"Ludicrously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should not be able to find employment for them. I asked one of them, a very fine-looking mulatto, how long she had been married, and her age. She replied that she was thirty- four, and had been married twenty-one years! Their black faces and woolly hair contrasted most ludicrously with the white pillow-case. After sleeping for a time, I was awoke by a dissonance of sounds—groaning, straining, creaking, and the crash of waves and roar of winds. I dressed with difficulty, and, crawling to the window, beheld a cloudless sky, a thin, blue, stormy-looking ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Lamb and Coleridge (I think) thought that Second Part should not have been written; why then did I—not for contradiction's sake, I am sure—so much prefer it? Old Hallam, in his History of Literature, resolved me, I believe, by saying that Cervantes, who began by making his Hero ludicrously crazy, fell in love with him, and in the second part tamed and tempered him down to the grand Gentleman he is: scarce ever originating a Delusion, though acting his part in it as a true Knight when led into it by others. {108b} A ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... old acquaintances of my mother's, both had visited The Farm before I was born; and about General Smith, in particular, there had survived amongst the servants a remembrance which seemed to us (that is to them and to myself) ludicrously awful, though, at that time, the practice was common throughout our Indian possessions. He had a Hindoo servant with him; and this servant every night stretched himself along the "sill" or outer threshold of the door; so that he might have been trodden on by the general ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... supposed that, though their astronomical achievements have been grossly, even ludicrously, exaggerated by some popular writers, the Babylonians contributed nothing of value to the progress of the science. We may infer from such a tablet as that already quoted on page 320, when the equinox was observed on the 6th day of Nisan, since ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... shy!' said Liza, excitedly, at which the unlucky men had to pull out their coppers, while Sally and Liza made ludicrously bad ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... been of course ludicrously over-paid, settled down in his corner, and announced his intention of seeing through to the end this most extraordinary and Heaven-directed occurrence. The innkeeper and his wife busied themselves with the breakfast, and Guy made remarks ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Everything the barrow held seemed to them rich and rare. But what they coveted most of all were those mysterious articles whose meaning and use they could make nothing of. For instance, there were polished globes like mirrors that reflected their feces with the features ludicrously distorted. There were Epinal wares with figures in impossibly vivid colours; there were little cases and boxes with ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... and nothing could have looked more utterly, more ludicrously bewildered than did the old concierge at ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... 'You mean like the dream presented to my mind when under the influence of the night-mare. This is most ludicrously expressed.' C. Ll[oyd] ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Bert. Also, 7 bullocks and 3 horses left their bones in the paddock, as evidence of the bitter necessity which had prompted this illegal invasion of pastoral leasehold. There were (including myself) 23 claimants, present in person, or arriving by twos or threes. A few of these were ludicrously abashed; others were insolent; but the large majority observed a fine nonchalance, shading down to apathy. And Mr. Smythe, true to his order of mind, treated the first with outrageous contumely, the second with silent contempt, and the third with a ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... "acquires a family" of a dozen small boys and henceforth finds her life "crammed with human interest." The ludicrously funny and sometimes pathetic doings of the little, untamed feudists, moonshiners, and hero worshippers, form ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... the note unfolded on the desk, and, as she rose, said in a tone of ludicrously mingled petulance and elation, "You have conquered! But ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it was supposed, had been so effectually tamed by penury and exile, that they would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new Envoy's origin was plebeian, his stature was dwarfish, his countenance was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony: but his strong sense, his keen penetration, and his lively wit eminently qualified him for his post. In spite of every disadvantage of birth and figure he was soon known as a most pleasing companion and as a most skilful ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was indeed Juniper Graves. That rather reckless character was, however, much more spruce in his appearance, and better dressed, than when in Frank Oldfield's service. There was an assumption of the fine gentleman about him, which made him look ludicrously contemptible, and had Frank not been roused to furious indignation at the sight of him, he could hardly have refrained from a violent outburst of merriment at the absurd airs and graces of his former servant. As it was, breathless ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... unseduced execrators of slavery, the upholders of the tie of brotherhood across the Atlantic, may well look back with shame to the time—and it was no matter of days or weeks, but a period of about four years together—when the loudest and most accepted voices in England exulted over the now ludicrously delusive proposition that the United States were a burst bubble, and slavery the irremovable corner-stone of an empire. It may be a lesson to nations against the indulgence in rancor, the abnegation of the national conscience, and the dear delight of prophesying one's own likings. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... products of modern thought lest his own strong opinions should undergo dilution. We were once talking of Keats whose fame had been constantly increasing, but of whose poetry Borrow's knowledge was of a shadowy kind, when suddenly he put a stop to the conversation by ludicrously asking, in his strong voice, 'Have they not been trying to resuscitate ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... accuracy. For no great state had then adopted the wise course of periodically numbering the people. All men were left to conjecture for themselves; and, as they generally conjectured without examining facts, and under the influence of strong passions and prejudices, their guesses were often ludicrously absurd. Even intelligent Londoners ordinarily talked of London as containing several millions of souls. It was confidently asserted by many that, during the thirty-five years which had elapsed between the accession of Charles the First and the Restoration ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be able to bear up a few months," laughed Walter, with a ludicrously wry twist of his mouth. "I hate to think you've been bothered and have been keeping it ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... not forbear laughing as he said: "My employment has been almost ludicrously incongruous with the title by which you honor me. I have been shovelling brick and mortar ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... position which to Malcolm was ludicrously suggestive of his standing in a corner. Further explanations could neither be given nor asked for. The door opened suddenly and a girl came in, closing it behind her. She looked first at Kensky with a smile, and then at the stranger, and the smile faded from her lips. ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... believe was 'born but to die[599].' Johnson was, I think, not very happy in the choice of his title, The Rambler, which certainly is not suited to a series of grave and moral discourses; which the Italians have literally, but ludicrously translated by Il Vagabondo[600]; and which has been lately assumed as the denomination of a vehicle of licentious tales, The Rambler's Magazine. He gave Sir Joshua Reynolds the following account of its getting this name: 'What must be done, Sir, will be done. When ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... thinking, unreasonably enough, how big and strong and clean her husband looked in the growing light. It was a pity Jack was so small. However, she faced Musgrave coldly, and thought how ludicrously wide of the mark were all these threats of ostracism. She shudderingly wished he would not talk of soil and taking root and hideous things like that, but otherwise the colonel left her unmoved. He was certainly ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... departed number one, with energy and curiosity, to investigate a brand-new world, fearless in his ignorance and self-confidence, although his entrance into the world had not been the triumphant fly we might look for, but an ignominious "flop," and was irresistibly and ludicrously suggestive of the manner of exit from the home nest of sundry individuals of our own race, which we consider ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... "dignity." When Astolfo blows the magic horn which drives every body out of the castle of Atlantes, "not a mouse" stays behind;—not, as Hoole and such critics think, because the poet is here writing ludicrously, but because he uses the same image seriously, to give an idea of desolation, as Shakspeare in Hamlet does to give that of silence, when "not a mouse is stirring." Instead of being mere comic writing, such incidents are in the highest epic taste of the meeting of extremes,—of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... everybody considers that 'geological animals' were ever so much bigger than their modern representatives; but the interests of truth should always be paramount, and, if the trade of an iconoclast is a somewhat cruel one, it is at least a necessary function in a world so ludicrously overstocked with popular delusions as this ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had been called, "I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to deny it;—you have been ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... He turned round upon them, suddenly striking, what seemed to them, a ludicrously grand attitude. "Abominable! That's what it is. I heard them shouting that I had a machine-gun on the roof and was killing people. I had no machine-gun. Of course not. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I had one. But there they were. That's what ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... as best we could. Jacotot, who was attending to his little stove below when the squall struck us, popped up his head with his white nightcap on, and his countenance so ludicrously expressive of dismay that, in spite of the danger we were in, Trundle burst into a fit of laughter. The Frenchman had not time to get out before the vessel righted. He now emerged completely, and frantically seizing his cap, tore it off his head and ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... thread of silk with the point of a needle till it becomes floss. (A.S. slefan, to cleavedivide.) This, I think, explains the 'sleeveless errand' in 'Troilus and Cressida' so inadequately, sometimes so ludicrously darkened by the commentators. Is not a 'sleeveless errand' one that cannot be unravelled, incomprehensible, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Gordon was able to go about the house again, it was at once to discover that things were not to be as they had been. Then deepened the combat, and at the same time assumed aspects and occasioned situations which in the eye of the world would have seemed even ludicrously unbecoming. The battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood, but how much harder and worthier battles are fought, not in shining armour, but amid filth and squalor physical as well as moral, on a field of wretched ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... veneration. I remembered that at Yale one of my class was wont to arouse shouts of laughter by his droll imitations of the prayers of the leading professors— imitations in which their gestures, intonations, and bits of rhetoric and oratory were most ludicrously caricatured. I remembered, too, how a college pastor, a man greatly revered, was really driven out of the university pulpit by a squib in a students' paper, and how several of his successors had finally retreated ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... in the position taken up. Neither Lelia nor Jacques combined the elements of lasting popularity with those of instant success; but they roused a stir and strife which created an impression of her as a writer systematically inimical to religion and marriage—an impression almost ludicrously at variance with facts, taking her fiction as a whole, but which has only recently begun to give way, in this country, to a juster ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... was sitting ludicrously in the snow, Gerald's fist having rung against the side of his head. But Loerke pulled himself together, rose, quivering, looking full at Gerald, his body weak and furtive, but his ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to give Democracy any chance to win, the few Democrats opposed to Free-Trade must be quieted, the utterances of the Democratic National Platform of that year, on the subject, were so wonderfully pieced, and ludicrously intermixed, that they could be construed to mean "all things ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... very strange by the side of this petition. So much luxury which does not mean refinement; so much ostentatious expenditure which does not represent increased culture or pleasure or anything but a resolve to be on a level with somebody else; so much which is so ludicrously unlike the poor little shrimp of a man or woman that sits in the centre ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... dressed just in the ordinary way, except that he wore a low blue collar, and blue shirt and tie, all uncommon in those days. Evidently he did not want to be conspicuous, but the whole effect was almost ludicrously beautiful." ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... which, together with the low square cap or coronet that he wore, gave him something of a regal appearance. A leash of hounds crouched at his feet. Before and below him the heralds and officers of the household arranged themselves, amongst whom Adam de Dutton was conspicuous by his ludicrously-solemn attitude and appearance. The whole scene had the aspect of a military tribunal, especially when Roger de Lacy (by which name we shall now distinguish him) ordered that silence should be proclaimed, and that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... crouching to catch a tender ewe lamb he finds that the watchful shepherd has safely locked it in the fold. Evidently he believes that you and Erle Palma have conspired to starve him out, and really he is ludicrously irate. Don't trifle with his expanding affections; they are not quite fledged yet, and are easily bruised. Deal with him kindly; he is better than his cousin, better than any of us. What have you done to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... London, Paris, and Berlin; one cannot take account of New York, which is merely the commercial metropolis of America, with a possibility of becoming the business centre of both hemispheres. Washington is still in its nonage and of a numerical unimportance in which it must long remain almost ludicrously inferior to other capitals, not to dwell upon its want of anything like artistic, literary, scientific, and historical primacy. It is the voluntary political centre of the greatest republic of any time and of a nation which is already unrivalled in its claim upon the future. But it is not ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... follow, Fair smiles the morn? Though the images are extremely complicated, what painting in the whirlwind, likened to a lion lying in ambush for his evening prey, in grim repose. Thirst and hunger mocking Richard II appear to me too ludicrously like the devils in The Tempest, that whisk away the banquet from the shipwrecked Dukes. From thence to the conclusion of Queen Elizabeth's portrait, which he has faithfully copied from Speed, in the passage where she humbled the Polish Ambassador, I admire. I can even ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... I happened not to walk myself, which was most ludicrously noticed by Mr. Musgrave; who, while we were at tea, suddenly crossed the circle to come up to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... meanings, and the phrase is oftentimes ludicrously mistaken by many individuals. A friend with whom we once travelled thought he was roughing it daily for the space of three weeks, because he was obliged to lunch on cold chicken and un-iced Champagne, and when it rained he was forced to seek shelter inside very inelegant hotels on the road. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... her grotesque dance with Bruin Boru, the wonderful dancing bear. Jack Fenn was very funny in his bear-skin costume, and he pawed and scraped as he ambled ludicrously about, and kept time to the music with mincing ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... have excelled in the poetical and historical character. So versatile is this faculty of genius, that its possessors are sometimes uncertain of the manner in which they shall treat their subject, whether gravely or ludicrously. When BREBOEUF, the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had completed the first book as it now appears, he at the same time composed a burlesque version, and sent both to the great arbiter ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that the vision of shy young folks driving miserably along the country lanes on Sunday afternoons in the family carryall, with mamma seated in the middle of the back seat, rose so ludicrously before him that he was obliged to beat a retreat, promising to send a special remedy for ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... for a long time. I've watched your career, Langrishe. I know pretty well all about you. You'd never give me credit for half the cunning I've got." The General rubbed his hands softly together and tried to look Machiavellian, failing ludicrously in the attempt. "There's no man I would more willingly trust my girl to. Why, I went after you to Tilbury when you were going out—to find out what you meant. I'll tell ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... in the workroom were pleasant ones, too, with their perpetual reminder that the creative power that had deserted her last January, had come back. The little problems were ludicrously easy, of course but they stimulated a pleasant sense of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... agency becomes vacant a proprietor receives innumerable applications for the vacant office, often from persons ludicrously ignorant of its duties. Thus, some time ago a seeker of such an office accompanied his application—he was a retired army officer—by a sketch of a sort of watch-tower whence he proposed to watch the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... only those who have watched its struggle in the past will be able to understand. The trouble in Britain—and I daresay in every country—is that the percentage of people who take art of any kind seriously is ludicrously small. And our impoverishment will surely make that percentage smaller by cutting off the recruiting which was always going on from the ranks of the great public. How long it will take Britain to recover even pre-war conditions I do not venture to ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... going home to a dingy lodging, and dividing her earnings with an invalid mother and a family of struggling brothers and sisters. Her heart went out to this other girl who was so evidently a lady despite her poverty, and when Bridgie mentioned a ludicrously small sum as the limit to which she was prepared to go, she showed neither surprise nor the thinly-veiled contempt which is usual under the circumstances, but volunteered some really useful ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... waiting for the expected speech, and, leaning ponderously on the railing, he kissed his hand, and said, in a loud voice, "Good day, my children." This was the exordiam, body, and peroration of his address, and it struck his audience so ludicrously, that a laugh spread among them, until it became general, and all seemed in the best possible humor. The King laughed, too, evidently regarding his reception as highly flattering. The affair turned out well, for the multitude parted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the pilot's wife, Captain Transom," again sung out old Dick; but decency won't let me venture on a description of poor Nancy's equipment, beyond mentioning, that one of the Gleam's crew had given her a pair of old trowsers, which, as a sailor has no bottom, and Nancy was not a sailor, were most ludicrously scanty at top, and devil another rag of any kind had the poor creature on, but a handkerchief across her bosom. There was no standing all this; the crew forward and in the waist were all on the broad grin, while the officers, after ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... behind me. The men checked, sprawling over each other in the snow—ludicrously, if I had been seeing much humor in things—and it was then it struck me that I should have had an accident if I had bolted straight into a dark house, instead of delaying in the stable till Macartney's gang got tired of waiting for me and bundled out themselves ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... suddenly bethink herself of Paul and Virginia, and be annoyed by a situation which was certainly none of his contriving. What was still worse, she might be amused! He could not get it out of his head that there was something dangerously, almost ludicrously, conventional in the whole position; it seemed to suggest some foolish, old-fashioned, sentimental picture. The solitary dell, and the two figures; why, he felt as if blue ribbons were beginning to sprout ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... last mile of heavy road, had slanted the tops of the fore-wheels towards each other at an alarming angle. The light, graceful dress and elegant parasol of the young girl, who occupied half of its single seat, looked ludicrously pronounced by the side of the slouching figure and grimy duster of the driver, who ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... so clearly outlined against the still luminous sky that it seemed even nearer. A human figure, but so disheveled, so fantastic, and yet so mean and puerile in its extravagance, that it seemed the outcome of a childish dream. It was a mounted figure, but so ludicrously disproportionate to the pony it bestrode, whose slim legs were stiffly buried in the dust in a breathless halt, that it might have been a straggler from some vulgar wandering circus. A tall hat, crownless and ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... on the floor by the Mistress, Laddie had crossed to where the Master stood. The man, glancing down, met the puppy's gaze. For an instant he scowled at the miniature watchdog, so ludicrously different from the ferocious brute he had expected. Then,—for some queer reason,—he stooped and ran his hand roughly over the tawny coat, letting it rest at last on the shapely head that did not flinch or wriggle at ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... decidedly suspicious of the hero of a modern woman's novel if one should walk into his office, or, doubtless, he would observe this whimsical caricature with something of the amusement he would find in the ludicrously false comic Irishman of the vaudeville stage. This irreverent flight of fancy on our part, however, is yanking the strong man from his appropriate and supporting setting, where paste is given the glow of an authentic stone; in the sympathetic pages created by feminine ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... desirous that they should let him live—not for his own sake, but for theirs; because he is their heaven-sent friend (and they will never have such another), or, as he may be ludicrously described, he is the gadfly who stirs the generous steed into motion. Why then has he never taken part in public affairs? Because the familiar divine voice has hindered him; if he had been a public man, and ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... and colouring it, both in fiction and reality; in the family, in the romance, in the fatalities and the prosaic ruin of vulgar fact. But the place given to it by Spenser is to our thoughts and feelings even ludicrously extravagant. An enormous change has taken place in the ideas of society on this point: it is one of the things which make a wide chasm between centuries and generations which yet are of "the same passions," and have in temper, tradition and language, so much in common. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... eyes to the Place of the Constitution; and, indeed, I had forgotten to say, that that majestic square was filled with military, with exceedingly small firelocks, the men ludicrously young and diminutive for the most part, in a uniform at once cheap and tawdry,—like those supplied to the warriors at Astley's, or from still humbler theatrical wardrobes: indeed, the whole scene was just like that of a little theatre; the houses ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scientists, philosophers, poets, actors, preachers, teachers, lecturers, and musicians who were ludicrously impractical is legion. Literature abounds in stories of their idiosyncrasies. These people deal with abstractions, ideas, with theories, and with emotions. They may be very successful in the spinning of theories, in the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... from an economic point of view has been ludicrously exaggerated on both sides. The original proposal would have in itself done far less harm than its opponents imagined and far less good than its supporters hoped. Yet to the extent of its influence ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... success of the Beggar's Opera. This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury Lane and rejected: it being then carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay RICH and Rich GAY. Of this lucky piece, as the reader cannot but wish to know the original and progress, I have inserted the relation which Spence ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... parties met at last, their shadows thrown far beyond them on the moist sand and mingling ludicrously ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... spoilt by English commanders who in this way have combined extreme offensiveness with conscious affability; and I have watched their allies—Spaniards and Portuguese of the first nobility—raging inwardly, while ludicrously impotent to discover a peg on which to ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... subscription. It was proposed, for example, to substitute a profession of belief in the Bible for a subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles. But the House of Commons sensibly refused to expose itself by venturing upon any theological innovations. A body more ludicrously incompetent ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... grandmother and me at the hotel and you can come up to my room and rest." And be it said right here that Frances proved herself to be very much of a lady for not adding "and wash your face," for Judy's face was ludicrously dirty. "Grandmother said she thought she saw Mr. Kinsella ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... message, perhaps even the crossing of wires, bringing you a jangle of sounds far different from what you desire—all these and a multiplicity of other things that will suggest themselves to every user of the telephone may be imagined as being almost ludicrously paralleled in the operations of the nervous mechanism. And that parallel, startling as it may seem, is not a mere futile imagining. It is sustained and rendered plausible by a sound substratum of knowledge of the anatomical conditions under which the central nervous ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... business, politics and social activities with one hand tied behind her, and both her bright eyes shut. In the kitchen and on the porch and in the hallway stood certain obscure people—women whose finger tips stuck out of their cotton gloves, and whose skirts dipped ludicrously in the back. Only Molly Brandeis could have identified them for you. Mrs. Brosch, the butter and egg woman, hovered in the dining-room doorway. She had brought a pound of butter. It was her contribution to the funeral baked meats. She had deposited ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... awry. As the ponies sought a path at a snail's pace through the sharp flints, she showed in a thousand ways how high the gaiety of her animal spirits had mounted. She sang airy little pieces of songs. She uttered single clear notes. She mocked, with a ludicrously feminine croak, the hoarse voice of a crow sailing over them. She rallied Bennington mercilessly on his corduroys, his yellow flapped pistol holster, his laced boots. She went over in ridiculous ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... then, indeed, suffer useless pain, since it would certainly very soon be captured again and be devoured." "All conclusions derived from the house-fed cat and mouse are fallacious."[12] Finally he concludes by inveighing against "the ludicrously exaggerated view adopted by men of such eminence and usually of such calm judgment as Huxley—a view almost as far removed from fact or science as the purely imaginary and humanitarian dogma of ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... if I sit here answering your questions till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. "Thereafter as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances.—I was travelling in a stagecoach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest non-conformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... been added that when an interesting stranger who carried no introduction was passing through the town, Voltaire sometimes sent for him; but this experiment was not always a success, and failed most ludicrously in the case of Claude Gay, the Philadelphian Quaker, author of some theological works now forgotten, but then of note. The meeting was only arranged with difficulty on the philosopher's undertaking to put ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... apparently thought to be fine. The Japanese display both taste and its lack in the choice of colors for clothing; this contradiction is the more striking in view of the taste manifest in the decorations of the homes of all classes of the people. Few sights are more ludicrously unaesthetic than the red, yellow, and blue worsted crocheted caps and shawls for infants, which shock all our ideas ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... his chair so that he might better stare at this new foe in the field. His little red mouth was open ludicrously. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... flat-boats ploughed alongside of his; deep in the bows and yawing their sterns ludicrously. They carried a gun apiece, and the artillerymen had laded them too far forward. To the 46th they were a sufficiently good joke to last for miles. "Look at them up-tailed ducks a-searching for worms! Guns? Who wants guns ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sweet milk to drink, and she showed me the way to the wonder-world of the wood. If I were something more of a fool and something less of a wiseacre I would champion her myself." And he swelled his lean body and strutted, ludicrously martial. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... spirits"—as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern ideas" all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost ALL human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed—a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... even more is the wonderful purity and transparency of her mind; one doesn't find it often now, women's souls are so clouded with knowledge. I think that sort of thing appeals especially to me because my own design isn't in the least esoteric. I'm only a man. Then she was so ludicrously out of her element. A creature like that should be surrounded by the softest refinement in her daily life. That was my chance. I could offer her her place. It's not much to counterbalance what she is, but it helps, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Anything less like the usual calm and serious demeanour of these seniors than the way in which they dance and sing through the town is not to be imagined, for the oldest and most sedate of them are as wildly and ludicrously enthusiastic as the youngest student; and their arrival at the reception, with bands of music, skipping about and roaring student songs like their sons and grandsons, is, to say the least, comical. But the occasion only ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... Lawrence," said Midget, demurely, her simple straightforward gaze fixed on her teacher's face. This calm announcement of a fact also struck Miss Lawrence ludicrously, but she managed ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... talked about terms afterwards? Or did she know an honest man when she saw one? He took his note-book and pencil and made out an estimate with the rapidity of happy inspiration, a fantastic estimate, incredibly and ludicrously small. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... back from the plate a little, and again bat and ball met squarely, an inshoot being sent humming over the head of Cooper, who made a ludicrously ineffective jump for it, the ball passing at least ten feet above his outstretched hand. But Piper, leaping forward and speeding up surprisingly, made a forward lunge at the last moment, and performed a shoestring catch that brought the entire ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... any human being to look upon them? that an instinct of pity and courtesy would even turn every casual glance away? There was a strange, sorrowful pleading in the one expressive side of the man's countenance, and a singularly untoward incident presently called it forth, and made it almost ludicrously pitiful. A bustling fellow entered at a way-station, his arms full of a great frame that he carried. As he blundered along the passage, looking for a seat, a jolt of the car, in starting, pitched him suddenly into the vacant place beside this man; ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... some ingredients in the spell besides the accumulation of facts and a happy title. Many of their publications, perpetually appearing and constantly forgotten, were drawn up by persons of considerable acquirements, and were ludicrously mimetic of their prototype, even as to the size of the volume and the form of the page. What has become of these "Varieties of Literature," and "Delights of Literature," and "Delicacies of Literature," and "Relics of Literature,"—and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to resist the tendency to laugh when a human being stands before you in a ludicrously-meagre costume, making hideous grimaces with his features, and remarkable contortions with his limbs, in the vain efforts to make himself understood by one who does not speak his language! Ned's powers of endurance were tested in this way by the chief of the tribe, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Spaniards, he is filled with sad forebodings, which the amusements fail to dispel. In the second act, Hernando Cortez appears, with soldiers. While the costumes of the indians were gay, and more or less attractive, those of these European warriors were ludicrously mongrel and unbecoming. The new-comers demanded that Montezuma acknowledge the authority of the King of Spain and the cross of Christ. Conversations, demands, replies, tableaus, sword-dances, etc., ensued. Finally, Montezuma and his warriors ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... articles of accusation. Never, indeed, had a short but well filled career, bright with glorious deeds, undertaken for King and fatherland—never had such a life (for no life ever approached that of the Maid's) been so ludicrously, so violently and wilfully misrepresented. Her most innocent words and actions were turned into accusations of sorcery, witchcraft, vice, and every kind of wickedness. Her harmless and pure youth was made to appear a childhood of sorcery and idolatrous ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... withdrew her fingers, and my mood toppled ludicrously. Why had I been rejoicing? We were in the deuce of a mess! So far I had simply won a half hour's respite to be followed by the deluge; for if Blenheim had been ruthless before, what ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... ancient, there is none so much to be lamented as the great scarcity of ghosts. Whence this proceeds I will not presume to determine. Some are of opinion that the moderns are unequal to that sublime sort of language which a ghost ought to speak. One says ludicrously that ghosts are out of fashion; another that they are properer for comedy; forgetting, I suppose, that Aristotle hath told us that a ghost is the soul of tragedy," &c. &c. But when, towards the commencement of the present century, melodrama ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... head line; "The Spider and the Fly" was worn out years ago. (3) Either title alone is good; "The Holdup of No. 4" is preferable because of its definiteness. (4) "The Battle of the Black Cats" alone would pass, in spite of its hint of sensationalism; but the second part is of course ludicrously impossible. (5) "Fate" is too indefinite; the second title is cheap and old. (6) Either would do, though the first is somewhat vague, and "Curse" savors of sensationalism. (7) Either would do, though the first sounds rather silly. (8) ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... and gloomier at the poor figure he cut. Lucy kept blushing at intervals as she reflected on the obligation she had laid herself under to a rejected lover. The rejected lover alone seemed to mind his business and nothing else; and, as he was almost ludicrously unconscious that he was doing a chivalrous action, a misfortune to which those who do these things are singularly liable, he did not gild the transaction with a single graceful speech, and permitted himself to be more occupied with the sails than ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the matrons are often observed, in the cool of the evening, sitting in a circle round their little ones, which amuse themselves with their various gambols. The merriment of the young, as they jump over each other's heads, and wrestle in sport, is most ludicrously contrasted with the gravity of their seniors, who are secretly delighted with the fun, but far too dignified ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... attempt nothing more than a very humble notice which may bring the existence of this latest salvation before some of the scattered fellowship who are ready for it. We despair of making any statement concerning it which believers would not consider ludicrously inadequate or absolutely false. All and singular are accordingly warned that what is here printed comes from a mental point of view totally opposed to the alleged Truth, as well as from that limited amount of application which a regular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... heated head, undressed myself, and got into bed, considering what I should say to the police when I went next morning to communicate my suspicions. And it is worthy of remark, as well as somewhat ludicrously self-betraying, that no sooner did I mentally see myself in the presence of the police, and was thus forced to confront my suspicions with some appearance of evidence, than the whole fabric of my vision rattled ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Central Hotel they were plunged into a denser fog than ever, and by means so ludicrously simple that even a budding dramatist would hesitate to avail himself of such a crude device. The police had searched the dead man's clothing without finding any positive clew to his name. His linen was ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... effect of drawing a melodramatic "Ha! ha!" from that youth, ludicrously out of keeping with his usual demeanour. Once he had seen a play-acting show unbeknown to his mother, when Jess had taken him ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... cabin-boy's words passed from mouth to mouth; a little chuckle was heard here and there; the men's faces became more and more ludicrously uneasy, and their suppressed laughter was on the point of bursting forth. Then the steersman was seen to nudge the ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... a plot may be either comical or tragic. Mr. Botts ludicrously fights against a black-hand enemy—who proves to be his mischievous small son. Plump and fussy Mrs. Jellifer lays deep but always transparent plans to outwit her daughter's suitor and is finally entrapped into so laughable a situation that she ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds |
