"Quirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in her heart, the poor woman was slowly wasting, worn out by the regrets of the past, the vain desires of the present, and the dreary prospect of the future. And now she had been openly insulted, her feelings as a mother wounded to the quirk; and her husband's uncle, instead of defending and consoling her, could give only cold ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chest, and clean-shaven. He had laid aside his Panama hat, and his hair was clipped closely, and was pleasantly and honorably sprinkled with gray. His face was broad and tanned; the nose was tilted, and the wide mouth was both kindly and humorous. One knew, from the tint of his blue eyes and the quirk of his lips, that when he spoke there would be a bit of brogue. He was James Harrigan, one time celebrated in the ring for his gameness, his squareness, his endurance; "Battling Jimmie" Harrigan, who, when he encountered his first knock-out, retired from the ring. He ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... presupposes a normal range of action of the other endocrines. Let there be some quirk or weakness elsewhere in the chain of hormones, and instead of the successful woman, behold the spinsters, the maiden aunts, the prudes and cranks who never satisfactorily adapt themselves in society. To them must be ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... miles of wonderful scenic travel he charged six dollars, and usually his big car was loaded to the running boards. Bud was a good driver, and he had a friendly pair of eyes—dark blue and with a humorous little twinkle deep down in them somewhere—and a human little smiley quirk at the corners of his lips. He did not know it, but these things ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... I was very proud to be in the company of Nelson, who was the most heroic figure among the oyster pirates and bay adventurers. Unfortunately for my stomach and mucous membranes, Nelson had a strange quirk of nature that made him find happiness in treating me to beer. I had no moral disinclination for beer, and just because I didn't like the taste of it and the weight of it was no reason I should forgo the honour of his company. It was his whim ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the genuine tremble in that weak, pipin' voice, or the meek look in them watery old eyes. For Cubbins is more or less of a human wreck, when you come to size him up close,—a thin, bent-shouldered, faded lookin' old party, with wispy, whitish hair, a peaked red nose, and a peculiar, whimsical quirk to his mouth corners. Old Hickory looks him over curious for a minute ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... His vocabulary overcame him often, bore him away from his thought and landed him in some swamp out of which he was wont to extricate himself, to the great delight of the semi-educated reader by some quip or quirk equally meretricious and mephitic. Thus would he, metaphorically, throw filth at himself. He felt all the time that he was pursuing the best course, bending things he despised and loathed to better purposes. Mr. Brann believed that the country was, if not in ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... volume, tome, Book, writing, compilation, work Attend the while I pen a pome, A jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... hath besides a pretty quirk, Taught him by nature, how to work In iron with much ease; Sometimes to the forge he goes, There he knocks and there he blows, And makes both locks ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... being six years old. This would happen on the seventeenth of October. Molly insisted that that was PLENTY close enough to the ninth of September to be celebrated then. This made Betsy feel like laughing out, but observing that the Putneys only looked at each other with the faintest possible quirk in the corners of their serious mouths, she understood that they were afraid that Molly's feelings might be hurt if they laughed out loud. So Betsy tried to curve her young lips to the ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... queer little quirk to his mouth the gruff Senior Surgeon jerked his glance back from the open window where with the gleam of a slim torn-boyish ankle the frisky young Spring went scurrying through ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a little quirk of humour at the corners of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dreamy quirk of the mind I felt I was a hunter and a man of arms. I was searching for a something here in this ghostly wood. The cudgel and knife of folks I could not understand were coming on me! Fast, fast, and hard I crunched my nuts, chewing shell ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... all one, Brother; if there be but a Quirk in the Law offended in this Case, though he fought like Alexander, and preserv'd the whole World from Perdition, yet if he did it against Law, 'tis lawful to hang him; why, what, Brother, is it fit that every ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... rocky soil; nothing came of the little artifice. No Buddha's graven face was less indicative than the squat man's. Perhaps his face was too sore to permit mobility of expression. The drollery of this thought caused a quirk in one corner of Kitty's mouth. The squat man stopped at the foot of the bed with the air of a mere passer-by and seemed more interested in the investigations of the policeman than in the man on the bed. But ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Landgraf Wilhelm was infinite; who, honest man, saw in all this merely an artifice of Carteret's, To undo the Kaiser with his French Allies, to quirk him out of his poor help from the French, and have him at their mercy. 'Shame on it!' cried Landgraf Wilhelm aloud, and many others less aloud, Klinggraf and King Friedrich among them: 'What a Carteret!' The Landgraf turned away with indignation from perfidious England; and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of friendship for the family, undertaken to publish the memoirs of the Rackrent family, I think it my duty to say a few words concerning myself first. My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I've always been known as "Honest Thady"; afterwards, I remember to hear them calling me "Old Thady," and now I've come to "Poor Thady." To look at me you would hardly think poor Thady was the father of Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and having better ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Briars covers it as completely as the vines on the wall," answered Rose Mary quickly, with a humorous quirk at her mouth that relieved the note of pain in her voice. "I know we can never pay it, but if something could be done to keep it for the old folks always, I think Stonie and I could stand it. They were born here and their roots strike deep and ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... myself. Apathy or the affectation of apathy must be acquired—Inevitably must be—My passions must be masked: I must pretend to have conquered them. In their naked and genuine form they are indecent, immoral, impure, I know not what! But catch a metaphysical quirk, and let vanity and dogmatic assertion stand sponsors and baptize it a truth, and then raptures, extravagance, and bigotry itself are deities! Be then as loud, as violent, as intolerant as the most rancorous of zealots, and it is all the sublime ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... return again into the house and desire some conduct of the lady. I am no fighter. I have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others to taste their valour: belike this is a man of that quirk. ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... out by dozens, together with the dace, and wreck themselves upon a floating plank. It is the little light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or silver spangles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is almost dissolved by the summer heats. A slighter and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the world, conservative and with a love for old fashions and old friends, a contempt for things that are modern. As he stood at the gate he thought that the mansion was glaring at him with an upturned nose and this imaginative quirk caused him ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... ulterior period, as I did those two fi fas when the right of freedom was being contested in the children. But, you see, Grabguy, I'm a man of standing; and no money would tempt me to have anything to do with another such case. It was by a mere quirk of law, and the friendship of so many eminent lawyers, that I secured that fifteen hundred dollars from M'Carstrow for the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the sleeves; they are as good as new, though come Holantide next I've had it these seven years: it holds on by a single button round my neck, cloak fashion. To look at me, you would hardly think "Poor Thady" was the father of Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and never minds what poor Thady says, and having better than fifteen hundred a year landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady; but I wash my hands of his doings, and as I have lived, so will I die, true and loyal to ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... it's raining gall and bitters— You may think it is a pipe To erect a Tower of Titters With a lot of lines o' type, To be whimsical and wheezy, Full of {quip and quirk and quiz. {quibbles queer and quaint. Do you fancy that is easy? Well—it ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... which defiantly overrides the lapse of line and proportion, and imperiously demands the homage of every man born of woman. Chill analysis might have judged the mouth, with its delicate, humorous quirk at the corners, too large; the chin too broad, for all its adorable baby dimple; the line of the nose too abrupt, the wider contours lacking something of classic exactitude. But the chillest analysis must have warmed to enthusiasm ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bring up against the desk; while Lanyard, making no move more than to drop his rejected arms, remained where she had left him, and requited her indignant stare with a broken smile of understanding, a smile at once tender, tolerant, and sympathetic, with a little quirk of rueful humour ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... cleaning up and turning over! For two nights, one in the chart- room and one on the cabin sofa, I have soaked myself in sleep, and I am now almost stupid with excess of sleep. The land seems very far away. By some strange quirk, I have an impression that weeks, or months, have passed since I left Baltimore on that bitter March morning. And yet it was March 28, and this is only the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... must have read something in his eyes, or caught something in his tone that pleased them: for the midwife's mouth had a peculiar quirk and the other women all ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Yet another vnconscionable quirk some haue of late time pried into, viz. in a ioynt-lease to three intended by the taker and payer, to descend successiuely and intirely, one of them passeth ouer his interest to a stranger, who by rigour of law shall hold it during the liues ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... thought of this Tree, and made me see that we could do it," persisted Polly, giving a little quirk to a rebellious pendant. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... sweeping off my cap in true outlaw fashion, "the way is long and something lonely; methinks—we will therefore e'en accompany you, and may perchance lighten the tedium with quip and quirk and ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... connected. The prayers of those whose interests he cared for so earnestly will doubtless be fervently offered for his eternal rest. The funeral took place from the Church of the Immaculate Conception, on the morning of November 10th. The Rev. Father Quirk celebrated the Requiem Mass. The Rev. Father Boursaud, rector, and the Rev. Father Charlier accompanied the body to Calvary Cemetery. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... wine now," Heidel said. There was a slight quirk in his mouth, so that his teeth showed between his lips. The butler moved methodically from place to place, pouring wine ...
— The Eyes Have It • James McKimmey
... the quirk in human nature that shows great gratification at the sight of a man betting on something where he is bound to be the loser: in inelegant language, this relates simply to the universal impulse to laugh at a "sucker." It is just like ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... into the mizzen-rigging and answered through his hands with an excellent cockney accent: "Tryde Wind o' Lunnon, Cappen Quirk, fifty-one dyes out fro' Liverpool, bound to ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... to the open doorway and gave a long whistle with a little quirk at the end. Then he came back to Pinky in the wide-seated porch swing. "You know," he said, his voice lowered confidentially, "I thought I'd take mother to New York for ten days or so. See the shows, and run ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... from indignation, could only shake his head and frown terribly, at which the midshipmen, as he was not their captain, laughed the more heartily. The Admiral had heard, too, of the trick Jack and his messmates had played with Quirk, the monkey, on Lieutenant Spry, of the marines, and while he told the story as he had received it from Jack, with a few amplifications of his own, the tears ran down his eyes, till Captain Sourcrout, boiling over ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Camp, Major A. R. Dugmore Along the Mohawk Trail, Percy Keese Fitzhugh Animal Heroes, Ernest Thompson Seton Baby Elton, Quarter-Back, Leslie W. Quirk Bartley, Freshman Pitcher, William Heyliger Billy Topsail with Doctor Lake of the Labrador, Norman Duncan The Biography of a Grizzly, Ernest Thompson Seton The Boy Scouts of Black Eagle Patrol, Leslie W. Quirk The Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill, Charles Pierce ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... I say't, he's gleg enough, An' 'bout a house that's rude an' rough, The boy might learn to swear; But then, wi' you, he'll be sae taught, An' get sic fair example straught, I hae na ony fear. Ye'll catechise him, every quirk, An' shore him weel wi' hell; An' gar him follow to the kirk— Aye when ye gang yoursel. If ye then maun be then Frae hame this comin' Friday, Then please, sir, to lea'e, sir, The ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Kathleen. Mrs. Quirk would like to have her at Layton as a companion and friend," said ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... marriage of love. He was sufficiently spoiled to be charming; she was ingenuous enough to be irresistible. Like two floating logs they met in a head-on rush, caught, and sped along together. Yet had Jeffrey Curtain kept at scrivening for twoscore years he could not have put a quirk into one of his stories weirder than the quirk that came into his own life. Had Roxanne Milbank played three dozen parts and filled five thousand houses she could never have had a role with more happiness and more despair than were in the fate ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... delight in taking the reader behind the scenes, and exhibiting the wires. Not so JAMES PAYN. He comes in front, and comments upon the actions of his puppets, or upon men and morals in general, or he makes a quip, or utters a quirk, or proposes a quiddity, and pauses to laugh with you, before he resumes the story, and says, with the older romancers, "But to our tale." Most companionable writer is JAMES PAYN. Tells his story so clearly. A PAYN to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... John, why didst not ask that at first rather than at last? Thou 'rt too fond of quip and quirk and wordy warfare, John, too much ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... divine nature is that it is a stooping nature, which bows to weak and unworthy souls, and on them pours out the full abundance of its manifold gifts. So the 'beauty of the Lord' means, by no quibble or quirk, but by reason of the essential loveliness of His lovingkindness, both God's loveliness and God's goodness; God's graciousness and God's gracefulness (if I ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... say that all of us are insane on certain subjects, however sane we may be upon other subjects. Certainly in the mental composition of every one of us is some quirk, some vagary, some dear senseless delusion, avowed or private. As for Trencher, the one crotchet in his cool brain centred about that worthless trade dollar. With it in his possession he had counted himself a winner, always. Without it he felt himself to be a ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... down and actually smiled when Kitty was gone. Somehow a grievous burden had fallen off her mind. Likewise, by some psychological quirk, the idea of leaving Granville and making her home elsewhere no longer struck her as running away under fire. She did not wish to subject Kitty Brooks to the difficulties, the embarrassment that might arise from having ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was of high birth, it was very difficult to become a senior officer in the Prussian army, and as sergeants never became second lieutenants, his former company still had the same captain and the same sergeant-major. Placed by a quirk of fate in the presence of his one-time soldier, now a marshal, the Prussian captain, who remembered Augereau perfectly well, acted as a man of discretion and spoke always to the marshal as if he had never seen him before. Augereau invited him to dinner ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... they sought out the defendant and offered their services to represent him gratis. Thus the elder counsellor frequently found himself pitted in the justice's courts against his keen-witted and graceless sons, who availed themselves of every obsolete technicality, quirk, and precedent of the law to obstruct justice and worry their dignified parent, whom they addressed as "our learned but erring brother in the law." Not infrequently these youthful practitioners triumphed in these legal tilts, to the mortification of their father, who, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... optimistic pokes and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyceums and other folks, to Rotarys, Kiwanis' Clubs, and feel I ain't like other dubs. And then old Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who's always waitin', he gives his tail a lively quirk, and gets in quick his dirty work. He fills me up with mullygrubs; my hair the backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than a hound, on Sunday when the folks ain't round. And then b' gosh, I would prefer to never be a lecturer, a-ridin' round in classy cars and smoking fifty-cent cigars, and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... cheat the buyer for his master if he could, proud to write in his book a large sum against the name of the animal. He would have scorned in his very soul the idea of making a farthing by it himself through any business quirk whatever, but he would not have been the least ashamed if, having sold Kelpie, he had heard—let me say after a week of possession—that she had dashed out her purchaser's brains. He would have been a little shocked, a little sorry perhaps, but nowise ashamed. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... theatres, who, like the M.P., used to rehearse the whole time he was in the boat; but he was a lively, noisy personage, full of humour, and perfectly indifferent as to appearances. He had a quiz and a quirk for everybody that passed in another boat, and would stand up and rant at them until they considered him insane. We were on very intimate terms, and I was never more pleased than when he made his appearance, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... exaggerated his proportions, but he seemed to Trixie the biggest man she had ever seen, and nearly the ugliest. Close-curling coarse black hair capped his high-domed skull, and his stern, powerful, swarthy face, big-nosed and long-chinned, with a humorous quirk at the corners of the heavy-lipped mouth, that redeemed its sensuousness, was lighted by eyes of the intensest black, burning under heavy beetle-brows. His khaki uniform, though of fine material and admirable cut, was that of a common ranker, and a narrow ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... she does," put in a voice from behind; it was Winnie, who had followed them on tiptoe, unknown to them, all the way. "She's got a funny quirk in her back, 'n' she lies down pretty much. That's her room up there to the top of the house. It's a real nice place, I tell you. They have onions mos' every day. Besides, I saw a little boy here one time when I was ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... is near setting, a sound very different from the warble of a bird is heard close by. It is some leader of a frog orchestra in the sedges of the canal giving the first note. It is like a quirk of gluttony just rousing from the torpor of satisfaction. The note is almost immediately taken up by other frogs, and the croaking travels along the canal-banks as fire would if there were a gale to help it. But the music only lasts a few minutes, for the hour is yet too early ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... reservation" with me, and in her smiling eyes I detected a kind of gentle amusement with her unconventional neighbors. She said nothing then (or at any time) which could be interpreted as criticism, but a merry little quirk in the corner ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... straight at him, a humorous little quirk to her mouth. "Say, what're you askin' me to ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture,—but still 'twas the torture of the happy—In this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... there, as he let his eyes drift from Betty, whom he loved, to her mother, whom his father had loved and lost. She had made his father suffer through love. Her daughter was making Donald MacRae's son suffer likewise. Again, through some fantastic quirk of his imagination, the stodgy figure of Horace Gower loomed in the background, shadowy and sinister. There were moments, like the present, when he felt hatred of the man concretely, as he ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... experiments, passed with the greatest swiftness. The boys were soon accustomed to their surroundings and threw themselves with enthusiasm into their studies and drill. Every possible moment was spent on the aviation field. Bill was learning every quirk and crank of such work as he could do in Ernest's plane without leaving ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... of straw. Bad people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few with knee-breeches, but the large majority in trousers, and for all the world like guests at a garden-party. Worldly-Wiseman alone, by some inexplicable quirk, stands before Christian in laced hat, embroidered waistcoat, and trunk-hose. But above all examples of this artist's intrepidity, commend me to the print entitled "Christian Finds it Deep." "A great darkness and horror," says the text, have fallen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through sickness and in health, for better or for worse—with all the strain and stress and struggle that life puts upon the yoke that binds the commonplace man to the commonplace woman rising to eminence by some unimportant quirk of his genius reacting on the times—these indeed would be memoirs ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... was not his intention to profit by so bald and barefaced a quirk, he only laughed; and exclaimed—'How much the young gentleman is his own master! But I will not pick your pocket. If at any time I should want twenty pounds, I shall have a fair claim to ask it as ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... last time as seaman, Kipping, mild and quiet, came to the forecastle. But as he packed his bag and prepared to leave us, he smiled constantly with a detestable quirk of his mouth, and before going he stopped beside downcast old Bill Hayden. "Straighten up, be a man," he said softly; "I'll see that you're treated right." He fairly drawled the words, so mildly did he speak; but when he had finished, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... said he, clearing his throat, and looking up at the farmer with a face of baby-like innocence, "I guess you don't know me—do you? My name's Johnny Quirk, and this boy here's my ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... reasoning, circular reasoning; petitio principii[Lat], ignoratio elenchi[Lat]; post hoc ergo propter hoc[Lat]; non sequitur, ignotum per ignotius[Lat]. misjudgment &c. 481; false teaching &c. 