"Absurdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the white pillow. A slave, an animal, a thing even, provided it should be in continuous contact with her person—that was what he longed to be; not to find himself obliged, at nightfall, to leave her after a parting absurdly prolonged by childish pretexts, and return to his irritating, common, vulgar life at home, to the solitude of his room, where he imagined he could see a pair of green eyes staring at him from every ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... She trembled, went hot and cold, had a parched throat. Mallard entered, and she did not offer him her hand; perhaps he might reject it. In consequence there was an absurdly formal bow ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... alas! too many were inclined to quiz the breakfast, Mrs. Rose, and everything they saw or met with, yet even these to her pretended the greatest felicity at what they partook of, and the sincerest regard and esteem for her, and were absurdly lavish in the admiration of her taste, and after all poor Mrs. Rose was so fatigued that she was attended for a considerable time by Doctor Gardener, and could associate with no other plant but her maid Valerian, having ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... of walking about on their hind legs in a singularly human fashion. Those in the London Zoological Gardens invariably attract a crowd. They struggle together in a playful way, standing on their hind legs to wrestle. They fall and roll, and bite and hug most absurdly. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the loveliest bride you or I ever beheld. Usually brides do not look their best, but Letty was the most charming, radiant, bewildering creature—and so absurdly young—as though suddenly she had dropped a few years and was again beginning that girlhood which I sometimes ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... of usurpation. Thus behind the arch-conspirator of the revolution stood "the Chief of all the Jews." Is it here perhaps, in Falk's "chests of gold," that we might find the source of some of those loans raised in London by the Due d'Orleans to finance the riots of the Revolution, so absurdly described as ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... said you had better die then? On no other terms will I go on those sands. But I tell you frankly what I think about this matter. I think that you absurdly exaggerate the effect the knowledge of her father's crime will have ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Greene. Yet it is clear, from more than one passage, that the author was acquainted with Shakespeare's historical plays. Dick Bowyer's puns on the sentinels' names (ii. 1) were certainly suggested by Falstaff's pleasantries with the recruits in Henry IV., Part II. Winstanley absurdly ascribes the piece to William Wager, who flourished (?) when Shakespeare was a child. If I were obliged to make a guess at the authorship, I would name Chettle or Munday, or both. It is not altogether improbable that the Tryall of Chevalry may be the play by Chettle ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... was this Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus, who, having everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions, ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained impossible victories? Who was this new comet of war who possest ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... subsistence at a period of life when be could no longer hope to find any other lucrative employment." As the thoughtful clerk of the War Office takes his hat down from the peg where it has used to hang for twenty years, methinks I hear one of our opponents cry out, "Friend Sharpe, you are absurdly scrupulous." "You may innocently aid Government in doing wrong," adds another. While Liberty Party yelps at his heels, "My dear Sir, you are quite losing your influence!" And indeed it is melancholy to reflect how, from that moment the mighty underclerk of the War Office(!) dwindled ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... members of the Company to France, a mistake for which he paid the penalty by being himself recalled. De Mesy was succeeded by the Marquis de Tracy and was the second Chief Crown Governor, or Viceroy. He was not fettered with a Council of Advice, but he was more absurdly hampered with almost co-equals in the shape of assistants. The Seigneur de Courcelles was appointed Governor of the Colony, and Mon. De Talon, Intendant. De Tracy brought with him as settlers the then newly disbanded ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... glance at the paper. Her eye had caught the impersonation of two American actresses she had never seen, the reading of a Hawaiian love poem she had never heard of, and scenes from two plays she had never read. It was all too deliciously, absurdly horrible for words; and then Patsy O'Connell geared up her wits, as any ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... impertinence of whose presence many of us have had painful proof, is the third or last molar, so absurdly misnamed the wisdom tooth. If there be any wisdom involved in its appearance it is of the sort characterized by William Allen White's delicious definition: "That type of ponderous folly of the middle-aged which we term 'mature judgment.'" ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... have still a correspondency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it, so as to produce a very similar impression: enlarging themselves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the sea remains a disappointment.—Is it not, that in the latter we had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I am afraid, by the law of imagination unavoidably) not a definite object, as those wild beasts, or that mountain compassable by the eye, but all the sea at once, THE COMMENSURATE ANTAGONIST OF THE EARTH! I do ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the naked proportion of the first room, which the understanding has so much approved, as admirably fitted for its purposes. What I have here said and before concerning proportion, is by no means to persuade people absurdly to neglect the idea of use in the works of art. It is only to show that these excellent things, beauty and proportion, are not the same; not that they should either of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wherein appears the sound reasoning and courageous philosophy for which Mr. Campbell has always been distinguished. Another notable essay or review is "English History," by Henry Clapham McGavack. Mr. McGavack here ably employs his keen analysis and lucid style in dissecting Prof. Meyer's absurdly biased but diabolically clever ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... man with sandy hair dragged the hose under the nose of the plane to take it to the other wing tank. Close by the nose wheel he slipped and steadied himself by the shaft which reaches down to the wheel's hub. His position for a moment was absurdly ungraceful. When he straightened up, his arm slid into the wheel well. But he dragged the hose the rest of the way and passed it on up. Then that tank was full and capped. The refueling crew got down to the ground and fed the hose back to the pit which ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... and the officials of the custom-house, and the mail-boat came out to us. My boy became impatient for couay (cake); Moonshee, my Persian teacher, and Beebe, my gay Hindostanee nurse, expressed their disappointment and disgust, Moonshee being absurdly dramatic in his wrath, as, fairly shaking his fist at the town, he ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... activity of thought, the moment that I stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which I most absurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me when, late at night, I sat in the deserted parlour, lighted only by the glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out on the brightening page in ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... did so the figure appeared familiar to him. There was something especially familiar in the scout hat which came down over the ears of the little fellow who was underneath it, and in the hair which straggled out under the brim. The belt, drawn absurdly tight around the thin little waist, was a quite sufficient mark of identification. It was Skinny McCord, the latest find, and official mascot of the Bridgeboro troop, one of the crack troop of the camp. Alfred ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... property; and Dalrymple did not hesitate to agree to these terms, although Sir John Moore arrived off the coast with a reinforcement of 10,000 men during the progress of the negotiation. The famous "Convention of Cintra" (most absurdly so named, as it was in fact concluded thirty miles from Cintra) was signed accordingly on the 30th of August; and the French army wholly evacuated Portugal in the manner provided for. The English people heard with indignation that the spoilers of Portugal had been suffered to escape ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... that Lord and Lady Montbarry, with Agnes and the children, would arrive in Venice in three days more. 'They know nothing of our adventures at the hotel,' Henry wrote; 'and they have telegraphed to the manager for the accommodation that they want. There would be something absurdly superstitious in our giving them a warning which would frighten the ladies and children out of the best hotel in Venice. We shall be a strong party this time—too strong a party for ghosts! I shall meet the travellers on their arrival, of course, ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the oddest effect on him. Vaguely and confusedly he was troubled by it; feeling as if he had even himself been concerned in something deep and dim. He had allowed for depths, but these were greater: and it was as if, oppressively—indeed absurdly—he was responsible for what they had now thrown up to the surface. It was—through something ancient and cold in it—what he would have called the real thing. In short his hostess's news, though he couldn't have explained why, was a sensible shock, and his oppression ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... may read absurdly to the West but it is true in the East. "Selim" had seen no woman's face unveiled, save that of his sable mother Rosebud in Morier's Tale of Yeldoz, the wicked woman ("The Mirza," vol. iii. 135). The H. V. adds that Alaeddin's mother was old and verily ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... extermination; when suddenly the course of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal to ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... camels still serenely munching day-before-yesterday's dinner; and twenty miles further on, again, having passed through the same green plain, backed by the same gray mountains, we would stop once more at the identical Koos-kam, which this time absurdly described itself as Tahtah. But whether it was Aboo-Teeg or Koos-kam or Tahtah or anything else, only the name differed: it was always the same town, and had always the same camels at precisely the same stage of the digestive process. It seemed to us immaterial whether you saw all the Nile or ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... he was marked chiefly by precocity. But the boy's education did not in truth take place at any systematic seat of education; it took place in his own home, where one of the quaintest and most learned and most absurdly indulgent of fathers poured out in an endless stream fantastic recitals from the Greek epics and mediaeval chronicles. If we test the matter by the test of actual schools and universities, Browning will appear ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... situation began to grow serious. The Rube did not take half his usual deliberation, and of the next two pitches one of them was a ball and the other a strike by grace of the umpire's generosity. Clancy rapped the next one, an absurdly slow pitch for the Rube to use, and both runners scored to the shrill tune of ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... third member of the Brunell household whom Morrow had observed frequently seated upon the doorstep, or on one of the lower window sills—a small, scraggly black kitten, with stiff outstanding fur, and an absurdly belligerent attitude whenever a dog chanced to pass through the lane. It waited in the doorway each night for the return of its mistress, and in the soft glow of the lamplight which streamed from within, he had seen her catch the little creature ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... himself with all that is going on in the little provincial garrison town, where men and women—except his mother, who is frozen to the point of living altogether by formula—are tormented by the exasperation of unsatisfied desires. He sees Novikoff absurdly and hopelessly in love with his sister, Lida; he sees Lida caught up in an intrigue with an expert soldier love-maker, and bound, both by her own weakness and by her dependence upon society for any opinion of her own actions, to continue in that hateful excitement; he sees men and ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... way to the morning's lecture, with his plump childish face, his round innocent eyes, his absurdly non-prehensile fat hand carrying his cap, his grey trousers braced up much too high, his feet a trifle inturned, and going across the great court with a queer tripping pace that seemed cultivated even to my naive undergraduate eye. Or I see him lecturing. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... His Own Times, 1880, iii 963-9. First collected in P. and D. W., 1877-80. In a copy of the Annual Anthology of 1800 Coleridge writes over against the heading of this poem, 'Written when fears were entertained of an invasion, and Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Tierney were absurdly represented as having recanted because to [The French Revolution (?)] in its origin they, [having been favourable, changed their opinion when the Revolutionists became unfaithful to their principles (?)].' See ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... plays, stories, travel books, and the Texans themselves have kept the tradition going. This is the main thesis of the book. Mr. Leach fails to note that the best books concerning Texas have done little to keep the typical Texan alive and that a great part of the present Texas Brags spirit is as absurdly unrealistic as Mussolini's splurge at making twentieth-century Italians imagine themselves a {illust. caption John W. Thomason, in his Lone Star Preacher (1941)} reincarnation of Caesar's Roman legions. Mr. Leach dissects the myth and ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... was dreadfully unlucky that be should be so desperately in love with her, more especially since Rowley had taken to be absurdly jealous of him, as if—now that she was married—she could ever think seriously of anybody. Only after you'd been brought up—to cut your teeth, as one might say—flirting, well, it was just a little bit hard to give it up at twenty-three. Besides, it wasn't as if she meant anything—except ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... furious, quite absurdly furious, quite thoughtlessly furious. Oh, how it lightened, crashed, rumbled, roared and snorted. What a conflict—but it was beautiful nevertheless. He raised himself up on his toes and exposed his hammering ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... maternal instinct—and as a necessary supplement to it. This instinct is more or less futile in most women because they are more or less ignorant of the realities as to wise and foolish expenditure. But it is found in the most extravagant women no less than in the most absurdly and meanly stingy. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... at that time as droll and roguish-looking a grizzly cub as ever stepped. In a grizzly-gray full moon of fluffy hair, two big black eyes sparkled like jet beads, behind a pudgy little nose, absurdly short for a bear. Excepting for his high shoulders, he was little more than a big bale of gray fur set up on four posts of the same material. But his claws were formidable, and he had the true ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... for battle. On the back of the mare he passed her window, after lifting his hat, and he thumped at his breast-pocket, to show her where the letter housed safely. The packet of provision bulged on his hip, absurdly and blessedly to her sight, not unlike the man, in his combination of robust serviceable qualities, as she reflected during the later hours, until the sun fell on smouldering November woods, and sensations of the frost he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... string-piece where it crossed the opening, telling me to put my hand on his shoulder. But I did not want to do that. I wanted to cross alone—when I got ready. It took me perhaps two minutes to get ready. Then I stepped over. It was, of course, absurdly easy. I had known it would be. But as we walked along I kept thinking to myself: "I shall have to cross that beastly place again when we come back," and I marveled the more at the amazing steadiness of eye and mind and nerve that enables some men to go continually prancing about over emptiness ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... But, as to the former, should we feel anything grotesque in the four injunctions 'Swear!' if it were not that they come from under the stage—a fact which to an Elizabethan audience, perfectly indifferent to what is absurdly called stage illusion, was probably not in the least grotesque? And as to the latter, if we knew the Ghost-lore of the time better than we do, perhaps we should see nothing odd in Hamlet's insisting on moving away and proposing the oath ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... felt this the more when to the concept of Infinitude I added that of Intelligence. I use the much-worked word intelligence because there is no other; but when one thinks for a second of what must be the understanding of an Infinite Mind, intelligence as a descriptive term becomes absurdly inadequate. ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... interpolated to give some colour to the charge of "gossiping," absurdly asserted of the learned Sergeant. The Parvis was the place of conference, where suitors met with their counsel and legal advisers; and Chaucer merely intimates thereby the extent of the Sergeant's practice. In ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... instant. What he was abidingly conscious of, was of a beautiful wild creature struggling with difficulties in which he was somehow himself concerned, and out of which, in some way or other, he was becoming more and more determined—absurdly determined—to ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... carefully, you got a little square, white forehead, and straight eyebrows of the same darkness as her hair, and very distinct on the white, and eyes also very dark and distinct, and fairly crystalline with youth; and a little white and very young nose that started straight and ended absurdly in a little soft knob that had a sort of kink in it; and a mouth which would have been too large for her face if it hadn't made room for itself by tilting up at the corners; and then a little square white chin and jaw; they were thrust forward, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... with the ancient Greek and Roman governments. Homer and Virgil could have no faults, because they were ancient; Milton and Tasso could have no merit, because they were modern. And I could almost have said, with regard to the ancients, what Cicero, very absurdly and unbecomingly for a philosopher, says with regard to Plato, Cum quo errare malim quam cum aliis recte sentire. Whereas now, without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... what do you think of me now?" she explained, pouring the tea into absurdly small cups, one of ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... had learned that the average player would seldom make more than thirty-one counts, and usually, before this number was reached, he would miss through some careless play or get himself into a position where he couldn't play at all. The thing looked absurdly easy. It looked as if one could go on playing all day long, and the victim was usually eager to bet that he could make fifty or perhaps a hundred; but for more than an hour I tried it patiently, and seldom succeeded in scoring ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... me. You cannot form any idea of what a young, inexperienced, absurdly brought-up boy may imagine to be love. However, why should one calumniate one's self? I told you just now I had never known happiness. No! I ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... at nine sharp the next morning. We expected a large attendance, and were not disappointed. Some of the boys grinned broadly when Alethea-Belle appeared carrying books and maps. She looked absurdly small, very nervous, and painfully frail. The fathers present exchanged significant glances; the mothers sniffed. Alethea- Belle entered the names of her scholars in a neat ledger, and shook hands with each. Then she made ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... but June was a stubborn little thing; warm-hearted, but stubborn as wood, and—quite true—not one who forgot! By the middle of next month they would be back. He had barely five weeks left to enjoy the new interest which had come into what remained of his life. Darkness showed up to him absurdly clear the nature of his feeling. Admiration for beauty—a craving to see that which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that I should have known you," answered the storekeeper. They were all absurdly silent, thinking of nothing to say and admiring the boy because he was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... quite true; I speak absurdly. There is a feeling of anguish, however, which I can ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... saying so. He left nothing undone in order to pay his court, at bottom with meanness, but externally with dignity; and he every year celebrated a sort of anniversary of his disgrace, by extraordinary acts, of which ill-humour and solitude were oftentimes absurdly the fruit. He himself spoke of it, and used to say that he was not rational at the annual return of this epoch, which was stronger than he. He thought he pleased the King by this refinement of attention, without perceiving he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was granted me, and I spent some hours with pleasure there. It is an absurd little gallery, absurdly imitating the Louvre, with just such compartments and pillars as you see in the noble Paris gallery; only here the pillars and capitals are stucco and white in place of marble and gold, and plaster-of-paris busts of great ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that he broke in upon Reade. Reade had passed an absurdly useless afternoon. He had not stirred from the study. For all that it would have mattered to him, it might have been raining hard the whole afternoon, instead of being, as it had been, the finest afternoon of the whole term. In a word, and not to put ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... had been misjudged; I had been absurdly measured by other men's creed: but might I not have similarly misjudged others, since I had from early youth been under similar influences? How many of my seniors at Oxford I had virtually despised because ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... burst out into his first horse laugh, in which I chorused him most heartily, having in truth been in convulsions, between the queerness of his lingo, and the absurdly grotesque attitudes into which he threw himself, in imitating the persons concerning whom his story ran. After this, jest succeeded jest! and story, story! 'till, in good truth, the glass circling the while with most portentous ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... at productive labor, such as timber-getting, or raise money somehow, somewhere. They followed the latter as being the easier task. So they sold to an outside capitalist the exclusive right for three years of cutting timber on the area. They sold it for an absurdly small consideration, to find later that they were also prevented cutting ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... midnight in his unventilated library, grinding at the task of putting new wrong meanings into perfectly obvious statements in the Bible. He was a series of circles—round head with smooth gray hair that hung in a bang over his round forehead; round face with round red cheeks; absurdly heavy gray mustache that almost made a circle about his puerile mouth; round button of a nose; round heavy shoulders; round little stomach in a gray sack-suit; round dumplings of feet in congress shoes that were never quite fresh-blacked or quite dusty. A harassed, honorable, studious, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... is quite right, Christine. Torvald is so absurdly fond of me that he wants me absolutely to himself, as he says. At first he used to seem almost jealous if I mentioned any of the dear folk at home, so naturally I gave up doing so. But I often talk about such things with Doctor Rank, because he ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... opened. Mrs. Lessways was not good at strategy, especially in conflicts with her daughter. She was an ingenuous, hasty thing, and much too candidly human. And not only was she deficient in practical common sense and most absurdly unable to learn from experience, but she had not even the wit to cover her shortcomings by resorting to the traditional authoritativeness of the mother. Her brief, rare efforts to play the mother were ludicrous. She was too simply honest to acquire stature by standing ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Holland, and is believed to have been a wealthy merchant in New Providence (the Bahamas), and seems to have shared in Sir William Phipps' successful undertaking of raising a Spanish galleon with L300,000 worth of sunken treasure. It is absurdly stated that he was at one time a buccaneer, and so gained a knowledge of Darien and the ports of the Spanish main. That he knew and obtained information from Captains Sharpe, Dampier, Wafer, and Sir Henry Morgan (the taker of Panama), is probable. He worked ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the tale of the brilliant imposture, which had been so harshly and so absurdly construed into the crime of a forgery, and which was (if not wholly innocent) so akin to the literary devices always in other cases viewed with indulgence, and exhibiting, in this, intellectual qualities ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from my boy. It had been written the day after the child's birth apparently. I have it here. After some private matter he says: "Our little son is a fine fellow, very dark, and his thick black hair has the 'Sarreco streak' very visible, which Inez is absurdly delighted at. The English nurse has jungle fever, and is kept away, but Pahna, the Karen woman, is a splendid substitute: she is the wife of my faithful native servant. Pahna is devoted to 'Bebe Ingalay.' Her English is curious; Inez she usually ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and absurdly, and seemed sporting in currents of wind; yet there was but little wind down below. Presently clouds came flying over the sky, and blacker masses gathered on the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... In short, the British, while professing peace with the Americans, treacherously incited the Indians to war against them; and, when it suited their own interests, they treacherously abandoned their Indian allies to the impending ruin. [Footnote: The ordinary American histories, often so absurdly unjust to England, are right in their treatment of the British actions on the frontier in 1793-94. The ordinary British historians simply ignore the whole affair. As a type of their class, Mr. Percy Gregg may be instanced. His "History of the United States" ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... paesi, (i. e., "cultivated country,") before we reach The Mountains, which are two days' journey distant. I therefore sent Mohammed to buy a small sheep, but he could not succeed although there were many flocks about, the people absurdly refusing to sell them, even when the full price was offered. The Arabs themselves never eat meat as the rule, but the exception, supporting themselves on the milk of their flocks and farinaceous matter. Olive-oil ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... warm, fierce, reckless-natured boy of fourteen could have hit upon such an absurdly quixotic way of deciding a quarrel. Indian combats between Red Indians in the Far West, the deeds of Sir Kenneth, Saladin, and Coeur de Lion in his favourite "Talisman," and the entire character of Drake's reading, had joined with and gathered romance ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... revolutionists, these levellers, these men of the people, are never weary of reviling the French Emperor for being a parvenu. Human inconsistency cannot go much farther than this. Not but I perfectly agree with my Garibaldian, that we have all agreed to take the most absurdly exaggerated estimate of the Emperor's ability. Except in some attempts, and not always successful attempts, to carry out the policy and plans of the first Empire, there is really nothing that deserves the name ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... tins placed on the counter, chose her outfit with vanity and care. The general effect was not good, but she did not know this, for she studied the parts separately in a six-inch mirror. She was filled with a simple pleasure. For she was always absurdly moved by little excitements, and by any prospect of a changed to-morrow. She was not really used to being alive at all, and that is what made her take to magic ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... it was," replied Orde; "but anyway, it's an absurdly inadequate sum, and shows one of the blank ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that men, in dancing, do Both impiously and absurdly, And proved his proposition true, With Firstly, Secondly, ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... camp we were still in sight of the Landing, which looked absurdly near, considering the men's hard pull; and from there messengers were sent to Baptiste Lake, the source of Baptiste Creek, which joins the Athabasca a few miles up, and where there was a settlement of half-breed fishermen ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... me I think; but then, afterwards, he remembered what a high position he had to fill and regarded me as too little and too childish. Oh, how many tears I have shed over being so absurdly little! A Water-wagtail—that is what I shall always be. Your old host called me so; and if a man like Orion feels that he must have a stately wife I can hardly blame him. That other one whom he thinks he loves better than he does me ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... time a life of unmixed happiness,—if we can call pure materialism happiness. A physiologist, observing the rolls of flesh which covered the last vertebrae and pressed upon the giant's cerebellum, and, above all, hearing the shrill, sharp voice which contrasted so absurdly with his huge body, would have understood why this ponderous, coarse being adored his only son, and why he had so long expected him,—a fact proved by the name, Desire, which was given to ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... Von Bloom knew what they were. He knew they were the "wilde-honden," very absurdly named by sapient naturalists Hyena venatica or "hunting hyena," and by others, with equal absurdity the "hunting dog." I pronounce these names "absurd," first because the animal in question bears no more resemblance to a hyena than it does to a hedgehog; and, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... over and done better. It finally was. The little pear-shaped bulb with its delicate loop of filament, which cost months of toil and experiment at first, is now a common article, manufactured at an absurdly small cost, packed in barrelfuls and shipped everywhere, and consumed by the million. A means has been found for producing the vacuum of its interior rapidly, cheaply and thoroughly, and the beautiful incandescent ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... of moral issues. The fact which so persistently distorts our point of view, that it is so largely associated with our sexual life, is probably a mere incident, biologically speaking, due in no small part to the almost absurdly simple circumstance that the germ of the disease cannot grow in the presence of air, and must therefore find refuge, in most cases, in the cavities and inlets from the surface of the body. History affords little support ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... desired, and that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. The argument was only slightly adequate. But Alan was not interested in mysteries, especially when they had to do with woman—and such an absurdly inconsequential thing as ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... collect a tax from every different farm in the country where this plant might happen to be cultivated, would be more difficult, it has been supposed, than to levy one upon its importation at the custom-house. The cultivation of tobacco has, upon this account, been most absurdly prohibited through the greater part of Europe, which necessarily gives a sort of monopoly to the countries where it is allowed; and as Virginia and Maryland produce the greatest quantity of it, they share largely, though with some competitors, in ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... absurdly wonderful on landing at Calais to hear every one talking French. Of course, Mary had known that it would be so, but actually to hear it, and to think that these people had spoken French since they were babies, was ridiculously nice. She felt rewarded for ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... JUNIOR: I hope you don't mind being called "Jerry Junior," but "Mr. Hilliard" sounds so absurdly formal, when I have known your sister so long and so well. We are spending the summer here in Valedolmo, and Mrs. Eustace and Nannie have promised to stop with us for a few days, provided you can be persuaded ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... ardour of the Assembly seemed to sink. Among the miscellaneous crowds that were visible between the divisions of the martial host, there ran a murmur of obloquy and derision against the pure object of public veneration. He was reviled as a whimsical Reformer, and a rash Enthusiast, who had absurdly sacrificed his life in a vain and fantastic pursuit. This base spirit of calumnious malignity was not communicated to any one division of the martial multitude; but the universal zeal for the glory of HOWARD seemed to be ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... question, this being the more laughable because he was such a little chap. Potts did not pay the least attention to the jeers, and finally the jeerers were constrained to admit that if he did have an absurdly pretentious way of talking, his talk was unusually well worth listening to, and the result was that they took him at his own valuation, and, for the sake of hearing what he had to say, quietly submitted to his assumption of authority as court of appeal. So when he coolly declared both disputants ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... How absurdly poor the chance! Yet they bade the old coachman turn that way, and indeed the facts were better than the hope of any one of them. Charlie, very gaunt and battered, but all the more enamored of himself ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... a little behind him that she might see his profile. Suddenly he reined back and met her face, his own gleaming with laughter. At such moments he looked absurdly young. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... going back—they had been brilliantly sure of it—Oliver had only to finish his novel that was so much better already than any novel Nancy had ever read—sell a number of copies of it that seemed absurdly small in proportion to the population of America—and then they could live where they pleased and Oliver could compose Great Works and Nancy get ahead with her very real and delicate talent for etching instead ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... age that they halted there in the open solitude, silently stroking and soothing their frightened beasts, before either could speak. Then "Forty-niner" found his voice and burst forth, absurdly: ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... nature. The false sentiment and partial science of the pagan which stresses the identification of man and beast is the first quarrel that religionist and humanist alike have with him. Neither of them sanctions this perversion of thought and feeling which either projects the impressionistic self so absurdly and perilously into the natural order, or else minimizes man's imaginative and intellectual power, leveling him down to the amoral instinct of the brute. "How much more," said Jesus, "is a man better than a sheep!" One of the greatest of English humanists was Matthew Arnold. You remember ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... respectable maiden lady nursing a young man on her knee. The gentleman's face was indistinct, and he was dressed in a costume which, upon a man of his size—one would have estimated him as rising 6 ft. 4 in.—appeared absurdly juvenile. He had one arm round her neck, and she was holding his ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... at large believes—a niche which is never so narrow but that it provides abundant material for varied work—often very pleasant work too. Let it be understood, once for all, that the champions of widows and single women are very much given to talking and writing absurdly on this point. Their premises are often wholly false. They often fancy discontent and disappointment and inaction where those elements have no existence. Certainly it is not in the least worth while to risk a tremendous social revolution in behalf of this minority of the sex. Every widow ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... of the practical joke. As if in scorn of rank and official dignity, Frederick gave this sot and fool the title of baron and created him chancellor and chamberlain of the palace, forcing him always to wear an absurdly gorgeous gala dress, while to show his disdain of learned pursuits he made him president of his Academy of Sciences, an institution which, in its condition at that time, was suited to the presidency ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... how Asiatic cities were colonized by Greeks, among whom the Ionians were pre-eminent. The cities were governed by tyrants, who were sustained in their usurpation by the power of Persia, then the great power of the world. Darius, then king, had absurdly invaded Scythia, with an immense army of six hundred thousand men, to punish the people for their inroad upon Western Asia, subject to his sway, about a century before. He was followed by his allies, the tyrants of the Ionian cities, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... are also so posed as to arouse no surprise at their presence. We should have said beforehand that heavy pontifical robes would be absurdly incongruous in such a composition, but Raphael solves the problem so simply that few would suspect the difficulties. The final touch of beauty is added in the cherub heads below, recalling the naive charm of the similar figures in the ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs—to sleep so soundly, and to awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing to get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage been flung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the hand inserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had not the slightest ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... on Helm, but a glimpse of the Captain's broad good-humored face heartily smiling, dispelled his anger. There was no ground upon which to maintain a quarrel with a person so persistently genial and so absurdly frank. And in fact Hamilton was not half so bad as his choleric manifestations seemed to make him out. Besides, Helm knew just how far to ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... as if he was very cold. He had drawn his knees close to his chest, and held them in that position with thin, clasped fingers. His hair, which he wore rather long, was in a wild tangle, and his neat eye-glasses with their black cord looked absurdly out of keeping with his general dishevelment. The groom, never strong or robust, looked as if he had shrunk. The bride, too, looked as if she had shrunk, and I certainly felt as if I had. But, however strong the contrast between us three small humans and the vast stretches ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... He spent his mornings in his own yacht, his afternoons and evenings on board the schooner. The proposal had been a godsend to him in his state of indecision. After his aimless wanderings he was exhilarated by this eager challenge and pursuit, absurdly pitting the speed of his own small craft against the swiftness and strength of the larger vessel. But he enjoyed still more sitting on the rail of the Windward and talking to Frida. There was something infinitely soothing ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... puzzling you recognise there the relics of a familiar verse from a Latin psalm Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, and the rest: inscribed as well as may be in Greek characters. Prior Saint-Jean caused it to be so inscribed, absurdly, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... A vague, absurdly alarming sense of presage grew upon him as his eyes went from this face to Imogen's—so still, so cold, so unanswering, lightened, as if from a vail of heavy cloud, by that stealthy, baleful, illuminating ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... beauty referred to in the opening lines of this chapter, whose love Eugene had been lucky enough to secure. Had Eugene not been absurdly rich himself, he might have been congratulated further on the prospective enjoyment of a nice little fortune as ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... disposed for wandering in the woods. When it rained or for some other reason they did not leave the town he would take her to the theater, or the museum, or the Thiergarten: for she insisted on being seen with him. She even wanted him to go to church with her; but he was so absurdly sincere that he would not set foot inside a church since he had lost his belief—(on some other excuse he had resigned his position as organist)—and at the same time, unknown to himself, remained much too religious not to think Ada's ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... dispute about the worth of the men we like. I began it, now let it be dropped; only make me one promise,—that if you should be in arrear, or if need presses, you will come at once to me. It was very well to be absurdly proud in an attic, but that pride will be out of place in your appartement ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Sylvia a birthday present. She lay awake most of the night wondering if she could do it, and most sorrowfully concluded that it was utterly out of the question, no matter how she might pinch and contrive. Old Lady Lloyd worried quite absurdly over this, and it haunted her like a spectre until the next Sewing ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... there were doubtless also many words for the simple fact that so prime a Roman had a fancy for again seeing Rome. They would accordingly—hadn't they better?—go for a little; Maggie meanwhile making the too-absurdly artful point with her father, so that he repeated it, in his amusement, to Charlotte Stant, to whom he was by this time conscious of addressing many remarks, that it was absolutely, when she came to think, the first ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... on religions-philosophie, with the heart's battles translated into conceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the religious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly little technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working philosophy, individual Germans should preserve any spontaneity of mind at all. That they still manifest freshness and originality in so eminent ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... facetoface, the width of one pitiful little Banana Republic between them. On one hand the Grass, funneled and constricted to a strip of land absurdly inadequate to support its gargantuan might, on the other the combined resources of man, desperately determined to destroy the bridge before the invader. In tropic heat the work was kept up at superhuman pace. Gangs of native laborers fainting under ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... The Liberator, Nov. 27, 1863. I have not dwelt upon Beecher's tour of England and Scotland in 1863, because its influence in "winning England" seems to me absurdly over-estimated. He was a gifted public orator and knew how to "handle" his audiences, but the majority in each audience was friendly to him, and there was no such "crisis of opinion" in 1863 as has frequently been stated in order to ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... very valuable, and of course Billy was crazy over it—or pretended to be). There was no trousseau, either, and no reception. There was no anything but the bridegroom; and when I tell you that Billy actually declared that was all she wanted, you will understand how absurdly in love she is—in spite of all those weeks and weeks of broken engagement when I, at least, supposed she had come to her senses, until I got that crazy note from Bertram a week ago saying they were to ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... absurdly alive and audacious and sensitive and youthful-hearted, dear madam! For the life of me I can't quite fit you into the narrow ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... I have been asking," said Mr. Britling. "They are fixing the upward age for recruits at thirty; it's absurdly low. A man well over forty like myself is quite fit to line a trench or guard a bridge. I'm not ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... not been rather amiable, it would have been absurdly droll. His wife at once withdrew her touch; but it was plain she had to exert some force. Thereupon the young man coloured and looked ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was pleasant, of a warm forenoon, after the morning drill was over, to sit under the trees at the foot of the camp, and catch the cool breeze as it crept up the bluff. Here the news was read; here the rations were eaten and the siesta enjoyed,—though stay-at-homes may think the latter an absurdly superfluous luxury, taking into consideration the quality of the former! Here the letters from home—so welcome to the soldier—were devoured again, and with his inverted plate for a writing desk, ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... promising to help her to get a cab, I asked her a few questions. Her answers showed that she was suffering from some terrible nervous excitement. She asked me if I knew any baronet—any from Hampshire—and seemed almost absurdly relieved when I assured her I did not. In the course of our conversation, as we walked towards St. John's Wood, I discovered a curious circumstance. She knew Limmeridge ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the side she had seen, written in tiny, tiny letters just as the Lord's Prayer is written in carved ivory toys of incredible smallness, the letters E-L-L-A, and these letters had fixed themselves in her mind, they had seemed so absurdly real and she had felt so ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... immodesty, truth or falsehood; the lad will be taught honor or dishonor, simplicity or affectation. Without the lesson the amusement will not be there. There are novels which certainly teach nothing; but then neither can they amuse any one. I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my own confraternity if I were to declare that the bulk of the young people in the upper and middle classes receive their moral teaching chiefly from the novels they read. Mothers would no doubt think of their own ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... care for any of them except The Imitation of Christ and Robinson Crusoe. The Bible was spoilt for her by incessant services and Sunday School classes; The Heir of Redclyffe and Ministering Children she found absurdly sentimental and unlike any life that she had ever known; Mrs. Beeton she had never opened, and Longfellow and Kingsley's Natural History she found dull. For Robinson Crusoe she had the intense human sympathy ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... offended individuals wronged by too much license, take the matter into their own hands, not waiting for the courts, but executing a swifter justice. It is the terror of lynch law which has, in countless instances, been the foundation of the later courts, with their slow moving and absurdly inefficient methods. In time the inefficiency of the courts once more begets impatience and contempt. The people again rebel at the fact that their government gives them no government, that their courts give them no justice, that their peace officers give them no protection. Then ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... change and rest, and had called twice a day when Leonie was really ill, and four times when she was convalescent; so upon fair Devon had they decided, Leonie cajoling and smiling until she had obtained a year's lease, at an absurdly low rent, of the little cottage on the left of Lee harbour as ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... alive. The nun takes the child, and Ginx, in gratitude for her assurance that the child shall not be sent back to him, stands treat for the crowd. The child's life in the convent is material for some good satiric writing upon the question of his salvation. The picture is absurdly over-drawn so far as its effectiveness against conventional charity is concerned, but it touches the question of religious bigotry surely and strongly. Indeed the method of treatment here verges closely upon the Rabelaisian, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... shall once agree to write clearly and plainly of them, and thereby keep men from being stunn'd, as it were, or imposd upon by dark or empty Words; 'tis to be hop'd that these men finding that they can no longer write impertinently and absurdly, without being laugh'd at for doing so, will be reduc'd either to write nothing, or Books that may teach us something, and not rob men, as formerly, of invaluable Time; and so ceasing to trouble the World with Riddles or Impertinencies, we shall either by their Books receive an Advantage, or ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... East Surreys, and Queen's. About 8 a.m. a wagon and team crawled up to our camp; this turned out to be the light trolley I had sent for and which Lieutenant Melville had kindly hurried forward from Frere. I was awfully pleased to see it as our load before was absurdly heavy. The General was also quite glad to see and hear of the new trolley. At 2 p.m. in came my new horse from Frere, and a bag of excellent saddlery; the horse was in an awful state; he had apparently bolted on getting out ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... wildering track struck out by those innovators and visionaries who absurdly endeavor to teach modern English, by rejecting the authority and sanction of custom, and by conducting the learner back to the original combinations, and the detached, disjointed, and barbarous constructions of our progenitors, both prudence and reason, as ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... mixed up in the revolution of 1848 at Dresden, and Liszt produced the work at Weimar in 1850. From that time forward Liszt was the mouthpiece of the new school, or rather he was a sort of godfather to it, ministering to Wagner's impecuniousness often and again out of resources which were absurdly small when we consider the rank of genius which the salary covered. Liszt's salary at Weimar ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... he argued within himself, in extenuation of what he felt was an unreasonable mental attitude; "'And modern fashionable women are among the most unlikeable of all human creatures. Any one of them in such a village as this would be absurdly out of place." ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... farming community, brought up on the farm, naturally become farmers, yet in the interim, between babyhood and farmer life, they go to school. How absurdly easy the task of the school—to determine that they shall be intelligent, progressive, enthusiastic, up-to-date farmers. The girls, too, marry farmers, keep farmers' homes and raise farmers' sons. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... Terry, still wrapped in his blanket, sat before him looking up with an absurdly rapt air as of a student at his master's feet. Merchant stopped to swab the thick perspiration from his face, laughed at Terry's humbugging pose, and desisted. Terry slipped on his shoes, buckled on the leather leggings he had used as a pillow and picking up his saddlebags went out to ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... unable to procure his help—though she tried her best—in time to save her foal. This touching instance of maternal affection is a very interesting example of the way in which the "dumb" animals—as they are somewhat absurdly called—make up for the want of speech. The mare's strange cry and her extreme restlessness were ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... a refutation of Menzel's absurdly perverted relation of these great events, the reader is referred not only to the Duke of Wellington's despatches and to Colonel Siborne's well-established account of the battles of Ligny, Wavre, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo, but also to ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... absurdly liberal in spite of his blue Southern blood; and a man's man wandering alone at the age of forty was almost foredoomed to disaster. No doubt the poor man ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... and common place lintels. Indeed, it might easily have been mistaken for a charity hospital; and in the absence of a front, discovering the slightest architectural grandeur, bore no small resemblance to an absurdly constructed barracks. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... cast of social sentiment, or of natural beauty and expression; and which, therefore,—there being much obstinate originality in his mind,—produces strange varieties of dwelling, frequently rendered still more preposterous by his love of display; a love universally felt in England, and often absurdly indulged. Wealth is worshiped in France as the means of purchasing pleasure; in Italy, as an instrument of power; in England, as the means "of showing off." It would be a very great sacrifice indeed, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's" of Wordsworth and Hazlitt. I best fulfil my purpose in urgently referring you to them. I have only a single point of my own to make—a psychological detail. One of the main obstacles to the cultivation of poetry in the average sensible man is an absurdly inflated notion of the ridiculous. At the bottom of that man's mind is the idea that poetry is "silly." He also finds it exaggerated and artificial; but these two accusations against poetry can be satisfactorily answered. The charge of silliness, ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett |
