"Queer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friend," said he, taking me aside after the ostler had led the animal away, "recommends you to me in the strongest manner, on which account alone I take you and your horse in. I need not advise you not to be taken in, as I should say, by your look, that you are tolerably awake; but there are queer hands at Horncastle at this time, and those fellows of mine, you understand me—; but I have a great deal to do at present, so you must excuse me." And ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... This queer fellow whom everybody laughed at was really the chosen one,—chosen, however, with an intention which made such preference insulting. The choice escaped all public suspicion by its very improbability. Madame Schontz intoxicated ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... coat and trousers and his queer pointed hat, sat on a magnificent pony in front of the crowd of Lamas ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... this little adventure; but, as you say, it has been true, therefore—— Oh! dear, it takes a lot to satisfy some people. And you cannot account for it? Do you think the telegraph station has had anything to do with it—electricity, you know? Electricity is a queer thing, and plays pranks sometimes. No! Well, perhaps the hills ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... to make of it," Walter confessed. "Every few hundred feet there are branches partly broken off and left hanging. Queer, isn't it?" ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, With my Bible under my arm 'Till I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church. I know they laughed and thought me queer. I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, Disdaining me, not seeing me. But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. It was the vision, vision, vision ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... twelve, and Benjamin, seven, were put to school. They were pretty, attractive children, and Henry, the baby, was a sturdy toddler, the pride of the household. Little Sam was the least promising of the flock. He remained delicate, and developed little beyond a tendency to pranks. He was a queer, fanciful, uncommunicative child that detested indoors and would run away if not watched—always in the direction of the river. He walked in his sleep, too, and often the rest of the household got up in the middle of the night to find him fretting with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "Mighty queer what has become of Hank," one of them said. "But I don't reckon there's any use looking any farther. You don't figure he's aiming to throw us down—do ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... satisfactory, and attracting every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth. The model of them all is Oudendorp's Caesar. But there is nothing very great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend, not give for a book that belonged to the author ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... is for you only. I would never let him call me that. But they are all for short names, one syllable—he is Phil, and Mariamne, well at home they call her Jew—horrible, isn't it?—because she was called after some Jewess; but somehow it seems queer when you see her, so fair and frizzy, like anything ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... fountains. Many of these remain from the time of the Moors, and are still surrounded by the delicate arches and brilliant tile-work of that period. The populace in the streets are entirely Spanish—the jaunty majo in his queer black cap, sash, and embroidered jacket, and the nut-brown, dark-eyed damsel, swimming along in her mantilla, and ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... I sailed, I happened to meet an old friend, and over our dinner I mentioned the names of my officers. He told me he knew this Mr. Linthorne well, and that Horton had gone to sea with him for the first time as a midshipman, and that there was certainly something queer about him as a boy, for Linthorne had specially asked him to keep his eye upon him, and had begged him, frankly, to let him know how he conducted himself. That rather set me against ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... buildings that had once been the counting-rooms of Carondelet-street cotton merchants, but were now become the prisons of soldiers in gray. One of these places, restored after the war as a cotton factor's counting-room again, had, until a few years ago, a queer, clumsy patch in the plastering of one wall, near the base-board. Some one had made a rough inscription on it with a cotton sampler's marking-brush. It commemorates an incident. Mary by some means ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... remembered," he continued, stroking his moustache thoughtfully, "a priest whose interest in his fellow-passengers was a little extraordinary—a cup of coffee pressed upon me, a queer taste—bah! Why waste time? I was drugged, sir, with your connivance, no doubt, and brought here. What ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... to chuckle. Mr. Franklin Sharp was the principal of Central High, and was very much admired by all the pupils; while Professor Dimp, because of his harshness and his queer ways, was the butt of more than ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... for the statement that there are about twenty-two match factories in the United States and Canada, and that the daily production—and consequent daily consumption—is about twenty-five thousand gross per day. It may seem a queer statement to make that one hundred thousand hours of each successive day are spent by the people of the two countries in striking a light, but such is undoubtedly the case. In each gross of matches manufactured there are 144 ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... team, pretended to be sick! Tooky was the mother of Nip and Tup, and she was a very clever dog. While Koolee and Koko and Menie were getting the sledge and dog-team ready, the rest of the women set to work with their queer crooked knives to take off the bear's skin. The moon set, and the sky was red with the colors of the dawn before this ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... you remember that time I took you over to see my queer old maiden aunt, who's got the rheumatics so bad, and lives in the big house all alone with a colored woman, and all her silly pets,—cats, squawkin' crows she cares for like they might be humans; and with that big bulldog chained under ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... that would possess him, sometimes the preaching, and sometimes the comic, or they might come in succession, replacing each other so rapidly as to bewilder his companions. Intoxication brought all kinds of queer little peculiarities with it. One of them was that he could walk or run perfectly straight, but that there always came a time when he unconsciously returned upon his tracks and retraced his steps again. This had a strange effect sometimes, as in the instance which ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the funny little house would have inside it. But I never imagined it would be anything like this. Yet somehow after I had felt the Doctor's hand upon my arm I was not frightened, only confused. It all seemed like some queer dream; and I was beginning to wonder if I was really awake, when I heard the ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... chins upon their shoulders as if I had been a fiend. It was plain as a pikestaff that they were frightened, and that the superstitions of the forecastle were hard at work in them whilst they viewed me. They looked a queer company: two were negroes, the others pale-faced bearded men, wrapped up in clothes to the aspect of scarecrows. The fellow who steered had a face as long as a wet hammock, and it was lengthened yet to the eye by a beard like a goat's hanging at the ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... would queer me for a job," he said. "You see, Gregory, when a man hires a fellow he figures he's all there. He kind of rents him all over and when he's shy on somethin', he kind of figures the fellow's holding back on him. I didn't want to slip anything ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... it zigzagged its way to a point about sixty miles north of Paris, whence it then followed an eastern tangent paralleling the northern bank of the River Aisne; thence easterly to Verdun, forming there a queer half-moon salient arc with the points bent sharply toward the center. From the south of Verdun the line extended unbroken and rather straight south and a little easterly to the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... frigate had gone out to Spithead, where one of England's proud fleets was collected. The gig was waiting at the point. I stepped into her with as much dignity as I could command and we pulled out of the harbour. When we got into the tide-way the boat began to bob about a good deal. I felt very queer. "Edkins, is this what you call a storm?" I asked, wishing the boat would be ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... and riches sank into the sea long ages since, she took with her all but a handful of her colonists working the vast gold mines of Central Africa. From these and their degraded slaves and a later intermixture of the blood of the anthropoids sprung the gnarled men of Opar; but by some queer freak of fate, aided by natural selection, the old Atlantean strain had remained pure and undegraded in the females descended from a single princess of the royal house of Atlantis who had been in Opar at the time of the great catastrophe. Such ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to do and good novels to read and they will get over it. History breeds queer ideas in children. They read of military heroes, kings and statesmen who commit awful deeds and are yet monuments of public honor. What a sweet hero is Raleigh, who was a farmer of piracy; what a grand Admiral was Drake; what demi-gods the ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... Virginian', warmed by a 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 wedged, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... renewed effort by the strains of a penny whistle and a child's drum taken from a toyshop in a wrecked French town. I remember in India, in a cholera camp, where the men were suffering very badly, the band of the Tenth Lincolns started a regimental sing-song and went on with that queer, defiant tune, "The Lincolnshire Poacher." It was their regimental march that the men had heard a thousand times. There was nothing in it—nothing except all England, all the East Coast, all the fun and daring and horse play of young men bucketing ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... he watched it from the top rail of the old fence. Then he scurried down to the ground and, a few steps at a time, stopping to watch sharply between each little run, he drew nearer and nearer to that queer acting string. It gave him a funny feeling inside to see a string acting like that, so he was very careful not to get too near. He looked at it from one side, then ran around and looked at it from the ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... whole baggage is a pair of socks and a book in a fishing-basket; and he borrows even a rod from the landlord. He walked here over the hills from Sanquhar, 'singin', he says, 'like a mavis.' I naturally asked him about Hazlitt. 'He wouldnae take his drink,' he said, 'a queer, queer fellow.' But did not seem further communicative. He says he has become 'releegious,' but still swears like a trooper. I asked him if he had no headquarters. 'No likely,' said he. He says he is writing his memoirs, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gave her shoulders an angry jerk, and sticking the pin on the waist of her dress, replied, "So I s'pose it's no matter if I'm kept awake all night, and worried to death. But I guess you'd find there'd be queer doins here if I should be taken away. I wish the British would stay to hum, and not lug their young ones here for us ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... Every morning he fetched a turn round about the mountain, letting his horse ramble at a venture, whistling forever the same tune, some negro melody or other. Lastly, this rum chap had brought from Haiti a lot of bandboxes filled with queer insects—some black and reddish brown, big as eggs; others little and shimmering like sparks. He seemed to set greater store by them than by his patients, and, from time to time, on coming back from his rides, he brought a quantity of butterflies pinned to ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... DANDELION COTTAGE Illustrated by Mmes. SHINN and FINLEY. $1.35 net. Four young girls secure the use of a tumbledown cottage. They set up housekeeping under numerous disadvantages, and have many amusements and queer experiences. "A capital story. It is refreshing to come upon an author who can tell us about real little girls, with sensible ordinary parents, girls who are neither phenomenal nor silly."—Outlook. THE ADOPTING OF ROSA MARIE A sequel to "Dandelion Cottage." Illustrated by Mrs. SHINN. $1.35 ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... thought it very queer that in so pretty a house, where almost everything was neat and well kept, the floors should be dirty and the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 'Daddy WAS there a minnit ago,' they say; 'must hev gone home.' Bein' kinder responsible for the old man, I hangs around, and goes out in the hall and sees a passage leadin' behind the scenes. Now the queer thing about this, boys, ez that suthin in my bones tells me the old man is THAR. I pushes in, and, sure as a gun, I hears his voice. Kinder ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... of course—in fact, he had made it his business to find out—that Jo lived in St. John's Wood, that he had a little house in Wistaria Avenue with a garden, and took his wife about with him into society—a queer sort of society, no doubt—and that they had two children—the little chap they called Jolly (considering the circumstances the name struck him as cynical, and old Jolyon both feared and disliked cynicism), and a girl ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with strange bedfellows; and I made one or two queer acquaintances on the Thames Embankment and acquired a taste for vagabondising about among the poor which lasted a year or two and has proved to be of no small service since. Slumming had not become a fashion at that time ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... to the old man. Mrs Rayleigh, who was a fine lady, and had never seen so queer a specimen of a critic as Mr Roe, was a little alarmed at his uncouth pronunciation. And Mr Gillingham Howard made a feeble and unsuccessful effort to deaden the effect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... soldier eyed me carefully. "Now you do have some queer ideas. There was a man in our company who used to talk like that when no officers were around. This fellow, his name was Mannteufel, said he could read books, that he was a forbidden love-child and his father was an officer. I guess he was forbidden all right, for he certainly wasn't right in his ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... word, but he sat looking at the other in stolid silence. "That stepbrother of yours," continued the old Squire presently, "is a rascal—he is a rascal, Hiram, and I mis-doubt he's something worse. I hear he's been seen in some queer places and with queer company ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... of that, Rowe," said Bennet. "A band of young desperadoes is my idea. The papers are full of 'em just now—fellows living in caves and other queer places, and robbing right and left (result of reading too many dime novels; heard the Professor say so this morning). Been 'round here too; stole Uncle Jeff's calf day before yesterday; and his grandmother goes to sewing ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... being paid," volunteered Jennings, with the air of a man of the world. "I heard him having a row with her one day about some bills she hadn't paid. She'd spent the money for some nonsense and he was pretty stiff in that queer way of his. Quite right he was too. I'd have been the same myself," pulling up his collar and stretching his neck in a manner indicating exact knowledge of the natural sentiments of a Marquis when justly annoyed. "What he intimated was that ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Mr. Tebrick too, and he said to himself that the queer girl, his niece, must have married him because he was the first man she had met. He reflected also that he was never likely to see her again and said aloud, when he ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... of this consultation was that very shortly afterwards queer reports began to fly about; it was whispered that the ghosts whom the pious director had expelled had again invaded the convent, under an invisible and impalpable form, and that several of the nuns had given, by their ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... every respect that I must give as complete a description of her as possible. She was born in Upper Stewiacke, Nova Scotia, on March 28th, 1860, and is consequently in her eighteenth year. Esther has always been a queer girl. When born she was so small that her good, kind grandmother, who raised her, (her mother having died when she was three weeks old) had to wash and dress her on a pillow, and in fact keep her on it all the time until she was nine months old, at which age ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... figure sat motionless. "If ever a man needed a wife to patch the seat of his pants, it's Caleb Kimball! I guess it's the only part of his clothes he ever wears out. He wa'n't like that before his mother died; the wheels seemed to stop in him then an' there. He was queer an' strange an' shy, but I never used to think he'd develop into a reg'lar hermit. She'd turn in her grave, Mis' Kimball would, to see him look as he does. I don't s'pose he gets any proper nourishment. The smartest man in the world won't take the trouble to ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... house the pastor's thoughts went back to the time it was built. How full the air had been of prophecies, and how firmly he had believed that God had intended it to be something great! But nothing much had happened. "Our Lord must have changed His mind," he thought, amused at his entertaining such queer ideas regarding ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... gave it to me. And what do you think, Mother? The poor little thing has to live in a tent, and she wants to live in a home! And it made her awful sad to see us, 'cause we have a home, and we can wear regular dresses and shoes, and she has to wear queer bloomer things,—and sandals on ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... a queer place, my Belasez, full of crooked lanes and crookeder men and women. Men are bad enough, ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... was, as it were, stunned; I had nothing to say. It was just as if I had never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I perceived an unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling of lightness, of unreality. Coupled with that was a queer sensation in the head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping of blood vessels at the ears. Neither of these feelings diminished as time went on, but at last I got so used to them that I ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... 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
... anybody secretly, they are ready enough to apply to me, and pay well too. Why, in the war time, if it hadn't been for us smugglers, they couldn't have managed to send a messenger across Channel. Bless you! I've carried over a queer lot of characters now and then. But you must be getting hungry, young gentleman, and it's ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... was tired enough—having been standing all the way—when Grassina was reached, for festivals six miles out of Florence at seven in the evening disarrange good habits. But a few pence spent in the albergo on bread and cheese and wine soon restored me. A queer cavern of a place, this inn, with rough tables, rows and rows of wine flasks, and an open fire behind the bar, tended by an old woman, from which everything good to eat proceeded rapidly without dismay—roast chicken and fish in particular. A strapping girl with high cheek ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... their bursting if he should have sat down hastily. I am almost afraid that I shall hardly be believed; but it is a fact, that the next thing he did was to attach a pair of spurs to his boots:—but, to be sure, it was not impossible that he might intend to ride during the day. Then he put on a queer kind of under-waistcoat, which in fact was only a roll-collar of rather faded pea-green silk, and designed to set off a very fine flowered damson-colored silk waistcoat; over which he drew a massive mosaic-gold chain, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... called middle-aged," said Anna-Felicitas dreamily. "One middle-ages first, and from there it just spreads. It must be queer," she added pensively, "to watch oneself ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... sleighs all over Norway. As a matter of fact, it is only in the extreme North, among the Lapps, that reindeer are employed for this kind of work; and very few Europeans ever have the opportunity of enjoying a drive in a reindeer "pulk," as the queer sleigh is called. That the experience is most exhilarating and exciting is certain. In the first place, there is only one trace, connecting a kind of shoulder harness with the forepart of the sleigh; again, there is only one rein coming ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... I am not far out of the way, returned Elnathan, endeavoring to imitate the expression of the others countenance, by looking jocular. Latin is a queer language, gentlemen; now I rather guess there is no one in the room, except Squire Lippet, who can believe that Far. Av. means ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... matters, my dear Bertie, just to show you that I am not down on my luck, and that my life is not pitched in the minor key altogether, in spite of my queer situation. But, to turn to graver things: I was right glad to get your letter, and to read all your denunciations about dogmatic science. Don't imagine that my withers are wrung by what you say, for I agree with almost every ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Webster and Everett seem to have appreciated him from the first. But he was, till he vindicated his title to be a great lawyer, rather a thorn in the flesh of Chief Justice Shaw, of whose consternation and amazement, caused by the strange figure that appeared in his court-room, many queer stories used to be told. But the young men ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... aroused by the sight of the beavers and muskrats, and they questioned the old man about them. The queer, broad, scaly tail of the beavers much interested them, and drew from Souwanas an interesting account of the various purposes for which the clever, industrious beavers ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... would find them. It would be as incongruous to attribute these things to the Eskimos as to attribute tablets and lettered stones to the aborigines of America. Some time I shall take up an expression that the queer-shaped mounds upon this earth were built by explorers from Somewhere, unable to get back, designed to attract attention from some other world, and that a vast sword-shaped mound has been discovered upon the moon—Just now we think ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... let you share my difficulties and dangers," said Gerald; "at least, I'm inclined to let you. I wouldn't do as much for my own brother, I can tell you. And if you queer my pitch I'll never speak to you again or ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... like a sieve," as he said, "and bullets flew round me like a swarm of buzzin' bees, not one of 'em more'n just nipped me and raised a blister in the skin." Indeed, even those abrasions were indistinguishable, though Jake solemnly believed in their existence. Then another queer thing! Long before the lieutenant and "his fellers" reached the imperiled vehicle all but two or three of the dozen assailants went scurrying off in the darkness, and when the cavalry came charging furiously through the gloom there was ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... "Don't mind Mr. Wingate. He too is somewhat queer at times. You will stay here to-night, both of you. We could not be so inhospitable as to permit you to start out at this hour of the night. In the morning you will have breakfast and, if you wish, an ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... Miss Lou ride about the country. Occasionally she galloped up and down the highway, to the Pointdexters and back, just to let Pasha stretch his legs. Queer sights Pasha saw on these trips. Sometimes he would pass many men on horses riding close together in a pack, as the hounds run when they have the scent. They wore strange clothing, did these men, and they carried, instead ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... "Why can't you take yourselves off and give me some rest? Nannie, you and Jake go out to the old oak and see if all the turkeys air up. Be sure and count 'em—and take Jubal (the youngest) 'long with you. If you see your pa tell him I say to look at the brindle cow. She acted mighty queer at milkin', and I reckon she'd better have a little bran mash—Sairy Jane," turning suddenly upon her eldest daughter, "if you eat another one of them ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... feel a vague misgiving. What did this mean? What was going to be the end of it? Ought she to allow it to go on? And yet—most likely it meant nothing; it was only one of his queer fancies that he was elaborating. There did not seem to be any thing ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... a queer girl!" was Mary's comment, while Caroline expressed her disappointment and vainly endeavored to change Elsie's determination. The little girl was firm, because she felt sure she was doing right, and soon managed to change the subject of conversation to the pleasure ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... "A queer place this," he remarked, as they emerged from the narrowest passage they had yet traversed into a neat, snug, and most unexpected little square, with a garden in the middle of it, and a ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... not mad, far from it. He's just a bit queer—he's got 'bats in the belfry', as men say. He gets these attacks when he's at home in the dark winter days and has nothing to occupy him. But there's little sign of it in the summer. And he's a ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... such places that Bracciolini and his companions looked for the books that they wanted; what is still stranger, they always found in such queer places the exact books they were in search of. It was so, for example, when they recovered the books in the monastery of St. Gall; the books were not found where, Bracciolini admits, they ought to have been, on account of their ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... "Queer child. But I'll promise. Now look here: if I go into a thing at all I go into it heart and soul; so let's do the thing properly. We must have some luggage. I've got an old portmanteau knocking about. Will you wait for me somewhere while I ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Fire Dogs—they are queer, indeed; They seem to come of a three-legged breed. They have no tails, their bark is on their back; They hunt in couples, never in a pack. The day's work over, 'tis a pleasant sight To find them waiting by ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... needs, the segregation of the physically defective or needy will encourage the cooeperation of children themselves in persuading parents to act intelligently for the child's sake. No child wants to remain "queer" or "dopey" or behind his peers. The city superintendent of schools for New York City has asked for laws compelling parents to permit operations and punishing them for neglecting to take steps, within their power, to remove physical defects ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... 'Queer fish, women!' he delivered himself of the philosophical ejaculation cloudily. I was not on terms with him to offer any remark upon the one in question. His imperturbable good humour foiled me, and I left him, merely giving him a warning, to which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... queer, quizzical face. "Let it smell the green fields, Doctor. Ledgers and copperas are not good food for a chicken's soul, or ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... askt Roderick: "why should we see nothing in the vast realm of water, in lakes, rivers, and seas, but those dismal objects which you have taught yourself to find there? why not rather look on such creatures as queer, amusing, and ludicrous mummers? so that the deep might be called a kind of large maskt ballroom. But your caprices go still further; for while you love roses with a sort of idolatry, there are other flowers for which you have a no less passionate hatred: ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... what becomes of Creation? Prince Charles, hidden in a convent, was being tutored by Mlle. Luci in the sensational philosophy of Locke, 'nothing in the intellect which does not come through the senses'—a queer theme for a man of the sword to study. But, thirty years earlier, the Regent d'Orleans had made crystal-gazing fashionable, and stories of ghosts and second-sight in the highest circles were popular. Mesmer had not yet appeared, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... how queer my head feels! Give us a boost, please. Stop howling, Maud, and come home. You bring the machine, and I'll pay you, Pat." As he spoke, Tom slowly picked himself up, and steadying himself by Polly's shoulder, issued his commands, and the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... this evening," she said, with a queer ring of anxiety in her voice, as if she feared that for some reason or another she ran the risk of failing to despatch her letter. She glanced at the clock, and stood, pen in hand, thinking of ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... sat: she cooed content, And bats ringed round, and daylight went; The gnarl, our seat, is wrenched and sunk, Prone that queer pocket in the trunk Where lay the ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... the trunk and edged around it. As he did so a form moved around the trunk also. Hervey paused. The pounding of his heart seemed louder than the noises of the storm. In his throat was a queer burning sensation. He could not speak. He could not stir. The dark form moved ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... light. "Well, this is good!" soliloquized the ancient dame, as she seated herself on a box and puffed away at the short-stemmed pipe. Ah, good indeed to get away from city folks, with their stuck-up manners and queer ways, a-fault-finding when you stick your knife in your mouth in place of your fork, and a-feeding you on China tea in place of dear old yaupon. Charles, you can't reckon how I longs to get a ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... the red-bearded man. "Can't I say a teasing word without gittin' called to order fer it? I know ye, my boy, as well as ye know yerself. Ye're a queer one. Ye're one of the few that must know all sides of the world—and can't content themselves with bein' respectable! Ye haven't sunk to 'low life' because ye're low yourself, but ye'll never git a damned one o' the respectable ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... springing lightly through the fringing bay and briers toward an open space on the hillside. "There is a gate in the wall!" she called out; "it seems to be some sort of enclosure. Lewis, help me to open the gate! Hurry! What a queer place! What do you suppose ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... come to han', Requestin' me to please be funny; But I a'n't made upon a plan Thet knows wut 's comin', gall or honey: Ther' 's times the world doos look so queer, Odd fancies come afore I call 'em; An' then agin, for half a year, No preacher 'thout a call 's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... you, he is not here," he cried. "The man is not here. He is quite small, with very queer, black hair." ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... arm. He looked up. By the light of the moon he saw a boy standing before him. Such a queer boy he was, too. He had cloven feet, and his coat, if it was a coat, seemed to be made in the ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... very hills over the capital could be seen, with little green wheat-fields dotting them and, as the raft drew a little closer, Chad could see houses on the hills—more strange houses of wood and stone, and porches, and queer towers on them from which glistened ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... the van in which May would journey was not to be expected at the Palais de Justice before noon, it so happened that at nine o'clock that same morning a queer-looking "loafer" having the aspect of an overgrown, overaged "gamin de Paris" might have been seen hanging about the Prefecture de Police. He wore a tattered black woolen blouse and a pair of wide, ill-fitting trousers, fastened about his waist ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... invented charades; and Helen Josselyn acted them, as charades had never been acted on West Hill until now. When it came to the Hobarts' "Next Thursday" they gave us "Dissolving Views,"—every successive queer fashion that had come up resplendent and gone down grotesque in these last thirty years. Mrs. Hobart had no end of old relics,—bandbaskets packed full of venerable bonnets, that in their close gradation of change seemed like one individual Indur ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... tale they tell at the darkening, and you who are Rulewater folk probably know it well. But however well you may know it, you have to own that it is an eerie thing to listen to when the fire is dying down, and there are queer-shaped shadows playing on the walls, and outside in the wood the owls are beginning to hoot, or, from the far moor, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... like uncle awfully; it seems to me that he is just what I expected he would be. I suppose they all put in equal shares, but the other men quite look upon him as their leader. Sometimes when he is talking to me he speaks just as people do at home. When he talks to the men he uses the same queer words they do. He is taller than father was, and more strongly built. What I like in him is, he is always the same. Sometimes the others used to get grumbly when we were shut up so long, but it never seemed to make any difference ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... Heaven; people who thought it right to keep the seventh day of the week as a Sabbath instead of the first day; people who cherished a special predilection for the Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel; people with queer views about property and government; people who advocated either too little marriage or too much marriage; all such eccentric characters as are apt to come to the surface in periods of religious excitement found in Rhode Island a favoured ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... very queer place, Van Bibber thought, and the people stared very hard at him and his gloves and the gardenia in his coat and at the ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... ways Brown gets a letter from Belle, and in it says she's invited a whole lot of folks from Chicago and New York and Boston and the land knows where, and that they've never been to the Cape and she wants to show 'em what a "quaint" place it is. "Can't you get," says she, "two or three delightful, queer, old 'longshore characters to be at work 'round the hotel? It'll give such a touch of local color," ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... always visible—green, blue, or grey according to distance. One may ride, walk, or go by boat to any quarter of the town; for it is not only divided by two rivers, but is also intersected by numbers of canals crossed by queer little bridges curved like a well-bent bow. Architecturally (despite such constructions in European style as the College of Teachers, the great public school, the Kencho, the new post- office), it is much like other quaint Japanese towns; ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... its meanin' anything to Keith, or of his takin' it nohow wrong; but after Mis' McGuire had gone home (she came out an' set with me a spell first in the kitchen) I heard a queer little noise in the settin'-room, an' I went an' looked in. Keith was at the table, his arms flung straight out in front of him, an' his head bowed down. An', Miss Dorothy, he was cryin' ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... one, and him readin' a book like a dead man without a civil word out of him! It's queer they'd be allowin' the sick ones to read books, when I'll bet it's the same lazy readin' in the house brought the half of them down with the consumption itself. (Raising his voice.) I'm thinking this whole shebang is a big, thievin' fake—and I've ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... came up on deck, because it affords me an opportunity to say something that Kennedy's queer talk has rather forced upon my mind. It is this. If by any chance we should be attacked, will you undertake to see that Mrs Vansittart, her daughter, and the boy are, any or all of them, prevented from coming on deck? Their presence here under such circumstances could be of no possible assistance ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... such a record it was ludicrous to deny that Tilden, although resembling a reformer, was simply an adroit politician, who had cultivated some queer political associates and had countenanced some very shady transactions. Nevertheless, Tilden would not be diverted from the singleness of his purpose. To make the issue a personal one he took the stump and traversed the State from one end to the other, always addressing immense crowds. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Ross always uses, and a nice little secretaire for papers. Mamma was so charmed when she saw that; she told Cyril that he only wanted a few stained shelves to hold his books, and that then he would be as snug as possible. I thought Cyril looked a little queer when she said that, and when she exclaimed at the softness of the couch I saw such an odd smile on his face. I fancy he must have bought it himself, and that he does not wish mamma to know it.' ('Oh, you little goose!' observed Audrey, when ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... unless you can say something better than that. Well, let me tell you, I have been in very genteel society, without feeling any thing so human, so catholic, so pantheistical, (in the right sense,) as I did in making one of that queer company. The great lout of a giant, with not soul enough in him to fill out his circumference; the sad little dwarf, with not room enough for hers; the poor, patient, necromanted savage of a bear; the smart, steely, grog-loving, praise-loving ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the clothing, against the bed, or rubbing the thighs together. Sometimes the child sits upon the floor, crosses its thighs tightly and rocks backward and forward. Many of these things are passed over lightly and are regarded for months as simply a "queer trick" of the child. It may be seen at any age, even in those not more than a year old, ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... receive it. Venders of guava jelly, rude pottery, and straw mats hastily spread out their merchandise on the muddy ground and began to dilate loudly on their merits. A scantily clad man held aloft a rare leopard skin, which he vigorously offered for two pesos gold. Slatternly women, peddling queer delectables of uncertain composition, waved their thin, bare arms and shrilly advertised their wares. Black, naked children bobbed excitedly about; and gaunt dogs and shrieking pigs scampered recklessly through the crowd and added to the general confusion. Here ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... inasmuch as they were contemplating the problem:—'I don't know what to do!' Nicholas's appetite for Turkey breakfasts had made work too profound for the brains of Downing Street. 'Don't seem a subject of this atmosphere,' said the stupid, significantly canting his head, and giving a queer look out of the corner of his right eye. 'You fellows don't seem to know me,' I interpolated, 'Citizen Smooth—they call me Solomon Smooth, Esq., that is my name.' A door now opened near where I was standing, and in I walked—right among ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... their luncheons. These were wrapped in little fancy napkins that were carefully shaken and folded to serve for the next day. As the Everglade teachers had dismissed Mrs. Preston from the first as queer, her absence from the noon gossip ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... uneven; singular, peculiar, unusual, unique, strange, quaint, extraordinary, queer, eccentric, whimsical, freakish, baroque, fantastic, nondescript, abnormal, bizarre, erratic, unconventional, curious, capricious; extra, remaining, additional, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... receive the food (for the Belgians) and consign it to Whitlock. This is their way of keeping it out of German hands—have the Stars and Stripes, so to speak, to cover every bag of flour and of salt. That's only one of 1,000 queer activities that I engage in. I have a German princess's[75] jewels in our safe—$100,000 worth of them in my keeping; I have an old English nobleman's check for $40,000 to be sent to men who have been building a house for his daughter in Dresden—to ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... roses. And theise weren the first roseres and roses, both white and rede, that evere ony man saughe. And thus was this mayden saved be the grace of God. And therfore is that feld clept the feld of God florysscht: for it was fulle of roses. Also besyde the queer of the chirche, at the right syde, as men comen dounward 16 greces, [Footnote: Steps.] is the place where oure Lord was born, that is fulle welle dyghte of marble, and fulle richely peynted with gold, sylver, azure, and other coloures. And 3 paas besyde, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... man, who had excited the general mirth of the crowd on his arrival, took his stand opposite the target. He gazed at it a full minute before raising his piece. There was a derisive titter throughout the spectators as at last he did so in an awkward style, and with a queer twist of his mouth. The next moment he was rigid as a statue cut out of stone. Flash! bang! the bull's-eye; again the bull's-eye; two more very near it; twice again the bull's-eye. So he has made the best score after all. "I thought so," ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... a moment, and then said, "If you are Amy's daughter you are a Harris, and they are queer, with slow minds,—and now go. I am infernally tired, and ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... the Cardinal's theory that an African 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 Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... much about her at that moment from Duroc, but when I chanced to meet him in Paris two years later, after the campaign of Wagram, I was not very much surprised to find that I needed no introduction to his bride, and that by the queer turns of fortune he had himself, had he chosen to use it, that very name and title of the Baron Straubenthal, which showed him to be the owner of the blackened ruins of the ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from her and faced the valley saturated with slumberous sunlight. Lucy hesitated for a moment and then fled lightly into the house. After a little he heard her singing on the upper floor. People wouldn't think it was queer because she would ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... had eaten what they could there came a change. The friar ceased talking; the old man faced Prosper with a queer look. "Sir, have you well-eaten and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... know she meant Dudley. I would have blurted out that shrinking from the mere touch of his hand was a queer way to show it; only I was afraid to speak at all, for fear I begged her for God's sake not to speak of love and Dudley to me! And suddenly something banged even that out of my head. "Listen," I heard my own whisper. ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... after he had had a mountain of granite hollowed out as a receptacle for the triple coffin, painted and gilded, covered with hieroglyphics and beautiful paintings of the Judgment of Souls,' continued the queer little merchant, half audibly, as though talking ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... astound me," said Patty. "Why do they wear such queer rigs? Almost like a masquerade or fancy-dress ball. You, for instance; why do you wear this Oriental ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... the last two weeks I've felt very queer about keeping Tom's disappearance a secret. At first I dreaded to have any one know, on account of Fairy Godmother's horror of gossip and on my own account, too. She was afraid that some malicious person ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... boots, a collection of rags, or the like. Besides these and other shows, there were the wandering minstrels, most of whom were "Waterloo veterans" wanting arms or a leg. I remember one whose arms had been "smashed by a thunderbolt at Jamaica." Queer bent old dames, who superintended "lucky bags" or told fortunes, supplied the uncanny element, but hesitated to call themselves witches, for there can still be seen near Thrums the pool where these unfortunates used to be drowned, and in the session book of the Glen Quharity kirk can be read an ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... eaten so many. Besides, he didn't remember ever having known Billy to leave heads around that way. Billy sometimes catches more fish than he can eat, but then he usually hides them. The farther he went down the Laughing Brook, the more puzzled Farmer Brown's boy grew. It made him feel very queer. He would have felt still more queer if he had known that all the time two other fishermen who had been before him were watching him and chuckling to themselves. They were Little Joe Otter ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 With light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... many times the lakes have all Been emptied over here; Why Clinton did not feed the grand Canal Up here—I think is queer. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... his wife, laying an arm particularly white and round about his neck as she spoke, 'are you not a queer man and a stern? I have been your wedded wife now these three years; and, beside my dower, have brought you three as bonnie bairns as ever smiled aneath a summer sun. O man, you a douce man, and fitter ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... time I still had my husband, who ran off in search of him. And this is the queer part of the story: he brought back the Spaniard's clothes, which he had found under a big stone on a sort of breakwater along the river bank, nearly opposite la Grande Breteche. My husband went so early that no one saw him. ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... queer and mighty particular, but if you get the soft side of her you are all right," she said to Bessie, who moved about the house almost as handily as if she had ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... king, but was ready to defend his claim by battle sooner than yield. William was a man of power and iron will; he forced his reluctant Normans to listen to his complaint, equipped an army, and sailed for Britain. On came the queer little ships of war, nearer and nearer to England's white, free cliffs, and cast anchor in ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... bull-frogs in the creek sing louder to our glory; would the bleating of the sheep swing in sweeter to the music of the valley? And look at God's fireplace, I cry, pointing to the west, where the sun is heaping the glowing cloud coals among the mountains. God's fireplace? says Tim, with a queer look in his eyes. Yes, say I, and the valley is the hearthstone. The mountains are the andirons. Over them, piled sky high, the cloud-logs are glowing, and never logs burned like those, all gold and ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... they always seemed to know when something unusual was happening. It was wrong, really, to consider them unintelligent animals. There are other sorts of intelligence than human, and other sorts of communication, and other sorts of culture. The Baron IV colonists had never understood the queer perceptive sense that the Dusties seemed to possess, any more than they knew how many Dusties there were, or what they ate, or where on the planet they lived. All they knew was that when they landed on Baron IV, the Dusties ...
— Image of the Gods • Alan Edward Nourse
... the poor is, of course, equally essential. America is described by Mr. Lowell in the noblest panegyric ever made upon his own country, as "She that lifts up the manhood of the poor". She has taken some rather queer methods of securing that object lately; yet, however imperfect the result, every American traveller will, I believe, sympathise with what Mr. Bryce has recently said in his great book. America is still the land of hope—the land where the poor man's horizon is not bounded by a vista of inevitable ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... "He had a queer fad. He cultivated one of his finger-nails, that of the little finger of his left hand, with the greatest care. Just like a Chinese mandarin. At last the nail was fully a centimetre long, and made holes in all his gloves. Now, whenever a speck of dirt lodged in this nail, he was in the habit ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... became its purchaser. It lies before me now, in an inner wrapper of queer old black paper, beside its little tight-fitting bag, or case of a kind of bright, large-flowered silken stuff not made in these days, and its outer wrapper of discolored brief-paper; a pretty little document of sixty-eight small pages in a feminine hand, perfect in ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable |
