"Queer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... primus stove which in a land of plenty we could afford to keep going. Later in the afternoon the smokers found that a match would not strike, and the primus went out. Then the man reading said that he felt unwell and could not see the words. Soon several others commented on feeling "queer," and two in the sleeping-bags had fallen into a drowsy slumber. On this evidence even the famous Watson would have "dropped to it," but it was some time before it dawned on us that the oxygen had given out. Then there was a rush for shovels. The snow, ice and food-tank were tightly ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to the West know queer little Brent Tor, that isolated church-crowned peak that stands up defiantly a mile or two from Lydford, seeming, as it were, a sentry watching the West for grim Dartmoor that rises twice its height behind it. Burnt Tor, they say, was the old name of this peak, because, seen from a distance, ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... still a great player. She has a peculiar reverse twist service, a wonderful forehand drive, but with excessive top spin, a queer backhand poke, a fine volley and a reliable overhead. Much of her old aggressiveness and speed of foot are still hers. She retains all of her famous fighting spirit and determination, while she is even more charming and delightful than of old. She is a remarkable woman, ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... children, with no acknowledged fathers, were entered in a variety of odd ways. In Lambeth (1685), George Speedwell is put down as "a merry begot;" Anne Twine is "filia uniuscujusque." At Croydon, a certain William is "terraefilius" (1582), an autochthonous infant. Among the queer names of foundlings are "Nameless," "Godsend," "Subpoena," and "Moyses and Aaron, two children found," not in the bulrushes, but "in ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... business is new to me, too," said Captain Brisco. "But I suppose I can get used to it. Seems rather queer to go to all this work and expense," he went on to Mr. Pertell, "just to fit a schooner out, and then sink her. It's a waste of good money, I ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... others of a different stripe. "We had a man with us at Menlo called Segredor. He was a queer kind of fellow. The men got in the habit of plaguing him; and, finally, one day he said to the assembled experimenters in the top room of the laboratory: 'The next man that does it, I will kill him.' They paid no attention to this, and next day one of them made some sarcastic remark ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Rajputs of impure descent, who have now developed in the Central Provinces into a caste of cultivators, marrying among themselves. Their first settlement here was in the Nerbudda Valley, and Sir C. Elliott wrote of them: [453] "They are a queer class, all professing to be Rajputs from Ajodhia, though on cross-examination they are obliged to confess that they did not come here straight from Ajodhia, but stopped in Bundelkhand and the Gwalior territory by the way. They are obviously ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... my father and mother came home with a buffalo calf. They threw down the dead calf, and ran after the queer thing. He had long hair upon a round head. His face was round, too. He ran and climbed up into a small ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... May; "well, of all the queer schools! Ask a teacher if we may have a midnight supper? Well, I ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... know of. Queer fish; kept queer company. Even if she was ever so fond of dogs, I don't think a girl would have cared for Bolter's kennel. Not in her ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... fields. The idea that the temporal state will not continue to encourage and protect liberty, genius, and originality is most absurd. That has been its general course against the sects and monopolists of religion and opinion which have ever been the persecutors. Mr. Savage throws down a queer jumble of names, viz.: "Homer, Virgil, Isaiah, Jesus, Dante, Shakespeare, Angelo, Copernicus, Galileo, Goethe, Luther, Servetus, Newton, Darwin, Spencer, and Galvani,"—and says, "consider them," where would they have been before ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... confused for an instant. Then I remembered, and—almost—chuckled. The conversation I had had with him came back to me, and I recalled a queer look on his face which had puzzled me till I forgot it. Now I was on the point of blurting out: "Oh, the kind friend is a Miss Paget, who said she'd like to help me if I needed help," when a spirit of mischief seized me. I determined to keep up the little mystery I'd inadvertently made. "I know," ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... alcoholism called by so many queer sounding terms that anything she not understand she set down to that dread trouble. But Miss Peckham had run ahead into ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... falling tears, mither, If love's a sin in youth; He leuks to me, and talks wi' brither, But I know the secret truth. He's courted me the year, mither; Judge not the matter queer, mither; Ye're a' the while as dear, mither, As ye've been the Summer long. I cannot ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... he would arrive, though he had written his mother from New York that it would be soon, He was glad that no one belonging to him had been at the station. He wanted to see his mother in his home. Walking fast exhausted him, and he had to rest. How dead his legs felt! In fact he felt queer all over. The old burn and gnaw in his breast had expanded to a heavy, full, suffocating sensation. Yet his blood seemed to race. Suddenly an overwhelming emotion of rapture flooded over him. Home at last! He did not think ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... good, honey, but thar's a queer gone feelin' inside of me. I'm twenty years younger than you, old Adam, but you've got mo' youth left in ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... to confess," replied the chevalier, after a moment's reflection, "that Blue Beard has singular means of corresponding with one. This is a queer ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... trying to unfasten this golden locket that contains your miniature. Then I struggled, and succeeded in throwing off the spell and waking up. As soon as I opened my eyes I saw the wild eldritch face, with its keen bright black eyes and queer eyebrows, and snake-like black locks, running down over the red cloak. The instant I saw this, I cried out, and the girl fled, and you hurried up. Now call that a dream if you can, for I tell you I saw that figure start up and run away from me as plainly as I saw you come up. One event was ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the fond patroness are the chief characters in another brilliant character study in "Queer People." ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... he began in apologetic explanation, "how mighty queer it was that while we were working like niggers on grub wages, without the ghost of a chance of making a strike, how we used to sit here, night after night, and flapdoodle and speculate about what we'd do if we ever DID make one; and now, Great Scott! that we HAVE ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... is one thing that looks a little queer to me. He said he did not know or believe in a Great Spirit, and yet he talks of the sun as ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... song he could make if he should try, is quite a stranger here. And now, as if for the very purpose of helping the knight, comes another young man, who turns out to be a prentice, and he begins arranging benches and chairs in some queer sort of way, while the looks that he casts at the maid and the looks she throws back at him show that they are not total strangers; and he tells them that these very poets and singers are to meet here in a few minutes, and that if anybody wants to join them he will have a chance to sing ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... Joralemon and all, you'd find out and realize that G. P. is the liveliest, smartest town in the state. Did you know that Percy Bresnahan, the famous auto manufacturer, came from here and——Yes, I think that a St. Patrick's Day party would be awfully cunning and original, and yet not too queer or freaky ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... reads that letter. He said the answer would be just 'yes' or 'no,' and I shouldn't have to wait long. 'She ain't one to teeter long on a decision,' says he; 'she finds her footin' one side or the other.' He talks queer, queerer'n ever sence he was hurt. I pity anybody that ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... metaphysical question—"Why do certain arrangements and combinations of form move us so strangely?" For aesthetics it suffices that they do move us; to all further inquisition of the tedious and stupid it can be replied that, however queer these things may be, they are no queerer than anything else in this incredibly queer universe. But to those for whom my theory seems to open a vista of possibilities I willingly offer, for what they ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... student who knew even such ordinary Elizabethan books as Lyly's 'Euphues' and Phil Holland's 'Pliny,' and the speculations of such earlier writers as Paracelsus. Bacon and Shakespeare, like other Elizabethans, accepted the popular science of their period, and decorated their pages with queer ideas about beasts, and stones, and plants; which were mere folklore. A sensible friend of my own was staggered, if not converted, by the parallelisms adduced in Judge Webb's chapter 'Of Bacon as a Man of Science.' I told him that the parallelisms were Elizabethan ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... was a crooked back, yet he bore his burden so cheerfully, that Demi once asked in his queer way, "Do humps make people good-natured? I'd like one if they do." Dick was always merry, and did his best to be like other boys, for a plucky spirit lived in the feeble little body. When he first came, he was very sensitive about his misfortune, but soon learned to forget it, for no one ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... brandy, they are morbidly mad with solitude and sentiment. Now she is a great creature, really a great creature; might have the world at her feet if she liked; and all she cares for is a big dog, a bunch of roses, and some artist or poet dead and gone three hundred or three thousand years! It is very queer. It is just like that extraordinary possession of Victor Hugo's; with powers that might have sufficed to make ten men brilliant and comfortable, he must vex and worry about politics that didn't concern him in the least, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... had every sort of adventure by land and sea before I acted with him at the Court. He had been midshipman, tea-planter, engineer, sheep-farmer, and horse-breeder. He had, to use his own words, "hobnobbed with every kind of queer folk, and found myself in extremely queer predicaments." The adventurous, dare-devil spirit of the roamer, the incarnate gipsy, always looked out of his insolent eyes. Yet, audacious as he seemed, no man was ever more nervous on the stage. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... myself more cheerfully disposed, by the queer Dutch faces with short pipes and ginger-bread complexions that came smirking and scraping to get us on board their respective vessels; but, as I had a ship engaged for me before, their invitations were all in vain. The wind blows fair; and, should it continue of the same mind a few ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him 'Gravey.' Anne's was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him 'Waiting-boy.' Branwell chose his, and called ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... "This looks queer," he muttered, and held the paper up slantingly away from the gas-jet in order to examine it by what ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... his father; he was well read, and two histories were dedicated to him, William of Malmesbury's, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's wonderful chronicle of the old British kings, whose blood flowed in Robert's veins; that chronicle—wrought out of queer Welsh stories—that served as a foundation for Edward's claims on Scotland, and whence came our Lear ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... this mean about you going to the mill at this queer old hour?" Bobolink was saying, as the three boys continued to walk on abreast, the speaker carrying the silver-plated bugle which he knew how to manipulate so well when ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... discover her. Such a contingency held untold terrors for her shyness, and yet to turn her back on so interesting a mystery would be insupportable. Accordingly, she crept over, eyes and ears alert, and slipped around to the front of the queer tripod, with all her muscles poised in readiness ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... street without attracting attention. Vandover was not at all certain that he cared to be seen on Kearney Street as Ida Wade's escort; one never knew who one was going to meet. Ida was not a bad girl, she was not notorious, but, confound it, it would look queer; and at the same time, while Ida was the kind of girl that one did not want to be seen with, she was not the kind of girl that could be told so. In an upper box at the Tivoli it would have been different—one could keep in the background; ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... down the Place de la Concorde, but before he reached Maxim's his heart misgave him; he was reviewing the events of the evening and, though he could not justify it, his mind was full of suspicion. It was queer her wanting to see Ramsey again after the way he had behaved. What could have been her object? Was he really so irresistible? She had certainly shown quite plainly that she wanted to see him, and yet she had shown equally plainly ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... th' Valley folks begun to shun ye, didn't they?" he continued. "They called ye queer. Then when yer paw died they dropped ye altogether. It hurt ye, an' ye jest drew aloof ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... singular commixture of an upper and under current of thought. Deep down in our hearts we were going back to English days; the cumbrous, quaint, queer, old, picturesque times; the dim, haunted times between cock-crowing and morning; those hours of national childhood, when popular ideas had the confiding credulity, the poetic vivacity, and versatile life, which distinguish children from ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... have done worse for a couple of years. Now, I've never wanted to be a priest. The Reverend Father would like me to be ordained, but I don't think I should make a good priest. I believe if I were to become a priest, I should lose my faith. That sounds a queer thing to say, and I'd rather you didn't repeat it to any of those ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Challoner laughed his queer muffled laugh. "Bed!" exclaimed he. "I don't go to bed nowadays. Haven't been able to lie down ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... it's queer, too. I never knew either of them to be occupied at this season before. They are both owned by the Danforths, and they usually shut them both up on September 30 and refuse to open them till the beginning of the next season. How did you come to get one of them, ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... idea of Van Cleft's," said Shirley, as he followed into the adjoining compartment. "It's a phonograph. Have you received any phoney 'phone calls to-night? Queer ones that you didn't expect and couldn't explain? Van Cleft has, and he decided to take records of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... "You're a queer chap," Frank said, at the conclusion of one of French's stories of the grandeur of the coming empire, "and I'd like to hear you spin yarns all night, but, if you don't mind, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... soon. That ought to make my name a little known. I have not your talent at making acquaintances, and find Singapore very dull. I have not found a single companion. I long for you to walk about with and observe the queer things in the streets of Singapore. The Chinamen and their ways are inexhaustibly amusing. My revolver is too heavy for daily use. I wish I had had a ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... to read about that movement in the Apologia, for example, of Cardinal Newman. On what singular topics men's minds were bent! what queer survivals of the speculations of the Schools agitated them as they walked round Christ Church meadows! They enlightened each other on things transcendental, yet material, on matters unthinkable, and, properly speaking, unspeakable. It is as if they "spoke with tongues," which had a meaning then, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... can't say. Judging by her inches, I should say about Rosie's age. But she is wise enough and old-fashioned enough to be Rosie's grandmother. She's a queer ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... said, with that queer courage which never deserted him, even if it were based entirely upon self-seeking and self-interest. He threw his head back with the characteristic action with which he always swallowed his medicine, and went back to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... it didn' seem like 'twas th' doctor. 'E looked so old an' 'is face such a queer color. 'E was very solemn-like when us took un an' th' dogs on th' boat. No un felt like sayin' much, an' 'e 'ardly said nothin' till us gave un some tea an' loaf an' then 'e talked. I s'pose e was sort o' faint-like. Th' first thing 'e said was, how wonderfu' sorry 'e was o' gettin' ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... a sharp gun report close at hand frightened the reptile away. Before leaving the neighbourhood the viper-catcher presented his child friend with a specimen which he had tamed and rendered harmless by removing the fangs. This creature the queer boy fed with milk and often carried ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... down 'the step from the sublime to the ridiculous,' and drag staid, dignified folks after them? Miss Earl, I have been watching your little party for some time, listening to your incipient art-lecture. You Americans are queer people; and when I go home I shall tell Mr. Ruskin that I heard a little boy criticizing 'The Heart of the Andes,' and quoting from 'Modern Painters.' Felix, as I wish to be accurate, will ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... I'm very glad he shouldn't become your stepdaughter's husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!" said Ralph, smiling. "But I'm rather nervous lest your husband should think you haven't pushed ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... seized the town, And therefore the flag shall not come down. And having told you that it shan't, Just let me show you why it can't. The climate here is very queer, In the matter of flags at this time of year. If a Pelican touched the banner prized, He would be immediately paralyzed. I'm a gentleman born—though now on the shelf, And I think you are almost one yourself. For from my ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Tuck's Court was a house at which was employed a Welsh groom, a queer fellow who soon attracted the notice of Simpson & Rackham's clerks, young gentlemen who were bent on "mis-spending the time which was not legally their own." {27b} They would make audible remarks about the unfortunate and inoffensive Welsh groom, calling out after ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... farming as the man in the moon is likely to rouse their suspicions. I'm much obliged, Charlie, but my job's right here. I'm going to try to raise something that I can haul to town in a wagon and get money for. I haven't your business genius. It would seem queer to me to go about asking people to take their money out of the bank to give me in exchange for pieces of paper that might not be good in the end. And besides, a good many of these country people swallowed the same hook when it was baited ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... rushing black water too wide for even his powerful muscles to bridge. Mokwa crouched down in the center of his ice cake, which was now being swept along in mid-stream with a rapidity which made him giddy. The weight of the bear helped to steady his queer craft, and unless it should strike another floating cake, Mokwa was in ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... "It's queer they should find this place, so entirely off their routes, though. I wonder if that was the brute I saw skipping out, then? I've a notion to hunt him down. He's spoiled my rest for to-night, anyhow. And I never can feel ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... should be born and bred in a Christian city to render him unfit for slavery. This unclerical native prejudice against working for white men is so universal, and has been so consistently maintained for three hundred years, as to present a queer contradiction to those divine marks which set him apart for that condition. The Cardinal attributed, in fact, to intercourse with the spirit of his countrymen that disposition of the negro which seems to be derived from intercourse with the spirit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... some queer notions in his head. One of them was that a person couldn't be happy unless he was making a great deal of noise. And if there was anything that roused Jasper's wrath, it was the sight of some quiet, modest ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... not long ago, a thoughtful man studying Nature's secrets far and wide found up in a valley where a stream had worn a deep fissure, a queer little rock. When he looked at it, he saw running over it a strange design, as though some fairy with its magic pencil had drawn the outline of a fern with every vein distinct, showing in every line the life of the long-lost plant. It was the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... books were full of sketches. Ruins, imperial and mediaeval; peasants and bagpipemen; Passionists with shaven polls; Capuchins and the equally hairy frequenters of the Cafe Greco; painters of all nations who resort there; Cardinals and their queer equipages and attendants; the Holy Father himself (it was Gregory sixteenth of the name); the dandified English on the Pincio and the wonderful Roman members of the hunt—were not all these designed by the young man and admired by his friends in after-days? J. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cried Jack suddenly; for the wrench must come, and lingering over it was painful. "I shall miss you lots! it seems so queer to be without you! Of course you'll succeed: there's no ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... said, "it's queer to see how things will tangle themselves sometimes. I don't know whether he took this thing from Ferriss or not. Both of them were exposed to the same conditions when their expedition went to pieces and they were taken off by the whaling ships—bad water, weakened constitution, not much power ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... have all Queer Street in their waiting rooms, these railway people; and the man's words were rougher than his voice. But these were two ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the '7' on his hat, of course, but never asked any questions, for his face was strange. I didn't know. The name, when you just spoke it, struck me rather queer. I—I used to know a Brant in the Seventh, but he was much older; it was ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Smythe smiled a queer livid smile. 'Yes, I thought of that all along, since the boy mentioned the porch,' he said. 'I've just been looking up the old belief in that new book of yours. I was seen going in, therefore I must look to go out in ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... my pals," turning to the other prisoners. "Here's a queer concern. Isn't this the very flat, Dick," addressing one of their number, "that I did so clean in Glasgow, and about whom I wrote you! The fellow whom ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... that?" A queer note came into her voice and she added almost in a whisper as if echoing it to herself: "Just because ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... hotel, I had the greatest difficulty in finding my way about. It is composed of three of the oldest houses in Quebec, and has no end of long passages, dark winding staircases, and queer little rooms. It is haunted to a fearful extent by rats; and direful stories, "horrible, if true," were related in the parlour of personal mutilations sustained by visitors. My room was by no means in the oldest part of the house, yet I used to hear nightly sorties made in a very systematic manner ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... something very, very queer About a story-book, No matter what's the time of year, Nor where you chance ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... the Dunster rents; all the old hoards, with queer figures of Saxon kings, lay on the grass, still for each the beggar had rained down its fellow, and inexhaustible seemed the bags that he sat upon. Samson bit his lips, and the merchant muttered with vexation. It could not be fairly ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... critter in the wagon is a man,' said Hopkins, looking as intently in the same direction. 'It seems to me,' he added, a moment later, 'that there's somebody else a-sit-ting alongside of him, either a dog or a boy. Wal, naow, ain't that queer?' ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... himself tucked in Mrs. Tobin's bundle for Jack Tobin, who had never had that sort of valentine, or indeed any sort, in his life. And it was queer how all day long the thought of that new sort of valentine he had sent out made Davie ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 7, February 15, 1914 • Various
