"Curiously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the crest upon the spoons; the curious red knobs upon Miss Smeardon's fingers, and the odd mincing way she held her fork; the almost athletic efforts of the butler when he raised an enormous silver dish-cover, and the curiously frugal and unappetizing nature of the viand it disclosed. The wizened face of the lap-dog, too, peering over the table's edge, out of Miss Smeardon's lap, might have acquired its distrustful expression, Robinette ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... girl strode out of ear-shot, Slim, absent-mindedly, kept shaking the hand she had held. Awakening suddenly to the fact that his hand was empty, he looked at it curiously, and sighed. Turning quickly, he slapped his hat on his head, hitched up his chaps, and stepped up to Bud, who stood with a ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... is introduced into the one, which is absent from the other. Josephus prides himself on his accuracy; people whose fathers might have heard Herod's oration were his Contemporaries; and yet his historical sense is so curiously undeveloped that he can, quite innocently, perpetrate an obvious literary fabrication; for one of the two accounts must be incorrect. Now, if I am asked whether I believe that Herod made some particular ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... other excavations compose the monasteries or viharas. Begun 100 B.C., they have remained since the tenth century of our era as we now see them. The subterranean monasteries are majestic in appearance. Sustained by superb columns with curiously sculptured capitals, they are ornamented with admirable frescoes which make us live over again the ancient Hindoo life. The paintings are unfortunately in a sad state, yet for the tourist they are an inexhaustible source ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... that they had made their ordinance* *provision, arrangement Of victual, and of other purveyance, They go and play them all the longe day: And this was on the sixth morrow of May, Which May had painted with his softe showers This garden full of leaves and of flowers: And craft of manne's hand so curiously Arrayed had this garden truely, That never was there garden of such price,* *value, praise *But if* it were the very Paradise. *unless* Th'odour of flowers, and the freshe sight, Would have maked any hearte light That e'er was born, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... her curiously, her pure profile turned up to the wide dome of luminous blue above. His voice was strangely low and wondering as he ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... that dinner was served. Caroline rose and led the way to the dining room. Captain Elisha followed, looking curiously about him as he did so. Stephen, who had been sulkily dressing in his own room, ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... for Franklin in this reasonable speech, but he could not see clearly where it lay; curiously, it did not seem to centre on that hopelessness as regarded Althea. He could see nothing clearly, and there was no time for self-examination. 'No,' he agreed. 'No, that's true. It's not as if I ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Grandmother's History, or anxious to satisfy themselves that I have not Lied, should consult a book called The Travels of Edward Brown, Esquire, that is now in the Great Library at Montague House. Mr. Brown is in most things curiously exact; but he errs in stating that Mrs. Greenville's name was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Jesu to take him over, but he would not; and another for the love of Mary, and a third for the sake of the Rood of Bromholm, [a famous relic of the True Cross.] and a fourth for the love of saint Anthony. And at that they laughed at him, coming round him and looking on him curiously, and crying that they would have all the saints out of him before Avemaria, and asking to know his business. When he told them in his simplicity that he was to see the King, they laughed the more, and said that the King was gone to be a monk at saint ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... that the body in beta Lyrae giving dark hydrogen lines shows those lines also split at certain times. It has been calculated, from a study of the phenomena noted above, that the bright-line star in beta Lyrae is situated at a distance of about fifteen million miles from the center of gravity of the curiously complicated system of which it ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... how little, comparatively, we do for them, it appears that the demand for gratitude might come more appropriately from the other side. It is an old saying that we value in others the virtues which are convenient to ourselves, and this is curiously illustrated in the popular ideal of a good servant. In the master's estimate besides the indispensable physical qualification of vigorous health—diligence, punctuality, cleverness, readiness to oblige, and rigid honesty, of a certain ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... made one more effort to speak, but he heard the key turn and his wife's voice commanding him to go away. He descended the stairs to the library and threw himself into a chair. Mr. Hungerford, smoking one of his host's cigars and reading the evening paper, looked at him curiously and asked ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is curiously alike in one feature. There is an almost sprightliness in their conviction that what they can write in these circumstances would exactly suit any paper, daily or weekly, morning or evening. All they have ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... ground-floor, with a man of from forty to forty-two, who was entirely unknown to him, and who was very simply dressed, and occupied in following—at a blazing furnace—some chemical experiment, to which he appeared to attach great importance. This man, seeing Buvat, raised his head, and having looked at him curiously— ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... her and her guardian had curiously changed. In the first place, since her Dansworth adventure, Helena had found something to do to think about other than quarrelling with "Cousin Philip." Her curiosity as to how the two wounded police, whom she had driven ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rival those who are in possession of what we long for, we shall certainly be happy when, being emancipated from that body, we at the same time get rid of these desires and this rivalry: and, that which we do at present, when, dismissing all other cares, we curiously examine and look into anything, we shall then do with greater freedom; and we shall employ ourselves entirely in the contemplation and examination of things; because there is naturally in our minds a certain insatiable ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... on sporting airs and curiously cut overcoats on two days in each year. The weather for the occasion is nearly always cloudless, and the townsfolk have begun to think that either they are very clever in arranging the date ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... But as she followed the moth, she caught sight of something lying on the bank of the river, and not yet having learned to be afraid of anything, ran straight to see what it was. Reaching it, she stood amazed. Another girl like herself! But what a strange-looking girl!—so curiously dressed, too!—and not able to move! Was she dead? Filled suddenly with pity, she sat down, lifted Photogen's head, laid it on her lap, and began stroking his face. Her warm hands brought him to himself. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... spade clinking away the drift of bones that permeates the thin brown soil; but my first disappointment had taught me to expect little from Greyfriars' sextons, and I passed him by in silence. A slater on the slope of a neighbouring roof eyed me curiously. A lean black cat, looking as if it had battened on strange meats, slipped past me. A little boy at a window put his finger to his nose in so offensive a manner that I was put upon my dignity, and turned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... much," said Del, her temper curiously and suddenly restored. "But mentally, Artie, dear, he's been distances and to places and in society that your poor brain would ache ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... two boys curiously as they stepped upon the verandah and the brothers were not reassured by any looks of friendliness, though they were outwardly courteous. A withered looking old woman, who looked to Jim as though she had Indian blood showed the boys to a room, where ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... a great deal of Pleasure in contemplating the material World, by which I mean that System of Bodies into which Nature has so curiously wrought the Mass of dead Matter, with the several Relations which those Bodies bear to one another; there is still, methinks, something more wonderful and surprizing in Contemplations on the World of Life, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... eluded me for long. It was, "Oh, You Beautiful Doll!" They had changed the tune, so that I had not recognized it. The Tahitians have curious variations of European and American airs, of which they adapt many, carrying the thread of them, but differentiating enough to cause the hearer curiously mixed emotions. It was as if one heard a familiar voice, and, advancing to grasp a friendly hand, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... where presently I made out that the men stretched in the straw at the horses' feet were monks all, and habited like the monk on the deck behind me. To him next I turned, to find his eyes, which were dark and quick, searching me curiously; and as I turned he made a step forward, put out a hand as if to touch me on the shirt-sleeve, and anon drew it back, yet still continued ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of the United States in section 2 of Article I seems to have relegated authority over the extension of the suffrage to the various States, yet, curiously, few men in the United States possess the suffrage because they or the class to which they belong have secured their right to it by State action. The first voters were those who possessed the right under the original charters granted by the mother ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... found the cure. In a word, he has been converted. I do not care whether or no Masefield means to tell his own story in "The Everlasting Mercy," but I do know that he tells, in spite of himself, a story that fits curiously into, and marvelously explains, the strange revolution and change in his own life from "Salt Water Ballads" to ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... National, it seemed to Stephen that this strange Berber people would never have been forced to yield; for looking down from mountain heights as the motor sped on, it was as if he looked into a vast and intricate maze of valleys, and on each curiously pointed peak clung a Kabyle village that seemed to be inlaid in the rock like separate bits of scarlet enamel. It was the low house-roofs which gave this effect, for unlike the Arabs, whom the ancient Berber lords of the soil regard with scorn, the Kabyles build ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a few choice remarks upon the undoubted inclusion of a pig in the commissionaire's parentage, in a curiously sibilant voice, then limped away with a distressing swing of her body ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... on the top of the head. The mouth was large, the lips were thick, dim in colour, undefined in shape. The hands were large, powerful, and grasping; they were earthly hands; they were hands that could take and could hold, and their materialism was curiously opposed to the ideality of the eyes—an ideality that touched the confines of frenzy. The shoulders were square and carried well back, the head was round, with close-cut hair, the straight falling coat was buttoned high, and the ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... own expense, Mr. Pugin being his architect, a small Roman Catholic Church, which is a magnificent specimen of that gentleman's taste in the "decorated" style. "Heraldic emblazonments, and religious emblems, painting and gilding, stained glass, and curiously-wrought metal work, imageries and inscriptions, rood loft and reredos, stone altar and sedilia, metal screenwork, encaustic paving, make ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... of a man who lies unwinking in the dark, angrily passive in the toils of disastrous thoughts. Now, when I know how true it was, I can honestly affirm that this was the effect he produced on me. It was painful in a curiously indefinite way—for, of course, the definition comes to me now while I sit writing in the fullness of my knowledge. But this is what the effect was at that time of absolute ignorance. This new sort of uneasiness which he seemed to be forcing upon me I attempted ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... aching eyes I looked over the walls around me. There, in that corner, was the red cloth door which led to the library. As children, how often Ralph and I had peeped curiously through that very door, to see what my father was about in his study, to wonder why he had so many letters to write, and so many books to read. How frightened we both were, when he discovered us one day, and reproved us severely! How happy the moment afterwards, when we had ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... face of plastic contour, rich full lips, soft interfused outlines, intense purple eyes, and heavy waving hair, dark indeed, but harmonized curiously with the narrow gold fillet that bound it. "It is no pain to die for love," said the low, deep voice, with an echo of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... consciousness, are reproduced here with a faithfulness that is absolutely startling. What really makes the transformation complete is the absence in "Alice" of that half-comic sententious priggishness which, as soon as we have ceased to be children, we find so curiously irritating in ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... checkered woollen cloth so much worn in Scotland. Curiously enough, the name is not Gaelic but French. See Jamieson ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of their mighty ship, the Jackies, all perfect specimens of young American manhood, quietly watched us march aboard. We were as novel to them as they to us, yet what confidence they inspired! Curiously yet kindly they looked us over, approvingly observed the long orderly lines of our glittering rifles stretching away through the dim sheds, and seemed to say, "You are worth while fellows!—we'll take you over all right, all right, for our little ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... chimed the hour of noon upon the old clock of the Recollets, and Amelie still sat looking wistfully over the great square of the Place d'Armes, and curiously scanning every horseman that rode across it. A throng of people moved about the square, or passed in and out of the great arched gateway of the Castle of St. Louis. A bright shield, bearing the crown and fleur-de-lis, surmounted the gate, and under it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... yet another tendency of the times, to which Dante, in his later works, has given the fullest and most characteristic expression, and which exhibits itself curiously in the "Vita Nuova." Corresponding with the new ardor for the arts, and in sympathy with it, was a newly awakened and generally diffused ardor for learning, especially for the various branches of philosophy. Science was leaving the cloister, in which she had sat in dumb solitude, and coming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... a great sigh that sounded curiously like an expression of vast and many sided relief. Then he chuckled. "Easy enough for me. You can't never be nothing but ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... curiously, slid down the steps until he reached the one on which the dog was sitting, and put his arm around its neck. The banister posts hid him from the approaching couple. He could hear Georgina's eager voice ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... saddest sort of comedy. We were looking out of my library window on that view of the Charles which I was so proud of sharing with my all-but-next-door neighbor, Doctor Holmes, when another friend who was with us called out with curiously impersonal interest, "Oh, see that woman getting into the water!" This would have excited curiosity and alarmed anxiety far less lively than ours, and Clemens and I rushed downstairs and out through my basement and back gate. At the same time a coachman came out ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... precipitation of vapor, the condition of our nervous system, and, according to Humboldt, with the circulation of the organic juices. Atmospheric electricity has heretofore been a great obstacle to the success of the Magnetic Telegraph, and curiously disturbs its operation; but there has recently been invented an instrument called a Mutator, which is connected with the wires, and carries off all the disturbing influences of the atmosphere without interfering with the working current. On the other hand, artificially created ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... grown lukewarm, and went out to walk by a way that he knew well, and which had for him now a romantically pathetic interest. It was, of course, the way past the Desmond cottage, which, when he came in sight of it round the shoulder of upland where it stood, was curiously strange, curiously familiar. It needed painting badly, and the grounds had a sadly neglected air. The naked legs of little girls no longer twinkled over the lawn, which was grown ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... house. I have seldom seen a more remarkable-looking person. It was a gaunt, aquiline face which was turned towards us, with piercing dark eyes, which lurked in deep hollows under overhung and tufted brows. His hair and beard were white, save that the latter was curiously stained with yellow around his mouth. A cigarette glowed amid the tangle of white hair, and the air of the room was fetid with stale tobacco smoke. As he held out his hand to Holmes, I perceived that it was also ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dividing all Paris into Laffargists and anti-Laffargists, and almost superseding war as a general topic of conversation, she passes to the then burning subject of the fortification of Paris, and writes as follows—curiously enough, considering the date ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... moon shines dim in the open air, 175 And not a moonbeam enters here. But they without its light can see The chamber carved so curiously, Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain, 180 For a lady's chamber meet: The lamp with twofold silver chain Is ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 'Dramatis Personae' represented his own creed; though this was often accentuated in the sense of a more personal privilege, and a perhaps less poetic mystery, than the poem conveys. The Evangelical Christian and the subjective idealist philosopher were curiously blended in ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... beauty slightly awry," said Father Payne; "names are curiously sacred things—they often seem to be part of the innermost essence of a man. I confess I would rather change most things than change my name. I would rather shave ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and abilities of the learned Jerom; and the grateful saint has celebrated the merit and purity of a very ambiguous character. [80] But the splendid vices of the church of Rome, under the reign of Valentinian and Damasus, have been curiously observed by the historian Ammianus, who delivers his impartial sense in these expressive words: "The praefecture of Juventius was accompanied with peace and plenty, but the tranquillity of his government ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... portraits. Among these is that of his daughter Violante, believed to have been loved by Titian. 'Palma's three Daughters,' in the Dresden Gallery, is a masterpiece of 'fair, full-blown beauty.' The hair of the women is of the curiously bleached yellow tint affected then by the Venetian ladies. Palma painted many pictures, leaving at ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... and mother than about most of the other people he mentions. I myself was never on bad terms with my mother: we lived together until I was forty-two years old, absolutely without the smallest friction of any kind; yet when her death set me thinking curiously about our relations, I realized that I knew very little about her. Introduce me to a strange woman who was a child when I was a child, a girl when I was a boy, an adolescent when I was an adolescent; and if we take naturally to one another I will know more of her and she of me at the end of ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... your affairs; I am only your Starost," she said. But he could not suppress a yawn, watched the birds, the dragon-flies, picked the cornflowers, looked curiously at the peasants, and gazed up at the sky over-arching the wide horizon. Then his aunt began to talk to one of the peasants, and he hurried off to the garden, ran down to the edge of the precipice, and made his way through ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Alexander's rather; for the property of the conquered is, and should be called the conqueror's." Here, when he beheld the bathing vessels, the water-pots, the pans, and the ointment boxes, all of gold, curiously wrought, and smelt the fragrant odors with which the whole place was exquisitely perfumed, and from thence passed into a pavilion of great size and height, where the couches and tables and preparations for an entertainment ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... towering passion to live in a tower, or saw no fun in waiting for funds; and so, continually pealed an appeal to the public:—however, it was a puny, little, curious bell, with a tongue of its own, now clacking for a charity sermon; and, curiously, Mr. Brown thinks a charity sermon always edifies him with the headache, and is doubtful about going, as they make him a reluctant giver—for mere vain show; but he, curiously, wonders where the De Camps go; and, curiously, Victoria ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... belonging to the church had come to the meeting feeling anxious, and yet pretty certain that the answer would be favorable. All over the building, people were whispering about the matter, and heads were nodding and bowing. The bonnets on these heads were curiously alike. Mrs. Perry, the village milliner, never had more than one pattern hat. "That is what is worn," she said; and nobody disputed the fact, which saved Mrs. Perry trouble. The Valley Hill people liked it just as well, and didn't ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the grass, smoking cigarettes and eating sweetmeats. If they see us looking at them they draw the corners of their mantles across the lower part of their faces; but when they think themselves unobserved they drop their veils and regard us curiously with lustrous ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... was thinking of is quite foreign to your tastes and possibilities."... He hesitated with a look of perplexity, while Don Ippolito stood before him in an attitude of expectation, pressing the points of his fingers together, and looking curiously into his face. "The case is this," resumed Ferris desperately. "There are two American ladies, friends of mine, sojourning in Venice, who expect to be here till midsummer. They are mother and daughter, and the young lady wants to read and speak Italian with somebody ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... the wrappings off, and I leaned forward, a little breathless at the beauty of the thing in his hand. A curiously wrought little statuette about eight inches high, of gold. It was set with real emeralds, for eyes. About the neck and waist of the exquisite female figure were inset jewels, simulating girdle and necklace. A little golden ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... in which were many ladies and gentlemen of the court, all dressed in rich costumes. These people had nothing to do but talk to each other, but they always came to wait outside the Throne Room every morning, although they were never permitted to see Oz. As Dorothy entered they looked at her curiously, and one of ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... A. 6). For the first degree of humility is to "be humble in heart, and to show it in one's very person, one's eyes fixed on the ground": and to this is opposed "curiosity," which consists in looking around in all directions curiously and inordinately. The second degree of humility is "to speak few and sensible words, and not to be loud of voice": to this is opposed "frivolity of mind," by which a man is proud of speech. The third degree ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... much money I am holding." I then went on to describe to them my desire to attain contact with the said Mafia; meanwhile they descended further and grouped about me in the very little light, examining curiously the motionless figures ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... erect, her hands at her belt, her elbows widespread, and with narrowed eyes watched the youngsters. Her lips were closed so tightly they wrinkled curiously as she turned back to ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and gracious lady," he murmured in that curiously muffled voice of his, which seemed to endow his strange personality ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... spoke, Deulin bowed in his rather grand way to an old gentleman who walked briskly past in the military fashion, and who turned to look curiously ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... childhood's Fancy shot For me beyond its ordinary mark, 'Twere vain to ask; but in our flock of boys 90 Was One, a cripple from his birth, whom chance Summoned from school to London; fortunate And envied traveller! When the Boy returned, After short absence, curiously I scanned His mien and person, nor was free, in sooth, 95 From disappointment, not to find some change In look and air, from that new region brought, As if from Fairy-land. Much I questioned him; And every word he uttered, on my ears Fell flatter than a caged parrot's note, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... over the world at a primitive stage of thought, and even to some extent in the highest civilization, the sight of the sexual organs or of the sexual act, the image or even the names of the sexual parts of either man or woman, are believed to have a curiously potent influence, sometimes beneficent, but quite as often maleficent. The two kinds of influence may even be combined, and Riedel, quoted by Ploss and Bartels,[38] states that the Ambon islanders carve a schematic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... age) children in Fitchburg may elect to take this school of Practical Arts instead of the regular grammar school course. The results of this election are extraordinary. The practical course was planned for the children who expected to leave school at fourteen, or at the end of the eighth grade. Curiously enough, all types of children have flocked into it. Sons of doctors, lawyers and well-to-do business men; boys and girls preparing for college, and children who must stop school in a year or two are all clamoring ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... Mis' Farley said some of 'em might slip yo' enough jest to help yuh out." Stopping in her work, she looked curiously at the actress. "Ain't yo' got nobody to take care of yo' ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... marched into the room behind Sitsumi, who stepped aside, looking curiously at Jeter and Eyer as they passed him. Inside the door, pausing only a moment to glance over the big room's appointments, Jeter turned ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... affliction." He again admitted, that the Slave Trade was not an amiable trade; but he would not gratify his humanity at the expense of the interests of his country; and he thought we should not too curiously inquire into the unpleasant circumstances which ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... moment I thought he was going to strike me. He grew livid, and a small crooked blood-vessel in his temple swelled and throbbed curiously. Then he forced a ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Sterling. I was waiting in his office when he returned from this consultation, and the expression of his face as he entered indicated plainly that a real snag had been struck. His jaw and the droop of the upper corners of his eyelids gave a curiously sinister aspect to ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... tonight," he protested, while some of the gamblers eyed me curiously. "Can't deal to more than seven for ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... brain still alert with the sense of injury and wrong, and most curiously alive to seize any opportunity which might lead to an escape from so galling ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... sliding to the floor. Age had sapped from beneath the skin, so that every curve had collapsed to bagginess, the cheeks and the underchin sagging with too much skin. Even the hands were crinkled like too large gloves, a wide, curiously etched marriage band hanging loosely ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... is why I have always thought since that the woodland scent hung around Karl. Ah, I must tell you how curiously unconscious he was—what other word can I use? We stood still and looked over the lake. 'Oh, what a longing that gives,' said I. 'Yes, a longing to bathe, ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... corner he mused upon their lives, and wondered how many of them would be members of his flock in the years to come. They gave the stranger who was to play for them that night but passing glances, though all had heard of his prowess as a wrestler. But if they had only known who he really was, how curiously they would have ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... fallen from about his neck. She shrank away from him. He drew back, shocked into silence by the sudden, dreadful change in her. Her eyes, curiously dulled and faded, looked at Beauvayse as though they saw not him, but another man, through him and behind him. Her face was peaked and pinched; her supple, youthful figure contracted and bent like that of a woman withered by some wasting sickness, her dainty garments ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... another scene, a convent refectory, transformed into the assembly hall of the gentry. The older men are seated in a row on benches; the younger are standing and looking curiously over their heads towards the centre; in the centre stands the Marshal, holding the urn in his hands; he is counting the balls, and the gentry devour them with their eyes; he has just shaken out the last one: the Apparitors ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... instantly arrested. Being pressed to tell the truth, the girl apprehended told that the image had been made by her brother, Bessie Weir, Margery Craig, and Margaret Jackson, in presence of a black man, whom she understood to be the devil. Sir George, curiously enough, recovered after the second discovery of an image, the same as he had done at the finding of the former figure. John Stewart remained obstinate until his body was searched for insensible marks. These being discovered in great numbers, so confounded ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... as the voices of these Ventadour boys and girls in their part songs; and the foreign element retained in their characters and manner of living reminds me of some of the happiest days of my life. Lucille, the second daughter, is curiously like Phillis Holman.' In vain I said to myself that it was probably this likeness that made him take pleasure in the society of the Ventadour family. In vain I told my anxious fancy that nothing could be more ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... wampum among these same Indians. "They hang," he states "these strings of money about their necks and wrists, as also about the necks and wrists of their wives and children. Machequoce, a girdle, which they make curiously of one, two, three, four and five inches thickness and more, of this money, which sometimes to the value of tenpounds and more, they weare about their middle, and a scarfe about their ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... name might have been spoken in Mr. and Mrs. Trueman's presence. But now they had entered its shadow; they were "going"—whether to the dim vale of Avilion, or with chariot and horses of fire to heaven, let nobody too curiously ask. If Mr. and Mrs. Trueman chose to speak definitely, it was ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tones growing fewer and fainter by degrees until they almost died out of hearing in the opposite direction. That all were now taking part in the performance I became convinced by watching in turn different individuals, some of them having small, curiously-shaped instruments in their hands, but there was a blending of voices and a something like ventriloquism in the tones which made it impossible to distinguish the notes of any one person. Deeper, more ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... aspirations that had been thwarted by his present condition,—all his longing for education, experience, and, above all, the desire to be "as good as the next man, bar none, no matter where I be," an aspiration inexplicable to Adelle, a curiously aristocratic sensitiveness to caste distinction that might not be expected in a healthy-minded laboring-man. It was the most American note in his character, and like a true American he felt sure that money would enable him to attain "equality" with ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... excellent portraits of Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. Curiously enough, each of these was sent off from France to the Sandwich Islands, by way of Cape Horn, while the original was in the zenith of his power and fame; and each reached its destination after the original had been deposed and had fled to ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... deep down in some obscure and cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and something dangling from it caused me to stretch forth my hand and seize it curiously. It was the half of a silver dime that had been cut in ...
— Options • O. Henry
... so lovingly around his neck as she kissed and called him Uncle Eph. That sight grated harshly, and Wilford, knowing this was the uncle of whom Katy had often spoken, felt glad that he was not bound to her by any pledge. Very curiously he looked after the couple, witnessing the meeting between Katy and old Whitey, and guessing rightly that the corn-colored vehicle was the one sent to transport Katy home. He was very moody for the remainder of the route between ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... and soft light-brown cheeks, and he was all dressed in pink satin, with a little jewelled cap, and his long black hair tied up in a hard knot at the back of his neck. The little Highness looked at Sonny Sahib curiously, and then tugged ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... on the whole was pleasing, and rather soft, yet, owing to this warring of opposing inner forces, it was at the same time curiously deceptive. Out of that dreamy, vague expression shot, when least expected, the hard and practical judgment of the City—or vice versa. But the whole was gentle—admirable quality for an audience, since it invited confession and assured a gentle hearing. No harshness lay ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... assassins of Archbishop Sharp. To reproduce a departed age with such minute and lifelike accuracy as this tale exhibits, demanded a far more energetic sympathy of imagination than had been called for in any effort of his serious verse. It is indeed most curiously instructive for any student of art to compare the Roundheads of Rokeby with the Bluebonnets of Old Mortality. For the rest—the story is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding novels: the canvas is a broader ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... He glanced rather curiously at Milly while he was speaking of Mr. Stormont. Was he really going away, I wondered, or was that threat of departure only a ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... apothecaries' bottles, cups and saucers standing separate, and bowls, in which messes have been prepared with the hope of suiting a sick man's failing appetite. There was a small saucepan standing on a plate, a curiously shaped glass utensil left by the doctor, and sundry pieces of flannel, which had been used in rubbing the sufferer's limbs. But in the middle of the debris stood one black bottle, with head erect, unsuited to the companionship in which it ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of his, "my mother took a heroic decision and made up her mind to get up in the middle of the night. You must understand my mother's phraseology. It meant that she would be up and dressed by nine o'clock. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... difficulty and some risk) he had risen to his feet, given himself a good shake, and was nibbling away at a bit of gorse that peeped through the snow on which he had fallen. A deep cut on the shoulder was his only injury, and, curiously enough, our portmanteaus, with the exception of a broken strap, were unharmed. There was, luckily, nothing ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... had been sent by the Institute to take his first lessons in archaeology and photography, having arrived, we went to Candia to select our site. We decided on attacking a ruin on the acropolis of Gnossus, already partially exposed by the searches of local diggers for antiques. It had a curiously labyrinthine appearance, and on the stones I found and described the first discovered of the characters whose nature has since been made the subject of the researches of Mr. Evans. I made an agreement with the Turkish proprietor of the land, and prepared to set to work when the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... reeds in the direction of the sound. After a while he came to a wall of rocks perpendicular and almost insurmountable. He paused and considered, licking his lips greedily as the thud, thud continued, now, apparently, directly in front of him. All at once his eyes, curiously sensitive to external impressions, discovered a little, secret trail between two boulders. He followed it; a great stone revolved at his touch, and he found himself inside the sacred groves. He went on, gulping greedily in anticipation of the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... table, absently balancing on his forefinger a long, broad, ivory paper-knife. He was, Brigit remembered, curiously adept in balancing, and once she had seen him go through, for Tommy's amusement, a whole series of the kind, from the classic broomstick on his chin, to blowing three feathers about the room at a time, allowing none of them to fall. How quickly ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... thirst (after some ferocious meal), turned from the spring and, coming upon the veil, sniffed at it curiously, tore and tossed it with her reddened jaws,—as she would have done with Thisbe herself,—then dropped the plaything and crept away to the ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... he had never seen so charming a living-room. A comfortable chair invited him, and he sat down. He felt suddenly rested and at home, and at peace with the world. Realizing that, in some way, the room had produced this effect, he looked curiously about him, trying to solve ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... but I'm glad to see you!" I said. They were of the Third Battalion, and my exclamation must have startled them, for, of course, I did not know them. "Tell me something in American," I added. My nerves were frayed, I guess, and my voice sounded curiously far-off. ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... kind I mentioned—the Fantail—is a small bird, with exceedingly small legs and a very small beak. It is most curiously distinguished by the size and extent of its tail, which, instead of containing twelve feathers, may have many more,—say thirty, or even more—I believe there are some with as many as forty-two. This bird has a curious habit ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... as the 'Hunger- Thurm,' or Hunger Tower, as having been used as a place for starving prisoners to death, in the fine old days when the lords of Greifenstein did as they judged good in their own eyes. Frau von Sigmundskron used to look curiously at the grey building when she was staying with her relations. She could have described the sufferings of the poor wretches who had perished there as well as any one of themselves or better. Not twenty miles from all the luxury that ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... negro, leaning toward the banker and gazing curiously at the Panama hat he wore, "I'se always afeared. You see, sah, you look like you was always ready ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... curiously for a moment, not at all certain that she was in earnest; but she saw that Margaret meant what she said. There was no mistaking the troubled look ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... of the sugar bush, which thrives upon the hill-sides. This sugar bush is a very handsome and peculiar plant, with soft thick leaves, standing about twenty feet high. It bears a brush-like flower, each of which in the Cape Colony contains half a teaspoonful of delicious honey; but, curiously enough, though in other respects the tree is precisely similar, this is not the case in the Transvaal or Natal. At the proper season the Cape farmers go out with buckets and shake the flowers till they have collected sufficient honey to last them for ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... been on the best of terms, and met after being separated for half an hour or so, they could hardly have been more composed. For five minutes we discussed commonplace topics, when suddenly I noticed that Albeury was looking at me very hard. Dulcie, too, seemed to have grown curiously uneasy. ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... amongst a little wave of sandy hillocks close to the sea. The silence, and some remains of the sleepiness of the previous night, soon began to have their natural effect. He closed his eyes and began to doze. When he awoke, curiously enough, it was a familiar voice which first fell upon his ears. He turned his head cautiously. Seated not a dozen yards away from him was a tall, thin man with a bag of golf clubs by his side. He was listening with an air of engrossed attention to his ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had streaks of gray in his moustache. His face, without being handsome, possessed a certain charm; it was worn and rather pale, the lines about the firm mouth were full of lassitude, the eyes rather tired. He had the air of having tasted widely, curiously, of life in his day, prosperous as he seemed now, that had left its mark upon him. His voice, which usually took an intonation that his friends found supercilious, grew very tender in addressing this little French girl, with her quaint ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... prodigy, not only among American cities, but among the cities of the world. Her first town directory was published in 1796, and she began the next year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population of about twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early history containing such odd items as that the first umbrella carried in the United States was brought from India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772; that the town had for some time possessed such other useful articles as a fire engine, a brick theater, a newspaper, and policemen; ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... little curiously at herself and that arm, which she had seen in a shirt-sleeve, carrying a pickaxe on shoulder; and making up her mind in spite of it all that she didn't care! So the walk home was not otherwise than comfortable. Indeed the beauty of ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... deprived of the power of choice, trammeled by convention, bound to wait till asked for, quite naturally resorts to artifice. And yet, curiously enough, and a thing incomprehensible ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... to say, most judiciously) enjoined, by "that same fickle goddess, Fashion," in obedience to whose sovereign behest, a lady's horse, in the olden time, was disguised, as it were, "in cloth of gold most curiously wrought." ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... for it." Then he looked at her curiously. "What made you think of bringing me anything, Nellie? I don't ever ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... profound knowledge of life, her interest would break away continually, despite her honest efforts to pin it down to the facts so patiently elucidated for her. Recurrently she heard: "I don't know; I really don't know." It was curiously like the intermittent murmur of the surf, those weird Sundays, when her father paused for breath to launch additional damnation for those who disobeyed the Word. "I don't ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... persons kind and agreeable to those they live with; for as 'when the fire blazes the house looks brighter,'[117] so man, it seems, becomes more cheerful through the heat of love. But most people are affected rather curiously; if they see by night a light in a house, they look on it with admiration and wonder; but if they see a little, mean, and ignoble soul suddenly filled with noble-mindedness, freedom, dignity, grace, and liberality, they do not feel constrained to say with Telemachus, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... on the plain Hugh saw fifteen or twenty bluish-grey mounds in a line rising above the grass; it was a herd of buffalo feeding. The animals never lifted their heads, and were curiously like a lot of railway trucks covered with grey tarpaulin. It was impossible to tell which was head and which was tail. A short halt was made while girths were tightened, cartridges slipped into place, and hats jammed on; they all mounted and rode slowly towards the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... Home was a large bungalow with a wide verandah and a curiously suburban-looking little garden of bushes and a few trees between it and the street. That institution partook somewhat of the character of a residential club, but with a slightly Governmental flavour ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Perseus had undertaken, they made no difficulty about giving him the valuable articles that were in their custody. In the first place, they brought out what appeared to be a small purse, made of deer skin and curiously embroidered, and bade him be sure and keep it safe. This was the magic wallet. The Nymphs next produced a pair of shoes or slippers or sandals, with a nice little pair of wings at ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... rather drunker than a man with both arms ought to be; but he was very affectionate, and, putting his face close to the other's, at once entered into talk with the blind man, forming with him a picture curiously pathetic and grotesque. He was the only tipsy person I saw during the Jubilee days,—if he was tipsy, for after all they may have been real sea-legs ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... or painful ideas, by fury or dejection, according to the degree or violence of their exertions. Hence the analogy between the insanities of the mind, and the convulsions of the muscles described in the preceding genus, is curiously exact. The convulsions without stupor, are either just sufficient to obliterate the pain, which occasions them; or are succeeded by greater pain, as in the convulsio dolorifica. So the exertions in the mania mutabilis are either just sufficient ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... much attention to Fraulein Cacilie. She was a plain girl, with a square face and blunt features. She could not have been more than sixteen, since she still wore her long fair hair in a plait. That evening at supper he looked at her curiously; and, though of late she had talked little ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of a little band of elephant-catchers burned fitfully at the edge of the jungle. They were silent men—for they had lived long on the elephant trails—and curiously scarred and sombre. They smoked their cheroots, and waited for ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... reported to be approaching along the Larch Path, which stretched in feathery bowers between our house and his. Yet I was not aware that the seer failed at any hour to gain admittance,—one cause, perhaps, of the awe in which his visits were held. I remember that my observation was attracted to him curiously from the fact that my mother's eyes changed to a darker gray at his advents, as they did only when she was silently sacrificing herself. I clearly understood that Mr. Alcott was admirable; but he sometimes brought manuscript poetry with him, the dear child ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... out of Mrs. Farnsworth that shed any light on my aunt's history beyond what she had told me herself, which was precious little. Mrs. Farnsworth's talk was that of a cultivated woman. Her voice interested me unaccountably; the tones had all manner of shadings and inflections; it was curiously musical, but in speaking of the great war a passionate note crept into ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... the book in her hand and gazed at it curiously. This was the "wonderful book" of which Maurice Kenyon had spoken. This little shilling pamphlet—really it was little more than a pamphlet! It seemed an extraordinary thing to her that her father should write shilling books. "A shilling shocker" was a name ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... his second week with disaster staring him in the face, and before it was over it was plain to everyone that the enterprise was doomed to monumental failure. The public after the first night became curiously apathetic. This apathy would have been justified had any considerable number of the city's habitual opera-patrons attended any of the performances. The welcome came from the Italians dwelling within the city's boundaries; the performances ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... for him. The curtain lecture that followed was of unusual virulence, and in the midst of it he fell asleep. Awakening a few hours later he found his wife still pouring forth a regular cascade of denunciation. Eyeing her sleepily he said curiously, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... sun and perished in his beam; The sky's blue promise brightened through the veil. With her unopened sketch-book in her hand, Linda stood on the summit looking down On Norman's Woe, and felt upon her brow The cooling haze that foiled the August heat. Near her knelt Rachel, hunting curiously For the fine purple algae of the clefts. Good cause had Linda for a cheerful heart; For had she not that day received by mail A copy of "The Prospect of the Flowers,"— Published in chromo, and these ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent |
