"Queerness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tongue about it, giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life, asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked. He hadn't disturbed people with the queerness of their having to know a haunted man, though he had had moments of rather special temptation on hearing them say they were forsooth "unsettled." If they were as unsettled as he was—he who had never been settled for an hour in his life—they would ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... his or her part and strove in imagination to conceive how they would act and feel as old men and old women, they grew more interested, and more sensible of the mingled pathos and absurdity of the project, and its decided general effect of queerness. They all set themselves to make a study of old age in a manner that had never occurred to them before, and never does occur to most people at all. Never before had their elderly friends received so much attention ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... There was a queerness, a sort of mystery, about this couple which I admit piqued my curiosity, though as a rule I have no morbid interest in the affairs of my neighbors. They behaved like a pair of lovers who had run off and got married clandestinely. I willingly acquitted them, however, of having done anything ...
— Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... returned. He had made his meal unattended. Now, while he looked for her, she was hurrying down the alley, bound for the home of her preacher. She felt the need of his holy counsels and the reading of scriptural passages. She was used to queerness in her master, but if he were going crazy all of a sudden, why that would be a different matter altogether. So presently she was confiding to her ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... replied, "our whole story, all your queerness, everything—and he, instead of being amused, grew angry, and stamped ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... near-sighted, and whatever they did to other objects they magnified immensely the kind eyes behind them. Blessed conveniences they were, in their hideous, honest strength—they showed the good lady everything in the world but her own queerness. This element was enhanced by wild braveries of dress, reckless charges of colour and stubborn resistances of cut, wonderous encounters in which the art of the toilet seemed to lay down its life. She had the tread of a grenadier and the ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... this: It is a queerness of these people that they like this vile-tasting wine. Well, let them. I cannot quarrel with their tastes. My manhood, according to their queer notions, must compel me to appear to like this wine. Very well. I shall so appear. But I shall drink no ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... "to steal," because it always made her brother uncomfortable. For Stevie was delicately honest. Certain simple principles had been instilled into him so anxiously (on account of his "queerness") that the mere names of certain transgressions filled him with horror. He had been always easily impressed by speeches. He was impressed and startled now, and his intelligence ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... street, we put down right next to the canal side of the city, took our small cameras and revolvers, and started for a gap in the wall of masonry. We weren't ten feet from the rocket when we both saw the explanation for a lot of the queerness. ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... A desire to give pleasure, the queerness of the notion, and her real love of seeing this girl ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... old story. All the Wendovers have died of weak hearts or queer brains—generally of both together. I imagine you had some experience of the squire's queerness at one time, Mr. Elsmere. I can't say you and he seemed to be on particularly good terms on the only occasion I ever had the pleasure of meeting ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had ever taken, and that of itself would have made it unforgettable. Then, too, she was going visiting, and she had never been visiting before. Also, she was leaving Mrs. Hobbs and, for a time at least, that lady could not remind her of her queerness and badness. More than all, she was going on a journey, a real journey, like a grown-up or a person in a story, and her family—David and the dolls—were journeying with her. What the journey might mean to her, or to what sort of place she was going—these questions did ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... me you've got yourself into some fix," she said to herself. "What's puzzling me is that I can't believe the evidence of my own eyes. Did I dream I saw Loveday go downstairs and take a roll of papers out of Hilary's desk? Goodness, I was only too horribly awake! The queerness of the thing bothers me. It doesn't fit in, somehow. Loveday! Loveday's the last person in the world, as I should have thought, to do a trick like that. I can't understand it. It's the sort of stupid ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... over; he saw two Little Sisters of the Poor who were in charge of this school of fossils, and he understood. These poor creatures were dressed in clothes that had been begged, the rummage of wardrobes, for which the owners had no further use. Then the queerness of their outfit was pathetic; the Little Sisters must have been at infinite trouble to utilize these leavings of charity; and the old children, recking little of fashion, plumed themselves with pride ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... its remarks, while Pat was so often in a kind of dreamland of his own fancy, that he slipped into many things without quite realising what he was about. Just now he was enjoying himself very much. He loved the queerness and fascination of old Nance and her belongings. It was like living in a fairy-story to him, and he felt rather cross at Archie for interrupting it, though he ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth |
