"Quaint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flagged walks leading up to all the doors, with borders of evergreen box, which had once been trim, and still was quaint and pleasing; there were old gardens, where everything was "all run out," but where the bees and birds appeared to find congenial homes; there were gnarly old apple-trees, with bending, twisted branches that touched the ground and made the most ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... originally a Thames waterman, hence the term "Water-poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published with this quaint title, "The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt carts and coaches." It is an ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... think myself that he had much better not have done it. As for the justice of the general verdict, it is no doubt affected throughout by Thackeray's political incapacity, whatever side he might have taken, and by that quaint theoretical republicanism, with a good deal of pure Toryism mixed, which he attributes to some of his characters, and no doubt, in a kind of rather confused speculative way, held himself. He certainly puts George III's ability too low, and as ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... us, on the authority of Leland, that there was at Great Milton a priory "many yeres syns;" and quotes the following quaint lines from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... chiefly of wizard-incantations, and all kinds of pagan folk-lore. Gabriel Maxenius, however, was the first to publish a work on Finnish national poetry, which brought to light the beauties of the Kalevala. It appeared in 1733, and bore the title: De Effectibus Naturalibus. The book contains a quaint collection of Finnish poems in lyric forms, chiefly incantations; but the author was entirely at a loss how to account for them, or how to appreciate them. He failed to see their intimate connection with the religious worship of ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully told; but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference; it was pleasant to the others when it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bear it. I'm going. I'm like ice. My burden? You would share it? Forbid the sacrifice! Forget so quaint a notion, And let no more be told; For moon and stars and ocean And ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... come"),—a fresh and animated number, which is familiar to every one. Simon trolls out a pastoral aria ("With Joy the impatient Husbandman"), full of the very spirit of quiet, peace, and happiness,—a quaint melody which will inevitably recall to opera-goers the "Zitti, Zitti" from Rossini's "Barber of Seville," the essential difference between the two pieces being that in the latter the time is greatly accelerated. This aria is followed by a trio ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... wandering winds will do, Brought to the baby there Sweet smells from some quaint flower that grew ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... at first that as it was his primary duty to give to the people of St Ewold's the best clergyman he could select for them he could not give the preference to Mr Crawley, because Mr Crawley, in spite of all his zeal and piety, was a man so quaint in his manners and so eccentric in his mode of speech as not to be the best clergyman whom he could select. "What is my old friend Thorne to do with a man in his parish who won't drink a glass of wine with him?". For Ullathorne, the seat of that Mr Wilfred Thorne who had been so ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... private home which in the aggregate make a great attraction, while the denizen of one of these public residences is apt to say: "What is the use? I have no place to keep them if I should take them." Mementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosy lounge, upholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that accrete in a home are discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to arrange them. And yet they are the case in which the pearl ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Standing in the midst of the richest grass country in England, with its grounds sloping to the brimming river that wound through meadows which in May were a blaze of golden buttercups, it was a typical English home, with quaint old gables, high chimney stacks and old-world garden with yew hedges trimmed fantastically as in the days of wigs and patches. I had snatched a week-end several times to be old Mrs. Mivart's guest; therefore I knew the picturesque old place well, ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... pamphlet on aristocracy which has been sent to you, or who may be its author, I have heard nothing but through your letter. If the person you suspect, it may be known from the quaint, mystical, and hyperbolical ideas, involved in affected, newfangled, and pedantic terms, which stamp his writings. Whatever it be, I hope your quiet is not to be affected at this day by the rudeness or intemperance of scribblers; but that you may continue in tranquillity ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the House of Lords. We were admitted while the business was going on, and saw the curious old form of passing the Acts of Parliament by Commission, than the ceremonies of which it is difficult to imagine anything more quaint, not to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... picturesque surroundings the Motor Maids spend a happy vacation. The charm of Japan,—her cherry blossoms, her temples, her quaint customs, her polite people,—is reflected in ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... forest, lying 'twixt two streams, Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams; That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief; Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things, Vague, whispering' touches, gleams and twitterings, Dews and cool shadows—that the mystic soul Of Nature permeates with suave control, And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... to the quaint language of the people, and from the helpless way in which they stare at me, my tongue must be equally unintelligible. A delightful camaraderie exists; every one knows every one else, or they all act as if they did. As we come to anchor in the little ports, the ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... a quaint old wardrobe," I said. "It looks out of place with the rest of the furniture. Why don't you have ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... welcome sight of tea. A newspaper was spread on the rough table in my honour and Wheatley was despatched "at the double" to find the only saucer! (Those who knew the good Wheatley will perhaps fail to imagine he could attain such a speed—dear Wheatley, with his long spindle legs and quaint serio-comic face. He was a man of few words ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... subjects who decided to try their fortune in the Western World after the signing of the Peace of Paris in 1763 was one Andrew Jackson, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian of the tenant class, sprung from a family long resident in or near the quaint town of Carrickfergus, on the northern coast of Ireland, close by the newer and ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... average gun-collector would pay more than ten cents to see his Lord and Savior riding to hounds on a Bren-carrier. "They don't give a hoot whose grandfather owned what, and if anything's battered up a little, they don't think it looks quaint, they think it looks lousy. And they've never heard of inflation; they think arms ought still to sell for the sort of prices they brought at the old Mark ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... week of illness, owing perhaps to the April bleakness of this high fell, and old Daffady was much concerned. They had made friends from the first days of her acquaintance with the farm. And during these April weeks since she had been the guest of her cousins, Daffady had shown her a hundred quaint attentions. The rugged old cow-man who now divided with Mrs. Mason the management of the farm was half amused, half scandalised, by what seemed to him the delicate uselessness of Miss Fountain. "I'm towd as doon i' Lunnon town, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when we are alone, she sings to me snatches of all sorts of songs, grave and gay, but she won't sing in the saloon, where every other woman on board with the smallest pretensions to a voice carols nightly. She is a most attractive person this G., with quaint little whimsical ways that make her very lovable. We are together every minute of the day, and yet we never tire of one another's company. I rather think I do most of the talking. If it is true that to be slow in words is a woman's only virtue, then, indeed, is my state pitiable, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... at bridge, and he accused me of causing him to revoke. A very curious personality, that of Comrade Bickersdyke. But let us dismiss him from our minds. Rumours have reached me,' said Psmith, 'that a very decent little supper may be obtained at a quaint, old-world eating-house called the Savoy. Will you accompany me thither on a tissue-restoring expedition? It would be rash not to probe these rumours to their foundation, and ascertain ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... canariensis Tourn.), which an Irish traveller called a 'dragon-palm,' owed its vulgar name to the fancy that the fruit contained the perfect figure of a standing dragon with gaping mouth and long neck, spiny back and crocodile's tail. It is a quaint tree of which any ingenious carpenter could make a model. The young trunk is somewhat like that of the Oreodoxa regia, or an asparagus immensely magnified; but it frequently grows larger above than below. At first it bears only bristly, ensiform leaves, four feet long by one to ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... such fools as many of the arm-chair students of these things delight to represent them. For just as, a few years ago, we modern civilizees studying outlying nations, the Chinese for instance, rejoiced (in our vanity) to pick out every quaint peculiarity and absurdity and monstrosity of a supposed topsyturvydom, and failed entirely to see the real picture of a great and eminently sensible people; so in the case of primitive men we have been, and even still are, far too prone to catalogue ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... and on it burned a candle, casting a pale and shadowy light over and giving clearer outline to each figure. There was the old loom, with its harnesses, its reed, and its shuttles; the flax-wheel and the distaff, forming a quaint setting, but representing a past age and the primitive habits of the ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... from sleeping. As on the day before, sounds reached him from the adjoining rooms through the walls, voices, the jingle of glasses and teaspoons. . . . Marya Timofyevna was gaily telling Father Sisoy some story with quaint turns of speech, while the latter answered in a grumpy, ill-humoured voice: "Bother them! Not likely! What next!" And the bishop again felt vexed and then hurt that with other people his old mother behaved in a simple, ordinary way, while with him, her son, she was shy, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a quaint costume, was the Harlequine to her husband's Harlequin. They made a very funny love scene, because, being man and wife, they could make all their kissing real, and so ridiculously loud, that one could ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Were a man to write so now, the boys would throw stones at him.' He, however, did not alter my opinion of a favourite authour, to whom I was first directed by his being quoted in The Spectator[566], and in whom I have found much shrewd and lively sense, expressed indeed in a style somewhat quaint, which, however, I do not dislike. His book has an air of originality. We figure to ourselves an ancient ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and insignificance, that it began to look as if he was hardly likely to penetrate into the studio of the painter, to whom we owe the wonderful portrait of Henri IV. But fate was propitious; an old man came up the staircase. From the quaint costume of this newcomer, his collar of magnificent lace, and a certain serene gravity in his bearing, the first arrival thought that this personage must be either a patron or a friend of the court painter. He stood aside therefore ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... In the quaint language of the sacred scribes, we find David's frequent battles graphically described. Rapid and pitiless as Attila or Napoleon, he "smote" the Amalekites, and the Ammonites, and the neighboring warlike peoples, and compelled them ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... and to the south-east, where the beechwoods of South Lynch begin to creep up the rapid slope of chalk, there is delightful hunting ground; for bee orchis (Ophrys apifera) swarm; careful search may discover the brown velvet blue-eyed fly, Ophrys muscifera, the quaint MAN and DWARF orchis can be found; butterfly or honey-suckle orchis, Habenaria, as we are constrained to term it, is frequent; and where the beech-trees begin there are those curious parasites which are the only plants ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... spite of a style which is carefully clear and elegant, in spite of a tone that is wonderfully pure and healthy, what one remembers longest in Mrs. Cooke's writings is these dialect passages, forgetting for their sake her delectable descriptions of quaint, old-fashioned gardens, pretty girls, odd old maids, and odder old men, and even forgetting the bit of moral usually ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... incoming gentiles have cut trees down to make space for modern showy buildings, that are so wholly out of harmony with the low, artistic white houses and vine-covered walls. It is such a pity that these high, red buildings could not have been kept outside, and the old mormon city left in its original quaint beauty. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... out in the surf, and I was carried to it on a boatman's back, and then had to clamber carefully through the wires, but that is a matter of detail. This flying is indeed so certain to become a general experience that I am sure that this description will in a few years seem almost as quaint as if I had set myself to record the fears and sensations of my First Ride in a Wheeled Vehicle. And I suspect that learning to control a Farman waterplane now is probably not much more difficult than, let us say, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... have we here?" He turned the canvas to the light. The figure against the quaint landscape looked out with level, smiling glance. He fell upon his knees before it. "Ah, marvellous, marvellous!" he murmured in naive delight. He remained long before it, absorbed, forgetful. At last he rose. He lifted the picture and placed it on an easel. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere With quaint vermiculations close and clear - His graving. Had I known, would I have risked the stroke Its reading brought, and my own ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... not particularly strong voice, was early impressed into service, because she was so good-natured, so dependable, and pretty and young enough to carry off a delectable costume. The song she sang had been specially written for the affair, and in the quaint dance that accompanied it she was drilled by the dance authority of the hour. A chorus of eight girls and eight men was added to complete the number, and the gaiety of the rehearsals, and the general excitement and interest, carried the matter along to the last ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... his character. It is given in one of those "Brief Lives" which might well serve as models to modern biographers; lives compressed into two pages of nervous English, adorned here and there, rather than disfigured, by quaint pedantic words and phrases, relics of the euphuism of the sixteenth century. Aubrey is credulous, appallingly frank, a strong partisan, a man of great industry and learning, by no means trustworthy, but none the less entertaining and delightful. He tells us that Wilkins had ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... and animals, and surmounted by a small square case in which was a beautifully-mounted specimen of the little spotted brown owl of Greece, the species so common among the ruins of the Acropolis. On the mantelpiece were a small bronze clock, a quaint Chinese teapot and a pair of delicately-flowered Sevres vases. On the table the engraved tooth of a sperm whale did duty as a paper-weight, a miniature gondola held an inkstand and pens, and a sprig of red coral with a sabre-shaped ivory blade formed the most beautiful paper-knife I ever saw. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... hundreds of gas-jets, each exquisite detail, each shining gold mosaic and lavish carving stood out with marvellous distinctness. The golden-winged angels that mount a mystic stairway above the great central arch, the bronze horses prancing so harmlessly over the main portal, even the quaint bas-relief of St. George, sitting, with such unimpeachable dignity, upon his camp-stool,—each and all were far more clearly enunciated than ever they are in the impartial splendour of daylight. Against the darkly luminous, unfathomable sky, the outline ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... everybody in the cars that she was Katy's aunt," kept her silent on that point, and so Lieutenant Bob Reynolds failed to be enlightened with regard to the relationship existing between the fastidious Wilford Cameron of Madison Square, and the quaint old lady whose very first act on entering the car amused him vastly. At a glance he saw that she was unused to traveling, and as the car was crowded, he had kindly offered his seat near the door, taking the side one under the window, and so close to her that she gave him her ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... hall Stephen's door stood always open, and Courtland, walking that way one day, found fresh flowers upon his desk and wreathed around his mother's picture. A quaint little photograph of Stephen taken several years back hung on one wall. It had been sent at the class's request by Stephen's mother to honor ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... moment, his quaint old visage working under the influence of emotion, almost beyond control. At ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... thaw under the influence of her husband's quaint comparison. "I am never warm, Miss Halcombe," she remarked, with the modest air of a woman who was confessing to one of her ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... says she graciously, and after taking the head on her lap, and combing its golden hair with her silver comb, there were the three golden heads in a row on the primrose bank. And she sate down to rest herself and looked at them, they were so quaint and pretty; and as she rested she cheerfully ate and drank the meagre portion of the brown bread, hard cheese, and small-beer which the old man had left to her; for, though she was a king's daughter, she was too ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... simple," the artist explained. "The shore, the sea, the gray rocks, with here and there the roof of a quaint cottage to enliven the effect, and few trees, only just enough for contrast with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... consulting men and books. He spent two months in Paris, where S. G. Goodrich met him. "A slender form, with a black coat, black small-clothes, black silk stockings, moving back and forth, with its hands behind it, and evidently in a state of meditation. It was a curious, quaint, Connecticut-looking apparition, strangely in contrast to the prevailing forms and aspects in this gay metropolis. I said to myself, 'If it were possible, I should say that was Noah Webster!' I went up to him and found it was ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... with edge and point and keen directness which never miss the mark. Some are unquestionably an acquisition, those which come from States where the language is honoured and studied with a carefulness that puts to shame all except our very best. They have kept some gracious and rare expressions, now quaint to our ear, preserved out of Elizabethan English in the current speech of to-day. These have a fragrance of the olden time, but we cannot absorb them again into our own spoken language. Then they have their ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... said, turning to Ericson, who was now becoming rather eager to get away, 'that if we could prevail upon his Excellency to join us he might be interested in our quaint little club, to say nothing of an evening with two such distinguished American scholars, who, I ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... dear to me. Wandering through many lands, I had come to know the charm of quiet cloisters; the delight of a strange, rare volume; the interest of a quaint bit of pottery; the unutterable loveliness of some perfect painter's vision, making a glory in some dusky, world-forgotten church: and so my life was full of gladness here in Rome, where the ass's hoof ringing on a stone may show you that Vitruvius was right, where you had doubted ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... at the knees, leaving his muscular arms and legs entirely bare; models for the statuary, in their neatness, vigor, and proportions. The feet alone formed an exception to the ordinary attire, for they were cased in a pair of quaint canvas shoes that were ornamented a little like the moccasins of the American Indian. Carlo caught the eye of this man, who appeared to be eagerly watching the frigate's gangway for a fare, and holding up a small piece of silver, in a moment ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had grown slightly more temperate in type, we still find among the fossils, not only oaks, planes, vines, and walnuts, but also wellingtonias like the big trees of California, Spanish chestnuts, quaint southern salisburias, broad-leaved liquidambars, and American sassafras. Nay, even in glacier-clad Spitzbergen itself, where the character of the flora already begins to show signs of incipient chilling, we nevertheless see among the Eocene types ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... private buffoon is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumour; From morning to night he's so joyous and bright, And he bubbles with wit and good humour! He's so quaint and so terse, both in prose and in verse; Yet though people forgive his transgression, There are one or two rules that all Family Fools Must observe, if they love their profession. There are one or two rules, Half-a-dozen, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... A large, quaint, low-ceiled chamber on the second floor, with a superfluity of tiny greenish window-panes, was assigned to the stranger, and his African servant, Jake, was installed in a smaller adjoining apartment. ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... never seen him in a brighter mood. He chattered ceaselessly, quaint stories of his schoolboy friends, quainter jokes and whimsies and bits of advice for her edification. In such moods, Allyn was well-nigh irresistible, and it was with genuine regret that Cicely turned her face towards home. Her regret, however, was as nothing in comparison with ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... carry it out, all right," remarked Uncle John. "I've been expecting something of this sort, ever since we came here. My girls, Mr. Jones," he said, turning to the young man, "are always doing some quaint thing, or indulging in some queer enterprise, for they're a restless lot. Before Louise married, she was usually in these skirmishes with fate, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... legendary scenery. Those dear, time-worn, rugged, red-tiled roofs, with their peaks coming in just where they are needed,—what could the artist do without them? Then the same necessities made the early French and Norman builders push up into the air those gaunt, quaint old camelbacks, with spindles or pinnacles astride. You cannot but love them for their strangeness and the surprise they make against the quiet sky. In Britain, too, you might have beheld this tendency, where the lordly curfew quenched the lights in castle and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... by a rude stone seat. The portico itself contains seats for worshippers, and a pulpit from which the preacher's voice can reach the many who must stand outside. The walls of the inner chapel are hung with votive pictures, some of them very quaint and pleasing, and not overweighted by those qualities that are usually dubbed by the name of artistic merit. Innumerable wooden and waxen representations of arms, legs, eyes, ears and babies tell of the cures that have been effected during two centuries of ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... and physically that this last disappointment was too much for her endurance, and she thanked God that in a few minutes the strain would be over, and she would be seated by her father's side. They drove along the quaint, foreign streets, and presently arrived at the hotel itself, a large building set back in a courtyard in which visitors sat before little tables, smoking and drinking ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the new treaty as it was drawn up. Notice the quaint way of expressing the ideas, and also, that many words are not spelled as we spell them to-day. Notice, too, how one-sided the treaty is, and that it is signed only by Philip and ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... much amused with an account which he gave me, in his quaint way, of an excursion he went upon with a botanist, to collect specimens of the plants and flowers ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... one of their birthdays has arrived by the queer package, addressed in old Jane's quaint half-printed writing, that always comes. She has cared for many dozens of children since then, but loves none like my girls, for she came to them in her young womanhood and they were ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... head to foot once more and passed on. In that look there was neither surprise, nor indignation, nor scorn, only a quaint and somewhat amused curiosity, yet this thief and associate of thieves quivered, as if it had been a sun-stroke. When she passed out of sight he bit the half-crown till it bent, and hid it away in his breast. "I'll never part with ye," ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... "this little travesty reminds me of a quaint story. It was in 1746, when I was completing my noviciate under the care of the Pere Magitot, a man well on in years, of deep learning and austere morals. At that period, you perhaps remember, dancing figures, intended in the first instance to amuse ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... which became attached to the settlement which he established on the upland prairies beyond the bluffs of the "American Bottom," is said to have originated from a quaint remark of his that he "had a 'new design' to locate a settlement south of Bellefontaine" near the present town of Waterloo.[22] The name "New Design," however, became significant of his anti-slavery mission; and when, after ten years ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... a whole world of familiar acquaintances, who are, notwithstanding their old-fashioned dresses and quaint expressions, more alive to us than a great many of the people among whom we live. We know so much more about them to begin with. Notwithstanding a certain reticence and self-control which seems to belong to their age, and with all their quaint dresses, and ceremonies, and manners, the ladies ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... for her. He laughed and joked perpetually during that last day, and promised the girl that he would take a vacation while she was gone and visit his old colonel in Virginia, which she knew was the rarest pleasure he could enjoy. And now he stood upon the deck amusing them all with his quaint sayings and appearing so outwardly jolly and unaffected that only Patsy herself suspected the deep grief that was gripping ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... or not quaint, bizarre or not bizarre, he had said "So!" and it was up to me to cope with the ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... most certainly saw in that house, which, somehow or other, had got a bad name in the neighbourhood. I had the curiosity to go and look at the place for myself. It's a saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough to be mean and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint. As far as I could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished, and almost every door has three bells to it. Here and there the ground floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind; it's a dismal street in every way. I found Number 20 was to ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... this quaint conceit, and then rode on quickly. In a few minutes he stopped and listened again, but heard no noise save the loud ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Holland, Somerville was quite at home, and amused himself talking to the people, for he had learnt the Dutch language at the Cape of Good Hope. We admired the pretty quaint costumes of the women; but I was the only one who took interest in the galleries. Many of the pictures of the Dutch school are very fine; but I never should have made a collection exclusively of them as was often done at one time in ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... the most interesting thing in the old church; but I found Vevay quaint and attractive in every way. It is, as all the world knows, the paradise of pensions and hotels and boarding-schools, and one may live well and study deeply there for a very little money. It was part of our mission ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... anxious to visit Blato, an inland village of 8000 inhabitants. De Michaelis regretted very much that he had no carriage, but a Yugoslav had a quaint little car on which he was learning how to drive and he was kind enough to take us—for which he was afterwards deported to Italy. The good man made so much noise in changing his gears that our progress was advertised ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... word, and at Peterborough the workhouse girls used to go in procession round the city on her day, dressed in white with coloured ribbons; the tallest was chosen as Queen and bore a crown and sceptre. As they went to beg money of the chief inhabitants they sang a quaint ballad which ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... himself with preparations for that meal. "Wal, wal, if he ain't surprisin'! He'll do somethin' out here on the frontier, sure as I'm a born sinner," he muttered to himself, wagging his head in his quaint manner. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... though he had been a faithful servant to his master, was always longing to enjoy his free liberty, to wander uncontrolled in the air, like a wild bird, under green trees, among pleasant fruits, and sweet-smelling flowers. "My quaint Ariel," said Prospero to the little sprite when he made him free, "I shall miss you; yet you shall have your freedom." "Thank you, my dear master," said Ariel; "but give me leave to attend your ship home with ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... once christened "The Crazy American." A lady must not be escorted home from an evening party by a gentleman, but by a servant with a lantern; and as the streets have no lamps, I never could see the breaking-up of any such entertainment without recalling Retzsch's quaint pictures of the little German towns, and the burghers plodding home with their lanterns,—unless, perchance, what a foreign friend of ours called a "sit-down chair" came rattling by, and transferred our associations to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... laughter in her voice made him look up to her face. The rose deepened in her cheeks, and the laughter rippled out. 'You are quaint,' she said. 'I will forget—well—what you said, until you are ready. Till then it's to be just as it was before—only not less. You are not to stay away'; and without waiting for an answer she lifted the trap, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... a smile the quaint ideas of our Victorian forbears, however, it is well to ask, 88 years later, whether some rather elaborate work reported recently on the synthesis of straight-line mechanisms is more to the point, when the principal objective appears to be the moving ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... quaint but just assertion of Hare, in his "Guesses at Truth," that in Greek history there is nothing ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... at the table of contents will show that not only have selections been made from modern authors and from the folklore of different races, but that some quaint old literary sources have been drawn on. Among the men and books contributing to these pages are the Gesta Romanorum, Il Libro d'Oro, Xenophon, Ovid, Lucian, the Venerable Bede, William of Malmesbury. John of Hildesheim, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... substitute Allah or Jehovah) as a pompous deluded individual worried by the difficulty of keeping up his position had more than the usual share of scepticism and irony. The compilers of such discourses regarded the gods as mere embellishments, as gargoyles and quaint figures in the cathedral porch, not as saints above the altar. The mythology and cosmology associated with early Buddhism are really extraneous. The Buddha's teaching is simply the four truths and some kindred ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... and the moon, creating, like the imaginative power, a beautiful strangeness in familiar objects, gave something of romance to a scene that might not have possessed it in the light of day. The irregular and often quaint architecture of the houses, some of whose roofs were broken into numerous little peaks, while others ascended, steep and narrow, into a single point, and others again were square; the pure snow-white of some ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the history of my own experience in this inexplicable mystery. We found M. C—— buried in the heart of Paris, in one of those vast old hotels, which give to this town the air of generations of houses, commencing with the quaint and noble of the sixteenth century, and ending with the more fashionable pavilion of our own times. His cabinet looked upon a small garden, a pleasant transition from the animal within to the vegetable without. But one meets with gardens, with their verdure ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... autumn of 1856, crossed over to Heligoland one day on a pleasure trip, and lost some money there, at a miniature Roulette table, much frequented by joyous Israelites from the mainland, and English "soldier officers" in mufti. I did not lose much of my temper, however, for the odd, quaint little place pleased me. Not so another Roman citizen, or English travelling gent., who losing, perhaps, seven-and-sixpence, wrote a furious letter to the "Times," complaining of such horrors existing under the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the humorous brightness, the laughter, and the light of the surroundings associated with his great contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer. His very satire is kindly and quaint, like that of Horace, rather than bitterly acidulous. He raps his age over the knuckles, it is true, for its faults and foibles, but the censor's face wears a genial smile. One of his chief attractions for us lies in his bright objectivity. He never wears his heart on his sleeve like ...
— English Satires • Various
... found nothing' easier than to throw aside his professor's mantle and to improvise ballate for women to chant as they danced their rounds upon the Piazza di S. Trinita. The frontispiece to an old edition of such lyrics represents Lorenzo surrounded with masquers in quaint dresses, leading the revel beneath the walls of the Palazzo. Another woodcut shows an angle of the Casa Medici in Via Larga, girls dancing the carola upon the street below, one with a wreath and thyrsus kneeling, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... accentuated by the months spent in what was, after all, almost her native land, Toni looked the picture of glowing, vivid health; and when, late that night, she faced her husband with sparkling eyes across the rose-decked table, Owen realized, for the first time, that this quaint, half-foreign wife of his was giving promise of ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... her sailing came, so full of sadness for me. Why not confess, after nigh threescore years, that break of day found me pacing the deserted dock. At my back, across the open space, was the irregular line of quaint, top-heavy shops since passed away, their sightless windows barred by solid shutters of oak. The good ship Annapolis, which was to carry my playmate to broader scenes, lay among the shipping, in the gray roads just quickening with returning light. How my heart ached ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and current of quotation and sentiment, that the strength, though not the courage, is hardly equal to the day. The Diary, both here and elsewhere, is full of good things, pleasant wit still, shrewd criticism of life, quaint citation of wise old Scots saws and good modern instances, happy judgment of men and books,—above all, that ever-present touch of literature, without mere bookishness, which is as delightful to those who can taste it as any ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... with a mop of unruly brown hair escaping from a quaint sun-bonnet, was still sitting in the car and regarding the scene with big awestruck eyes. In a moment she jumped out and approached Bobby. She was only half a head taller than he was, and now gazed at him with soft, sweet ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... thorned staff of office; and then—the sudden, electric wakening, and the consternation of the whole staid and pious congregation at such terrible profanity in the house of God. Ah!—it was not two hundred and forty years ago; when I read the quaint words my Puritan blood stirs my drowsy brain, and I remember it all well, just as I saw it last ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... object, a Federal Amendment, had been attained. The humor for which Mrs. Miller, a staid "Quaker," was noted sparkled in its sentences although she protested that she was entirely serious. Miss Anthony introduced Henry B. Blackwell (Mass.) with the quaint remark: "He was the husband of Lucy Stone; I don't think he can quite represent her but he will do the best he can!" Mr. Blackwell briefly reviewed the agitation for women suffrage during the first half of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... in wigs. These had the gallery all to themselves, for there were no furniture or ornaments in it, except some great china vases in the window-seats. At either end there was a high stone mantelpiece, carved all over in quaint patterns. The ceiling was oak, and so was the floor—this last very slippery, so that it was as good as ice to ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... she came in contact. Her wise, fat face, somewhat solemn in expression, was the essence of good-humor. Her blue eyes were as serene as an unruffled summer pool. She could say heaps of old-fashioned, quaint things. She had strong likes and dislikes, but she was never known to be cross. She adored Judy, but Judy only liked her, for all Judy's passionate love was already disposed of. It centered itself round her eldest ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... a quaint corner of New England, where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to the young people on the staff of a newspaper—and it is one of the prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old-fashioned ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... beautiful it might be, would not do for you. This was one of my mother's books. She read it and loved it. See—the faded rose leaves she placed in it one day are there still. I'll write your name in it—that quaint, pretty name of yours which always sounds as if it had been specially invented for you—'Kilmeny of the Orchard'—and the date of this perfect June day on which we read it together. Then when you look at it you will ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... easily find out that the family hadn't got "into" things—the things that mattered. Of course they could see what the family was. They could see that anywhere, alas! But poor father and mother were better against a country background. And foreigners might attribute some quaint tricks of manner and speech to their being Americans, just as she and Peter hadn't known how awful the cockney accent was until they had ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... he was known until he was called to the blackboard one day in geometry, the only course in which he had not been sent to the "kitchen." Then Chad saw Harry turn quickly when the professor called his name. Confused though he was for a moment, he gave his demonstration in his quaint speech with perfect clearness and without interruption from the professor, who gave the boy a keen look as ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... "'Nor quaint devices of the shawl, Far less the drooping lashes meek; The gracious figure, lithe and tall, The ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a square face, sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck "jumper" and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpet-bag he was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... brink of a grim despair, He happened to think of a quaint old fellow, A comical customer, rusty and slow, But who used to be an elegant beau, In dress and manner quite comme il faut; And who, because he happened to know How to play on the violoncello, Which he'd learned for fun long time ago, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... papers and modern furniture for the lower floor of the house. The furniture they had taken with them; the wall paper had perforce been left behind. And the captain had every scrap of that paper stripped from the walls, and the latter re-covered with quaint, ugly, old-fashioned patterns, stripes and roses and flowered sprays with impossible birds flitting among them. The Bassett decorators has pasted the gilt improvement over the old Whittaker paper, and it was the Whittaker paper that the captain did his best to match, sending samples here, there, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... The rites of a religion sweet, Whose god was in her heart and brain: The seasons' loveliest flowers were strewn On the marble floor beneath her feet, 1080 And she brought crowns of sea-buds white Whose odour is so sweet and faint, And weeds, like branching chrysolite, Woven in devices fine and quaint. And tears from her brown eyes did stain 1085 The altar: need but look upon That dying statue fair and wan, If tears should cease, to weep again: And rare Arabian odours came, Through the myrtle copses steaming thence 1090 From the hissing frankincense, Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam, Hung ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... on the river, the sun slipping behind the masts, doubly large through the mist and smoke in which the houses, bridges, ships are all spectral and dim. No hint of this, nor of the sea, nor of Belgium, with its quaint foreign life; nor yet of that French style and method so carefully impressed upon her by Monsieur Heger, and which so decidedly moulded her elder sister's art. But in the midst of her business at Haworth we catch a glimpse of her reading her German book at night, as she sits on the hearthrug ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... isn't clairvoyance—no more than when I told you that your only real interest is women." He paused, his hand upon the door-knob. "I'm a quaint mixture, however: perhaps I should be handled ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... complaint that came to Anwoth from Kilmacolm was expressed in the quaint and graphic language natural to that day. 'Security, strong and sib to nature, is stealing in upon us.' The holy law of God, they mean, was never preached in their parish; at any rate, it was never carried home to any man's conscience. Nobody was ever ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... his ready-made suit on the rocking-chair back. Sitting on the edge of his bed, quaint in his cotton night-gown, like a rare little bird of dull plumage, he rubbed his head sleepily. Um-m-m-m-m! How tired he was! He went to open the window. Then his tamed heart leaped into a waltz, and he ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... to her difference with these ladies, Lady Burton was not able to use them in the life of her husband; and Miss Stisted's own scheme did not include illustrations. So they are now reproduced for the first time. The most noticeable are the quaint picture of Burton, his brother and sister as children, and the oil painting of Burton and Lady Stisted made by Jacquand about 1851. Of great interest, too, is the series of photographs taken at Trieste by Dr. Grenfell Baker; while the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... on which we enter, that he conducted, ages ago, those pilgrims to the shrine of Canterbury who still live in his verses; and we may glance at the Tabard Inn whence they set forth, and indulge our fancy with the thought of their quaint equipments, while we betake ourselves to the modern 'hostelrie' of the Elephant and Castle, and commit our persons to the modern comforts of an English coach. Alas! for the fickleness of a world which changes its idols almost as often and as easily as its fashions. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the north side rose the square tower and low nave of a venerable church; amidst a mass of wood on the opposite side stood a great Norman keep, half ruinous, which looked down on a picturesque house at its foot. Quays, primitive and quaint, ran along between the old cottages and the water's edge; in the bay itself or nestling against the worn timbers of the quays, were small craft whose red sails hung idly against their tall masts and spars. ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... and devotion to letters that a special impetus ought thereby to have been given to the cultivation of a similar spirit among those who were to inhabit the land of his love. But, though Hariot, Lawson, and quaint Dr. Brickell were moved by such a spirit, the muses have not made the Old North State very remarkable in ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... saw a man last night who had just come home from Simla. He saw a great deal of her, and he says that she and her mother were adored in India. They were thought so quaint and sweet—unlike other people—and the girl so lovely, in a sort of gossamer way. And who do you think was always about with them—at Peshawar first, and then at Simla—so that everybody talked? Captain Warkworth! My man believed there ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and their rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... be very hot and full of smells, nor did Mrs. Morton care for its quaint old medieval houses, but Ida's heart had begun to fail her when she came so near the crisis, and on looking over the visitors' book she gave a cry. 'Ah, if we had only known! It is all ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I sought out a quaint little maiden lady living on the top floor who, I was told, knew more about the L'Hommedieus than any one in the building. Miss Winterburn, whose acquaintance I had failed to make while residing in the house, was a fluttering, eager, affable person whose ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... purses or gold bags if they were women. Down poured a shower of small silver and copper, little boys scrambling to pick it up, and hand it to the conductor, who would, Mrs. Van der Windt said, divide the money among the members of his quaint band. ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... exactly what she doubtless regarded as her chief obligation: he was sure she thought a great deal of "measure", and approved of most things only up to a certain point. She was a woman of sixty, with a figure at once young and old-fashioned. Her fair faded tints, her quaint corseting, the passementerie on her tight-waisted dress, the velvet band on her tapering arm, made her resemble a "carte de visite" photograph of the middle sixties. One saw her, younger but no less invincibly lady-like, leaning on a chair with a fringed back, a curl in her neck, a locket ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... others. In most of the subjects, the figures are much mutilated. On one window is inscribed, "Pierre Androuet ouvrier demeurant a Kemperle 1552." Over one altar is a sculpture, representing the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, between two archers, in the quaint costume of the ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... the goats in our churches; now the doctrine of universal brotherhood and the respect due to all men are taught much more effectively than when George Fox refused to doff his hat to the Justice; the quaint old speech has lost its significance, the dress would imply all the vainglory that the wearer desires to avoid; the young Quakers of this generation are no longer 'disciplined' in matters of the common social life; ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... There is no undercutting anywhere, nor exhibition of technical skill, but the fondest and tenderest appliance of it; and one of the principal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subject to its quaint limit. The tale must be told within the four petals of the quatrefoil, and the wildest and playfullest beasts must never come out of their narrow corners. The attention with which spaces of this kind are filled by the Gothic designers is not merely a beautiful ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... he entered the cave, where he perceived beautiful trees with thick foliage, quaint flowers in lustrous bloom, while a line of limpid stream emanated out of a deep recess among the flowers and trees, and oozed down through the crevice of the rock. Progressing several steps further in, they gradually faced the northern ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the Duke. The readiness with which he has adopted the air of a debater, shows the man of genius. There is a gruff, husky sort of a downright Montaignish naivete about him, which is quaint, unusual, and tells. You plainly perceive that he is determined to be a civilian; and he is as offended if you drop a hint that he occasionally wears an uniform, as a servant on a holiday if ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... time for Langley to return to camp. He was so pleased at the entertainment afforded by Ghamba, that all the tobacco he had with him found its way into the claw-like hand of that strange-looking man of many experiences and quaint ideas. So Langley asked him to come to the ant-heap again on the following day, and have another talk at the same hour. This, Ghamba, with a wide and prolonged exposure of his teeth, ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... a child at his quaint fancy, she answered merrily, "And so you hid among the roses to trap ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... little woman in Oxford once,' said Miss Buchanan. 'She was studying there—she had come from a college in America. She was so nice and clever, and charming, too; quaint and full of flavour. She was going to teach in a college when she went back. She was very poor, quite different from the others. Her father, she told me, kept a shop, but didn't get on at all; and her brother, to whom she was devoted, sold ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... herself not for her own sake, but for the sake of the Allies. They say that they are being "Hooverized," thus coining a new word out of Mr. Hoover's name. Sometimes these Hooverish practices produce contrasts which are rather quaint. I went to stay with a friend who had just completed as his home an exact reproduction of a palace in Florence. Whoever went short, there was little that he could not afford. At our meals I noticed that I was the only person who was served with butter ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the Queen had a fool named Tricominy. This quaint person was permitted to utter everywhere and to everybody in incoherent fashion the pseudo home-truths that passed through his head. One day he went up to the grande Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and said to her before everybody, "Since you are so anxious to get married, marry ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Spotswood, Governor of the Colony of Virginia, and a gallant soldier who had served under Marlborough in the English wars, rode, at the head of a dauntless band of cavaliers, down the quiet street of quaint old Williamsburg. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... cupboards; dark shelves carrying ancient country crockery; guns and antlers and broadside ballads on the wall; a tall old clock with roses on the dial; and down in one corner the comfortable promise of a wine-barrel. It was homely, elegant, and quaint. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... supernatural. It is where myth and history combine that legend is most interesting and appeals to our fancy or our sympathy most strongly; and it is not too early for us to begin the collation of those quaint happenings and those spoken reports that gain in picturesqueness with each transmission. An attempt has been made in this instance to assemble only legends, for, doubtful as some historians profess to find them, certain ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... portraits had once hung—lines that the successive scrubbings of fifteen years had not utterly effaced. A massive mahogany sofa, carved to represent a horn of plenty, had been purchased, perhaps at a general sale of the old furniture, with several quaint rosewood chairs and a rare cabinet of inlaid woods. For the rest, the later additions were uniformly cheap and ill-chosen—a blue plush "set," bought, possibly, at a village store, a walnut table with a sallow marble top, and several hard engravings ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... he would fain fathom the depths of those rude scribblings and quaint efforts at delineation, whence, in the course of ages, have been evolved the wonders of the alphabet and the marvellous creations of a ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to me, although I was too young at the time to estimate it fully. He has left behind him a quaint and graphic account of my infancy, with which I shall hope to make you ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... one of the great religious centres of the primitive peoples of Peru." Here is found an enormous block of granite, very curiously carved to facilitate the dispersion of a liquid poured on its summit into varied streams and to quaint receptacles. Whether the liquid was the blood of victims, the intoxicating beverage of the country, or pure water, all of which have been suggested, we do not positively know, but I am inclined to believe, with M. Wiener, that it was the last mentioned, and that it was as ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... sound of some one (Jakes, perhaps) raking gravel on the garden path. Everything was unaltered. There was the little bust of Minerva that Barbara had once adorned with a paper bonnet; the fretsaw bookcase that the two boys had made at school; and the quaint little glass-fronted cupboard, let into the panelling, from which the watch had been stolen. In the years that had passed, only one thing in the room had changed, and that was the tall figure in uniform ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... quite willing that the child should herd the cattle if she preferred it to spending an hour at "meetin'." Luther, who also until this year had herded his father's cattle and who usually spent the long days with the girl, had quaint ways of looking at religious questions which was a never-ending source of delight and interest to her. Their problems at home as well as at school were subjects of common discussion. He had been the beginning and the end of her ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... could find friends who would assist me. I knew a French priest in Dublin on whom I could rely for some aid. I at length hit upon a course of action which I determined to pursue. Through narrow lanes I went, still keeping to the right, and after walking for more than an hour I found myself in a quaint little village (Hale) in which there was a church then building. The houses were constructed principally of timber, lath, and plaster and were apparently of great antiquity. Onward still I went, the rain beating down heavily and the wind blowing. In about a quarter of an hour I gained a sight of ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... side of the square, and half-hidden in ivy, was a Noah's Ark church, topped by a quaint belfry holding a bell that had not rung for years, and faced by a clock-dial all weather-stains and cracks, around which travelled a single rusty hand. In its shadow to the right lay the home of the Archdeacon, a stately mansion with Corinthian columns reaching to the roof and surrounded by a spacious ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... proportions mayn't agree With FECHNER'S pedant formulae, I don't complain of such disparity; Too flawless that perfection shows; For me a larger comfort flows From human failings (take your nose— I like its quaint irregularity). ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... detached mass of the red-wall limestone, which, however, is rapidly losing its red color, owing to the disappearance of the red strata from above. Cheops is five thousand three hundred and fifty feet in elevation, and is of a peculiar shape, as of some quaint and ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... critical moment, and it now being safely past, Miss Penelope hastily sent away all the cup-bearers in a body. But she still hovered anxiously over the pot, gravely considering how many minutes longer it should rest on its trivet over the glowing coals. Hers was a quaint little figure. She wore a queer little black dress, very short and narrow, made after some peculiar fashion of her own, and over it a queerer little cape of the same stuff. Her cap on the other hand was singularly large and white, and the ruffle around her face was very wide and very stiff. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... celebration of their nocturnal revels."[53] Now, as the "Picts' houses" are, to outward appearance, "small verdant hillocks," the parallel is very exact. With these two references compare also the mention, in a quaint old gazetteer printed at Cambridge in 1693,[54] of the tribe of the "Germara," defined as "a people of the Celtae, who in the day-time cannot see." Although the author usually gives the sources of his information, in this instance he gives none. But the statement agrees perfectly ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... lock, and the door creaking on its hinges we were left to wander at our will through old wainscoted rooms in the dreamy twilight. No spirit of modern restoration had ever reached them: they were allowed to remain just as inconvenient, but also just as quaint, as on the day of their erection. There were gloomy recesses enough, but there were likewise graceful carvings, mottoes, rare tracery and wood-work; while, strange to say, in several chambers grotesque wooden birds were suspended from the ceiling like malformed ducks, conveying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... through the ranks of the receding throng, in the direction of this fresh summons, when the first object that met the eye was the towering form of Ethan Allen, mounted on a large black horse; he having recently returned from his captivity, and been appointed, in the quaint language of his commission, "to conduct, in behalf of the state, the trial and execution of that inimical person, David Redding" [Footnote: David Redding, the only person ever executed in Vermont for political offences, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... piano that it responded so wonderfully to her touch? Where had she found such quaint, dainty music, simple as the old-fashioned dance itself, so that the little ones could keep time to it, and yet pleasing Van Berg's fastidious ear with its unhackneyed and refined melody. But the marked and marvellous feature in her playing was an airy rolicksomeness that was as irresistible ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... at the quaint adroitness of his speech. But her lips were curiously unsteady, and she found the darkness very comforting. There was no moon, and the sky was veiled. She suffered the strong clasp of his fingers about her own without protest. What did it ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... an acceptance by Mr. King, his nomination by the President, and confirmation by the Senate. He was an old Federalist, to whom Mr. Adams owed no favors. With such directness and simplicity were the affairs of the Republic conducted. It is a quaint and pleasing scene from the period of our forefathers: the President, without discussion of "claims" to a distinguished and favorite post, actually selects for it a member of a hostile political organization, an old man retiring from public life; then quietly walks over to his house, surprises him ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... croak, the chirping of the Sparrow, The scream of Jays, the creaking of Wheelbarrow, And hoot of Owls,—all join the soul to harrow, And grate the ear. We listen to thy quaint soliloquizing, As if all creatures thou wert catechizing, Tuning their voices, and their notes revising, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the quaint old streets of Rouen They went to see the old church of Saint Ouen, With eager feet, and chatting as they walked, About the ...
— Abroad • Various
... seemed) another white horse; as rude and as clean, as ancient and as modern, as the first. This, at least, I thought must be the aboriginal White Horse of Alfred, which I had always heard associated with his name. And yet before we had driven into Wantage and seen King Alfred's quaint grey statue in the sun, we had seen yet a third white horse. And the third white horse was so hopelessly unlike a horse that we were sure that it was genuine. The final and original white horse, the white horse of the White Horse Vale, has that big, babyish ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... collected the unpublished plays, and, in 1623, issued them along with the others in a single volume, usually known as the First Folio. When one considers what would have been lost had it not been for the enterprise of these men, it seems safe to say that the volume they introduced by this quaint and not too accurate preface, is the most important single book in the imaginative ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... genuine old house of a very quaint description, teeming with old carvings, and beams, and panels, and having an excellent old staircase, with a gallery or upper staircase, cut off from it by a curious fence-work of old oak, or of the old Honduras Mahogany wood. ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... a delightful vein of humor of the quaint, sparkling variety which readily appeals to children of all ages. Several critics who have read The Twinkle Tales favorably compare Miss Bancroft's stories to Mr. ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... in the audience. When he finished he was overcome with shyness by the applause, and for a moment forgot to turn and leave the platform. He hung his head, and, looking out from under his eyebrows, gave a quaint, shy little smile at the audience. Betsy saw Mr. Pond's great smile waver and grow dim. His eyes filled so full that he had to take out his handkerchief and blow his ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield |
