"Preposterous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would certainly be very inconvenient to us, and inasmuch as we are probably capable of judging of our own "convenience," and have never solicited the advice of anyone on this point, it is scarcely to be expected that we shall be advised to adopt a line so preposterous and injurious. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... preposterous start, you will say; yet the delightful naturalness which Miss GLADYS COOPER and Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY bring to the situation gives it almost an air of possibility. But, once we are at Ostend, and have been introduced to Trotter's incredibly inappropriate fiancee (she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... disdain, the first appearance of this weapon of the great now coming to the grande dame's aid. Her husband, the Duke de Chaulnes' trouble with his revolutionary citizens at Rennes was a subject that never failed to arouse a feeling of angry contempt in her. It was too preposterous, the idea of those insolent creatures rising against him, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... entirely free? If he were informed by the political boss that if he join, it must be forever; that he must be that party's chattel and wear its brass collar the rest of his days—would not that insult him? It goes without saying. He would say some rude, unprintable thing, and turn his back on that preposterous organization. But the political boss puts no conditions upon him at all; and this volunteer makes no promises, enlists for no stated term. He has in no sense become a part of an army; he is in no way restrained of his freedom. Yet he will presently find that his bosses and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... I did not believe Mr. McGrath, and I told him, as I resumed my graceful occupation, that I didn't think there were any fish there to catch. The idea of their rejecting flies served up as mine were was too preposterous. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... interval he remained in gaol until 1800. By that time Despard was desperate, and engaged in a plot to seize the Tower of London and Bank of England and assassinate George III. The whole idea was patently preposterous, but Despard was arrested, tried before a special commission, found guilty of high treason, and, with six of his fellow-conspirators, sentenced in 1803 to be hanged, drawn and quartered. These were the last men to be so sentenced in England. Despard was executed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Cadwallader?" said Sir James. His fear lest Miss Brooke should have run away to join the Moravian Brethren, or some preposterous sect unknown to good society, was a little allayed by the knowledge that Mrs. Cadwallader always made the worst of things. "What has happened to Miss Brooke? Pray ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... laughter. "It is preposterous," he cried. "Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am I—in this damned twilight—I never knew a dream in twilight before—an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... from Oregon [Mr. Williams] thinks this is entirely preposterous. I have no doubt he does, and I give him all credit for honesty and sincerity in the remarks that he has made; but the trouble with him is, and with a great many others—perhaps it is with myself upon some subjects—is that he ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the republic—against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday moving-pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the cigarette, against all things sinful and charming—these astounding Methodist ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... come in the boat. Suspicion said that O'Shea would cause the boat to be towed ashore, and would then take the Captain home by the quicksands. Would O'Shea make him drunk, and then cast him headfirst into the swallowing sand? It seemed preposterous to be harbouring such thought against the cheerful and most respectable farmer at his side. What foundation had he for it? None but the hearing of an idle boast that the man had made one day to his wife, and that she in simplicity had taken ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... The curs were preposterous curs. Nora had always been afflicted with a surplus amount of laughter—laughter which had difficulty in attaching itself to anything, owing to the lack of the really comic in the surroundings of the poor. But with a red-headed and freckled baby ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... the palms of their hands and soles of their feet were dyed dark-brown with henna. Captain Lyon viewed with amazement and pity the dress of these poor little girls, borne down as they were with finery; but that of the youngest boy, a stupid looking child of four years old, was even more preposterous than that of his sisters. In addition to the ornaments worn by them, he was loaded with a number of charms, enclosed in gold cases, slung round his body, while in his cap were numerous jewels, heavily set in gold, in the form of open hands, to keep off the evil eye. These talismans were sewn ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... modern one, that it was hallucination, is preposterous. Hallucinations that five hundred people at once shared! Hallucinations that lasted all through long talks, spread at intervals over more than a month! Hallucinations that included eating and drinking, speech and answer; the clasp of the hand and the feeling of the breath! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Mink's parents some sixty years ago, and nothing had been changed. A customer had once suggested that if the sofa was taken away from the window, and the table put in its place, the room would be lighter. Miss Mink had regarded the proposition as preposterous. One might as well have asked her to move her nose around to the back of her head, or to exchange the positions ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... when Greece and Rome had shed superior light on human relationships and obligations, and especially since Christ had promulgated the golden rule, the idea that man could own a fellow-creature was so preposterous that he would be an infidel, nay, he would go farther, he would be an atheist, rather than believe it. Our moral instincts are our guide. They are the highest source of evidence that there is a God, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... the column halted at Garnettsville, in Hardin county, and went into camp. It has been frequently surmised, in the North, that Morgan crossed the Ohio river to escape from Hobson. Of all the many wildly and utterly absurd ideas which have prevailed regarding the late war, this is, perhaps, the most preposterous. It is difficult to understand how, even the people whose ideas of military operations are derived from a vague rendition of the newspaper phrases of "bagging" armies, "dispositions made to capture," "deriving ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... offered to me because I'm too good to love a man honestly.... You see, I'm none of the things you think I am, Graham. Nor that you want me to be. Not white, not innocent. Not a 'good' woman even, let alone an angel. That's what makes it so—preposterous." ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... so early an hour, and if he had no better success with others than he was having with these soldiers, it was possible that he might be led out and shot before his identity was discovered. The thing was preposterous. The king's knees became suddenly quite weak. They shook, and his legs gave beneath his weight so that he had to lean against the back of a chair to keep ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... foot pavement; and to see a gentleman scrambling through by that orifice into the principal street of, and from one of the principal houses of the town, whilst all the people were going to church, was a little too preposterous even for Mr Root's matter-of-fact imagination. However, they all peeped up the chimney one after the other, as if an elderly, military-looking gentleman, encumbered with a surtout, for thus he was described, would ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... to relate. A strange thing is this memory, by the way, and strangely moved by trifles to the exercise of its marvellous power. For more than thirty years—for the average period that suffices to change the generation of man upon earth—had this preposterous adventure, and everything connected with it, lain dormant in some sealed-up cavity of my brain, when the bare sight of the little bundle of small-sized German foolscap, with its ragged edges and blotted official ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... hinges upon two points. The first is the making of Pycroft write a declaration by which he entered the service of this preposterous company. Do you not see how very suggestive ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... may be the case with some individuals, is very possible. I have known it happen in our own country, where the follies of the French are adopted and exhibited in the most aukward imitation: but the general prevalence of those preposterous modes, is a plain proof that there is a general want of taste, and a general depravity of nature. I shall not pretend to describe the particulars of a French lady's dress. These you are much better acquainted with than I can pretend to be: but this I will be bold to affirm, that France is ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... which its parts must necessarily move to attain that vigor which shall continue forever."18 To state this figment is enough. It would be folly to attempt any refutation of a fancy so obviously a pure contrivance to fortify a preconceived opinion, a fancy, too, so preposterous, so utterly without countenance, either from experience, observation, science, reason, or Scripture. The egg of man's divinity is not laid in the nest of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... time go thus Backward and most preposterous; Thou hast benighted me; thy set This eve of blackness did beget, Who wast my day (though overcast Before thou hadst thy noontide passed): And I remember must in tears Thou scarce hadst seen so many years As day tells hours. By thy clear sun ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... "Beyond the Vanishing Point," by Ray Cummings, is preposterous. The flesh might shrink or grow, but the bone would not! If one shrunk as did George Randolph, one's bones ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... Sibthorp backed himself on the 1st of September to bag a hundred leverets in the course of the day. He lost, of course; and upon being questioned as to his reason for making so preposterous a bet, he confessed that he had been induced to do so by the specious promise of an advertisement, in which somebody professed to have discovered "a powder for the removal of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... heard of oyster-shells in the Gulf of Finland? Nothing remained save to dive down and seize a big rock, detach it from the bottom, and, holding it up before me, make a break for the pile of clothes; yet when I came to consider the preposterous spectacle that a middle-aged man would present in a state of nudity charging full tilt upon a party of ladies, with a big rock in his hands and a gleam of desperation in his eye, the idea seemed too ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and imbeds whatever it touches. When you excavate in it you find, as in a buried city, all sorts of objects ludicrously entangled in each other. Anything can be related to anything else, provided it feels like it. Nor has a mind in such a state any way of knowing how preposterous it is. Ancient fears, reinforced by more recent fears, coagulate into a snarl of fears where anything that is dreaded is the cause of anything ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Witch was branded with a preposterous marke in Nature, euen from her birth, which was her left eye, standing lower then the other; the one looking downe, the other looking vp, so strangely deformed, as the best that were present in that Honorable assembly, and great Audience, did affirme, they had not ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... sung with delight in beholding the dreadful conflagration. In vain would history be ransacked for a parallel to this emperor, who united the most shameful vices to the most extravagant vanity, the most abject meanness to the strongest but most preposterous ambition; and the whole of whose life was one continued scene of lewdness, sensuality, rapine, cruelty, and folly. It is emphatically observed by Tacitus, "that Nero, after the murder of many illustrious personages, manifested a ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... true we spoke of the bonds," replied the book-keeper. "But nothing was said about stealing them. Why, Mr. Sumner—why should your own partner and trusted book-keeper conspire to rob you? It is preposterous! I ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... the disposition to enjoin this obsequious mood of mind is prompted by a strong desire to revive the ancient empire of priestcraft and the pretensions of ecclesiastical despotism; to secure readmission to the human mind of extravagant and preposterous claims, which their advocates are sadly conscious rest on no solid foundation. They feel that reason is not with them, it must be against them: and reason therefore they are determined ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Mr. Narkom, for the moment I thought you were fooling," he said in a tone of deep interest. "But I see now that you are quite in earnest, although the thing sounds so preposterous, a child might be expected to scoff at it. A man to get a magic belt; to put it on, and then to melt away? Why, the 'Seven-league Boots' couldn't be a greater tax on one's credulity. Sit down and tell ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... weakness. It is a good thing to harness two horses to a cart; but it is not a good thing to try and turn two hansom cabs into one four-wheeler. Turning ten nations into one empire may happen to be as feasible as turning ten shillings into one half-sovereign. Also it may happen to be as preposterous as turning ten terriers into one mastiff. The question in all cases is not a question of union or absence of union, but of identity or absence of identity. Owing to certain historical and moral causes, two nations may be so united as upon the whole to help each other. Thus ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Let us stick to the middle course—for our language is essentially half way between the German and the French, the Teutonic and Romance tongues, and any attempt to approximate too much to either extreme is simply preposterous. ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... then, may understand how the Scotch Presbyterians of the time, overflowing as they were with free and republican ideas as far as regarded their own welfare, when it came to a question of extending the same to their Catholic fellow-men, if they would have admitted the term, scouted such a preposterous and ungodly idea. These latter were unworthy the enjoyment of such benefit. And thus the hoot of Protestant ascendancy, "Protestant liberty and right! " came up as war-cries to stifle out all efforts tending to extend even the most ordinary privileges of the liberty ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... tripped over a pin or hung his hat on the scenery. They all behaved as if they were presenting us with what is known as a human document, to be regarded au grand (or, at worst, au petit) serieux. The fun—and there were some very pleasant touches—was not so much the fun of a huge and preposterous joke, but rather the humour of character or incidental detail. The part of Lord Glandeville, who might have been made the most ridiculous butt of imposture, was treated quite solemnly. Indeed, our sympathies were provoked for a man whose finest instincts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... "who could? It was too preposterous to be dreamt of by any one. At his age, too, one would have thought he might ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Which was to all the neighborhood a source of constant worriment; For every one who passed that way pretended to be eager to Discover pumpkin vines that ran across the fields a league or two, So queer was the effect of each preposterous experiment. ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... little beard, nose straight, lips thin, teeth black with chewing, and always a little brown dribble from the left corner of his mouth (there was a leak there, he said). Altogether his countenance was prepossessing, for it was honest and manly, but his waist was preposterous. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... him? But it was impossible, it was preposterous! Delaherche had more to say of his hurricane of shot and shell. Gilberte seized her by the wrists to detain her, while Madame Delaherche used all her persuasive powers to convince her of the folly of the mad undertaking. In the same ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... leave the rest to the divorce court! Marry for whim and leave the rest to the man. That was the former Mrs. Phillimore's idea. Only she spelled "whim" differently; she omitted the "w." [He rises in his anger.] And now you—you take up with this preposterous— [CYNTHIA moves uneasily.] But, nonsense! It's impossible! A woman of your mental calibre—No. Some obscure, primitive, female feeling is at work corrupting your better judgment! What is ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... times as she had read it. There was nothing stilted or theatrical in the words as Charles Gibbon said them, but they brought home to her the unwelcome fact that he was in deadly earnest, that he loved her, and she was dealing him a cruel blow. She felt miserable, humiliated, ashamed. It was preposterous, out of all proportion, that he should have had to ask such a question, in such a tone, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... ears!" exclaimed Colonel Belford. "To be sure you cannot believe your ears. Do you not see that this is a preposterous lie, and that he is telling it to you to ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... you see, Mister Brown," Cried the youth, with a frown, "How wrong the whole thing is, How preposterous each wing is, How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is— In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis? I make no apology; I've learned owl-eology, I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any deflections Arising from ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... back he had wondrous things to tell too—but so preposterous that they disbelieved him quite openly, and told him so. How in London he had seen a poor woman so tipsy in the street that she had to be carried away by two policemen on a stretcher. How he had seen brewers' dray-horses nearly six feet high at the shoulder—and one or two of them ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... beside the bogs, would have passed for a dark jest. But in this remote spot, the notion of overthrowing the hated power by means of a few score pikes, stiffened by half as many sailors from the Spanish ship in the bay, did not seem preposterous, either to these poor folk or to their betters. Cammock, of course, knew the truth, and the Bishop. Asgill, too, the one man cognisant of the movement who was not here, and of whom some thought with distrust—he, too, could appraise the attempt at its ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... say so, Sir?" cried Cecilia, "when it is utterly impossible you can have formed so preposterous an opinion. Pray hear me, however, finally, and ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... degradation which is the result of doing wrong. The man only is degraded who, voluntarily or by coercion, does wrong, or neglects to do right. To talk of the degradation of labor, whether coerced or free, is, therefore, preposterous. ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... at him without winking. Then his hair and his whiskers were so red, and his legs were so pink and so fat and so lifelike, that it seemed as if you could almost hear him speak; and, what was more, he had been standing for years at the door of the shop, proudly holding up a preposterous wooden watch that gave half-past three as the correct time at all hours of the day and night. In fact, it would have been no great wonder if the Admiral had stared at him to the ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... amaze at the preposterous tackle with which I proposed to try and catch my first 'lunge. I had much better take the rig-out provided with the boat. If, however, he disapproved of my equipment, how shall I describe my feelings with regard to the vessel for which (man and tackle included) we were to pay two dollars ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... said anything. We sat about that big round table as if assembled for a conference and looked at each other in a sort of fatuous consternation. I would have ended by laughing outright if I had not been saved from that impropriety by poor Fyne becoming preposterous. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... end, half in dreams, Aasmund Olavsen Vinje's Long figure and spare, a contemplative genius; Thin and intense, with the color of gypsum, And a coal-black, preposterous beard, Henrik Ibsen. I, the youngest of the lot, had to wait for company Till a new litter came in, after Yule ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... name only five members of the United States Supreme Court, three members of the Cabinet, and only one of the congressmen from the state of New York. This in cold type seems almost preposterous, but it is, nevertheless, a fact—and I am an active practicing lawyer besides. I am shocked to realize these things. Yet I am supposed to be an exceptionally intelligent member of the community and my opinion is frequently sought on questions ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... sound of feet drawing nearer, and the music borne every moment more loudly on the midnight air. And there were they, with dying lamps and empty oil-cans. Their shock, their alarm, their bewilderment, are all expressed in that preposterous request of theirs, Give us ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of treaties is as clear as the law of nations is precise upon this point: and as I believe no British statesman ever lived, so I hope none ever will live, unwise enough to bind his country by so preposterous an obligation, as that she should go to war, not merely in defence of an ally, but at the will and beck of that ally, whenever ambition, or false policy, or a predominant faction, may plunge that ally into wars of her own seeking ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... answer. Mabel had almost laughed to hear so preposterous a question—it was not wonderful that he should scorn to reply. Suddenly she looked at his face, and her heart sickened. Many incidents that she had attached no importance to at the time came back to her now laden with vague but terrible significance ... she would not doubt him, only—why ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... take a look at the floor underneath. It was covered with carpet, like the rest of the hall, but this did not disguise the fact that it sloped a trifle toward the outside wall. Had not the idea been preposterous, I should have said that the weight of the cabinet had been too much for it, causing it to sag quite perceptibly at the base-board. But this seemed too improbable to consider. Old as the house was, it was not old enough for its beams to have rolled. Yet the floor was certainly uneven, ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... has not. Has he ever intimated in any way that he would do so? Certainly not. Has he created any beings since he made Adam? No. How, then, can any man assert that he did make or change a white man into a black negro, and say not one word about it? Such a position is untenable, it is preposterous. ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... slow, subtle smile of ridicule. It all seemed to him the preposterous pretentiousness of a megalomaniac—one whom, after a while, humanity would probably have the satisfaction of putting into prison, or into a lunatic asylum. And Levison felt strong, overwhelmingly strong, in the huge social power ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... that the results of his principles must be sought. Jefferson was a man who had worked unwearyingly in Virginia at sound, and what we should now call conservative, reforms, establishing religious toleration, reforming a preposterous land law, seeking to provide education for the poor, striving unsuccessfully for a sensible scheme of gradual emancipation of the slaves. In like manner his disciples after him, in their several States, devoted themselves to the kind of work in removing manifest abuses and ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... one of the last of these international epileptic fits, for example, the English, with much dysentery and bad poetry, and a few hundred deaths in battle, conquered the South African Boers at a gross cost of about three thousand pounds per head—they could have bought the whole of that preposterous imitation of a nation for a tenth of that sum—and except for a few substitutions of personalities, this group of partially corrupt officials in the place of that, and so forth, the permanent change was altogether insignificant. (But an excitable young man ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... days, in the forms they now present, is simply false. Nor can they admit that man was made suddenly out of the dust of the earth; while it would be an insult to ask an evolutionist whether he credits the preposterous fable respecting the fabrication of woman to which Suarez pins his faith. If Suarez has rightly stated Catholic doctrine, then is evolution utter heresy. And such I believe it to be. In addition to the truth of the doctrine ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... correct," approved Mr. Hampton. "Don Fernandez has not attempted to conceal from me that that is his desire. He sent a demand for a preposterous ransom, merely in order to precipitate action at Washington, and he has been wondering why no ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... mine, and I have known the young fellow since he was a child. I should as soon suspect one of my own daughters of being capable of such an act of gross treachery as laying a plot to bring the American cavalry down upon guests of mine. The idea is preposterous. Bless me, how amused the girls will be at your suspecting ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... withdraw her hand. He squeezed it, trembling, and blundered toward his coat. At the delicatessen he bought preposterous stores of food, chosen on the principle of expensiveness. From the drug store across the street he telephoned to his wife, "Got to get a fellow to sign a lease before he leaves town on the midnight. Won't be home till late. Don't wait up for me. Kiss Tinka good-night." He expectantly lumbered ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... deliver an address before the Medical Society of Baltimore, in the midst of a pro-slavery audience, and before slave-holding professors and men of authority, Dr. Fussell, with a courage scarcely to be comprehended at this late day, denounced "the most preposterous and cruel practice of Slavery, as replete with the causes of disease," and expressed the hope that the day would come "when Slavery and cruelty should have no abiding place in the whole habitable earth; when the philosopher ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... that Elizabeth, when a century later England became interested in world trade, disputed a division contrary not only to common sense and treaties but to "the law of nations." The Papal decree, intended merely to settle the differences of the two Catholic states, gave rise to endless disputes and preposterous claims. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... a general said to me, "are the biggest liars in the world. Cocky fellows claiming impossible achievements. What proof can they give of their preposterous tales? They only go into the air service because they haven't the pluck to serve in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... friends to be thus explicit. Time was, when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable solicitude, from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are bred in all hearts, by a perverse and vicious education, and they would still have maintained their place in my heart, had not my portion been set in misery. My errors have taught me thus much wisdom; that those sentiments which we ought not to disclose, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... first place we scented liver and bacon for breakfast. In the second place it seemed to promise a settlement of the long-standing dispute between me and the General. The General has a preposterous theory about the existence and hostility of a vast number of mythical Arabs in our immediate neighbourhood. Now this is obviously absurd. With the exception of three palm-trees, which belong to us, there is nothing but sand for about two hundred miles in all directions, and even an Arab cannot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... stage, which swayed sickeningly as she watched it. At last the song ended, and while she clapped mechanically with the rest she gave herself a little shake, and told herself sternly that she was being a goose, that it was absurd, preposterous, even wicked—this thought that had flashed into her head. Nita's pin wasn't the only one of its kind; there might be hundreds just like it. Georgia's great grandmother probably had had ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... white light listening to the clatter of hoofs over the pavement, he recalled his childish ambition to buy up all the old horses in the world when he was big—he smiled now at the size of the contract—all the horses he could find that were stiff and sore, and half dead on their feet from straining on preposterous loads; the horses that were lashed and cut and cursed because in their wretched old age they could not step out like colts. He meant to turn them into a pasture where the grass was knee-deep and they could ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Territory late in May, and it required but short investigation to satisfy him that any idea of making Kansas a slave-State was utterly preposterous. Had everything else been propitious, climate alone seemed to render it impossible. But popular sentiment was also overwhelmingly against it; he estimated that the voters were for a free-State more than two to one. All the efforts ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... reasons, but the theological virtues must be got rid of as quickly as possible. Charity, for instance, is a mischievous quality—it is too indulgent to weakness, which is not to be indulged or encouraged, but stamped out. Hope is another pernicious quality leading to all kinds of preposterous expectations which never are, or can be, fulfilled; and as to faith, it is simply a vice. So far from taking anything on trust, you must refuse to accept any statement whatsoever till it is proved so plainly you can't help believing ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... opened, it was found that the whole bulk of his large estate had been left to trustees, to be held as a fund for assisting poor young men to a certain amount of capital to go into business with,—the very thing which he had never done for his own children. The trust was burdened with such preposterous conditions, however, that it never could have amounted to any thing, even if the courts had not come to the rescue, and mercifully broken the will, dividing the property where it rightfully belonged, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of Wilton Barnstable sometimes said of him that he was jealous of Sherlock Holmes. When this was reported to Barnstable he invariably remarked: "How preposterous! The idea of a man being envious ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... professor's ideas of a rival's teachings, assumed the task. In the articles which followed, the usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be "absurd," "vague and unintelligible," "preposterous and gratuitous." This new champion stated that "the objections drawn from the fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference to the analogy of Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when they were but a ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... reasonable degree. But to make it the exclusive literary diet, as some do,—to devour the garbage with which the shelves of circulating libraries are filled,—and to occupy the greater portion of the leisure hours in studying the preposterous pictures of human life which so many of them present, is worse than waste of time: it is positively pernicious. The habitual novel- reader indulges in fictitious feelings so much, that there is great risk of sound and healthy feeling becoming perverted or benumbed. "I never ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... theologians," and we imagine that he would have met the affirmation of their existence with a flat contradiction. At any rate he would have been quite justified in doing so. But when he asserts, with a show of logical precision, but in reality with great looseness, that "it is preposterous to assert that there is no god because he cannot be such as we think him to be," he is using language for which no precise meaning can be found. To be intelligible, the sentence implies that we have some conception ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... why then withhold thought too cautiously from conversation? The habit of evasion is cowardly as well as unsocial; and nothing so augments conversation as being pleasantly downright; letting people know where to find you. The most preposterous views get respect if uttered intrepidly. Sincere speech is necessary to good conversation of any kind, and especially is it essential to discussion. One of the stupidest of conversational sins is quibbling—talking ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... captain, my messmate, my watch on deck, 'my eyes!' 'you lubber, don't you know that's me?' I like to listen to their yarns and their jokes, and to hear them sing their simple ditties. The odd mixture of manliness and childishness—of boldness and superstitious fears; of preposterous claims for wages and thoughtless extravagance; of obedience and discontent—all goes to make the queer compound called 'Jack.' How often have I laughed over the fun of the forecastle in these small fore ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... he vociferated, his hands deep in his pockets, his face scarlet. "It's—it's preposterous, Blix! I won't let you TALK about it even—I won't touch a nickel of that money. But, Blix, you're—you're—the finest woman I ever knew. You're a man's woman, that's what you are." He set his teeth. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... anxiously acknowledging the glimpses of the truth to be met with in their writings; as if he had not only kept in mind the justice due to previous discoveries, and the prudence of softening the novelty and veiling the extent of his own, but had foreseen the preposterous imputation of plagiarism, which, with other inconsistent charges, was afterward brought forward against him. This short sketch is followed by a plain exposition of the anatomy of the circulation, and a detail of the results of numerous experiments; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... eleven for looking at Baby's tongue every other day when there was nothing really the matter with him at all! It's preposterous, Jack. There must be something wrong. You must see Dr. Thom at once about that account. Call to-morrow, dear, on your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... the city. He found the hangings covered with dust; and, while dining all alone, Frederick was seized with a strange feeling of forlornness; then his thoughts reverted to Mademoiselle Roque. The idea of being married no longer appeared to him preposterous. They might travel; they might go to Italy, to the East. And he saw her standing on a hillock, or gazing at a landscape, or else leaning on his arm in a Florentine gallery while she stood to look at ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... away. It was unconscionable to cram the child's mind with these preposterous fables. I pictured the poor little chap's disappointment when the bleak reality came to stare him in the face. To my mind, his father was worse than an idiot, and I could hardly bring myself to greet him next morning, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thing over the water. We were pals over there; but here every single soul loathes every other single soul like poison. . . . Can it be that only by going back to the primitive, as we had to do in France, can one find happiness? The idea is preposterous. . . . And, yet, now that I'm here and have been here these months, I'm longing to come back. I'm sick of it. Looking at this country with what I call my French eyes—it nauseates me. It seems so utterly petty. . . . What the devil ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... of the casual and territorial revenues to the purposes of civil government without the consent of the house of assembly, that noble lord had thought fit to propose to make them over to the clergy; a step which was at once novel and preposterous, and only embroiled matters still further. Sir Robert Peel promised his cordial assent to the address, because this country had acted with justice and liberality towards Canada. He thought that the military force in the colony ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... like the truth. So saying "Not guilty, but don't do it again," or words to that effect, he left the hotel and returned to his own house. Here he disclosed his fears to his wife, but she scouted the idea as preposterous, and urged him to have Mary's marriage with Hazelton celebrated as soon as convenient, and so put an end ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... replying. Her first impulse was to reject the proposal as preposterous. The hour seemed very ill chosen. Rebecca was not accustomed to leaving home for any purpose at night, and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... made the attempt, sir," replied I, drawing myself up proudly, for I began to think that I was carrying forbearance too far, in submitting thus tamely to his repeated insults; "my only desire is to convince you of the necessity of breaking off this preposterous engagement, which is alike unsuitable in itself, and distasteful to Miss Saville; for the rest, I must trust to time, and to the unshaken constancy of my own affection (with 300 which it is only fair to tell you the young lady is acquainted), for the accomplishment of my hopes. Had I the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of the richest noblemen in Romagna, but far advanced in life. "From the first," said Lord Byron, in his account of her, "they had separate apartments, and she always called him, Sir! What could be expected from such a preposterous connection. For some time she was an Angiolina and he a Marino Faliero, a good old man; but young Italian women are not satisfied with good old men, and the venerable Count did not object to her availing herself of the privileges of her country in selecting a cicisbeo; an ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... early days, but of which they have since been deprived, was the right of voting. An early writer, speaking of this privilege, says, "The New Jersey women, however, showed themselves worthy of the respect of their countrymen by generally declining to avail themselves of this preposterous proof of it." It is very pleasant for us to remember that New Jersey was among the first of our States in which free and equal rights were given to all citizens, male or female, if they chose to avail themselves ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... inclined to laugh at him. What struck him most forcibly was Joseph, the servant. The idea of a man swaggering up an African river with a European man-servant was so preposterous that it could only be met with ridicule; but the thing seemed so natural to Jack Meredith, he accepted the servitude of Joseph so much as a matter of course, that after a time Durnovo accepted him also as part and parcel ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... become conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, affect to disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they are not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast between the real and the affected character as severely as possible, and denying to those who would impose on us for what they are not, even the merit ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... he took counsel of his assistants, who having walked over it twice, first with their toes pointed out, and then with their toes pointed in, decided that it came from some greedy person who wanted five. They thought this because there was a large five printed on it. 'Preposterous!' cried Solomon in a rage, and he presented it to Peter; anything useless which drifted upon the island was usually given to ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Shackford justice, he was thoroughly convinced that Richard had lent himself to a preposterous attempt to obtain money from him. The absence of ordinary shrewdness in the method stamped it at once as belonging to Slocum, of whose mental calibre Mr. Shackford ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to tell me," said Mrs. Proudie, "that you are going to make yourself ridiculous by lending your name to such a preposterous attempt as this? Mr. Slope Dean of Barchester, indeed!" And she tossed her head and put her arms akimbo with an air of confident defiance that made her husband quite sure that Mr. Slope never would be Dean of Barchester. In truth, Mrs. Proudie ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... humanly sing, or the tiniest of fairies appear from behind clocks or from within flower-pots. She looked at Pa with fresh awe. There was no knowing where you had him! He had the interest, for her, of one returned by miracle from other regions, gifted with preposterous knowledges.... He became at this instant fabulous, like Rip Van Winkle, or the Sleeping Beauty ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... him, or of any struggle having taken place, they supposed that he must have returned alone. But their excuses were not held to be valid, the idea of Malcolm having left his men without orders being so preposterous that it was held it should never have been entertained for a moment ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... and in i. 360, the reading is "dear." In ii. 865, 866, it varies from the pointing of the 1st ed.; but we are inclined to regard this as a misprint, not a correction. In ii. 76 this 2d ed. has "lingerewave" for "lingerer wave," and in ii. 217 it repeats the preposterous misprint of "his glee" from the 1st ed. If Scott could overlook such palpable errors as these, he might easily fail to detect the misplacing of a comma. We have our doubts as to i. 336, 340, where the 1st and 2d eds. agree; but there a misprint may have ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... a thought is preposterous, of course, for the risk would be entirely unnecessary. Quite evidently you are not well acquainted with one of the flourishing industries of this section, my dear. There are always plenty of men out of a job in this camp; conscience does n't come high, and the ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... of command and accusation they roared and bellowed at me, aiming to break down my defense with the suddenness of the onslaught. They succeeded for a moment. I couldn't rally my scattered and worn-out wits to think what the basis of this preposterous charge ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... bed still stood in the hall where Eberhard Ludwig assembled his Privy Council for the announcement of his marriage with Wilhelmine von Graevenitz, the Mecklemburg adventuress. The councillors kept waiting in the Golden Hall guessed the preposterous demand their Duke would make to them. They were in a fine quandary. What to say to a Prince who answered questions of legal right by: 'I am above the law, alter the petty phrase in your code-book.' ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... correspondence. Still it is inexplicable, it is not like Lorimer. He could not have harboured a grudge against me—for what? A boyish infatuation for a woman who adored him, and whom he adored. The idea is preposterous, they must have laughed over my folly often, of winter evenings by their fireside. For they married, they must have married, they were made for each other and they knew it. Was their marriage happy I wonder? Was it as successful as mine, though ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... put that into your head?" She advanced and took the chair which Miss Bunce had left, and resting her elbows on the table, regarded her sisters steadily. "What a preposterous age you both must be, to be sure! My husband's ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of common people running a government with no head but their own wills is preposterous!" cried the proud old Tory Ralph Jeffries, as he settled his wig with a shake of the head and pulled out his lace ruffles. "Are these canting Puritans going to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... indeed it may even be mentioned upon our highly moral stage, and passed by the censor, who would probably be hurried into eternity if M. Brieux's Les Avaries were submitted to him, and who found "Mrs. Warren's Profession" intolerable—is just the most useless, ill-devised, and literally preposterous with which this tremendous problem ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... sooner perish," he said. "Give up a jolly walk because Jimmy Urquhart talks about my heart and his own neck—preposterous! Besides, there's ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... in what diseased imagination," Gotthold said, "that preposterous monster saw the light ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... propose measure for the extinction of licences. Of course, a little money would pass. JOKIM, in Budget Scheme, made provision to enable County Council to buy out publicans. "But to call such a transaction Compensation is", RITCHIE added, his left eye twitching in fearsome manner on CALEB WRIGHT, "preposterous." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... only just beginning to realise their misfortunes. It had seemed to her impossible that such wealth as theirs should positively give out; that there should be nothing left but her miserable two thousand a year; that something should not turn up to save them from this preposterous necessity of leaving Flood. When Douglas came home, she had thrown herself on her clever son, confident that he would find a way out, and his sombre verdict on the hopelessness of the situation had filled her with terror. How could they live with nothing but the London house to call their own? ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Preposterous, at his age! And yet—what other reason was there for asking June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his son and his son's wife from thinking him very queer? He would be reduced to sneaking up to London, which tired him; and the least indisposition would cut ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... possible. Why, man, it was Betty who helped me bring Miss West to New York, it was Betty who helped me to install her here, it was Betty who chose the furnishings for her apartment, who helped her buy her clothes, who engaged her maid, who gave her most of her training. This is the most preposterous, the most filthy perversion of the truth. Betty must know it better than any one else. Come, now, Woodward, there's something more in it than this?" Jasper had himself in hand, but it was easy now to see the effort it cost him. The veins ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... morning, the whole thing seemed dreamlike. It was preposterous to imagine that flying objects, probably balloons shaped like stingarees, were launched from a famous mansion that dated back to the days of the early Maryland colony. But the sighting data couldn't be ignored. Dreamlike or not, ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... boundless energy, daring, ambition. His too were the fiery temper and the contemptuous arrogance which made him at one time the best-hated man in England outside a narrow circle of devoted admirers; while for all his pride he could match Hatton himself in preposterous adulation of the Queen. He could be as chivalrous as Sidney, and as merciless as an Inquisitor: he could be gorgeously extravagant, or the veriest Spartan, as circumstances demanded. He was in brief the epitome ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... test to try the soul of any man, for all the world looked on askance, prepared to deride the maker of so preposterous a claim as soon as his claim should be proved baseless. Not even the fame of Pasteur could make the public at large, lay or scientific, believe in the possibility of what he proposed to accomplish. There was time for all the world to be ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... indignant with everything, still rankling, in spite of all Sam had said, with the thought that she had been made a mere part of a commercial transaction. Why, it was like those barbarous countries she had read about, where wives are bought and sold! Preposterous ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... petticoats she wore, and unceasing were the ablutions which her clean-tiled floors received. She was in the main not a bad old soul, and I dare say she considered herself perfectly justified, in consideration of the cause I served, in charging me a preposterous amount for my board and lodging while I resided under ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... you were puzzled by some mysterious likeness,"—Tom began eagerly, smiling at her. And stopped short, open-mouthed, assailed by so apparently preposterous a recognition that for the minute it ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... be remembered that, with the exception of a very few in fragmentary condition, all these poems are of great length. Only the later or less genuine, indeed, run to the preposterous extent of twenty, thirty, or (it is said in the case of Lion de Bourges) sixty thousand lines. But Roland itself, one of the shortest, has four thousand; Aliscans, which is certainly old, eight thousand; the oldest known form of Huon, ten thousand. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... preposterous size, and Chet marveled at the minds that had conceived and wrought so tremendous an undertaking. And he saw plainly in his own mind the throngs of serene-faced beings who must have folded their white wings softly about them to gather there for worship. But more plainly still he ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... made to say: "How can I assist you, O my champion, do you not see that the flies have sucked me to the very bones?" Which story,' said he, 'shows that the idea of going to Rome for money was not quite so original as I imagined the other night, though utterly preposterous. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... they slept on. When I said to them, 'G'il is your real God,' they laughed at my stupidity—good humoredly, as though there were something, perhaps, in my idea, yet with a complacent assurance that I was preposterous. I did not argue with them. One couldn't, you know. I simply continued my observations, corroborating my theory at every turn. To give you an instance: Bashwa is supposed to think highly of hunters and sailors, and the Waam-folk always profess to think highly of them too. That attitude, however, ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... balloon in a wind, and poising it in the manner suggested, is, of course, preposterous; and when one considers the attempt to aim bombs from a moving balloon high in air the case becomes yet more absurd. Any such missile would partake of the motion of the balloon itself, and it would be impossible to tell where ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... it to his recollection of his fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such passages—which Jonson never intended for publication—plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the subtler ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... your book is worthless. If you think you are likely to make a good thing by employing an obscure publisher, with little or no capital, then, as some one in Thucydides remarks, congratulating you on your simplicity, I do not envy your want of common sense. Be very careful to enter into a perfectly preposterous agreement. For example, accept "half profits," but forget to observe that before these are reckoned, it is distinctly stated in your "agreement" that the publisher is to pay himself some twenty per cent. on the price of each copy sold before ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... that something must happen. At any rate, the silence of the man must be broken. And so I gathered together my courage, and with a preposterous attempt at a ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... Roman Empire. Nor was it long before the League of Augsburg was called upon to resist further encroachments of the French king. In 1688 Louis dispatched a large army into the Rhenish Palatinate to enforce a preposterous claim which he had advanced to that valuable district. The war which resulted was Louis's third struggle, and has been variously styled the War of the League of Augsburg or the War of the Palatinate. In America, where it was to be paralleled by an opening conflict ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... walked made me sad. The wharf had all the seeming of a ship's deck. It lifted, tilted, heaved and sank; and since there were no handrails on it, it kept Charmian and me busy avoiding falling in. I never saw such a preposterous little wharf. Whenever I watched it closely, it refused to roll; but as soon as I took my attention off from it, away it went, just like the Snark. Once, I caught it in the act, just as it upended, and I looked down the length of it for two hundred feet, and for all the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... to your "elderly lady,"—that is, to current criticism, to the public. Like every elderly person, she holds fast to preconceived ideas, however preposterous they may be. For example, she is perpetually asserting that since my "Annals of a Sportsman" my works are weak, because, having lived abroad, I cannot know Russia. But this accusation can touch only what I have written since 1863; for until then—i.e., ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various |