... drawing-room where you were having tea, do you think you would recognize yourself as an individuality? I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other guests: "Who's this chap? Seems rather queer, I hope he won't be a bore." And your first telling would be slightly hostile. Why, even when you meet yourself in an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes that you have put on that very day and that you know by heart, you are almost ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... was one of these. It was crammed with emigrants. You know Langhetti's extraordinary pluck, and his queer way of devoting himself for others. Well, what did he do but this: as soon as the ship- fever broke out he left the cabin and took up his abode in the steerage with the sick emigrants. He is very quiet ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... much wit!" Such wits and beauties are not praised for nought, For both the beauty and the wit are bought. 'Twould burst even Heraclitus with the spleen To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin: The presence seems, with things so richly odd, The mosque of Mahound, or some queer Pagod. See them survey their limbs by Durer's rules, Of all beau-kind the best proportioned fools! Adjust their clothes, and to confession draw Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw; But oh! what terrors must distract the soul Convicted ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Tosswill there was always something incongruous, and recurringly strange, in this queer link between a little country parish mentioned in Domesday Book and the ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... my mother so. After his death we hunted high and low for it, but it could not be found. My mother asked you if the certificates were in the store safe, but you denied all knowledge of them—yet you had them all the time and they did not appear in the settlement of Father's estate. It looks very queer if they were yours that you did not say so to my mother at the time. No, I shall not give them up until you ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... their fears. The best subjects are those who pretend to understand the scientific meaning of the operation, or the utterly indifferent, who never think about it at all, are quite surprised to be suddenly presented with tobacco, and go home, shaking their heads over the many queer madnesses of white men. I took as many photographs as possible, and my pictures made quite a sensation. Once, when I showed his portrait to one of the dandies with the oiled and curled wig, he ran away with a cry of terror at his undreamt-of ugliness, and returned after a short while with his ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... explain how there came to be gold on the cabin floor. His surprise deepened when, a few days later, he found another "prospect" in the same place. His two sweepings had yielded perhaps a pennyweight of the precious metal—enough to set him to thinking. It seemed queer that in the neighborhood of Black Jack's bunk he ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... covertly, albeit her ears were drummed by the other's monotone. How much better this mood became the young man! Suddenly the smile of amusement that lurked about his lip corners and gave him a pleasing look hardened in a queer fashion—he started, then stared at one of the pages while the color died out of his brown cheeks. Cherry saw the hand that held the magazine tremble. He looked up at her, and, disregarding Fraser, broke ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... them by Flashman narrowly missed Tom's head. Their story was soon told to a knot of small boys round the fire in the hall, who nearly all bound themselves not to fag for the Fifth, encouraged and advised thereto by Diggs—a queer, very clever fellow, nearly at the top of the Fifth himself. He stood by them all through and seldom have small boys had more need of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... this place Dickens realized a dream of his boyhood and ambition of his life. In one of his travelers' sketches he introduces a "queer small boy" (himself) gazing at Gad's Hill House and predicting his future ownership, which the author finds annoying "because it happens to be my house and I believe what he said was true." When at last the place was for sale, Dickens did not wait to examine it; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... that it is worked in granite. Across the trefoil at its springing there runs a horizontal moulding resting on the flat elliptical arch of the door itself. On the tympanum is a figure of St. John under a very elaborate canopy with, on his right, a queer carving of a naked man, and on his left a dragon. The space between the arch and the top moulding is filled with intricate but shallow panelling, among which, between two armillary spheres, are set, on the right, a blank shield crowned—probably ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... vessel's course before I should be near enough to make accurate observation. All turned out as I wished—at least, nearly so—as shall be seen. Being in the bow, I had, of course, a better view than from the bridge. Presently I made out that the boat, which had all along seemed to be of a queer shape, was none other than a Coffin, and that the woman standing up in it was clothed in a shroud. Her back was towards us, and she had evidently not heard our approach. As we were creeping along slowly, the engines were almost ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... anon or before that. The clouds would clear away agin, no doubt, and the sun of Love shine out permanent if their affection for each other wuz cast-iron and sincere. But the light of this magic moon I knew would never shine on 'em agin. The light of that moon makes things look dretful queer and casts strange shadders onto things and folks laugh at it but no other light is so heavenly bright while it lasts. I think so ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... that," said Dab, staring at the queer, huge, rickety old mass of unsightly wood and glass that Ford was pointing at, after they ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... passionate, and spiritual. Those who do not consider it crazy may well consider it inspired. Coming after the trite and decorous verse of most of our decorous poets, this poet seems like a minstrel of Provence at a suburban musical evening.... The unseizable magic of poetry is in the queer paper volume, and words are ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... make soldiers desert and shoot their sergeants and corporals, and Highland drovers dirk English graziers, to prove themselves men of fiery passions, it is not to a man like me you should come. I could tell you some tricks of my own trade, perhaps, and a queer story or two of estates that have been lost and recovered. But, to tell you the truth, I think you might do with your Muse of Fiction, as you call her, as many an honest man does with his own ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... people were beheaded—unless they meant to hang themselves? The mystery troubled me so much that I finally made bold to ask the young man if his friend had committed any serious crime, and whether that was the reason he talked so much about hemp? These North Germans are a queer people. I don't think they ever suspect any body to be joking. They take the most outrageous proposition literally, and never seem to understand that there can be two meanings to any thing. As Sydney Smith says of the Scotch, it would take a surgical operation to get a joke well into their ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... things do come 'round. Jest to think that you and the young lady that was up to Mr. Montgomery's happenin' to be the same identical one, and I was up to meetin' the same Sunday. It seems so queer that of all places I should happen to get here. But as I say there's no tellin' ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... than it is now, and was attended with considerable danger. The peddler with his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to rely upon the country people for hospitality. This brought him into relation with queer characters, some of whom were not altogether scrupulous in their methods of making a living, murder being an acceptable means to that end. It occasionally occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen purse would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character and ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... perpetually engaged in this rather exhausting pursuit I was, at any rate, intrigued. Pengard, who is also Sylvester, and yet is neither the one nor the other, may be too much for your saner moments of credulity. But Mr. STRAUS tells his queer story so plausibly and with so light a touch that even though you may affect to scoff at his dashing improbabilities you cannot escape their attraction. Indeed Mr. STRAUS'S adventure into fields hitherto strange to him has been so successful that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... "the promise you made me three weeks ago?" And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory, was obliged to confess that the promise had escaped it, she declared that he had made her, at the time, a very queer answer—an answer at which, viewing it in the light of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offense. "You promised to take me to Bullier's after your marriage. After your marriage—you made a great point of that. Three days after that your marriage was broken off. Do you know, ...
— The American • Henry James
... us—if not more. Rather absurd this assignment of a separate quarter of an hour to each interview—quite as though Mr. Indiman desired to engage a valet and we were candidates for the position. Evidently, an eccentric person, but it's a queer world anyhow, as most of us know. There's my own case, for example. I'm supposed to be a gentleman of leisure and means. Leisure, certainly, but the means are slender enough, and proceeding in a diminishing ratio. That's the penalty of ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... that, but it was apparent that he had some sort of a queer, tough customer on his trail and it's always in order to ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the art of the late sixties. The pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, as such, a thing of the past, and seemingly leaving few imitators. Burne-Jones just heard of as a strange, unknown artist, who wouldn't exhibit his pictures, but who had done some queer new kind of stained-glass windows at Lyndhurst, which one might perhaps be curious to see when we went (as of course we must) to worship "Leighton's great altar-piece." Nay, ten years later, at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery, ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... turn that way. I remember the queer things you used to scratch in the mud in the court, when you were a ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... notoriety as "Goat Castle" and was so known over the United States from the manner in which the inmates lived. The strange fashion in which dogs, goats, chickens, or any animal on the place was made welcome in the drawing room was very queer and gave ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... the salutations that passed from M'Clutchy to the party in question, which the party in question received, on the other hand, with a degree of good humor and cordiality that surprised and astounded our agent, Val, to tell the truth, felt rather queer; for, on comparing M'Loughlin's nonchalance with the significant good humor of the new comers, he was too shrewd not to feel that there was a bit of mystery somewhere, but in what quarter he could ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... In a tenement's highest casement: Queer sort of flower-pot—yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set, To the little sick child in the basement— The pitcher of mignonette, In the tenement's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... remember that Sunday afternoon, and how merry we all were; how we drank tea in the queer bed-room at the top of the house; and how afterwards Muriel went to sleep in the twilight, with baby Maud in her arms. Mrs. Halifax sat beside the little bed, a sudden blazing up of the fire showing the intentness of her watch over these two, her eldest ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... went, to and fro, slowly along the line of Indifference, without ever transgressing as its extreme limits on either hand, Moderate Desires and Slight Troubles. I led obscurely a contemplative life, and I was generally considered a queer character. I fulfilled my duties, and took little heed of any one. Whenever I had an hour at my disposal, I sought solitude in the neighboring woods, far from the town and from mankind. I used to lie down under the big trees. Every season in turn, spring and summer, autumn and winter, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... knew she was coming up, she said no, of course not, and that it was going to be a grand surprise. Said it was possible she'd buy your range, and she wanted to look it over before you arrived. An' it seems queer I can't remember anything more about the thunder and lightning between there and Chitina. When we took the train again, she began askin' a million questions about you and the Range and Alaska. Soak ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... his shaving off the beard at that time in the morning?" Braceway urged, fingering the dollar bill. "Didn't you think it was queer?" ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... hole, that's a fact," Max admitted, "but we ought to be thankful it's no worse than it is. One of us might have been swept loose, and drowned, or had a hard time getting around. We're all together, and it'll be queer if we can't figure out some way to ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Meeker, now quite herself again—'no, indeed; it is only a word from Augustus. What a queer creature, to send it by such a horrid fright of a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... a whisper and he stole close to my side—"I had such a nice dream about her just the last thing before the bell rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer—so kinder good and kinder bad—and I wanted to see her so much, that if I hadn't been a big boy, I believe I should have blubbered. I tried ever so much to go to sleep and see her again; but the more I tried the ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... upon the cats, gathered them up, two under each arm, and bore them away, moving out of sight between the box borders like some queer monster, with her wide humping flanks of black bombazine enhanced by four angrily waving yellow cat tails, which gave an effect of grotesque ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dying, and, though she is obviously robust, there is that transparent ethereal look in her face which makes old women say 'she is not long for this world,' that fateful beauty which creates an atmosphere of doom about it. You cannot look at her without a queer involuntary feeling that she was born to die in some tragic way. She reminds one of those perilously fragile vases we feel must get broken, those rarely delicate flowers we feel ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... sure," returned Mart slowly, thinking of that firm chin and knotted hand. "I'm not so sure, Holly. You can't go by what you read in books, always. Sure, I know he's a nice old fellow, but he's a queer fish just the same. And as for bein' a pirate, there's that man Morris, who's workin' on the Tribune now as city editor. He's as quiet and nice as you ever see 'em, but they say he's been all kinds of things. That shows you, Holly, that you can't ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... did not know. No one knew better than this great criminal lawyer that the battle was fought on the selection of the jury. The subsequent examination of witnesses, the eloquence expended on the jury are all for effect outside. At least that is the theory of Mr. Braham. But human nature is a queer thing, he admits; sometimes jurors are unaccountably swayed, be as careful as you can in ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... but then, so too was her beauty. At all events, he dared no more, not having the courage, though all the will, to linger, and was turning off when a queer thing happened. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... "now that you mention it, Jack, seems to me Fred has been acting a little queer lately. There's been a sort of shifting way he avoids looking straight into your eyes when you're talking with him. Why, when I got speaking about our next big game, and hoped he'd play like a regular demon at third sack he grinned sheepishly, and simply said he meant to try and do himself ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... a man without a heart, without a soul, and, I believe, absolutely without conscience—the type of man who even his associates feel is likely to bring in after their deaths queer bills against their estates as an offset for what he owes them; the type of man whose promise is just as good as his bond, and whose bond is so near his promise as to make it absolutely immaterial to ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... see," Rob told them, "that while we're over here we are bound to keep our eyes wide open all the time because there are so many things that strike us as being queer just because we've been used to other ways. These people would stare at many of the things we think ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... at me woefully sad, and I had a queer, heartrending prevision I would never see her more. Garry was supporting her, and she seemed to have suddenly grown very frail. He was pale and quiet, but I could ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... like that woman?" said Necia, in a queer, strained voice. She had listened intently to the Corporal's story, but he had purposely avoided her eyes and could not tell how ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... queer feeling to find oneself a foreigner. One can not realize long at a time how his face or his manners should have become peculiar; and after looking at a print for five minutes in a shop-window, or dipping into an English book, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... remembers riding through Utah, with its queer red cliffs and high rocks carved in strange shapes by winds and weather; the stretches of sandy desert; and beyond those, grassy meadows and streams fringed with green willows. After a while Great Salt Lake lay sparkling in the ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... next conspicuous appearance in Detroit was about 1892. This appearance was not only conspicuous; it was exceedingly noisy. Detroit now knew him as the pilot of a queer affair that whirled and lurched through her thoroughfares, making as much disturbance as a freight train. In reading his technical journals Ford had met many descriptions of horseless carriages; the consequence was that he had again broken away from the farm, taken a job at $45 a month in a ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... little one," he said, in his queer French, "behold me—I come alone. Your English friend sends a thousand apologies—he has to return to his guests: is it an English custom to leave guests in such a manner? Ah, Madame Potecki, there is a time in one's life when one does strange things, is there not? When a farewell ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... a name to my feeling, but I jolly well wish they didn't know. Seamen are a rough lot and they get queer ideas." ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... from its outward appearance; a tall, dark old house, with a stone staircase leading us up from one sombre story to another, into a brick-paved dining-room, with our sleeping-chambers on each side. There was a fireplace of tremendous depth and height, fit to receive big forest-logs, and with a queer, double pair of ancient andirons, capable of sustaining them; and in a handful of ashes lay a small stick of olive-wood,—a specimen, I suppose, of the sort of fuel which had made the chimney black, in the course of a good many years. There must have been much shivering and misery of cold ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... queer things. I suppose all of you have had the pocket-book fever when you were little?—What do I mean? Why, ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in them.—So, too, you must all remember some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... he said, "rather queer is, I've never seen others that way; I simply don't know what a fear is; I really rejoice in the fray, I guess I'm the champion glarer, my glance seems to wilt all my foes; I've seen fellows crumple with terror before we had ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... Foureau heaved a sigh. "Queer amusement! and then the guillotine at the end of it!" He had visions of the scaffold, and was ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and town and even in the villages peddlers went along the streets selling these chapbooks, as they were called. Imagine how the children, and the grown people too, must have flocked around the peddler as he began taking out one after another of his queer little books, for he had something to please every one. The boys might choose stories like The Mad Pranks of Tom Tram, A Wonderful and Strange Relation of a Sailor or The True Tale of Robin Hood, and we can see them almost getting into a brawl over the possession of The Merry Life and Mad ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... went home, I found him sitting up very straight in his wagon, with his cheeks crimson with excitement. Patrick was with him, and the table and the whole floor were covered with queer, long, jointed paste-board sheets, with pieces of gay-colored calicoes, pasted on them. Patrick looked as excited as Nat, and as soon as I opened the door he exclaimed, 'Och, Miss Dora, see how he's plazed with um.' I was almost frightened at Nat's ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... passage seemed coming to an end, for daylight again appeared ahead of the two girls and Ozma replaced her wand in the bosom of her gown. The last ten steps brought them to the surface, where they found themselves surrounded by such a throng of queer people that for a time they halted, speechless, and stared into the faces that ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Innocent by saying that he had "often been a week without sleep." "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst sententiously. "When a man gets a streak of luck,—nigger-luck,—he don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat,—you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along you're all ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... wonderful landscape garden. Short work had made kitty's head slick and shiny, like a lake, with a stray bristle or two, which stood for trees. In the middle of her back stood Fuji, the great mountain, with numberless little Fujis to keep company. Many winding paths ran down kitty's legs to queer, shapeless shrines, and it was only when Yuki Chan had insisted on making a curious old pine-tree with twisted limbs of kitty's short and stubby tail that trouble ensued, and she had been requested by her mother to take her honorable little ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... always unprepared. It has become one of the grim trade jokes of innovators that the one thing you can count upon is that the rulers will come to think that they are the apex of human development. For a queer effect of responsibility on men is that it makes them try to be as much like machines as possible. Tammany itself becomes rigid when it is too successful, and only defeat seems to give it new life. Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... lived again at Leicester House, now occupied by the new favorite Essex, where he probably met Shakespeare and the other literary lights of the Elizabethan Age. Soon after his return to Ireland, Spenser was appointed Sheriff of Cork, a queer office for a poet, which probably brought about his undoing. The same year Tyrone's Rebellion broke out in Munster. Kilcolman, the ancient house of Desmond, was one of the first places attacked by the rebels, and Spenser barely escaped with ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... withering look of contempt at her husband, folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, more puzzled than ever at his queer course. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... mighty queer men in the trade," said he, as he puffed his cigar. "I took an order from a man in Indiana, not long ago, for felt wads, Nos. 8 and 9, and for some cardboard. When I went to copy my orders I remembered that the man had given no size for the cardboard wanted, but I was pretty ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... him several times in the corridors or on the stairways, and one day I was going up-stairs, carrying a hod of coals, as he was coming down. Looking up at him, I made a misstep, and came near dropping a portion of my burden. 'My good man,' said he, with a queer smile, 'if you would learn to carry your coals as well as you carry your age you would do well.' I don't remember what I said in reply; but I know I thought if Charles Lamb could be made aware of my real age he would abandon his Elia work and devote ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... Boy and youth afore that I served Pinch-a-Penny Peter in his shop at Gingerbread Cove. I was born in the Cove. I knowed all the tricks of Pinch-a-Penny's trade. And I tells you it was Pinch-a-Penny Peter's conscience that made Pinch-a-Penny rich. That's queer two ways: you wouldn't expect a north-coast trader to have a conscience; and you wouldn't expect a north-coast trader with a conscience to be rich. But conscience is much like the wind: it blows every which way; and if a man does but trim his sails to suit, he can bowl along in any ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... you one question. Where did you pick up that queer gown? It seems to me that I have seen ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... curious names which attract our notice as we pass an inn door have some queer stories to tell. We notice a very curious collection of animals sometimes, and a strange assortment of things; and the reason why our ancestors put some of these curious things together is somewhat difficult for us to ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... great. But the push or the force that is doing this, the yeast as it were, has to work in and on certain definite kinds of material. Because this yeast is in us, there may be great and undreamed of possibilities awaiting mankind; but because of our line of descent there are also queer limitations. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... knew folk at home liked some o' the queer things one meets with abroad; but I never thought they'd care for them nasty slimy things. I were always on the look-out for a mermaid, for that, I ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell |
