"Irrationally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to himself when they had departed, "their words were irrationally offensive, but among them there may stand out a pointed edge. Our magnanimous father is now bereft of both comforts and necessities, and although an ebony rod is certainly not much in the circumstances, if this person is really humanely-intentioned he will not withhold it." With this charitable ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... that convicts him of a far greater depravity. One could allege these and similar lines of argument against Martial's position, and could reverse the sense of his distich so that it read no less irrationally: ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... She was irrationally angry at him. What right had he to think she needed time to think it over? Why hadn't he the decency to be deceived by her behavior? Then she stole another look at him, with all the gaiety and youth gone out of his face, and made up her mind that the anger ought to be on his ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... different order of literature from the ballad. The ballad tells of things dimly discerned by the poet; king's sons and daughters are no more to him than they are to the story-tellers of the market-place—forms of a shadowy grandeur, different from ordinary people, swayed by strange motives, not irrationally, nor altogether in a way beyond the calculation of simple audiences, yet in ways for which there is no adequate mode of explanation known to the reciter. The ballad keeps instinctively a right outline for its tragic story, but to develop the characters is beyond its power. In the epic ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... dance, for towards the finish all the crowd should form in long lines and go twining about in a ballet figure. In this opening chorus of knights and retainers in the Second Act (scene ii) the musical inspiration is intense; but words are repeated as irrationally as in a Handel oratorio chorus; and the same is the case in the bridal procession music. Wagner still had a hankering after imposing spectacle and brilliant choral writing. That bridal procession and chorus are, of course, supremely beautiful music: music and spectacle were aimed at and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... directions left by the divine Mantuan in his will to be carried into effect. So that, Senor Ambrosia while you consign your friend's body to the earth, you should not consign his writings to oblivion, for if he gave the order in bitterness of heart, it is not right that you should irrationally obey it. On the contrary, by granting life to those papers, let the cruelty of Marcela live for ever, to serve as a warning in ages to come to all men to shun and avoid falling into like danger; or I and all of us who have come here know already the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... growing tendency to look upon this function as the greatest service which woman can render to society, are manifest signs that this time is approaching. There is little doubt that woman will be as amenable to these newer and more rationalized mores as human nature has always been to the irrationally formed customs and traditions ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... plunge filled Bert with a haunting sense of boundless waters below. It was a summer's night, but it seemed to him, nevertheless, extraordinarily long. He had a feeling of insecurity that he fancied quite irrationally the sunrise would dispel. Also he was hungry. He felt, in the dark, in the locker, put his fingers in the Roman pie, and got some sandwiches, and he also opened rather successfully a half-bottle of champagne. That warmed and restored him, he grumbled at Grubb about the ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... people walking about with the same complaint who regard themselves and are generally regarded as perfectly normal. He says they unconsciously invent and believe all sorts of preposterous things. He says no one could predict at what moment they might suddenly go off the handle and behave quite irrationally. No doubt what he says is entirely true, only I can't see it applying to Esther. Why, if I'd been asked to pick a thoroughly ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... fraternal relationship has developed. 3. When both are of such nature that the famous divine spark can not set them afire. Whether there is an electrical influence between couples, as some scientists say, or not, we frequently see two people irrationally select each other, as if compelled by some evil force. Now this selection may result in nothing more than a friendship. Such friendships are frequently claimed in trials, and of course, they are never altogether believed in. The necessary thing in treating these cases is caution, for it will ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... is interesting to speculate on the future of an abstinent nation whose politics have the misfortune to be guided by a Peerage instead of a Beerage, and whose national destiny is irrationally divorced from the interests of 'The Trade.' Any departure from the established customs of humanity must be criticised unsparingly, and, if necessary, destructively. To overthrow the customs of antiquity must entail its own punishment ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... a roaring foreign market. The agent's confidence and enthusiasm mastered his principal, and large capital was raised solely on the security of the Hawarden fortune and credit. Whether Oak Farm was irrationally inflated or not, we cannot say, though the impression is that it had the material of a sound property if carefully worked; but it was evidently pushed in excess of its realisable capital. The whole basis of its credit was ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley |