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism[obs3]; quibble, quirk, elenchus[obs3], elench[obs3], fallacy, quodlibet, subterfuge, subtlety, quillet[obs3]; inconsistency, antilogy[obs3]; "a delusion, a mockery, and a snare" [Denman]; claptrap, cant, mere words; "lame and impotent conclusion" [Othello]. meshes of sophistry, cobwebs of sophistry; flaw in an ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... after all, no quirk in those merchants and advocates to urge that the Queen was not going to war with the great potentate for their sakes alone. To Elizabeth's honour, she did thoroughly comprehend that the war of the Netherlands ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... plaster-cast moulds that would turn out dollars and other coins, remarkably like the real thing. He was not a clever forger; he had learned to write somewhat late in life, and the large, bold round hand, with the capital letters that invariably began with the wrong quirk or twirl, was too characteristic, though he wrote anonymous letters sometimes, risking detection in the enjoyment of what was to him a dear delight, only smaller than that other pleasure of moulding bodies to his own purposes, of malice, or gain, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... "It has queered me for a long time to find out who that man is; and my mistus she's been quite in a quirk over it. He d[dot above o][dot above a]nt seem to be quaint with nobody, and he d[dot above o][dot above a]nt seem to have no business, and for all that he's always to and thro', to and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the details of the small boy's appearance came back, later, with an amazing clarity. Later she could have described his dark, sullen eyes, his mouth with its curiously grim quirk at one corner, his shock of black hair and his ragged coat. But at the moment she had the ability to see only one thing—the scrawny gray kitten that the boy had tied to the iron leg of the bench; the shrinking kitten that the boy was torturing with ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... "Now!—Now!—Oh, don't look surprised. I've thought of this possibility. My God!" she said with a bitterness that startled him. "I've thought of every possibility, every possible crook and quirk of this business." ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... unfailing loyalty, follows his master with quip and quirk into exile. When all, even his daughters, had forsaken King Lear, the fool bares himself to the storm and covers the shaking old man with his own cloak; and when in our day we meet the avatars of Trinculo, Costard, Mercutio and Jacques, we find they ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... reasoning, circular reasoning; petitio principii [Lat.], ignoratio elenchi [Lat.]; post hoc ergo propter hoc [Lat.]; non sequitur, ignotum per ignotius [Lat.]. misjudgment &c 481; false teaching &c 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism^; quibble, quirk, elenchus^, elench^, fallacy, quodlibet, subterfuge, subtlety, quillet^; inconsistency, antilogy^; a delusion, a mockery, and a snare [Denman]; claptrap, cant, mere words; lame and impotent conclusion [Othello]. meshes of sophistry, cobwebs ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rang through the parlor. In eye, and look, and voice, the popular tribute spoke in honor of the popular instrument,—an instrument whose strings can sound almost every passion forth: The quip and quirk of merriment, the mourner's wail, the measured praise of solemn psalms, the lively beat of joy, the subtle charm of indolent moods, and the sweet ecstacy of youthful pleasure, when with flying feet and in the abandon of delight ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... suffering and persecuted of ail classes, Messrs. Quibble and Quirk, attorneys-at-law, beg to offer their professional services at the following fixed and equitable rate,—they, Messrs. Q. and Q., pledging themselves that on no occasion shall the charge exceed the sum opposite the particular amusement in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... a purely Western way. His gray eyes were deceivingly candid and his voice was pleasant with a little, humorous drawl that matched well the quirk of his lips when he talked. He was headed for home—which was the Flying U—sober and sunny and with enough money to see him through. He told Florence Hallman his name, and said that he lived "up the road a ways" without being too definite. Florence ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... gathered. But she had made up her mind and taken matters in her own hands. That was her way—a clean-cut sort of person—like a gold-and-white arrow; and now she was going to stick by her choice no matter what happened; owed it to Whitney. There was the quirk in her brain; we all have a quirk somewhere, and that was hers. She felt that she had ruined his career; he had been a brilliant young engineer, but her family had kicked up the devil of a row, and, as they were powerful enough, and nasty enough, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... are a man skilled in 'magic,' Medic. You certainly display the traditional sorcerer's quickness of wit. But this rumor is also truth." The quirk of good humor had gone again, and there was an edge in the Chief Ranger's voice which cut. "Poachers on Khatka would welcome the Patrol in place of ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... them in order one by one, saw himself laying bare the man with savage glee when next they should encounter. He would whiten the big brute's face by showing he had probed him to the quick. Just let him laugh at me again, thought Gourlay, and I'll analyze each mean quirk of his dirty soul ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... call it) we have had a wondrous growth of blockheads, even in our business. And if it were not for Shephard and Frazier, a hundred years hence, they would not think that in our times there were fellows bold enough to get sixpence out of a legal road, or dare to do anything without a quirk of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... glance.... Mademoiselle, standing there all disfigured and blotchy about something... it was nothing... it couldn't be anything.... If anyone were dead she would not be standing there... it was just some silly prim French quirk... her dignity... someone had been "grossiere"... and there she stood in her black hat and black cotton gloves.... Hurriedly putting on her hat and long lace scarf she decided that she would not change her shoes. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... thin quirk of thin lips. "Now let me outline your duties, Marsden. You are posted to my ship as Executive Officer. An Executive Officer is the Captain's ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... in which Hamlet or Othello was produced? If these circumstances were better known to us, is it to be believed and will it be seriously asserted that our admiration for one or the other play would be augmented?" In penning this quirk, the eminent critic would seem to have wilfully overlooked the fact that a writer's life may have much or may have little to do with his works. In the case of Shakespeare it was comparatively little—and yet we should be glad to learn more of this little. In the case of Balzac ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... New York remembers yet with a shudder. It was known long in the department for the bravest act ever done by a fireman—an act that earned for Foreman William Quirk the medal for 1888. He was next in command of Engine No. 22 when, on a March morning, the Elberon Flats in East Eighty-fifth street were burned. The Westlake family, mother, daughter, and two sons, were in the fifth story, helpless and hopeless. Quirk ran up on the scaling-ladder to the fourth ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... involuntary spasm of Don Cazar's lips, the shadow of an expression which might mean he anticipated a distasteful scene to come. But the quirk disappeared as he turned to face the man ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... success. They conclude that lies, in this world at least, are necessary. They have seen, with their own eyes, how powerful, venerable, or respectable lies are, and they act on their knowledge. They take the lie into sleeping partnership—Quirk and Co. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... their strange mountain calls; and the people went quite mad. Even the English taxidermist who had taken the trouble to sew and roughly stuff that mangled tiger-skin for the mahouts—even he shouted with them. Every time Neela Deo put that little quirk into his trunk and slanted his head in that absurd angle—Neela Deo, whose smooth dignity had never shown a ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify his wooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: "Dead-struck? Dead- drunk, you mean. I'm a Nature's dipsomaniac—as you can see," he added with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... life was different, easier, when he had married—and his wedding most appropriate to felicity. Yet that, against every apparent reason to the contrary, had vanished, and left him this calm determining of his fate. Through his thoughts a quirk of memory ran like a tongue of flame. He felt Savina's hand under his cuff; he felt her sliding, with her arms locked about his neck, out of her furs in the automobile; a white glimmer, a whisper, she materialized in the coldness ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... social circles Mrs. Gore's Dowager, Mrs. Grey's Flirt, Mrs. Trollope's Widow, and Boz's Mrs. Nickleby? Who can help thinking of his lawyer, when he makes acquaintance with those immortal firms Dodson and Fogg, or Quirk, Snap, and Gammon? Is not Wrexhill libellous, and Dr. Hookwell personal? Arise! avenge them both, ye zealous congregations! Why slumber pistols that, should damage Bulwer? Why are the clasp-knives sheathed, which should have drunk the blood of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Edmund, he did not even show him common justice. While others in the Eastern Counties were adorning and enlarging with rich gifts St. Edmund's resting-place, which had become a city of refuge for many things, this Earl of Essex flatly defrauded him, by violence or quirk of law, of five shillings yearly, and converted said sum to his own poor uses! Nay, in another case of litigation, the unjust Standard-bearer, for his own profit, asserting that the cause belonged not to St. Edmund's Court, but to his in Lailand Hundred, 'involved us in travellings ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... eyes gloated over the board, a malicious quirk sat astride his fat lips. The Funny Fellow ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... brothers, Reuben and Burke 10 And Nathan and Jotham and Solomon, lurk Around the corner to see him work— Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk 15 Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot holes and pried through cracks; With wood from the pile and straw from the stacks He plugged the knot holes and calked the cracks; 20 And a bucket of water, which one would think ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... forced into a fight not of his own choosing; an effort, which had failed, had been made to take him unfairly from behind; he had fired in self-defense after having first been fired upon; save for a quirk of fate operating in his favor, he should have faced odds of two deadly antagonists instead of facing one. What else then than his prompt and honorable discharge? And to top all, the popular verdict was that the killing off ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pounds sterling!" said Simeon, who was thinking. He had a suspicion that there might be some quirk about pounds "Scots," and was trying to explain things ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... mad now or am I christen'd, you my pagan cousin, My mighty Mahound kinsman, what quirk now? You shall be welcom all, I hope to see Sir Your Grace here, and my couz, we are all Souldiers, And must ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... to do with it?" Mangan asked; and then he continued, in his indolent fashion: "Why, I thought you knew all about Quirk. Quirk belongs to a band of literary weaklings, not any one of whom can do anything worth speaking of; but they try their best to write up one another; and sometimes they take it into their heads to help an acquaintance—and then their cry is like that of a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... you a good sort of quirk of Mr. Wilkes, who, when the power of the mob and their cruelty were ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... had a steady, hard grind of existence, and was for the first time seeing the point of some of those jokes of life for which his natural temperament had given him a relish. He acquired in those days a quizzical cock to his right eyebrow, and a comically confidential quirk to his mouth, which were in themselves enough to ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bounty of your Heavenly Father without returning thanks?' We laid down our knives and forks like boys caught in a watermelon patch, and the old man asked a blessing. I've been at his house often. He was a good man, but Secession caught him and he never came back. So, Quirk, you see, a son-in-law will be a handy man in the family, and with the start you made last night I hope for good results." The other boys seemed to enjoy my embarrassment, but I said nothing in reply, being a new man with the outfit. We reached the ranch an hour before noon, two ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... ALL ITS PREPARATIONS—MORPHINE, LAUDANUM, PAREGORIC, ETC.—Symptoms: Giddiness, drowsiness, increasing to stupor, and insensibility; pulse usually, at first, quirk and irregular, and breathing hurried, and afterwards pulse slow and feeble, and respiration slow and noisy; the pupils are contracted and the eyes and face congested, and later, as death approaches, the extremities become cold, the surface is covered ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... think of as a place of freedom. I came, because I like freedom; I am staying because I like the climate. I find that what freedom means in the West is the ability of ignorant and fanatical persons to start some new, fantastical quirk of scriptural interpretation, to build a new cult around it, and earn a ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... destruction, appealed to Rose. She had Dolly in her pocket in five minutes, and before the end of the rehearsal, their treaty was signed and sealed. They were to be chums, bosom friends! The notion of it gave Rose the most spontaneous smile she'd had in days; the first one that hadn't had a bitter quirk in it. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... With a mysterious quirk of the head he motioned the foreman to follow, and led the way to the cook-shack, where Blood River Jack waited ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Burke And Nathan and Jotham and Solomon, lurk Around the corner to see him work,— Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot-holes and pried through cracks; With wood from the pile and straw from the stacks He plugged the knot-holes and calked the cracks; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... twice with his knuckles on the unpainted casing, and entered, pulling off his hat and turning it round and round in his gloved fingers while he ducked his head, pressed his lips together with a humorous quirk, shuffled his spurred feet on the dirty floor and bowed again as awkwardly as he could. In this manner he hoped to draw some little spark of individuality from Mary Hope, who sat behind her yellow-painted table and stared at him over her ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... the impulses of his rabbit heart, but the unexpected clatter of hoofs still set his pulses a-flutter. Why had fate snatched so gentle a youth from his law desk and flung him into such turbid waters to sink or swim? All he had asked was peace—friends, books, a quiet life. By some ironic quirk be found himself in scenes of battle and turmoil. As the son of John Beaudry he was expected to show an unflawed nerve, whereas his eager desire was to ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... plaintive quirk of the voice the singer paused, gayly flicked the strings of the banjo, then put her hand flat upon them to stop the vibration and smiled round on her admirers. The group were applauding heartily. A chorus said, "Another ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... that it should be otherwise. Having achieved the incredible conviction of O'Connell, by an Irish jury, the great culprit baffled the vengeance of the law by a quirk which a lawyer only could have devised. As regards his Irish policy, Sir Robert Peel never recovered this blow, the severity of which was proportionably increased by its occurrence at a moment of unprecedented success. Resolute not to recur to his ancient Orangeism, yet ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... soul. In what part of the unsightly baby-carcass had been stowed away these old airs, forgotten by every one else, and some of them never heard by the child but once, but which he now reproduced, every note intact, and with whatever quirk or quiddity of style belonged to the person who originally had sung or played them? Stranger still the harmonies which he had never heard, had learned from no man. The sluggish breath of the old house, being enchanted, grew into quaint and delicate whims ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... had merited punishment. They eagerly discussed the subject—all the midshipmen had been insulted in the person of Adair, and it was not long before a bright idea was elicited from among them. On board the ship, belonging to the men, was a large monkey, whom they called Quirk, a very tame and sagacious animal, who had a peculiar aptitude for learning any trick which any person had perseverance enough to teach him. "He'd know more nor any of the ship's boys if it weren't for his tail," ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... that at the age of nine I was sent away from home and began an independent career at the boarding-school kept by the Reverend Mr. Quirk, at Methuen, Massachusetts. Here I remained for seven years, in the course of which both my parents died, victims of typhoid. I was cast upon the world utterly alone, save for the rather uncompromising and saturnine regard in which I was held by old Mr. Toddleham, my trustee. This antique gentleman ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... of seats a prim little body, full of a severe quaintness in every quirk of dress, tilted her head toward a neighbor, and whispered, "It's that ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... And looks on all creation as the work Of God All-wise, most kind and mighty too. This frees my mind from all vain thoughts which lurk In its recesses, dissipates the murk Of idol worship and religious pride, And makes me proof 'gainst each insidious quirk Thrown out by those who do my views deride; Whose judgment seems to me from truth ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... lady in disguise!" And I quirk my little finger as I drink my coffee and order Eleanor to peer without to see if my ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... er bust somethin'." Pinkey's mouth had a funny quirk at the corners. "Maybe it'll take the kinks out of ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... Moll all cock-a-hoop with a new delight, by reason of her dear husband offering to take her to London for a month to visit the theatres and other diversions, which put me to a new quirk for fear Moll should be known by any of our former playhouse companions. But this I now perceive is a very absurd fear; for no one in the world who had seen Moll three years ago—a half-starved, long-legged, raw child—could recognise her now, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... the only other apartment—the bed-chamber. Through this they could see the workmen laying MacEvoy on the bed, and standing awkwardly about thereafter, getting in the way of the wife and old Maggie Quirk as they strove to remove the garments from his crushed limbs. As the neighbors watched what could be seen of these proceedings, they whispered among themselves eulogies of the injured man's industry and good temper, his habit of bringing his money home to his wife, and the way ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... asked with a slightly southern accent in her voice, delicate and entrancing. Her head gave a little modest toss, her fine white teeth caught her lower lip with a little quirk of humour; for she could see that he was a gentleman, and that she was safe from anything that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... held it, and rubbed his eyes as he looked at it, and wondered; then he began to remember what Mother Quirk had said to him; and he would have given a good deal just then to have been back again at the well, as he was before the angry old woman boxed his ear. He was afraid she had ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the soil of Pennsylvania, this lawyer stood ready, free of charge, to use in their behalf his skill and every fair interpretation of the letter and spirit of the law, and availing himself of every quirk for postponements, thus adding to the expense and anxiety of the pursuer, and giving the engineers of the underground railroad added opportunities to run ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... very needful human race. But there had been no machine to produce peace. The crossing shock waves of fused hydrogen had destroyed the machines by the tens of thousands, along with all the automatic shipping lines, leaving only, in the quirk of a pressure cross-pattern, an undisturbed taffy-making machine, oozing its special ...
— Sweet Their Blood and Sticky • Albert Teichner
... wide yet noticeably beautiful—not with the soft beauty of a baby's mouth, or a girl's, and not because it could boast even a touch of scarlet. It had been cut as carefully as his nose, the lips full yet firm, their lines drawn delicately, but with strength. It was sensitive, with a little quirk at each corner which betrayed its humor. Above all things, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... SKIP meant 'do not SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say 'SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP meant 'do not JUMP'; the unconditional form was JUMPA. However, hackers never did this. By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST} (Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of man, not overbalanced and erratic, without quirk or quibble of temperament. He was efficient, but not brilliant. His was a general all-round efficiency. He was efficient at the law; he was efficient at college; he was efficient as a sailor; he was efficient in the matter of pride, when that pride was no more than the pride of a forecastle hand, ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... some little quirk in his brain that makes him different—some trait that isn't quite normal. I've come to watch for it, and it's always there, even in the most commonplace people. It's the quirk which, when accentuated, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... none of the care. "Once it was her head, and then it was her shoulders; and now her eyebrows are all of a quirk." ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... it, Holly, those ignorant Mexicans are bad!" She had lifted her eyes accusingly to where Holman Sommers sat on the ground with his knees drawn up and his old Panama hat hung upon them. He was smoking a pipe, and he did not remove it from his mouth; but Helen May saw that amused quirk of ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... said Telfer and his voice seemed far away and unnatural like the voice from the jail; "it is an odd thought that but for a quirk in the brain this Mike McCarthy might himself have been a kind of Christ with a ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... quirk to her too. Work up as much sympathy as you wanted to, you couldn't do anything for her. Sadie ain't slow at that, you know. She got int'rested in her right off, and when she discovers how Lindy lives in a couple of cheap rooms down in ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... think to take refuge with the Son from the righteousness of the Father; to take refuge with his work instead of with the Son himself; to take refuge with a theory of that work instead of the work itself; to shelter behind a false quirk of law instead of nestling in the eternal heart of the unchangeable and righteous Father, who is merciful in that he renders to every man according to his work, and compels their obedience, nor admits judicial quibble or subterfuge. God ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... stop to quirk your little finger and simper over your plate, Amy," cried Jo, choking on her tea and dropping her bread, butter side down, on the carpet in her haste ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott |
