"The absurd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concert their cries of lamentation over the corpse, and among them Shaw clearly distinguished those strange sounds resembling the word "Halleluyah," which together with some other accidental coincidences has given rise to the absurd theory that the Indians are descended from the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... convinced of the contrary. A populace which could dare to mock at the divine Caesar, the guest of their city, with such gross audacity, must be made to smart under the power of Rome and its ruler. The deposed magistrate had lost his place for the absurd measures he had proposed, and Aristides was in danger of following ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a natural, not a morbid process, no medicine should be given, where there is no appearance of disease. The absurd custom of giving a powerful opiate without indication to all women, as soon as they are delivered, is, I make no doubt, frequently attended with injurious, and sometimes with fatal consequences. See Class ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... extraordinary influence upon the Czarina, and through her upon the Czar. This influence was thought to be responsible for many of the Czar's unpopular policies. In times of great public agitation the wildest rumors are easily taken for truth and the absurd legends which were easily associated with his name were greedily accepted by people of every rank. The influence of Rasputin over the Imperial family was denied again and again. It has been said from authoritative sources that the Czar did not know him by sight, and that ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... staff. These on the night in question had plied him well with hackneyed objections; but to see him get up and relieve himself of them—the air of originality, the really original air he threw around them; the absurd light which he turned full on the weaknesses of his noble friend's propositions, was as beautiful to an indifferent critic as it as saddening to the man who had at heart the sorrows of his kind. If that minister lived long ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Tunis was to obtain information concerning The Scented Garden, to consult MSS. &c. After a month's hard work I came upon only a single copy, the merest compendium, lacking also Chapter 21, my chief Righah (the absurd French R'irha) for a week or ten days [for the sake of the baths] then return to Algiers, steam for Marseilles and return to Trieste via the Riviera and Northern Italy—a route of which I am dead sick. Let us hope that the untanned leather bindings have spared you their malaria. You ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... has much to recommend it, is here defended on a priori principles without much real reflection, and was quite outgrown by him when taught by the experience of riper years. In the Constantio Sapientis he praises and holds up to imitation the absurd apathy recommended by Stilpo. In the De Animi Tranquillitate, addressed to Annaeus Serenus, the captain of Nero's body- guard, [1] he adopts the same line of thought, but shows signs of limiting its application ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... be falsely imputed, in how many cases are they concealed by false professions, in how many is no declaration of motive made? Admit this doctrine, and you give to the States an uncontrolled right to decide, and every law may be annulled under this pretext. If, therefore, the absurd and dangerous doctrine should be admitted that a State may annul an unconstitutional law, or one that it deems such, it will not apply to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... looked out of my window. There was moonlight; possibly the last time I should ever see moonlight in the land of the living. Nothing but a mishap on my opponent's part, and that early in the combat, would save my epidermis. The absurd side of the affair struck me, and I laughed, mirthlessly, but none the less I laughed. If it had been pistols the chances would have been equal. A German does not like pistols as a dueling apparatus. They often ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... ignorant; his private inclination appears to have been toward such romantic sentimentality as entrances school-boys; the thing that interested him in Shakespeare was not the man's colossal genius, but the absurd theory that Bacon wrote his plays. Had he been born in France (the country of his chief abomination!) instead of in a Puritan village of the American hinterland, I venture that he would have conquered the world. But try as he would, being what he was, he could not get rid of the Puritan ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... with the absurd and barefaced illogicalness of one finding herself in danger of death. It was necessary to re-read her first declarations, which she was now denying, of presenting afresh the material proofs whose existence she did not wish ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was certain was that this was the time for Belarab to open the great gate and let his men go out, display his power, sweep through the further end of the Settlement, destroy Tengga's defences, do away once for all with the absurd rivalry of that intriguing amateur boat-builder. Lingard turned eagerly toward Belarab but saw the Chief busy looking across the lagoon through a long glass resting on the shoulder of a stooping slave. He was motionless like a ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... dexterously arranged a couple of cushions in an arm-chair and placed it near the window. Angela half-reluctantly seated herself, watching the Abbe under the shadow of her long lashes as he sat down opposite to her. "Yes,—the emmets, the flies, the worms and the men, are all of one equality in the absurd belief that they can do things—things that will last. Their persistent self-credulity is astonishing,—considering the advance the world has made in science, and the overwhelming proofs we are always getting of the fact that we are only ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... appreciate. Most boys not wholly immersed in dulness felt it, I think; to myself, for one, Homer was the real beginning of study. One had tried him, when one was very young, in Pope, and had been baffled by Pope, and his artificial manner, his "fairs," and "swains." Homer seemed better reading in the absurd "crib" which Mr. Buckley wrote for Bohn's series. Hector and Ajax, in that disguise, were as great favourites as Horatius on the Bridge, or the younger Tarquin. Scott, by the way, must have made one a furious and consistent Legitimist. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... rubbed down his colours on the bottom of a broken plate. "In the first place, you assume that I propose to spend all my life in rambling; and, in the second place, you found your argument on the absurd supposition that everybody else must find their sole ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... hostile tone beginning with the words "We have always feared" and a guarded, half-column leader, opening with the phrase: "It is a deplorable sign of the times" what was, in effect, an austere, general rebuke to the absurd infatuations of the investing public. She glanced through these articles, a line here and a line there—no more was necessary to catch beyond doubt the murmur of the oncoming flood. Several slighting references by name to de Barral ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... sense in due time. It occurs to me that perhaps the simplest way out of the difficulty will be for you to withdraw the guarantee of financial assistance which, as I understand, you have given. If you are prepared to support me in this way I may safely promise that no further notice of the absurd publication will be taken by the college authorities. There are rumours of libel actions pending, but I think we may disregard them. No damages can be obtained from you beyond the amount of your original guarantee, which, I understand, did not amount to more than L30. All the other defendants are ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... the early days of the war to see how eager the spirit of the country was to do all that the war required of it, and consequently were afraid to tax at a time when higher taxation would have been submitted to most cheerfully by the country. There was also the absurd weakness of our Finance Ministers and our leading financial officials, which allowed our financial machinery to be so much weakened by the demands of the War Office for enlistment that it has been said in the House of Commons by several Chancellors ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... themselves for an account of their state, it will appear very little to deserve envy; for they have in all ages been addicted to complaint. The neglect of learning, the ingratitude of the present age, and the absurd preference by which ignorance and dulness often obtain favour and rewards, have been from age to age topicks of invective; and few have left their names to posterity, without some appeal to future candour from the perverseness and malice ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of the imagination of the poet. But Boccaccio was a poet with a roistering proclivity, and truth to such a one in a love-affair is out of the question. Lies and love, with a certain temperament, go hand in hand. Possibly the absurd position of modern civilization towards the love-emotions has much to do with this. We have held that in human love there was something essentially base and bad, and so whenever a man or a woman become involved in Cupid's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... controversies about the freedom of the will would have had no existence, if this pithy paragraph had been well pondered by those who oppose the doctrine of necessity. For they rest upon the absurd presumption that the proposition, "I can do as I like," is contradictory to the doctrine of necessity. The answer is; nobody doubts that, at any rate within certain limits, you can do as you like. But what determines your likings and dislikings? ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... that view, is the admitted excellence of Boswell's book. Carlyle dismissed with just contempt the absurd paradox that the greatness of the book was due to the imbecility of the author. That is a theory which it would be waste of time {57} to discuss. But it may be worth while to point out that other and more rational explanations of Boswell's success are ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... south, and joining Eyre's Creek. This river has since been re-named by the Queensland Government, in consequence of there being another Herbert River in the territory. With most questionable taste, the officials, out of a wide choice of names, could find none better than the absurd, and inappropriate one of the GEORGINA! by which ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... women, and a male parliament gives us no redress, and a male press laughs at us for our feeble attempts to claim common rights with men. Instead of proceeding to such violence I am merely resorting to a very harmless guile in getting round the absurd restrictions imposed by the benchers of the Inns of Court, namely that all who claim a call to the Bar should not be accountants, actuaries, clergymen or women. I am going to give up the accountancy ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... in much better preservation, though of the same date; and the doorway which the tasteful Dominicans cut in the wall, through the bottom of the painting, is, though blocked up, still quite visible. It is but too probable that the monks valued the absurd and hideous frescoes in the cloisters outside, representing Saint Dominic's miracles! and the Virgin fishing souls out of purgatory with a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... placing Horace in the court of a Norman king is the result. But Dekker's play is not without its palpable hits at the arrogance, the literary pride, and self-righteousness of Jonson-Horace, whose "ningle" or pal, the absurd Asinius Bubo, has recently been shown to figure forth, in all likelihood, Jonson's friend, the poet Drayton. Slight and hastily adapted as is "Satiromastix," especially in a comparison with the better ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... the bracelet on his palm, looking accusingly at me; Mr. Harbison and the scene on the roof, with my flippancy; and the result of that flippancy—the man on the stairs, the arms that held me, the terrible kisses that had scorched my lips—it was awful! And then the absurd situation across Aunt Selina's bed, and Bella's face! Oh, it was all so ridiculous—my having thought that the Harbison man was a gentleman, and finding him a cad, and worse. It was excruciatingly funny. I quite got a headache from laughing; indeed I laughed until I ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... driver long enough, anyway, and Roger paid him liberally and led Margarita into the draggled, dusty station; the new one was not then built. Seated beside her in a relatively dim corner he tried to formulate some plan, but the absurd emptiness of the situation baffled even his practical good sense. How could he take this girl to a town that neither he nor she knew the name of? How, on the other hand, could he fling such a projectile as Margarita into any ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... ever seen John McIntyre smile, nor did he do so now; but as he watched the absurd attempts of the youngster to portray the queer gait of the village philosopher there came into his eyes a look as though there had passed before them the ghost of the days when he, himself, was young and light-hearted and full of boyish pranks. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... that no bishop was sent to superintend the exertions, or sustain the efficacy, or cement the connexion of the Church in America with the Church in England. The whole of the united provinces were, by the absurd fiction of a sinecure law, "in the diocese of London!" Of course, in the first collision, the Church was swept away like chaff before the wind. An Episcopal Church has since risen in its room; but it has now no farther connexion with its predecessor than some occasional civilities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... in the silence of the ship, reinforced by the great silent stillness of the world, said to himself that there was something mysterious in such beings as the absurd Franklin, and even in such beings as himself. It was a strange and almost improper thought to occur to the officer of the watch of a ship on the high seas on no matter how quiet a night. Why on earth was he bothering his ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... sinner," said F., with a slight laugh; for he was one of those happy-natured dogs who are not indifferent to the absurd side of even their own mishaps. "How long does the post ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... support the brilliant bevy of nobles who flitted gaily round the monarch at Versailles. The young King Louis XVI., it is true, carried through several reforms, but he had not enough strength of will to abolish the absurd immunities from taxation which freed the nobles and titled clergy from the burdens of the State. Thus, down to 1789, the middle classes and peasants bore nearly all the weight of taxation, while the peasants were also encumbered by feudal dues and tolls. These were the crying ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... abruptly as it begins, but while it is on the neighbours know it. She shrieks, yells, sings, chivies the servant, and skims plates out of the window at the passers-by. Of course, it is really not funny, but pathetic and deplorable—all the same, it is hard to keep from laughing at the absurd contrast between her actions and her appearance. I was called in by accident in the first instance; but I speedily acquired some control over her, so that now the neighbours send for me the moment the crockery ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Such is the absurd disposition of some anglers. They never see a fish without believing that they can catch him; but if they see no fish, they are inclined to think that the river is empty ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... darkness, the veldt awoke. Animals that had dozed through the hot hours and grazed through the cooler hours in somnolent content now quivered alert. There were runnings here and there, the stamp of hoofs, sharp snortings as taut nerves stretched. Zebras uttered the absurd small-dog barks peculiar to them; ostriches boomed; jackals yapped; unknown birds uttered hasty wild calls. Numerous hyenas, near and far away, moaned like lost souls. Kingozi listened as to the voice of an old acquaintance telling familiar things; the men chattered ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... The absurd and improper treatment proposed in the work we have noticed, can afford but little hope to any but the hypochondriacal dyspeptic; he may fly to any measures, however desperate or ludicrous; for "a mind diseased no medicine can cure." Let others, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... cent. discount is allowed. Less than five thousand will pay five dollars extra. I should, perhaps, mention that no distinction is made to dealers, the only advantage they have over the private buyer is, that they are enabled to get the discount for large lots. The absurd notion so prevalent with us, that the Cubans only smoke their cigars green, is an error, since the leaf is entirely dried in the sun before being touched by the manufacturer. The Cubans are very particular indeed to preserve the aroma ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... misunderstand the new facts because he uses wrong old experiences to give them meaning. Such was evidently the difficulty in the case of the young pupil who, after a lesson on the equator, described it as a menagerie lion running around the earth. Many of the absurd answers that a pupil gives are due to his failure to use the correct old ideas to interpret the new facts. He has misunderstood because his mind was not prepared by making the proper ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... trials, from a perishable state of being to a higher existence, is not that enough for a creature that is distinguished from other creatures only by more perfect instincts? If in moral philosophy there is not a single principle which does not lead to the absurd, or cannot be disproved by evidence, is it not high time that we should set to work to seek such dogmas as are written in the innermost nature of things? Must we not ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... he said, advancing to Philip; "after all the absurd goodness of my son and myself; after rejecting all our offers, and persisting in your miserable and vicious conduct, how dare you presume to force yourself into this house? Begone, or I will send for ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... them is well shown by the Abbe Dubois: [400] "To the Brahmans alone belongs the right of reading the Vedas, and they are so jealous of this, or rather it is so much to their interest to prevent other castes obtaining any insight into their contents, that the Brahmans have inculcated the absurd theory, which is implicitly believed, that should anybody of any other caste be so highly imprudent as even to read the title-page his head would immediately split in two. The very few Brahmans who are able ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... mention will be made of Harris, Bishop Staley, the American missionaries, etc., and the absurd customs and characteristics of the natives duly discussed and described. The great volcano of Kilauea will also ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at his ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... argument, it must be admitted, is not without a certain force, but it seems to me that the policy adopted tended to increase rather than diminish the evils which it sought to cure. Instead of dispelling the absurd idea that the Tsar was Antichrist by a system of strict and evenhanded justice, punishing merely actual crimes and delinquencies, the Government confirmed the notion in the minds of thousands by persecuting those who had committed no crime and who desired merely to worship God according to ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... "Down-along" it was a game of unending surprises and a gossamer web shot with the golden light of romance. High-falutin perhaps, but to Harry, as he sat before the fire with the strange dog and those ten wild men, words and pictures came too speedily to admit of a sense of the absurd. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... much wider scope. Religious melancholy, whatever peculiarities it may have qua religious, is at any rate melancholy. Religious happiness is happiness. Religious trance is trance. And the moment we renounce the absurd notion that a thing is exploded away as soon as it is classed with others, or its origin is shown; the moment we agree to stand by experimental results and inner quality, in judging of values—who does ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... regard to Gundling himself, it is observable how, with his unutterable contempt, he seems to notice in him glimpses of the admirable (such acquirements, such dictionary-faculties, though gone distracted!),—and almost has a kind of love for the absurd dog. Gundling's pensions amount to something like 150 pounds; an immense sum in this Court. [Forster, i. 263, 284 (if you can RECONCILE the two passages).] A blockhead admirable in some sorts; and of immense resource in Tobacco-Parliament ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... consequence of this, but a mighty, a fearfully influential premium on crime? And what is its radical cause, but the absurd indulgence wherewith our law greets the favoured, because the atrocious criminal? Upon what principle of propriety, or of natural justice, should a seeming murderer not be—we will not say sternly, but even kindly—catechised, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... dead and fictitiously pathetic, animal; and that perfect piece of comic dialogue—the interview between the puzzled English traveller and the French commissary of the posts. To have suggested this scene is, perhaps, the sole claim of the absurd fiscal system of the Ancien regime upon the grateful remembrance of the world. A scheme of taxation which exacted posting-charges from a traveller who proposed to continue his journey by water, possesses a natural ingredient of drollery ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... home, and they arranged that they would be married at once. Neither was quite sure whether the absurd marriage with Charles would make theirs illegal, but they ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... obliged the Queen to put up with whatever the confidante chose to do. From this circumstance has arisen that custom which gives femmes de chambre so much authority in our apartments. The Queen-mother, the widow of Louis XIII., not contented with loving Cardinal Mazarin, went the absurd length of marrying him. He was not a priest, and therefore was not prevented by his orders from contracting matrimony. He soon, however, got very tired of the poor Queen, and treated her dreadfully ill, which is the ordinary result in such marriages. But it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... knowledge of his new possession of considerable value, he was not proof against the familiar thoughts which the suburban streets and the damp shrubs growing in front gardens and the absurd names painted in white upon the gates of those gardens suggested to him. His walk was uphill, and his mind dwelt gloomily upon the house which he approached, where he would find six or seven brothers and sisters, a widowed mother, and, probably, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... "What's the matter with you, Robert Burns? And what's become of your manners?" she demanded of the urchin who had followed them in from the passage, and now stood gripping Hester's skirts and gazing up at her, as she in turn gazed up at the absurd cat in the ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wife, above all for such an artist as this outrageous fellow, impassioned, uproarious and exuberant, who, with his nose in the air and bristling moustaches, rushed through life defiantly flaunting the eccentric and whirlwind-like name of Heurtebise,* like a challenge thrown down to all the absurd conventionalities and prejudices of the bourgeois class. How, and by what strange charm had the little woman, brought up in a jeweller's shop, behind rows of watch chains and strings of rings, found the means of ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... Walter Raleigh (the virtuous and good) butchered the garrison of Limerick in cold blood, after Lord Deputy Gray had selected 700 to be hanged. There were, during the reign of Elizabeth, three invasions of Ireland by the Spaniards, produced principally by the absurd measures of this princess for the reformation of its religion. The Catholic clergy, in consequence of these measures, abandoned their cures, the churches fell to ruin, and the people were left without ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... fat and grinning: then up to a good high- road, and a school for Coolies, kept by a Presbyterian clergyman, Mr. Morton—I must be allowed to mention his name—who, like a sensible man, wore a white coat instead of the absurd regulation black one, too much