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More "Absurdity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right and to the left, and then retired. I mean no disrespect to that prince in recalling those circumstances; no doubt, he acted upon the suggestion of others, and perhaps, also, under a sincere emotion on witnessing the enthusiasm of those outside; but that could not cure the original absurdity of recognizing as a representative audience, clothed with the national functions of recognizing himself, a chance gathering of passengers through a single street, between whom and any mob from his own stables and kitchens there could be no essential difference ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... 3. Here she made a speech criticising the women of New York City for having gone so actively into partisan politics during the recent campaign, although none of the parties advocated giving them the right of suffrage, and pointed out the absurdity of hoping for "good government" from any party until it was reinforced by the votes of women. The speech created something of a sensation, and when she reached home a reporter was waiting for her, to whom she gave an interview which intensified ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... galloping hoofs. Though the moon was nearly full and the treeless landscape was bare of any kind of cover, he could not make out the horseman who was evidently passing him and going in the same direction. At first he thought it was some one who was making a detour to avoid him. Then he smiled at the absurdity of the guess and concluded that he himself was off the trail. This conclusion was confirmed a little later when two other travellers, announcing themselves to the ear as the first one had, and also, like the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... see a firmer footing established between them; and all former animosities wiped out forever. These and other like sentiments called forth loud applause, the band playing "The Star Spangled Banner." Speech followed toast and song until the hours wore on unheeded. Lest it might be considered an absurdity, we will not say how many toasts were actually made—not in water, either, on this occasion. The strongest proof of this fact was found in the dozens of empty bottles lying scattered in profusion upon sideboards, tables and floors, the following morning, as servants looked on ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... comparison with some of the craft lying in the Hole she looked little more than a mere boat, and the idea of actually going to sea and attempting serious work in such a cockle-shell struck me as little short of an absurdity. But that feeling wore off a bit as we closed with her; and the next thing to attract my attention was the great beauty of her outline. She sat very low upon the water; had an abnormally long, overhanging ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... it for the appointed number of days, until the moment when, crazily, through the hole which she digs with a hatchet in the middle of the skull, she absorbs the sleep which stupefies her and grants her oblivion for a given period. And here again we see absurdity and madness. Why does she fix that period at so many days? Why should one victim ensure her a hundred and twenty days of sleep and another a hundred and twenty-five? What insanity! The calculation is mysterious and of course mad; but the fact remains ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... had been accomplished? Carrington, the judge, Yancy, Cavendish—the four men who might have worked together to some purpose had widely separated themselves; and here was the duel, the very climax of absurdity. He resumed his dark corner and waited another hour. Still no Carrington, and Yancy and Cavendish had not come up ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... must tread here with the greatest circumspection. It is a dangerous thing to set up for a wit. There is inherent to it a certain touch of absurdity which is catching, and we should be warned by the example of some ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... to the thin beard, which sprouts tufty from both rami of the chin, as in the purely nervous temperament of Europe; and doubtless the mustachios, if the latter were not mostly wanting, would be similarly treated. Whatever absurdity in hair may be demanded by the trichotomists and philopogons of Europe, I can at once supply it to any extent from Africa—gratis. Gentlemen remarkable by a raie, which as in the Scotch terrier begins above the eyes and runs down the back, should ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... year. Some have ignored my condition and laughed because of the impossibility of getting Swaraj anyhow within one year. Others have spelt the 'if' in capitals and suggested that if 'ifs' were permissible in argument, any absurdity could be proved to be a possibility. My proposition however is based on a mathematical calculation. And I venture to say that true Swaraj is a practical impossibility without due fulfilment of my conditions. Swaraj means a state such that ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... invading his individual being? in a word, though Malcolm put it in no such definite shape: Why should a fisher lad find himself in danger of falling in love with the daughter of a marquis? Why should such a thing, seeing the very constitution of things rendered it an absurdity, be yet ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... generally reckon on a handful! "Childe Harold" was vexed at galloping on a different strip of turf to his companions, and delivered himself of seven buck-jumps successively. Kate, quite at her ease, was repressing his efforts to get his head down, with the same smile on her face that some absurdity of Harry's had provoked; but just as she began to tire a bit, and fancy her hat was loosening, "Childe Harold," who might then, perhaps, have had one conquering buck, as suddenly gave it up, in the fatuous way a horse will, when he is nearest success, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... with a very Highland accent, 'See such pretty goats!' Then he whistled, WHU! and made them jump. Little did he conceive what Doctor Johnson was. Here now was a common ignorant Highland clown imagining that he could divert, as one does a child, DR SAMUEL JOHNSON! The ludicrousness, absurdity, and extraordinary contrast between what the fellow fancied, and the reality, was truly comick. It grew dusky; and we had a very tedious ride for what was called five miles; but I am sure would measure ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... beginning as well as without end. Else, how could the plural of the word be used, and how could Scripture speak of "the aions" and "the aions of the aions" (i.e., "the ages," and "the ages of the ages")? There can be no plural to "eternity," and it is surely an absurdity to talk about "the eternities" and "the eternities of the eternities." And yet the translators, in some instances have deliberately imported into the word [Greek: aion] the meaning of everlastingness, while excluding it ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... however, are entitled to some indulgence from the reader, when they occur in a work of real genius. Those, who do not strive at excellence, will seldom fall into absurdity; as he, who is contented to walk, is ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... a very sufficient hatred for the party, but with no detestation at all of the proceeding. Nay, we are apt to urge our dislike of such measures as a reason for imitating them,—and, by an almost incredible absurdity, because some powers have destroyed their country by their persecuting spirit, to argue, that we ought to retaliate on them by destroying our own. Such are the effects, and such, I fear, has been the intention, of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... these evils." "The dread of being cured of the gout," he further remarks, "was and is still much greater than the dread of having it; and the world seems agreed patiently to submit to this tyrant, lest a worse should come in its room." It is not difficult to account for such absurdity, though it be quite impracticable to palliate it; and what is worse, from its being founded on something more congenial to human nature than even prejudice, it is almost impossible to remove it. A single quotation more from the same author, so much in repute among ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... it is a small thing. People privileged to receive Punch's Almanack through the post will not quibble over a half-penny. But it is evident that a system which embodies an arrangement that needs only to be stated to have its absurdity demonstrated, wants ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... at the absurdity of the situation. 'Sing Sing is a first-class, up-to-date penitentiary, with all modern improvements, and a ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... of Sakya having lived among them since about the commencement of the Christian era, is probably confined to Nepal, and other remote parts, where no means of knowing the contrary exists. Such an absurdity could scarcely pass among actual observers, however degraded in understanding, and in Thibet the Lama of Lassa is probably considered as ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... are never weary of analyzing their sentiments. Her flowing style, so pleasant to read, carries us swiftly and easily through her dissertations in print, before we have time to tire of them. On the stage such colloquies soon appear lengthy and unnatural. The climax of absurdity is reached in Flaminio, where we find the adventurer expatiating to the man of the world on "the divinity ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... nothing better to do, I'll try to show the absurdity of it. A man, so far as he concerns this discussion, consists of a certain quantity of bones, with muscles and tendons capable of setting ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... as it was called, was indeed marked by all the features of absurdity in the delusion, ferocity in the popular excitement, and destruction along the path of its progress, which belonged to the witchcraft proceedings here, and shows that any people, given over to the power of contagious passion, may be swept by ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... wearisome and out of place. Yet such is the custom of the country, and to such fulsome flattery do the language and common usage lend themselves. Countess Orsetti, therefore, is not responsible for this absurdity. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... for the talent of this conjurer, which they endeavoured to ridicule in all companies, where his surprising art was the subject of discourse; not that they had sense and discernment enough to perceive the absurdity of his pretensions, but affected a singularity of opinions, with a view of insulting the inferior understandings of those who were deceived by such ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... made of the prevalence of duelling. Addison, Swift, Steele, and other writers, employed their powerful pens in reprobation of it. Steele especially, in the "Tatler" and "Guardian," exposed its impiety and absurdity, and endeavoured, both by argument and by ridicule, to bring his countrymen to a right way of thinking. [See "Spectator," Nos. 84. 97, and 99; and "Tatler," Nos. 25, 26, 29, 31, 38, and 39; and "Guardian," No. 20.] His comedy of "The Conscious ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... gentleman made the statement that every prostitute, without exception, was diseased at one time or another. If venereal disease exists among prostitutes to the extent of 100 per cent., then how can it exist to a greater extent among innocent, virtuous wives? And to still further emphasize the absurdity of the above statement, I will tell you that the extent of venereal disease among married women is believed by careful non-sensational venereologists not ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... the revolver in his pocket and seized the handle of the door, preparing to jump out, in spite of the absurdity of ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... explain it all to him,—all that she thought upon the subject. She could not say that the interference of any domestic between such a one as John Gordon and his love,—between him and her if she were happy enough to be his love,—would be an absurdity too foolish to be considered. They, that happy two, would be following the bent of human nature, and would speak no more than a soft word to the old woman, if a soft word might avail anything. Their love, ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Shakespeare himself by no means always succeeded. There is often an affectation in his lighter love-scenes which destroys the impression of sincerity. Even in life one may see how at any time the note of sentiment may be turned to absurdity by the least discordant element. The lover whose tender expressions are wholly pleasing to his lady may become an object of ridicule before an uninvited audience. Everyone can remember some occasion when a whole company of persons, wistfully alluding to a recent death, has suddenly ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... disaffected. This is very true; but it proves just what I have said, that you have either done too much or too little; and as there lives not, I hope, upon earth, so depraved a courtier that he would load the Catholics with their ancient chains, what absurdity it is, then, not to render their dispositions friendly, when you leave their arms ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... vibrations even reaching the widow lying awake in her cabin. This said that some hundreds of barrels of turpentine had broken loose and were smashing everything below. If any one of them rolled into the furnaces an explosion would follow which would send them all to eternity. That this absurdity was immediately denied by the purser, who asserted with some vehemence that there was not a gallon of turpentine aboard, did not wholly allay the excitement, nor did it stifle the nervous anxiety which had now taken ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... his face, rubbing his two hands together. All the points were made. The letter of the Marquis, in which he told his brother that he was to be married, was shown to him. The concealment of the birth of the boy till the father had made up his mind to come home was urged. The absurdity of his behaviour since he had been at home was described. The singularity of his conduct in allowing none of his family to become acquainted with his wife was pointed out. This was done by the Dean rather than by Lord George, and Lord George, as he heard ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... himself of disgrace by sullying the hands that had branded him, the excommunicated cardinal did not hesitate to call the Pope a heretic, an adulterer, a sanguinary beast of prey. The emperor himself knew Gregory too well to believe such a tissue of absurdity; but he hoped to find others more credulous ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... resolutions of protest against Thorne personally, against his rangers, and his policy, alleging that one and all acted "arbitrarily, arrogantly, unjustly and oppressively in the abuse of their rights and duties." Finally, as a crowning absurdity, the grand jury, at its annual session, overstepping in its zeal the limits of its powers, returned findings against "one Ashley Thorne and Robert Orde, in the pay of the United States Government, for arbitrary exceeding ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... a passing thought, born of weakness and self-distrust, and she brushed it away with the tear that had come with it, and smiled at its absurdity. Her youth was past; with nothing to expect but an old age filled with the small expedients of genteel poverty, there had opened up to her, suddenly and unexpectedly, a great avenue for happiness and usefulness. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Note B, p. 2. This expedient was attended with an insurmountable absurdity. If the majority of the convention could not grant a legal sanction to the establishment they had made, they could never invest the prince of Orange with a just right to ascend the throne; for they could not give what they had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... obscurities. What is meant by the verb write!(40) Does it mean composition and then something else; the former in the first part of the passage, and editing in the second? Rashi explains it of composition throughout, which introduces absurdity. The most obvious interpretation is that which understands the verb of writing in one place, and editing in the second. But it is improbable that the author should have used the same word in different senses, in one and the same passage. ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... like me! If they would only speak to me now and then as they pass me on the stair; but they only stop and laugh to one another, and then they toss their heads; and I can hear them say something about 'upsetting,' and 'mamma's whim, and papa's absurdity.' I'm sure—I'm sure, my dear parents—(for, alas! I have none other, though I dream sometimes that I have, and I feel so happy and delighted, that I always awake crying)—but what was I going to say?—you know I never wrote any letters before, and you will excuse this I know—I could not, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... and though the vibration in it was almost imperceptible, it was sufficient to nullify the ridiculousness of Julian's demeanour as a wearer of sackcloth, and to bring a sudden lump into Rachel's throat. The comical absurdity of his bellicose pride because he had accomplished something which he had sworn to accomplish was extinguished by the absolutely painful sincerity of his final words, which seemed somehow to damage the reputation of Louis. Rachel could feel her emotion increasing, but she ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... d'Antin or M. de Torcy, and some ladies of the King's suite. I am angry to this day when I think of it. The King used often to laugh at my anger on this subject; and, whenever the Elector committed some new absurdity, he used to call to me in the cabinet and ask me, "Well, Madame, what have you to say to that?" I would reply, "All that the Elector does is alike ridiculous." This made the King laugh heartily. The Elector had a Marshal, the Count d'Arco, the ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... you look at it, after a little study of this rational notation. Note also that there is no mathematical absurdity here: the division is logical, and yet the air is perfectly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... way along the edge of the precipice, where the plateau broke sheer off, was ticklish work; and half humorous, half melancholy thoughts went through my mind touching the absurdity of an ex-professor of Topical Linguistics in the University of Michigan being thus employed in path-hunting upon a lonely mountain-top in Mexico. Truly, adversity brings us strange bedfellows; but far stranger are the straits into which ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... created the world in six days, then caused a flood, and put all the animals in an ark, and all the rest of the horrors and nonsense of the Old Testament. And then that Christ ordered everyone to be baptized with water; and we make them believe in all the absurdity and meanness of an Atonement essential to salvation; and then that he rose up into the heavens which do not really exist, and there sat down at the right hand of the Father. We have got used to all this, but really ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... me if I remark, without the least view of finding any fault, that if my words will admit of a bad construction, that construction seems to be the first one which strikes your mind. If you suppose me capable of such an abominable absurdity as to say, that if the man of this town who was born blind should be restored to his sight by some one's anointing his eyes with clay and spittle, and this done in our presence, we could not know it! that we could not know but that the seeing man was a total ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... form of the sixty or more words of which Press constitutes the base, and must a new record be also made for each of the prefixes and suffixes in the thousands of combinations in which they occur? No one believes any such absurdity. ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the Prince of Wales said, they were going to court; it was objected that they ought to say to Carlton House; that the only court is where the king resides. Lady P., with her paltry air of significant learning and absurdity, said, "Oh, Lord! Is there no court in England but the king's? Sure, there are many more! There is the Court of Chancery, the Court of Exchequer, the Court of King's Bench, &c." Don't you love her? Lord Lincoln does ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... rejected, it is too late now to deny that music is conceived by its creators as a language of the emotions and so applied by them. The German philosopher Herbarth sought to reduce the question to an absurdity by expressing surprise that musicians should still believe that feelings could be "the proximate cause of the rules of simple and double counterpoint;" but Dr. Stainer found a sufficient answer by accepting the proposition as put, and directing attention to the fact that the feelings of men having ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to who and what Canidia was, in which scholars have run riot, are conspicuous for absurdity, even among the wild and ridiculous conjectures as to the personages named by Horace in which the commentators have indulged. That some well-known person was the original of Canidia is extremely probable, for professors ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... show Tom how cordially he felt towards him, and his friendly regard seemed of a graver and more thoughtful kind than before. The new one, on the other hand, had no impulse but to laugh at the recollection of Tom's extreme absurdity; and mingled with his amusement there was something slighting and contemptuous, indicative, as it appeared, of his opinion that Mr Pinch was much too far gone in simplicity to be admitted as the friend, on serious and equal terms, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... for all human minds. Reason, whether from an indwelling instinct, or from an innate causality-law, may assert that something supermundane exists, but can know nothing more and nothing further. So we see the absurdity of chattering in our journals and periodicals of the progress of reason. The advance has been only formal, not essential. The formal advance has been in printing, railroads, and such like, in which direction we may easily suppose progression will yet further continue. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... fierce blocking, no defying. And with the cough, the absurdity of the whole affair, striking us simultaneously, left us grinning like a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... there are "general problems common to all classes," says Lagardelle, democracy refuses to take into account the real difference between men, which is that they are divided into economic classes. Here we see the central principle of Socialism exaggerated to an absurdity. Few Socialists, even the most revolutionary, would deny that there are some problems "common to all classes." Indeed, the existence and importance of such problems is the very reason why "State Socialism," of benefit to the masses, but still more to the interest of the capitalists, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... the long past, claiming him, associating itself imperatively with him, asserting, whether he would or no, the actuality and inalienability of its relation to himself. Science might pour scorn on that relation, exposing the absurdity of it both from the moral and physical point of view. But sentiment held other language. And so did that nobler morality which takes its rise in considerations spiritual rather than social and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... "in the light of accepted astronomical theories (which regard our earth as uttterly insignificant compared with the rest of the universe) have pointed out the irrationality and absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all this unimaginable vastness of suns and systems should have any special interest in so pitiful a creature as man, an imperfectly developed inhabitant of one of the smaller planets attached to a second or third rate sun, while that ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... were decidedly less scrupulous than we are now in our ideas on the subject; and we all said freely that as gunpowder destroyed the feudal system, so the capitalist system could not long survive the invention of dynamite. Not that we are dynamitards: indeed the absurdity of the inference shows how innocent we were of any practical acquaintance with explosives; but we thought that the statement about gunpowder and feudalism was historically true, and that it would do the capitalists good ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... motley of night-moths. Above all, the mystery of their tiny slits of eyes, drawn back and up so far that the tight-drawn lids can scarcely open; the mystery of their expression, which seems to denote inner thoughts of a silly, vague, complacent absurdity, a world of ideas absolutely closed to ourselves. And I think as I gaze at them: "How far we are from this Japanese people! how ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... produced by a less or inferior authority, much less by the will or the act of one who, with reference to civil and political rights, was himself a slave. The master might abdicate or abandon his interest or ownership in his property, but his act would be a mere abandonment. It seems to involve an absurdity to impute to it the investiture of rights which the sovereignty alone had power to impart. There is not perhaps a community in which slavery is recognised, in which the power of emancipation and the modes of its ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... this was very great. From being at the very mouth of the furnace, quivering with fear and captive to morbid imaginings, Bacon's dry intonation brought them all back to earth again. They perceived something of the absurdity of ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... descent from a traditional ancestress and a conjectural God. The Works and Days form an attempt to collect and arrange the rules and tabus relating to agriculture. The work of Hesiod as a whole is one of the most valiant failures in literature. The confusion and absurdity of it are only equalled by its strange helpless beauty and its extraordinary historical interest. The Hesiodic system when compared with that of Homer is much more explicit, much less expurgated, infinitely less accomplished and tactful. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... upon. If any friend had been in a painful and ludicrous position (such as when Cardinal Balue in full dress is run away with on horseback, which Scott comments upon as one of a class of situations combining "pain, peril, and absurdity"), I would not remind him of it. Why should I bring back a disagreeable impression to his mind? Besides, it would be more painful than ludicrous to me. I should enter into his feelings rather than into those of the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... control its working," said they. "The cable between England and America passes through Ireland, will be worked by our servants, by people who will look to us as their paymasters, and we are to have no control!" The preposterous absurdity of the notion tickled the entire company. "But if England does not please us, can we not cut the cable? Can we not order our own paid servants to cease transmitting messages, or to transmit only such as have survived the inspection of the accredited officials ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... permit the unlimited issuance of interest-bearing government bonds in order to procure gold, for that national treasury, out of the hoards of the banks, so that these same banks might be able to obtain the gold again from the treasury in return for paper money. The extent to which this sort of absurdity might be carried would depend solely upon the desire of the confederation of finance to have interest-bearing government bonds on which they might issue national bank notes, since the Executive was apparently willing to yield interminably to their greed, ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... from inheriting by daughters? Or, lastly, if that law be of human institution, may it not be enacted in any state, with whatever extent or limitation the legislature shall think fit? For the notion of an unchangeable human law is an absurdity in government, to be believed only by ignorance, and supported by power. From hence it follows, that the children of the late Queen of France, although she had renounced, were as legally excluded from succeeding to Spain, as if the salique law ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... have the bank-notes with him was a contingency; that he would carry about with him two thousand napoleons was an absurdity. And Durkin knew the money had not been deposited—to ascertain that had been part of his day's work. The Prince, of course, was a prodigal and free-handed gentleman—how much of his winnings had already leaked through his careless fingers it was impossible to surmise. Durkin even resented the thought ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... would hardly blame human sacrifices only thus incidentally, more in ridicule than in high moral indignation; he would bring it to prominence the horrible and revolting character of the action much more than its absurdity. Thus ZBXY )DM means most probably, "offerers belonging to the human race." At the same time, even if the expression did mean "sacrificers of men," it would prove nothing regarding regular ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the burglar appeared to acquiesce, for he sank at once into an armchair—an armchair toward which Holland himself was making his way, knowing it to be the most comfortable for an all-night session. Feeling the absurdity of making any point of the matter, however, he contented himself with ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... and worship as divine the most stupid monstrosities ever conceived of! Only tell the masses that St. Luke, St. John, or Mary Magdalen was the author of some absurdity, which, if you or I had originated, they would scoff at, and they will clasp their hands in mute admiration over that ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... origination of capital by "social connexions" (gesellschaftliche Zusammenhaenge) Lassalle (Bastiat-Schultze, 92, 98) exaggerates into the absurdity that no capital was ever saved. This is in part related to his confounding land with capital (103 seq.). On the other hand, P. L. (v. Lilienfeld), Gedanken ueber die Staatswissenschaft der Zukunft (1873), ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... reviewers have in some cases been inclined to treat the chapters on Machines as an attempt to reduce Mr. Darwin's theory to an absurdity. Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr. Darwin; but I must own that I have myself to thank for the misconception, for I felt sure that my intention would be missed, ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... The absurdity of burglars attempting to rob the town poorhouse did not occur to her in panic. She sat up in bed, and proceeded to nudge her husband in ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... see us within their walls, and a few of the worst troops who ever styled themselves soldiers. The impossibility of relief, and the certain prospect of wanting every necessary of life, should your opponents confine their operations to a simple blockade, point out the absurdity of resistance....I am at the head of troops accustomed to success...and so highly incensed at your inhumanity, illiberal abuse, and the ungenerous means employed to prejudice them in the minds of the Canadians, that it is with difficulty I ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... at grips with Germany, sending armies across the Atlantic to fight in Europe. It would have been as impossible for any of us, on that May evening in Lowndes Square, even to imagine such a future, as it was for Macbeth to credit the absurdity that Birnam wood ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... [Footnote 13: The utter absurdity of Dr. Williams's assertion is shown by the fact that on the first and second trials of Mrs. Wharton he affirmed that the violent convulsions, the extreme muscular rigidity, the retentive stomach, seen in the last day of General Ketchum's life ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... But it wouldn't bend right." Sally's truthful nature postpones laughing at the Professor's absurdity; looks at the case on its merits. When she has done justice to this point, she laughs and adds: "What did you ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... held it, and spake not a word. Soon of another tremendous absurdity, wilder and worse than the former we heard. 'Husband,' I say, with a tender solicitude, 'Why have you passed such a foolish decree?' Viciously, moodily, glaring askance at me, 'Stick to your spinning, my mistress,' says he, 'Else you will speedily find it the worse ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Michaud had ridden round the Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and till then considered a chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which would ensure Napoleon's destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the destruction ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... account; and I was told that the quantity of boots, clothing, saltpetre, lead, and tin, which they bring into the country, is very great. I cannot suppose that in ordinary times there would be anything like such a trade as this, at a little place like Wilmington, which shows the absurdity of calling the blockade ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... be able in his turn to order a better kind of beer from the publican and pay a higher price for it. Thus, by some extraordinary process, everybody pays too much for everything, and nevertheless all are enriched in turn. The absurdity of this is easily kept out of sight where the protective duties affect a number of varying and complicated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... of the first page of the translation of Emile by Miss Worthington is a note by Jules Steeg, Depute, Paris, bearing on the above first paragraph and running as follows: "It is useless to enlarge upon the absurdity of this theory, and upon the flagrant contradiction into which Rousseau allows himself to fall. If he is right, man ought to be left without education, and the earth without cultivation. This would not be even the ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Richard went to see his grandfather, and asked if he would allow him to give Miss Wylder a lesson in horseshoeing: she wanted, he said, to be able to shoe Miss Brown—or indeed any horse. Simon laughed heartily at the proposal: it was too great an absurdity to admit ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... like a man of education, and also like a man of extreme sobriety, upon his extravagant theme. He is angry with Swedenborg, as might be expected, for his "absurdities;" but, as to him, there is no chance that he should commit any absurdity, because (p. 6) "he has met with some who have acknowledged the fact of their having come from the dead"—habes confitentem reum. Few, however, are endowed with so much candor; and, in particular, for the honor of literature, it grieves me to find, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... lightning blow of his tail that has given rise to the curious delusion that Unk Wunk can shoot his quills at a distance, as if he were filled with compressed air—which is, of course, a harmless absurdity that keeps people from ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... of the brain I heard him addressing the Rector and protesting against the absurdity, the monstrosity, of the charge—yet still with that recurring agonised glance at me. But my eyes now were on Mr. Rogers; and the buzzing ceased and my brain cleared when he swung round, inviting me to speak. I cannot tell what question he put ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... up at him from their writing as he passed, with faces of surprise and awe, and evidently thinking no more about the absurdity of his sheepskin and his tanned complexion; and he went out with a stunned, confused feeling, as of one who, by a desperate leap, has plunged into a new world. He tried to feel content; but he dare not. All before him was anxiety, uncertainty. He had cut himself adrift; ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... and I have made observations on thousands of children. When this great and living book is more constantly read, the contents of this humble volume may have a better chance of being appreciated; and the utter absurdity of many things palmed upon the public for the education of infants ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... metaphysical impediment in the way of admitting the possibility of falsehood. To the Parmenides, the Sophist stands in a less defined and more remote relation. There human thought is in process of disorganization; no absurdity or inconsistency is too great to be elicited from the analysis of the simple ideas of Unity or Being. In the Sophist the same contradictions are pursued to a certain extent, but only with a view to their resolution. The aim of the dialogue ...
— Sophist • Plato
... Massinger's." Now the words of Gifford's note on the dialogue of which I have already spoken, between the saint and the angel, are these: "What follows is exquisitely beautiful.... I am persuaded that this also was written by Dekker." And seeing that no mortal critic but Kingsley ever dreamed of such absurdity as Kingsley rushes forward to refute, his controversial capacity will probably be regarded by all serious students of poetry or criticism as measurable by the level of his capacity for accurate report of fact or accurate citation ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... newspaper devoted much space to the advocacy of Responsible Government, which for many years constituted the main plank in the Liberal platform. He pointed out the injustice and absurdity of the existing state of things, where the people were beguiled with a mockery of representation in Parliament without having any voice in the nomination of the persons composing the Government of the day. There was no attempt on the part of the official body to distort the real ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Italian grace and wit,—Anne of Austria the Spanish courtesy and romance; the Hotel de Rambouillet had united the two, and introduced the genre precieux, or stately style, which was superb in its origin, and dwindled to absurdity in the hands of Mlle. de Scudery and her valets, before Moliere smiled it away forever. And now that the wars were done, literary society came up again. Madame de Sable exhausted the wit and the cookery of the age in her fascinating entertainments,—pates ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... Slade came to town with his two men, actually sober, and went into a drug-store for a prescription. While waiting for his preparation, twelve shotguns suddenly covered them, and they were ordered to throw up their hands. Slade complied smilingly, but proposed to reason with them as to the absurdity of taking him for ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... which counts 7, on the basis of an Ace or face counting 2, and any lower card, 1. The believers in this doctrine would, therefore, bid a Club from such a hand as Queen, Knave, X, X, X, without any possibility of another trick; or even from Knave, X, X, X, X, X. The absurdity of this becomes obvious when it is remembered that the only real object in bidding a Club or Diamond is to show strength which will justify the partner in declaring one of the three game-going declarations. Any such holding as that mentioned not only does not help any other declaration, ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... the critical. It has been said that an author cannot be at once a first-class critic and a first-class creative artist. To which absurdity I reply: What about William Dean Howells? And what about Henry James, to name no other names? Anyhow, if Swinnerton excels in fiction he also excels in literary criticism. The fact that the literary editor of the Manchester Guardian wrote and asked him ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... summer is of course impossible. Any weather expert will tell you so. Weather Bureau Chief Botts was certain no such absurdity could occur. And he would have been right except for one thing. It ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... the beauty of a woman's hair before you know whether it did not once belong to somebody else.—To expect that your tradespeople will give you long credit if they generally see you in shabby clothes.—To arrive at the age of fifty, and be surprised at any vice, folly, or absurdity your fellow creatures ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,—an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... In a letter to a friend, dated Jan. 16th, 1819, Mr. Kelley said: "The House has to-day disagreed by a small majority, to my favorite bill to abolish imprisonment for debt. I was not disappointed, although at first, a large majority seemed in favor of it. The time will come when the absurdity as well as inhumanity of adding oppression to misfortune will be acknowledged; and if I should live to see that day I shall exult in the consciousness of having early combatted one of the worst prejudices of the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... absurdity of the argument will immediately appear. It depends wholly on the supposition, that the parents are brutes. If they are brutes, we shall instantly cease to contend: if they are men, which we think it not difficult ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... husband? and will he not remonstrate with her, and induce her to use him a little more kindly and reasonably than she does? The Earl's letter is that of an injured and justly provoked man; of a man who loves his wife too well to coerce or quarrel with her, and who thoroughly perceives the absurdity of his position no less than its pain. Yet he does feel the pain bitterly, and he would do anything to ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... they laughed at the absurdity of his assertion, they did not know until long afterward ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... expound decently the myths which made Indra the slayer of a Brahman; the sinner, that is, of the unpardonable sin. In Egypt, too, we study the priestly or philosophic systems by which the clergy strove to strip the burden of absurdity and sacrilege from their own deities. From all these efforts of civilised and pious believers to explain away the stories about their own gods we may infer one fact—the most important to the student of mythology—the fact that myths were not evolved in times ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... who was a year older, and therefore considered himself a man at all events, burst into a loud fit of laughter, in which his companion joined him, at the absurdity of their conversation; of which, although they had spoken in earnest, they were both somewhat conscious. "But I say, old fellow, without any more humbug about love and such like bosh, just look at the dear old craft! how beautifully she sits ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... which stand out as individualities in themselves, that appear on the surface absolutely unrelated. So the caterpillar and the butterfly, to the naive child, seem as far apart as worm and bird. In the case of the frog, the tadpole as a first sketch seems completely an impossible and wild absurdity. Yet we know that there is an orderly progression of events, a propagation of cells, a forward going arrangement of chemical reactions, that results in expansion and intricate complication of the organism. Just what the forces at work in this most mysterious of all natural processes are, has ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... have written it. Moreover he is absolutely without humor, and so he often fails to see the small step that separates the sublime from the ridiculous. In no other way can we explain "The Idiot Boy," or pardon the serious absurdity of "Peter ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... upon it, to inform against her would be far worse than letting any amount of absurdity be talked. I should like to know how you would get over being ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in tones in which, had it not been for the absurdity of the idea, one might have fancied there was almost a spark of satisfaction. "How very, very sad. I wouldn't have had ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three fourths of them were called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. Each new witness only added new testimony to the absurdity of a man's claiming to own another man's property because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the Morgan lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak ones —they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the General, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said the teacher, "the only real fault of these so-called books on Political Economy consists in the absurdity of the title. Correct that, and their value as documents of the times at once becomes evident. For example, we might call them 'Examinations into the Economic and Social Consequences of trying to get along without any Political Economy.' ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and talked of going home by the next steamer; Rashe, far from ready for another sea voyage, called herself ill used, and represented the absurdity of returning on a false alarm. Cilla was staggered, and thought what it would be, if Mr. Calthorp, smoking his cigar at his club, heard that she had fled from his imaginary pursuit. Besides, the luggage ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the semblance of a plot by which the scheme is put into execution. The design once effected, the remainder of the play is given over to a series of loosely connected scenes, ascending to a climax of absurdity, in which the consequences of the original happy thought are followed out with a Swiftian verisimilitude of piquant detail and a Rabelaisian license of uproarious mirth. It rests with the audience to take the whole as pure extravaganza, or as a reductio ad absurdum or playful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the event of a doubtful and bloody battle, in which defeat must be ruinous, and victory, if obtained at all, must cost us many thousands of our best soldiers. Let any one force himself for a moment to conceive the French seriously believing such a mass of absurdity; and the inference must be that such a people must be prepared to believe anything. They might fancy their own country to abound not only with Napoleons, but with dragons and centaurs, and "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... legs dangle uncertainly towards the dais, and ill that a crown settle down over the tip of the nose. And the very fact that for quite inadequate kings men's hands do leap to the salute, instinctively, does but make us, on reflection, the more conscious of the whole absurdity. Even than a great man on a throne we can, when we reflect, imagine something—ah, not something better perhaps, but something more remote from absurdity. Let us say that Umberto's father was great, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... lively wish to please, that the ordinary Polynesian chooses and presents his gifts. A plain social duty lies before him, which he performs correctly, but without the least enthusiasm. And we shall best understand his attitude of mind, if we examine our own to the cognate absurdity of marriage presents. There we give without any special thought of a return; yet if the circumstance arise, and the return be withheld, we shall judge ourselves insulted. We give them usually without affection, and almost never with a genuine desire to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... idea of a personal God, but the idea of God in general. For even the pantheistic idea of God, which he had formerly treated with a certain polite reserve, finds in his eyes even less favor than the theistic. He says: "If the absurdity is already great enough in theism, it is possibly still greater in pantheism, which moreover has always played a great role in philosophy;" and, "Christianity has but injured the spiritual and material progress of mankind." In agreement ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... The whole house vibrated to the shutting of his door at Good-night time. Yet when Bartie came down in the morning, late, and more morose than ever, Vera's mouth made as if it kissed some visionary image of the poor thing's absurdity. She didn't believe for one minute in his cancer. It was an excuse for the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... angle, the talk didn't run smoothly. Because, precisely as the half-back forgot his terrors and the hopes that had prompted them, and the absurdity of both—precisely as he began to feel, after all, that it was a very superb and grown-up thing to be a familiar friend of a married woman with a limousine and a respectful chauffeur, and wonderful ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... optimism would arm himself with social pity. There is no social pity in "Candide." Voltaire, whose light touch on familiar institutions opens them and reveals their absurdity, likes to remind us that the slaughter and pillage and murder which Candide witnessed among the Bulgarians was perfectly regular, having been conducted according to the laws and usages of war. Had Voltaire lived to-day ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... of commercial expediency for packing ground coffee, it could not be defended as a quality principle; also that plate-grinders produced a more efficient drawing granulation than roller grinders, and that the idea that the steel-cut process eliminates dirt was an absurdity, as "the finest ground coffee is not dirt but coffee in its most efficient drawing condition." He added, "I have paid no attention to chaff removal in these tests as the uselessness of such removal has been repeatedly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... business, worry, over-study, too much social duties, or excesses of any kind. The patient must have confidence in the physician, and he must be attentive to the complaints of the patient. It is the height of foolishness and absurdity for a physician to tell such a patient before he has thoroughly examined him or her that the troubles are imaginary. I believe that is not prudent in the majority of cases. I have heard physicians talk that way to such patients. I thought, what fools! The patient ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the most ridiculous lover of his folly. It is remarkable that though Cloten makes so poor a figure in love, he is described as assuming an air of consequence as the Queen's son in a council of state, and with all the absurdity of his person and manners, is not without shrewdness in his observations. So true is it that folly is as often owing to a want of proper sentiments as to a want of under- standing! The exclamation of the ancient critic, 'O Menander and Nature, which ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... acquaintance with the natural history of this harmless animal has now exploded these fables. Our British porcupine, the innocuous Hedgehog, has long been the object of unceasing persecution, from the popular belief that it bites and sucks the udders of cows, an absurdity sufficiently contradicted by the smallness of its mouth. In like manner, the Goat-sucker is a persecuted bird, since, as its name implies, it has been thought to suck the teats of goats and other animals; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... important but very nice question. We have now before us the whole of the particulars of the treaties in question, but we wish to make our reply valuable by giving the best legal construction on some disputable points. This, however, is only another of those daily evidences which we have of the absurdity and inconvenience of a great commercial country like this attempting to regulate its laws and transactions by treaties, which, however convenient they may be when made, may, by the ordinary course of events, be ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... as much as you have done, perhaps I may not be obliged to shut my eyes at all half a year hence. I have been very much entertained by your story of Carolina and her aged father; it made me laugh heartily, and I am particularly glad to find you so much alive upon any topic of such absurdity, as the usual description of a heroine's father. You have done it full justice, or, if anything be wanting, it is the information of the venerable old man's having married when only twenty-one, and being ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... this moment, to know what she thought of it. But she stepped very lightly and easily, and I am not sure I ever enjoyed a waltz so much. The blue light—that bewitching, intoxicating blue light—paled on us as we danced. The grey conquered it, and I felt that when we looked at each other the whole absurdity would strike us, and I should never be able to face these lovers again without a furious blush. As the day crept on, I stole a glance at Tubal Cain. He was scraping away desperately—with his eyes shut. For us the dance had become weariness, ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Some scouted the absurdity of these acts—alleging that they sprung from personal enmity, or originated in the mob-patriotism of the leperos. It was not so, as we afterwards learned; the government of the country— or, at all events, several of its prominent members—countenanced ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... be correlated with the life of the home and the farm—a school which would be in the highest degree cultural by being consciously useful and obviously practical. There sharp spats of applause from the useless hands of Newton Bronson gave the final touch of absurdity to a situation which Jim had felt to be ridiculous all through. Had it not been for Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!" stinging him to do something outside the round of duties into which he had fallen, had it not been ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... pinnacle in the eyes of the younger girl. Her poverty, her inferior position in the school, only made her more interesting to the warm-hearted Bessie, who passionately resented any slight offered to her friend. It was in vain that Miss Rylance took Bessie to task, and demonstrated the absurdity of this childish fancy for a young person whose future sphere of life must be necessarily remote from that of a Hampshire squire's daughter. Bessie despised this ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... and Arab. Fil, with the article Al-Fil, whence the Greek {Greek letters} the suffix—as being devoted to barbarous words as Obod-as (Al Ubayd), Aretas (Al-Haris), etc. Mr. Isaac Taylor (The Alphabet i. 169), preserves the old absurdity of "eleph-ant or ox-like (!) beast of Africa." Prof. Sayce finds the word al-ab (two distinct characters) in line 3, above the figure of an (Indian) elephant, on the black obelisk of Nimrod Mound, and suggests an ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... with an inward laugh as to the absurdity of my ever wishing to cause the death of this harmless boy, whom I hastened to assure of my friendship and even of my protection; begging him, in return, to convey me in his father's ship to my own country. I need hardly say that I took special ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... appeared to have on their minds was one of vague amusement. The notion that any clergyman should have the 'impudence'—(this was the word used by Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay)—to pause in the service because people came in late, touched the very apex of absurdity. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... dispute. As it is, the ablest scholar must feel cautious about expressing a decided opinion; for the whole fabric of his argument may be overturned any day by the unearthing of a fragment of pottery or a sculptured head. Years ago, it was easy to demonstrate the absurdity of any theory of polychrome decoration. The few who dared to believe that the Greek temple was not in every part as white as the original marble subjected themselves to the pitying scorn of their fellows. Only the discoveries of recent years have brought proof ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... command of a pirate-brig one day and an officer of a French man-o'-war the next. I might just as reasonably have suspected the Vestale herself of piracy; and that, I well knew, would be carrying my suspicions to the uttermost extremity of idiotic absurdity. I had, in short—so I finally decided—discovered a mare's nest, and upon the strength of it had been upon the very verge of proclaiming myself a hopeless idiot and making myself the perpetual laughing-stock ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to me that it was my friend Albert who spoke to me. "Very odd," thought I, "that he should have found me out!" And again I fell into the absurdity of imagining that because I had put on a conspicuous domino, I was sure to be recognised. "What can he want with me? We must be in some difficulty, some unexpected one, that is certain." Such were my reflections as I slowly descended the steps, occasionally pausing for a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... in groups, because groups produce the friction that generates light. Competition with fools is not bad—fools teach the imbecility of repeating their performances. A man learns from this one, and that; he lops off absurdity, strengthens here and bolsters there, until in his soul there grows up an ideal, which he materializes in stone or bronze, on canvas, by spoken word, or with the twenty-odd ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... New York speak of the exhilaration of its air, and I can but repeat their testimony. After the first few days the idea of going to bed became an absurdity. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... Ossian's or Macpherson's can surely be of little consequence, yet, in order to prove their worthlessness, Mr. W. has expended many pages in the controversy. Tantaene animis? Can great minds descend to such absurdity? But worse still: that he may bear down every argument in favor of these poems, he triumphantly drags forward a passage, in his abomination with which he expects the reader to sympathize. It is the beginning of the epic poem 'Temora.' 'The blue waves of Ullin roll in light; the green hills are ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Blaine, on March 27, 1863, Mr. Laird was loudly cheered in the House of Commons when he declared that "the institutions of the United States are of no value whatever, and have reduced the name of liberty to an utter absurdity." ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... every moment that the wellbeing of the members can only result from that of the whole body" (ch. xv.) To say of such a doctrine as this, that it is to invite every individual to make himself happy after his own will and fashion, and to pull down the barriers of the selfish appetites, is the very absurdity of philosophic prejudice. It is for us to look at Holbach's ethical doctrine in its widest practical application, and if we place ourselves at a social point of view, we cannot but perceive that the principle laid down in the words that we have ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... hole in its ear, in order that that grandson of yours may be surfeited with goose liver, and indulge in patrician amours. Am I to be a living anatomy that his pope's stomach may shake with fat."[23] Alluding to the absurdity of the prayers generally offered up, he uses language worthy of a Christian. "You ask for vigour, but rich dishes and fat sausages prevent the gods from granting your behest. You ask what your fleshly mind suggests. What avails ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Miss Smith, as he certainly would if he were able. I tried to quiet him by offering to interview her myself. Think of me in a district school-house, talking to the teacher about the diameter of a grindstone! The absurdity must have struck my uncle. You should have seen the look he gave me over his spectacles, as he said, 'You, who know nothing, except ball games, and boat races, and raising the devil generally, interview a girl ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... threshold, and then we crept up; not to the uppermost landing, where the light, when the door was opened, must betray us, but to that immediately below it. There we took our stand in the angle of the stairs and waited, the King, between amusement at the absurdity of our position and anxiety lest we should betray ourselves, going off now and again into stifled laughter, from which he vainly strove to ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Fry! Why go to Newgate? Why Preach to poor rogues? And wherefore not begin With Carlton, or with other houses? Try Your head at harden'd and imperial sin. To mend the people 's an absurdity, A jargon, a mere philanthropic din, Unless you make their betters better:—Fy! I thought you had more religion, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... this sense also we may interpret without absurdity the apostolic declaration when the blessed Apostle Paul says: "Being ready to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled" [II Cor. 10:6]. Whence also the Lord himself bids the guests to be brought first to ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... pocket for matches and as the flame spurted before his face I saw the corners of his mouth betrayed a pucker of amusement. I suddenly felt the absurdity of my position. I had been led to expose myself to ridicule. I might have expected it after the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the people; by teaching them their proper value in society; by instructing them in their moral and civil duties. Let them not labor under that humiliating and slavish error, that the landlord is everything, and themselves nothing; but let the absurdity be removed, and each party placed upon the basis ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... have even been compelled to manipulate in the matter of time! I must not only defeat and annihilate the minions of Moyen, but must work from a mathematical absurdity, so that at the moment of impact that moment itself must become part of the past, sufficiently remote to remove the monsters at such distance from the earth that not even the mighty genius of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... become so," said I; "the good sense of the people of England will never permit them to commit such an absurdity." ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and answered the questions with the plain intention of making no one laugh. This disgusted everybody, the expected absurdity did not materialize, no one could laugh, and the good friar never pardoned him for having defrauded the hopes of the class and disappointed his own prophecies. But who would expect anything worth while to come from a head ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... response to my programme of non-co-operation Swaraj would be attained in one year. Some have ignored my condition and laughed because of the impossibility of getting Swaraj anyhow within one year. Others have spelt the 'if' in capitals and suggested that if 'ifs' were permissible in argument, any absurdity could be proved to be a possibility. My proposition however is based on a mathematical calculation. And I venture to say that true Swaraj is a practical impossibility without due fulfilment of my conditions. Swaraj means a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... it necessary while I insist on the value of all these seemingly childish means when in the hands of a noble painter, to assert also their futility and even absurdity if employed by no exalted power. I think the error has commonly been on the side of scorn, and that we reject much in our foolish vanity, which if wiser and more earnest we should delight in. But two points it is very necessary to note in ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... which, of course, would be frank and conversational to a degree impossible under any other conditions, and free from the dodges of the expert vote manipulator altogether, would, for example, in the case of several candidates of the same or similar political colours, do away with the absurdity of the split vote. The jurymen of the same political hue could settle that affair among themselves before contributing ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... I should so long have announced my lord Egremont to you for a master, without his announcing himself to you.—it was no fault of mine; every thing here is a riddle or an absurdity. Instead of coming forth secretary of state, he went out of town, declaring he knew nothing of the matter. On that, it was affirmed that he had refused the seals. The truth is, they have never been offered to him in form. He had been sounded, and I believe was not ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... argument current among the protectionists of the United States that was not current in France at the time Bastiat wrote the Sophismes Economiques. Nor was there one current in his time that is not performing its bad office among us. Hence his demonstrations of their absurdity and falsity are equally applicable to our time and country as to his. They may have even greater force among us if they thoroughly dispel the notion that Protection is an "American system." Surely they cannot do ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... possibly be correct. "To suppose, that He, who is the Fountain of all wisdom, could have been the Author of such inevitable disorder,—a kind of disorder which must ever keep the axe at the root of that unity for which He prayed,—is not only an absurdity, but an opinion equally repudiated by all parties." "It is manifest," therefore, "that whatever may prove itself to be THE form of ministry, established and authorized by Jesus Christ, every other must be altogether void of such authority, and ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... was as if an angel had made a poor human joke! He was much too bewildered to feel hurt, especially as he was aware of no committed absurdity. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... contemporary with its actual discovery by Herut[a]t[a]f. It is not necessary to inquire here whether the word "find" (in Egyptian qem) means a genuine discovery or not, but it is clear that those who had the papyrus copied saw no absurdity or impropriety in ascribing the text to the period of Men-kau-R[a]. Another text, which afterwards also became a chapter of the Book of the Dead, under the title "Chapter of not letting the heart of the deceased be driven away from him ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... precisely as we see them now. But so soon as they perceived that the earth is undergoing processes of development and has undergone such processes in the past, it was reasonable, though at first painful, to conclude that on this point they had been mistaken. Yet as we recognise the absurdity of the supposition that, because fruits and trees grow, and were not made in a single instant as we know them, therefore there is no Supreme Being, so may we justly reject as absurd the same argument, enlarged in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... speaking, Mr. Belford, is too fervent a flame for female minds to manage: a light that but in few of their hands burns steady, and often hurries the sex into flight and absurdity. Like other extremes, it is hardly ever durable. Marriage, which is the highest state of friendship, generally absorbs the most vehement friendships of female to female; and that whether the ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... cor. "To those whose taste in elocution is but little cultivated."—Kirkham cor. "They considered they had but a sort of gourd to rejoice in."—Bennet cor. "Now there was but one such bough, in a spacious and shady grove."—Bacon cor. "Now the absurdity of this latter supposition will go a great way towards making a man easy."—Collier cor. "This is true of mathematics, with which taste has but little to do."—Todd cor. "To stand prompter to a pausing yet ready comprehension."—Rush cor. "Such an obedience ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... shot!" he burst out suddenly, with a plaintive twang. Then he grinned. The boy still in him had prompted the absurdity. And the rough warrior had laughed at it. Boy and warrior faced each other, either surprised that the other existed. The boy flushed resentfully at the veteran's contemptuous grunt. His eyes still had the boy's naively inquisitive greeting to the world before him. Next, quite abruptly, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... distinguish him from other white men. The stupidity attributed to barbarians, and the vacant laughter, with which they receive the announcement of new ideas in a foreign tongue, would be ascribed, by experienced teachers, to the absurdity of such a medium ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... of entailed power is a thing so obvious that one marvels it has escaped the recognition of mankind until yesterday. But stay! Men have always seen its monstrous absurdity—hence the rack. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... pretended revelations of Chalais while under torture, of having intrigued to procure the death of her husband, and her own marriage with his brother. To this accusation the Spanish Princess disdainfully replied that "she should have gained so little by the exchange, that the absurdity of the charge must suffice for its refutation;" but her haughty and indignant retort produced no effect upon her judges. She was commanded thenceforward to reside exclusively at the palaces of the Louvre and St. Germain; without the privilege of receiving a single guest, not even excepting the ambassador ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the observer, and as this produces a similar image on our retina, we accept it though we know it is only a make-believe; it serves its purpose by giving us an impression on our retina which we have learnt to interpret as representing that landscape, but such a picture would indeed be a marvel of absurdity to a being who had perfect sight, such as we have already referred to, and who could appreciate parallel rays; in such a vision there would be no perspective, no ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... plead for mercy, as the reward of their own righteousness, are guilty of gross absurdity. They may claim to employ the mercy which they have earned: why plead with the God of justice for that to which they consider themselves in justice entitled? God will give to all that to which they are entitled, without being ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... course I wished him good day; and a little farther up the road I saw a dark plain chariot, no coronet, no arms, no footman only the man on the box, but the beauty of the horses assured me it must belong to Lilburne. Can you conceive such absurdity in a man of that age—and a very clever fellow too? Yet, how is it that one does not ridicule it in Lilburne, as one would in another man between fifty ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and fleets, with which the people had little concern. International quarrels would tend to take the form of the mediaeval private disputes which were settled by champions in trial by battle, an absurdity which led rapidly to the domination of purely legal procedure. If international quarrels could go the same way, humanity would have advanced a long stride. But the world is scarcely ripe for such a revolution. Meanwhile to abolish the right of interference ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... not be a Christian if I gave Him any other names than those of Jesus Christ, and Saviour. He is the true Son of God. But He is not eternal, since He had a beginning; as to thinking that He existed before He was begotten, we must leave that absurdity to the Nicaean mules, and the obstinate ass who too long governed the Church of Alexandria under the accursed ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... suggest a practical method of providing the material, especially for colleges which can provide enough copies for class use. Poets, of course, may be satisfactorily read in volumes of, selections; but to me, at least, a book of brief extracts from twenty or a hundred prose authors is an absurdity. Perhaps I may venture to add that personally I find it advisable to pass hastily over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and so gain as much time ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... surprise, whether from the effect of the horror which he felt, acting as it were hysterically on his nervous system, or that at the first moment he lost the sense of the guilt of the proposal in the feeling of its strangeness and absurdity, he flung her from him and burst into a fit of laughter. Irritated by this almost to frenzy, the woman fell on her knees, and in a loud voice that approached to a scream, she prayed for a curse both on him and on her own child. Mary happened to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... church itself was a quaint and wonderful preservation of the past. For four centuries it had been sacred to the tombs of the Dorntons and their effigies in brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the stately sarcophagus of the unknown ticket of leave man, its complacent absurdity, combined with his nervousness, made him almost hysterical. Yet again, it seemed to him that something of the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested that degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... national duty. The extravagance of this error can hardly be surpassed." In truth, it is so exceedingly extravagant, that we doubt if it really exists. It is certain, that we have no acquaintance, either historically or personally, with those who have fallen into so wild an absurdity. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... theory into the realm of fact, proving the Buddhist explanation of the universal mystery quite as plausible as any other. "None but very hasty thinkers," wrote the late Professor Huxley, "will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doc-trine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality; and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... however, I have seen the same absurdity in my own sex, and have observed many a very good sort of man turn pale at the politeness of ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... attempts to expound decently the myths which made Indra the slayer of a Brahman; the sinner, that is, of the unpardonable sin. In Egypt, too, we study the priestly or philosophic systems by which the clergy strove to strip the burden of absurdity and sacrilege from their own deities. From all these efforts of civilised and pious believers to explain away the stories about their own gods we may infer one fact—the most important to the student of mythology—the fact that myths were not evolved in times of clear civilised ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... by the least characteristic of its classes, the politicians,—and only then when they had been defeated as politicians, and when their constituents had declared them no longer worthy to be even THEIR representatives. This National Absurdity was only equaled by another, wherein an ex-Politician was for four years expected to uphold the honor of a flag of a great nation over an ocean he had never tempted, with a discipline the rudiments of ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... this adventurer down at the Louis Quinze. "Yet, who can tell? Disraeli was half mountebank at the start," she said. "Napoleon dressed infamously, too, before he was successful." But again she laughed, as at an absurdity. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with his position on the wall and his disposition to parley had begun to arouse my suspicions, and Larry several times exclaimed impatiently at the absurdity of discussing my affairs with a person whom he insisted on calling a constable, to the sheriff’s evident annoyance. The officer now turned ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... studied by the other sex. I will venture, again, however, so far into this strange realm as to say that the subordinate shops did not seem so many or so good in London as in New York, though when one remembers the two Bond Streets, and Oxford, and lower Piccadilly, one might feel the absurdity of claiming superiority for Broadway, or Fourteenth and Twenty-third streets, or Union and Madison squares, or the parts of Third and Sixth avenues to which ladies' shopping has spread. After all, perhaps there is but one London, in this as in some ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Our only regret was that we could not have that same broom to take away; but on our zig-zag journey, when we were likely enough to stop over or turn off anywhere, that was an absurdity not to be thought of. We did, however, "buy a broom" that we could take—and an excellent one it proved—and we accepted a small package of broom-corn seed which the blind workman was anxious ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... dialogue is full of crisp humor. "McDonough's Wife," another drama that appears in the volume, is based on a legend, and explains how a whole town rendered honor against its will. "The Bogie Men" has as its underlying situation an amusing misunderstanding of two chimney-sweeps. The wit and absurdity of the dialogue are in Lady Gregory's best vein. "Damer's Gold" contains the story of a miser beset by his gold-hungry relations. Their hopes and plans are upset by one they had believed to be of the simple of ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... few men doubted that the South would conquer the North, and among these was Herschel V. Johnson. There was an idea abroad, that one Southerner could whip a dozen Northerners. Nobody knows how this idea got out, nor why the absurdity of it was not plain to all; but the newspapers were full of it, and the speech makers insisted on it so roundly that the people began to believe it. One orator declared that he could take one company of ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... in which is only dimly felt the remembrance of a purpose, take us nowhither. We loiter in musty waiting-rooms, are frustrated by mobs, and foiled by an eternal clamour. We have forgotten the feast and occupy ourselves in all manner of foolish and irrelevant ways. Only now and again, struck by the absurdity of our occupations, we grope after our lost consciousness and feel somehow that somewhere out beyond is our real destination, that somewhere out there a feast is proceeding, that a cover is laid for us and dishes served, that though we are absent the master calls a ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... against the certainty of its results. "There is no commoner, and at the same time faultier, way of reasoning, than that of objecting to a philosophical hypothesis the injury it may do to morals and to religion. When an opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that it is false because it entails dangerous consequences."[38] So wrote the patriarch of modern sceptics, the Scotchman Hume. The lesson has been well learnt; ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... her praise of Herbert Talcott, with a subtle purpose, I suspected, of impressing on me the utter absurdity of my entering the lists with him and of bringing Rufus Blight to a keener appreciation of the man whom he might be called on any day to welcome into his own family. With me her efforts were quite unneeded. With Rufus Blight ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... corresponding clause outwardly also more perceptible. This reference shows also, that the explanation of [Hebrew: mN] by prae, which was proposed by Pococke and others, is inadmissible, besides involving an absurdity, inasmuch as nothing can be before eternity; while, on the other hand, this reference alone affords a satisfactory explanation of the plural. According to it, the words, "From the time of old, from the days of eternity," contain ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... injunctions grew less nerve-racking: "You must use a medium soft black pencil (which will be furnished)"—law-breaking under such conditions would be absurdity—"use no ditto marks and"—here I could not but shudder as there passed before my eyes memories of college lecture rooms and all the strange marks that have come to mean something to me alone—"take ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... importance of this rule, that we observe not the contents of the command but its author. He who fails to do this will often be offended, as I said, by the insignificance or absurdity of a task. God should receive credit for wisdom and goodness. Assuredly that which he himself enjoins is well and wisely enjoined, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Tract, was a false print for "Sacrament," I thought the mistake too pleasant to be corrected before I was asked about it. I was not unwilling to draw an opponent on step by step, by virtue of his own opinions, to the brink of some intellectual absurdity, and to leave him to get back as he could. I was not unwilling to play with a man, who asked me impertinent questions. I think I had in my mouth the words of the Wise man, "Answer a fool according to his folly," especially if he was prying or spiteful. I was ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... succeeded. It succeeded so well, indeed, that the Europeans who came to know China in the seventeenth century and who rediscovered it so unnecessarily in the nineteenth century, believed it to have been motionless for two thousand years. There is no need to lay stress here upon the absurdity of this prevalent opinion. It has been seen in the past and will be seen in modern times, that the inner travail, the evolution and the diversity are by no means arrested. Like the nations of Europe, China ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... already mentioned to you, that the fraternity of the Conards was established at Evreux, as well as at Rouen. Another institution, of equal absurdity, was peculiar, I believe, to this cathedral[41]. It bore the name of the Feast of St. Vital, as it united with the anniversary of that saint, which is celebrated on the first of May: the origin of the custom may be derived from the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Washington, words of wisdom and warning, were, "Never trust a nigger with a gun;" and accustomed to chafe each other into a fever heat of excitement over any matter of public interest, were ready to give credence to any report—all the more easily because of its absurdity. On the other hand, the colored people, hearing these rumors, said to themselves that it was simply a device to prevent them from voting, or to give color and excuse for a conflict ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... ordered of Spanish minds can resist a tendency to excess of all sorts, to over-elaboration, to grotesquerie, to deadening mannerism. All that is greatest in their art, indeed, lies on the borderland of the extravagant, where sublime things skim the thin ice of absurdity. The great epic, Don Quixote, such plays as Calderon's La Vida es Sueno, such paintings as El Greco's Resurreccion and Velasquez's dwarfs, such buildings as the Escorial and the Alhambra—all among ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... enough for the most part, such as they used to write in those days. Other papers, and notably the Figaro, have brought the art to a curious perfection since. Lousteau compared the Baron to a heron, and introduced Mme. de Bargeton, to whom he was paying his court, as a cuttlefish bone, a burlesque absurdity which amused readers who knew neither of the personages. A tale of the loves of the Heron, who tried in vain to swallow the Cuttlefish bone, which broke into three pieces when he dropped it, was irresistibly ludicrous. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... pit, clambered on to the stage, and fought there, to the greater comfort of the audience, and with a more excited fury on the part of the combatants. The mingling of the public with the players was a practice which so annoyed the haughty French actor, Baron, that to suggest to the audience the absurdity of it, he would turn his back on them for a whole act, and play to the audience on the stage. Sometimes the noise was so loud that an actor's voice would scarcely be heard. It was about 1710 that the word encore was introduced at the operatic performances in the Haymarket, and very much objected ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you ya dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... the jealousies between the Spanish and Portuguese led to various outbreaks and to troubles on the frontiers. From a purely practical point of view, there is no doubt whatever that such bickerings were a sheer absurdity, since the territories at the disposal of both nations were far too great to be effectively dealt with by any forces which either the Spanish or Portuguese could introduce into the Continent. As it was, the era was one of moulding and ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... not withstand the absurdity of this appeal. He burst into a roar of ill-tempered laughter. "I like that!" he cried. "Asking a man to help his daughter to run away from his own house! It's my impression, my young mistress, that you're at the bottom of all this nonsense. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... perceived Martigny. He was listening intently to one of the brokers, who was talking earnestly in his ear—telling him how to make his fortune, I suppose—and did not see me. For an instant, I was tempted to cross to him, and get him out of danger. Then I smiled at the absurdity of the thought. It would take a clever man to fleece Martigny, and I recalled his strong face, his masterful air—he was no fool, no lamb ready for the shears. He was perfectly able to look out for himself—to wield the shears with power ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... gravely at the girl's flushed, excited face; then at the pale, serious Jimmy Stiles. He could not smile at this startling statement as an out-and-out absurdity when it was so apparent that both of them were sincere in their belief that ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... recognized as their towns-man, one of their own people: if he were such, theirs was the credit of having produced him! Then indeed they were ready to bear witness to him, take his part, adopt his cause, and before the world stand up for him! As to his being the Messiah, that was merest absurdity: did they not all know his father, the carpenter? He might, however, be the prophet whom so many of the best in the nation were at the moment expecting! ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... obviously not the aftereffects of liquor. The astonishing possibility occurred to Joe Rix that this seemed to be a man with a broken spirit and a great sorrow. He blinked that absurdity away. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... reputable hour of three in the afternoon, by pretending to start a coach at five o'clock in the morning, was an imposition "tolerable" only in Dogberry's sense of the word—it was "not to be endured." And then, the downright absurdity of the undertaking! for admitting that the proprietors might prevail on some poor idiot to act as coachman, where were they to entrap a dozen mad people for passengers? We often experience an irresistible impulse to interfere, in some matter, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... as legislation therefore is concerned, the attempt to secure competence by 'collation' is an absurdity. Yet it is an inverted sort of competence useful for indicating the state of a nation's temper. From this it follows that this system is as mischievous in a republic as it would be wholesome in a monarchy. It is not ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... either believed that its chief object was to prevent the stage from ever being altogether empty, whereas in truth the stage was not at all the proper place for the Chorus; or else they have censured it as a superfluous and cumbersome appendage, expressing their astonishment at the alleged absurdity of carrying on secret transactions in the presence of assembled multitudes. They have also considered it as the principal reason with the Greek tragedians for the strict observance of the unity of place, as it could not be changed without the removal of the Chorus; an act, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... At present I am getting some sleep again, but I still eat merely mechanically, horse-wise, rubbing my mouth with vinegar otherwise I am very well, and I haven't even so much pain in the head." Fault was found with Madame de La Fayette for not going out. "She had a mortal melancholy. What absurdity again! Is she not the most fortunate woman in the world? That is what people said," writes Madame de Sevigne; "it needed that she should be dead to prove that she had good reason for not going out, and for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... roofs, the statue of Lord Nelson stood perched in absurd elevation above the London that flouted his Emma, and Clara laughed to see the little gray man in cocked hat symbolising for her the delicious absurdity of London, where nothing and nobody could ever be of the smallest importance in its hugeness.... This was its charm, that an individual could in it feel the indifference of humanity exactly as on a hill the indifference of Nature can be felt. A city ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... time only, this being the condition of their existence in themselves, then the actions of these beings must be simply His actions which He performs in some place and time. Thus, Spinozism, in spite of the absurdity of its fundamental idea, argues more consistently than the creation theory can, when beings assumed to be substances, and beings in themselves existing in time, are regarded as effects of a Supreme Cause, and yet as ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... old words, "He that made the eye, shall he not see? he that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" do not at once commend themselves to the intellect of any person, we shall never convince that person by any arguments drawn from the absurdity of conceiving the invention of optics by a blind man, or of ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... sternly, "this is preposterous! I cannot allow such absurdity;" but Walcott silenced him with a deprecatory wave of his hand, and, taking Kate's hand in his, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... grand scheme of political mystification begins to develop itself. Had, indeed, their new constituency, as they have long impudently pretended, really been 'the people,' a struggle between such a body and the House of Lords would have been brief but final. The absurdity of supposing that a chamber of two or three hundred individuals could set up their absolute will and pleasure against the decrees of a legislative assembly chosen by the whole nation is so glaring that the Whigs and their scribes ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... that of Sauti, though the texts alluded to above make it that of Vaisampayana. It is true in the speech the vocative 'Brahman' occurs, but we may easily take it as a slip of this pen. K. P. Singha makes the correction. The Burdwan translator, without perceiving the absurdity, adheres ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Here we have an absurdity quite fairly exposed. The young American student who acts as a reporter or waiter during his college vacation is nearly always a respectful gentleman who neither takes nor allows a liberty; but the underbred ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the eating of half-raw meat, her husband's bushy face, the constant battles, and the worship of the spirits who will hoodoo her unless she gives the priests her best claw necklace. Her man protests, 'But it can't all be wrong!' and he thinks he has reduced her to absurdity. Now you assume that a world which produces a Percy Bresnahan and a Velvet Motor Company must be civilized. It is? Aren't we only about half-way along in barbarism? I suggest Mrs. Bogart as a test. And we'll continue in barbarism just as long ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the group of humanity thus illuminated was more farcical than dramatic. A scrap of newspaper, part of a sandwich, and an orange peel that had fallen from the floor of the coach, brought into equal prominence by the searching light, completed the absurdity. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... should go off with the greatest report. Lady Mary, who had naturally a great deal of vivacity and a sufficient share of wit, made no bad figure in the brilliant assembly; for though she perceived an absurdity in these mock skirmishes of genius, yet she thought proper to conform to her company; but saw plainly that a sprightly look and lively elocution made the chief merit of the best bons mots that ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... roared at Rob's astonishment and contusion. The absurdity of it grew, and they went into spasms of laughter. But Wilson remained impassive, not the twitching of a muscle betraying that he saw anything to ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... such a splendid bite, that, being fond of fishing, I was about to strike, the absurdity of the idea of fishing with a man for a float never striking me for a moment; but, just as I was going to pull up, the man was crawling over the floor of the grinders' shop, and the water was not there, though the wheel seemed to be going round ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the Italian opera was what it is now, frivolous, insincere, imbecile. Its sole function was, and always has been, to help idlers of the upper classes to while away their evenings. The absurd notion of a Platonic music was rivalled by the absurdity of the composition. The inane dialogue was made up of interminable recitative, in the midst of which an occasional chorus—introduced in conformity with supposed classical practice—must have come as a most refreshing relief; for choruses they could write. It was dramatic in so far that it ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... was too strong, had dropped the design. I was confirmed in this notion, by observing that all their houses were empty. After getting a few of the people of the place together, I desired Omai to expostulate with them on the absurdity of the conduct they were pursuing; and to tell them, that, from the testimony of many on whom I could depend, I was well assured that the goat was in their possession; and, therefore, insisted upon its being delivered up, otherwise I ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... "No, it isn't absurdity; it's gospel truth," retorted Alice. "And—don't interrupt me—there have been times, too, when I have had to ask myself if I wasn't getting almost to hate you in return. I tell you ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... involved in this exemplary remark, combined with the absurdity of repentance taking the form of interest in mining speculations, was almost too much for Richard's sense of humor; but he only nodded with gravity, as became a man who was imbibing information, and inquired further, whether, in addition to these favorers of ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Tib. Master Stephen was greatly struck with his "dainty oaths," such as "By the foot of Pharaoh!" "Body of Caesar!" "As I am a gentleman and a soldier!" His device to save the expense of a standing army is inimitable for its conceit and absurdity: ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... proposition amazed the "help"; in fact, its absurdity convulsed them. The man laughed loudly; the cook buried her ebony face in her apron; the second girl bent double with mirth. Here was a quaint gentleman, indeed, and a great joker. But the gentleman was not joking. On the contrary, he brought this levity ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... concentrated, platinum and diamond become rapidly vaporised, notwithstanding the great loss of heat by absorption, first in passing through the air, and again in traversing the lens. Pouillet's maximum is then manifestly too low, since it involves the absurdity of supposing a radiating mass capable of heating a distant body more than ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... he replied. "No! to answering Graham's question. He is not the person to ask it. I wonder that he does not see the impropriety, the absurdity of his meddling at all in this affair. Besides, he could not understand my answer even if he believed it. But to the explanation, I say, Yes! I will give it, not to Graham, but to you. I make you this ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... anatomical absurdity been reconcilable with the structure of the human frame, it is possible Miss Bruce might have treated this important organ in ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... the results to which we have been led are the legitimate consequence of taking those positions. It may be said, that this is another weak attempt on the part of the clergy to regain an influence which they have irrecoverably lost. The absurdity of the idea is its sufficient refutation. It may be said, that this is the first step, feebly put forth indeed, towards a union of Church and State. Church and State! words of wonderful power over our fears and our imaginations. But who can for a moment seriously believe that such a purpose ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... not only quite superfluous, but an absurdity, the origin of which is to be found in the desire to place the black traitor opposite the white hero of light and in the hatred of Jews arising among the first Gentile Christians, who later made the world forget that not only this straw-doll, Judas, but also ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... of a former life as if it were an established fact is, of course, an absurdity; to dogmatise at all on such a question, with regard to which one man's opinion is just as speculative as another's, is, perhaps, equally ridiculous. Granted, then, the equal value of the varying opinions of sane men on this ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... is no intrinsic absurdity in supposing that Zschokke's mind was occasionally thrown into direct relation with that of a chance visitor through favourable influences; that the soul of Arnod Paole, as he lay in his grave alive, in the so-called vampyr-state, may have drawn into communion the minds of other persons, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the present inhabitants of Britain as an "Anglo-Saxon" people. It is, in fact, just as absurd as the habit of talking of the French people as a "Latin" race, because they speak a language which is, in the main, derived from Latin. And the absurdity becomes the more patent when those who have no hesitation in calling a Devonshire man, or a Cornish man, an "Anglo-Saxon," would think it ridiculous to call a Tipperary man by the same title, though he and his forefathers may ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... she carried her father's dinner in a flagon to the country place where he was at work, but to walk with no end save the good of your health seemed a very droll proceeding to her. In her young days, she was positive, no one had ever gone for a walk, and she never lost the belief that it was an absurdity introduced by a new generation with too much time on their hands. That they enjoyed it she could not believe; it was merely a form of showing off, and as they passed her window she would remark ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... arguing the main question of idealism versus realism. Secretly conscious of his own inability to handle that question, to refute my "Soliloquy of the Self-Consistent Idealist," or to overthrow my demonstration that consistent idealism leads logically to hopeless absurdity at last, Dr. Royce found it infinitely easier to deceive his uninformed readers by a bold assertion that I myself am an idealist at bottom. This assertion, swallowed without suspicion of its absolute untruth, ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... from alienation, and which hides its ugliness behind all manner of flimsy excuses. One is that the reason itself is utterly unreasonable. I have said the true reason is indifference. Can anybody put into words which do not betray the absurdity of the position, the conduct of the man who says, 'I do not want God; give me five yoke of oxen. That is the real good, and I will stick by that.' There is one mystery in the world, and if it were solved everything would be solved; and that mystery ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... subject for a July Sunday than the teachings of the beautiful season which was passing over? So the text was, Thou hast made summer: it was a sermon on summer, and its moral and spiritual lessons. How inconsistent the sermon seemed with everything around! The outward circumstances reduced it to an absurdity. The congregation was diminished to a sixth of its usual number; the atmosphere was charged with a muggy vapour from sloppy garments and dripping umbrellas: and as the preacher spoke, describing ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... his taking up pieces like the -Thyestes- and the -Telephus- so well known from the immortal ridicule of Aristophanes, with their princes' woes and woful princes, and even such a piece as Menalippa the Female Philosopher, in which the whole plot turns on the absurdity of the national religion, and the tendency to make war on it from the physicist point of view is at once apparent. The sharpest arrows are everywhere—and that partly in passages which can be proved to have been inserted(44)—directed against faith in the miraculous, and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... not difficult to perceive that I had adopted an utterly false method of investigation, and a moment's reflection sufficed to show me the absurdity of my question. I had asked from an uneducated man a philosophical definition, instead of extracting from him material in the form of concrete facts, and constructing therefrom a definition for myself. These ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... false ideas must be reckoned the hyperbolical. These are not false in a given word, for we dealt with this above, but false in the whole train of thought. Of this kind is that epigram of Ausonius, the absurdity of ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... necessary to enable us to meet and repel the invader, it follows as a necessary consequence not only that we possess the power, but it is our imperative duty to construct such a road. It would be an absurdity to invest a government with the unlimited power to make and conduct war and at the same time deny to it the only means of reaching and defeating the enemy at the frontier. Without such a road it is quite ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... had changed. To Mahomet the very idea of exploration was an absurdity. He had never believed in it front the first, and he now became impressed with the fact that he was positively committed to an undertaking that would end most likely in his death, if not in terrible difficulties; ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... mathematical point, which is simple—not, however, a part, but a mere limit of space- physical points, which are indeed likewise simple, but possess the peculiar property, as parts of space, of filling it merely by their aggregation. I shall not repeat here the common and clear refutations of this absurdity, which are to be found everywhere in numbers: every one knows that it is impossible to undermine the evidence of mathematics by mere discursive conceptions; I shall only remark that, if in this case philosophy endeavours to ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... women should take no interest in the blood that circulates through their bodies because they are not physicians, or in the air they breathe because they are not chemists. The people who are most fond of repeating this absurdity, are, it may be observed, the very people who are most furious with women for not acquiescing at once in any absurdity which they may think proper to promulgate as an incontrovertible truth. Ill temper, and rash opinions, and crude notions, are always ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... might have a softening and affectionate kind of effect, don't you see? As to Beadle, that I needn't say was wholly out of the question. If there is anything that is not to be tolerated on any terms, anything that is a type of Jack-in-office insolence and absurdity, anything that represents in coats, waistcoats, and big sticks our English holding on by nonsense after every one has found it out, it is a beadle. You haven't seen a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Hardwicke, emboldened by the support she had gathered from her children, passionately declared that it could only be because he was himself in love with the murtheress. Lord Shrewsbury could not help laughing a little at the absurdity of the idea, whereupon my lady rose up in virtuous indignation, calling her sons and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... plain and simple reasons, an 'interview' must, as a rule, be an absurdity. And chiefly for this reason: it is an attempt to use a boat on land, or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is a proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn't for the former. The moment 'talk' is put into print you recognize ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
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