"Ridiculously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... just the kind of girl I admire. I see you have been prejudiced against me by Lady Delacour; but whatever stories she may have trumped up, the truth of the matter is this, there's no living with her, she's so jealous—so ridiculously jealous—of that lord of hers, for whom all the time she has the impudence to pretend not to care more than I do for the sole of my boot," said Mrs. Freke, striking it, with her whip; "but she hasn't the courage to give him tit for tat: now this is what I call weakness. Pray, how do she ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... the freedom of all his father's children too, and the price he paid was twenty marks. [Footnote: N.B.—A man could not buy his own freedom, Merewether's "Boroughs," i. 350. Compare too Littleton on "Tenures," p 65, 66.] That sounds a ridiculously small sum, but I feel pretty sure that six hundred years ago twenty marks would be almost as difficult for a penniless young chaplain to get together as L500 for a penniless young curate to amass now. Of the younger Ralph, who bought his father's ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... armed with a long lance and his bow and arrows. We did not care a cent for him, but I thought he might be one of the tribe's runners, lying in wait to discover the condition of the coach—whether it had an escort, and how many were riding in it, and that then he would go and tell how ridiculously small the outfit was, and swoop down on us with a band of his colleagues, that were hidden somewhere in the sand hills south of the river. He rose as we came near, and made the sign, after he had given ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... insisted on singing the Marseillaise until a crowd collected in front of the house, whose open windows looked on an irregular square. Then he and his friends shouted "Viva la partida dos Republicanos!" The charges at this hotel were ridiculously small—only three and fourpence a day for board and lodging. And it was by no means bad; at anyrate it was always possible to get fruit, including loquats, strawberries, custard apples, bananas, oranges, and the passion-flower fruit, which is not enticing ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... Susan's hand shook so ridiculously that she lowered the revolver to prevent its dropping from her grasp. Her countenance expressed chagrin, ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... listening. She was looking over to the other side of the street, where that shrinking, pitiable old figure in its threadbare neatness trembled; not daring to seek safety across the dangerously smooth street, nor daring to remain exposed here, where it ducked ridiculously every now and then to avoid the whizzing ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... from the sunny window with a sigh, and went down the dark, echoing staircase to the breakfast parlour, where her own little silver chocolate-pot looked ridiculously small beside Sir John's quart tankard, and where the crisp, golden rolls, baked in the French fashion by the maid from Chilton, who had been taught by Lord Fareham's chef, contrasted with the chine of beef and huge farmhouse loaf that accompanied ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... point out that the specific cause which the poet confides to us of his "wounds, tears and pains" is ridiculously unimportant as compared with the conclusion which he draws in the last ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... wholly untrained civilians into soldiers while the war was being waged. This took time, but less time than for the manufacture of rifles and guns. She had everything necessary for supplying her navy, but ridiculously inadequate plants for supplying a force of soldiers so immense. Thus England had scores of battalions of excellently drilled soldiers prepared to go to France before there were any rifles for them to fight with, or before they had the all-important ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... precaution which I feel called upon to note. Some generals, (12) in attacking a force which they imagine to be inferior to their own, will advance with a ridiculously insufficient force, (13) so that it is the merest accident if they do not experience the injury they were minded to inflict. Conversely, in attacking any enemy whose superiority is a well-known fact, they will bring the whole of their ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... gallery, and stood looking from one to the other, as if trying to guess which of the three would be most likely to welcome him. His large and bowed shoulders made his bald, egg-shaped skull (his turban had fallen in his flight) seem ridiculously small; it was bald to the ears, and a thick black beard spread over the face like broom, and nearly to the eyes; thick black eyebrows shaded eyes so piercing and brilliant that the three Essenes were already aware ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... on toward noon by this time, and the sun was blazing down through a choking pall of dust that hung in the lifeless air. Men were driving horses to and fro. They were men with weak, deeply lined faces and shambling gaits. They broke into querulous curses and beat their animals savagely on ridiculously small pretexts. They handled their reins with a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... crept on as by the bedside of death. If those ridiculously bobbing figures in the ring would ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... herself hated her name, and saw keenly how ridiculously it sounded after such a name as Beatrice, only made her feel the more indignant with Brandon. "His own name," she thought, bitterly, "is plebeian—not so bad as mine, it is true, yet still it is plebeian. Why should he feel ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... caprices of the Pasig,—that brave bridge was no more. The new Spanish bridge drew Ibarra's attention. Carriages passed continuously, drawn by groups of dwarf horses, in splendid harness. In these sat at ease government clerks going to their bureaus, officers, Chinese, self-satisfied and ridiculously grave monks, canons. In an elegant victoria, Ibarra thought he recognized Father Damaso, deep in thought. From an open carriage, where his wife and two daughters accompanied him, Captain Tinong waved ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... revivify the brain wonderfully, for he made rapid progress, and then we tried friction, and he got well very quick. Indeed, as he had nothing the matter with him, except being dead, he got ridiculously well, and began paying us fulsome compliments, the doctor ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... latter part of his life he attended in a ridiculously minute manner to his diet and its results, and entered into discussions which drove his doctors to despair. Fever and gout at last attacked him, and he augmented them by the course he pursued. Finot, our physician and his, at times knew not what to do with him. What embarrassed Finot most, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sublimated, methodistic Hill Boothby, who read her bible in Hebrew; and lastly, the more charming Mrs. Thrale, with the beauty of the first, the learning of the second, and with more worth than a bushel of such sinners and such saints. It is ridiculously diverting to see the old elephant forsaking ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... fatigue, the excitement of the journey, and the thought of how she should meet—ought she to call him Leonard? And when Haldane saw her he suddenly smiled boyishly—as if there could be such a thing as a problem over this scared, half-tearful, ridiculously pathetic, white-haired old woman with a black-bordered handkerchief in her ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... and a high-class evening paper left upon a seat in the Park. He had no sooner eaten and drunk with the former than he opened the latter. There was an article on the front page entitled "London Awake." He read it line by line and laughed. It was all so ridiculously simple. He hurried back to his rooms and wrote a much better one on "London Asleep." He was master of his subject. He wrote of what he had seen with effortless and sublime verity. Why not? Simply with the aid of pen and ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cannot turn out products of high value for a rich one; it has not had the education arising from demand. In products relating to sport and to comfort, for instance, England was a model, but in France these products were ridiculously misunderstood and imitated with silly adornments, while on the other hand French products of luxury and art-industry were sought for by all countries. German wares were considered to be cheap and nasty, until the land grew rich, ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... historian—and am only responsible for the veracity of this fact. That "Mr. Tomkins lived in familiar intercourse with the Royal Academicians of his day, and was a frequent guest at their private tables," and moreover was a most worthy man, I believe—but is it less true that he was ridiculously mortified by being never invited to the Academic dinner, on account of his caligraphy? He had some reason to consider that his art was of the exalted class to which he aspired to raise it, when this friend concludes his eulogy of this writing-master ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... demolished the photo-play romances we had constructed about him. It was a warning to us to avoid nonsense, in future, when discussing our neighbours. Miss Fraenkel had fared no better. Evidently he was not "held" for something with which his wife had "got away." We were all ridiculously wrong and ought to be ashamed of ourselves. And so we were; avoiding mention of him, and devoting our attention to the fish, for it was Friday, and we ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... comes in the cross of my destiny. My father, sir, had secretly cherished dreams of raising me above his own station. To him a gentleman—and he ridiculously hoped to make me one—was a fellow above working for his living. He scoffed at my enthusiasm for trade, and at length he sent for me and in tones that brooked no denial commanded me to learn ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Filmore, Jr., laughed at this—it sounded so ridiculously funny to hear a helpless prisoner talk of being in ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... of the opera if they had not found the secret of making of it a monster which shocks me. Let who will go to see bad tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for no other end than to introduce two or three songs ridiculously out of place, to show off an actress's voice. Let who will, or who can, die away with pleasure at the sight of an eunuch quavering the role of Caesar, or of Cato, and strutting awkwardly upon the stage. For my part I have long since renounced those paltry entertainments which constitute ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... equivalent to a brigade command in the volunteers, and to be a brigadier in it was a reward which regular officers looked forward to as a result of the successful conduct of a great campaign as general-in-chief of an army. The actual command in war was thus ridiculously belittled in the official scale in comparison with grades of a petty peace establishment, and the climax of absurdity was reached when, at the close of hostilities, men who had worthily commanded divisions and corps found themselves reduced to subordinate places ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... these days, you see, I am hoping that we shall again have a poet with a conviction and a voice, so that men may know that sympathy and love are things as real as money. I am quite sure there never was a nation so ridiculously sodden as our own just at present; all of our maxims and ways of life are as if we were the queer little Niebelung creatures that dig for treasure in the bowels of the earth, and see no farther than the ends of their shovels; ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... absent for a week after that. Of course his polling at the election had been ridiculously small compared with that of the other candidates. When he returned he went about his ordinary occupations; he was seemingly not in his usual health, but the constant irritableness had left him. Adela tried to bear herself as though nothing unwonted had come to pass, but Mutimer scarcely ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... were cumbersome affairs, huge of wheel, and with ridiculously small bodies slung on wide strips of bull's hide which served for springs. The driver's box was high above the forward running gear. There were as yet no "seats on top," such as were developed in the later ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... that night it had been shown that I was the more skilful swordsman, yet now he stood without the least sign of fear. If he had formerly retreated, on being disarmed, it was from situations in which he had figured ridiculously, and could not endure to remain before Mademoiselle de Varion. Also, he had sought to preserve his life, so that he might have revenge. But now that events had taken their turn, he showed himself ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... men's clothes sufficient to equip themselves, were obliged to take up with women's gowns and petticoats, which (provided there was finery enough) they made no scruple of putting on and blending with their own greasy dress. So that, when a party of them thus ridiculously metamorphosed first appeared before Mr. Brett, he was extremely surprised at their appearance and could not immediately be satisfied ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... cautious dailies, scarcely a lay paper in the land that has been able to refrain from joining in the hearty yell of delight at the rare chance of coarsely, publicly, and safely insulting an artist! In this eagerness to affront the man they have irretrievably and ridiculously committed themselves to open sympathy with the destruction ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... acceptance. And then a curious change came. She felt her heart begin to beat faster, the strange intrusion of a new element into her life and thoughts and being. It was shining out of her eyes, something which made her a little afraid yet ridiculously light-hearted. Suddenly she felt the colour burning in her cheeks. She withdrew her hands, lost her presence of mind, and found it again at the sound ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... extravagances. To satisfy her curiosity he blandly informed her that he was getting off much more cheaply than he had expected. He laughingly denounced as untrue the stories that had come to her from outside sources. And before his convincing assertions that reports were ridiculously exaggerated, the troubled expression in ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... cloak? The pink cloak that Owen saw you with at the play in Paris? Yes...yes...I was mad enough for that!...It does me good to laugh about it now! But you ought to know that I'm going to be a jealous woman...a ridiculously jealous woman...you ought to be warned of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... is to stigmatize' (ib. ii. 5). In his Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 297, he says:—'With a lumber of learning and some strong parts Johnson was an odious and mean character. His manners were sordid, supercilious, and brutal; his style ridiculously bombastic and vicious, and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the gigantic littleness ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... these sects are, for the most part, ridiculously intolerant; so many small Popes, who fancy that whomsoever they bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whomsoever they loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. They remorselessly cobble the true faith, without ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... Britton began to make her preparations immediately, and only halted over them once, and that was when she hesitated about packing a dress that had just come home, which she said was ridiculously young for her. ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... scattering thousands were recorded in the negative. Thus, in a blaze of glory that might well have satisfied the ambition of the First Bonaparte, did he, who, only twelve years before at Boulogne, had tried most ridiculously to excite a paltry rebellion by the display of a pet-eagle to his followers, mount the Imperial throne of France with the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... been doped by the addition of electrolyte or acid instead of water, or when one of the "dope" electrolytes which are advertised to make old, worn out batteries charge up in a ridiculously short time and show as much life and power as a new battery. Use nothing but a mixture of distilled water and sulphuric acid for electrolyte. The "dope" solutions are not only worthless, but they damage a battery considerably and shorten its life. Such a "doped" battery may give ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... that had come and gone with the fading of the night were figments of a slumbering brain. The last portion of the dream which he could visualize distinctly was his act of arising from a wireless machine in a house that had gone mad, to confront a tall Chinese who wore a ridiculously stubby pigtail, like that of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... these great authors did esteem the point of honour, so much magnified by the French, and so ridiculously aped by us. They made their heroes men of honour; but so, as not to divest them quite of human passions and frailties: they content themselves to shew you, what men of great spirits would certainly do when they were provoked, not ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... inherent flair for criminality, but because of a lack of independent judgment and inability to resist suggestion, and a desire to please friends. He is simply an overgrown child who still loves to play with toys, laughs and cries, becomes angry or afraid, unreasonably and ridiculously, and yells for mamma when thwarted ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... pianoforte score, is generally accessible; only a few of the spoken play sets are as yet published, and they are ridiculously expensive. Let us not repine and give up hope. Some day that unheard-of thing an intelligent music publisher may be born into the world, and he may give Englishmen a trustworthy edition, at a fair price, of the works of England's greatest musician. Meantime, the reader must do as the writer did ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... re-entered the room with her bonnet on; determination was painted on the lady's countenance. Cockayne should not escape this time. He should be led off like a lamb to the slaughter. Were not the silks marked at ridiculously low prices? Was not the shawl-room a sight more than equal to anything to be seen in any other part of Paris? Was not the folding department just as much a sight of Paris as that wretched collection of ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... askance at Kingfisher. His head is ridiculously large; his feet ridiculously small. He is a poem of grace in the air; but he creeps like a lizard, or waddles so that a duck would be ashamed of him, in the rare moments when he is afoot. His mouth is big enough to take in a minnow ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... sprung on him, hanging at everyone's heel in turn, and it was only towards dusk that he knew with bitter certainty that he had been forgotten. A crisis had wiped him and his birthday out altogether. And then he had cried, and James Stonehouse, moved to generous remorse, had rushed out and bought a ridiculously expensive toy having first borrowed money from Christine and scolded her at the top of his booming voice for her heartless neglect ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... pounds of salt is a ridiculously cheap price for what he is doing for us, even though it is ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... for the name of the sexual parts of a woman." (A.C. Haddon, "Ethnography of the Western Tribes of Torres Straits," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1890, p. 336.) After a subsequent expedition to the same region, the author reiterates his observations as to the "ridiculously prudish manner" of the men, attributable to missionary influence during the past thirty years, and notes that even the children are affected by it. "At Mabuiag, some small children were paddling in the water, and a boy ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... I help myself? The aggressor was my superior in weight and size. It was a plain case that I should get badly and ridiculously whipped, if I attempted to cope with him in any pugilistic encounter. But how would it do to demand of him the satisfaction of a gentleman? True, I knew nothing of pistol-shooting, and had never handled a small-sword. No ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... per cent profit and wallow in the infamy of their wealth. The facts that man is brave and kind, that he is social and generous and self-sacrificing, have some aspect of the complete in them; but the fact that he is a manufacturer of gunny-bags is too ridiculously small to claim the right of reducing his higher nature to insignificance. The fragmentariness of utility should never forget its subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to occupy more than its legitimate ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... that the long-bow might be revived, but Washington would have none of it. Pikes, however, whose use in European warfare was fairly recent, he would consider. A number were ordered, and after them a second set of stronger make, the first being "ridiculously short ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... "You're ridiculously proud. It would hurt to let a girl help," Barbara rejoined. "After all, you're a conventionalist, and I rather thought you ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... some one who will love me while I am at work and relieve my poor old wearied fairy of her sentry duty. This man here suits my purpose, and I thought of him from the first time I met him. He is ugly, but he has a kind manner; then, too, he is ridiculously rich, and wealth, upon that scale, must be amusing. Oh, I know well enough. No doubt there is in his life some blemish that has brought him luck. All that money cannot be made honestly. But come, truly now, Jenkins, with your hand on that heart ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... heart," answered the fairy. "Although your nose is ridiculously long, you are no less the son of one of my best friends. I loved your father like a brother; he had a very ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... talked assassination with the silent and absolute Booth, until entrapped into conspiracy and the gallows, much against his calculation. This man was visited by his mother and a poor, ignorant woman with whom he cohabited. He was the picture of despair, and died ridiculously, whistling up ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... friars. So far from having entertained and even expressed that sentiment of religious toleration for which he was said to have been condemned as a heretic by the inquisition, and for which Philip was ridiculously reported to have ordered his father's body to be burned, and his ashes scattered to the winds, he became in retreat the bigot effectually, which during his reign he had only been conventionally. Bitter regrets that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... seven years," said Daniel as they passed through the village gate. Everything seemed so ridiculously small—the Town Hall, the Church, the Market Place, and the Eschenbach Fountain. He had also pictured the houses and streets to himself as being cleaner and better kept. As he passed over the three steps at the front gate, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... rid of a horrible person, who would persist in following Min about under the false pretence that his name was on her card for several of the after-supper dances—an assertion I knew to be ridiculously unfounded; for, I had taken care to place my own name down for as many as Min would give me, and, all the latter ones I had appropriated also without asking her permission, thinking that when that happy time arrived, she would not be very hard on me for ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... first negative was brought forth, dripping, from the dark-room, it was without spot or stain, scratch or pin-hole; uniform in colour and of exactly the required density. The six cheques shown on it—ridiculously small in appearance, though only reduced to half-length—looked as clear and sharp as fine etchings; though, to be sure, my opportunity for examining them was rather limited, for Polton was uncommonly careful to keep the wet plate out of reach ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... controversy between a fishwife and a buyer called Thomson. the buyer offered a price so ridiculously small for a parcel of fish that the seller became quite indignant, and she terminated at once all further higgling. Looking up to him, she said, "Lord help yer e'e-sight, Maister Tamson!" "Lord help my e'e-sight, woman! What has that to do with it?" "Ou," said she, "because ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... ridiculously angry. They were all treating him as a child, as some one who would grow up one day perhaps, but was, at present at any rate, immature in thought and word; even with Robin there ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... and ungrateful to neglect such a chance. When will you go? Fortunately, you have some new clothes, and you will get what else you want in London. There are one or two things I should like you to get for me. You could pick them up at some of the sales; they are all on now, and things are sold ridiculously cheap. And, Eleanor, be sure and send me a full description of Lady Wolfer's dresses. You might snip off a pattern, perhaps. And I shall want to hear all about the people who go to the house, and the dinner parties ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... some person had been walking all over the garden in a pair of clogs—only the foot-marks were too ridiculously little! ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... you superintended the 'going-to-bed' of Prince Robin before you left the Castle?" she said, lying back in the comfortable chair and stretching her feet out to the fire. He handed her a match and watched her light the long, ridiculously thin cigarette. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... blushed ridiculously, and so did Lou. Evan pretended not to notice, and turned his attention ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... to illustrate Holy Writ—so can gipsydom—for no apparent purpose whatever. How often have we heard that the preservation of the Jews is a phenomenon without equal? And yet they both live—the sad and sober Jew, the gay and tipsy Gipsy, Shemite and Aryan—the one so ridiculously like and unlike the other, that we may almost wonder whether Humour does not enter into the Divine purpose and have its place in the Destiny of Man. For my own part, I shall always believe that the Heathen Mythology shows a superiority to any other, in one conception—that of Loki, who into ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... said, "I congratulate you on your conquest. It has been a ridiculously easy capture, but I warned her she had met her fate long ago. No doubt she has wisely decided that to run away any longer would be a waste of energy. En tout cas,—" she made an airy gesture of the hands,—"my blessing be ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... coerced by those in charge of you," he went on in a level voice of argument, which yet broke into notes of tenderness, "you were influenced into becoming engaged to this man who is ridiculously unsuited to you. You, so full of life and boundless joy! You, who will learn all of love's meaning presently, and what it makes of existence, and what God meant by giving it to us mortals. You are intended by nature to be a complete woman if you did but know it—but such ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... (523/2. Professor Buckland may be described as joint author, with Agassiz, of the Glacier theory.), as I have foreseen, will crow over me: he will tell me he always knew that I was wrong, but now I shall have rather ridiculously to say, "but I am all ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... that he had gone to Doctor Anderson on the morning of the frightful news. Anderson had told him he couldn't possibly be passed for the Army, but at the moment the idea of ever wanting to go into the Army had only been an almost ridiculously remote contingency, and what did Anderson know ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... there are a thousand conventional cases in which 'yes' means 'no,' and 'no' means 'yes;' and they are so ridiculously common that every one is supposed, in politeness, not to mean what he says, or, rather, is not doubted to mean the contrary of what he says. In fact, quite apart from positive lying—that is, any intention to deceive—the honest words are so often interchanged, that if 'no' were to prosecute ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Roumania's co-operation then, as now, would have been of much greater help to the Allies than certain other results which were secured by sacrificing it. And sacrificed it was quite wantonly. We are wont to sneer at Germany's diplomacy as ridiculously clumsy, and to plume ourselves on our own as tactful and dignified. Well, if one were charged with the defence of this thesis, the last source to which one would turn for evidence in support of it is our diplomatic negotiations with ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... brilliant personage with keen perceptions who would not submit to being bored. Her Majesty made many enemies at court of persons who believed she was making fun of them. There was a dress-maker at the French court called Mademoiselle Bertin, who became ridiculously pretentious because the Queen allowed the woman to dress her hair in private. Bertin used to put on airs with the nobility when they came to order gowns, and she was very rude to me when I went for my court dress. There was a ball at Versailles the day I was presented, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... keeping very careful notes and instructions. Safe deposit boxes ... we'll talk about that tomorrow, eh? Somewhere else? Had a man in mind, as a matter of fact, but we can make better arrangements now. You see, it's really so ridiculously easy at this stage." ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... subdued voice to Patty Vetch, who looked, in her frock of scarlet tulle, as if she had just alighted from the chorus of a musical comedy. Her boyish dark head was bent over a fan of scarlet feathers, a toy which appeared ridiculously large beside her small figure. It was evident that the girl was trying to cover an uncomfortable shyness with an air of mocking effrontery; and a moment later, when Corinna joined them, Benham glanced up with a flash of satirical amusement in his eyes. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... soon as they were released, retired to their arbour, where, for some time, they could talk of nothing but this visit. Miss Jenny Peace remarked how many shapes vanity would turn itself into, and desired them to observe, how ridiculously Lady Caroline Delun turned her whole thoughts on her dress, and condition of life; and how absurd it was in Lady Fanny, who was a very plain girl, to set up for a beauty, and to behave in a manner which would render her contemptible, even if she had ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... not expected this, and for a moment was utterly at a loss. He looked at his daughter in bewilderment; he turned from her to Howard and finally to Sanchia herself as though for help. His face was puckered up; he looked ridiculously as though he were on the verge of tears. Sanchia had the effrontery to pat his ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... than all the other human occupations. He is a poet, and succeeds because the majority of men are poets. It is true, if that matter is at all important, that the German Emperor is not a good poet. The majority of men are poets, only they happen to be bad poets. The German Emperor fails ridiculously, if that is all that is in question, in almost every one of the artistic occupations to which he addresses himself: he is neither a first-rate critic, nor a first-rate musician, nor a first-rate painter, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... present, which, perhaps, drove him on the companionship of his follower, who was dressed something in the style of an ambassador's chasseur; yet it was not a chasseur's dress after all; it was something more thoroughly old-world; boots half way up his ridiculously small legs, which clattered as he walked along, as if they were too large for his little feet; and a great quantity of grey fur, as trimming to coat, court-mantle, boots, cap—everything. You know the way in which certain countenances remind you perpetually of some animal, be it bird ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... own trade gin very seldom, but when he did, a ridiculously small quantity of the stuff could induce him to assume a rebellious attitude towards the scheme of the universe. And now, throwing his body over the rail, he shouted impudently into the night, turning his face towards that far-off and invisible slab of imported granite upon which Lingard had thought ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the poor old Bible? If by education we mean the exposition of some special branch of the physical sciences, the statement may be true. If we mean men and women with a general knowledge of life and letters, with a social consciousness and humanitarian sympathies, it is ridiculously wide of the truth. There is everywhere a hunger for a satisfying explanation of life. There are restlessness and impatience with dogma and creed, there is a growing indifference to the old sectarian exclusiveness, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Lithuania, having been seriously delayed in Liverpool by men who were most ridiculously striking for the fantastic remuneration of one pound a week, was engaged on the business of making new records. And every passenger was personally determined that she should therein succeed. And, despite very bad ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... in the place they were sadly perplexed on the subject of doctors, until the nurse told her mistress that she had seen me going in and out of Galvaston House. And this decided Mrs. Stanwell to send for me. As I was able to do the child good, they are ridiculously grateful. I am likely to have another patient there; Mrs. Stanwell has an aunt living with her, and she is ailing. I have only taken a hasty diagnosis of the case, but I am going again to-morrow. I am half afraid the poor old lady is in ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ridiculously wrapped up in her," Lady Jim accused with a smile. "Why do you expect her love affair to be so interesting? For my part, I think Ned quite good ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... he found by no means cold, and moved off leisurely towards the Piazza dell' Erbe. Neither woman spoke for a while: La Testolina was picking at her apron, Vanna sat quietly in the dark holding her heart. She was still in a tremble, so ridiculously moved that when her friend kissed her she burst out crying. La Testolina went nodding away; and the end of the episode may be predicted. Not at one but at many sermons of the tall Carmelite did Vanna sit rapt; not for one but for every dusk did he stoop to kiss her ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the morning conference—and there were portholes through which they could look. The city which was Naples seemed to swing smoothly past the ship. They saw other ships. A cruiser was under way with its anchor still rising from the water. It dripped mud and a sailor was quite ridiculously playing a hose on it. It ascended and swayed and its shank went smoothly into the hawse-hole. There were guns swinging skyward. Some were still covered by canvas hoods. The hoods vanished before the cruiser swung out of the ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and find occasion to amuse him when he anointed and washed himself, there was one Athenophanes, an Athenian, who desired him to make an experiment of the naphtha upon Stephanus, who stood by in the bathing place, a youth with a ridiculously ugly face, whose talent was singing well, "For," said he, "if it take hold of him and is not put out, it must undeniably be allowed to be of the most invincible strength." The youth, as it happened, readily consented to undergo the trial, and as soon as he was ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Oonahgemessuk weegeet, the Home of the Water Fairies. [Footnote: Also called from a legend, Oonahgemessuk k'tubbee, the Water Fairies' Spring. This appropriate and beautiful name has been rejected in favor of the ridiculously rococo term "Diana's Bath." As there is a "Diana's Bath" at almost every summer watering place in America, North Conway must of course have one. The absolute antipathy which the majority of Americans manifest for the aboriginal names, even in a translation, is really remarkable.] Now the old man, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of the balcony, it was evident, would have to be done in a rush, for it was all in clear moonlight, and visible from the gate into the avenue. A trellis thinly set with young, ambitious climbing roses made the ascent ridiculously easy. There, in that black shadow by the stone vase of flowers, one might crouch and take a closer view of this gaping breach in the domestic defences, the open window. For a while Mr. Ledbetter was as still as the night, and then that insidious ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... of the creation of the world, and formation of mankind, had something ridiculously extravagant. They believed that the world at first consisted only of sky and water, and between these two, a glede; which, weary with flying about, and finding no place to rest, set the water at variance with the sky, which, in order to keep it ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... smoothly, but at no time could it be called a comfortable voyage. For the officers it was very different. They were not too overcrowded and were fed like fighting cocks. The deck accommodation was, of course, ridiculously inadequate, and muster parades, boat drill, and physical drill in relays was all that could be managed. We also had lectures on flies, sanitation, and how to behave when ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... Her one consolation was the immediate prospect of seeing Mac Clarke and the mysterious Monte to whom Birdie had said she must be nice. As she pinned on a saucy fur toque in place of her own cheap millinery, she viewed herself critically in the glass. Beside the big show girls about her, she felt ridiculously young ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... the doctor shuffled in on his big feet, it came over me how ridiculously I must have looked the day I was taken sick, being walked off between Aunty and himself, crying like a baby. I burst out laughing, and no consideration I could make to myself would stop me. I pinched myself, asked myself how I should feel if one of the ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... new captain, who arrived the day after we had finished loading, on the very eve of the day of sailing. I first beheld him on the quay, a complete stranger to me, obviously not a Hollander, in a black bowler and a short drab overcoat, ridiculously out of tone with the winter aspect of the waste-lands, bordered by the brown fronts of houses with their roofs dripping ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... relative of his, this dying Mrs. Holywell; ridiculously rich for a childless widow, and with no nearer heir than the reverend pastor ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... why, why should all her previous interests, including the consideration of the questions of orthodoxy and the other thing, seem so ridiculously ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... life was of a piece throughout. He never succeeded in any single purpose he set before him; for his deliverance from England, after twenty- five years of failure and at the cost of dignity and consistency, it would be ridiculously hyperbolical to treat as a success. During the first part of his life he was the stalking horse of Bernard d'Armagnac; during the second, he was the passive instrument of English diplomatists; and before he was well entered on the third, he hastened ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frivolity, infinitely sensitive to his own indulgence, chill as the poles to the indulgence of all others; prodigal to his own appetites, never suffering a shilling to escape for the behoof of others; magnanimously mean, ridiculously wise, and contemptibly clever; selfishness is the secret, the spring, and the principle of, par excellence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... of “Sandford and Merton,” who spent a good deal of his life in hunting for a wife, made love to Honora. She, however, refused to marry him; and small wonder, for the conditions he wished to impose on her were ridiculously stringent and restrictive, and she, not unnaturally, refused to entertain the prospect of the unqualified control of a husband over all her actions, implied by his requirements. Later on Day wished to marry Honora’s ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... been fine, and there are fragments of good painting still left; but the light does not permit these to be seen, and there is too much perfect work of the master's in Venice, to permit us to spend time on retouched remnants. The picture is only worth mentioning, because it is ignorantly and ridiculously referred to by Kugler ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... written long since by Allan Ramsay, and now sung at Ranelagh and all the other gardens; often fondly encored, and sometimes ridiculously hissed.' Gent. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... her neck with a smile. "You are joking, Mrs. Baker. I know it is ridiculously small, but it is a child's necklace, and I wear it because it was a ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... 'at!" she spelled out slowly. "W'y the other day, at Messrs. Freebody and Williams's in Regent Street, there it confronted me again in a whole bevy of new model shapes. The medium, in brown Ottoman silk, fronted with wings of fine brown or blue lustre, is quite ridiculously cheap at 27s. 6d. And a large hat in black satin, swathed with black chiffon in which lurks just a touch of real ermine, asks you no more than 35s. 9d. Truly age cannot wither nor custom stale the ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and bindings; there was a globe or two, a couch, and an easy chair. Statues and busts there were none, and only one painting, a portrait, that of my host, but not him of the mansion. Over the mantelpiece, the features staringly like, but so ridiculously exaggerated that they scarcely resembled those of a human being, daubed evidently by the hand of the commonest sign-artist, hung a half-length portrait of him of round of beef celebrity—my ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... President gave the Imperialists little concern at first, but with the revival of the Liberal cause they availed themselves of every means to divide its supporters, and Ortega, who had been lying low in the United States, now came forward to claim the Presidency. Though ridiculously late for such a step, his first act was to issue a manifesto protesting against the assumption of the executive authority by Juarez. The protest had little effect, however, and his next proceeding was to come to New Orleans, get into ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... it seemed, the village garrisoned by our men was in advance of our trench lines, with nothing dividing them from the enemy but a little undergrowth—and the queerest part of it all was the sense of safety, the ridiculously false security with which one could wander about the village and up the footpath beyond, with the knowledge that one's movements were being watched by German eyes and that the whole place could be blown off the face of the earth... but for the convenient fact that the Germans, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Russian serfs used formerly to take place at ridiculously early ages. Haxthausen asserts that strong hearty peasant women were to be seen at work in the fields with their infant husbands in their arms. The inducement lay in the fact that the "tiaglo" (see previous note) received an additional lot of ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... excited and some agitated people could be heard. Among the latter were Mrs. Tynan and her daughter and Malachi Deely; among those who held their breath in suspence were John Sibley, Studd Bradley the financier, and the Young Doctor. The swish of a skirt seemed ridiculously loud in the hush, and the scratching of the judge's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... recalled Carroll's charge, and though, with the subject of them before her, it seemed ridiculously impossible, yet the spirit of mischief, ever hovering about her like an attendant sprite, descended and took possession of her speech. She assumed a ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... out beyond the mountains, and Logan of Pennsylvania also called Walpole's attention to the troubles ahead; but the prime minister would take no action. On the other hand, the white population of Louisiana was ridiculously small, and their trade nothing worth mentioning; but when Anthony Crozar resigned the charter he had received for the district, it was taken up by the famous John Law, the English goldsmith's son, who had become ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Now the most important things I know are right in here"—he tapped his head. "Every once in a while they ransack my rooms, but they never find anything worth while. Now this code"—he was studying the card intently—"seems to be one of a sort that our friends from Wilhelmstrasse are ridiculously fond of using. It is manifestly a ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... father's arm, his face changing from red to white as he watched Tessibel. She had clambered to her feet, ridiculously tangled in the rags of her dress. The dead Frederick was forgotten, falling with a great thud upon the floor. Her face was so mobile, so glassily white that if the hand of death had smitten her, she could not have ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... day pack down from his shoulders, ridiculously pleased with the gleaming scarlet braid on the collar and cuff of his uniform, and lifted Fuzzy up on his shoulder to see. It seemed to Dal that everyone he had passed in the terminal had been looking at the colorful ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... breakfast in a dress almost as ridiculously fine as that worn by Miss Folly herself. She ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... wonderful on landing at Calais to hear every one talking French. Of course, Mary had known that it would be so, but actually to hear it, and to think that these people had spoken French since they were babies, was ridiculously nice. She felt rewarded for all the pains she had taken to learn verbs and acquire exactly the right accent; and she half smiled in a friendly way at the dark porters in their blue blouses, and at the toylike policemen with their swords and capes. Her porter ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... left a description of him entering a room, "knees bent, and feet on tiptoe as if afraid of a wet floor." When his feet were not swollen with the gout, they were so slender, he said, that he "could dance a minuet on a silver penny." He was ridiculously lean, and his hands were crooked with his unmerited disease. An invalid, a caricature of the birds, and not particularly well dressed in spite of his lavender suit and partridge silk stockings, he has nevertheless contrived to leave in his letters an impression of almost ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... so—dangerous, and I quite agree with Isabel and her mother that if I am as bad as you say, I am not fit to live in a respectable house and with—decent people. It would be useless for me to assure you that you are all ridiculously mistaken." ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... disappointed when I discover what exorbitant prices are demanded for the best brands. The cedar boxes, with their precious contents, set like gems in the midst of tinfoil and fancy-cut paper, look inviting; but I seek in vain for a cigar at the ridiculously cheap rate I have prepared myself to pay. I try Brevas, and ask for a penn'orth of the best, but am horrified when I am told that a single specimen of that brand costs five-pence! The Intimidads alarm me; the Bravas unman me; and as for the Cabanas, the Partagas, the Henry Clays, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... disintegration, the whole school burst into deafening cheers. Fris had thrown up the game, and let them go on. He walked up and down the middle passage like a suffering animal, his gall rising. "You little devils!" he hissed; "You infernal brats!" And then, "Do sit still, children!" This last was so ridiculously touching in the midst of all the rest, that it had to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... had some buckets of rough fat that would do for greasing sledge runners, or to mix with caulking pitch. He told us he bought the stuff from one of the American whalers that were fishing in the bay last summer, and he offered to sell us a bucket at such a ridiculously low price that Astor ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... Gilman and those who think with her are asking us to believe when they say that the primal physical functions of maternity will be best fulfilled by the mother who "mingles in the natural industries of a human creature." This statement is either ridiculously false or can be rendered true by rendering it as a truism. The primal physical functions of maternity are the natural industries of the particular human creature we call a mother; and the better she fulfils them, the better she fulfils them, certainly. But the ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... is fairly high, but the total of the communicants is relatively small. The clergy are a most estimable and cultured body of men, and perform their duties, which are often very laborious, in an eminently exemplary fashion. Their stipends are ridiculously poor, and the scene of their labours is frequently the reverse of lively. Very often, in the bleak moors and glens of north-east Scotland, I have spent pleasant and memorable evenings in the village rectory. The modes of speech and general atmosphere ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... most of those who formed part of the procession the number of persons assembled to witness it was almost ridiculously small, and popular indignation roared as gently as a sucking-dove. In their own opinion the most law-abiding of Her Majesty's subjects, the Ballinrobe folk indulged but very slightly in groaning or hissing, and when the little army got clear of the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... as on a time he sate after his accustomed and beastly manner carousing with them, his servants being as drunke as he, threw the king, in sport, into a great vessell full of drinke, that was set in the middist of the hall for their quaffing, where he ridiculously and miserably ended ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various |
