"Preposterous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happen, and do not come to pass because they are foreseen, still, all the same, there is a necessity, both that they should be foreseen by God as about to come to pass, and that when they are foreseen they should happen, and this is sufficient for the destruction of free will. However, it is preposterous to speak of the occurrence of events in time as the cause of eternal foreknowledge. And yet if we believe that God foresees future events because they are about to come to pass, what is it but to think ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... us to violate this principle, and dress in the most absurd, incongruous, unbecoming, and uncomfortable style. A little more self-respect and independence, however, would enable us to resist many of her most preposterous enactments. But Fashion is not responsible for all the incongruities in dress with which we meet. They are often the result ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... meant to serve to Man as a 'New' Mind—the scientific mind, which is in harmony with nature—a mind informed and enlarged with the universal laws, the laws of KINDS, instead of the spontaneous uninstructed mind, instead of the narrow specific mind of a barbaric race, filled with its own preposterous prenotions and vain conceits, and at war with universal nature; boldly pursuing its deadly feud with that, priding itself on it, making a virtue of it. It is a machine in which those human faculties which are the gifts of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... but that your young brother here means well, but perhaps some of us, with more experience, and with more mature thought, are better able to handle this great question. Such a plan as he has proposed is preposterous. A committee without an ordained minister on it, thinking to start any movement in harmony with the teaching of Christ is utter folly. It is a direct insult to the clergy, who, as you know, compose the finest body of men, intellectually and morally, in the country. ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... everything, still rankling, in spite of all Sam had said, with the thought that she had been made a mere part of a commercial transaction. Why, it was like those barbarous countries she had read about, where wives are bought and sold! Preposterous ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... balloon in a wind, and poising it in the manner suggested, is, of course, preposterous; and when one considers the attempt to aim bombs from a moving balloon high in air the case becomes yet more absurd. Any such missile would partake of the motion of the balloon itself, and it would be impossible to tell where it would strike ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... a rap for your information or its source," the other interrupted, impatiently. "The whole thing is simply preposterous. The estate descended regularly to Hugh Mainwaring, and from him to our own family as next of kin. You can see for yourself that to talk of any other claimants having prior rights is ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... did not fall, but rested steadily on his face. Under this clear gaze his remark appeared to him preposterous. She seemed to show him how precipitate, unformed,—crude, as she said,—all his acts were. Instead of answering his question, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... A pink-haired, red-faced man in a preposterous green belted suit lunged in, swept his broad felt hat in greeting, and boomed ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... to enjoin this obsequious mood of mind is prompted by a strong desire to revive the ancient empire of priestcraft and the pretensions of ecclesiastical despotism; to secure readmission to the human mind of extravagant and preposterous claims, which their advocates are sadly conscious rest on no solid foundation. They feel that reason is not with them, it must be against them: and reason therefore ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... was merely the mat that they slept on. When I said to them, 'G'il is your real God,' they laughed at my stupidity—good humoredly, as though there were something, perhaps, in my idea, yet with a complacent assurance that I was preposterous. I did not argue with them. One couldn't, you know. I simply continued my observations, corroborating my theory at every turn. To give you an instance: Bashwa is supposed to think highly of hunters and sailors, ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... Major, like the old war horse that he was, had already pricked up his ears, and determined to lend his tongue or his sword, as his state might require. That a fight could go on in the Union so long as Virginia or himself kept out of it, seemed to him a possibility little less than preposterous. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... harness two horses to a cart; but it is not a good thing to try and turn two hansom cabs into one four-wheeler. Turning ten nations into one empire may happen to be as feasible as turning ten shillings into one half-sovereign. Also it may happen to be as preposterous as turning ten terriers into one mastiff. The question in all cases is not a question of union or absence of union, but of identity or absence of identity. Owing to certain historical and moral causes, two nations may ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... himself to be seated upon the limestone steps still facing the wall and convent of Santa Mercedes. His first thought was of the ecstatic kiss from Katie. The outrageous villainy of Captain Peek, the unnatural mystery of the situation, his preposterous conflict with the improbable dwarf—these things roused and angered him, but left no impression of ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... couple in love with each other—the parents, say, of one child, who feel they cannot afford another child for, say, three years—being expected to occupy the same room and to abstain for two years. The thing is preposterous. You might as well put water by the side of a man suffering from thirst and tell ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... about of his special party, was to my juvenile apprehension, and even mature consideration, an event to deplore. But just as in the tapestry on my wall I can recognise figures which have struck out a fancy, on occasion, that though truly enough thus derived, yet would be preposterous as a copy, so, though I dare not deny the original of my little poem, I altogether refuse to have it considered as the "very effigies" of such a moral and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... draws ill who does so: for, to each one, things are important, more or less, in proportion to his own interest in them. But hence is the mischief. We forget that every one has a self of his own; and that the constant setting forth of ours is, to others, preposterous, obtrusive, and ridiculous. The painter who draws a folio in the front of his picture, and a castle in the distance, properly draws the book the larger of the two: but he must be a fool, if he therefore thinks ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... smarting absurdly already, and did Arnold suppose the chemist would use a carbolic lotion? Stephen, with a guarded look, said very possibly not, but one never knew; and Hilda, thinking of the far-off day when the little girl of her was brought tactfully to disagreeable necessities; covered a preposterous impulse to cry ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... the skin is a continuation of the membrane which lines the stomach; and your own observation will inform you, that the delicate linings of the mouth, throat, nose, and eyes, are nothing more. Now some people acquire preposterous noses, others blotches on the face and different parts of the body, others inflammation of the eyes—all arising from irritation of the stomach. People laugh at me for talking so much about the stomach. I sometimes tell this story to forty different people of a morning, and some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... walked made me sad. The wharf had all the seeming of a ship's deck. It lifted, tilted, heaved and sank; and since there were no handrails on it, it kept Charmian and me busy avoiding falling in. I never saw such a preposterous little wharf. Whenever I watched it closely, it refused to roll; but as soon as I took my attention off from it, away it went, just like the Snark. Once, I caught it in the act, just as it upended, and I looked down the length of it for two hundred feet, and for all the world it ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... met his so frankly, so proudly, were turned from him. He saw it, and it troubled him with a trouble the more perplexed that he could assign to himself no reason for it. That it could be caused by any interest felt for a Chasseur d'Afrique by the haughtiest lady in all Europe would have been too preposterous and too insulting a supposition for it ever to occur to him. And he did not dream the truth—the truth that it was her withholding, for the first time in all her life, any secret from him which caused her pain; that it was the fear lest he should learn ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... faces, with, in the cases of the younger boys, tear-filled eyes, surmounted by these absurd, preposterous hats—it was truly a case of not knowing whether to laugh or to cry; so by laughing hard, the women who saw ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... the heart of New York City! It sounded silly, preposterous. Yet, before he had gone through that dread experience with the mad Barter, Bentley would have sworn that brain transplantation was impossible. Even now he was not sure that it hadn't ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... at Baby's tongue every other day when there was nothing really the matter with him at all! It's preposterous, Jack. There must be something wrong. You must see Dr. Thom at once about that account. Call to-morrow, dear, on your way ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... the stranger heartily assented. It was certainly a preposterous suggestion that anyone could ever upset Mr. Jellyband's firmly-rooted opinions anent the utter worthlessness of the inhabitants of ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a kind of ridicule in her voice, a ridicule which was tragic, which was full of passion, which sounded like a scoff at something preposterous, as ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... for an hour or two of the eighteenth century. You remember Fanny Burney's reference to the gentleman who thought it preposterous that Reynolds should have increased his price for a portrait to thirty guineas, though he admitted that Reynolds was a good enough sort of man for a painter. I think I should like to have an hour with ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... offer His body and blood in the Lord's Supper; that Baptism should be the washing of regeneration; that the dead shall rise; that Christ the Son of God was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, etc. Reason shouts that all this is preposterous. Are you surprised that reason thinks little of faith? Reason thinks it ludicrous that faith should be the foremost service any person ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... St. Domingo. He reached France just after the peace of Amiens, when Napoleon was fitting out his ill-starred armament for the insane purpose of restoring slavery in the island. General Vincent remonstrated solemnly and earnestly against an expedition so preposterous, so cruel and unnecessary; undertaken at a moment when all was peace and quietness in the colony, when the proprietors were in peaceful possession of their estates, when cultivation was making a rapid progress, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... if he goes at such a preposterous speed. It must have been nearly two hundred miles an hour: the Brennan mono-rail is nothing to it. At any rate, it's rather a feather in our cap—this record, I mean, after so many have been made by the French ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... like a gentleman, on a clean bed, surrounded by the Venus's, Apollo's, and the Graces, and the busts of great men; nay, even among flowers, and, if possible, while music is breathing around me. Far from courting the sympathy of posterity, I will never give mankind the gratification of ejaculating preposterous sighs, because I died in a hospital, like Camoens, or Tasso; and since I must be buried in your country, I am happy in having got, for the remainder of my life, a cottage, independent of neighbours, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... what Christianity was, then Jose was forced to admit that he did not. He, weak, frail, fallible, remit sins? Preposterous! What was the true remission of sins but their utter destruction? He change the wafer and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus? Nay, he was no spiritual thaumaturgus! He could not do even the least of the works of the Master, despite his priestly character! Yet, it was not he, but the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... please as to the manner in which we work, but you know as well as I do that our services are ample payment for the food and lodging which we and the ladies get; and as to their working—why, it is simply preposterous; what can ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... discovery that organism is capable of modification at all has occasioned so much astonishment that it has taken the most enlightened part of the world more than a hundred years to leave off expressing its contempt for such a crude, shallow, and preposterous conception. Perhaps in another hundred years we shall learn to admire the good sense, endurance, and thorough Englishness of organism in having been so averse to change, even more than its versatility in having been willing ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... "stock" in known error, for it "abounds in all knowledge and judgment," and "approves things that are excellent." It is noble and right to let "love," or "charity have her perfect work," to be, or rather try to be, as charitable as God himself; but it is absurd and preposterous to go beyond or try to be more charitable. "It is enough that the ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... his lip sharply. "It's dangerous, you know, what you're doing. I told you last night men are natural animals all the world over. I shan't stand being turned down like this for ever; it's absurd, unnatural; it's preposterous after we've been married all these years. I tell you what you're doing is not safe. You'll ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... fighter. A man of that type is always capable of being wildly wrong, especially in the sectarian atmosphere of America; and Mr. Ford has been wrong before and may be wrong now. He is chiefly known in England for a project which I think very preposterous; that of the Peace Ship, which came to Europe during the war. But he is not known in England at all in connection with a much more important campaign, which he has conducted much more recently and with much more success; a campaign against the Jews ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... contains two of the most exquisitely Shakespearean verses ever vouchsafed to us by Shakespeare, and two of the most execrably euphuistic or dysphuistic lines ever inflicted on us by man. Upon the Sonnets such a preposterous pyramid of presumptuous commentary has long since been reared by the Cimmerian speculation and Boeotian "brain-sweat" of sciolists and scholiasts, that no modest man will hope and no wise man will desire to add ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Semitic race with the less elegant war customs of the Soudan and the northwest frontier of India, and quoted Doughty, at that time a little-known author, and Cunninghame Graham to show that the Arab was worse than a county-town spinster in his regard for respectability. But his case was too preposterous, and Esmeer, with his shrill penetrating voice and his way of pointing with all four long fingers flat together, carried the point against him. He quoted Cato and Roman law and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... allowed to run, walk much, ride, skate, or dance. In fact, entire repose is strictly enforced in every well-regulated household and school. A German girl would consider the idea of going to a party at such times as simply preposterous; and the difference that exists in this respect in America is wholly unintelligible ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... over. She gasped for breath, drawing back slightly from the nearness of his lips. "Do you mean—you'd like—to marry me?" she whispered tremulously, and hid her face on the instant; for the bald words sounded preposterous. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Mrs. Vanderbridge that you are very comfortable," was the last remark Hopkins made before she sidled out of the door and left me alone with the mystery. It was one of those situations—I am obliged to repeat this over and over—that was too preposterous for me to believe even while I was surrounded and overwhelmed by its reality. I didn't dare face what I thought, I didn't dare face even what I felt; but I went to bed shivering in a warm room, while I resolved passionately that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... irritatingly conscious of her presence—a presence which now had all the absurdity of her ridiculous love-experiences superadded to it. He tried to reason with himself that it was only a phase of frontier life, which ought to have amused him. But it did not. The intrusion of this preposterous girl seemed to disarrange the discipline of his life as well as of his school. The usual vague, far-off dreams in which he was in the habit of indulging during school-hours, dreams that were perhaps ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the ground that the character of Englishmen would be too weak to contend successfully against that of the races with whom they would be brought into contact, and that they would relapse into barbarism, such an alarm would have seemed too preposterous to be entertained; yet, prior to experience, it would have been equally reasonable to expect that the modern Englishman would adopt the habits of the Hindoo or the Mohican, as that the fiery knights of Normandy would have stooped to imitate a race whom they despised as slaves; that ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... very deeply in my mind; from yours it may easily have fled. If any one at that moment could have shown me the Edinburgh Edition, I suppose I should have died. It is with gratitude and wonder that I consider 'the way in which I have been led.' Could a more preposterous idea have occurred to us in those days when we used to search our pockets for coppers, too often in vain, and combine forces to produce the threepence necessary for two glasses of beer, or wander down the Lothian Road without any, than that I should be strong and well at the age of ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... —"was preposterous," continued Dr. Howe, not noticing her; "but he's earnest, he's sincere, and I have a great deal of respect for earnestness. And look here, Lois, you must not let anybody see you are not in sympathy with Helen's choice; be careful of that tongue of yours, child. It's bad taste to make ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... interview with the city editor of the Washington Evening World meant so much to him that he feared to meet it. Another failure and—what? Surely not starvation. To a youth of nineteen, normally healthy and hopeful, the idea of starvation in a great city, surrounded by thousands of human beings, seems preposterous. And yet when the few coins yet remaining in his pocket were gone he would be absolutely at the end of his resources; unless—unless fortune favored him in the next few minutes. He had tried every newspaper office in the city with disheartening results; ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... were wretched imitations of some of the Persian and Arabian tales, in which everything was distorted, and rendered absurd and preposterous.] ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... they are? The proposal toward which the book points and in which it ultimates is so radical and astounding—nothing less than that Penal Imprisonment for Crime be Abolished—that the author can hardly escape the apprehension that the mass of the public will dismiss it as preposterous and impossible. And yet nothing is more certain in my opinion than that penal imprisonment for crime must cease, and if it be not abolished by statute, it will be by force. It must be abolished because, alarming or socially destructive though alternatives to it may appear, it is ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... him. If he admitted his guilt, he would be unfrocked; he would show like a chanticleer stripped of his hackles before his hens. If he denied it, he could never preach to the women again. Admit it? Be degraded? Eh, that would be a nasty shift! Deny it? Oh, preposterous! The whole day he battled with himself, voice crying against voice, without result. Observe, it was a mere case of expediency: he had no thought to own a fault or repudiate a slander—the fellow had no conscience ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... husband for Romola. It was undeniable that Tito's coming had been the dawn of a new life for both father and daughter, and the first promise had even been surpassed. The blind old scholar—whose proud truthfulness would never enter into that commerce of feigned and preposterous admiration which, varied by a corresponding measurelessness in vituperation, made the woof of all learned intercourse—had fallen into neglect even among his fellow-citizens, and when he was alluded to at all, it had long been usual to say that, though his ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... indeterminate idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are all curtains—a nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way. The Yankees alone are preposterous. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... have accustomed themselves to ascertained methods of proof, are apt to look on a man who vows that if a thing has been declared true by some authority whom he respects, then that constitutes proof to him, as either the victim of a preposterous and barely credible infatuation, or else as a flat impostor. Yet De Maistre was no ignorant monk. He had no selfish or official interest in taking away the keys of knowledge, entering not in himself, and them that would enter in hindering. The true reasons for his detestation of the eighteenth-century ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... that it was unworthy of her, but, as she led this wonderful, winsome creature, whom she knew to be accustomed only to the softnesses of life, up over the worn stair carpeting to the room she had prepared for her, she was wondering how she herself had ever conceived the preposterous idea of inviting her cousin to visit her; the task of making this daughter of luxury comfortable, even for a fortnight, seemed suddenly ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... done,' exclaimed Mr Jephson blankly. 'But it's absurd. Something must be done. The thing can't be left as it is. It's preposterous!' ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... but a half frightened expression had replaced the one of scornful raillery. For he, too, knew that his eccentric brother-in-law was likely to propose any preposterous thing, and then carry it out in spite of all opposition. But to take Patsy to Europe would be like pulling the Major's eye teeth or amputating his good right arm. Worse; far worse! It would mean taking the sunshine out of her old father's sky altogether, and painting ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... accomplices; and as for the savages seen in ambush at the Ford, the shaking of the cane-brake by the breeze, or by some skulking bear, would as readily account for them. The idea of his being allowed to pass a crew of Indians in their lair, without being pursued, or even fired upon, is quite preposterous." ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... unruly on Jim Crow. One night he even had to fight a five-round battle with a riotous young Cousin Jack, in which engagement Done seconded him by special request. Ben triumphed, but came out of the contest with a black eye and an inflamed nose of a preposterous size, at which Mary ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... obtain a hearing. It may well be doubted whether Congress, from the nature of its organization, is properly constituted to decide upon such cases. It is impossible that each member should examine the merits of every claim on which he is compelled to vote, and it is preposterous to ask a judge to decide a case which he has never heard. Such decisions may, and frequently must, do injustice either to the claimant or the Government, and I perceive no better remedy for this growing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... turning in amazement as if to seek a witness to such a preposterous charge. And again: "Clean? He's as fresh as a daisy, as clean ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... come to love if he has seen anything of a party of Americans. Spotting him as a new chum, the Brigade Major offers to show him round the line, and proceeds to pull his leg and tells him the most preposterous nonsense. For instance, on a shot being fired miles away he pretends they are in frightful danger, and leads him bent double round and round trenches in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... living a century since with his