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More "Ludicrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to him. He seemed to be on the verge of collapse, and was positively livid with fright. In other conditions than those obtaining at the moment, such a display of terror on the part of a truculent looking, strongly built man would have been almost ludicrous; but Steingall found no humor in the spectacle. He was gazing at the Hungarian with a curious concentration, and the police captain, who had begun by thinking his colleague was saying far too much, and who was inclined to disagree with some of his ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... of ludicrous effects. For example, keep a plain background behind your piano. Make sure that, when listening to music you are not distracted by seeing a bewildering section of a picture above the pianist's head, or a silly little vase dodging, as ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... political character. To hear such a character attributed to her—to her, who was only last year boarding in a school—to her, who knew little more of politics than that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were the most amiable young couple in England—was ludicrous even in that hour of trouble. I do not exactly know how she comported herself during her examination; but I suspect she not merely laughed at the whole affair, but felt a little elated at the idea of being held as of so much importance. She was really anxious, however, about her ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... seasons when his ideas were flushed to a degree much above their common complexion. In times not credulous of inspiration, we should account for this from some natural cause; but we do not mean to account for it at all; it were sufficient to describe its effects; but they were sometimes so ludicrous, as might derogate from the dignity of the sensations which produced them to describe. They were treated indeed as such by most of Harley's sober friends, who often laughed very heartily at the awkward blunders of the real Harley, when the different faculties, which should have prevented them, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... the mode adopted of making his estimates, that additional knowledge may perhaps alter the conclusions drawn, but can never diminish the value of the experiments." They are not open to the objections of mistaken sensations, and honest, though ludicrous, misapprehension of fallible symptoms, to which the testing of drugs homeopathically is liable, and of which another instance has just occurred in London, in the "proving" of the new medicinal agent, gonoine. They rather resemble in accuracy a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... all the spirit and wrath of the old woman: her cries of distress as she darted from one to the other, striking to the right and left with her feeble arms, her form trembling with passion, were at once ludicrous and piteous; and these were responded to by the shrill exclamations of the fierce tymbesteres, as they retorted scratch for scratch, and blow for blow. The spectators grew animated by the sight of actual outrage and resistance; the humpbacked tinker, whose unwholesome fancy one of the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or in any other place, his appearance would have been ludicrous. But now no one laughed. The people in the court-room began to whisper, "Hush!" fearing lest the noise of moving bodies might cause them to lose ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... important mission. I forgot not only my father's caution against vanity but also my sorrow at parting with him; my amour propre rose triumphant above every other feeling; the disagreeable lump in my throat subsided, and with an unconscious, but no doubt very ludicrous, assumption of condescending authority, I ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... even her, of Kyan's confidential disclosure, and, after some speculation as to whether or not there might be a sequel, put the whole ludicrous affair out of his mind. He worked hard in his study and at his pastoral duties, and was conscious of a pleasant feeling that he was gaining his ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... their canoes; and they received in exchange small saws, knives, nails, tin-kettles, and needles. It was pleasing to behold the exultation, and to hear the shouts of the whole party, when an acquisition was made by any one; and not a little ludicrous to behold the eagerness with which the fortunate person licked each article with his tongue, on receiving it, as a finish to the bargain, and an act of appropriation. They in no instance omitted this strange practice, however small the article; the needles even ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... young bird I know is the robin. He is perfectly sure he has a right to attention, and he intends to have it. If he is neglected too long and gets hungry, he calls loudly and impatiently, jerking himself up with a ludicrous air of stamping his feet. Even when he does condescend to go to the lawn with mamma, it is not to seek his food—far from it! It is to follow her around, and call every moment or two for something to eat. The idea that his individual exertions have anything to do with the food supply ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... version, "The Six Sillies," is in Lang's Red Fairy Book. A very fine Italian version, called "Bastienelo," is given in Crane's Italian Popular Tales. The tendency of people to "borrow trouble" is so universal that stories illustrating its ludicrous consequences have always had wide appeal. Some details of these variants are due to local environments. For instance, in the Italian story wine takes the place of beer, and it has been pointed out that there are "borrowing trouble" ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... occurred which gave me the very opportunity I wanted—a scene so ludicrous, that the steed was no longer the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... and the neck is short. The hind legs appear to be longer, compared with the front legs, than is usual. The exposed incisor teeth, the short head and upturned nostrils, give these cattle the most ludicrous, self-confident air of defiance. The skull which I presented to the College of Surgeons has been thus described by Professor Owen:[209] "It is remarkable from the stunted development of the nasals, premaxillaries, and fore-part of the lower jaw, which ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... "Dick, you're a marvel and I'm glad adversity hasn't soured you; but you won't make enough to keep you in neckties at any business you take up. It's ludicrous to think of your running about with paint samples, but there's something pathetic in it that spoils my amusement." Her face softened and she changed her tone. "I'm a rather rich old woman, Dick, and your mother was a very dear friend of mine. You ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... great glee; and that very evening sent off to his Court a most ludicrous spicy description of the whole scene of meeting between this amiable father and child; in which he said that young Billings was the eleve favori of M. Kitch, Ecuyer, le bourreau de Londres, and which ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Queen, smiling, gave him her hand to kiss, dispensing with the form of touching her crown. Miss Martineau, who witnessed the scene, states that a foreigner who was present was made to believe by a wag that this ludicrous tumble was a part of the regular programme, and that the Lords Rolle held their title on condition of performing that feat at ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... JAMES (1745-1813).—A country gentleman of Berkshire, who pub. Poems on Various Subjects and Alfred, an Epic, translated the Poetics of Aristotle, and was Poet Laureate from 1790. In the last capacity he wrote official poems of ludicrous dulness, and was generally a jest and a byword ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... marked his inward shrinking, for she checked herself, and, slowly turning her lifeless screen, hid behind it. It was impotent deprecation translated into flesh,—at once ludicrous and painful. The young man found so much difficulty in restraining the manifestation of his distaste, that he blushed in the twilight at his own rudeness. He would do his ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... have been complete, only that it was ludicrous to those who could not but think, as I did, of the very little matter as to which the contest had been raised;—just a game of cricket which two sets of boys had been playing, and which should have been regarded as no ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... she looked haughty and handsome. Addressing her as Fraeulein Hulstrom, von Francius gave her a sharp lecture, and imitated the effect of her voice in a particularly soft passage with ludicrous accuracy. The rest of the chorus was tittering audibly, the musicians, with the exception of Courvoisier and his friend, nudging each other and smiling. She bridled haughtily, flashed a furious glance at her mentor, grew crimson, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... newspapers and authors, too, detracting the Irish race. Men and women who have never seen the green hills of Ireland, paint Irish characters as boors and blunderers and make them say ludicrous things and use such language as is never heard within the four walls of Ireland. 'Tis very well known that Ireland is the most learned country on the face of the earth—is, and has been. The schoolmaster has been abroad there for hundreds, almost ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... a touch of vanity in his smile, as though in memory of some old, half-ludicrous story ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... other hand, some of our electric exhibitions produce mirth. For instance, the effect of electricity on the monkeys in Montalluyah—who are very sagacious, having faces white like a human being, and talking like parrots—is ludicrous in the extreme. When engaged in chewing and eating their favourite nuts, they find themselves, in spite of their cunning, raised to a great height, without seeing the man underneath their pedestal, who impels them upwards with ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... know, I suppose, that they actually keep a list of all individuals in Italy who dislike them—it must be numerous. Their suspicions and actual alarms, about my conduct and presumed intentions in the late row, were truly ludicrous—though, not to bore you, I touched upon them lightly. They believed, and still believe here, or affect to believe it, that the whole plan and project of rising was settled by me, and the means furnished, &c. &c. All this was more fomented by the barbarian agents, who are numerous ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... and tired, that, although Jerry and I could not help laughing at their ludicrous ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... Gourlay was hounded into prison, where he was broken in health and shattered in mind, and then exiled from the province for criticism of the Government which was certainly no more severe than now appears every day in Opposition newspapers. The conflict had elements of the ludicrous, too, as when Captain Matthews was ordered by his military superiors to return to England because in the unrestrained festivities of New Year's Eve he had called on a strolling troupe to play Yankee Doodle and had shouted to the company, ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... has no such courage. Collapsed altogether, he has nothing more to say for himself or his creed. Giotto hangs the cloak upon him, in Ghirlandajo's fashion, as from a peg, but with ludicrous narrowness of fold. Literally, he is a 'shut-up' Magus—closed like a fan. He turns his head away, hopelessly. And the last Magus shows nothing but his back, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... drawings, because my attempts at taxidermy were grotesquely ludicrous; to put it plainly, they were unmitigated failures. These remarks apply to my very early attempts, for I would not have the readers think me incapable after long practice of turning out a shapely bird or a fish fair to ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... upon the waters. However, his influence did not heal up the difference, and in about a fortnight, a few days before the intended race, there occurred during our afternoon boat-practice a little row between the two antagonists, which proved a final skirmish before the severe but ludicrous battle which crowned the ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... arguments of theologians to prove the inspiration (i.e. infallibility) of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are sometimes almost ludicrous. My lamented friend, John Sterling, has thus summed up Dr. Henderson's arguments about Mark. "Mark was probably inspired, because he was an acquaintance of Peter; and because Dr. Henderson would be reviled by other Dissenters, if ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... don't that I am laughing," said Paul, whose remembrance of childhood was unconnected with any scriptural game. That he should be solemnly consulted about one seemed extremely ludicrous. ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... return to her evil ways there would be no further place for repentance. As a return for the mercy and clemency of the Church, he required her immediately to put on the female dress which his attendants had brought. There is something almost ludicrous, could we forget the tragedy to follow, in the bundle of humble clothing brought by such exalted personages, with the solemnity which became a thing upon which hung the issues of life or death. Jeanne replied with the humility ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... "It was ludicrous, but very sad, and Jake's efforts to keep order were pitiful. He called his young mistress Miss Dory, and was most anxious to screen her from the least suspicion of wrong. When I questioned him with regard to the parentage of the little girl, he wrung his hands and ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... tearing Mrs Boyce's commiseration into the smallest shreds. "Minnie," she said, speaking quite loud, almost with girlish ecstasy, "what do you think Tartar did yesterday? I never laughed so much in my life." Then she told a ludicrous story about a very ugly terrier which belonged to the squire. After that even Mrs Boyce made no further attempt. Mrs Dale and Bell both understood that such was to be the rule,—the rule even to them. Lily would speak to ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... seems a little sad to see them there, doesn't it, mamma, and I in my old gray frock?" The tears were in her eyes, but she looked up at Mrs. Warrender with a little soft laugh at herself, and at the little tragedy, or at least the suspended drama, laid up with something that was half pathetic, half ludicrous, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... laughter rising, such was the effect. Laughter springs from unexpected causes, and nothing could be more unexpected than this termination. Never was sensation comparable to that produced by the ray of light striking on that mask, at once ludicrous and terrible. They laughed all around his laugh. Everywhere—above, below, behind, before, at the uttermost distance; men, women, old gray-heads, rosy-faced children; the good, the wicked, the gay, the sad, everybody. And even in the streets, the passers-by ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... one instant an expression of angry and almost ludicrous surprise leaped across the Spaniard's face as his teeth snapped shut. Then his whole body twisted round violently, rolled over, and lay still beside ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... music-roll to my uncle, and permitted him to dip his thumb and finger into a little porcelain snuff-box, fashioned in the shape of a pug dog, out of which she took a pinch herself with evident relish. She had a horrible squeaky voice, indulged in all sorts of ludicrous flourishes and roulades, and so you may imagine what an effect all this, combined with her ridiculous manners and style of dress, could not fail to have upon me. My uncle overflowed with panegyrics; that I could not understand, and so ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... New Zealand. Hunter River. Midnight alarm. Ludicrous scene. Changes in Officers of ship. Leave Sydney. Port Stephens. Corrobory. Gale at Cape Upstart. Magnetical Island. Halifax Bay. Astonish a Native. Description of country. Correct chart. Restoration Island. Picturesque arrival. Interview with the Natives from Torres Strait. Their weapons. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... which he was very fond. Sometimes he discovered to me honey, deposited in the clefts of rocks, or hollow trees. But if he happened to have met with neither honey nor gum, and his appetite had become sharp by his running about, I always witnessed a very ludicrous scene. In those cases, he looked for roots, which he ate with great greediness, especially a particular kind, which, to his cost, I also found to be very well tasted and refreshing, and therefore insisted ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... the dog, but the ludicrous bereavement he had sustained made him laugh, in spite of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... are you going to convince anybody else that you are? But you'll have to excuse me for a moment—these bracelets are cutting my wrists to pieces. I must find that man who locked me up. You must stay here till I come back—I won't be a minute," and the young man darted out of the room with a ludicrous diving motion of his arms as he parted the heavy crimson silk hangings at the doorway and caromed against ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... utterly astounded. His amaze was ludicrous. And the other two men looked to stare, to equal their ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... object here was matter of curiosity; and, taking the light from her woman to examine the tapestry, she perceived, that it represented scenes from the wars of Troy, though the almost colourless worsted now mocked the glowing actions they once had painted. She laughed at the ludicrous absurdity she observed, till, recollecting, that the hands, which had wove it, were, like the poet, whose thoughts of fire they had attempted to express, long since mouldered into dust, a train of melancholy ideas passed over her mind, and she ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Vander Thumb, the burgomasters receiving it with that reverent and silent attention which becometh an audience at a deep tragedy. Notwithstanding all this, there have not been wanting some who have represented these scenes in a ludicrous light; and Mr D—— hath been heard to say, with some concern, that he wondered a tragical and Christian nation would permit a representation on its theatre so visibly designed to ridicule and extirpate everything that is great and ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... again with a sense of superiority, which was in itself somewhat ludicrous; but as nobody is clear-sighted in their own concerns, he was quite unconscious of this. His laugh nettled Lady Randolph still more. She said, with a ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... not appear to see the others. During the progress of the meal she said little, keeping up a pretense of indifference as to what went on around her. Nevertheless her eyes strayed more than once toward the end of the table where Elfreda was entertaining the girls sitting nearest to her with a ludicrous account of what had happened to her on her way back to Overton. Miriam accidentally intercepted one of these straying glances. In it she fancied she read reproach. A quick flush rose to Laura Atkins's cheeks. Drawing down her eyebrows ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... movement desired, and it was then the duty of a company commander to see to the details of the movement that his company should make, and give the proper orders. Well, sometimes he would be badly stumped, and ludicrous "bobbles" would be the result. As for the men in the ranks, battalion drill was as simple as any other, for we only had to obey specific commands which indicated exactly what we were to do. To "form square," an antique disposition against cavalry, was a movement that was especially "trying" to ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... that the definition does not distinguish the thing designed. Nay, further, even when we perceive the turpitude tending to the destruction of its subject, we may still be sensible of a ridiculous appearance, till the ruin become imminent, and the keener sensations of pity or terror banish the ludicrous apprehension from our minds; for the sensation of ridicule is not a bare perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, but a passion or emotion of the mind consequential to that perception; ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... of sadness enacted there, have left their impress upon the mind of Mrs. Holstein in unfading characters. And yet, amidst these there were some almost ludicrous, as for instance, that of the soldier, White, of the Twentieth Massachusetts, who, supposed to be dead, was borne, with two of his comrades, to the grave side, but revived under the rude shock with which the stretcher was set down, and looking ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... is a satirical poem, representing an action carried on by dialogue, to excite laughter by describing ludicrous characters. See Aristotle. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to her, but she was too busy outdistancing her pursuer. It was Sheriff Coogan, puffing and huffing, the metal-and-gold cloth uniform ludicrous on his ...
— Dream Town • Henry Slesar
... pp. 62, 67; id., The Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 154 sq. Compare L. Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa (London, 1898), p. 445 note: "Before horses had been introduced into Uganda the king and his mother never walked, but always went about perched astride the shoulders of a slave—a most ludicrous sight. In this way they often travelled hundreds of miles." The use both of horses and of chariots by royal personages may often have been intended to prevent their sacred feet ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... leaping act from the springboard. He could, by this time, turn a somersault from the board, though his landing was less certain. Any part of his anatomy was liable to sustain the impact of his fall, but he fell in so many ludicrous positions that the other performers let it go at that, for it furnished them ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He recognized ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... These words, strange and ludicrous as they seem to us, but tersely expressed the general opinion of the day; but fortunately the clear head and the undaunted will persevered, until success was at last attained, and the magnificent railway system of the present, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... Pedro,' I stammered in confusion, when I recalled the ludicrous scene, 'how foolish I must appear ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... powers than that which is involved in giving a man such faculties and capacities, if this be the only field on which they are to be exercised. If you think of what most of us do in this world, and of what it is in us to be, and to do, it is almost ludicrous to consider the disproportion. All other creatures fit their circumstances; nothing in them is bigger than their environment. They find in life a field for every power. You and I do not. 'The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have roosting-places.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... brass plate with the arms of Netherlands under the inscription, "Sultan of Sambir." Babalatchi's head was covered by a red turban, whose fringed ends falling over the left cheek and shoulder gave to his aged face a ludicrous expression of joyous recklessness. When the canoe was at last fastened to his satisfaction he straightened himself up, shaking down the folds of his sarong, and moved with long strides towards Almayer's house, swinging regularly his long ebony staff, ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... not horrified by the Romans, men of exemplary wisdom and famous before other nations by reason of their dignified discipline, who observed the custom of letting the worthy matrons worship and crown Priapus, the foul idol, and of leading bridal virgins before it? What is more ludicrous than that the Egyptians adored the calf Apis as ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... He was a man well skilled in his profession, but had read and thought very little on matters unconnected with it. He had no idea that the marks had any particular signification, or were anything else but common and fortuitous ones. That I became at all acquainted with their nature was owing to a ludicrous circumstance which I ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... this junto of adventurers. It is a singular but ludicrous fact—which, were I not scrupulous in recording the whole truth, I should almost be tempted to pass over in silence as incompatible with the gravity and dignity of history—that this worthy gentleman should likewise have been nicknamed from what ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... awakened the numerous echoes. Hundreds of savages were killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands ran howling into the woods. The Latin- grammar master had a spare night-cap lent him, and a long-tail coat, which he wore hind side before. He presented a ludicrous though pitiable ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... lunacy so that public peace is not endangered; had poor Wilbraham looked a fanatic with pale face, long hair, ragged clothes, much would have been forgiven him, but for a stout, middle-aged gentleman, well dressed, well groomed.... What could be supposed but insanity and insanity of a very ludicrous kind? ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Emperor's orders, five days too long at Odessa—that was all—yes, you see, a little French actress who was there, who sang operettas; oh, how she did sing operettas! Offenbach, you know;" and the General tried to hum a bar or two of the 'Dites lui', with ludicrous effect. "Charming! To leave her, ah! I found that very hard. I remained five days: that wasn't much, eh, Zilah? five days? But the devil! There was a Grand Duke—well—humph! younger than I, of course—and—and—the Grand Duke was jealous. Oh! there ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... portion of the public take a morbid delight in such works as Frankenstein, that "Poor, impossible monster abhorred," who would be disgusting if he were not so extremely ludicrous: and all this search after impossible mystery, such trumpery! growing into the popular taste, is fed with garbage; doing more harm than all the preachings and poundings of optimistic Reviews will be able to remedy ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... character of these apostilles, always confused, wordy and awkward, was sometimes very ludicrous; nor did it improve after his thirty or forty years' daily practice in making them. Thus, when he received a letter from France in 1589, narrating the assassination of Henry III., and stating that "the manner in which he had been killed was that a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dignity, And, though alone for error meant, Sing through the air irreverent. I blame her not, the young athlete Who plants her woman's tiny feet, And dares the chances of debate Where bearded men might hesitate, Who, deeply earnest, seeing well The ludicrous and laughable, Mingling in eloquent excess Her anger and her tenderness, And, chiding with a half-caress, Strives, less for her own sex than ours, With principalities and powers, And points us upward to the clear Sunned heights of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... harmful because the pristine innocence of the mind is, they think, destroyed, and evils are suggested of which a boy might otherwise remain unconscious. To one who knows what boys really are such ideas are nothing less than ludicrous. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... understanding how different institutions, forms, limitations, and governmental arrangements may exist in the several States, independently of, or in subordination to, the province and administration of the Federal Government. Nearly every English journal which undertakes to refer to our affairs will make ludicrous or serious blunders, if venturing to enter into details. The "Edinburgh Review" kindly volunteered to be the champion of American institutions and products in opposition to the extreme Toryism of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... 