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incongruity
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  • Buffalo Bill's Wild West may indeed have been an "incongruity," as the directors had declared in rejecting his request for a concession within Jackson Park, but the citizens of Chicago had fallen in love.†   (source)
  • Of the fourth possibility, we know that incongruities, comic or otherwise, fascinate the novelist.†   (source)
  • All his letters show is an enormous confusion of contradictions and incongruities and divergences and exceptions to any rule he formulated about the things he observed.†   (source)
  • Something in the sight brought home to Johnnie the incongruity of her present position.†   (source)
  • I stopped here, letting the words take shape and sequence, my hand around Donna's ankle, and I sensed a certain receptiveness, a thing I needed to beat back the incongruity.†   (source)
  • I almost want to laugh at the incongruity of it.†   (source)
  • They themselves now referred to Teeleh as Elyon, though they didn't seem to notice the incongruity of the practice.†   (source)
  • There were, to be sure, those in the ranks and among the local populace who had little fondness for Virginia planters and their high-andmighty airs, or who saw stunning incongruity in the cause of liberty being led by a slavemaster.†   (source)
  • "How do you do, Miss Taggart," she said in a lazily gracious voice, a drawing-room voice which seemed to strike, in that office, the same style of incongruity as her suit and her bow.†   (source)
  • He'd make the prints sharp and crisp to accent the incongruity.†   (source)
  • He observed with the eye of an accountant, with unassailable accuracy but no interest in the delicious, gossipy detail, or the incongruities or neuroses of the characters he so drily introduced.†   (source)
  • In addition to the incongruity of Austrians walking through Rome in swords and plumes, they would need us-you and me-to help them conquer France and Greece, and if we didn't want to help, they would chase us down and shoot us.†   (source)
  • Taleswapper followed, saying nothing about the incongruity--Ta-Kumsaw vowing to make war against Whites until all were dead or gone from this land, and yet hurrying back to Eight-Face Mound to save a White boy.†   (source)
  • I am profoundly appalled now by its collegiate silliness, but I think it worth quoting in order to further emphasize the glaring and even, perhaps, terrifying incongruity.†   (source)
  • He continued, "That I was taken aback by the apparent incongruity.†   (source)
  • A fragment of memory is preserved of him sitting in a room at three and four in the morning with Immanuel Kant's famous Critique of Pure Reason, studying it as a chess player studies the openings of the tournament masters, trying to test the line of development against his own judgment and skill, looking for contradictions and incongruities.†   (source)
  • Colonel William Cody—Buffalo Bill—sought a concession for his Wild West show, newly returned from a hugely successful tour of Europe, but the fair's Committee on Ways and Means turned him down on grounds of "incongruity."†   (source)
  • Perhaps he wants to accentuate the comic or ironic incongruity between the brevity of the sexual act and its consequences.†   (source)
  • Some of the clockers, training their field glasses on Tom Smith's face as he led the horse back to the barn, noticed a glaring incongruity.†   (source)
  • She wore a tailored suit, with a loose, bright bow hanging casually sidewise for a note of elegant incongruity, and a small hat tilted at an angle considered smart by virtue of being considered amusing; her face was a shade too smooth, her steps a shade too slow, and she walked almost as if she were swinging her hips.†   (source)
  • The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field.†   (source)
  • There was, for all this, a tremendous incongruity in Lincoln as a war leader.†   (source)
  • In his present occupation he was an incongruity.†   (source)
  • He had not only public opinion but his own disinclination for the big wedding to support it without incongruity or paradox, as Ellen had her aunt as well as her own desire for the big wedding to support it without incongruity or paradox.†   (source)
  • The first sort joke about sex because it gives rise to many incongruities: the second cultivate incongruities because they afford a pretext for talking about sex.†   (source)
  • Perhaps he saw no incongruity at all in the fact that he was about to be punished, who had refrained from what McEachern would consider the cardinal sin which he could commit, exactly the same as if he had committed it.†   (source)
  • Neither he nor she had had any such adventure before and neither was conscious of any incongruity.†   (source)
  • Why, it is just for this very incongruity in my nature that I have had to suffer what I have.†   (source)
  • Strange incongruity in a State called free!†   (source)
  • Nor, strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in this comparison.†   (source)
  • "Speak for yourself when you are inclined to utter such incongruities," interrupted Aramis.†   (source)
  • This incongruity did not escape the guest.†   (source)
  • I might give her something, for the incongruity of it.†   (source)
  • The incongruity between the men's deeds and their environment was great.†   (source)
  • Now, it is a mere anomaly and incongruity here, out of date and out of purpose.†   (source)
  • 'Such, you see, Mr Clennam,' said the Father, 'are the incongruities of my position here.†   (source)
  • He was exhilarated by the scene, the funny little man in his odd clothes, the panelled room and the Spanish furniture, the English fare: the whole thing had an exquisite incongruity.†   (source)
  • To Tess's sense there was, just at first, a ghastly bizarrerie, a grim incongruity, in the march of these solemn words of Scripture out of such a mouth.†   (source)
  • It was like weakness in a good woman, or blood on satin; one of those terrible incongruities that shake little things in the back of the brain.†   (source)
  • Finery laid off is as unappetizing as the remains of a feast, and it occurred to Lily that, at home, her maid's vigilance had always spared her the sight of such incongruities.†   (source)
  • She smiled at such incongruities.†   (source)
  • Put your Shakespearian hero and coward, Henry V and Pistol or Parolles, beside Mr Valiant and Mr Fearing, and you have a sudden revelation of the abyss that lies between the fashionable author who could see nothing in the world but personal aims and the tragedy of their disappointment or the comedy of their incongruity, and the field preacher who achieved virtue and courage by identifying himself with the purpose of the world as he understood it.†   (source)
  • But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder, not two miles away.†   (source)
  • You see, what confuses the world is the incongruity between the swift flight of the mind and matter's vast clumsy slowness, its dogged persistence and inertia.†   (source)
  • Paul looked at his father's thick, brownish hands all scarred, with broken nails, rubbing the fine smoothness of his sides, and the incongruity struck him.†   (source)
  • "I say!" said Jaffers, brought up short by a dim realization of the incongruity of the whole business, "Darn it!†   (source)
  • It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had ventured to criticize the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank overture to Miss Jessel.†   (source)
  • She tried to persuade them to confine their tributes to flowers and sweets, which had at least the merit of mortality; but she was never successful, and the house was gradually filled with a collection of foot-warmers, cushions, clocks, screens, barometers and vases, a constant repetition and a boundless incongruity of useless but indestructible objects.†   (source)
  • One must admit such an incongruity would suffice to excuse the mind's lack of interest in reality, because as a rule the mind is disgusted by reality's ferment long before it erupts in revolution.†   (source)
  • The incongruity of death with either the beauties of Lake Geneva or with his mother's dignified, reticent attitude diverted him, and he looked at the funeral with an amused tolerance.†   (source)
  • Although there was much incongruity in the furniture and appearance of the hall, there was nothing mean.†   (source)
  • The transformation was ludicrous, but as men are seldom struck with incongruities in their own appearance, any more than in their own conduct, the Delaware studied this change in a common glass, by which Hutter was in the habit of shaving, with grave interest.†   (source)
  • Such as observed him closely were struck by an incongruity between his demeanor, which had the ease and grace of a patrician, and certain points of his person.†   (source)
  • Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling together of extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunction of opposites and irreconcilables—the home of the bogus miracle become the home of a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turned into a telephone office!†   (source)
  • But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and what all the Russians of that day desired—to drive the French out of Russia and destroy their army—it is quite clear that the battle of Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that stage of the campaign.†   (source)
  • "And what reason is that?" asked Hester, half smiling at the absurd incongruity of the child's observation; but on second thoughts turning pale.†   (source)
  • This unwonted abstraction by love of all dignity from a man of whom it had ever seemed the chief component, was, in its distressing incongruity, a pain to her which quenched much of the pleasure she derived from the proof that she was idolized.†   (source)
  • The scene was just what Lucy expected, and her kind heart delighted in bringing Philip and Maggie together again; though, even with all her regard for Philip, she could not resist the impression that her cousin Tom had some excuse for feeling shocked at the physical incongruity between the two,—a prosaic person like cousin Tom, who didn't like poetry and fairy tales.†   (source)
  • Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business.†   (source)
  • Henchard as a Justice of the Peace may at first seem to be an even greater incongruity than Shallow and Silence themselves.†   (source)
  • He had a great aversion to taking things too hard; he thought that half the discomfort and many of the disappointments of life come from it; and for an instant he asked himself whether, possibly, he did not appear ridiculous to this intelligent young man, whose private perception of incongruities he suspected of being keen.†   (source)
  • He had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them.†   (source)
  • It struck her as a great incongruity; neither Pansy's small fascinations, nor his own kindness, his good-nature, not even his need for amusement, which was extreme and constant, were sufficient to account for it.†   (source)
  • His lamp was not lit, and as her large, grave face gazed at him through the light dusk from under the shadow of her ample bonnet, he felt the incongruity of such a person presenting herself as a servant.†   (source)
  • — But he had fancied her in love with him; that evidently must have been his dependence; and after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners and a conceited head, Emma was obliged in common honesty to stop and admit that her own behaviour to him had been so complaisant and obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as (supposing her real motive unperceived) might warrant a man of ordinary observation and delicacy, like Mr. Elton, in fancying himself a very…†   (source)
  • Madame Merle had alluded more than once to some undefined incongruity in her relations with Ralph Touchett; so Isabel took this occasion of asking her if they were not good friends.†   (source)
  • The evening passed all too quickly for me; since that day, for the first time in my life, I was having my fill of the pleasure of the eyes without any of that sense of incongruity, that dread of approaching ruin, which had always beset me hitherto when I had been amongst the beautiful works of art of the past, mingled with the lovely nature of the present; both of them, in fact, the result of the long centuries of tradition, which had compelled men to produce the art, and compelled…†   (source)
  • I was overwhelmed with depression, too; I had an hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to vice.†   (source)
  • Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity.†   (source)
  • ") L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.†   (source)
  • It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope: when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation does not prompt to enterprise.†   (source)
  • "What original notions you clever men have!" said Rosamond, dimpling with more thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity.†   (source)
  • His face was of necessity serious—it was incapable of the muscular play of a smile; but its owner apparently had not lost a perception of incongruities.†   (source)
  • Accustomed to see the ladies of the garrison in the formal, gala attire of the day, and familiar with the more critical niceties of these matters, the girl had managed to complete her dress in a way to leave nothing strikingly defective in its details, or even to betray an incongruity that would have been detected by one practised in the mysteries of the toilet.†   (source)
  • This gentleman was a colonel of the militia, in attendance on a court-martial, who found leisure to steal a moment from his military to attend to his civil jurisdiction; but this incongruity excited neither notice nor comment.†   (source)
  • It may seem odd that with such pleasant habits he should have been given to the heroic treatment, bleeding and blistering and starving his patients, with a dispassionate disregard to his personal example; but the incongruity favored the opinion of his ability among his patients, who commonly observed that Mr. Toller had lazy manners, but his treatment was as active as you could desire: no man, said they, carried more seriousness into his profession: he was a little slow in coming, but…†   (source)
  • I forbear to speak of an incongruity which would shock the intelligent Reader, should the Poet interweave any foreign splendour of his own with that which the passion naturally suggests: it is sufficient to say that such addition is unnecessary.†   (source)
  • But Fitzgerald judges incongruity distracting and generalizes the epithets: "the godlike athlete, son of Peleus, Prince / Akhilleus waited by his racing ships."†   (source)
  • The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its place: the deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females: the incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella inclined in a closestool: the insecurity of hiding any secret document behind, beneath or between the pages of a book.†   (source)
  • The preordained frangibility of the hymen: the presupposed intangibility of the thing in itself: the incongruity and disproportion between the selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done and the selfabbreviating relaxation of the thing done; the fallaciously inferred debility of the female: the muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed…†   (source)
  • For there is no more incongruity therein, than that he that hath the generall command of the whole Army, should have withall a peculiar Regiment, or Company of his own.†   (source)
  • Our modern authors of comedy have fallen almost universally into the error here hinted at; their heroes generally are notorious rogues, and their heroines abandoned jades, during the first four acts; but in the fifth, the former become very worthy gentlemen, and the latter women of virtue and discretion: nor is the writer often so kind as to give himself the least trouble to reconcile or account for this monstrous change and incongruity.†   (source)
  • A man might as well say, that one man maketh both a streight line, and a crooked, and another maketh their Incongruity.†   (source)
  • One Makes The Things Incongruent, Another The Incongruity And for their Morall, and Civill Philosophy, it hath the same, or greater absurdities.†   (source)
  • Seeing then they had taken on them the name of Spirituall, to have allowed themselves (when there was no need) the propriety of Wives, had been an Incongruity.†   (source)
  • And these are but a small part of the Incongruities they are forced to, from their disputing Philosophically, in stead of admiring, and adoring of the Divine and Incomprehensible Nature; whose Attributes cannot signifie what he is, but ought to signifie our desire to honour him, with the best Appellations we can think on.†   (source)
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