wife in chambers—either within or hard-by an Inn or Court—was, at a comparatively low rent, the occupant of far more ample quarters than those for which a working barrister now-a-days pays a preposterous sum. Such a man was tenant of a 'set of rooms' (several rooms, although called 'a chamber') which, under the present system, accommodates a small colony of industrious 'juniors' with one office and a clerk's room attached. Married ladies, who have lived in Paris or Vienna, in the 'old ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... pained her with a profane tenderness, and a poignant repudiation. Her soul being once more adjusted to the divine, it was intolerable to think that this preposterous human voice should have power to ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... failing to delight her, dancers appear. Four first; then two; THE two; the flesh-coloured two. The way in which they dance; the height to which they spring; the impossible and inhuman extent to which they pirouette; the revelation of their preposterous legs; the coming down with a pause, on the very tips of their toes, when the music requires it; the gentleman's retiring up, when it is the lady's turn; and the lady's retiring up, when it is the gentleman's turn; the final passion of a pas-de-deux; and the going off with ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... eyes that he had found his home in through so long and happy a time,— why, they were his! Of course he had never meant to really forfeit them, to lose them, and let them go to anybody else. The idea was preposterous,—was laughable. It was indeed the first time it had occurred to him in that light. He had only thought of her as losing him; scarcely at all of himself as losing her. During the whole time he ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... laughter. "It is preposterous," he cried. "Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am I—in this damned twilight—I never knew a dream in twilight before—an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... treated. Yet this conviction only made them the more ready to listen to any story, grasp at any straw, that lent an atom of weight to the case against him. Dinner had brought no comfort to either, and Petty's preposterous story, swallowed whole by the chief while still bristling with the nervous strain of the concoction of that telegram of explanation, had further upset his digestive powers. The aide had been sent forthwith to notify Mr. Loring of the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... preposterous to the judge, after these few hours of contact with the mason, that Adelle should want to endow her cousin with a part of that fortune which but for accident and legal formality would have been his. There were, however, many other of these California Clarks, in whom Adelle ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... circle. I passed a very pleasant evening, and left about ten o'clock. The gentleman who was handing me down stairs said, "I suppose you are going to one or two other places to-night." The idea struck me as so preposterous that I could not ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... much accustomed to the beauties of the court, as Bluewater, had actually been caught, by the pretty face of a country girl, when so well turned of fifty, himself! Then discarding the notion as preposterous, he gave his attention to the discourse of Sir Wycherly; a dissertation on rabbits, and rabbit-warrens. In this manner ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to see how decisively, yet with what preposterous ignorance of any thing like the true state of affairs in this country, the English press informs the public as to the 'ex or inexpediency' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation. I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not been saved from that impropriety by poor Fyne becoming preposterous. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... all, the military must be kept, according to the language of our bill of rights, in strict subordination to the civil authority. Wherever this lesson is not both learned and practiced there can be no political freedom. Absurd, preposterous is it, a scoff and a satire on free forms of constitutional liberty, for frames of government to be prescribed by military leaders and the right of suffrage to be exercised at the point ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... received your very kind note of April 8th. In truth it is preposterous in me to give you hints; but it will give me real pleasure to write to you just as I talk to Hooker, who says my questions are sometimes suggestive owing to my comparing the ranges, etc., in different kingdoms of Nature. I will make no further apologies about my presumption; but will ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... so impossible—preposterous!—that he sat as if stunned, eyes a-stare, jaw dropping, wits bemused; until abruptly roused by the sharp barking of a taxicab horn as it swung round the corner of Fourth Avenue and the subsequent grumble of its motor in the ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... "he was scarce ever out of my thoughts. His dear image still obtruded itself in my mind, and I believe would have broken my heart, had I not taken a very preposterous way to ease myself. I am, indeed, almost ashamed to tell you; but necessity put it in my head.—You will think the matter too trifling to have been remembered, and so it surely was; nor should I have remembered it on any other occasion. You must know then, sir, that my brother was always ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... to the extortion in most cases. With some half-dozen honourable exceptions, the traders are what is popularly known as "Jews" in their mode of dealing. They cozen on principle, sell articles that will not last, and charge preposterous prices for them; they impose upon the young officer's softness or delicate gentlemanly feeling, and consider themselves smart for so doing. In this manner Gibraltar, with all its discomforts, is dearer than the most expensive and luxurious quarter ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... vertue and learning of the Queenes Majesties Wardes, being heires males, and whose landes, descending in possession and coming to the Queenes Majestie, shall amount to the cleere yearly value of c. markes, or above.'" Sir Nicholas asks the new Master of Wards to reform what he justly calls most "preposterous" abuses in the department:—"That the proceeding hath bin preposterous, appeareth by this: the chiefe thinge, and most of price, in wardeship, is the wardes mynde; the next to that, his bodie; ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... luminous inaccuracy which usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's teachings, assumed the task. In the articles which followed, the usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be "absurd," "vague and unintelligible," "preposterous and gratuitous." This new champion stated that "the objections drawn from the fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference to the analogy of Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when they were but a day old, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... admitted. "Nevertheless we must see Doctor Harrison in the morning. It must be understood distinctly that if she is suffered to remain, she adopts an entirely different attitude. I never heard anything so preposterous in all my life. I shall pay her a visit myself after dinner.—You will feel quite at home here in the library, Sir Everard," Mr. Mangan went on, throwing open the door of a very fine apartment on the seaward side of the house. "Grand ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Germany. Why this change in German policy? So far as the Kaiser himself is concerned, there can be little doubt that a main cause was the horror he felt at the assassination of the Archduke. The absurd system of autocracy gives to the emotional reactions of an individual a preposterous weight in determining world-policy; and the almost insane feeling of the Kaiser about the sanctity of crowned heads was no doubt a main reason why Germany backed Austria in sending her ultimatum to Serbia. ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... particulars seem probable enough, with the exception of the eye, which certainly must be an exaggeration; one such an eye would be large enough for any animal, were he as monstrous as the wonderful Mammoth of antediluvian days. Do not you think, madam, that the account is a little preposterous?" ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... fairness and moderation the English ambassadors at Paris lessened their demands more than once, and appeared willing for some time to renew negotiations after their terms had been rejected. But in the end they still insisted on a claim which in point of equity was altogether preposterous, and rejected a compromise which would have put Henry in possession of the whole of Guienne and given him the hand of the French King's daughter Catharine with a marriage portion of eight hundred thousand crowns. Meanwhile Henry was making active ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... a thrice-blessed thing—and yet—! Having read this over with the greatest attention, taking preposterous heed to every dot and comma, having carefully refolded it, slipped it into the envelope and hidden it upon his person, he raised his eyes to the ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... with arms in their hands? Can it be that, the moment the rebel armies are dispersed, the military authority ceases, and they are to be turned loose to arm and organize again for another conflict against the Union? Why, sir, it would not be more preposterous on the part of the traveler, after having, at the peril of his life, succeeded in disarming a highwayman by whom he was assailed, to immediately turn round and restore to the robber his weapons with which to ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Trust her!" the consolatory brother rejoined. "Why, it will be her first natural step. The idea of her daughter betrothed to a merchant's clerk is preposterous on the face of it. You yourself must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... day or two after his call upon the judge. He was dissatisfied with the ending of their interview. He felt that he had been foolishly soft-hearted in promising to call at the Fair Harbor, or, to consider for another hour the preposterous offer of management of that institution. He must say no in the end. How much better to have said it then and there. Fifteen hundred a year looked like a lot of money to him. It tempted him, that part of the proposition. But it did not tempt him ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... was admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying. After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her; and she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to listen to a proposal patiently; whistling to her dogs, ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... a brisk passage of arms between the two men of opposite party in the group by the fire, and Mrs. Cricklander incited them to further exertions. It had arisen because Mr. Derringham had launched forth the abominable and preposterous theory that the only thing the Radicals would bring England to would be the necessity of returning to barbarism and importing slaves—then their schemes applied to the present inhabitants of the country might all work. The denizens ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... forbid. In the particular deductions, logically considered? But these we have found legitimate. Where then? I answer in deducing any consequences by such a process, and according to such rules. The rules are alien and inapplicable; the process presumptuous, yea, preposterous. The error, [Greek: to proton pseudos], lies in the false assumption of a logical deducibility at all, in ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... preposterous," said Christine, and a sense of bitter injustice seethed within her. "Why in the world should I be expected ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... is by far the most important factor), has had ample time and opportunity for making up his mind. It is, therefore, high time to simplify and to cease from elaborating. In this book will be found, I trust, no special pleading, no defence or extenuation, no preposterous eulogy on the one hand, and on the other no vampire work, but a plain and concise attempt to depict the mighty artist as he lived and to describe his artistic achievement as it is. We have all had time to consider and to sort out (so to say) the reams that have been written and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... at a loss. Their offer was preposterous, but to them, it was apparently a perfectly possible arrangement. Nor were they acting on impulse. Mrs. Farrell had admitted that for six months she had had me "trailed." How to say "No" and not give offense, I found difficult. They were deeply in earnest and I could see that Farrell, ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... said, over and over, "I shall not give her up. It is preposterous. Yet my father believed it. He died with his hand on the old Bible, his finger in the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... detail, in a general way, at least, we become plausible. In comparison with Myers' way of attacking the question of immortality in particular, the official way is certainly so far from the mark as to be almost preposterous. It assumes that when our ordinary consciousness goes out, the only alternative surviving kind of consciousness that could be possible is abstract mentality, living on spiritual truth, and communicating ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... insisting upon some seven discriminations which, even only forty years ago, would have appeared largely preposterous to the then ...
— Progress and History • Various
... apprehension, a sudden fear for Hope taking possession of him. Surely the girl would never consent to enter any of those dens along the way, and Hawley would not dare resort to force in the open street. The very thought seemed preposterous, and yet, with no other supposition possible, he entered these one after the other in hasty search, questioning the inmates sharply, only to find himself totally baffled—Hawley and Hope had vanished as though ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... past. But month succeeded month, and she for ever disappointed me, and at last I abandoned hope. In solitude and exile Mercedes degenerated sadly; got monstrously fat; too indolent to gnaw, let her teeth grow to a preposterous length; and in the end died of a ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... it. My imagination was not affected before, at the time, or after. My pulse may have been a little quickened for the moment, for I did not accept the appearance as a matter of course, as we do everything, however preposterous, in a dream, but, on the contrary, quite recognized its abnormal character. I know of no existing cause of especial or temporary liability to any delusion of the kind. In short, though I have not—and had not when I continued after the disappearance to contemplate, without ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... and suddenly arose a complaint, which to the modern mind is preposterous. "Want of room" was the cry of every citizen and possibly with justice, as the town had been set within fixed limits and had nearly doubled in size through the addition in August, 1632, of the congregation ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... chatted upon a variety of topics, but neither the matter of the precious stones nor even Kitwater's name was once mentioned. I could not help fancying, however, that the man was considerably disappointed at the non-acceptance of his preposterous offer. He had made a move on the board, and had lost it. I knew him well enough, however, by this time to feel sure that he by no means despaired yet of winning the game. Men of Gideon Hayle's ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... at home. Shortly afterwards, Captain Carrington and those who were the least affected, by persuasion and force, removed the others from the house; and the bridal party were left to themselves, to deliberate whether they should or should not obey the preposterous demands of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... undeceive him. I hope to bring him to see the matter clearly. Unfortunately the thing has been so secret and hurried that there is barely time. I knew nothing until this morning—never dreamt of such a preposterous occurrence.' ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... they do not come to pass because they are foreseen, notwithstanding it is necessary that either things to come be foreseen by God, or that things foreseen do fall out, which alone is sufficient to overthrow free-will. But see how preposterous it is that the event of temporal things should be said to be the cause of the everlasting foreknowledge! And what else is it to think that God doth therefore foresee future things, because they are to happen, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... twenty years for the development of a speculation. Confident in the soundness of his calculations and expecting to be speedily rich beyond the dreams of avarice, he erected in Philadelphia a palace for his own abode, of the most preposterous magnificence. The architect assured him that the building would cost sixty thousand dollars, but the mere cellars exhausted that sum. He imported from Europe the most costly furniture and fine statuary for ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... we find? Mr. Swinburne calls the book "a worthless little volume of stolen and mutilated poetry, patched up and padded out with dirty and dreary doggrel, under the senseless and preposterous title of The Passionate Pilgrim." On the other hand, Mr. Humphreys maintains that "Jaggard, at any rate, had very good taste. This is partly seen in the choice of a title. Few books have so charming a name as The Passionate Pilgrim. It is ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with a piece of touch-paper from the inside of his box, he curled his legs under him in Eastern fashion, and settled down to enjoy a smoke. There was something so peculiar about the whole incident, and so preposterous about the man's appearance and actions, that we both broke into a roar of laughter, which lasted until for very exhaustion we were compelled to stop. He neither joined in our merriment nor expressed offence at it, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his head with a certain alert interest. Perhaps he himself had doubted whether his wife would think him worth the money. There was a general flutter of good-natured gratulation, and it seemed at the moment only some preposterous mistake that Con Hite should put it into Persimmon Sneed's lean paw and close his trembling ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... satisfactorily as by the more cumbrous supposition of Ptolemy. He showed, moreover, that the latter supposition must attribute an almost infinite velocity to the stars, so that the rotation of the entire universe around the earth was clearly a preposterous supposition. The second great principle, which has conferred immortal glory on Copernicus, assigned to the earth its true position in the universe. Copernicus transferred the centre, about which all the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... with the octroi duty for even a single pheasant at two shillings and sixpence, there are many good feeders who cannot afford to "dine well," and the fuss they make about their eatables is something preposterous. It is a vice—this systematic gluttony—that seems to be steadily increasing in France for the last twenty years, at least in its public manifestation, and moreover it is an ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... war material should cease to be a private industry and a source of profit to private individuals, that all the invention and enterprise that blossoms about business should be directed no longer to the steady improvement of man-killing. It is a preposterous and unanticipated thing that respectable British gentlemen should be directing magnificently organized masses of artisans upon the Tyneside in the business of making weapons that may ultimately smash some of those very ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... proprieties; sometimes from incapacity to take, or even to comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it proceeds from a pettedness of nature, which keeps you ever in fear that offence may be taken at the most innocent word or act. Sometimes it comes of a preposterous sense of his own standing and importance, existing in a man whose standing and importance are very small. It is quite wonderful what very great folk very little folk will sometimes fancy themselves to be. The present writer has had little opportunity of conversing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... for a Scotchman, and Reeve was a Saxon of Saxons. To an American this attitude of oscillating reserve seemed more eccentric than the reckless hostility of Brougham or Carlyle, and more mischievous, for he never could be sure what preposterous commonplace ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... is the lesson of history, that real wrongs, unredressed, grow into preposterous demands. Men are much like nature in action; a little disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium becomes a cyclone, a slight break in the levee a crevasse with ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... His men too, suffering for food and clamoring for their pay, began to leave him. He therefore resolved to play upon another string. On the 28th of August he despatched envoys to the regent with the preposterous proposition that he should be received as king, or that in lieu thereof he should receive from the regent and Cabinet of Sweden a yearly stipend, and that the losses which he and the Danish party in Sweden had ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... multitude of absurd expedients for procuring light—such expedients precisely as a man in the perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar purpose—each and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the most reasonable and the most preposterous of conceptions, just as the reasoning or imaginative faculties flicker, alternately, one above the other. At last an idea occurred to me which seemed rational, and which gave me cause to wonder, very justly, that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... only a coincidence. It's preposterous to imagine for a moment that reputable managers would lend themselves to anything of the kind. You happened to come across a scoundrel—that's all. Broadway's full of such human vultures—more's the pity—and they're giving the stage a bad name. But a ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... families of that State. The general officer in command at West Point, too, is a colored gentleman, of excellent reputation and qualifications. All prejudice of race, in fact, has now very much disappeared, and is looked back upon as a preposterous error of the past. Indian members of Congress number this session at least seven—two Senators, Cherokees, and five members of the House from the two new States formed from what was once the Indian Territory. The white population of those States is also well ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... both Calvinistic and Arminian writers in the position, that no man is elected to eternal life on account of his merits. Indeed, the idea that a human being can merit anything, much less eternal life, of God, is preposterous in the extreme. All his gifts are of pure grace. The creation of the soul with glorious and immortal powers was an act of pure, unmixed favour. The duty of loving and serving him, which we are permitted to enjoy, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... trying to tell him. She was stirred by some deep emotion—some overwhelming loneliness. For a moment it crossed his mind that she also was tempted—fascinated by some lurement of dishonor kindred to Adair's. He put the thought from him as preposterous and disloyal. Yet it recurred. Ever since they had met she had been talking curiously—talking about having given away bits of herself to people who were hungry, little bits of herself in wrong directions. She had coupled her own case with this unspeakable ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... is preposterous. It is far outside of God's justice and infinitely farther beyond His ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... that I need not hesitate further to tell the doctor the truth. I disliked the task, but I saw it would not be safe to leave him any longer in ignorance of his condition. There as no telling what other preposterous tales he might invent. So I said ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... ridiculous for fashion to consecrate. The rider seemed to be about thirty years old, but he was really twenty-two; perhaps he owed this appearance of age to debauchery, possibly to the perils of the period. In spite of his preposterous dress, he had a certain elegance of manner which proved him to be ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... wind?' a tempest that outrides itself. To suppose a tempest without wind, is as bad as supposing a man to walk without feet; for if he supposes the tempest to be something distinct from the wind, yet, as being the effect of wind only, to come before the cause is a little preposterous; so that, if he takes it one way, or if he takes it the other, those two ifs will scarce make one ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... shot," he says, disabled the "Peacock's" foreyard. It was certainly a capital piece of luck for the "Epervier" that her opponent at the outset lost the use of one of her most important spars; but the implication that the shot were directed for the point hit is not only preposterous but, in a combat between vessels nearly equal, depreciatory. The shot of a first broadside had no business to be so ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... been deciding to return for about an hour it annoyed her to find that she could not get clear of the woods. It seemed preposterous; the woods could not be very extensive. As for being actually lost it seemed too absurd. Life is largely ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... I find it very difficult to exclude from my Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of death and mourning under his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by his preposterous enchantments. He is a great eater and drinker, and always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior. His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he charges very high. He impresses on ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... to be hanged every time he performed it." What Dickens himself really thought of these wilder affectations of intensity among impersonators, is, with delicious humour, plainly enough indicated through that preposterous reminiscence of Mr. Crummies, "We had a first-tragedy man in our company once, who, when he played Othello, used to black himself all over! But that's feeling a part, and going into it as if you meant it; it isn't usual—more's the pity." ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... wisdom; but at any rate it was human on the part of all concerned. If this Titanic struggle, in which Russia is perhaps the greatest sufferer, is to bring her any palpable and enduring advantage, this, it was urged, can take but one form—freedom from the preposterous restraints that bar her way to the sea, and through the sea to the outside world. This and other pleas were powerful; but for this very reason and for the purpose of realizing her natural striving I personally would have temporarily negatived the Russian proposal and left ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that ... sometimes your eyes gleam so, that I never saw their match; they look like flowers ... eh? No, well, no, perhaps, not like flowers, either, but ... I am so desperately in love with you, and it is so preposterous ... for, great Scott! there is naturally not an atom of a chance for me.... What is your name? Now, you really must tell me ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... warfare is absolutely unknown. Do the moose and caribou of Alaska and Yukon Territory attack the mountain sheep and goats? Never. Does the Indian elephant attack the gaur, the sambar, the axis deer or the muntjac? The idea is preposterous. Does any species of giraffe, zebra, antelope or buffalo attack any other species on the same crowded plains of British East Africa? If so, we have yet to learn ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... some master. The bare notion of allowing a woman to choose whether she would go through life unattached to a master, or, if otherwise, to reject one she feared or disliked, would have seemed to Matthew the most preposterous audacity on the part of the inferior creature, as it would also have appeared if the inferior creature had shown discontent with the lot marked out for it. The inferior creature, on the whole, walked very meekly in the path thus swept for it. This was partly, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... warm defenders—who affirmed that the Marquis of Arondelle would never seek a peasant girl to win her affections, unless he intended to make her his marchioness—which was an idea too preposterous to be entertained for an instant—therefore there could be ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... nobility, were soon open to me; and I remarked with astonishment in the higher circles, what I had experienced in the lower on my first unhappy visit to Dublin, an extraordinary want of money, and a preposterous deal of promissory notes flying about, for which I was quite unwilling to stake my guineas. The ladies, too, were mad for play; but exceeding unwilling to pay when they lost. Thus, when the old Countess of Trumpington lost ten ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... another on facile and ready genius, and translates it, adapting it to his recollection of his fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such passages—which Jonson never intended for publication—plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the 'Discoveries', is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... reflect how utterly subversive these notions must be of that favorite catchword of Southern partisans; "State rights." It may be objected, "These people can have been only the extremely ignorant." That, however, is my own conviction: but such childish assumptions were not the less prevalent for being preposterous, nor the less potent in leavening the mass of opinion, when the question was, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... best informed, the priests, merchants, and lawyers, are really the most ignorant, and it is only from the arrieros, or muleteers, and the correos, or runners, that any knowledge of this kind can be obtained, and then only in a very confused form, and with most preposterous and contradictory estimates of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... control of its present handful of inhabitants. We may expect, at least, that Australia will not be permanently able to retain its position without an infusion of entirely fresh blood, and should other peoples require an outlet in that direction, the present preposterous policy ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... savage ceremonies used at sea on crossing the equator have been so often described that a voyager, at this time of day, may be well excused for omitting any minute account of such wild proceedings. The whole affair, indeed, is preposterous in its conception, and, I must say, brutal in its execution. Notwithstanding all this, however, I have not only permitted it to go on in ships which I commanded, but have even encouraged it, and set it agoing, when the men ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... editor answered, smoothing his large hands softly one over the other. 'Certainly not; though I confess, as a practical man, I don't sympathise in the least with this preposterous German refugee fellow. So far as I can learn, he's been at the bottom of half the revolutionary and insurrectionary movements of the last twenty years—a ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... "Can you explain to me, my good woman, why I am alive? Can you throw any light on such a preposterous paradox as my present existence? My son—a wretch, vanished without a trace, so far as I am concerned no longer living. My daughters, both of them, in the grave; my dear wife also. I have been a man, a husband, and a father; that is, I have been a father! My existence scorns ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... process in its triple aspects, says Paul, constitutes a man a Christian. What correspondence is there between it, in any of its parts, and a carnal ordinance? They belong to wholly different categories, and it is the most preposterous confusion to try to mix them up together. Are we to tack on to the solemn powers and qualities, which unite the soul to Christ, this beggarly addition that the Judaisers desire, and to say, the essentials of Christianity are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... themselves. Milton, who must not be named in the same paragraph with others, although he had not yet meditated the sublime work which was to carry his name to immortality, disdained, even in his lesser compositions, the preposterous conceits and learned absurdities, by which his contemporaries acquired distinction. Some of his slighter academic prolusions are, indeed, tinged with the prevailing taste of his age, or, perhaps, were ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... another trait not rare among her sex. She liked the attentions of young gentlemen, while the society of girls bored her. She would drag them, sulkily, in the cart; but as for permitting one of them in the saddle, the idea was preposterous. Once when Pepper Whitcomb's sister, in spite of our remonstrances, ventured to mount her, Gypsy gave a little indignant neigh, and tossed the gentle Emma heels over head in no time. But with any of the boys the mare was as docile as ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... truth,—and it was a blow. Deep down in his masculine heart he felt that he had been unjustly put in the wrong, somehow. No woman had the right—no wife—to say without cause that having thought better of the marriage bargain she had "taken herself back." There was something preposterous in the idea. It was due to the modern fad of a woman's reading all sorts of stuff, when her mind was inflammable. He recognized that his wife was the more important, the stronger person of the two,—that was the trouble with American women (Larry always made national generalizations when he wished ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... strengthened this faculty, or that he might have supplied its deficiency by some technical devices; but where the higher powers of intellect were so extraordinarily manifested, it would have been preposterous to complain of what may perhaps have been a necessary consequence of their amplitude, or at least a ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of Arguments,' Mr. Crewe was to have three hundred! It was incredible, preposterous. Mr. Flint looked at his counsel once more, and wondered whether he could be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... negligible little shop, his whole capital in his few pianos. For he looked hopefully ahead, woke with plans, regarded the children in the street as if, conceivably, children might come within the confines of his life as he imagined it. A preposterous little man. And a preposterous store, empty, echoing, bare of wall, the three pianos near the front, the remainder of the floor stretching away like the corridors of the lost. He was going to get a dark curtain, he explained, and furnish ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... bring cognac; to save the waiter the trouble, I make another wry face, indicative of disapproval, and suggest that he bring vishner-su. "Vishner-su" two or three of them sing out in a chorus of blank amazement; "Ingilis. Christian? vishner-su." they exclaim, as though such a preposterous and unaccountable thing as a Christian partaking of a non- intoxicating beverage like vishner-su is altogether beyond their comprehension. The youth who has been to the Kaizareah school then explains to the others that the American missionaries never indulge in intoxicating ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... earnestly laboring to extend the ballot to every American citizen, irrespective of all distinctions of race, complexion or sex? Can such accusers look each other in the face and not laugh? Cato wondered that two augurs could meet with gravity. What would he do here? And still more preposterous, if not ludicrous, is it, when woman voluntarily stops and becomes the agent of her own degradation, and with her own hands builds barriers against her own advancement; piling up opposition, Pelion upon Ossa, when the majority against her, even in New York and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of ours," a general said to me, "are the biggest liars in the world. Cocky fellows claiming impossible achievements. What proof can they give of their preposterous tales? They only go into the air service because they haven't the pluck to serve ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... that he could scarcely sack him off hand without some reasonable pretext. Still, the fellow was really not worth the money he was getting. Sevenpence an hour was an absurdly large wage for an old man like him. It was preposterous: he would have to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Colombia to terms, evicted her in favor of a more pliable authority. This is not in accord with Christian morality. Nor are political dealings generally. And, from a practical point of view, it was preposterous that the cupidity of some Colombian politicians should stand in the way of an improvement in geography. The agreement with the newly born republic of Panama gave the United States a perpetual lease of a strip of land, ten miles broad, across the Isthmus. This is styled the "Canal Zone." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... you are an adept in the art of pleading the impossible! You must excuse me; I am a sceptic; and I hope I am also in possession of my sober reason,—therefore, you can hardly wonder at my entirely refusing to accept such preposterous theories as those you appear ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... a little, his hand clenching on the post beside him. At first the idea was fascinating, but preposterous; he tried to put it from him, but it came back persistently, and his mind held it with a kind of half-fearful excitement. They had said he could not ride him—a child's pony! Would he ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... friends to be thus explicit. Time was, when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable solicitude, from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are bred in all hearts, by a perverse and vicious education, and they would still have maintained their place in my heart, had not my portion been set in misery. My errors have taught me thus much wisdom; that those sentiments ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... of meeting Alden again, then made a wry face at her own foolishness. "Ridiculous," she said to herself, "preposterous, absurd!" No matter what her own nightmares might be, he slept soundly—of course he did. How could healthy youth with a clear ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... favourite craze, appear to give evidence in its favour, even though in reality they are most obviously opposed to it. He learns to look upon himself as an unappreciated Newton, and to see the bitterest malevolence in those who venture to question his preposterous notions. He is fortunate if he do not suffer his theories to withdraw him from his means of earning a livelihood, or if he do not waste his substance in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... called upon to deliver an address before the Medical Society of Baltimore, in the midst of a pro-slavery audience, and before slave-holding professors and men of authority, Dr. Fussell, with a courage scarcely to be comprehended at this late day, denounced "the most preposterous and cruel practice of Slavery, as replete with the causes of disease," and expressed the hope that the day would come "when Slavery and cruelty should have no abiding place in the whole habitable earth; when the philosopher and the pious Christian could use the salutation of 'brother,' ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... meetings would clash either with other activities or with the solemnity of Sabbath meals. This obvious reason could not have stood by itself; it was secretly supported by the recondite reason that the preposterous hour of 6 a.m. appealed powerfully to something youthful, perverse, silly, fanatical, and fine in the youths. They discovered the ascetic's joy in robbing themselves of sleep and in catching chills, and in disturbing households and chapel-keepers. They thought it was a great ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... to me? May mountains first fall down beneath their valleys, And fire no more mount upwards, when I suffer An act in nature so preposterous; I must o'ercome in this, in all things else The victory be yours: could you here read me, You should perceive how all my faculties Triumph in my blest fate, to be found yours; I am your son, your son Sir, and am prouder To be so, to the Father, to such goodness (Which heaven be pleas'd, I may inherit ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Richmond, but certainly in Stewart's paper in Washington. The Jacobin printers and their friends are panic struck. Never was terror more strongly depicted in the countenances of men. They see, they feel, the fatal mischiefs that their preposterous principles and ferocious party spirit ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... girl was in front, with a young man in khaki, a convalescent officer, to judge from his frail look and hollow eyes. The girl was exactly like the fashion-plate in the morning's paper. She wore a very short skirt and Zouave jacket in grey cloth, high-heeled grey boots, with black tips and gaiters, a preposterous little hat perched on one side of a broad white forehead, across which the hair was parted like a boy's, and an ostrich plume on the top of the hat, which nodded and fluttered so extravagantly that the face beneath almost escaped the spectator's notice. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