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. Everybody remembers the sensation which the pleasantry made in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it was the first of a series of similar articles, and was one of the thousand and one causes which provoked the rigorous press legislation ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... by men who sweat and toil on the stock exchange. Have you ever, my dear Quell, watched those little, grotesque brokers on a busy day? No? Well, you will say that no lunatic grimacing beneath the horns of the moon ever made such ludicrous, such useless, gestures. And for what? Money! Money to spend as idiotically as it is garnered. The world is crazy, I tell you, crazy, to toil as it does. How much cleverer are the apes who won't talk, because, if they did, they would be forced to abandon ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in anticipation, Jesus would listen to his gusty, resonant, cheerful utterance, and sometimes laughed so at his jokes, that it was necessary to interrupt the story for some minutes. But John told tales even better than Peter. There was nothing ludicrous, nor startling, about his stories, but everything seemed so pensive, unusual, and beautiful, that tears would appear in Jesus' eyes, and He would sigh softly, while Judas nudged Mary Magdalene and excitedly ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Frank in vain pursuit of his favourite ancient hat over that wild and windy waste, the sheep running away from him; a boat tossing at lovely Minehead; a 'native' bargaining over a crab with my mother; the wonderful Valley of Rocks, and many another scene, ludicrous or grand; for, indeed, we were for ever taking the one step between the sublime and the ridiculous! I am inclined to believe it is as well worth reading as many that have rushed into print, and it is full of precious reminiscences to Emily and me; but the younger generation may judge ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of their amusement turned sharply as they came abreast of him. His freckled, clean-shaven face looked strangely old, and the big, gold-rimmed spectacles bridged halfway down his nose added to his ludicrous appearance. He raised his eyebrows and surveyed the two ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... explode in loud speech and vehement action. Why? Because, as before, the emotion is reflected back, accumulates, and intensifies. Similarly, men who, as proved by their powers of representation, have the keenest appreciation of the comic, are usually able to do and say the most ludicrous things with ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... him. As he saw food approaching his voice ran up several tones higher, in laughable imitation of a human baby cry. This note is of course the promise of a "caw," but the a is flattened to the sound of a in bar, which makes it a ludicrous caricature of ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... the Declaration of Independence, issued by a body largely composed of slave-owners, that all men are created equal and with an inalienable right to liberty, as bringing their theories within the range of practical politics. Franklin was received with ludicrous adulation as an embodiment of republican virtue and philosophic thought. He busied himself in stirring up hostility to England. Another American envoy sought help from Prussia. Frederick showed his hatred of England by forbidding some German troops which George had hired to pass through his dominions; ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the trap-door with his head, gave it a final thrust, and the door fell over with a loud flap, which made Jem Wimble sit up, with his face so swollen and bruised that his eyes were half-closed; and this and his dirty face gave him an aspect that was more ludicrous ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... Leone, but she did permit herself, at rare intervals, to relate some ludicrous anecdotes of people who had suffered from a severe ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... said he, rising with a countenance in which there was a considerable struggle between self-conceit and mortification, a struggle which in fact was exceedingly ludicrous in its effect, "I must only hope that you probably may ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... talent consisted in drollery, more than in serious reasoning, took his own method of exposing those opinions. He wrote a piece called The Rehearsal Transposed, in which he very successfully ridiculed Dr. Parker. This ludicrous essay met with several answers, some serious, and others humorous; we shall not here enumerate all the Rejoinders, Replies, and Animad-versions upon it. Wood himself confesses, who was an avowed enemy to Marvel, 'that Dr. Parker judged it more prudent rather to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... her sixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed an inscription, extolling the charms of her person and of her manners; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion to mention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic, "Pretty creature!" ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... full-of-meaning, musical Indian names ever should have been replaced by such commonplace English ones as are now frequently met with. Who can say that Chelsea is an improvement on sweet Win'nisim'met? Or that the slight elevation which joins that city to Everett, called Mount Washington (how ludicrous that must strike strangers who are familiar with the Mount Washington!), was not better as Sagamore Hill, the Indian name for it? Some of its public-spirited inhabitants are going back to that; and they dare ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... to Lingard, with the wild and stealthy aspect of a lunatic longing to whisper out an insane secret—one of those misshapen, heart-rending, and ludicrous secrets; one of those thoughts that, like monsters—cruel, fantastic, and mournful, wander about terrible and unceasing in the night of madness. Lingard looked at her, astounded but unflinching. She spoke in his ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... had at last arrived at our boma of Matamburu, the same groups of curious people, the same eager looks, the same exclamations of surprise, the same, peals of laughter, at something they deemed ludicrous in the Musungu's dress or manner, awaited us, as at Mvumi. The Arabs being "Wakonongo" travellers, whom they saw every day, enjoyed a complete immunity from the vexations which we ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... same name which, to the Vedic poet, to the Persian of the time of Xerxes, and to the modern Russian, suggests the supreme majesty of deity, is in English associated with an ugly and ludicrous fiend, closely akin to that grotesque Northern Devil of whom Southey was unable to think without laughing. Such is the irony of fate toward a deposed deity. The German name for idol—Abgott, that is, "ex-god," or "dethroned god"—sums up in a single etymology the history of the havoc wrought ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... cracking under his chin with the rising of his hair inside it. Running with him into that part of the garden which I have already described, they saw a score of creatures, to not one of which they could give a name, and not one of which was like another, hideous and ludicrous at once, gambolling on the lawn in the moonlight. The supernatural or rather subnatural ugliness of their faces, the length of legs and necks in some, the apparent absence of both or either in others, made the ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... at that self-contained, trained young woman, with feelings of almost ludicrous astonishment. I remembered the skidding car; and Richard Geddes lying with his head on Alicia's knees, and how we had both thought him dead; and myself sitting in the dust; and then the pain. But it was astounding news that ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... several seconds against the forehead of the victim. When he withdraws his thumb he secretly brings away the coin, but the victim invariably believes that he can still feel it sticking to his forehead, and his head-shaking and facial contortions to get rid of his imaginary burden are ludicrous. It is understood at the time the sentence is pronounced that he must shake the coin off and must not touch it ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... not come to London till the second of April following; and the first mention we find of Goldsmith is in connection with an incident which has its ludicrous as well as its regrettable aspect. The further success of She Stoops to Conquer was not likely to propitiate the wretched hole-and-corner cut-throats that infested the journalism of that day. More especially was Kenrick driven mad with envy; and so, in a letter addressed to the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... contrition, his eyes being turned up, and the corners of his mouth drawn down, as Wamba expressed it, like the tassels at the mouth of a purse. Yet this demure affectation of extreme penitence was whimsically belied by a ludicrous meaning which lurked in his huge features, and seemed to pronounce his fear and repentance ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... favored the afflicted Theodora with a peculiar smile, in which, somewhat of the ludicrous prevailed over the tender, and dismissed her from his presence, with a gracious promise of a visit as early as the importance of his affairs ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... more sensible, to fall into line and acquiesce in the condemnation; then it would matter nothing whether the vulgar did or did not elect to admire Dick Benyon's peculiar friend. Yet a protest stirred within her; only her sense of the ludicrous prevented her from adopting Dick's word and asking Marchmont if he had ever seen the fellow in one of his "moments." But it would be absurd to catch up the phrase like that, and it was by no means certain that even the moments would appeal ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... so ludicrous, and yet so Pathetic, in the little man's lamentations, that I scarcely knew whether to laugh or to cry. His feelings seemed so very acute, and he himself so perfectly sincere in his moanings and groanings, that it was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... in the after-cabin. He remembered me perfectly, and at once engaged in a most interesting conversation. He was full of curiosity about the many incidents of our great march, which had reached him officially and through the newspapers, and seemed to enjoy very much the more ludicrous parts-about the "bummers," and their devices to collect food and forage when the outside world supposed us to be starving; but at the same time he expressed a good deal of anxiety lest some accident might happen to the army in North Carolina during my absence. I explained ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and he called himself Jim Crow. His right shoulder was drawn up high and his left leg was stiff at the knee, but he took his deformity lightly, singing as he worked. He had one favorite tune to which he had fitted words of his own, and at the end of each verse he made a ludicrous step which in time came to be known as "rocking the heel." His refrain consisted of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... going yet,' said Flora—Arthur had looked at his hat, being in a ludicrous dismay, and not knowing what to do: 'you could never be so unkind as to think of going, Arthur—I mean Mr Arthur—or I suppose Mr Clennam would be far more proper—but I am sure I don't know what I am saying—without a word about the dear old days gone for ever, when I ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... great deal of excellent tactics was displayed in these discussions; still less, if possible, that the zeal of the disputants was all the more creditable to them for their peaceful antecedents during their whole lives; but the ludicrous side of the scene was brought out all the more strongly by the silence of these old soldiers, who alone out of the whole party had ever seen what men actually could and did do on the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be more safe than where he was. The figure he made in his retreat—his large swelled body on the lean jade, like a tun of wine on a gantress—his anxiety to get off—his receding position—his flight after such a day of vaunting—all conspired to render the sight ludicrous in the extreme. One general burst of laughter filled the air; but the Captain held on his course, and never stopped till he arrived at Berwick. That day Hume and Isabel were wed—and a happy day it was for ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... I gasped, as the horror of my situation increased, and like a flash came the idea of being ill out in that wilderness, away from all human help and comfort; and, ludicrous is it may sound, I forgot all about Uncle Dick, and began to think of Dr Portly, who had a big brass plate upon his ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... one American example (to be found at length in S. P. R. Proceedings XVIII.) of well-recorded telepathic transmission. The incident thus transferred is trivial and even ludicrous; the fact of the transference was absolutely useless. But the case is not only none the worse for this; it is all the better. When we are trying to prove that such transmission exists, we want to keep clear, if we can, of emotional complications. If P is brooding over A's approaching death, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... jealously conceals its secrets, and intentionally leads conceited interpreters astray. There is no sight under the sun more pitiful and ludicrous at once, than the spectacle of the Prestons and the Webbs, not to mention the later incarnations of Dullness and Commonplace, undertaking to "explain" the old symbols of Masonry, and adding to and "improving" ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Penrhyn is my—" And then he stopped. The ludicrous side of the matter had never appealed to him, but he was none the less conscious of how ridiculous the ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... found, and poor Zenobia is brought to the shore with her knees still bent in the attitude of prayer, and her hands clenched in immitigable defiance. Foster tries in vain to straighten the dead limbs. As the teller of the story gazes at her, the grimly ludicrous reflection occurs to him that if Zenobia had foreseen all 'the ugly circumstances of death—how ill it would become her, the altogether unseemly aspect which she must put on, and especially old Silas Foster's ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... moment Bob towered above them like a great avenging red angel. Then his anger left him as suddenly as it had come. Carey and the deputy presented such a pitiable sight, although ludicrous withal, that he was moved to shame to think that he had pitted his strength against such puny adversaries. He picked T. Morgan Carey out of the corner, set him on his feet, dusted him off, gave him his ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... "White Cloud," who are on a visit to England. They are truly a wild enough looking company, and helped not a little to relieve the tedium of the passage. The chief was a very grave and dignified person, but some of the braves were merry enough. One day we had a war-dance on deck, which was a most ludicrous scene. The chief and two braves sat upon the deck, beating violently a small drum and howling forth their war-song, while the others in full dress, painted in a grotesque style, leaped about, brandishing ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... informant's father, the gathering of these angry and startled weavers, when he thrust his blue bonnet on his head and rushed out to join them, was an impressive and solemn spectacle. That bloodshed was meant there can be no doubt; for starving men do not see the ludicrous side of things. The difference between the farmers and the town had resolved itself into an ugly and sullen hate, and the wealthier townsmen who would have come between the people and the bread were fiercely pushed aside. There was no nominal ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... or not. Lord W.'s letter appeared last Monday, and certainly from that time to this it never entered into anybody's head that the Duke ought to or would take it up, though the expressions in it were very impertinent. But Lord Winchelsea is such a maniac, and has so lost his head (besides the ludicrous incident of the handkerchief[7]), that everybody imagined the Duke would treat what he said with silent contempt. He thought otherwise, however, and without saying a word to any of his colleagues or to anybody but Hardinge, his second, he wrote and demanded an apology. After many letters ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... cannot imagine what you would have. One woman is too frivolous—another wants refinement—one is too indolent and exacting—and when you can make no other objection, why her style is a little too prononce"—the last words were given with ludicrous imitation of his cousin's tone. "If an angel were to descend from heaven for you, I doubt ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... length a positive heel over to that; the whole of my little world within being canted to half a right angle, and a ridiculous distortion of every single thing in my bedroom was the result. The humiliating sensation of being aground on hard unromantic mud is tempered by the ludicrous crooked appearance of the contents of your cabin and by the absurd sensation of sleeping in a corner with everything askance except the lamp flame, which, because it burns upright, looks most awry of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... worthy of the name of a cause. Yet the men who could show that he had failed to clear up the mystery could themselves throw no light upon it. The government was especially ignorant of all that it should have known; and there is something almost ludicrous in the tone of the speech made by the President ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... look it over. The people of Victoria think it is fine. They ought to come to California and pattern after some of our playhouses. It was small, the acoustics bad and the mixtures of colors was as a crazy-quilt to me. The boxes were ludicrous in their attempt at ornamentation. The seats were long benches, upholstered with solferino-colored damask and the scenes were the merest daubs. We did not rehearse in the theater. We returned to the hotel and rehearsed in the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... all now so wrapt in security as country dwellers, guarded by the rural police everywhere, that the following ludicrous incident may seem hardly worth a word; but in the good old days, when poor Jack was such a highway brigand that my nurses feared to take the children off the premises, and when burglars were not infrequent callers at remote residences, what happened long ago, on a certain ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... own faith promised to the Scottish settlers, did a great stroke of work in marrying the young Swiss girls to the De Meuron bachelors of German Creek. The description of the way in which the De Meurons invited families having young women in them to the wifeless cabins is ludicrous. A modern "Sabine raid" was made upon the young damsels, who were actually carried away to the De Meuron homesteads. The Swiss families which had the misfortune to have no daughters in them were left to languish in their comfortless tents. The afflictions of the earlier Selkirk ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... of Electoral Expenditure.*—Time was, and within the memory of men still living, when an English parliamentary election was attended by corrupt practices so universal and so shameless as to appear almost more ludicrous than culpable. Voters as a matter of course accepted the bribes that were tendered them and ate and drank and smoked and rollicked at the candidate's expense throughout the electoral period and were considered men of conscience indeed if they did not end ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Liberty"; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus—and "Swellfoot" was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... supply of the liquid on his head. They rubbed it in well, grinning with delight. They made a second and a third application before the bottle was exhausted; then they stood off to view the result of their efforts. The effect was ludicrous. The combination of coal black skin and red gold hair presented by the little negro exceeded the wildest expectations of Jimmy and Billy. They shrieked with laughter and rolled over and over on the ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... his arm, cried, with awful vehemence, "Get thee back into the tempest, and the night's Plutonian shore!" there was a sudden disappearance of the sable visages, a scuttling of feet, and the gallery audience was gone. Ludicrous as was the incident, the final touch was given when at that moment Miss Poe, who was an extraordinary character in her way, sleepily entered the room, and with a dull and drowsy deliberation seated herself ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the attempt was little else than ludicrous. Anthony laughed fiercely to himself as he pictured the landing of the treacherous fools at Dingle, of Sir James FitzMaurice and his lady, very wretched and giddy after their voyage, and the barefooted friars, and Dr. Sanders, and the banner so solemnly ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Both hoboes made ludicrous haste to elevate their hands as far as they could. In the excitement of the moment, having only caught glimpses of khaki uniforms, they imagined that a detachment of the State militia had been called out to search the woods for the firebugs guilty of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... childbirth, were tainted with the Sabbatian heresy. So bitter and widespread were the charges and counter-charges, that at one moment every Jewish community in Europe stood excommunicated by the Chief Rabbis of one side or the other—a ludicrous position, whereof the sole advantage was that it brought the Ban into contempt and disuse. It was not likely that a controversy so long-standing and so impassioned would fail to permeate Poland; and, indeed, among us the quarrel, introduced as it was by Baruch Yavan, who was ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... knows—nobody that is, but a climber like herself. To those who were born and who live, no matter how quietly, in the security of a perfectly good ledge above and away from the social ladder's rungs, the evidence of one frantically climbing and trying to vaunt her exalted position is merely ludicrous. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... and was such a charming companion. He often developed a strain of humor in the girl's society and would relate anecdotes that aroused in her spontaneous laughter, for she possessed a keen sense of the ludicrous. Yes, Gran'pa Jim was really funny, when in the mood, and as jolly a comrade as ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... mind—dominated by its physical brain and brain-born intellect—can they have a living signification. All that words can convey is that Nirvana is a sublime state of conscious rest in omniscience. It would be ludicrous, after all that has gone before, to turn to the various discussions which have been carried on by students of exoteric Buddhism as to whether Nirvana does or does not mean annihilation. Worldly similes fall short of indicating the feeling with which the graduates of Esoteric Science regard ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... society which it depicts is too revolting for comedy. The Silent Woman is, perhaps, the easiest of all Jonson's plays for a modern reader to follow and appreciate. There is a distinct plot to it, the situation is extremely ludicrous, and the emphasis is laid upon single humor or eccentricity, as in some of Moliere's lighter comedies, like Le Malade Imaginaire, or ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to have been of a light and dissolute character. We are indeed told by an Indian author that numbers regretted the departure of the Persians. The drolls and players of the capital began, immediately after they went away, to amuse their countrymen with a ludicrous representation of their own disgrace; and the fierce looks and savage pride of their conquerors, which had been so late their dread, became in these imitations one of their chief sources ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... glance at some of the main questions which arise in connection with this doctrine; and, to begin with, we may state with the utmost frankness that nothing is easier than to interpret the {24} conception of Divine immanence in such a manner as to make it appear either ludicrous or hateful or simply meaningless—in any case repulsive from the religious point of view. This, to come straight to the point, is what is bound to happen when God's indwelling in man is explained as meaning that man is de facto one with his Maker. What could the general reader think when he ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... some things simply do not happen. From this extravagant summit of horror, his fears gradually receded. Such a waking nightmare even quieted his nerves when it was past; for if a possibility presents a ludicrous side, then its horror must diminish by so much. Moreover, Henry told himself that if the threat of a disaster so absolute could really be felt by him, it was his duty to rise at once, intervene, and, if necessary, summon his uncle and force May to ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... Our adventurers could not guess. Nor, indeed, could the wreckers themselves have given a good reason for undergoing such an amount of ludicrous labor. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... merely religion but decency was habitually disregarded. At his wedding he was so drunk that his attendant dukes "could scarcely support him from falling."[6] The Princes of the Blood were notorious for a freedom of life and manners which would be ludicrous if it were not shocking. Here I may cite an unpublished diary[7] of Lord Robert Seymour (son of the first Marquis of Hertford), who was born in 1748 and died in 1831. He was a man of fashion and a Member of Parliament; and these ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... army, writes that: "A big fine man mounted on a pony, with his body bent forward and looking very top-heavy, always at a gallop, and waving his enormous whip, the Cossack presents an almost ludicrous appearance to one accustomed to our stately troopers. But this feeling is dashed with regret that ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... indignant, and then the ludicrous climbed uppermost, and I laughed, whereat Madame looked positively shocked, and even mamma seemed aghast and murmured something apologetic about my having been at boarding-school in the country, and at college, where I had ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... gentleman from Pi-chi-li, not for opium but for a chat with him. For my companions had not smoked before, and I did not want two helpless invalids on my hands at midnight. Those amazingly thrilling and amazingly ludicrous stories of East End opium-rooms are mainly, I may say, the work of journalistic specials. A journalistic special is a man who writes thrillingly on old-fashioned topics on which he is ill-informed. The moment he knows ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... sober earnest, that are obviously not true? (I allude here, of course, to genuine women, not to suffragettes and other such pseudo-males). As for me, I should not like to undertake such a list. I know of nothing, in fact, that properly belongs to it. Women, as a class, believe in none of the ludicrous rights, duties and pious obligations that men are forever gabbling about. Their superior intelligence is in no way more eloquently demonstrated than by their ironical view of all such phantasmagoria. Their habitual attitude toward men is one of aloof disdain, and their habitual attitude toward what ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... after dinner he turned to a friend of mine, and said simply, "I think all these bigots ought to be burnt." Such deplorable intolerance was happily rare. Less rare, perhaps, were his irresistible sense of the ludicrous and irrepressible tendency to sarcasm. Of a famous clergyman he said, "At least they have not put him into a bishop's apron, the emblem of our first parents' shame." "What can education do for a man," he once asked, "except ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Point of Death. Sir John, tho' a Wit, took no Pains to shew it at his latest Hour, that is, he did not dye like one of those prophane Wits, who bid the Curtains be drawn, and said the Farce of Life was ended. This is making our Warfare too slight and ludicrous: He departed with more Grace, and, like the memorable Type of his Prudence, Don Quixote de la Mancha, where he perceiv'd his Sand was running out, he repented the Extravagance of his Knight-Errantry, and ingenuously confess'd ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... as if such things, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish in immortal youth, or at least to die before their decrepitude. They are trees of Paradise, and therefore not naturally subject to decay; but have lost their birthright by being transplanted hither. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental—who can give the world nothing but flowers—should die young, and never be seen with gray hairs and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... timeworn phrase back and forth; it would have been ludicrous if it hadn't been so deadly serious. Well, money when you come to think of it, is its very existence to such an institution; it was not to be wondered at that the twelve men around the long table in the directors' room ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... deliberation which he felt to be the better part of impulse. Financially they did not represent a great deal, he admitted; then, as if flinching before a threatened sacrilege, he looked away again, while he remembered with a quick recognition of the ludicrous, that among the articles for which Connie had not paid was a pair of pearl ear-rings. The item had taken a prominence oddly out of keeping with its significance, and he found that it irritated him more than the thought of objects of a decidedly greater cost. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... grandeur and in antique stateliness. I do not remember very particularly what we saw,—time-worn fronts of famous colleges and halls of learning everywhere about the streets, and arched entrances; passing through which, we saw bits of sculpture from monkish hands,—the most grotesque and ludicrous faces, as if the slightest whim of these old carvers took shape in stone, the material being so soft and manageable by them; an ancient stone pulpit in the quadrangle of Maudlin College (Magdalen), one of only three now extant in England; ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the dusty road, and the girl went back to her tree. She had not sold any daisy-handkerchiefs, but she had her story to tell the girls. She lay in the grass thinking of it. Once or twice she pursed her lips and made a ludicrous ineffectual attempt to whistle, but she did not smile. Jane Cotton's Sam clicked the gate, going out, but she did not notice. When she did at last look up, and her gaze wandered over the little yard aimlessly, she suddenly uttered ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... rather a ludicrous misprint (doubtless owing to an illegible MS.) at p. 120. For Mr. Pickering's Lives, read Series ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... caged—they enjoy life so intensely in the jungle, and are so amusing, swinging themselves from the branches of tall trees, leaping, flying almost, in pursuit of one another for mere fun, that it was sad to put them in prison, where they never lived long, and where they only exhibited a ludicrous and humiliating parody on the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... What a ludicrous difference do these two nobodies make to each other. You can see that they are to be married when ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Djafar, to which was added Al Soft, or "The Wise," and he was born at Hauran, in Mesopotamia. ["Biographie Universelle."] Some have thought he was a Greek, others a Spaniard, and others, a prince of Hindostan: but, of all the mistakes which have been made respecting him, the most ludicrous was that made by the French translator of Sprenger's "History of Medicine," who thought, from the sound of his name, that he was a German, and rendered it as the "Donnateur," or Giver. No details of his life are known; but ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Georgie's first impulse was to affect not to see her, and turn into his bachelor house, but she had certainly seen him, and made so shrill and piercing a whistle on her fingers that, pretend as he would not to have seen her, it was ludicrous to appear not to have heard her. ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... side of the building. As he warily put his head out to take the observation it came in hard contact with that of the president, who had adopted Paul's own tactics to catch him. The situation was so ludicrous that even that austere gentlemen burst out laughing and Paul scampered away to ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... little brass basin dangled above the threshold; and looking through the glass I saw the master of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now I had come to see and pay my compliments to a poet, and there did appear to me to be something strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to some extent, in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... the following day, the Sunday preceding Lent, a festa, or carnival, lasting three days, would begin. During the festa, business would be suspended, and the people, disguised in masks and fanciful costumes, would engage in most ludicrous and extraordinary antics and play all manner of practical jokes on one another, showering the passers-by gently with confetti and flowers, or pelting them stingingly with dried peas and beans. Many children, impatient for the morrow to come, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... started up in passionate parliamentary eloquence; but after a sentence or two, broke down; one, and then another, and still another, and remained all three staring in open-mouthed silence there! The peasant-proprietors accepted the phenomenon as ludicrous, perhaps partly as miraculous withal, and consented to ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... another desperate effort to raise a further sum of a hundred thousand pounds; and beginning, as usual, at Manchester, have raised there alone, within a few days' time, upwards of L.20,000! The fact (if true) is at once ludicrous and disgusting: ludicrous for its transparency of humbug—disgusting for its palpable selfishness. Will these proverbially hard-hearted men put down their L.100, L.200, L.300, L.400, L.500, for nothing? Alas, the great sums they have expended in this crusade against the Corn-laws, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... also as a disciplinarian, that she followed this career steadily for fifteen years, with the exception of some months given in Philadelphia to her own training. Of the many school rebellions which she overcame, one rises before me, prominent in its ludicrous aspect. This was in the district school at Center Falls, in the year 1839. Bad reports were current there of male teachers driven out by a certain strapping lad. Rumor next told of a Quaker maiden coming ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... in which Ramiro himself joined heartily. The idea of anyone voluntarily entering upon a single combat with the terrible Frisian giant, who for months had been a name of fear among the thousands that beleaguered Haarlem, struck them as really ludicrous. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... eater of meat, always had to be pressed to it, and often would not take it till we brought in the cat. The malicious looks that he cast at her from under his eyebrows on such occasions were exceedingly ludicrous, considering his utter disinclination to injure her. Whenever he saw her, he drew near his bicker and looked angry; but still he would not taste till she was brought to it, and then he cocked his tail, set up his ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Like Grimes, he was a "good old man!" A true gentleman of the old school, he clung to many of the fashions of a by-gone period with a pertinacity, which, to the eyes of the thoughtless, savored somewhat of the ludicrous. It was only of late years that he relinquished his three-cornered hat; to breeches, buckles, and hair powder he adhered to the last. He was also partial to pigtails, though his earliest was shorn from his head by a dangerous rival, who cut him out of the good ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... treasures had spilled out. One sack of diamonds had broken. Wolden stopped and kicked the stones away. An ancient Ford, with its back seat piled high with rotting and sprouting sacks of prize-winning oat seed, was both heart-breaking and ludicrous. ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... and went sprawling headlong in a ludicrous manner; but being so round and clumsy he rather overdid the matter; for instead of simply rolling there on the ground, he kept on scrambling, hands and legs shooting out every-which-way; and to the astonishment and dismay of his comrades, Noodles vanished over the edge ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... were doing, and much disliked it. Why then was my delight of such sort that I did it not alone? Because none doth ordinarily laugh alone? ordinarily no one; yet laughter sometimes masters men alone and singly when on one whatever is with them, if anything very ludicrous presents itself to their senses or mind. Yet I had not done this alone; alone I had never done it. Behold my God, before Thee, the vivid remembrance of my soul; alone, I had never committed that theft ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... of negroes hanging on the rear of our column when it arrived in Milledgeville, like a sable cloud in the sky before a thunder storm or tornado. They thought it was freedom now or never, and would follow whether or no. It was really a ludicrous sight to see them trudging on after the army in promiscuous style and divers manner. Some in buggies of the most costly and glittering manufacture; some on horseback, the horses old and blind, and others on foot; all following up in right jolly mood, bound for the Elysium ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... I said." Foster smiled slightly as he spoke, for the expression upon the face of Peter John was a study. Consternation, incredulity, and partial unbelief in what Foster had said were all expressed there, and his entire attitude was so indescribably ludicrous ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... child, they flattened or pressed his nose. From this I judged, that they do so by their children when born, which may be the reason why all in general have flat noses. This part of the play, from its newness, and the ludicrous manner in which it was performed, gave us, the first time we saw it, some entertainment, and caused a loud laugh, which might be the reason why they acted it so often afterwards. But this, like all their other pieces, could ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... it is not for me to speak. It would be impertinent, and even ludicrous, for a person in my position to dilate on the social gifts of ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... directs. It is a stage-business that must please the common actor of Hamlet; but there is nothing in the text any more than in the margin of Folio or Quarto to justify it, and it would but for the horror of it be ludicrous. The coffin is supposed to be in the grave: must Laertes jump down upon it, followed by Hamlet, and the two fight and trample ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... inquest resulted in their trial and acquittal at the old Bailey two months later. It would have been well for the London Magazine and for literature in general if that unfortunate duel could have been prevented or at least diverted into such a ludicrous affair as the meeting between Jeffrey and Tom Moore ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... parallel with him on the other side of the room, giving an absurdly exact imitation of his carriage and deportment. To make this more striking, she pulled out of her pocket, after a mock search, a huge paste ring, gazed on it with a ludicrous affectation of simple wonder, stuck it, like Cibber's diamond, on her little finger, and, pursing up her mouth, proceeded to ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... boys remember when 'lection time comes, to vote fer a sheriff that's got disgression an' common sense." And with ludicrous alacrity, the deputy scrambled from the platform and disappeared into the deep ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... of discipline and misconduct in military service, were brought before the praetor in Sicily. Cicero undertook their defense, which he conducted admirably, and got them acquitted. So returning to Rome with a great opinion of himself for these things, a ludicrous incident befell him, as he tells us himself. Meeting an eminent citizen in Campania, whom he accounted his friend, he asked him what the Romans said and thought of his actions, as if the whole city had been filled with the glory of what he had done. His friend ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... work, yet bordering on the ludicrous, Jack told himself, meanwhile wondering just how long Perk's heap of missiles would persist, also what was bound to happen when the rock pile was gone. Doubtless the near-demented man inside must be working up to a feverish pitch under the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... all parts of the country offers of risings came. Sir George Booth was to seize Chester; Lord Newport, Shrewsbury; and in Gloucestershire, Devonshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and North Wales, the Royalists were only too eager for the work. The ludicrous weakness of the Parliament made it a matter of no great danger to defy what could hardly be deemed an existing Government. But the Royalists had been too long depressed and deprived of any share in administration to take a ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... he at chumming thus with the captain. The little airs he put on and the painful striving to assume the easy carriage of a man born to a dignified place in life would have been sickening had they not been ludicrous. He quite ignored my presence, though I credited him with being simply unable to see me. His pale, wishy-washy eyes were swimming like lazy summer seas, though what blissful visions they ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... up and down, takes a cigar, stops near her and says, after a pause: You think the topic of my talk to-night Extremely ludicrous, I should not wonder? [Pauses for an answer. SVANHILD is silent. I'm very conscious that it was a blunder; Sister's and daughter's love alone possess you; Henceforth I'll wear kid gloves when I address you, Sure, so, ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... said Cyrus Thurston, and laughed in derision. There was something ludicrous in the futility of the attack. He stuck his head from a window into the gale they created. He sheltered his eyes to try to follow ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... somewhat ludicrous in their uniforms,[309] were not much behind their comrades of the Ninth and Tenth Kansas[310] in earnestness and in attention to duty.[311] Nevertheless, they had been very reluctant to leave their families and were, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Diana. Indeed, Puff was not bred for a sportsman. His father, a most estimable man, and one with whom we have spent many a convivial evening, was a great starch-maker at Stepney; and his mother was the daughter of an eminent Worcestershire stone-china maker. Save such ludicrous hunts as they might have seen on their brown jugs, we do not believe either of them had any acquaintance whatever with the chase. Old Puffington was, however, what a wise heir esteems a great deal more—an excellent man of business, and ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... dreams as to our future achievements. It is thus the principal root of that gigantic illusion of self-conceit, which has long been recognized by practical sense as one of the greatest obstacles to social action; and by art as one of the most ludicrous ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Hester!" replied her brother. "How you could see anything pathetic, or pitiful as you call it, in that disreputable old humbug, I can't even imagine. A more ludicrous specimen of tumble-down humanity it would be impossible to find! A drunken old thief—I'll lay you any thing! Catch me leaving a sov where he could spy the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... went to Kirtland, where he had several thousand pamphlets printed, setting forth the prophet's views and plans, and he then travelled around in a buggy, distributing the pamphlets and making addresses in Smith's behalf. "To many persons," he confesses, "who knew nothing of Joseph but through the ludicrous reports in circulation, the movement seemed a species of insanity."* John D. Lee was a most devout Mormon, but his judgment revolted against this movement. "I would a thousand times rather have been shut ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... "The ludicrous dismay that will seize you when the constablery of your progressive civilization notify you that you must emigrate to the Gossip and Slander Reservation. Poor Mrs. Prudence Potter! from my earliest recollection she has been practising archery upon the target of her neighbours' characters, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... department in which it demanded the united life-long labors of a Kepler, Galileo, and Newton to elicit the truth, the hasty guesses of a great theologian, rashly ventured in a polemic spirit, gave form and body to but ludicrous error. It is not after a fashion so impetuous and headlong that the elaborately wrought key must be plied which unlocks the profound mysteries of nature. But of this ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... had already been too often dosed in the same way, to be impatient of repetitions. The three first soon got together in a corner, and Eve fancied they were laughing at the rest of the company; whereas, in fact, they were merely laughing at a bad joke of their own; their quick perception of the ludicrous having pointed out a hundred odd combinations and absurdities, that would ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... attracted to a youth in spectacles, dressed in a rich plum-coloured coat, on the outside of a dingy-looking, big-headed, brown nag, which he was flogging and cramming along the public walk in front of the "Dolphin," in the most original and ludicrous manner. We presently recognised him as one of our fellow-passengers of the previous day, respecting whom Jorrocks and I had had a dispute as to whether he was a Frenchman or a German. His equestrian performances decided the point. I never in all my life witnessed ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... audience, his writings at least have come home to most English readers. They suggest a consideration of the many points of difference which distinguish American from English humour. The Americans are of our own stock, yet in their treatment of the ludicrous how unlike us they are! As far as fun goes, the race has certainly become "differentiated," as the philosophers say, on the other side of the Atlantic. It does not seem probable that the infusion of alien ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... dead silence to a friend's room near by. There he locked the door, and began to comfort her by making light of the little mishap. But Kitty cried so tragically, that he was at his wit's end, till the ludicrous side of the affair struck her, and she began to laugh hysterically. With a vague idea that vigorous treatment was best for that feminine ailment, Jack was about to empty the contents of an ice-pitcher over her, when she arrested him, by ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... would try and blow it back but it would not move. I reached for my shell dressing and tried, with one hand, to bandage my face to prevent the flow. I had an awful horror of bleeding to death and was getting very faint. You would have laughed if you had seen my ludicrous attempts at bandaging with one hand. The pains in my wounded shoulder were awful and I was getting sick at the stomach. I gave up the bandaging stunt as a bad ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... a potent and popular solvent of psychic problems. Thought-transference was a supremely ludicrous supposition till comparatively recently; nor could there be any credible testimony for what was known antecedently to be quite impossible. But some way or other, facts which demanded a name were forced upon the direct observation ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... familiar friends for years; and their conversation was by turns tender, sentimental and gay. Madame, though she had no taste for such conversation, and whose coarseness and selfishness sometimes exhibited a ludicrous contrast to their excessive refinement, could not remain wholly insensible to the captivations of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... for a dead organism cannot reform itself. Then, continuity. The reformed man, must be the same man, or he would not be a reformed man but somebody else. So with the Church of England. It would have been quite possible, however ludicrous, to have established a new Church in the sixteenth century, but that would not have been a reformed Church, it would have been {15} another Church—the very last ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... agreed with Marian that it was a melancholy case, but the others were too triumphant to be compassionate; and Gerald amused Agnes half the morning with ludicrous stories ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... observed," the visitor went on to say, "that the ideas which ignorant people entertain concerning heroes are ludicrous in the extreme. Now, I have met with more adventures than generally fall to the lot of mortals; but, being a modest young man, I have never allowed any one to apply that name to me. I have been in battles—desperate battles. I have seen ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... sense enough left to observe something of the ludicrous in the woman and her advice. He turned at once, uttered a wildly jovial laugh, and driving in the head of another cask, overturned it. As before, the spirit rushed down the hill and was set ablaze, but the poor madman did not pause now to look at the result. His great enemy was ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... blindness who did not know that you were blind,—with personal deformity who believed you even good-looking, chiefly in consequence of having seen the rather neat likeness of you prefixed to your Poems [Marshall's ludicrous botch of 1645 which Milton had disowned] ... Nor did I know any more that you had written on Divorce. I have never read that book of yours; I have never seen it ... I will have done with this subject. That book ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to have had a fastening, but merely to have been stuck fast by the accumulation of paint. As he bent it slowly back upon the rusted hinges his heart beat so fast that he could scarcely catch his breath, though he was conscious all the while of a ludicrous aspect of his position, knowing that it was most probable that the cavity within would be found empty. The cupboard was small but very deep, and in the obscure light seemed at first to contain nothing ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... unconnected with it. He had no idea that the marks had any particular signification, or were anything else but common and fortuitous ones. That I became at all acquainted with their nature was owing to a ludicrous circumstance which I will ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... hurt their feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were not strongly stirred. If this be taken into account along with the fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance, making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... but his well-earned reputation at the table, with his ordinary coolness of demeanor; though at times there were fleeting smiles that crossed his military aspect, which sufficiently indicated that he considered the matter of his reflection to be of a particularly ludicrous character. In the young man who sat by his side, dressed in the deep-blue jacket of a seaman, with the fine white linen of his collar contrasting strongly with the black silk handkerchief that was tied with studied negligence around his neck, and ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ludicrous side to the Papal Lotteries; but there is also a very sad one. It is sad to see the offices on a Thursday night, when they are kept open till midnight, hours after every other shop is closed, and to watch the crowds of common humble people who hurry in, one after the ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... and scratch, uttering shrill screams of rage and kicking on the floor with his feet. He was at once pulled away, assured by those dearest friends who had so recently and merrily assisted him in his "rags" that he was not playing the game and was no sportsman. He was moreover a ludicrous sight, his trousers being torn, one blue-black eye staring from a confused outline of dust and blood, his hair amazingly ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Corydon at last as though she had always lain like this, and as though she must for endless time. She found herself getting used to it even; her muscles relaxed. There came to her a sense of the ludicrous side of it. "He means to conquer me!" she thought. "Can I hold out? If I only had something to think about, then I'd be a match for him." And suddenly the inspiration came to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... reckless sort of a way, "fix me up a good hot whisky-punch, and do it right; and here's another sixpence toward the fortune you are bound to make. It's the last one left—not a copper more in my pockets," and he turned them inside-out, with a half-solemn, half-ludicrous air. "I send it to keep company in your till with four others that have found their way into that snug place since morning, and which will be lonesome without their ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... She was a big, sonsy woman, with full-blown peony cheeks and large, dreamy, brown eyes. When she had been a slim, pink-and-white girl those eyes had been very romantic. Now they were so out of keeping with the rest of her appearance as to be ludicrous. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... entangled in formulas, slowly feels its way. The Congress is composed of better elements than is the administration, and it is ludicrous to see how the administration takes airs of hauteur with the Congress. This Congress is in an abnormal condition for the task of directing a revolution; a formula can be thrown in its face almost at every bold step. The administration ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... greater toleration the time was ripe to expand her organization it was necessary to recruit her priests in Ireland. What the Jesuits had begun the Irish completed. It had been amusing to listen to the lamentations of Monseigneur Cripps; but Monseigneur Cripps had expressed, however ludicrous his egoism, the failure of ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the Americans were well in the stream, and some had gained the bank, on the Canadian side, when eighteen or twenty of the red children of the forest, sprang to their feet, and gave a yell, so hideous, that the Americans, stricken with panic, fled with almost ludicrous precipitancy. So terror-stricken, indeed, were the valiant host, that they left arms, accoutrements, and haversacks, behind them. No further attempt was made by General Hull, on Amherstburgh. It would have been captured ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... upon the wall, and stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth to prevent a sudden explosion of laughter, by which cousin Betty might be awakened, she ran to call the family. No pen-sketch but an actual profile would give the slightest idea of the extraordinary and most ludicrous appearance of the image thus thrown upon the wall; with the enormous ears standing up, and the mouth and chin snapping together like the claws of a lobster. One by one they rushed from the room, till at length a ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... illustrating the proverb, "So wie die Alten sungen, so pfeifen auch die Jungen"; fairs, weddings, etc.; he also treated other scenes, such as the Doctor's Visit, the Schoolmaster with a generally very unmanageable set of boys—of which is a charming example at Dublin. The ludicrous ways of children seem especially to have attracted him; accordingly, he depicts with great zest the old Dutch custom on St. Nicholas's Day, September 3rd, of rewarding the good, and punishing the naughty child; or shows a mischievous little urchin teasing the cat, or stealing ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... true to our age to the core. Whether he wrote of the gentle McKinley, the fighting Dewey, the ludicrous schoolboy, the "grand eternal fellows" that are coming to this world after we have left it—he was ever a weaver at the loom of highest thought. The world is not to be civilized and redeemed by the apostles of steel and brute force. Not ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... that followed may be conceived, but cannot be described. Some of the men burst into laughter, for anything ludicrous is irresistible to an Eskimo of the very far north. A few were petrified. Others there were who resented this indignity to the heir-apparent, and flourished their spears in a threatening manner. These ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... perceiving my lameness for the first time. "Donald, fetch out the pony. Can you ride bareback?" he asked: "I fear there's no saddle but an old piece of sacking." In spite of my protestations the pony was led forth; a starved little beast, on whose over-sharp ridge I must have cut a sufficiently ludicrous figure when hoisted into place with ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Addition, according to Cocker." Old Amen, the parish clerk, is united to Miss Bridget Silence, the pew opener; and Theophilus White, M.D. changes place with Mr. Sable, the undertaker. But we shall become too grave if we proceed deeper with this subject. There is no end to the whimsical alterations and ludicrous changes that take place upon these occasions, when scarce a sign or door plate in ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... because they are sacred to freedom, than the sumptuous and magnificent robes of regality itself. Such sentiments are truly detestable, nor could any thing be an aggravation of the author's guilt, except his ludicrous ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... was sweeping the ward with a broom muffled in a white bag. In the breeze from the open windows, her blue calico wrapper ballooned about her and made ludicrous her frantic thrusts after the bits of fluff that formed eddies under the beds and danced in the ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... purpose to say, than the briefless lawyers and patientless medical students who are glad to earn a guinea by their pens. Men are not born article-writers any more than they are born doctors of law, or doctors of physic; as the ludicrous failures, which are every day thrown into the rubbish-baskets of all our newspaper offices, demonstrate past all contradiction. Incompetency is manifested in a variety of ways, but an irrepressible tendency to fine ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... imagination, like a juggler detected and laughed at, hastily takes itself out of the way. As I walked homewards I paused midway on the barren ridge to gaze back on the scene I had left, and then the recent adventure began to take a semi-ludicrous aspect in my mind. All that circumstance of preparation, that mysterious prelude to something unheard of, unimaginable, surpassing all fables ancient and modern, and all tragedies—to end at last in a concert of howling monkeys! ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Dickens, in his best production, says, with all the shrewdness and point of a practical philosopher, "There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat." But, unfortunately, on shipboard, if a man's hat is taken off by the wind, he cannot chase it and recover it; nor is it swept from his sight into ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... terrible, when I'm roused," ejaculated Jos from the sofa, and made a grimace so dreary and ludicrous, that the Captain's politeness could restrain him no longer, and he and Osborne fired off a ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the tonsorial artist, and have his hair cropped short, was warned that "he'd look like one o' them there fiddler chaps." The barber apparently had no greater estimation of the violinist's art than the latter had of the tonsorial profession, and the situation was sufficiently ludicrous to form the subject of a picture in Punch, and thus the matter assumed ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... never so irresistible as when seasoned with obscenity, and employed upon religion. But in proportion as these noxious principles take hold of the imagination, they infatuate the judgment; for trains of ludicrous and unchaste associations, adhering to every sentiment and mention of religion, render the mind indisposed to receive either conviction from its evidence, or impressions from its authority. And this effect, being ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... outrance. Never was a subject monarch more goaded and driven into rebellion against his inclination by over-bearing conduct on the part of his suzerain than was Ra-Sekenen by the last "Shepherd King." The disinclination of himself and his court to fight is almost ludicrous: they "are silent and in great dismay; they know not how to answer the messenger sent to them, good of ill." Ra-Sekenen, powerful as he had become, "victorious" as he may have been against Libyans and negroes, and even Cushites, dreaded exceedingly to engage in ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... hard, it is ludicrous," he continued, "that some of the busiest men in the world should be obliged to occupy their time, and that so many of my friends and well wishers should be put to inconvenience—and on a day, too, when it would ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... York comes as near as any one of its earlier rivals in the faithful embodiment of those theories which, with Promethean rashness, he had flung at the head of a startled world in 1888. For the usual thing has happened: what a quarter-century ago seemed almost ludicrous in its radicalism belongs to-day to the established ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... his voice—"Here's the extra Sun, with a full account of the two murders and suicide in William street last night—only one cent!" Of course I purchased a copy; and, upon perusing the account, I could not help smiling at the ludicrous and absurd exaggerations which it contained. It was a perfect modern tragedy of Othello, with Romaine as the Moor, Mrs. Romaine as Desdemona, and Anderson as a sort of cross between Iago and Michael Cassio. I was not alluded to in any ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... forcibly exemplify the separative spirit of the Greek arts than their comedy as opposed to their tragedy. But as the immediate struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both were alike ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles above its tragic events and passions,—and it is in this one point, of absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakespeare and the old comedy of Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... carved in flesh by great strokes of the blocking-out chisel. Small frseuated eyes, a short nose, flanked by widely distended nostrils, round cheeks, a square chin, thick, but not curling lips—this unattractive and ludicrous physiognomy, sometimes animated by an expression of cunning which recalls the shrewd face of an old French peasant, is often lighted up by gleams of gentleness and of melancholy good-nature. The external characteristics of these two principal ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the foot of the rainbow. Now a sudden turn of Fortune's wheel had lifted him to a salary of L6 a week and all expenses paid, and the work he was required to do for his money was so trifling in amount as to be almost ludicrous. He had merely to read over a few letters and send off a few brief cablegrams saying ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... communicating the suspicions. To be brief, the two went behind a hedge, and presently Israel emerged, presenting the most forlorn appearance conceivable; while the old ditcher hobbled off in an opposite direction, correspondingly improved in his aspect; though it was rather ludicrous than otherwise, owing to the immense bagginess of the sailor-trowsers flapping about his lean shanks, to say nothing of the spare voluminousness of the pea-jacket. But Israel—how deplorable, how dismal his plight! Little did he ween that these wretched rags he now wore, were ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Damon had to laugh when he recalled the ludicrous situation in which he had been placed in the jungles of South America. Surrounded by savages, he had absent-mindedly taken off his wig, thereby frightening the simple natives half out of their wits. They had thought he could scalp himself at will. Nevertheless, this action had ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... one-sided, upset evolution, and made of education a fraud. That, two thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be called — and should actually and truly be — the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous. One must be as commonplace as Grant's own commonplaces to maintain such an absurdity. The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... goatskin they paddled and drifted over. By starting from the head of the island they could reach the shore opposite the down-stream end. The bobbing heads of the dignified old graybeards of the community looked most ludicrous. On landing they would solemnly don their clothes, deflate the skins, and go ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... this petition, and the grave answer which the King was advised to give to such a ludicrous appeal, are preserved in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1765, p. 95; where also we learn that Mr. Walpole's idea of the Carpenters' petition was put in practice, and his Majesty was humbly entreated to wear a wooden leg himself, and to enjoin all his servants to do the same. It may, therefore, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... with living, squirming turtles, which he regarded and carried as tenderly as a mother would her infant. Some of the wretched reptiles were carefully wrapped in soft blankets, their heads and forefeet protruding,—and, mounted on the backs of the plume-bedecked pilgrims, made ludicrous but solemn caricatures of little children in the same position. While I was at supper upstairs that evening, the governor's brother-in-law came in. He was welcomed by the family as if a messenger from heaven. He bore in his tremulous fingers one of the much abused and rebellious ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... were, John Skinner, Hector Macneill, John Mayne, and Richard Gall. Grave as a pastor, Skinner revelled in drollery as a versifier; Macneill loved sweetness and simplicity; Mayne, with a perception of the ludicrous, was plaintive and sentimental; Gall ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that was then almost finished. This picture Meneclidas persuaded them to dedicate, inscribed with Charon's name, designing by that means to obscure the glory of Epaminondas and Pelopidas. This was a ludicrous piece of pretension; to set a single victory, where only one Gerandas, an obscure Spartan, and forty more were slain, above such numerous and important battles. This motion Pelopidas opposed, as contrary to law, alleging that it was not the custom of the Thebans to honor ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... this attempt to forestall his enemies Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an immediate and deserved success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than its earlier companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to lead up to the ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed from the "Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the difficult words with which he had overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... at six o'clock, and lasted for two hours and a quarter. Beginning in a low voice, he proceeded gradually to unfold his measure, greeted in turns by cheers of approval and shouts of derision. Greville says it was ludicrous to see the faces of the members for those places doomed to disfranchisement, as they were severally announced. Wetherell, a typical Tory of the no-surrender school, began to take notes as the plan was unfolded, but after ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... last night was on Comedy. He professed to enter on the subject with reluctance, as conscious of a deficiency in the organ of the ludicrous—a profession, however, that was not substantiated very well by the lecture itself, which convulsed the audience with laughter. He spoke in the commencement of the silent history written in the faces of an assembly, making them as interesting to a spectator ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Penny, who had no sympathy with German, French, or any of these ludicrous languages. "Yes, sir, we had ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Nicholas Blount entered, and hastily apprised by Sussex, who met him at the door of the hall, of the Queen's gracious purpose regarding him, he was desired to advance towards the throne. It is a sight sometimes seen, and it is both ludicrous and pitiable; when an honest man of plain common sense is surprised, by the coquetry of a pretty woman, or any other cause, into those frivolous fopperies which only sit well upon the youthful, the gay, and those to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... saw the "Home Rule" movement in Irish politics brought to an almost ludicrous halt by the success of Mr. Parnell, then a young member of Parliament for Meath, in unhorsing the leader of that movement, Mr. Butt. As the Irish members then had no coherent purpose or policy, Mr. Parnell had, without much trouble, dominated and brigaded them to follow him blindly into a system ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... accepted this random word as though it were a name of honour for him, and rewarded the wit of the saying with a heavy bracelet. Then Wigg, thrusting out his right arm decked with the bracelet, put his left behind his back in affected shame, and walked with a ludicrous gait, declaring that he, whose lot had so long been poverty-stricken, was glad of a scanty gift. When he was asked why he was behaving so, he said that the arm which lacked ornament and had no splendour to boast of was mantling with the modest blush of poverty to behold the other. The ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... disciplined human mind works as a thing detached, refusing to be hurried or flustered by outward circumstance. Time and its artificial divisions it does not acknowledge. It is concerned with preposterous details and with the ludicrous, and it is acutely solicitous of other people's welfare, whilst working at a speed mere electricity could ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... by one or two scratches and by a smudge of dirt. But it was as calm and as eternally smiling as ever. In place of his wontedly correct, if garish, form of dress, he was clad in ragged calico shirt and soiled drill trousers whose lower portions were in ribbons. All of which formed a ludicrous contrast to his white buckskin yachting shoes and his ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... said, touching his sun hat, which was stuck on to the back of his head in a somewhat ludicrous fashion, "as we have got all those guns and things in the whale-boat astern, to say nothing of the provisions in the lockers, I think it would be best if I got down and slept in her. I don't like ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... succession to this incident of epic dignity, which has its only parallel by the way in the case of Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Camoens,) when met and confronted by a sea phantom, whilst attempting to double the Cape of Storms, (Cape of Good Hope,) a ludicrous passage, in which one felicitous blunder did Csar a better service than all the truths which Greece and Rome could have furnished. In our own experience, we once witnessed a blunder about as gross. The present Chancellor, in his first electioneering contest ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Jersey when it rains is to let it rain; and what I did when he pounded was to let him pound. I was perfectly willing he should pound; I even hoped that he enjoyed it. In spite of the anxiety I felt for poor Kate, I could not help laughing at the ludicrous earnestness with which he swore and pounded. Like most men, my uncle was cool when he was not excited; and as there had been nothing on the present occasion to excite him, I suppose he was cool. Doubtless ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... And a fine-looking party they were. Some had their faces so swollen that their eyes were completely closed upon awakening from sleep. When one could see the others he could not refrain from laughing, so ludicrous was the spectacle. All dignity was lost. Even the august commander of the party was a laughing-stock, and though he knew why they laughed at each other, he could not understand why he should excite such mirth until he saw his face in a mirror. Then, when he tried ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... Family. The King's printer is a Mons. BREE l'Aine. He is a very pleasant, well-bred man, and lives in the Place Trinite. I have paid him more than one visit, and always felt additional pleasure at every repetition of it. My first visit was marked with a somewhat ludicrous circumstance. On entering the compositors' room, I observed, pasted upon the walls, in large capital letters, the following well ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... time that it passed through several editions. The merit of achieving what the satirist intended may therefore be granted to the Dispensary. Few modern readers, however, will appreciate the welcome it received, and it is ludicrous to read in Anderson's edition of the poet that the poem 'is only inferior in humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour to the Rape of the Lock.' It would be far more accurate to say that the Dispensary has not a single merit ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality. What was it? I knew—the moon's picture of a town. These streets with their houses did not exist, they were but a ludicrous projection of the moon's sumptuous personality. This was a city of Pretend, created by the hypnotism of moonlight.—Yet when I examined the moon she too seemed but a painting of a moon and the sky in which she lived a fragile echo of colour. If I blew hard ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the village priests were convicted as aiders and abettors of the attack on the abbey, and twenty were summarily hanged. Nearly two hundred persons remained under sentence of outlawry, and for five weary years their case dragged on in the King's Courts. At last matters ended in a ludicrous outrage. Irritated by repeated breaches of promise on the abbot's part, the outlawed burgesses seized him as he lay in his manor of Chevington, robbed and bound him, and carried him off to London. There he was ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... Princess Oninga had seen fit to dress her head was indeed peculiar, I may say ludicrous. Her woolly hair had been arranged in the form of a cocked hat, with a horn projecting in front, and at a short distance off it might easily have been mistaken for the headpiece of a general officer ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... cohesion) through conflict; but the book is so much more than that, in spite of its heavy debt to all scientific and institutional research, that it remains a first-rate feat of original constructive thought. It is the more striking from its almost ludicrous brevity compared with the novelty, variety, and pregnancy of its ideas. It is scarcely more than a pamphlet; one can read it through in an evening: yet there is hardly any book which is a master-key to so many historical locks, so useful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... said Craigie, bowing with ludicrous politeness, to poor Hannah, whose head he was supporting, "I must first ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... began to torture us at about five o'clock in the afternoon, and left off only when the cold of night came, relieving us of one discomfort by the substitution of another. Bill, of whom I had come to think as the expatriated turnip, gave me an opportunity to study homesickness—at once pitiful and ludicrous in a man with abundant whiskers. But he pulled strenuously at the forward paddle, every stroke as he remarked often, taking him closer ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... have a shambling sort of gait, half walk, half amble, but manage to get over the ground very quickly, and for such cumbersome animals are very nimble-footed. It is almost ludicrous to see the huge beasts picking their way along a narrow "bund" or crossing some ditch by a bridge of fallen logs, but they ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... Calumet Marston who, a week before, had set out on his homeward journey filled with bitterness—looking for trouble? Had he been at the Lazy Y a day or a year? It was a day—two days—but it seemed more like the longer time. At least the time had wrought a change in him. It was ludicrous, farcical. In spite of his treatment of Betty she had faith in him! Wasn't that just like a woman? There was nothing logical in her. She had taken him on trust. The whole business was in the nature of a comedy and suddenly yielding to his feelings ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... clear representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I think, almost always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all the pictures I have seen of hell, to determine whether the painter did not intend something ludicrous. Several painters have handled a subject of this kind, with a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their imagination could suggest; but all the designs I have chanced to meet of the temptations of St. Anthony were rather a sort of odd, wild grotesques, than any thing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a coarse and ludicrous image in favour of such opuscula; he says, "Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew fair, may proclaim plenty of labour and invention, but afford less of what is delicate, savoury, and well concocted, than smaller pieces." To quote so light a genius as the enchanting La Fontaine, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... been so accustomed to regard Jack Frost as a member of the male sex that they could not get out of the habit. So they continually used the masculine pronoun, although the result was ludicrous. Visitors used to be quite electrified when Rilla referred casually to "Jack and his kitten," or told Goldie sternly, "Go to your mother and get him to wash ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which as a "fine" art is placed immediately after poetry, as an "agreeable" art at the very foot of the list, and as the play of tone in the vicinity of the entertaining play of fortune [games of chance] and the witty play of thought. The explanation of the comic (the ludicrous is based, according to Kant, on a sudden transformation of strained expectation into nothing) lays great (indeed exaggerated) weight on the resulting physiological phenomena, the bodily shock which heightens vital feeling and favors health, and which accompanies the alternating ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... intercourse. A very large majority of these are the property and habitations of the cultivated and intelligent Creoles of the State. And here let me explain the term Creole, which has led to so many ludicrous, and sometimes to painful mistakes. It is an arbitrary term, and imported from the West Indies into Louisiana. Its original meaning was a native born of foreign parents; but universal use has made ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... victories to show in the same field of battle, and every victory and every defeat brought him new sympathy. Every one who was at Paris a few years since must recollect the famous "poire" which was chalked upon all the walls of the city, and which bore so ludicrous a resemblance to Louis Philippe. The poire became an object of prosecution, and M. Philipon appeared before a jury to answer for the crime of inciting to contempt against the King's person, by giving such a ludicrous version of his face. Philipon, for defence, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that wild and windy waste, the sheep running away from him; a boat tossing at lovely Minehead; a 'native' bargaining over a crab with my mother; the wonderful Valley of Rocks, and many another scene, ludicrous or grand; for, indeed, we were for ever taking the one step between the sublime and the ridiculous! I am inclined to believe it is as well worth reading as many that have rushed into print, and it is full of precious reminiscences to Emily and me; but the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... land and water from point to point, Varrick lightly laughed aloud at the ludicrous incidents, such as the sudden flashing of the light's piercing rays on some lover's nook, where two souls indulging in but one thought were ruthlessly awakened from sweet seclusion to the most glaring publicity, and at many a novel sight, ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... ennobling Monsieur Jourdain is performed in dance and music, and comprises the Fourth Interlude.) [The ceremony is a burlesque full of comic gibberish in pseudo-Turkish and nonsensical French, in which Monsieur Jourdain is made to appear ludicrous and during which he is outfitted with an extravagant costume, turban, ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... advance of the young corvi. After vacating the nest they squat for some days on a branch close by; numbers of them are to be seen thus in suitable localities towards the end of July. At first the call of the koel is a squeak, but later it takes the form of a creditable, if ludicrous, attempt at a caw. The young cuckoo does not seem to be able to distinguish its foster-parents from other crows; it clamours for food whenever ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... It was ludicrous, standing there in a bathing suit, discussing the matter under the gaze of three pairs of outraged female eyes, and a ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... footstep sounded in the passage, and Hilliard, to whose emotions was now added a sense of ludicrous indignity, heard talk between Patty and ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... description can be felt only by those who are familiar not only with the poetic language, but also with all those minute local and historical circumstances, the allusions to which contribute so frequently to augment the ludicrous. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... The tumult is explained. A colony of wild pigeons is busy amongst the beech-nuts, which the frost has showered upon the earth. The ground for some distance around the tree is perfectly blue with the birds picking, and fighting, and scrambling. It is ludicrous to see them. Here a score or two are busy eating, looking like a collection of big-paunched, blue-coated aldermen at a city feast; there, all are hurrying and jostling, and tumbling over one another like ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... this ludicrous association Mr. Browning always recognized great merit in Watts's hymns, and still more in Dr. Watts himself, who had devoted to this comparatively humble work intellectual powers competent ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Socialism; half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future, at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous in its effects, through total incapacity to comprehend ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... anything so ludicrous; the manager sent officers up to discover the offenders but no one could tell who had played the trick; he then came before the curtain to make a speech upon the occasion, but, having sneezed seven or eight times, he ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the room—then darted swiftly out between the legs of Lund and Rainey, on all fours, like a great dog. Curlike, it sprawled on the floor with a white face and pop-eyes, with hands outstretched in pleading, knees drawn up in some ludicrous attempt at protection, calling shrilly, in the ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... of his disagreeable proximity to their eminently respectable residence, induced me to follow him. I paused at a point where, concealed by some shrubbery, I had a view of the hall door, which, upon my friend's ringing, was opened by a smart maid-servant. Swaying up and down on the steps in a most ludicrous manner, the "houtcast" addressed her, although I was too far off to make out the words, but to judge by her looks she felt no prepossession in his favour. After a while she went away, leaving the door open and him standing on the steps. In about a minute a stout, middle-aged gentleman appeared ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... However ludicrous all this may seem to the British public, yet for the honour of our country such accusations should not remain unrefuted. A witness of the disorders that took place in Portugal declared to the present writer ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... lies hard and dead." On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott has recorded this verdict: "In the inimitable tale of Tam o' Shanter, Burns has left us sufficient evidence of his abilities to combine the ludicrous with the awful and even the horrible. No poet, with the exception of Shakespeare, ever possessed the power of exciting the most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions. His humorous description of death in the poem on Dr. Hornbrook, borders on the terrific; and ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... laugh't so much in my life as I did last night at Captain Grigg's minuet. I wish you could see him. It is really the most ludicrous thing I ever saw; and what makes it more so is, he thinks he ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... because of the many possible alternatives that present themselves. And in every lead correct grammar should be considered above all else. If a lead is ungrammatical no clever arrangement of details can make it effective or other than ludicrous. For instance, this lead, taken from a newspaper, illustrates an unfortunate attempt to crowd too many details into ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... (Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 5), Byron relies on the authority of "Ariosto Thomson and Beattie" for the inclusion of droll or satirical "variations" in a serious poem. Nevertheless, Dallas prevailed on him to omit certain "ludicrous stanzas." It is to be regretted that no one suggested the excision of sections xix.-xxi. from the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... thing designed. Nay, further, even when we perceive the turpitude tending to the destruction of its subject, we may still be sensible of a ridiculous appearance, till the ruin become imminent, and the keener sensations of pity or terror banish the ludicrous apprehension from our minds; for the sensation of ridicule is not a bare perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, but a passion or emotion of the mind consequential to that perception; so that the mind may perceive the agreement or disagreement, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... horse. How he managed it was something of a puzzle, for he never had painting lessons, his drawing was often wildly inaccurate, and, while his perception of a Tree Personality was true and vivid, his rendering of it might almost approach the ludicrous. Yet the character and personality of that particular tree stood there alive beneath his brush—shining, frowning, dreaming, as the case might be, friendly or hostile, good or evil. ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... malignity of others. Such cases, with respect to libels that are quickened into popularity by interesting circumstances, or by a personal interest attached to any of the parties, or by wit, or by extraordinary malice, or by scenical circumstances, or by circumstances unusually ludicrous, are but too likely to occur; and, with every fresh repetition, the keenness of the original provocation is renewed, and in an accelerated ratio. Again, with reference to my own case, or to any case resembling that, let ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Plato describes with ludicrous exaggeration the influence exerted by the one and many on the minds of young men in their first fervour of metaphysical enthusiasm (compare Republic). But they are none the less an everlasting quality of reason or reasoning which never grows old in us. At first we have but a confused conception ...
— Philebus • Plato
... pretension in their construction, both being cumbrously large, awkward, and unwieldy; and occupying, as they did, the only portion of the village which had been stripped of its forest covering, bore an aspect of mutual and ludicrous wildness and vacancy. They had both been built upon a like plan and equal scale; and the only difference existing between them, but one that was immediately perceptible to the eye, was the superfluous abundance of windows in the former, and their deficiency in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... with the advantages of the body; we may observe a phaenomenon, which might appear somewhat trivial and ludicrous, if any thing coued be trivial, which fortified a conclusion of such importance, or ludicrous, which was employed in a philosophical reasoning. It is a general remark, that those we call good women's men, who have either signalized themselves by their amorous exploits, or whose make ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... veil which ornamented the head, and which, having been crushed and flattened, for two hundred and fifty miles, in that particular angle of the vehicle from which the lady's snores now proceeded, presented an appearance sufficiently ludicrous to have moved less risible muscles than those ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... out the dialogue, already over-long in the original, to an altogether inordinate and ludicrous extent. When the pair at last come upon the unhappy lover they find him lying insensible, a horn of poison by him. The necessary sequel ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and almost ludicrous widowerhood tears would sometimes galumph down on his daughter's face as Henry rocked her of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... possessing so intimate a knowledge of the country, they might have evaded the armed parties in pursuit, until, with increased numbers, they had fallen upon some place of arms which they would have made their point d'appui. As it was, their proceedings were ludicrous, and afforded subject-matter for Punch, which contained a caricature representing an army of Irish rebels scared by the shadow of a policeman. There can be no doubt that O'Brien would have dared anything which a sense of duty and honour dictated, and which opportunity ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... have done all that which the framers of them hoped that they might effect. We all know what has been the fate of the constitutions which were written throughout the French Revolution for the use of France. We all, here in England, have the same ludicrous conception of Utopian theories of government framed by philosophical individuals who imagine that they have learned from books a perfect system of managing nations. To produce such theories is especially the part of a Frenchman; to disbelieve in them is especially ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... terrified penitents were yielding; and whenever any mitigation of the violence of the gale made it possible to do any thing to divert the minds of her company, she tried to make amusement out of the odd and strange dilemmas in which they were continually placed, and the ludicrous disasters and accidents which were always befalling her servants and officers of state, in their attempts to continue the etiquette and ceremony proper in attendance upon a queen, and from which even the ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
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