"Ridiculously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... myself; and upon the whole I might describe myself as being, according to the modern phrase, "in a false position." I had, for instance, a vast superiority, as was to have been expected, in bookish attainments, and in adroitness of logic; whilst, on the other hand, I was ridiculously short-sighted or blind in all fields of ordinary human experience. It must not be supposed that I regarded my own particular points of superiority, or that I used them, with any vanity or view to present advantages. On the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... dislike this partiality, or, if his Grace pleases, this flattery of mine, have a comfort at hand. I may be refuted and brought to shame by the most convincing of all refutations—a practical refutation. Every individual peer for himself may show that I was ridiculously wrong: the whole body of those noble persons may refute me for the whole corps. If they please, they are more powerful advocates against themselves, than a thousand scribblers like me can be in their favour. If I were even possessed of those powers which his ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... ridiculously you talk; there is a great deal more difference between two babies, than between you and all the other young dandies who walk Broadway. They are all alike, the same cut of the coat and collar, and whiskers; the same tie of the neck-cloth, and shape of the boot: when you have seen one, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... offered so abundantly here can only be bought at somewhat near to their just value in the markets of the world. All the tricks of trade are known and resorted to at these gatherings. The merchant begins by demanding a price ridiculously above the amount for which he is willing to sell. No dealer has a fixed price at Nijni-Novgorod. The Asiatic enjoys dickering—it is to him the very life of his occupation, and adds zest, if not ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the appointments in every respect brilliant; yet the price—which was not varied by any difference of rank—was ridiculously low according to Western notions. A seat cost sixpence—that is in the large opera-house; the other theatres are considerably cheaper. The undertakers are in all cases the urban communes, and the performers, as well as the managers, act as communal officials. The theatres are ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... coarse and clumsy, as to be fitter for the cart than the race. Shall we then wonder these cannot race, or shall we doubt that degrees of imperfection in the mechanism, will produce degrees of imperfection in racing! and when we find such deficient, shall we ridiculously impute it to a degeneracy of that blood, which once was in the highest esteem, or to the want of judgment in him who did not properly adapt the shapes ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... "What will become of the privacy of life?" asked another London editor. "What will become of the sanctity of the domestic hearth?" Writers vied with each other in inventing methods of pooh-poohing Bell and his invention. "It is ridiculously simple," said one. "It is only an electrical speaking-tube," said another. "It is a complicated form of speaking-trumpet," said a third. No British editor could at first conceive of any use for the telephone, except for divers and coal miners. The price, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... so incensed at the ridiculously absurd and misleading stories that are being published on this question that I want to give you this letter, and, before delivering it to you, shall take oath ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... is a skilful fighter. It hits out with such force and precision that a weaponless man who stands before the bird when it is angry and vicious is ridiculously overmatched. The great bird is so quick that you do not realise that it has got its blow in first until you see the blood flow. It strikes with its middle toe, and that toe is a lance, keen if not bright. How does the regal bird of the jungles of North Queensland acquire this lightning-like ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... it was easy for him to treat her as such, that is, as a mere fancy of his son's. The idea of her had passed through his mind; but with what vividness any idea, notion, or conception could be present to him, my readers must judge from my description of him. So that obstinacy was a ridiculously easy accomplishment to him. For he never had any notion of the matter to which he was opposed—only of that which he favoured. It is very easy indeed for such people to stick ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... friend it shall be nominal," replied the keeper, naming a figure that Gahan, accustomed to the high price of wealthy Gathol, thought ridiculously low. ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... been able to refrain from joining in the hearty yell of delight at the rare chance of coarsely, publicly, and safely insulting an artist! In this eagerness to affront the man they have irretrievably and ridiculously committed themselves to open sympathy with the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... situated, that he could have bought for less than twice the amount he had paid for this; and he was really very sorry for the Tylers, who explained to him, in confidence, that had they not been in such urgent need of money, they would never have sold Donaldgowerie House at such a ridiculously low figure. However, with them it was a question of cash—cash down, and Mr. Whittingen had only to write out a cheque for the modest sum they asked, and the house was his. It was June when Mr. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... stupid fellows are allowed to pass. When the examiners find a clever man, they take a pleasure in plucking him. A number of the cleverest men in England can easily put out a lad of one-and-twenty. Then, shifting her ground, she declares the examination was ridiculously easy: her son was rejected because he could not tell what two and two amount to: because he did not know the name of the river on which London is built: because he did not (in his confusion) know his ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... find them crowded with young girls, bending over sewing-machines, or over work-tables, breathing foul air, and, in some cases, engaged in conversations of the most objectionable character. Their pay is ridiculously small,—a dollar and a half for doing the machine-work on a full-trimmed fashionable "suit." I learned this, and about the conversations, from a worker at one of these establishments. Clothes, especially outside clothes, they must have and will have; consequently the saving must be made on ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... had granted her request for a previous farewell in private. The Duchess had met him with tear-swollen lids, and had wept incessantly during the short interview. The poor soul had shown her grief in a most unbecoming way; her mouth grimaced ridiculously when she cried, 'like a squalling brat's,' his Highness ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... little these great authors did esteem the point of honour, so much magnified by the French, and so ridiculously aped by us. They made their heroes men of honour; but so, as not to divest them quite of human passions and frailties: they content themselves to shew you, what men of great spirits would certainly do when they were provoked, not what they ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... dismissed everything from her mind? I really think you must be a magician, Tom. I could not have believed it, after all the trouble she gave us, and all the money she threw away. Those Russells, you know, that she was so ridiculously liberal to, they are as bad as ever. That sort of extravagant giving of money is never successful. But I never thought you would have got it ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... folded his arms across his breast; then, ridiculously enough, this struck him as a heroic attitude, and altogether unsuitable for an American, so he thrust his hands deep ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... worthy Sir, how ridiculously I find we have all been trussed up during the War, and how infinitely the French ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... these two girls found to dispute, and get angry, and get miserable, and make the whole family miserable over, were so ridiculously petty that I hardly expect to be believed in telling of them. The front side of the bed, the upper drawer in the bureau, a hair-ribbon, who should be helped first at the table, who was the best scholar, which was the more stylish color, drab or green, and whether Vermont wasn't a better ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... ridiculously simple. He had had no plan, beyond a vague one of breaking from his guardians when he was led back to the jail. But he formed a new one almost as soon as he had seated himself in the room where ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... alike. You mistake luck for merit. You do it in good faith too! I would not be too hard on you. It's masculine nature. You men are ridiculously pitiful in your aptitude to cherish childish illusions down to the very grave. There are a lot of us who have been at work for fifteen years—I mean constantly—trying one way after another, underground and above ground, looking neither to the right nor to the left! I can talk about it. I have ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... secession newspaper that we notice these amusing mistakes. There are many persons-we are sorry to say many clergymen among others—here, even in the free States, who, in attempting to write elegantly, use words very ridiculously. They say 'dialect' and 'idiom' when they mean 'language;' they use 'donate' for 'give;' 'transpired' for 'happened;' 'paper' for 'newspaper,' and describe various events as taking place in 'our midst'—all because they think that these vulgarisms are really more correct ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... agree with Admiral de Horsey that the line between "territorial waters" and "the high sea" is drawn by international law, if drawn by it anywhere, at a distance of three miles from low-water mark. In the first place, the ridiculously wide claims made, on behalf of certain States, by mediaeval jurists were cut down by Grotius to so much water as can be controlled from the land. The Grotian formula was then worked out by Bynkershoek with reference to the range of cannon; and, finally, this somewhat variable ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... That he was rather ridiculously gotten up, it was true. Those gold earrings! But then, she had seen several of the older men about the store wearing rings in their ears. If he did not always have that bright-colored kerchief on his head! But then, he might wear that because he was susceptible to neuralgia and ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Bowen. "It's ridiculously far. It's outside the Roman Gate. I don't see why people live at ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... still young enough to deal in superlatives, for there had been other fine days that Summer; moreover, in likening himself to a pig, he was ridiculously unfair to six feet of athletic symmetry in which it would be difficult to detect any marked resemblance to the animal whose name ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... splash, accompanied by a muffled explosion, and McCulloch relieved his feelings by a few words, the use of which is expressly forbidden by the police manual. But their purport was ridiculously clear; the gray car had plunged into the Hudson, and who could tell whether or not Anatole had gone with it? Curtis was the first to adopt a definite line of reasoning: he assumed command now with the confidence of one accustomed ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... to inquire who the stranger was, when I ascertained that it was only Tommy Came-last who was imitating a Scotch female who, as I then learnt, was at Portland Bay and had been very kind to Tommy. The imitation was ridiculously true through all the modulations of that peculiar accent although, strange to say, without the pronunciation of a single intelligible word. The talent of the aborigines for imitation seems a peculiar trait in their character. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... so. We must be "respectable," though only in the meanest sense—in mere vulgar outward show. We have not the courage to go patiently onward in the condition of life in which it has pleased God to call us; but must needs live in some fashionable state to which we ridiculously please to call ourselves, and to gratify the vanity of that unsubstantial genteel world of which we form a part. There is a constant struggle and pressure for front streets in the social amphitheatre; ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... very plain,' she said, with a sort of sensuous enjoyment in her frankness, 'and yet I have passed successfully for a beautiful woman most of my life. I am also what is ridiculously called a power in society, and I owe everything to my own ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... up every day to the very out-works of Berwick, but nobody cared to meddle with them. And in this posture things stood when the pacification was agreed on by both parties, which, like a short truce, only gave both sides breath to prepare for a new war more ridiculously managed than the former. When the treaty was so near a conclusion as that conversation was admitted on both sides, I went over to the Scotch camp to satisfy my curiosity, as many of our English officers ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... narrow-gauge road can go anywhere. It trails along the slope of shelving hills like a wild vine; it slides through gopher-hole tunnels as a thread slides through the eye of a needle; it utilizes water-courses; it turns ridiculously sharp corners in a style calculated to remind one of the days when he played "snap-the-whip" and happened to be the snapper himself. This is especially the case if one is sitting on the rear platform of the last car. We shot a canon ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... must smelt his ore. And to smelt it he finds he is compelled to sell it to a smelter that is controlled by the mining company whose offer he has refused. He sends his ore to the smelter. Back comes the quotation for his product, at a price ridiculously low. "That's what we'll give you," says the company, through its proxy the smelter, "take it or leave it," or ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... with any sense of propriety, or any sense at all, the whole of this illy-play'd fashionable play and display, with their absorption of the best part of our wealthier citizens' time, money, energies, &c., is ridiculously out of place in the United States. As if our proper man and woman, (far, far greater words than "gentleman" and "lady,") could still fail to see, and presently achieve, not this spectral business, but something truly noble, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Isn't it ridiculously true that, as soon as we get enlightened ourselves, we burn to enlighten the rest of the world? We do not seem to remember our own feelings during the years of darkness, and the contentment of those who remain as we were surpasses our ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... counts, chevaliers, knights of the order of the golden fleece, or of the thimble, or of Malta. But the realities are the same. Fashionable life is a show, truly fashionable people are the proprietors, who are never prominently or ridiculously seen therein; and these several orders of over dressed, under-fed, empty-pocketed mountebanks, are the people put on the platform outside, to astonish the eyes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... favored by God with divine revelation, upon his preceptive will, in opposition to their anarchical notions of setting it wholly upon the tottering basis of the corrupt will of man. And, to conclude this particular, how ridiculously absurd is it in them to insinuate, that, in the examples above, or others to be found in sacred history, those persons did, notwithstanding their own practice in rejecting the authority of wicked rulers, still view it as the duty of the rest of the nation, to acknowledge ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... shortness left from a broken leg LAME!" Alix protested. "Peter isn't brawny, but he's never been ill. And he's not a child. He's thirty-seven. And I imagine he's awfully lonely. And then I imagine it would please Dad—" "Dad has always been ridiculously fond of him," Cherry said, thoughtfully. Peter— possibly in love with Alix! She had never even suspected it. Peter's attitude toward them all had been more paternal than anything else. Cherry and her sister could ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... Some people are ridiculously sensitive. Some years ago, at a certain place, a big dinner was given in honor of a notable who was passing through the district. A Chinese, prominent in local affairs, who had received an invitation, discovered ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... He found his ward established in elegant and luxurious apartments, quite fit for a royal prince, and very much more ostentatious than the unpretending chambers occupied by the young Marquis of Arondelle at Cambridge, and ridiculously extravagant for a young man of limited income and no ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... "and I'm so tired of playing Noah's Ark or a Christian Association out for a lark," she continued in unconscious poetical despair. Then, warned by the attitude of the guard, that wonderful attitude of the haughty Briton in hopes of a tip, she opened her ridiculously tiny gold-linked purse and gave herself up to the absorbing question as to which of the pieces therein was a shilling. Having at last decided this, she presented it to the guard with a dazzling smile. It had been so long since Peggy had had an opportunity to smile at anything masculine ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... of the Western Tribes of Torres Straits," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1890, p. 336.) After a subsequent expedition to the same region, the author reiterates his observations as to the "ridiculously prudish manner" of the men, attributable to missionary influence during the past thirty years, and notes that even the children are affected by it. "At Mabuiag, some small children were paddling in the water, and a boy of about ten years of age reprimanded a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dramatic ending? How the smart one on the fatal day sought to "press the button" and finding it gone, lost his wits completely and failed ignominiously? Many of us when we have lost a sustaining button, have we not felt as ridiculously helpless and wit-benumbed ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... intelligence, and his flaming eyes were set wider apart; but his mouth was smaller, his fangs less long and punishing. His fur was of a browner, warmer hue than that of the lynx, whose gray had a half-invisible ghostliness in the moonlight. The tails of both were ridiculously short, not six inches in length, but that of the catamount was straight and stiff, while that of the lucerfee had a curious upward twist that somehow mocked the contortions of his huge and overlong hind legs. The eyes of the lynx, under his flatter forehead, were the more piercing, the less blazing. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... corner," he declared. "It isn't that you lack anything, but nearly all the girls one meets some time or other seem to expect from one nice little speeches or compliments, just a little sentiment now and then. Now you seem so entirely superior to that sort of thing altogether. It is a ridiculously lame explanation. The thing's in my head all right, but I can't get it out. I can only express it when I say that you are the only girl I have ever known, or known of, in my life with whom sex would never interfere ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... head from the water. Twice a seal attempted to climb upon the slippery hull for a rest, but, to the amusement of the boys, slid back into the water. An offer to assist the third one was not appreciated, and the ridiculously human-like head disappeared beneath ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... some person had been walking all over the garden in a pair of clogs—only the footmarks were too ridiculously little! ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... it had been shown that I was the more skilful swordsman, yet now he stood without the least sign of fear. If he had formerly retreated, on being disarmed, it was from situations in which he had figured ridiculously, and could not endure to remain before Mademoiselle de Varion. Also, he had sought to preserve his life, so that he might have revenge. But now that events had taken their turn, he showed himself not ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a ridiculously silly little softie, that nobody could put a grain of sense into your head," Elsie replied, angrily. "Supposing it had been mother. A nice row you'd have got us into. Why couldn't you keep quiet, and she'd have thought we were both ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... should think me so wicked and so—dangerous, and I quite agree with Isabel and her mother that if I am as bad as you say, I am not fit to live in a respectable house and with—decent people. It would be useless for me to assure you that you are all ridiculously mistaken." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... manner of speaking; for she was said to be a woman of great sense, and devotedly attached to the King and Madame de Pompadour. Some people pretended that she tried to captivate the King, and to supplant Madame: nothing could be more false, or more ridiculously improbable. Madame saw a great deal of these two ladies, who were extremely attentive to her. She one day remarked to the Duc d'Ayen,—[Afterwards Marechal de Noaines.] that M. de Choiseul was very fond of his sisters. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the Superintendent was laughing. "You child!" she exclaimed when the first spasm of mirth had passed, "you blessed child! If you could know how ridiculously young you looked, sitting there and talking about lined faces—and yourself at eighty. Eighty is a long ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... joined in a few minutes by a prim, dignified little lady, ridiculously like Mr. Pengarth, whom he called sister, and she Miss Rachael. Juliet walked down the ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... youth, bringing to the task a mind polished and matured by judgment and experience. But, generally speaking, we rather expect reason than rhyme from an elderly gentleman; and when the reverse is the case, the pursuit fits them as ridiculously as would a humming-top or a hoop. Yet there are many who, having passed a life in the sole occupation of making money—the most unpoetical of all avocations—that in their retirement entertain themselves ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... hump on her back, and has a charming voice, your sympathies are with her at once! Oh, yes, they are! Now shall I tell you what your Lady Beltham really is? Well, she is nothing more nor less than a barnstormer! She knew well enough how to get on the soft side of the judge, who was quite ridiculously amiable to her, and to capture the sympathy of the Court. I think it was outrageous to declare that she had married a man who was too old for her, and to say that she felt nothing ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... numbers, the loss to Clive's force was ridiculously small. Indeed, as Sir Alfred Lyall justly observes in his interesting review of The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India, the so-called battle of Plassey was a rout rather than a battle. As a military achievement it cannot be compared ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... instant the fantastic idea of crying "Waiter!" or "Please send up my breakfast!" tugged at him hard, but fantasy had got him into much too much trouble as it was, he reflected savagely. It made you feel ridiculously self-conscious, standing behind bars like this and shouting into emptiness. Still he had to get out. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... and innocently demolished the photo-play romances we had constructed about him. It was a warning to us to avoid nonsense, in future, when discussing our neighbours. Miss Fraenkel had fared no better. Evidently he was not "held" for something with which his wife had "got away." We were all ridiculously wrong and ought to be ashamed of ourselves. And so we were; avoiding mention of him, and devoting our attention to the fish, for it was Friday, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Bobo appeared. He bounded into the middle of the flock and knocked them every-which-way with his great paws. He thrust his muzzle under the hissing gander and sent him over on his back, where he lay and flapped his webbed feet ridiculously. And he did not hiss any ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... "Married to Marjorie Jones! You're the only boy I ever heard say he was going to get married. I wouldn't get married for—why, I wouldn't for—for——" Unable to think of any inducement the mere mention of which would not be ridiculously incommensurate, he proceeded: "I wouldn't do it! What you want to get married for? What do married people do, except just come home tired, and worry around and kind of scold? You better not do it, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... plastered about his face by the snow. In his normal day his eyes gleamed behind his hair like sunlight in a thick wood. He wore a little pointed beard that could only be considered an affectation; in one word, if you imagine a ridiculously small sheep-dog with no legs, a French beard and a stump of a tail, you have him. And if you want to know more than that I can only refer you to the description of his great-great-great-grandson "Jacob," described in the Chronicles of ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... to go first. The rise is easy for a half-mile or so. I can better watch out for you and catch you—if you make a misstep. The stones are loose and mischievous; the path is ridiculously near the edge of things. If one should—now do not get nervous, but if you should go over, just clutch the bushes, the sturdy little clumps, and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... joy of setting out towards home! That ridiculously small house in Chelsea in which were centered all my hopes. Some word might be there waiting for me. Nannie might have thought nothing of sufficient importance to forward at such a moment. How I hoped ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... while the distracted "Gyppies" tugged and wailed, "No gude! No gude! Finish Noo Zealand!" to which the only reply was "Imshi Yallah, you black devils." At this stage the little beast, an animal of rather miserable dimensions, with a large, rotund centrepiece, escaped and wobbled ridiculously down the street. He was recaptured, drenched with two more bottles, and let loose to wander wherever his tottery legs would carry him. The donk swayed and stumbled, his ears cocked at all angles, and his expression happy ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... no more; and daughter and the Frenchmen had it all to themselves. Conceive this in a great hotel, with not only their own servants, but half a dozen waiters coming constantly in and out! I showed no atom of surprise, but I never was so surprised, so ridiculously taken aback, in my life; for in all my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and another, I never saw a woman—not a basket woman or a gipsy—smoke before!" This last remark is highly significant. Forster says that Dickens "lived to have larger and wider experience, but there was enough to ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... i. "The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger sense, has been derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village of Saraka, more plausibly from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation. Yet the last and most popular of these etymologies is refuted by Ptolemy, who expressly remarks the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... to see what kind of a tail he had. Just imagine how surprised he was when he couldn't make sure that Buster had any tail at all. There was something that might, just might, be meant for a tail, and Peter wasn't even sure of that. If it was, it was so ridiculously small that Peter felt that he had no reason to be ashamed ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... be afraid of? You can't hurt me unless you kill me by some violent means. That I should indeed consider a tremendous sell. I want to live and I mean to live. I can't die of illness, I am too ridiculously tough; and the time for dying of old age won't come round yet a while. I can't lose my wife, I shall take too good care of her. I may lose my money, or a large part of it; but that won't matter, for I shall make twice as much again. So what have ...
— The American • Henry James
... Among the latter were Mrs. Tynan and her daughter and Malachi Deely; among those who held their breath in suspence were John Sibley, Studd Bradley the financier, and the Young Doctor. The swish of a skirt seemed ridiculously loud in the hush, and the scratching of the judge's quill ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I help myself? The aggressor was my superior in weight and size. It was a plain case that I should get badly and ridiculously whipped, if I attempted to cope with him in any pugilistic encounter. But how would it do to demand of him the satisfaction of a gentleman? True, I knew nothing of pistol-shooting, and had never handled a small-sword. No ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... flame. Among those who used to wait on the king and find occasion to amuse him when he anointed and washed himself, there was one Athenophanes, an Athenian, who desired him to make an experiment of the naphtha upon Stephanus, who stood by in the bathing place, a youth with a ridiculously ugly face, whose talent was singing well, "For," said he, "if it take hold of him and is not put out, it must undeniably be allowed to be of the most invincible strength." The youth, as it happened, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the case are these, Mr. Marryat. Owing to the failure, of Muhammud Ali, to fulfil the ridiculously onerous terms extorted from him, by some of his native allies, during the siege of Trichinopoli, several of them are in a state of discontent, which is likely soon to break out into open hostilities. The Rajahs of Mysore and Tanjore are, I have learned, already in communication with Pondicherry; ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... no doubt of the result—and what fun it will be! It does not matter what I do now, he cannot break away from me. He has let me see plainly that my money has influenced him—and, although Englishmen are fools, in his class they are ridiculously honorable. I've got him!" and she laughed aloud. "It is all safe, he ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... a friend's house on the Island. We paddled over in a canoe and Joe went ahead of me to locate it. In the dark I must have missed the spot where he was waiting for me and when you came along so silently and so close to the bank I naturally thought it was Joe. Ridiculously simple, you see." ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... on the ramp and looked down at the ridiculously tiny wings and watched the control surfaces move in response to Jerry's gentle touch on the controls within the blockhouse. The drone control was working perfectly. Rick felt a surge of pride. This particular ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... were preserved in spirits.[EN104] Amongst the excellent fish, the Marjan (a Sciona) the Sultan el-Bahr, the Palamita (Scomber), the Makli (red mullets, Mugil cephalus), and the Buri, were monstrous animals, with big eyes and long beaks like woodcocks; some of these were garnished with rows of ridiculously big teeth. I failed to procure live specimens of small turtle, and yet the huts were full of carapaces, all broken and eight-ribbed. One species, the Sakar, supplies tortoise-shell sold at Suez for ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... hold? Could they be expected to with the balance so heavily against them? Keeko could look no longer, and, in the agony of the moment, she seized hold of the upstanding roots and clung to them in a ridiculously impotent frenzy of hope that the weight of her own light ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... own profession, and gone over entirely to the enthusiasts who think that medicine is not an experimental science, but a series of hap-hazard hits at the occult laws of disease, he might be accused of conceit; but we think the charge is ridiculously false as directed against a man who boldly puts his professional and literary fame at risk in order to advance the cause of reason, learning, and common sense. Nobody can justly appreciate Holmes who does not perceive an impersonal earnestness and insight beneath the play of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... sphere below, the evil increases, the workmen agonise with hunger and exasperation, while above them discussion still goes on, systems are bandied about, and well-meaning persons exhaust themselves in attempting to apply ridiculously inadequate remedies. There is much stir without any progress, all the wild bewilderment which precedes great catastrophes. And among the many, Catholic socialism, quite as ardent as Revolutionary socialism, enters the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... damp deck and in the dingy "salle" of the second-class Max wondered, with stifled repulsion, which among the fat Germans, hook-nosed Algerian Jews, dignified Arab merchants, and common-looking Frenchmen, was to share his ridiculously small cabin. Most of them appeared to be half sick already, in fearful anticipation of the rocking they were doomed to get in the ancient tub once she steamed out of the harbour and into the face of the gale. In the "gang," as he called it, there was visible but ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... not. So that the thing is very bad for the Duke, and them all; but my Lord do make light of it, as a thing that he believes is not a new thing for the Duke to do abroad. After dinner to the Abbey, where I heard them read the church-service, but very ridiculously. A poor cold sermon of Dr. Lamb's, one of the prebends, in his habitt, come afterwards, and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... not walk in the middle of the road as a freshman; and in American schools and universities, such regulations as the "Fence" laws at Yale show that they have emulated and even surpassed us in these. It was, however, a very potent influence, and we were always ridiculously sensitive about breaches of it. Thus, on a certain prize day my friend "Mad G.," having singularly distinguished himself in his studies, his parents came all the way from their home, at great expense to themselves, to see their beloved and only ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Dead"—to be found at p. 26 of my Miscellaneous Poems, still extant at Gall & Inglis's—a long one of eighteen stanzas, much liked by Gladstone amongst others. I didn't intend it certainly, but, as the poem ends with the word "bliss," it was ridiculously thought that I had specially ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... which he had for sale. These commodities, by the way, consisted of fruits of various descriptions, eggs, chickens of astounding skinniness, and a half-grown porker, and the prices demanded, in what the skipper termed "truck", were so ridiculously low that in the course of an hour's lively bargaining we completely emptied the canoe ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... have sometimes felt sorry for having begun the struggle, and yet perhaps it is just as well, since it must have come sooner or later. Ten years hence I shall want to take her occasionally to the theatre or opera, or perhaps now and then to a ball, and unless I can eradicate these ridiculously strict notions she has got into her head, she will be sure to rebel then, when she will be rather too old to punish, at least in the same way in which ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... suppressed me, stifled me, bottled me up, tinkered at me, overgroomed me, dressed me ridiculously, and stuffed my mind. And I'm starved all the time! O Kathleen, I'm hungry! hungry! Can't ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... of ivy and vine-branches, and of other trees sacred to Bacchus. Some represented Silenus, some Pan, others the Satyrs, all drest in suitable masquerade. Many of them were mounted on asses; others dragged goats(59) along for sacrifices. Men and women, ridiculously dressed in this manner, appeared night and day in public; and imitating drunkenness, and dancing with the most indecent gestures, ran in throngs about the mountains and forests, screaming and howling furiously; the women especially seemed more outrageous than the men; and, quite ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... pleasant—the elegant evocations of Gloriana; but there was more in it than that: there was the suggestion of a diminutive creature, endowed with magical—and mythical—properties, and a portentousness almost ridiculously out of keeping with the rest of her make-up. The Faery, he determined, should henceforward wave her wand for him alone. Detachment is always a rare quality, and rarest of all, perhaps, among politicians; but ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... & Haight, big stock-buyers of Sacramento, submitting an unsolicited order for a surprisingly large shipment of cattle and horses. The price offered was ridiculously low, even for this season of low figures due to the fact that many overstocked ranches were throwing their beef-cattle and range horses on the market. So low, in fact, that Judith's first surmise when Hampton brought it to her was that the typist taking the company's ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... expression, which was like that of a mischievous boy amusing himself by breaking a bird's wings and legs. Nor shall I ever forget the man's stupefaction when he saw that his dagger no longer consisted of anything but the pommel and a harmless and ridiculously small stump of the blade, just long enough to keep it in its sheath. His fury was revealed by a splutter of curses and he at once rushed at one of his friends and ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... and he considered that he had repented and atoned for that enough, especially as nothing had ever come of it; but sometimes he thought he might be over-doing the beer; yes, he thought he must cut down on the tivoli; he was getting ridiculously fat. If ever he met Kinney again he should tell him that it was he and not Ricker who had appropriated his facts and he intended to make it up with ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... months in a career of misrepresentation which had led her case into the hands of several social agencies. Much difficulty was encountered because repeatedly when people had tried to help her she had led them astray in their investigations by telling ridiculously unnecessary falsehoods. Her parents came to see us and gradually we obtained a detailed and probably quite reliable family and developmental history. About the evolution of the young woman's mental life we have unfortunately had to rely much upon her own word. This has made our studies rather ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... vast army without adequate drill masters or leaders. She had to make wholly untrained civilians into soldiers while the war was being waged. This took time, but less time than for the manufacture of rifles and guns. She had everything necessary for supplying her navy, but ridiculously inadequate plants for supplying a force of soldiers so immense. Thus England had scores of battalions of excellently drilled soldiers prepared to go to France before there were any rifles for them to fight with, or before ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... really true—really, wretchedly, ridiculously, fine-ladically, nervous. I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... sparkling in St. James's sun or the musk and amber that perfume the Mall, she never penetrates beyond externalities. The sentiments of her characters are as inflated as those of a Grandison and her picture of refined society as ridiculously stilted as Richardson's own. The scene whether in London, Bath, Oxford, or Paris, is described with more attention to specific detail than appeared in her early romances, but compared with the setting of "Humphrey ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... day were cumbersome affairs, huge of wheel, and with ridiculously small bodies slung on wide strips of bull's hide which served for springs. The driver's box was high above the forward running gear. There were as yet no "seats on top," such as were developed in the later days of ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... cultural identity and moral unity of the States and the Empire make such sources of unintelligent prejudice increasingly nauseous and detrimental. We may add that the textbook treatment of our War between the States is almost equally unfair, the Northern cause being ridiculously exalted above the brave and incredibly high-minded ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Miss Dorothy herself, child? Well, now you mention it, Tunbridge of late has scarcely seemed to suit her constitution. She falls away, has not a word to throw at a dog, and is ridiculously pale. Well, now Mr. Austin has returned, after six months of infidelity, to the dear Wells, we shall all, I hope, be brightened ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... etc., I perceived it was a hollow thing. So it was given out in the Chronicle; but Perry was continually at me as other people were at him, and was afraid it would not last. It was to no purpose I said it would last: yet I am in the right hitherto. It has been said, ridiculously, that Mr. Kean was written up in the Chronicle. I beg leave to state my opinion that no actor can be written up or down by a paper. An author may be puffed into notice, or damned by criticism, because his book may not have been read. An ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... sometimes in the day time, to entertain one another with their warlike exploits. Every one recites the number of enemies whom he has conquered. A ridiculously false story is almost constantly followed by a charge of lying; a quarrel is the consequence; and the conversation is generally terminated with some blows of the poignard. They can never agitate even the most indifferent question, without having their eyes inflamed with rage. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... to concentrate, Mr. Carroll. It's really ridiculously easy after you've studied it a little bit. Now if I had been you, and you had been I—me—I never would have forgotten what you came to see me about. Of course, I know you didn't forget, really; but the chances are that you were interested talking, and absolutely ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... little wooden cups; later, partridges nested in the sun-burned grass. There was no lake or river, but there was a pond, swarming with a vivacious population, and on the hard-baked clay of the pond beach the green beetles aired their splendid changeable silks and sandpipers hopped ridiculously. ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... carriage—she had travelled alone in it—and she had meekly obeyed. She had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually found herself in the Embankment Gardens. Then she had asked me how to find Harry. Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket's Saracen mother crying in London for Gilbert. And the most ludicrous part of the resemblance was that she did ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... possible. It meant extermination by introducing prostitution in Korea. This has been done. Korea never had any legalized prostitution. Korea never knew what the Red Light Section meant. Japan's first move was to introduce that. She sent her diseased women to Korea. She made prostitution ridiculously cheap; fifty sen; which is twenty-five cents ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... and of the Governor, the crowd began to melt away. Splitting up in twos and threes, it sauntered off, as if it had made up its mind to submit quietly to the inevitable. Soon only women and children were left, and the Governor began to feel that the array of force was almost ridiculously out of proportion to the need. The whole thing was, as Captain Heseltine regretfully observed, "fizzling out," and he proposed to go home ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... designing machines than at mass producing or selling them; the company allowed itself to be sidetracked by a bout of perfectionism into continually improving the design, and lost credibility as delivery dates continued to slip. They also overpriced the product ridiculously; they believed they were competing with the KL10 and VAX 8600 and failed to reckon with the likes of Sun Microsystems and other hungry startups building workstations with power comparable to the KL10 at a fraction of the price. By the time SC shipped the first SC-30M to Stanford in ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Thisbe "sit[ting] on bryers,/Till they enjoyd the height of their desires," (Stanza 13), with no sense of the incongruity of the image employed. With similar ill effect in its pathetic context, Thisbe's nose bleed is introduced as an omen of disaster (Stanza 33), and Pyramus' "angry" blood, by a ridiculously far-fetched conceit, is said to gush out "to finde the author of the deed,/But when it none but Pyramus had found,/ Key cold with feare it stood ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... pardon for disturbing her so ridiculously," he said, seizing her hand and pressing it to his lips. "It was not my fault, and only occasioned by the insecure fastening upon the door. It was by a right fortunate accident that your grace commanded your valet to station ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... Peter's boot-jack, and many more articles of a similar character were placed together. Jack's sister had responded quickly, and a large box had arrived with articles curious and new, which elicited cries of delight from the ladies in charge, who marked them at a ridiculously low price, less even, in some instances, than had been paid for them, and labelled their corner "The New ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... did not speak. Presently they turned somewhat to one side, and Henry, still using the shelter of the brushwood, flitted silently past them. Three or four hundred yards farther and he lay down, laughing again to himself. It had been ridiculously easy. All his wild instincts were alive and leaping, and his senses became preternaturally acute. He heard some tiny animals of the cat tribe, alarmed by his presence, stealing away among the bushes, and the sound of an owl moving ever so slightly in the thick ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... certain income—pay in India is a matter of age, not merit, you see, and if their particular boy wished to work like two boys, Business forbid that they should stop him! But Business forbid that they should give him an increase of pay at his present ridiculously immature age! So Dicky won certain rises of salary—ample for a boy—not enough for a wife and child— certainly too little for the seven-hundred-rupee passage that he and Mrs. Hatt had discussed so lightly once upon a time. And with this he ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... appearance showing that he had made himself comfortable for the evening, stood, candle in hand, before us. He held up the light and peered before him into the darkness to ascertain who we could be. When his eye fell on our uniforms and the red-coats of the soldiers his countenance assumed a most ridiculously scared appearance, and with a groan of terror he let the candlestick fall from his hands. The expiring flame, as the candle reached the ground, showed me a female arm stretched out. It hauled him through a doorway, and the door was slammed and bolted in our ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... It was all so ridiculously easy. He knew that he had nothing to do but stand close while the men pulled themselves out of the river and the remaining boats made their passage. For further protection he moved into water deep enough to reach to his neck, while ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... enough, and you have talent enough," he went on; "but you are too ridiculously bashful for ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... quotation," says Molly, gayly. "Were you to see with my eyes, just consider how different everything would appear. Now, for instance, I would never have so far forgotten myself as to fall so idiotically and ridiculously in love, as you did, with beautiful ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... perpetually being drawn, and as perpetually being wiped out to a master's meaningless, monotonous verbal accompaniment; to have to join in a chant which began with "a, b, c," and droned steadily through a complexity of sounds to a ridiculously inadequate "z"—such things became desperately boring. One was not even let go to sleep, and if one wept from sheer ennui, then one was clouted. School, he shortly decided, was not worth anybody's while, but he also discovered that a torment ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... ridiculously angry. They were all treating him as a child, as some one who would grow up one day perhaps, but was, at present at any rate, immature in thought and word; even with Robin there was a ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... fire furnishes few of the surprises of conduct to which the civilian treats you. The soldier has no choice. He is tied by the leg, and whether the chances are even or ridiculously in his favor he must accept them. The civilian can always say, "This is no place for me," and get up and walk away. But the soldier cannot say that. He and his officers, the Red Cross nurses, doctors, ambulance-bearers, and even the correspondents ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... Moro, as he sat in state upon his massive throne, and the bewildering array of the seventy-two candidates for a king's choice. Seventy-two, I say, but in all that company of puffed and powdered, coifed and combed young ladies, standing tall and uncomfortable on their ridiculously high-heeled shoes, one alone was simply dressed and apparently unaffected by the gorgeousness of her companions, the seventy-second and ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... blocked by some big pieces of marble so that it would not roll into the hole. The rays of the headlights dispelled the darkness below immediately and there was His Highness the Elephant, almost submerged, looking up at them with his ridiculously ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... "We are all ridiculously weak, and this part of the work was exceedingly laborious and took us more than twice as long as it would have done had we been in normal health. Stones that we could easily have lifted at other times we found quite beyond our capacity, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... further intimated to the noble ladies we have mentioned, that the Royal ear had been abused, to the effect already stated, by Lady Lichfield. The ladies, who had reason to think that they had been thus unjustly and ridiculously accused, applied immediately to their supposed accuser, who denied that she had made any such communication. On being urged to give this denial in writing, she declined to do so without first consulting her ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... intolerable to Hephzibah Malling after the ghastly tragedy of her son's death; and when Robb and Alice saw fit to marry, urged on to that risky experiment by the two older ladies, she insisted upon leasing the place to them on ridiculously easy terms. She would have given it to them only for their steady refusal to accept such a magnificent wedding gift ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... these the officers of the Royal Guard that he had so often laughed at in disdain? Could that gay old gentleman in red and gold be the morbid, carelessly clad Duke of Rapp-Thorberg, whom he had grown to despise because he seemed so ridiculously unlike a real potentate? He marvelled and rejoiced as he strolled hither and thither with the casual Baggs, and for the first time in his life really felt that it was pleasant to be stared at—in admiration, too, he may be ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... the highest degree. Hanno in the Poen., in particular, meets first of all, in the strange city of Calydon, the very man he is looking for! When Pseudolus is racking his wits for a stratagem, Harpax obligingly drops in with all the requisites. The ass-dealer in the As. is so ridiculously fortuitous that ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... has all of five thousand people. Its commercial club asserts that it has at least a thousand more population and an infinitely better band than the ridiculously envious neighboring town of Joralemon. But there were few signs that a suite had been engaged for the Boltwoods, or that Prince Collars and Cuffs had on his royal tour of America spent much time ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis |
