"Quirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as she ran downstairs. She hoped Mademoiselle did not see her glance.... Mademoiselle, standing there all disfigured and blotchy about something... it was nothing... it couldn't be anything.... If anyone were dead she would not be standing there... it was just some silly prim French quirk... her dignity... someone had been "grossiere"... and there she stood in her black hat and black cotton gloves.... Hurriedly putting on her hat and long lace scarf she decided that she would not change her shoes. Somewhere out in the sunshine ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... open doorway and gave a long whistle with a little quirk at the end. Then he came back to Pinky in the wide-seated porch swing. "You know," he said, his voice lowered confidentially, "I thought I'd take mother to New York for ten days or so. See the shows, and run around and eat at the dens of wickedness. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... thin quirk of thin lips. "Now let me outline your duties, Marsden. You are posted to my ship as Executive Officer. An Executive Officer is ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... repeated, half-abstractedly. He went over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a little quirk of humour at the corners of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... an interesting quirk,' I said. 'My senses that fancy they have killed a woman have given birth to an illusion of guilt. And you are that illusion. My madness dresses itself in logic like a fishwife hanging rhinestones ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... vicious reasoning, circular reasoning; petitio principii [Lat.], ignoratio elenchi [Lat.]; post hoc ergo propter hoc [Lat.]; non sequitur, ignotum per ignotius [Lat.]. misjudgment &c 481; false teaching &c 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism^; quibble, quirk, elenchus^, elench^, fallacy, quodlibet, subterfuge, subtlety, quillet^; inconsistency, antilogy^; a delusion, a mockery, and a snare [Denman]; claptrap, cant, mere words; lame and impotent conclusion [Othello]. meshes of sophistry, cobwebs of sophistry; flaw in an ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... said Telfer and his voice seemed far away and unnatural like the voice from the jail; "it is an odd thought that but for a quirk in the brain this Mike McCarthy might himself have been a kind of Christ with a pipe in ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the details of the small boy's appearance came back, later, with an amazing clarity. Later she could have described his dark, sullen eyes, his mouth with its curiously grim quirk at one corner, his shock of black hair and his ragged coat. But at the moment she had the ability to see only one thing—the scrawny gray kitten that the boy had tied to the iron leg of the bench; the shrinking kitten that the boy was torturing ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... myself. Apathy or the affectation of apathy must be acquired—Inevitably must be—My passions must be masked: I must pretend to have conquered them. In their naked and genuine form they are indecent, immoral, impure, I know not what! But catch a metaphysical quirk, and let vanity and dogmatic assertion stand sponsors and baptize it a truth, and then raptures, extravagance, and bigotry itself are deities! Be then as loud, as violent, as intolerant as the most rancorous of zealots, and it is all ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... didst not ask that at first rather than at last? Thou 'rt too fond of quip and quirk and wordy warfare, John, too much given to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... called it, with that funny little quirk in the corner of his mouth, "a dwelling in amity, more precious than jewels ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... not at all like 'Poleon Doret's. When it gave his fingers a strong, firm, friendly pressure his throat contracted painfully. He raised his eyes, but they were blurred; he could distinguish nothing except that Jerry Quirk had sidled closer and that their ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... to ameliorate the suffering and persecuted of ail classes, Messrs. Quibble and Quirk, attorneys-at-law, beg to offer their professional services at the following fixed and equitable rate,—they, Messrs. Q. and Q., pledging themselves that on no occasion shall the charge exceed the sum opposite the particular amusement in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the accused as white as the plaster itself. France is the domain of satire, which reigns supreme in our land; Frenchmen jest on a scaffold, at the Beresina, at the barricades, and some will doubtless appear with a quirk upon their lips at the grand assizes of the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... freedom. I came, because I like freedom; I am staying because I like the climate. I find that what freedom means in the West is the ability of ignorant and fanatical persons to start some new, fantastical quirk of scriptural interpretation, to build a new cult around it, and earn a living out ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... gleg enough, An' bout a house that's rude an' rough The boy might learn to swear; But then, wi' you, he'll be sae taught, An' get sic fair example straught, I havena ony fear. Ye'll catechize him every quirk, An' shore him weel wi' Hell; An' gar him follow to the kirk— —Ay when ye gang yoursel'. If ye then, maun be then Frae hame this comin' Friday; Then please Sir, to lea'e Sir, The ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... when frightened by something thrown into the water, leap out by dozens, together with the dace, and wreck themselves upon a floating plank. It is the little light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or silver spangles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is almost dissolved by the summer heats. A slighter and lighter colored ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... which he locks These and a hundred other things. His grinning brothers, Reuben and Burke And Nathan and Jotham and Solomon, lurk Around the corner to see him work— Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed-end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot-holes and pried through cracks; With wood from the pile and straw from the stacks He plugged the knot-holes and caulked the cracks; And a dipper of water, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... The house used was in the market-place, The peers and commoners sat together; but a private room was allotted for the lords to consult in. Dr. Patrick Darcy, an eminent lawyer, represented the Chancellor and the judges. Mr. Nicholas Plunket was chosen as Speaker; the Rev. Thomas O'Quirk, a learned Dominican friar, was ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack |
