"Absurdity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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, ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... 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
... absurdity of the quarrel in the face of hostile Africa filled Billy with the futile fury of exasperation. He ground his teeth, glowering at her, and wound her halter rope about his smarting hand. All his hope was concentrated upon the necessity of winning to that rocky shelter before their pursuers overtook ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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
... 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 of ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... 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 |