affected by all well-to-do folk, lay as well as clerical, in the West Indies. The school seemed good enough in all ways. A senior class of young men—including one who had had his head nearly ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... capable of wishing; there was nothing selfish she might not by degrees become capable of doing. She could not at that moment commit murder; neither could lady Macbeth have done so when she was a girl. The absurd falsity of her notions as to her rights, came from lack of love to her neighbour, and consequent insensibility to his claims. At the same time she had not keen, she had only absorbing feelings of her ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the principal channel, and having passed the Crooked Spout, with several inferior rapids, and crossed a small piece of water, named Windy Lake, we entered a smooth deep stream about three hundred yards wide, which has got the absurd appellation of the Rabbit Ground. The marshy banks of this river are skirted by low barren rocks, behind which there are some groups of stunted trees{9}. As we advanced, the country becoming flatter, gradually opened to our ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... once, however. When he went for his constitutional that day he was still chuckling at the absurd story his paper would have had him believe. Wasps indeed—killing a dog! Incidentally as he passed by the site of that first crop of puff-balls he remarked that the grass was growing very rank there, but he did not connect that ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... what is out of their Reach: Thus they destroy the Use of their natural Talents, in the same manner as covetous Men do their Quiet and Repose; they can enjoy no Satisfaction in what they have, because of the absurd Inclination they are possessed with for what they ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... See the absurd and ridiculous promises made upon it! Why do they dare so to humbug the people? Because, in no other way could they get people to ride ten or twelve miles through a summer drouth to hand over their money to the man who is anxious to get it! ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... day of the absurd statement that thought (which is of course unextended) is as much a secretion of the brain as bile (which, equally of course, is extended) is of the liver. No one nowadays would commit himself to such a statement, ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... crimson shiny face, and the vermilion rims round his unsteady eyes, and his elephant ears, and the absurd streaming of his white whiskers, and his multitudinous noisiness, and his black kid gloves, strode half theatrically past ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... protector and constant companion of my fellow-student, overcome by the torment of mosquitoes, and having no curiosity about tanagers to make him endure them, had yielded to his emotions and sneezed. Away went the tanager family, and, laughing at the absurd accident, away we went too, happy at having discovered the nest, and planning to come the next day. We came next day, and many days thereafter, but never again did we see the birds near. They abandoned the nest, doubtless feeling that ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... be conceived as a weighty mass. The odd sense of a big cavity in the mouth, which we experience just after the loss of a tooth, is probably another illustration of this principle. And a third example may also be supplied from the recollection of the dentist's patient, namely, the absurd imagination which he tends to form as to what is actually going on in his mouth when a tooth is being bored by a modern rotating drill. It may be found that the same principle helps to account for the exaggerated importance which we attach to the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... it excited very little discussion at the time. The next presidential election which resulted in a change of party was that of Jackson in 1828, and then the methods of New York and Pennsylvania were applied on a national scale. Jackson cherished the absurd belief that the administration of his predecessor Adams had been corrupt, and he turned men out of office with a keen zest. During the forty years between Washington's first inauguration and Jackson's the total number ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... under oath the monstrosities of the existing system were fully revealed, as well as the wretched character of the "health officers,'' "inspectors,'' and the whole army of underlings, and I exhibited statistics carefully ascertained and tabulated, showing the absurd disproportion of various classes of officials to each other, their appointment being made, not to preserve the public health, but to carry the ward caucuses and elections. During this exposure Boole, the head of the whole system, stood not far from me on the floor, his eyes fastened upon me, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... yarns, twisting spunyarn, weaving mats, braiding sinnett, making reef-points and gaskets, and manufacturing small rope to be used for "royal rigging," for among the ingenious expedients devised by the second mate for keeping the crew employed was the absurd and unprofitable one of changing the snug pole royal masts into "sliding gunters," with royal yards ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Austria was backed by Germany. Why this change in German policy? So far as the Kaiser himself is concerned, there can be little doubt that a main cause was the horror he felt at the assassination of the Archduke. The absurd system of autocracy gives to the emotional reactions of an individual a preposterous weight in determining world-policy; and the almost insane feeling of the Kaiser about the sanctity of crowned heads was no doubt ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... "have you ever thought what would happen if you stopped making petticoats?" She did not answer. "It illustrates," he went on, "the absurd importance we attach to ourselves. The race would get itself clothed somehow, even as Church and State will go on, although they fail to settle that question of the swallowing on the top of ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... laughed again, and Reanda smiled at the absurd words—"A few more strawberries, and give me some more cream." But even the few notes, a lazy parody of the prima donna's singing of the phrase, charmed his ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Stanley Poole (loc. cit.) says that the Arabs dispute whether the name "Medyen" be foreign or Arabic; and whether "Medyen" spoke Arabic. He considers the absurd enumeration of the alphabetical kings (El-Mas'di, quoted above) to be curious, as possibly containing some vague reference to the language of Midian. When these kings are said contemporaneously to have ruled over Meccah, Western Nejd, Yemen, "Medyen," Egypt, etc., it is extremely improbable ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... be considered as Secretary Hamilton's statement of his case to the world. The debt exceeded $76,000,000, a sum that bore as great a proportion to the revenues of the country seventy years since as the debt of to-day bears to our present resources. As Hamilton was no believer in the absurd doctrine that "a national debt is a national blessing," we need say no more than that he dwelt with emphasis on the necessity of providing for the debt's payment. It is important to mention that he declared government could not rightfully tax ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... is on the right track. I am glad that he neither endorses lynching nor takes stock in the absurd report from certain sections of the South that all Negroes are ravishers of white women. I think his suggested remedy against rape a good one for white ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... few qualities, physical, intellectual, or moral, which the Italians do not possess. Are they "devoid of energy," as M. de Rayneval declares? I should rather reproach them with the opposite excess. The absurd but resolute defence of Rome against the French army, may surely be regarded as the act of an energetic people. We must be extremely humble, if we admit that a French army was held in check for two months by men wanting in energy. The assassinations which occur in the streets of Rome, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... to consider good and evil as defined by our natural sense of both; and to strive to promote the one, and to conquer the other, with as hearty endeavour as if there were, indeed, no other world than this. Above all, get quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will interfere to correct great errors, while allowing its laws to take their course in punishing small ones. If you prepare a dish of food carelessly, you do not expect Providence to make it palatable; neither if, through years ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... forgotten—a normally intelligent reader cannot fail to respond to a recognisable Personality there, a Personality with apathies and antipathies, with prejudices and predilections. Very quickly he will discern the absurd unreality of that monstrous Idol, that ubiquitous Hegelian God. Very soon he will recognize that in trying to make their poet everything they ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... because they were British subjects. It is all the worse for us now we have to regard them, not subjectively as subjects, but objectively as objects; as objects of a fierce hatred among the Moslems and the Greeks. We are in the absurd position of introducing to these people a new friend whom they instantly recognise as an old enemy. It is an absurd position because it is a false position; but it is merely the penalty ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... wished to forbid Lucien the house, but he feared that such extreme measures toward the brother of the First Consul might compromise, if not ruin, his bank. He therefore advised her neither to encourage nor repulse him. Lucien continued his attentions for a year,—the absurd emphasis of his manners at times amusing Madame Recamier, while at others his violence excited her fears. At last, becoming conscious that he was making himself ridiculous, he gave up the pursuit in despair. Some time after he had discontinued his visits he sent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Byzantium, most of the inhabitants of Fanari, near Constantinople, boast of being descendants of the dethroned imperial families; a circumstance which is probable enough, and which nobody takes the trouble to dispute, any more than the alleged nobility of the Castilian peasantry, or the absurd genealogies of certain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... hat and gloves. Now he ran up the shallow steps of the staircase. There was a sort of tumult within him. He felt angry, he did not know why. His whole body was longing to do something strong, eager, even violent. He hated his latchkey, he hated the long stroll in Hyde Park, the absurd delay upon the bridge, his preoccupation with the Muscovy duck, or whatever bird it was, voyaging over the Serpentine. Why had nothing told him not to lose a moment but to hurry home? He remembered that he had been specially ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... and the Eagle heard them, and was pleased. But the little brown Wren heard also, and he was not pleased. The absurd little bird! He wanted to be king himself, although he was one of the tiniest birds there, who could never be a protector to the others, nor stop trouble when it began. No, indeed! Fancy him stepping as a peacemaker between a robber Hawk and a bloody ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... when they arrived. And here I may introduce the mention of a practice connected with the convivial habits of which we have been speaking, but which has for some time passed away, at least from private tables—I mean the absurd system of calling for toasts and sentiments each time the glasses were filled. During dinner not a drop could be touched, except in conjunction with others, and with each drinking to the health of each. But toasts came after dinner. I can just remember the practice ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... Majesty held about English politics was, on the whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing this accomplished prince and his able and experienced ministers were strangely mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion that the Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared to undeceive them; but they were under an incurable delusion. They saw through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech appeared to them a leviathan. It ought ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is, as Mr. Arthur Symons said, an attitude; but it is an attitude in the flat, not in the round; not a statue, but the cardboard king in a toy-theatre, which can only be looked at from the front. In Wilde's own poetry we have particularly a perpetually toppling possibility of the absurd; a sense of just falling too short or just going too far. "Plant lilies at my head" has something wrong about it; something silly that is ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... evident sincerity of his tones, the force of his language, language which I have utterly failed to reproduce, carried conviction with every word. For the time being, at least, they felt that such an accusation bordered on the edge of the absurd, and to say the least of it, there was a tremendous gulf which had to be filled up, and that to fill it up by the belief in the long arm of coincidence, and to commit a man to the scaffold because of it, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... that tradesmen's weekly books are to be abolished. We have long felt that the absurd practice of paying the fellows is a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... face the absurd situation of a Federal budget with three-quarters of its expenditures routinely referred to as "uncontrollable." And a large part of this goes to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in his great plays. And a translation at best is something of a parody, especially a translation from a northern tongue, with its force and backbone, so to speak, into a southern, serpentine, gliding language. You have heard the absurd rendering of that passage from Macbeth where the witches salute him with 'Hail to thee, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!' into such French as 'Comment vous portez vous, Monsieur Macbeth; comment vous ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... something seemed to have struck me dizzy. Presently the air revived me a little, and, a couple of minutes later, my brain had sufficiently cleared to enable two ideas in particular to stand out in it. Firstly, I asked myself, which of the absurd, boyish, and extravagant threats which I had uttered at random last night had made everybody so alarmed? Secondly, what was the influence which this Frenchman appeared to exercise over Polina? He had but to give the word, and at once she did as he desired—at once she wrote me a note to beg ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a little dinner at Philippe's—not uncheered by the smiles of venal beauty—and had just completed a careful toilette. He was above the small peculations of his order; indeed, had he been inclined to plunder his late masters wardrobe, the absurd disproportion in their size would have saved him from that vulgar temptation. He was somewhat choice in his tailors, and his clothes fitted him and suited him well. He was reviewing the general effect in the glass with a complacent and rather egrillarde ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... deep breath, and drove back his fierce, snarling misery, and kicked it into its kennel, and befriended the absurd little couple. W. Keyse was tested, proved capable of manipulating the steering-wheel, duly certificated, and engaged. There were a couple of living-rooms over the coach-house that was now a garage. Saxham sent in some plain furniture, and behold an Eden! ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... understanding of the history of modern society. They saw that the arrogance and cruelty of the Roman clergy had produced innumerable evils in later times; that their venality in regard to indulgences and abuse of absolution had brought religion itself into discredit; that the absurd and incredible tenets which they still attempted to force on mankind, had gone far to alienate the intellectual strength of modern Europe, during the last century, from their support. Seeing this, they condemned it absolutely, for all times and in all places. They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... found an entire regiment under arms, close by the Custom—house. Somehow or other, I had drank deep of that John Bull prejudice, which delights to disparage the physical conformation of our Gallic neighbours, and hugs itself with the absurd notion, "that on one pair of English legs doth march three Frenchmen." But when I saw the weather—beaten soldierlike veterans, who formed this compact battalion, part of the elite of the first corps, more commanding in its, aspect from severe ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the intelligence, that flavoured her state with cynicism and made it more piquant. She did not altogether scorn her own intelligence at the result, because it had always admitted the existence of dominating facts that belonged to life and not to reason; it was only the absurd unexpectedness of coming across one herself. One might think round such a fact and talk round it—there were less exquisite satisfactions—but it was not to be cowed or abated, and in the end the things one ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the bar, followed in the wake of fashion: but at first they wore their old coifs and caps over their false hair. Finding this plan cumbersome, they gradually diminished the size of the ancient covering, until the coif and cap became the absurd thing which resembles a bald place covered with court-plaster quite as much as the rest of the wig resembles ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... are," cried Sue, holding her side from laughing. Mrs. Banning also vainly tried to repress her hilarity over the absurd guy into which the nattily-dressed city man had ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... still persist in your second folly,—the absurd ambition of daubing canvas. Heaven forbid I should say anything against the laudable industry of one who follows such a profession for the sake of subsistence; but with means and connections that will raise you in life, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... other hand, let no one repeat the absurd assertion that Freudism is a sort of religion bounded with dogmas and requiring an act of faith. Freudism as such was merely a stage in the development of psychoanalysis, a stage out of which all but a few bigoted camp followers, totally lacking in originality, have evolved. Thousands ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... fanciful story of Mr. H. G. Wells. They scattered for the arcades, and some, quaintly enough, ran under the trees in the near-by Champs-Elysees. There was a "Bang!" at which everybody shouted "There!" but it was not a bomb, only part of the absurd fusillade that now began. They were firing from the Eiffel Tower, whence they might possibly have hit something, and from roofs with ordinary guns and revolvers which could not possibly have hit anything at all. In the gray haze that hung over Paris the next morning, I wandered ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... produce a greater impression upon the entire world, and more forcibly announce the inauguration of a new era, than the voice of a man who should declare, "I refuse to draw my sword for the hideous folly of war; to surrender my life at the absurd caprice of princes; but I offer myself cheerfully, unreservedly, as the instrument of Science, in her majestic schemes for the discovery ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... the pit of the stomach, bladders of warm water placed to the left side, the soles of the feet rubbed with salt, and a little white wine dropped on the tongue. The patient should then be left in a quiet state till able to drink a little warm wine, or tea mixed with a few drops of vinegar. The absurd practice of rolling persons on casks, lifting the feet over the shoulders, and suffering the head to remain downwards, in order to discharge the water, has occasioned the loss of many lives, as it is now fully and clearly established, that the respiration being impeded ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the first place, to call the attention to the absurd charge that the Negro does not belong to the human family. Happily, there are few left upon the face of the earth who still maintain ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... it must have been. I judged the palm had been daintily cupped, the fingers slender, smooth and long in proportion to the absurd size of the whole affair. My hand covered ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the absurd result of the recent effort at marriage naturally led to the avoidance of publicity concerning the second undertaking. So nothing was said till the last moment; then the license was procured, a few friends were hastily notified, and the ceremony was performed, all within a few ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... should also vary widely. These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me every intelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of the theory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution, as the best antidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... proclamation announcing the admission of Utah as a state. The inauguration of the new state officers took place at Salt Lake City two days later. The first governor, Heber M. Wells,* in his inaugural address made this declaration: "Let us learn to resent the absurd attacks that are made from time to time upon our sincerity by ignorant and prejudiced persons outside of Utah, and let us learn to know and respect each other more, and thus cement and intensify the fraternal sentiments now so widespread in our community, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... second day by a drive to our county town to make some little purchases. Owen, and Morgan, and I were all hard at work, during her absence, on the stories that still remained to be completed. Owen desponded about ever getting done; Morgan grumbled at what he called the absurd difficulty of writing nonsense. I worked on smoothly and contentedly, stimulated by the success of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... growing to like her more and more. In a house where Bruce lived it was certainly a wonderful help to have a third person often present—if it was the right person. The absurd irritations and scenes of fault-finding that she had become inured to, but which were always trying, were now shorter, milder, or given up altogether. Bruce's temper was perennially good, and got better. Then the constant ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... from a hole where we had buried five or six hundred of the enemy. It was the most uncomfortable two hours' sentry I had ever spent as yet, and I kept my eyes more on the place where the dead were than on the road I was placed to watch, not having altogether forgotten the absurd ghost stories of my own country. I in a way began to think, too, that I had done a good many things I should have liked not to, and to regret for the first time leaving my apprenticeship, my father, mother, and friends, to follow a life so dangerous as ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... but which it was manifest her pilot could not discern from the deck. In a few moments she was stationary. All this I could plainly perceive, although the hull of the vessel was invisible. Some idea may be formed of the obscurity occasioned by the fog, from the absurd stories that were waggishly put abroad at the time of the accident. It was gravely asserted that the first notice the sentinel had of her approach, was a poke in the side from her jibboom, which knocked him over into the moat and broke two of his ribs, and it ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of the book. There are practical lessons in relation to the great deed to which our nation has been called that may well be laid to heart. The insurrection of San Domingo preceded emancipation, and was due to the absurd law of the Constituent Assembly which gave the same privileges to freemen of every color and every degree of education and capacity. While we recognize the negro as a man, let us remember that the time for recognizing him as a citizen is not yet. We must also mark the importance of paying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... porter's knowledge of English consisted, apparently, in being able to say, "Yes, sir," and mortified at the absurd figure which he made in attempting to make useless inquiries in such a way, bowed in his turn, and went back to Estelle in a state of greater alienation of heart from her than he had ever experienced before. And as this book may, perhaps, be read sometimes ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... they had many such conversations. Giselle was absorbed in the duty of teaching her son his a, b, c. Besides, being very timid, she had never ridden on horseback, and, naturally, riding was delightful to her cousin. Jacqueline was never tired of it; while she paid as little attention to the absurd remarks Oscar made to her between their gallops as a girl does at a ball to the idle words of her partner. She supposed it was his custom to talk in that manner—a sort of rough gallantry—but with the best intentions. Jacqueline ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... life: and as an example of the peculiar flavour of Frank Reynolds' humour, it would be hardly possible to better the irresistible sketch from life, furtively made whilst sitting amongst the audience at a cafe chantant, which, with a nice sense of the absurd, is labelled in the sketch-book "Having the Time of ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... Germanist and Edda scholar, had been invited to listen to a reading of my Siegfried and had been led home in a state of melancholy enthusiasm, there was a regular outburst of wanton spirits among those who had remained behind. I conceived the absurd idea of lifting all the doors of the state ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... it to human reason, that so luminous a principle should have given birth to the absurd reasonings, and wretched notions, in favour of the science of augurs and soothsayers, and been the occasion of espousing, with blind devotion, the most ridiculous puerilities: should have made the most important affairs of state depend upon a bird's happening ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... acquires by going through the classical mill at a public school. The classics, like almost all other literature, must be read in masses to be appreciated. Boys think them dull mainly because of the absurd way in which they are ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... superstitious people the trade is at once more profitable and less dangerous. As soon as a native of the Columbia is indisposed, no matter what the malady, they send for the medicine man, who treats the patient in the absurd manner usually adopted by these impostors, and with such violence of manipulation, that often a sick man, whom a timely bleeding or purgative would have saved, is carried off by a ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... college he was so deeply attached that he would not have been displeased to learn that his editor had been nursed in that once famous 'nest of singing birds.' Of Boswell's pleasure I cannot doubt. How much he valued any tribute of respect from Oxford is shown by the absurd importance that he gave to a sermon which was preached before the University by an insignificant clergyman more than a year and a half after Johnson's death[45]. When Edmund Burke witnessed the long and solemn procession entering ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... false than to suppose that the presence of humour means the absence of depth and earnestness. There are elements of the unreal, the absurd, the ridiculous in this strange, incongruous world which must seem humorous even to the highest mind. Of these the Bible says: 'He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Almighty shall hold them in derision.' But the mark of this higher humour is that it does not laugh at the weak, the helpless, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... man in Bigg's Buildings. He realised that in offering these sham stones for inspection he had probably done a mad thing. The act might bring the noose about his neck, if he were arrested, who would believe the absurd story he had ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... found it necessary to deceive them with a pretence of loyalty. He himself took the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and he imposed it upon all his followers. His commands were issued in the King's name. He even went to the absurd extremity of declaring it for the service of the Crown to disobey the King's commands, to arrest the King's Governor, to ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... succeeded in doing this his enemy struck another telling blow. From Judge Purcell he secured an injunction against the Consolidated from working its mines, the Diamond King, the Mary K, and the Marcus Daly, on the absurd contention that the principal ore-vein of the Marcus Daly apexed on the tin, triangle wedged in between these three great mines, and called by Ridgway the Trust Buster. Though there was not room enough upon this fragment to ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... up, as he called it, in a fruitless and weak, though laboured attempt, to refute what I had said in my address In fact, he acted as a zealous advocate for the plaintiff, or rather as a stickler for the absurd rule of court, to make the jury give a verdict of damages, notwithstanding the only witness produced, swore, that there was not the thousandth part ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... while in every small town, from Salem to some Pacific-slope settlement, the beginnings of the same social curse are manifest. Of course New York towers in bad eminence over the entire country. Abroad they are finding out the absurd shallowness of our professions. Nearly seven years ago an able literary man said to me in London: "I am wearied, here, by the necessity of continual aristocratic patronage. Especially true is this," he added, "regarding all new dramatic ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... much impaired to digest food of a more solid nature. Indeed, we should give that organ, together with the bowels, as little trouble as possible, while they are so incapable of acting in their accustomed manner. Much mischief is frequently produced by the absurd practice of taking tincture of rhubarb, which is almost certain of aggravating that species of disorder of which we have now treated; for it is a spirit as strong as brandy, and cannot fail of producing harm upon a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to Scandinavia; and up to the present moment we had not seen the scaly snout of a single fish. We murmured not; but could not resist the doubt, that the existence of salmon in Northern Europe was a reality; nor could we conceal from ourselves the absurd light in which we appeared to the simple people who each day, with mute astonishment, beheld us, late and early, in storm and calm, deliberately and untiringly flog with a long line of cat-gut their legendary streams, in the vain hope of capturing ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... stairs with a last buzzing accompaniment of civilities and polite phrases finished from one step to another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone in the unfriendly empty apartment, where the mats are still littered with the little cups of tea, the absurd little pipes, and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... kind conversation as well as by public instruction, I expected them to do what their own sense of right and wrong dictated. We never wished them to do right merely because it would be pleasing to us, nor thought ourselves to blame when they did wrong, although we were quite aware of the absurd idea to that effect. We saw that our teaching did good to the general mind of the people by bringing new and better motives into play. Five instances are positively known to me in which, by our influence on public opinion, war was prevented; and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... to refute the absurd hope entertained by "Prussian", according to which "political understanding" is called upon "to discover the roots of social ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... contradicting himself by doing something in so doing; but in the absurd actual he had to earn his bread and butter, and man cannot live by poetry alone, unless one sings the joys and sorrows of the middle classes. It was rather late at night before, having vainly hunted for him in his favourite restaurants, I found the narrow, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... understand what is not understood by those that write about it; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers. I should like to be intimate with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle—I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith, though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... proves, at the same time, a great relief to the instructer. The convenience and advantage of this method, are far greater than can be easily conceived by one who is unacquainted with it. The author is, therefore, anxious to have the absurd practice, wherever it has been established, of causing learners to commit and recite definitions and rules without any simultaneous application of them to practical examples, immediately abolished. This system obviates the necessity of pursuing such a stupid course ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... fled at once. Captain Leisler, supported by the democracy but bitterly opposed by the aristocracy, thereupon administered affairs very prudently until the arrival of Governor Sloughter (slaw-ter) who arrested him on the absurd charge of treason. Sloughter was unwilling to execute him, but Leisler's enemies, at a dinner party, made the governor drunk, obtained his signature, and before he became sober enough to ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... king himself, losing at last all patience at the absurd idea of chasing a man with one leg all night long, he called his herd together, and fled, in disgust, toward the west, and never more appeared in all ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... weakness of the consul's that his sense of the ludicrous was too often reached before his more serious perceptions. The absurd combination of the bleak, inhospitable desolation before him, and the sepulchral complacency of his self-elected ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... ridiculous mistake, worthy of the whole scene, the duke did not appear till after this exclamation was already recited by the preacher. The doctor was therefore obliged to repeat his rhetorical figure out of its proper place: the audience, less from the absurd conduct of the discourse than from their detestation of these proceedings, kept a profound silence: and the protector and his preacher were equally abashed at the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... only the rottenness was all dragged into the limelight. Things are discussed in papers and from pulpits to-day which were never even spoken of between fathers and sons or husbands and wives in days gone by. If the war will stop all the absurd talk about England going to the dickens, it won't be fought for nothing. We've decried ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... which, as we have noticed before, served as the medium for the expression of the political views of Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer. At the period in question The South African News rendered itself notorious by circulating the absurd, but none the less injurious, report that General Buller and his army had surrendered to the Boers in Natal and agreed to return to England on parole; by publishing stories of imaginary Boer victories; by eulogising Mr. Hargrove, whose acceptance of the L1,000 from ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... around in his memory and the phrase "free press." And then he remembered the Censors. The religious, the political, the scientific, the capitalist, the communist, the ridiculous and the absurd. ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... the misery and diseases of celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical processes: the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants; all these, and innumerable other causes, contribute their mite to ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Catholics may consider and address them so unharmed. The bill, as modified passed to a second reading on the 22d of March, by 438 ayes to 95 nays—a majority of more than four to one. Such is the finale of the absurd and disproportionate agitation with respect to the "Papal Agression." Nobody is satisfied. The Church party, who mourned over the shortcomings of the bill as originally presented, are of course still less pleased with it as emasculated. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... she did; for she was so beautiful in person and alluring in manner, that even that head-dress, and the accompanying costume with which she was deformed, could not eclipse her charms for those who had become at all accustomed to the absurd disguise which she assumed. But it was the woman that was beautiful, not the costume; and the woman was so beautiful, in spite of the costume, that she was able to light up even its forbidding features with the reflection of her own loveliness. There have been countless similar cases since;—there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... asked Hyacinthe where the hats were made that set the house in a roar as soon as he appeared. "I don't have them made," he said; "I keep them!" So also among the million actors who make up the great troupe of Paris, there are unconscious Hyacinthes who "keep" all the absurd freaks of vanished fashions upon their backs; and the apparition of some bygone decade will startle you into laughter as you walk the streets in bitterness of soul over the treason of one who was your friend ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to loch-fishing is, that the tyro and the experienced angler have nearly the same chance in fishing,—the one from the stern and the other from the bow of the same boat. Of all the absurd beliefs as to loch-fishing, this is one of the most absurd. Try it. Give the tyro either end of the boat he likes; give him a cast of any flies he may fancy, or even a cast similar to those which a "crack" ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... Molly, that you could have been here clairvoyantly. It was one of those scenes, just touched with that fine and almost imperceptible perfume of the ludicrous, in which you especially delight. There are a thousand minute shreds of the absurd which my duller sense overlooks, but which never can hope to ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... innocent little prayers. And afterwards at school he had been considered a pious lad. He rambled on, telling his story almost unconsciously, getting more thoughtful as he advanced into it, relating carefully the absurd episode of the hermitage in which, to emulate the piety of the old time, he chose Castle Island as a suitable spot ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... man. He had a steady nerve for that which affected himself, a nerve which would keep him quiet and motionless in a dentist's chair, but what philosophy or hardihood can steel one against the pain which those whom we love have to endure. He fretted and chafed, and always with the absurd delusion that his fretting and chafing were successfully concealed. A hundred failures never convince a man how impossible it is to deceive a woman who loves him. Maude watched him demurely, and ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... ever seen made of anything; but it was for all that a great date in her life. She spoke with her mild gaiety of all the other vain times, the long game of hide-and-seek, the unprecedented queerness of such a relation. For it was, or had been, a relation, wasn't it, hadn't it? That was just the absurd part of it. When she got up to go I said to her that it was more a relation than ever, but that I hadn't the face after what had occurred to propose to her for the present another opportunity. It was plain that the only valid opportunity would be my accomplished marriage. Of ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... David! but where's the teakettle?' alluding to the print of Hogarth, where a black boy follows his mistress with a teakettle in his hand.... In stature Garrick was short.... A fact which conveys a high notion of his powers is, that he was able to act out the absurd stage-costume of those days. He represented Coriolanus in the attire of Cheapside. I remember hearing from Sir G. Beaumont, that while he was venting, as Lear, the violent paroxysms of his rage in the awful tempest scene, his wig happened ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... has personified Cold—fur hunting, fur-trading, will last long as man lasts. We are entering, not on the extermination of fur, but on a new cycle of smaller furs. In the days when mink went begging at eighty cents, mink was not fashionable. Mink is fashionable to-day; hence the absurd and fabulous prices. Long ago, when ermine as miniver—the garb of nobility—was fashionable and exclusive, it commanded fabulous prices. Radicalism abolished the exclusive garb of royalty, and ermine fell to four cents a pelt, ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... and, his harsher mood returning upon him, Iglesias found a certain bitter enjoyment in setting forth the extreme meagreness of his life before this light-hearted, unsubstantial piece of womanhood. Again he classed her with the absurd and exquisite little dogs as something superfluous, out of relation to sad and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet |
