"Absurdly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. Forester renewed the attack with many arguments. At last one day, in a moment of expansion, the doctor confessed what he had done. In the face of Mrs. Forester's amazed displeasure, his reasons for his conduct seemed absurdly inadequate. She told him in no measured terms exactly what she thought of him, and indignantly reproached him for the course which he had taken. She quite pooh-poohed the suggestion that Hugh Davidson might be dead, as the ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... clever fellow in his way—in everything except the diplomatic 'trade' which his father would have him take up, and got him into, through Heaven knows what influence. No; Du Laurier's no fool, and is said to be a fine sportsman, as well as almost absurdly good-looking. Mademoiselle Maxine has plenty of excuse for her infatuation—for I assure you it's nothing less. She'd jump into the fire for this young man, and grill with a Joan of ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... attainment and every possession pails as soon as it is reached, and we still sigh for something that we have not. It is simply in analogy with all this that the Christian and every other religion says (absurdly, if you will, but certainly with a deeper knowledge of human nature than you), that, as every little present has its little future for which we live, so the whole present of this life has its great future, which must, all the way through, be made the supreme object of forethought and solicitude; ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... see it that way, Teresa, and I am perfectly willing to give up in your favor if the others will agree. Of course it is ridiculous to talk of any question of beauty having been considered. You know you are absurdly pretty, Teresa, and are merely trying to make some one say so," Joan remarked, half serious ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... magnificence and variety of ornaments. At imminent peril of being robbed, she brought to the country, and carried about everywhere with her, an amazing number of jewels, wearing two or three different sets at different times of the day—displaying them on the most absurdly improper occasions—at a fete champetre, or ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... upon his approaching departure as a great deliverance. He was to be a man immediately; not for him that absurdly dilatory condition of pimples and hobbledehoy boots that mark a transition period. Dawson's had been the most insignificant sojourn in the tent of the enemy, and the world, it was implied, had lamented his enforced absence. But, as the end of term flung its shadows in ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... biting at her under lip and trying to meet his humorous gray eyes with unconcern. But her face was burning now, and, aware of it, she turned her gaze resolutely on the sea. Also, to her further annoyance, her heart awoke, beating unwarrantably, absurdly, until the dreadful idea seized her that he could hear it. Disconcerted, she stood up—a straight youthful figure against the sea. The wind blowing her dishevelled hair across her cheeks and shoulders, fluttered her clinging skirts ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... order to hand me over to "Jule," if I hadn't been mulishly obstinate. I quite enjoyed manoeuvring to use my dear little invalid as a sort of standing barrage against enemy attacks, and even though Brian and I were parted for the first time since his blindness, I felt almost absurdly cheerful. It was so good to know that Mother Beckett was out of danger, and that it was I who had helped to drag her out! Besides, after all the stricken towns that have saddened our eyes, it was enlivening to be in one (as Mother Beckett said at Compiegne) with "whole houses." In contrast, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thank you," replied the polite banker, who, it will have been perceived, was nameless to Captain Cable, as he is to the reader. The truth being that his name was so absurdly and egregiously Russian that the plain English tongue never embarked on that sea of consonants. "It is an affair, as usual. My friends are here to meet you, but I think they do not speak English, ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... drawl that would have been amusing in a handsome woman, but was absurdly ridiculous in one with her ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... wonderment that they had gone, that obscurity had somehow engulfed them; and how afterwards, in the light of later things, memory and fancy attended them, figured their history as the public complication grew and the great intersectional plot thickened; felt even, absurdly and disproportionately, that they had helped one to "know Southerners." The slim, the sallow, the straight-haired and dark-eyed Eugene in particular haunted my imagination; he had not been my comrade of election—he was too much ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... observed Harding, who was not insensible himself to Sara's delightfulness, "the British public is absurdly fond of a love-match. They adore a sentimental Prime Minister. They want to see him either marrying for love, or jilted in his youth for a richer man. These things enlist the popular sympathy. What made Henry Fox? His ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... he remarked, chuckling at my surprise,—"so absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may serve to define the limits of observation and of deduction. Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering to your instep. Just opposite the Seymour Street Office they have taken ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... are absurdly ignorant of arithmetic and apparently cannot master it. Hence in Egypt they used Copts for calculating-machines and further East Hindds. The mildest numerical puzzle, like the above, is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... characteristics of men whose 'senatus consultum' bestows an Emperor on France, a King on Italy, makes of principalities departments of a Republic, and transforms Republics into provinces or principalities. To show the absurdly fickle and ridiculously absurd appellations of our shamefully perverted institutions, this Senate was called the Conservative Senate; that is to say, it was to preserve the republican consular constitution in its integrity, both against the; encroachments of the executive and legislative ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... their temperaments, absurdly and diversely, almost incompatibly young. At two-and-thirty Majendie, through very worldliness, was a boy in his infinite capacity for recoil from trouble. Anne had preserved that crude and cloistral youth which belongs to all lives passed between walls that protect ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... in gratitude for her assurance that the child shall not be sent back to him, stands treat for the crowd. The child's life in the convent is material for some good satiric writing upon the question of his salvation. The picture is absurdly over-drawn so far as its effectiveness against conventional charity is concerned, but it touches the question of religious bigotry surely and strongly. Indeed the method of treatment here verges closely upon the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is the main thesis of the book. Mr. Leach fails to note that the best books concerning Texas have done little to keep the typical Texan alive and that a great part of the present Texas Brags spirit is as absurdly unrealistic as Mussolini's splurge at making twentieth-century Italians imagine themselves a {illust. caption John W. Thomason, in his Lone Star Preacher (1941)} reincarnation of Caesar's Roman legions. Mr. Leach dissects the myth and ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... penetration, this French schoolmaster. "Homme de zele et de conscience, il possede a un haut degre l'eloquence du bon sens et du coeur." Fierce and despotic in the exaction of obedience, yet tender of heart, magnanimous and tyrannical, absurdly vain and absolutely unselfish. His wife's school was a kingdom to him; he brought to it an energy, a zeal, a faculty of administration worthy to rule a kingdom. It was with the delight of a botanist discovering a rare plant in his garden, of ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... you can depend on," said the General, quite conscious that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by way of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in this abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... asleep, very absurdly overcome by liquor, we extremely regret to concede, but nobly sure to do his soldierly duty as soon ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... very mild, I could not, in a sense, help being glad that I was obliged to get so excellent a view of what a shell bursting in the air looks like at fairly close quarters. To be truthful, it looks almost exactly like what I used to call an absurdly exaggerated picture in the illustrated newspapers! There was no great danger, but R.—- who was no doubt slightly anxious about his charge, i.e. myself, just as one is anxious when showing sights to visitors when one is threatened by a hailstorm,—thought we had better sit down and wait till ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... four oceans before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul. Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Helm, but a glimpse of the Captain's broad good-humored face heartily smiling, dispelled his anger. There was no ground upon which to maintain a quarrel with a person so persistently genial and so absurdly frank. And in fact Hamilton was not half so bad as his choleric manifestations seemed to make him out. Besides, Helm knew just how far to go, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... his utmost strength of lung against the infamous plot to expose him to the derision of the fiendish associates of that obscene woman! . . . Then he began another interlude upon the door, so sustained and strong that I had the thought that this was growing absurdly impossible, that either the plaster would begin to fall off the ceiling or he would drop dead next moment, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... How absurdly poor the chance! Yet they bade the old coachman turn that way, and indeed the facts were better than the hope of any one of them. Charlie, very gaunt and battered, but all the more enamored of himself therefor and for the new chevrons of a gun corporal ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... critic absurdly complains that I do not account for this. Account for what? I still hold the authenticity of nearly all the Pauline epistles, and that the Pauline Acts are compiled from some valuable source, from chap. xiii. onward; ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... appearance and his taste; the club steward's unmarried sister declared the senora's manners to be rustic and her voice loud; the woman in the carpenter's family would lend no ear to such a scandal because the subject of it was dumpy, shapeless, and dressed absurdly, even for the wife of a stonemason. Howbeit, the little woman was now in grief, for her husband lay in jail awaiting trial on the gravest charge that could be brought against a Cuban,—the charge of treason. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... him but this once," she added, as she threw herself upon the bed, "and now I think of it, I consider him very bold to dare to speak to me. I am almost inclined to laugh at him. How confidently he brought out his nonsense, how absurdly he rolled his eyes! They are really very fine, those eyes of his, and so is his mouth, and his forehead and his hair. He does not suspect that I noticed his hands, which are really very white, when he raised them to heaven, like a madman, as he walked ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to ask for her room key, she had come on the black-gowned floor clerk, deep in murmured conversation with the valet, and she had seemed not to see Sophy at all as she groped subconsciously for the key along the rows of keyboxes. She had seen the workmen in their absurdly baggy corduroy trousers and grimy shirts strolling along arm in arm with the women of their class—those untidy women with the tidy hair. Bareheaded and happy, they strolled along, a strange contrast to the glitter of the fashionable boulevard, stopping now and then to gaze ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... means were thus made abundant, the letter to Miss March was not then written. Lawrence finally determined that it was simply impossible for him to write to the lady, until he knew more. What Keswick had told him had been absurdly little, and he had hurried away before there had been time to ask further questions. Instead of sending a letter to Miss March, he would write to Keswick, and would put to him a series of interrogations, the answers to which would make him understand ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... knew what to look for, it was absurdly simple. They couldn't see the port open, but they saw the white flash of dry ice as it dropped from the port into ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... for the new phraseology and mode of thought known as Euphuism. If we consider the manner in which these lords and ladies spent their time at court, filling idle hours with compliment, love-making, veiled jibe and swift retort; if we read our Euphues again, renewing our acquaintance with its absurdly elaborated and stilted style, its tireless winding of sentences round a topic without any advance in thought, its affectation of philosophy and classical learning; if we remember that to speak euphuistically was a coveted and studiously cultivated accomplishment, and that to pun, to ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the world—that, to borrow a simile from his own vocation, he was setting a bulb which would expand into a shape of as wide note as the domes of Florence and St. Sophia. And the cost of his new production was so absurdly low—eighty thousand pounds by the contract. The cheapness of his plan was its great merit in the eyes of the committee, and that which chiefly determined its selection over two hundred and forty-four competitors. This new cathedral for the apotheosis of industry resembled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... He had built up a lot of illusions for himself, but his instincts are true and good. It needed only a touch. It was absurdly simple." ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... absurdly melancholy, Tess. I have no reason for flattering you now, and I can say plainly that you need not be so sad. You can hold your own for beauty against any woman of these parts, gentle or simple; I say it to you as a practical man and well-wisher. If you are wise you will ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... oh absurdly young! reviewers; and there are elderly reviewers, with whiskers. There are also women reviewers. Absurdly young reviewers are inclined to be youthful in their reviews. Elderly reviewers usually have missed fire ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... rapidly advancing in life, while such persons were absurdly speculating upon the cause of her success. Her business was not only increased, but extended. From crockery, herrings, and salt, she advanced gradually to deal in other branches adapted to her station, and the wants of the people. She bought stockings, and retailed them every market-day. ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... had what? Done things. Of course, but what things? That was the question. He exerted his imagination, but failed to arrive at any conclusion as to their probable crimes. His knowledge of wickedness was really absurdly limited. For the first time he felt slightly ashamed of it, and began to wish he had gone into the militia. He comforted himself with the thought that in a fortnight he would probably be fit for the regular ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... answered. "I guess I'm absurdly early, but I thought I ought to give the young lady an opportunity to get acquainted with me before starting out alone with ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... last he was astonished. Could it mean that she had not understood him? It could not be that she did not appreciate his offer! Her devotion to the child was indeed absurdly engrossing, but that would soon come right! He could have no fear of such a rivalry, however unpleasant at the moment! That little vagrant to come between him and the girl he would make ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... dilemma, and, while she too began to blush absurdly, would not help him, and her head bent lower than ever ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... room, lying wakeful with hot cheeks and big eyes, Ephie went over in memory all that had taken place at their last meeting, or built high, top-heavy castles for the future. She was absurdly happy; and her mother and sister had never found her more charming and lovable, or richer in those trifling inspirations for brightening life, which happiness brings with it. She looked forward with secret triumph to the day when she would be able to announce her engagement to the celebrated ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... himself with a start, and, dropping the letter into his pocket, went slowly out of the room; he felt as if he could not have hurried had his life depended upon it; there was an absurdly cold sort ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... This was absurdly too much. I then and there opened on Boogles, opened flooding gates of wrath and scorn on him—for him and for his idol of clay who, I flatly told him, could not be the real doughnuts of any sort. As for his being ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... recollected the engaging, enthusiastic little maiden, as he had seen her on the Rhone, but now brought to such a state. He implored Mr. Bullock to pursue the track up the mountain, and was grieved at this being treated as absurdly impossible, but then recollecting himself, 'You could not, sir, but I might follow her and make them understand that ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... players were really worse off before the latest refinements in make-up were invented? Some of the greatest acting triumphs of the world were accomplished when the players dressed their parts absurdly, trusting almost exclusively to their ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... moment of high resolves on the cargo-deck of the Belle Julie. For the propaganda, there was his book; for the demonstration, he would put the sacred fund into some industry where the weight of it would give him the casting vote in all questions involving the rights of the workers. It was absurdly simple, and he wondered that none of the sociological reformers whose books he had read had anticipated him in the discovery of such an obviously logical ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... her, and made an idyl. He was also seized with a passion of teasing her and dominating over her devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice, venting upon her the ill humor of his disappointments, and grew absurdly jealous and lost her after she had borne with him with incredible patience and after terrible scenes with her by which he gained nothing. Frenzied by his loss, he began to abuse his physical nature and was only saved ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the United States, from sending an address to the French Canadians, informing them of the success of the arms of France against the allied powers of Europe, and calling upon them to rally round the standard of the Republic. The response to this appeal in the Province of Lower Canada was absurdly feeble. The greatest power in all Canada—the Church—shrank in horror from the blood-stained banner of regicide France; and zealous always for the monarchy, the Catholic hierarchy indignantly spurned ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... and the officials of the custom-house, and the mail-boat came out to us. My boy became impatient for couay (cake); Moonshee, my Persian teacher, and Beebe, my gay Hindostanee nurse, expressed their disappointment and disgust, Moonshee being absurdly dramatic in his wrath, as, fairly shaking his fist at the town, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... with what the Speaker writes about our 'absurdly late hours.' I have no strong feeling upon the Wednesday question, and perhaps the Speaker is right, although I think the point is alluded to in a manner not too strong nor too 'disparaging' to the fixed hour, as I only recommend that a division, instead of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... and grow till he became a terribly tall demon. But instead of falling on his knees and begging for mercy, the Prince only burst into a fit of laughter, and said, 'My good sir! there is a medium in all things! Just now you were ridiculously small, at present you are absurdly big; but, as you seem to be able to alter your size without much trouble, suppose for once in a way you show some spirit, and become just my size, neither less nor more; then we can settle ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... Arena, and then retraced his steps. As he expected, M. Bocardon had left the bureau. It was the hour of absinthe. The porter named M. Bocardon's habitual cafe. There, in a morose corner of the terrace, Aristide found the huge man gloomily contemplating an absurdly small glass of the bitters known as Dubonnet. Aristide raised his hat, asked permission to join him, and ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... she had found the evenings the most trying part of the day. When not taken up with her household cares, she found herself becoming absurdly self-conscious in his society. They were neither of them naturally silent people, and it was difficult not to have the air of "talking down" to him, of palpably making conversation. Beyond the people at her brother's and the Sharps, they had not a single acquaintance in common. Her horizon, ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... shirt and stood forth naked to the waist, a broad belt strapped tightly about him holding his trousers. His muscles now showed out for the first time, and I stood gazing at the enormous bunches on his back and shoulders. He was like some monstrous giant cut off at the waist and stuck upon a pair of absurdly short legs, which, however, were simply ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... afterwards to walk by the same power, while in adult man the most prominent case of instinct is supposed to be, the powers possessed by savage races to find their way across a trackless and previously unknown wilderness. Let us take first the case of the infant's sucking. It is sometimes absurdly stated that the new-born infant "seeks the breast," and this is held to be a wonderful proof of instinct. No doubt it would be if true, but unfortunately for the theory it is totally false, as every nurse and medical man can testify. Still, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... gleaming bridge linked Dover and Calais; elsewhere, the rivers of Europe were bridged frequently, providing easy access between the many states of the Federation of Europe. Here, there, monuments of the past remained—the Eiffel Tower, absurdly dwarfed by the vast buildings around it, still reared its spidery self in Paris, and Notre Dame still remained as well. But the rest of Paris, the ancient city Alan had read so much of—that had long since ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... in the early morning, who thrust under our tent such articles as jewellery, saddle-cloths, carved spoons, etc., for sale. We bargained for some of these, and ultimately obtained them. The prices at first asked were absurdly high, but these simple-minded Icelanders have an idea that our nation's ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... appetite to rest, and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them; ascribing appetite, and Knowledge of what is good for their conservation, (which is more than man has) to things inanimate absurdly. ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... an insulting letter. It was an anonymous letter, and an author should respect his character's secrets. "You are only taking credit for a natural phenomenon," said the letter, "and trying to advertise yourself by your letter to the Times. You and your Boomfood! Let me tell you, this absurdly named food of yours has only the most accidental connection with those big wasps and rats. The plain fact is there is an epidemic of Hypertrophy—Contagious Hypertrophy—which you have about as much claim to control as you have to control the solar system. The thing is as ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... at Suzee as she stood before me. The figure, so exquisite in its lines when unclothed, looked too soft and shapeless under the cloth coat. She appeared absurdly short, too, beside the American assistant, who stood at least five feet eleven. I could not bear to see my little Suzee so disfigured. However, that she looked far more ordinary could not be disputed. She would attract ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... I get more and more doubtful, and rather incline to Ceylon again as place of meeting. I am so absurdly well here in the tropics, that it seems like affectation. Yet remember I have never once stood Sydney. Anyway, I shall have the money for it all ahead, before I think of such ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I didn't know it from the very first," he answered slowly. His heart beat hard, for he could not guess how she should know of Kathleen. It was absurdly impossible that she should know. "But many have loved you!" she said proudly. "They have not shown it," he answered grimly; then added quickly, and with aching anxiety: "When ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wildest goose chase and the most absurdly hopeless enterprise ever undertaken in the interest of science by ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... poor graceless mass of ruin down beside the river, and it was fenced about jealously and locked up from their invasion. After dinner Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont went for a walk in the mingled twilight and moonlight up the hill towards Chepstow. Both of them were absurdly and nervously pressing to Belinda to come with them, but she was far too wise to take this sudden desire for her company seriously. Her dinner shoes, she said, were too thin. Perhaps she would change and come out a little later. "Yes, come later," said Miss Grammont and led the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of Gabriel. The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hats to nothing known or unknown." [Footnote: Walt Whitman, Collect.] In these days, when the idlest man of the street corner would fight at the drop of a hat, if his inferiority to earth's potentates were suggested to him, all the excitement seems absurdly antiquated. There is, however, something approaching modernity in Byron's disposal of the question, as he makes the hero of The Lament of Tasso express ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... absurdly high over each wave, the little boat was now approaching a white crescent of sand. Behind this was a deep green valley, with distinct hills on either side. On the slope of the right-hand hill white houses with brown roofs were settled, like nesting sea-birds, and at intervals cypresses ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... himself together and stood away. "Madam," he said with an absurdly formal bow, "I ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... suffered rudely when he beheld the wife they brought him. Catherine, who was in her twenty-fifth year, was of an absurdly low stature, so long in the body and short in the legs that, dressed as she was in an outlandish, full-skirted farthingale, she had the appearance of being on her knees when she stood before him. Her complexion was ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... them had been growing during the six months of his Oxford life, and plucking up courage hurled at him a number of frank, young expostulations, which really put into friendly shape all that was being said about Langham in his College and in the University. Why was he so self-distrustful, so absurdly diffident of responsibility, so bent on hiding his great ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cheap, he was walking across the market-place to buy one: there, in the middle of it, stood an odd-looking little man, actually selling umbrellas. Here was a chance for him! When he drew nearer, he found that the little man, while vaunting his umbrellas to the skies, was asking such absurdly small prices for them, that no one would venture to buy one. He had opened and laid them all out at full stretch on the market-place—about five-and-twenty of them, stick downwards, like little tents—and he stood beside, haranguing the people. ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... he observed that I was taller than he had expected; and this, absurdly enough, is all I remember of the interview, except that the room had two empty bookcases, one on either side of the chimney-breast; that the fading of the wallpaper above the mantelpiece had left a patch recording where a clock had lately stood (I conjectured that it must be at ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... buffoon, who is allowed full liberty of speech, being himself a universal butt. His attempts at wit, which are rarely very successful, and his allusions to the pleasures of the table, of which he is a confessed votary, are absurdly contrasted with the sententious solemnity of the despairing hero, crossed in the prosecution of his love-suit. His clumsy interference with the intrigues of his friend, only serves to augment his difficulties, and occasions many an awkward dilemma. On the ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... began to get most absurdly luxurious. They had splendid villas on the Italian hill-sides, where they went to spend the summer when Rome was unhealthy, and where they had beautiful gardens, with courts paved with mosaic, and fish-ponds for the pet fish for which many had a passion. One man was laughed at for having ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... downward head, he climbed from the waist of the ship to the cabin promenade, and there a voice hailed him, and he turned to see Kate Malone approaching. She was all in white—cap, canvas shoes, silk shirt absurdly lose at the throat, and linen coat with the sleeves turned far back so that her hands would not be enveloped. The duck trousers were ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... advanced two or three paces and stood looking down at her. In our first conversation he told me that she seemed absurdly small, quite too insignificant to be so impudent. In our second conversation I elicited the fact that he thought her skin smooth; in our third that her lips ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... matter of fact, Roger was thinking as she sat there on a low stool, one foot curled under her, that she looked absurdly young, hardly more than a little girl. He believed she could be frivolous, too, gay without being silly, as he put it. So few girls could ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... on Billy's tongue wouldn't do at all. None of them. What he did say was absurdly stiff and constrained. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and appeared as a matter of course, according to the mysterious ways of the world, both convict and free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes. His arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes, and his attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought me down ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... face looking absurdly young above his broad shoulders, said despairingly, "I don't believe you want to ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... more solid cause than this for dissatisfaction with the younger. Nelly had really behaved like a little fool! The one family asset of which a great deal might have been made—should have been made—was Nelly's prettiness. She was very pretty—absurdly pretty—and had been a great deal run after in Manchester already. There had been actually two proposals from elderly men with money, who were unaware of the child's engagement, during the past three months; and though these particular ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... must grow up fully cognizant of what her clothes cost. When she desires, as she doubtless will desire, silk petticoats, and an "up-to-date" hat, and high-heeled shoes, and an absurdly beruffled dress, and a wonderful array of ribbons, she must discover what each and every one of these things costs and whether it is worth the price. The high heels sometimes cost health; the conspicuous dress may cost the good opinion or the admiration ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... bit of satire was probably invented by an inhabitant of one of the Arab khanates as a means of getting even with a ruler who had wronged him by an absurdly unjust decision. The khans of the Eastern Caucasus previous to the Russian conquest had almost unlimited power over the lives and persons of their subjects, and their decrees, however unreasonable and unfair they might be, were enforced without appeal ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... have heard, in the armory at Boston, a militia captain (captain, mind you!) give the command "Attention!" in three different ways, continually experimenting. So how could I, for the first time in my life, rap out my orders like a veteran? What we had to do was absurdly simple; but poor Pickle, when I balked, succeeded no better than I, so finally we fell to consulting each other about it and became idle, like other groups that we saw. Then came our way another pair, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... had occupation enough on his hands in settling the disordered state of Naples. King Ferdinand, his sovereign, notwithstanding the ambition of universal conquest absurdly imputed to him by the French writers, had no design to extend his acquisitions beyond what he could permanently maintain. His treasury, never overflowing, was too deeply drained by the late heavy demands on it, for him so soon to embark on another perilous ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Constantlne and his whole army, as that emperor himself affirmed upon oath, and as Eusebius assures us from his testimony, and that of other eye-witnesses. (l. 1, de Vit. Constant., c. 28, olim 22.) Fabricius very absurdly pretends that [Greek: graphen] may here signify an emblem, not an inscription. Mr. Jor tin, after taking much pains on this subject, is obliged to confess (vol. 3, p. 6) that, "After all, it seems more natural to interpret [Greek: graphen legousan] of a writing ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... (Unexplored Syria, i. 264-269). These 187 "dictes" were taken mainly from a MS. collection by one Hanna Misk, ex-dragoman of the British Consulate (Damascus), a little recueil for private use such as would be made by a Syro Christian bourgeois. Hereupon the critic absurdly asserted that the translator a voulu s'occuper de la langue classique au lieu de se faire * * * l'interprete fidele de celle du peuple. My reply was (The Nights, vol. viii. 148) that, as I was treating of proverbs familiar to the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... hadn't come up against that confounded artist-fellow! That had upset him, most absurdly. A half good-looking sort of fellow: a fellow who could prate with a certain brio; not unlikely to make something of a figure in the eyes of a girl ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... 'how absurdly you speak! Criticizing whether she's fit for me or no, as if there were room for doubt on the matter! Why, to marry her would be the great blessing of my life—socially and practically, as well as in other respects. No such good fortune as that, I'm afraid; she's too far above me. Her ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Revolution, are looked upon as perfect Irish; directly contrary to the practice of all wise nations, and particularly of the Greeks and Romans, in establishing their colonies, by which name Ireland is very absurdly called. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... second lover? Kate, of course, knew all about it; but how could Alice be made to understand that she, Mrs Greenow, was not to blame,—that she had, in sober truth, told this ardent gentleman that there was no hope for him? And even as to Kate,—Kate, whom her aunt had absurdly chosen to regard as the object of Mr Cheesacre's pursuit,—what sort of a welcome would she extend to the owner of Oileymead? Before the wheels had stopped, Mrs Greenow had begun to reflect whether it ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... are not to be arranged in regular equation. The result from capital employed in the production of any movement of a mental nature is sometimes as tremendous as the cause itself is absurdly minute. When women are in a freakish mood, their usual intuition, either from carelessness or inherent defect, seemingly fails to teach them this, and hence it was that Bathsheba was fated to be ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... chiefs thus absurdly arrayed was the means of letting the fugitive white men have an idea that something strange had occurred at the village. This man had appropriated a scarlet flannel petticoat which had been presented to his mother, and, putting it on with the waist-band tied ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... country life, it would be its ambitious desire to ape the towns, converting the ease and abandon of a village, into the formality and stiffness that render children in the clothes of grown people so absurdly ludicrous." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... came in this morning," continued Mrs Winn, "quite excited about her invitation. She wanted to know what I meant to wear. Julia's so absurdly frivolous, she thinks as much of her dress as a girl of sixteen. 'At our age, my dear Julia,' I said to her, 'we need not trouble ourselves about that. You may depend on it, no one will notice what we have on. For myself, I shall put on my Paisley shawl and my thickest boots. ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... feelings correctly during their conference in the parlour. At dinner, she had seen in him merely a pleasant, quiet-spoken old man, a typical "hick" farmer, who wore baggy, absurdly large clothing—"for the sake of his circulation," he said—and whose appearance in no way corresponded to his reputation as a learned psychologist and investigator of crime. Now, however, she responded warmly to his charm, felt ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... of the story and the euphonious name, made confusion worse confounded by transferring the hero to a distant region and identifying him with Manabozho, a fantastic divinity of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft's volume, absurdly entitled "The Hiawatha Legends," has not in it a single fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois deity Aronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his comrades form the staple of its contents. But it is to this collection that we ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... this out to the Count and Tagrag, and both of them wondered how the Editor of that tremendous Flare-up should get such information; and both agreed that the Baron, who still piqued himself absurdly on his play, would be vastly annoyed by seeing me preferred thus to himself. We read him the paragraph, and preciously angry he was. "Id is," he cried, "the tables" (or "de DABELS," as he called them),—"de ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on and off for about a month over this dog. The dad thought the mater absurdly sentimental, and the mater thought the dad unnecessarily vindictive. Meanwhile the dog grew ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... anecdotes in worthless missionary and Sunday School books, have gone far into the opposite extreme, and have been wont to regard the Indian as the Noble Savage who never forgets a kindness, who is ever ready to return good for evil, and who is so absurdly credulous as to look upon the pale-faces as the natural friends and benefactors of his species. Until within the last few years, no pen has ventured to write impartially of the Indian character, and no one has attempted ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... poor young man too seriously," she went on: "these Mexicans are absurdly demonstrative, ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... allowing just enough, and not too much, for the gall of private, political, and popular enmity. He is equally bound to remember and account, often on the adverse side, for inherent contradictions in his hero's own moral nature. While he knows it would be absurdly unjust to accept the verdict of Ralegh's jealous and envious world on his intentions, he has to beware of construing malicious persecution as equivalent to proof ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Thoughts or Sentiments are to be found in this Performance, we meet only with old ones absurdly expressed. Dryden said that Ben Johnson was every where to be traced in the Snow of the Ancients. We may say that Malloch is every where to be traced in the Puddle of the Moderns. Instead of selecting the Beauties, he has pick'd out whatever is despicable in Shakespeare, ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... the fragments of bacon, there were sodden biscuits and a broken-nosed pitcher holding molasses. A cup of roiled coffee stood ready poured beside each plate, and that was the breakfast upon which Joe cast his curious eyes. It seemed absurdly inadequate to the needs of two strong men, accustomed as Joe was to four eggs at a meal, with the stays of life which went ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the highest way. Now, for instance, if he felt all her fineness as—as we do, I don't believe he'd be willing to appear before her just like that." The father of the gods wore a damask tablecloth of a pale golden hue and a classic pattern; his arms were bare, and rather absurdly white; on his feet a pair of lawn- tennis shoes had a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is what makes King Lear or Faust or Brand great: and that is neither entirely nor mainly simplicity or beauty or truth or form. But my object is to emphasize qualities for which Greek is exceptional, and though some critics may have talked of the beauty of Greek literature till beauty was absurdly supposed to be its chief or only quality, they were right to recognize the prominence of beauty there, and though truth is a mark of the greatest writing in all languages, it is more universal in Greek than in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... what we should call "herb-doctors" to-day. Their insignificant infusions lost credit after a time; their absurdly complicated mixtures excited contempt, and their nauseous prescriptions provoked loathing and disgust. A simpler and bolder practice found welcome in Germany, depending chiefly on mineral remedies, mercury, antimony, sulphur, arsenic, and the use, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... while he can own a tongue to answer back. Ah! wretched slug, would you devour my tender opening leaves? Ugh! I cannot touch the slimy thing. Where has my trowel gone? I wish my ears had never heard his name,—Luttrell; a pretty name, too; but we all know how little is in that. I feel absurdly disappointed; and why? Because it is decreed that a man I never have known I never shall know. I doubt my brain is softening. But why has my tent been pitched in such a lonely spot? And why did he say he'd come? ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... tendency to its highest point of development. Nowhere else is the struggle for life so fierce; nowhere else is the enemy so goaded by hunger and thirst to desperate measures. It is a place for internecine warfare Hence, all desert plants are quite absurdly prickly. The starving herbivores will attack and devour under such circumstances even thorny weeds, which tear or sting their tender tongues and palates, but which supply them at least with a little food and moisture: so the plants are ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... the master explained to us how nearly allied many of the Latin and Greek roots were to our familiar English words, I feel assured that so interesting and valuable a department of instruction would not have been neglected. But our memories were strained by being made to say off "by heart," as it was absurdly called, whole batches of grammatical rules, with all the botheration of irregular verbs and suchlike. So far as I was concerned, I derived little benefit from my High School teaching, except that I derived ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... said, very kindly, "don't alarm yourself so absurdly. I have not the honor of Mr. Bruce's confidence; and if I had, how could I tell him of an affair where I have been most to blame? I'll speak to Foster; he must not show his disappointment even before Uncle Henry. You will be quite safe, you see. But, mind, I won't allow any one to frighten or ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... modern Venus, a creation of the modiste rather than of the sculptor; though hips and bosom were developed extravagantly, the long waist was absurdly small; but no token of ill health from the tight lacing appeared in the irreproachable shape, the well-turned arms and the countenance which was unmarred in a single lineament; the movements were not strictly ladylike, they were ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... editorials on a great variety of topics, excelled by no journal in Europe except the London "Times." It gives out two editions daily, the evening one about the size of the New York "Nation;" and it has all the telegraphic news. It is absurdly old-grannyish, and is malevolent in its pretended conservatism and impartiality. Yet it circulates over forty thousand copies, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Slim and straight and absurdly small, in trim shirt waists, big sombreros tilted over our heads, we bounced along on the wagon, trying to look as mature and dignified as our ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... origin of animal forms, and was led into the idea of the transformation of species and so into a theory of evolution, which in some important respects anticipated modern ideas. He definitely, though at times absurdly, conceived the production of existing species by the modification of their predecessors, and he plainly accepted one of the fundamental maxims of modern geology—that the structure of the globe must be studied in the light of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... firm belief in the efficacy of the "almighty penny," as a circulating medium. He took care that, so far as it was practicable, nothing should be sold for more than a penny. A bowl of porridge, that might satisfy a hungry man for breakfast, was to be had for what Montague Tigg would call this "absurdly low figure." A plate of potatoes, an egg, or a cup of coffee, cost no more. The very novelty of the thing drew thousands to the cooking depot who had no economical purpose to serve. They were more than satisfied. Many who came, like ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... would be necessary to procure another weapon before proceeding with his purpose ... ten dollars, perhaps fifteen; revolvers were highly priced in the turbulent distant wild. Could he afford to lose that amount from his slender store of dollars? Intact it was absurdly inadequate. He debated the choice—on one hand the peril of gambling unarmed, on the other his desperate need for money. Once more he considered Clare: in the end his arrogance of manhood brought a decision—he would preserve the money for play. He was, he thought insolently of himself, quick ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... out?" Dan asked, feeling safe on that subject, and appeared to listen to the details of the road with interest; but all the time the shrewd hazel eyes were upon me, drawing rapid conclusions, and I began to feel absurdly anxious to know their verdict. That was not to come before bedtime; and only those who knew the life of the stations in the Never-Never know how much was depending on the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... thought it worth a Serious Enquiry, whether or no Particles of Matter, each of them sing'y Insensible, and therefore small enough to be capable of being such Minute Particles as the Atomists both of old and of late have (not absurdly) called Corpuscula Coloris, may not yet consist each of them of divers yet Minuter Particles, betwixt which we may conceive little Commissures where they Adhere to one another, and, however, may not be Porous enough to be, at least in some degree, Pervious to the unimaginably ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... disturb you there, and you'll have fifteen thousand books all catalogued within easy reach. There's a private staircase too. You can breakfast in your room and slip down in your dressing gown if you want to." She laughed. My spirits took a turn upwards as absurdly as they had ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... applicable only to such portions of Ireland as the lord-lieutenant should proclaim to be disturbed. The reserved force of Irish constabulary was to be increased from four hundred to six hundred men—a feature of the scheme so absurdly inadequate as to expose its authors to ridicule. From this paltry reserve his excellency was to send forces into the proclaimed districts. This force would be paid out of the district it was sent to protect—a most salutary arrangement, as giving the small farmers and clergy an interest ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... peculiarities of construction which would injure a play written for our stage but were perfectly well-fitted for that very different stage,—a stage on which again some of the best-constructed plays of our time would appear absurdly faulty. Or take the charge of improbability. Shakespeare certainly has improbabilities which are defects. They are most frequent in the winding up of his comedies (and how many comedies are there in the world which end satisfactorily?). ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... of the day. You may go to a music shop at midday to buy a sonata, and find, if you are a girl, that you have committed a crime. The intercourse between young people outside their homes is hedged round with convention. German titles of address are so absurdly formal that Germans laugh at them themselves. Their ceremonies in connection with anniversaries and family events bristle with convention, and offer pitfalls at every step to the stranger or the blunderer. It is true that men do not dress for dinner every day, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... so glad," said Ronald. "And she talks so oddly—Joe's—Miss Thorn's aunt. Could you tell me, if it is not a rude question, why so many people here are never certain of anything? It strikes me as so absurdly ridiculous, you know. She said yesterday that 'perhaps, if I rang the bell, she could send a message.' And the man at the hotel this morning had no postage stamps, and said that perhaps if I went to the General Post Office I might be able ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford |
