tail happens to stick up in the air. Why, yours and mine stick up. But we don't go around boasting about them. And if somebody else has ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... cat as he spoke, which process he performed by passing his hand deliberately from her head, along her back, to the very tip of her tail, which he retained each time in his grasp for a moment, ere he recommenced operations), "I highly disapprove of the absurd practice, so common with young men of the present day, of expressing their ideas in that low and incomprehensible dialect, termed 'slang,' which, in my opinion, has neither wit nor refinement to redeem its vulgarity, and ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... "Absurd. There's nothing in these stimuli that can kill him." George Webber sat tense, his eyes fixed on the pale fluctuating screen near ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... appear whimsical, but which is still not without reason. He said that in his first campaigns the enemy was so well provided that when his troops were in want of supplies he had only to fall upon the rear of the enemy to procure every thing in abundance. This is a remark upon which it would be absurd to found a system, but which perhaps explains the success of many a rash enterprise, and proves how much actual ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... man. Great writer though Plato was, what he did not know of biology was eminently worth knowing, and his teaching regarding womanhood and the conditions of motherhood in the ideal city is more fantastically and ludicrously absurd than anything that can be quoted, I verily believe, from any writer of equal eminence. If, indeed, the teaching of Plato were correct, there would be no purpose in this book. If a girl is practically a boy, we are right in bringing up our girls to be boys. If a woman ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... portrait of the glaciere. The way to reach it? Go by diligence to Charvonnaz—exactly what I had determined upon—and walk up to Aviernoz, where his good friend the maire would make me see his beautiful glaciere, through the means of a letter which he went to write. It was absurd to see this hot little man sign himself 'Dugravel, glacier,' that being the style of his profession, naturally recalling the contradictory conduct of the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... his chance, he was beside himself with joy. As to his being scared, the idea was manifestly absurd. He was as pleased with the prospect as it was possible for a man to be, and hardly able to contain himself for impatience to be off. I almost envied him his exuberant delight, for a sense of responsibility began to weigh upon me with ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... guilt of Adam and Eve to their descendants. This is the famous doctrine of imputation, which is now rejected by all the leading schools of modern Orthodoxy. That we can be guilty of Adam's sin, either by imputation or in any other way, seems too absurd and immoral a ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... funeral pyre. This opinion had its defenders and its detractors. Some said that there were too many such personages, and the price of wood would be enormously increased by such a custom; moreover, it would be absurd to see our ancestors in their urns in the procession at Longchamps. And if the urns were valuable, they were likely some day to be sold at auction, full of respectable ashes, or seized by creditors,—a race of men ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... moonlight, "I must protest against your belief that I could have been an effective candidate! I have roamed about the State, and I have made some very good friends here and there among the hill farmers, like Mr. Jenney. Mr. Redbrook is one of these. But it would have been absurd of me even to think of a candidacy founded on personal friendships. I assure you," he added, smiling, "there was no self denial in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and those of his more fortunate mates. The experiences of his first day at school were branded into his soul; and although he made friends by his bright face and kind and honest nature, scarcely a day passed during his six years of village schooling without his absurd name flying out at him from some unsuspected ambush and ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... technical knowledge of some sort, as in "Abt Vogler," where only a trained musician can fully understand the terminology. Many even of the minor poems belong to realms of thought and experience so remote that only by distinct effort do we transport ourselves thither. It would, for instance, be absurd to call "Two in the Campagna" difficult in form or phrasing, yet it narrates an experience intelligible only to those who have loved deeply but have found in the very heart of that love a baffling sense of inevitable ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... not going to be accepted by the McKelveys made Babbitt feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly to the Elks; at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding the wickedness of strikes; and again he saw ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... great cruelties were practised to compel uniformity. To that absurd shrine many thousand invaluable lives were sacrificed. Blessed be God, that happier days have dawned upon us. Antichrist can no longer put the Christian to a cruel death. It very rarely sends one to prison for refusing obedience to human laws that interfere with religious ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... artistic temperament was all very well, but there were limits. It was absurd that obscure authors should behave in this way. Prosser! Who on earth was Prosser? Had anyone ever heard of him? No! Yet here he was going about the country clipping small boys over the ear-hole, and flinging loaves ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... and won the highest praise from thousands of grateful women. It many cases, it is well to accompany its use with alterative treatment, for which the "Golden Medical Discovery" will be found especially effective. It is an absurd practice to arrest the discharge with astringent injections alone. The weak and lax walls of the vagina, as well as the other tissues of the system, require strength, and this can be gained only by the use of general and special ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... scarcely answerable," nervously interposed Claire. "You see, you don't and the man who does—though it's all absurd, since we none of us here are the least in ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... means light-bearer. It was at first thought to be the source of all power, to heal all diseases, and to turn the common minerals into gold. Although we have long ago learned that these ideas are absurd, yet we have also learned that its real value to man is far greater than was even dreamed ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... every English tourist would be wise to avoid the place, I acknowledged that there was the genuine ring of truth in his declaration. When he appealed to me, as a dispassionate observer, to say whether I did not consider the conduct of the authorities arbitrary, unjust, and absurd, I was forced to admit that I did consider that conduct absolutely indefensible. Lastly, when he announced that he intended never to say another word in praise of Ostend, I confessed that I had come in my own mind to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... any one at this day to affirm that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation, from the same mouth, that those who did the two things, alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were inconsistent better than we—better than he who affirms that they ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... the only exception, that I can think of, of an accurate describer of species, at least in the Invertebrate Kingdom, who has disbelieved in permanent species, but he in his absurd though clever work has done the subject harm." ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... a hot rage, shapeless and wordless, but smouldering like a fire within me. The cool, green lane, deep between hedge-rows, the banks of which were gemmed with primroses, had no effect upon me just then. Tardif marry Olivia! That was an absurd, preposterous notion indeed. It required all my knowledge of the influence of dress on the average human mind, to convince myself that Olivia, in her coarse green serge dress, had impressed the people of Sark with the notion that she ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... pheasants at the start. Of these 16 were shot dead, 1 was wounded in the wing, and 7 got away. The reader may have concluded that the answer is, therefore, that "seven remained." But as they flew away it is clearly absurd to say that they "remained." Had they done so they would certainly have been killed. Must we then conclude that the 17 that were shot remained, because the others flew away? No; because the question was not ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... sir, your everlasting contradictions end by being rather absurd! You have hardly finished building up one laborious theory before you start knocking it down again. ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... it probably is the most serious, the most earnest, the least devoted to amusement, the least flippant, the least jocose,—and yet it has the face to show itself month after month to the world, with so absurd a misnomer! It is, as all who know the laws of modern literature are aware, a very serious thing to change the name of a periodical. By doing so you begin an altogether new enterprise. Therefore should the name be well chosen;—whereas this was very ill chosen, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... a noisy, lively, sociable Duck, who has in spring some pleasing notes, so mellow and musical that he may almost be said to sing; but he is not choice or dainty in his food, and the flesh is too rank for House People to eat. He has many absurd names besides ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... clinging to Him tenaciously, loyally, as no other under the sun. Oh, if martyrdom, patience, and faith in despite of trial, can confer a patent of nobility, then this people is noble beyond many another.—It would have been absurd and petty, if, as people accuse me, I had been ashamed of being a Jew. Yet it were equally ludicrous for me to call myself a Jew.—As I instinctively hold up to unending scorn whatever is evil, timeworn, absurd, false, and ludicrous, so my nature leads me to appreciate the sublime, to admire what ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of papers, I have only one request to make of the reader, which is this: that, however absurd or incredible my statements may appear, he will take them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... jabbering for amusement instead of putting their own hands into the dough. So our armies were beaten and we couldn't defend, our frontiers. THE MAN was no longer there. I say "the man" because that's what they called him; but it was absurd to say that he was merely a man, when he had a star of his own with all its belongings. It was the rest of us who were merely men. At the battle of Aboukir, with a single division and with a loss ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... word of objection or the least appearance of embarrassment, and delivered an original monologue supposed to be spoken by a freshman newly arrived and airing her impressions of the college. It hit everybody with its absurd humor, which no one enjoyed better, apparently, than the ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... would earn his daily bread,—that cities and countries would honor in him, not Caesar, the lord of the earth, but a poet whose like the world had not produced before. And so he struggled, raged, played, sang, changed his plan, changed his quotations, changed his life and the world into a dream absurd, fantastic, dreadful, into an uproarious hunt composed of unnatural expressions, bad verses, groans, tears, and blood; but meanwhile the cloud in the west was increasing and thickening every day. The measure was exceeded; the insane comedy was ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... baudy amusements. Where I fail to have done so, I have left description blank, rather than attempt to make a story coherent by inserting what was merely probable. I could not now account for my course of action, nor why I did this, or said that, my conduct seems strange, foolish, absurd, very frequently, that of some women, equally so, but I can but ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... know, you absurd prince, that when you played the Czardas the other night I seemed to see a vision of a Hungarian prairie, covered with fighting centaurs and satyrs! I longed to be a vivandiere among all those fauns. You were there—in the music, I mean—and you ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... captain had taken a great deal of trouble to come down several miles from the village, probably hiring Prince to put him alongside the yacht. Yet he could not help thinking that the slight uneasiness which disturbed him was very absurd. He had permitted himself to hope that the owner of the Skylark would not claim her, or, at least, would not claim her till he had the use of her for a season, the longer the better; but he felt that he had no right to hope any such thing. The yacht was a beautiful craft, and it was in the very height ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic |
