"Strangeness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... protector is John grown to me. The mistress, and presumptive wife, of Woodvil Can never stoop so low to supplicate A man, her equal, to redress those wrongs, Which he was bound first to prevent; But which his own neglects have sanction'd rather, Both sanction'd and provok'd: a mark'd neglect, And strangeness fast'ning bitter on his love, His love which long has been upon the wane. For me, I am determined what to do: To leave this house this night, and lukewarm John, And trust for food ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase,— Were equally existent in far days Of Music's dim beginning—even so, Truth was at full within thee long ago, Alive as now it takes what latest shape May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape Time's insufficient garniture; they fade, They fall—those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine And free through March frost: May dews crystalline Nourish truth merely,—does June boast the fruit As—not new vesture ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... would have prescribed a dose of Kasbah air, but to-night she felt strange, and she wanted strangeness. Mrs. Forbes with the vertigo, in a small carriage, would be inappropriate. She, therefore, bade her retire, mounted into the vehicle with Abdallah Jack, and was quickly driven away, her bonnet strings ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... first to move. He turned and looked at Mrs. Detlor. His mind was full of the strangeness of the situation—this man and woman meeting under such circumstances after twelve years, in which no lines of their lives had ever crossed. But he saw, almost unconsciously, that she had dropped his rose. He stooped, picked it up and gave it to her. With a singular coolness—for, though pale, she ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... juxtapositions, to satisfy or to exhibit the varied tastes and pursuits of its occupants. To Candace it was as wonderful as any museum; and while her eyes slowly travelled from one object to another, she forgot her strangeness ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... smiling at the painter, Masie's hand fast in his, Fudge tiptoeing softly about, divided between a sense of the strangeness of the place and a certainty of mice behind the canvases. Felix knew the old fellow's kind, and recognized the note of attempted gayety in the voice—the bravado of the poor putting their best, sometimes their ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... horror and strangeness of their position made all on board forget their enemies, among whom a terrible silence had fallen, but as the captain glanced in the direction of the praus he saw that the distance between them had increased, and that, caught in the same wondrous current, the enemy's vessel was ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... initiated into the mystery of sambals—tiny saucers of pickle-like and preserve preparations, popular amongst the Malays as appetisers, but quite needless in Ned's case, for he was perfectly independent of anything of the kind, and after his curry and coffee, now the first chill of strangeness had passed, paid plenty of attention to the fruit pressed upon him by the doctor's daughter. Now it was a deliciously-flavoured choice banana with a deep orange skin, now a mangosteen, and then a ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... The moon fell down behind the opposite ridge, and the road ran through a deep forest. He no longer saw the shades of meaning in her face, but in the blackness of Erebus he could have sensed her presence at his side. Speech, though of this strange kind of which neither felt the strangeness, had come and gone between them, and now silence spoke as eloquently. Twice or thrice their eyes met through the gloom,—and there was light. At length she spoke with the impulsiveness in her voice ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pinched, colorless face, constrained in a scared and apprehensive look as though in constant dread of an impending violence or injury. Over one eye she wore a green patch, which greatly heightened the pallor and strangeness of her features. ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... fascinated by the splendor and strangeness of the spectacle, suddenly the air was filled with fluttering colors. I do not mean flags and streamers, but colors in the air itself! Colors the most exquisite that ever the eye looked upon! They changed, flickered, ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... was not thinking of the planets at all. It had just come over me with dreadful distinctness that from now on my life could never, never be the same. When I had first parted from Roger and Margarita, the poetic strangeness of their surroundings, the shock of all the discoveries I had just made, the relief of finding our friendship secured on a new footing, nay, the very darkness of the mild evening through which I was rowed away from them after that ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the little Stuart princess, the daughter of Charles the First, whose quaint, coiffed, blue-gowned portrait hangs in a dark, gloomy gallery at Rome. I was subconsciously aware that I liked it despite its strangeness, the while I wondered more actively if that Paul Pry of a Van Blarcom had imparted to the ship's authorities the suspicions he had shared ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... tremendously, and happy is it for the immigrant who gets this initial impression from contact with a Christian missionary instead of a street sharper. Once put the touch of human kindness upon the immigrant and he is not likely to forget it. The hour of homesickness, of strangeness in a strange land, of perplexity and trouble, is the hour of hours when sympathy and help come most gratefully. The missionaries are on hand at this critical juncture. Thousands of immigrants are saved from falling into bad hands and evil associations through their zealous ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... builder's cart. Of course the club was a strange one, both of my own being closed for cleaning, a coincidence expressly planned by Providence for my inconvenience. The club which you are 'permitted to make use of' on these occasions always irritates with its strangeness and discomfort. The few occupants seem odd and oddly dressed, and you wonder how they got there. The particular weekly that you want is not taken in; the dinner is execrable, and the ventilation a farce. All these evils oppressed me to-night. And yet I was puzzled to find ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... less degree, according to temperament, amongst all the other little groups of men and women by whom they were surrounded. Wingrave alone remained unaffected. He was carefully and correctly dressed in clothes borrowed from his new tailor, and he showed not the slightest signs of strangeness or gaucherie amongst his unfamiliar surroundings. He looked about him always, with the cold, easy nonchalance of the man of the world. Of being recognized he had not the slightest fear. His frame and bearing, and ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... before from thy mysterious lore; why did the very strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me with a delightful fear? Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-demon, there was no peril to other but myself: and none to me, for my love was my heavenliest part; and my ignorance in all things, except the art to love thee, repelled every thought ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... seething with the tragedy and strangeness of the crime, Mr. Jabez Pash came to the heterogeneously-furnished sitting-room in Gwynne Street to read the will. For there was a will after all. Deborah, and Bart, who had witnessed it at the request of their master, told Mr. Pash of its existence, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... speedily settled down into their new home, and after the first feeling of strangeness had worn off, were forced to acknowledge that the reality of country living was not so disagreeable as they had anticipated. The neighborhood was pleasantly and thickly settled, the people kind-hearted and hospitable. True, Mrs. Smith still secretly yearned for modern conveniences and the ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... good care of that,' he said in a tone whose strangeness told me more than his words, and with that he turned away and sat down beside the professor, with the thoughts that were within his heart still unspoken. As soon as he had gone back to his seat I called Francis Hartness to me and ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... the words of the dreamer. Scarcely was she awake again, while we wondered at their strangeness, and asked her questions of their meaning, which she could not answer, for here the wisdom of the wisest was at fault, lo! you rode over the hill, and with you a beautiful white woman whose name you say is Swallow. Yes, this is the White Swallow who shall fly in front ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... list have not been affected in London, and at least two of them have made conspicuous profits. But in any case it is probable that they suffered if at all only during the first period of the war, when the general feeling of strangeness and insecurity was strong enough to inhibit the shopping instinct of the wealthier classes. As soon as these became accustomed to the state of war they reverted with even greater energy to their old pastime of spending money: and meanwhile the luxury trades had acquired an entirely ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... he said, turning sideways in his saddle, "I think we can get there in about five days, at the pace we'll be compelled to go; and we can sell these mules or give them away, just as we like. Going home! I can't get the strangeness of it out of my head. And a sister, too, mind you. I'm beginning to feel like a man now. You see, uncle wanted me to be a boy as long as I could, and it was only of late that he began to tell me that I must put ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... the still night suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered is from other worlds, It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though I know not where. It has the strangeness of the luring West, And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee I am aware of other times and lands, Of birth far-back, of lives in many stars. O beauty lone and like a candle clear In this dark country of the world! Thou art My woe, my early ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... pain of feeling that he "had spoiled my life" (a chivalrous assumption of blame for what was, I think, a natural, almost inevitable, catastrophe), and that long after all personal relation had been broken off, he wrote to me gently, kindly,—as sympathetically ignoring the strangeness of the position, as if, to use his own expression, "we stood face to face on the brink of ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... nineteenth century recedes into history and the essentially romantic quality of its great adventures is confirmed by the "beauty touched with strangeness" which illumines their true perspective, we are discovering, what the adventurers themselves always knew, that the movement for the higher education of women was not the least romantic of those Victorian quests ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... illustration, like a collection of patchwork, made of pieces as they might have chanced to have been cut by the mantua-maker, only just smoothed to fit each other, the different sorts of produce being in such a multitude of plots, and those so small and of such irregular shapes. Add to the strangeness of the village itself, that we had been climbing upwards, though gently, for many miles, and for the last mile and a half up a steep ascent, and did not know of any village till we saw the boys who had come out to play. The air was very cold, and one could not help thinking what ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Ralph's safety—a curiosity not, surely, under these circumstances, discreditable, to know what was going on, determined her to ascertain something more of the character of the nocturnal visitation. She felt secured from the strangeness of the occurrence, that evil was afoot, and solicitous for its prevention, she was persuaded to the measure solely with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... mysterious thing, and, in a spirit of bravado, he was pushing through the crowd to reach it, when a great clamour arose; every one sprang back, and fled wildly, shrieking: "Moloch, Moloch!" He did not know in the least what it meant, but the very strangeness of the word added to the horror, and he, too, fled with the rest; fled blindly, desperately, up streets and down, watched, it seemed to him, from every window by a cold, malignant eye, but never daring to turn his head, lest he should see the awful thing behind him; ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... few things to which we can not easily become accustomed, to the extent of a complete failure to notice their peculiarities, if their strangeness is only unfolded ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... fine were those far-off days in July which led us up to the brink of such undreamt-of happenings. On the Tuesday night I was sitting alone on the Terrace, when Redmond came out. For once, he was in a mood to talk. His mind was full of the strangeness and interest of that first day's Conference—a council, or parley, so momentous, so unprecedented. It touched what was very strong in him—the historic imagination. He told me how the King had received them all, stayed with them for some intercourse of welcome, and had been ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... piled with goods—boxes and bales now, instead of books and bat; the strange faces of the clerks, and the easy manners and handsome appearance of the rich boy, Ashton, just above him in the store,—all these contributed not a little to his sense of the newness and strangeness of his position. ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... in some of the songs—which were familiar to him from their use in the church—at first with a touch of hesitation, and then more confidently. For as they went on his sense of strangeness and fear at his new experience diminished, and his thoughts began to take on their habitual assurance and complacency. Were not these people going to the Celestial City? And was not he in his right place among them? He had always looked forward to this journey. If they were sure, ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... faithfully what his room presented, and nothing more. It stood there like a golden setting whence the central jewel has been stolen away—like a night-sky without the glory of its stars. She had carried with her all the strangeness of the reflected room. It had sunk to the level of the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... and struck my head," he said, bewildered with the strangeness of it all. "I may have," he repeated—"but if I didn't see Tom Travis's ghost to-night there is no need to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... strange issues leads our life! It seems but yesterday that you were brought To this old house, an orphaned little girl, Whose large shy eyes, pale cheeks, and shrinking ways Filled all our hearts with wonder, as we stood And stared at you, until your heart o'erfilled With the oppressive strangeness, and you wept. Yes, I remember how I pitied you— I who had never wept, nor even sighed, Save on the bosom of my gentle mother; For my quick heart caught all your history When with a hurried step you sought the sun, And pressed your eyes ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... the turbulence of human passions, and that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Seeing that they chanced in a homely parish in Cheshire, no one has been at the trouble to note their strangeness; though, to own the truth, none but the actors in the drama (besides myself, a solitary spectator) are cognizant of its incidents and catastrophe. I might boast, indeed, that I alone am thoroughly in the secret; for it is the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... fine. The white sand in some places near the beach drifted up in large wreaths exactly like snow. One might imagine himself in Scotland were there not a hot sun overhead. The woods present an aspect of strangeness, for everywhere the eye meets the foreign-looking tree from which the bitter aloes is extracted, popping up its head among the mimosa bushes and stunted acacias. Beautiful humming-birds fly about in great numbers, sucking the nectar from the flowers, which are in great abundance and very beautiful. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... love. She showed it in every little way that her maiden modesty did not interfere with, and old Bramble would at times throw out such strong hints of our eventual union as to make me feel very uncomfortable. They neither of them had any idea of my heart having been pre-engaged, and the strangeness of my manner was ascribed by Bramble to my feelings toward Bessy. Bessy, however, was not so easily deceived; my conduct toward her appeared, to say the best of it, very inconsistent. So often had I had opportunities, especially ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... than in any poet. By their assistance he gives rest to the imagination exhausted by the sublimity of heaven and hell, bringing it home to its own familiar earth, to scenes whose charm, unlike that of Eden or Pandemonium, lies not, in the wonder their strangeness excites but in the old habits, experiences and memories which they recall. So, after the strain of the great debate with which the second book opens, he soothes us with the beautiful simile of ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... if they had been in Germany, that land of nicely arranged distances between meals. They had an extremely cheerful little supper out of doors, with things to eat that thrilled the Twinklers in their delicious strangeness; heavenly food, they thought it after the rigours of the second-class cooking on the St. Luke, and the biggest ices they had seen in their lives,—great dollops ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... the Scythians, Ch. V. 15-17, besides still leaving them nameless, emphasises their strangeness to Israel's world. There was a common language in Western Asia, Aramean, the lingua franca of traders from Nineveh to Memphis; and Jew, Assyrian and Egyptian conversed in it. But the tongue of these raiders from over the Caucasus was unintelligible. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... bright and pleasant; but the wind rose during the night, and the waves began to break heavily on the shore, making our island tremble. I had not expected in our inland journey to hear the roar of an ocean surf; and the strangeness of our situation, and the excitement we felt in the associated interests of the place, made this one of the most interesting nights I remember during ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... the "heathen," in spite of taxes and fines—in spite of the fatigue that still remained from those days of travel and hunger, in spite of the strangeness of sitting all day stitching, in spite of even the fierce longing, whenever she passed a telephone, to speak with Dudley Hamilt, Felicia found herself—happy, happy with the same haunting happiness with which ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... was that the strain of eccentricity in his humble little friend had developed into actual insanity. But, on further consideration, he was disposed to take another view. He felt bound to admit that, though there had been a strangeness in the behaviour of the little man throughout his visit, it had not afforded any actual ground for the suspicion of insanity, until he had so suddenly rushed away home. It was, therefore, possible that there ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Musing on the strangeness of life, and on the invariable ultimate triumph of the insignificant and small over the important and vast, illustrated in this instance by the easy substitution in the arbour of slugs for grandfathers, I went slowly round the next bend of the path, and came to the broad walk along the south ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... addressed to both of them, but Ruth was too much occupied with the strangeness of the thought that she was again being counted among "Christian people" to make any answer. Not so Marion. Her eyes danced with merriment, but ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... the strangeness of the scene and the noise and laughter of the people all about, Fleurette set up a wail of woe which developed rapidly into a storm of screams and sobs,—indeed, it was a first-class crying spell,—a thing which the ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... strangeness of this incident is somewhat lost. For as far back as he goes in his own land, he will find some alien camping there; the Cornish miner, the French or Mexican half-blood, the negro in the South, these are deep in the woods and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cross-purposes with the wrong man, seems to betray the fact that they do belong together. They are so readily familiar that the cross-purposes making up the plot seem to be no longer troublesome either to themselves or the audience. The interval of reassurance makes the return of strangeness more unaccountable. Antipholus is also now reassured about his gold, and the earlier cross-purpose seems only ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... know how to put it," he replied. "As you said just now, I love her, and she loves me; and yet there is a sort of strangeness between us. One talks a good deal about one's self when one is in love, at least I do. I've told her all about myself and my mother, and how I came in for this place, and the rest of it. Well—though ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... that clung around her so closely seemed alive, almost thrilling, as it did, with fibres of communication perceptible only to a sixth sense. She marvelled at the strangeness of it, but was no longer afraid. Her fear had vanished at the bidding of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... to peer through the murk at the sight of Mr. Dudley Stackpole fleeing to the shelter of home like a man hunted by a terrible pursuer. But with all his desperate need for haste he ran no straightaway course. The manner of his flight was what gave added strangeness to the spectacle of him. He would dart headlong, on a sharp oblique from the right-hand corner of a street intersection to a point midway of the block—or square, to give it its local name—then go slanting back again to the right-hand corner ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... for epistolary correspondence. I suppose it is the surfeit of excitement that I had in my youth that has made a life of quiet monotony so extremely agreeable to me; it is like stillness after loud noise, twilight after glare, rest after labour. There is enough strangeness too in everything that surrounds me here to interest and excite me agreeably and sufficiently, and I should like the wild savage loneliness of the far away existence extremely, if it were not for the one small item ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Hardress went to his wife's room, and found her troubled because of the strangeness of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... describe the strangeness of that appeal, reaching me so suddenly out of the distance. I knew that it was a mistake, of course, but it was as if, away in the city, some nameless soul had echoed the cry in my own heart. I obeyed an ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... for sleeping came in the afternoon many of the children refused to lie down: some consented but only to sing and talk as they lay. Only one, a child of 2-1/2, slept, because he cried himself to sleep from sheer strangeness. This apparently unbeautiful picture is only the first battle of the individual on his entrance to ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... were shocked and stunned by the life that teemed in the close-packed quarter. It seemed some thick and monstrous growth of vegetation, and that they were wading through it. They shrank closely together in the tangle of narrow streets as though for protection, conscious of the strangeness of it all, and how unrelated they ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... A child's shoe, the doll, sitting in her little wicker-carriage, all objects that have been used or played with during the day, though still as familiar as ever, are invested with something like strangeness and remoteness. I cannot in any measure express it. Then the somewhat dim coal fire throws its unobtrusive tinge through the room,—a faint ruddiness upon the wall,—which has a not unpleasant effect in taking from the colder spirituality of the moonbeams. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... he sat close by the horses, and noted that they fed uneasily and would not lie down. Soon, however, he was lost in his own thoughts, and, as he heard no more of the lions, fell to wondering over the strangeness of their journey and of what the end of it might be. He wondered also about Masouda, who she was, how she came to know so much, why she befriended them if she really was a friend, and other things—for instance, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... wave of cold fear passed through me, at the unprecedented strangeness of my experience. I felt the materialistic, twentieth-century world slipping from me; was I back in the ancient days when Jesus appeared ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... suddenness and ease, the room came out of its strangeness. Voices and cards, the click of chips, the puff of tobacco, glasses lifted to drink,—this level of smooth relaxation hinted no more plainly of what lay beneath than does the surface tell the depth of ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... much probably as you have gained by killing Harran and Annixter. But that's all passed now. You're safe from me." The strangeness of this talk, the oddity of the situation burst upon him and he laughed aloud. "It don't seem as though you could be brought to book, S. Behrman, by anybody, or by any means, does it? They can't get at you through the courts,—the law can't get you, Dyke's pistol missed ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... ten Edinburgh minutes—sixpence between us, and the ever-glorious Lothian Road, or dear mysterious Leith Walk! But here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling; here in this strange place, whose very strangeness would have been heaven to him then; and aspires, yes, C. B., with tears, after the past. See what comes of being left alone. Do you remember Brash? the sheet of glass that we followed along George Street? Granton? the night at Bonny mainhead? the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strangeness of the situation, though not for an instant did he doubt Kiddie's fitness and ability. In Rube's estimation there was nothing great and honourable that Kiddie ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... ground, and redly tattooing the ashes with which their naked bodies were covered; Parsees with their long noses curving over their moustaches, clothed in white, sending one's thoughts back to Ormuz, to Persia, to Zoroaster, to fire-worship and to the strangeness of the fate which drove them out of Persia more than a thousand years ago, and which has turned them into the most industrious traders and most influential citizens of a land in which they are still exiles; Chinese, Afghans—the Highlanders of the East—Arabs, Africans, Mahrattas, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... you look so queer? I don't like you. Be nice to me." There was something terribly wrong with the smug little phrases, or with any words at all just then, there in the heart of the silent dark, and facing the strangeness of the boy's eyes; words failed her suddenly, and she pulled her hands away, and hid her face in them. "I won't go with you—I'll go home, if you ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... difficulty in this world is that the simple things are sometimes very hard to bring about. It is true in a certain sense that if we bring to a man something that is difficult and complex it catches the mind by its very complexity and strangeness. But if we come to him and say that mud is one of his worst enemies it seems hard to him that it could be as bad as it really is, as he is sort of friendly toward the mud. So many are familiar with the automobile—not as familiar, I believe, as they ...
— Address by Honorable William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government
... up in the boat as if undecided what to do. Never a sailor man was more bewildered than this old fellow by the strangeness of the adventure he had encountered. At first he could hardly believe it was all true and that he was not dreaming; but there was Trot in the water, laughing with the mermaids and floating comfortably about, and he couldn't leave his dear ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... night the two friends sat together. Now that the first strangeness had worn off, and with it the consciousness of the divergence of the roads which they had travelled since the old days, Flint began to find his liking springing up as strong as ever, only the liking was of a different kind. It was after midnight when he ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... helpless absorption in thought which changed Amiel's life from a fountain to a vapour: it would keep us near the surf and confluence of things. Its function is not to give any mysterious transcendental knowledge, but to serve culture "by suggesting questions which help to detect the passion, and strangeness and dramatic contrasts of life." And not only to bring suggestions, but repose, by granting to eyes wearied with minute concerns the contrasts of vast times and spaces, the majestic idea of the Whole; to change the focus and variously dispose the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... kissings and handshakings. Then Mr. and Mrs. Mason were introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith. They, it seemed, had been married in the early winter, just as Knight and Annesley had been. And to add to the strangeness of the coincidence, which drew birdlike exclamations from Jean Waldo, George and Kitty were starting for Kansas City that afternoon. They were going by the same train in which the Nelson Smiths ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... not take his eyes off the young woman, so that at length he found himself fascinated, or rather bewitched. She kept her eyes for the most part veiled with the loveliest eyelids fringed with darkest lashes, and he gazed entranced; for the red glow of the little oil-lamp covered all the strangeness of her complexion. But as soon as he met a stolen glance out of those eyes unveiled, his soul shuddered within him. Lovely face and craving eyes alternated fascination ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the body of the once beneficent philosopher who has simply thought that he might as well go now, finding himself powerless to do further good upon earth? Such, and such like, have of course been temporarily insane, though no touch even of strangeness may have marked their conduct up to their last known dealings with their fellow-mortals. But let a Melmotte be found dead, with a bottle of prussic acid by his side—a man who has become horrid to the world because of his late iniquities, a man who ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... and that's been more'n twenty years, I ain't never yet seen a comfortable, respectable, satisfied, old maid—they ain't permitted here, and you know it. In season, of course, you'd marry—that's to be looked for. It chances to be Jude—and after you get over the strangeness, he'll do as well as any other. They are all powerfully alike when they have their senses. The sameness lies in their having their faculties. The only man as was ever different in St. Ange was Timothy Drake. He got smashed on the head by a falling tree up ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... little Raphael!' she said, laughing the words into the yellow beard of the sea-thief who clipped her, and again she nodded at me, in no ways discomposed by the strangeness of her position. But I, poor fool, could not bear it, and I turned and ran down the stairs as if the Devil himself were ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... had gone straight to the heart of his mystery: his strangeness was the strange PATHOS that invested him; the "singularity" of "that other monsieur" was solved ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... cast a look into the corner where Paklin sat, also watching him. "Perhaps the presence of a third person prevents him from saying what he would like," flashed across Sipiagin's mind. He raised his eyebrows, as if in submission to the strangeness of the surroundings he had come to of his own accord, and repeated ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... may well imagine had opened his eyes at my statement. But he was full of his recalled experiences on board the Ferndale, and the strangeness of being mixed up in what went on aboard, simply because his name was also the name of a shipping-master, kept him in a state of wonder which made other coincidences, however unlikely, not so ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... eyes, there was a feeling of motion to the bed. The strangeness of the ceiling overhead drew his attention. It was not canvas, but shiny metal, almost purple ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... of a woman in furred robes and spreading fraise, her hand lifted, her face addressed to the tabernacle. There was a strangeness in the sight of that immovable presence locked in prayer before an abandoned shrine. Her face was hidden, and I wondered whether it were grief or gratitude that raised her hands and drew her eyes to the altar, where no living prayer joined ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... form and well wrought; but by this time I was quite used to the strangeness of him, and merely muttered to myself, "He is coming to summon the squire to the leet;" so I turned toward the village in good earnest. Nor, again, was I surprised at my own garments, although I might well have ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... railway station—its valley and common and wooded hills, were far below and soon left behind at an ever increasing distance. But she did not feel in the least afraid. It was odd, but, after the first surprise, she had lost all sense of strangeness in a situation so foreign to all ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... observable that Miranda does not perceive the working of her father's art upon herself. For, when he casts a spell of drowsiness over her, so that she cannot choose but sleep, on being awaked by him she tells him, "The strangeness of your story put heaviness in me." So his art conceals itself in its very potency of operation; and seems the more like nature for being preternatural. It is another noteworthy point, that while he is ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the point. The earth, the sky, the rocks, the trees, the men and women of Burne-Jones are not those of this world; but they are themselves a world, consistent with itself, and having therefore its own reality. Charged with the beauty and with the strangeness of dreams, it has nothing of a dream's incoherence. Yet it is a dreamer always whose nature penetrates these works, a nature out of sympathy with struggle and strenuous action. Burne-Jones's men and women are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the very diseases of the Navy, which we are troubled with now-a-days. I shall bestow writing of them over and much reading thereof. This morning Sir W. Batten came in to the office and desired to speak with me; he began by telling me that he observed a strangeness between him and me of late, and would know the reason of it, telling me he heard that I was offended with merchants coming to his house and making contracts there. I did tell him that as a friend I had spoke of it to Sir W. Pen and desired him to take a time to tell him of it, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... original aspect of the lunar landscapes, raw in tone, without gradation of colours, only white and black, for diffused light was wanting. Still the sight of this desolate world was very curious on account of its very strangeness. They were moving above this chaotic region as if carried along by the breath of a tempest, seeing the summits fly under their feet, looking down the cavities, climbing the ramparts, sounding the mysterious ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... and Mr. Gradgrind sat down forlorn, on the Clown's performing chair in the middle of the ring. On one of the back benches, remote in the subdued light and the strangeness of the place, sat the villainous whelp, sulky to the last, whom he had the ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... see. Give them the lace on their wedding-day. I can do nothing with you; talk to Tiet Nikonich who is coming to dinner." And she wondered what would come of such strangeness. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... into the details of which we are prevented by want of space—tend to mitigate the prima facie strangeness of the assumption that the Vedanta-sutras, which occupy an intermediate position between the Upanishads and /S/a@nkara, should yet diverge in their teaching from both. The Vedanta of Gau/d/apada and /S/a@nkara would in that case mark a strictly orthodox reaction against all combinations ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... in bearing, talents, and character, is it not strange that Flora, having conquest for her ruling passion, should strive so to relate Anna to Hilary as to give her, Anna, every advantage for the higher prize? Maybe it is, but she liked strangeness—and ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... fifteen minutes' walk for the sturdy farmer who knows it well—and you find yourself lost in a region which has no features and no landmarks, where the earth lays snares for you and the mists betray you, and where even in bright sunshine there reigns an eternal and indescribable melancholy. The strangeness and wildness of the scene entered the boy's consciousness, and brought with them a kind of exaltation. He stood gazing; that inner life of his, of which Louie, his constant companion, knew as ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... old acquaintances. Young and beautiful as they were, they found the deepest pleasure in one another, and the cold feeling of strangeness melted as by a charm. They were awakened to the consciousness that half an hour earlier neither of them had an idea of the other's existence, by the appearance of a girl in the gap in the wall, who seemed very much surprised at the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... indispensable utility, to be endowed with supernatural gifts. But this feeling itself must have had its root in a yet deeper tendency of the Egyptian mind. They reverenced the mysterious manifestation of God in all outward nature. No one can look at an animal, before custom blinds our sense of strangeness, without a feeling of wonder at the law of instinct, and the special, distinct peculiarity which belongs to it. Every variety of animals is a manifestation of a divine thought, and yet a thought hinted rather than expressed. Each must mean something, must symbolize something. But what does it ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... answered Martin. "I haven't seen 'em this dozen year; but the last I heard, Miss Warner and Rose was livin' in Leominster, and Henry was in a big store in Wooster. But what the plague is the matter?" he continued, alarmed at the expression of Hagar's face, as well as at the strangeness ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... the door back so that it was wide open, though he seemed to be amazed at the strangeness of ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... determination they had shown to stand by him until he had reached the goal he sought. He spoke, too, of the magnitude and importance of their discovery, of the knowledge it would add to the geographical lore of the country, and of the strangeness of the fact that the source of their mightiest river had so long been a disputed question. The cause of this he attributed to the peculiarities of the region in which it rose, the many lakes and swamps making ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... gaily in French, and I was so absorbed in my contemplation of them that I did not at first consider the strangeness of their appearance in that costume so early in the morning. When it did occur to me, I concluded the four must have come over from St. Louis to attend the ball and had no other dress to return in, and the other two were doubtless Mr. Gratiot's daughters, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... beginning by her fugitive, evasive ways. Then she had, indeed, led him a dance, but he had thoroughly enjoyed the fun of it. Now the dancing and the fun were all over. At least, so he was left to gather from her manner; for the strangeness of it was that she said nothing now. There was about her a terrible stillness and reserve, and in her little face, once so tender, the suggestion of a ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... displeasure. I renewed my acquaintance with "Fida," no longer little Fida, for she had grown to be a beautiful lady-dog. Our second meeting was by chance, but we talked like old friends, so much had our first done to remove all strangeness. I don't think the next time we saw each other was quite by accident. If I remember rightly, it was not; and we often met afterwards. We agreed that we should do all we could to assist one another, though what I could ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... mounted up until now it was almost overwhelming. Besides, Mrs. Ozanne was not alone in remarking it. Rosalie, too, knew, and conveyed her knowledge in round-about ways to her mother, for they would never speak openly of this strangeness in one they dearly loved. But it was through Rosalie that the mother heard that the same thing had gone on at school. There, the other girls had superstitiously but secretly named Rosanne "The Hoodoo Girl," ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... proposal for the Queen to have married the Prince; that for this purpose the Prince was sent for out of Germany, and the Queen seemed inclinable to the match; yet, after the Prince was come, she used him with a strangeness which was occasioned by the whisperings of Grave Magnus de la Gardie to the Queen, that when the Prince was in Germany he was too familiar with some ladies; at which information, he said, the Queen was so enraged ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... to the window and looked out. The night was black, save for the driving snow, and when he glanced back at the room it seemed a very haven of delight. But the strangeness of their situation, the weird effect of the dead city, with the ghost-like shapes of its houses showing through the snow, was upon his nerves, and he did ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... it. Beyond the narrow horizon of their own concerns they rarely looked, and Chagford people, noting the change, declared that life at Newtake was tying their tongues and lining their foreheads. Will certainly grew more taciturn, less free of advice, perhaps less frank than formerly. A sort of strangeness shadowed him, and only his mother or his son could dispel it. The latter soon learnt to understand his father's many moods, and would laugh or cry, show joy or fear, according to the tune of the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... was dumb, he was awed, he bowed his head, he trembled, he marveled at the desert silence. It was the one thing always present. Even when the wind roared there seemed to be silence. But at night, in this lava world of ashes and canker, he waited for this terrible strangeness of nature to come to him with the secret. He seemed at once a little child and a strong man, and something very old. What tortured him was the incomprehensibility that the vaster the space the greater the silence! At one moment Gale felt there was only death here, and that was the secret; ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of Chinese ancient history is the unravelling of proper names; but, as with other difficulties, this one is owing rather to the novelty and strangeness of the subject, to the unfamiliarity of scene and of atmosphere, than to any inherent want of clearness in the matter itself. In reading Scottish history, no one is much disconcerted to find a man called ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... deadly pale, the faintest, sweetest smile on her lip. He was for the moment incapable of speech. He began phrase after phrase, and broke them off. A whirlwind of feeling possessed him. The strangeness, the unworldliness of what she had done struck him singularly. He realised through every nerve that what she had just said to him she had been bracing herself to say to him ever since their last parting. And now he could not tell, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sometimes allowable even in English: but the habit of dealing with German seems to have produced, in the pages before us, a prodigious superabundance of this form of expression; which gives harshness and strangeness, where the matter would at all events have been surprising enough. Secondly, I object, with the same qualification, to the frequent use of inversion; which generally appears as a transposition of the two members of a clause, in a way which would not have been practiced in conversation. ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... matter; but even in the strangeness and numbness the girl wished he had not come. He was greater and dearer when he had stayed away and sacrificed his picture for her honor, ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... shape which this negative answer takes is, as Mr. Mozley points out, much more definite now than it ever was. Miracles were formerly assailed and disbelieved on mixed and often confused grounds; from alleged defect of evidence, from their strangeness, or because they would be laughed at. Foes and defenders looked at them from the outside and in the gross; and perhaps some of those who defended them most keenly had a very imperfect sense of what they really were. The difficulty of accepting them now arises not ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... was an epileptic. The assertion that the prisoner was an epileptic rested upon the evidence of Sir Henry Durwood, for the evidence of Miss Willoughby and the family doctor went no further than to suggest a slight strangeness or departure from the prisoner's usual demeanour. Sir Henry Durwood, by reason of his professional standing, was entitled to be received with respect, but he had himself admitted that he had had no previous opportunity of diagnosing the case ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... talking about you with Faustina," he said. "We are both much interested by the strangeness of your fate, by the difficulty and delicacy of your situation and by the wonderful constancy of you both. Faustina and I are a most united pair, never happy out of each other's company and very proud of our domestic ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... getting ready multiplied about him, Varney's interest in his novel undertaking imperceptibly grew. The thing had come upon him so unexpectedly that it had not yet by any means lost its strangeness. To the old friend of his mother's girlhood, Elbert Carstairs, he was sincerely devoted, though knowing him for an indulgent man whose indulgences were chiefly of himself. But when, responding to his excited summons that night, he had sat and listened ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... daily, both in the student body and among the instructors. Most of the strangeness of this new college world had worn off. Ruth and Helen and Jennie were full-fledged "Ardmores" now, quite as devoted to the college as they had ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... Michelangelo have sometimes spoken as if the only characteristic of his genius were a wonderful strength, verging, as in the things of the imagination great strength always does, on what is singular or strange. A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art; that they shall excite or surprise us is indispensable. But that they shall give pleasure and exert a charm over ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... feelings are so easily changed into their opposites! I can imagine one of these eyries a delightful setting to certain moods. A deserted one should be the place of places for reading a romance. The solitude, the strangeness, and the cradle-like swing, would all compose to shutting out the world. To paddle there some May morning, tie one's boat out of sight beneath, and climb up into the nest to sit alone half poised in the sky in the midst of the sea, should savor of a new sensation. After a little acclimatization ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... their long cloaks, they lay down upon the straw. It was some time before Walter got to sleep. The novelty of the situation, and the strangeness of lying with the night air blowing in his face, made him unusually wakeful. Occasionally, too, a laugh, from some party who were sitting late round their fire, attracted his attention, and the sound of the snorting and pawing ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... according to mens abilities and estates" But the colonial legislators soon found a just distribution of the taxes a matter of great difficulty, and we are told that the new measures, "through the strangeness thereof could not but require much time of controverting and debating".[319] In 1648 the experiment was abandoned and the old oppressive ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... been inundated by the stream, for bank there was none. Huge cypresses stood out at every angle, many having fallen as far as they could, but only to be supported by their fellows. And as the boat went swiftly on in obedience to the sturdily-tugged oars, Nic forgot his troubles in wonder at the strangeness of the scene through which he passed, for it was dreary, horrible, and beautiful all in one. Rotting vegetation supplied the rich, muddy soil from which rose vine and creeper to climb far on high, and then, finding no further support, throw themselves into ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... sight of beasts of prey and other foreign animals, their strangeness, the originality (if I may use the term) of their forms and gestures and habits and their variety and independence of each other, throw us out of ourselves into another creation, and as if under another Creator, if I may so express the temptation which may come on the mind. We seem to have new ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... The strangeness, as it seemed to him, of the handsome girl's absorption, for such it veritably appeared, in questions of no interest in themselves—so he judged them—attracted him even more than her beauty, for he did not ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... be a stranger. Thence he repaired to Pont de Ce, where lived a certain Sieur Leclerc, an innkeeper, who had formerly been a cook in the household of Louis XVI. To this man he paid a visit, and demanded if he recognised him. The innkeeper said he did not, whereupon he remarked on the strangeness of being forgotten, seeing, said he, "that I am Louis XVII., and that you have often pulled my ears in the ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... suggested cold water, fresh air or sunshine, made any appeal to him. A daisy in the grass bored him; a gardenia emitting its strangely unreal perfume on a dung heap brought all his powers into play. He was an eccentric of genius, and in his strangeness was really true to himself, although normal people were apt to assert that his unlikeness to them was a pose. Simplicity, healthy goodness, the radiance of unsmirched youth seemed to his eyes wholly inexpressive. He loved the rotten as a dog loves garbage, and he raised it by his art to fascination. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... of such moment. This he did by greeting her by a new and unwonted salutation. Wherefore Origen says, commenting on Luke (Hom. vi), that if "she had known that similar words had been addressed to anyone else, she, who had knowledge of the Law, would never have been astonished at the seeming strangeness of the salutation." In which salutation he began by asserting her worthiness of the conception, by saying, "Full of grace"; then he announced the conception in the words, "The Lord is with thee"; and then foretold the honor which ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... countries. In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers Should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness. It is easy to push this deference to a Chinese etiquette; but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene. Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... doubt, either inside the bunk-house or without. Nerves attuned to battle-front conditions are likely to become sharp as razor-edges, and Buck, starting from deep slumber to complete wakefulness, was almost instantly aware of a sense of strangeness in ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... the man. The suggestion added to the strangeness of the situation. The presence of chemicals in a fisherman's hut tallied with the boy's general idea that this man must hold a post of some importance in the plot. But he ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... repose, its obscurity, waiting the miracle of light to kindle it into smiles; the whole is, like the principal figure in it, 'a forerunner of the dawn.' The same atmosphere tinges and imbues every object, the same dull light 'shadowy sets off' the face of nature: one feeling of vastness, of strangeness, and of primeval forms pervades the painter's canvas, and we are thrown back upon the first integrity of things. This great and learned man might be said to see nature through the glass of time; he alone has a right to be considered as the painter of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... you to forgive us, madame. There has been a regrettable confusion of identities, which I will ask you to forget. But what I cannot well understand is your agitation ... the strangeness of your manner ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... my mind so long was reduced to insignificance between the blackness of the hills and the greatness of the sky; a little trouble, it seemed of no importance under the Southern Cross. And I fell wondering, as I had not wondered for long, at the forces that had brought me to this occupation and the strangeness of this game of war which had filled the minds and tempered the spirit of a quarter of a million of ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... West scenery that appear, at first glance, to be most salient, and that contribute most to the impression of strangeness and remoteness made by the island as a whole, are, unquestionably, the color of the water and the character of the vegetation. The ocean in which the little coral key is set has a vividness and a delicacy of color that I have never seen equaled elsewhere, and that is not even ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... which marked the limit of his former explorations. It was a wide, swift water, but too shallow and turbulent for swimming, and he forded it with some difficulty. Once across, he went with more caution, oppressed with a sense of strangeness, although the landscape as yet was in no ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... wayside people, such as we had long since become, retain a few of the instincts that belong to a more settled way of life, and often prefer familiar and commonplace objects (for the very reason that they are so) to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be thought much better worth the seeing. There is a small nest of a place in Leamington—at No. 10, Lansdowne Circus—upon which, to this day, my reminiscences are apt to settle ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... struggling, in Morgan's firm grasp. Entering his office, Lee closed the door, walked to the stove, and standing there produced the letter. It was the first and only missive he had ever received from Ruth. He gazed at the envelope and the scrawled writing on it with an impression of strangeness, but this gave way to a curiosity as to the contents. He had a strong suspicion of the letter's purport. Ruth would have reviewed her conduct that night at Sarita Creek, and, with her instinctive cunning, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... could not escape it. How could he spring away with his four legs in the air above him? Yet submission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly. This growl he could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it by giving him a blow on the head. And furthermore, such was the strangeness of it, White Fang experienced an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as the hand rubbed back and forth. When he was rolled on his side he ceased to growl, when the fingers pressed and prodded at the base of his ears the pleasurable sensation increased; and when, with ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... that was not destined to be all so bright. All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and broken halves of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth, on which the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the impression of strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place to make among men's ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... like bold and rugged cliffs on the beach fifteen feet high and whitened by the sun and waves; but after a few steps it proved to be low heaps of rags—part of the cargo of a wrecked vessel—scarcely more than a foot in height." Thoreau felt the eerie strangeness of beach and sand dunes as all explorers have, and he noted, too, the characteristics of the sand and its vegetation and of the inhabitants with a humorous minuteness. Writing of the dunes, which seem always about to overwhelm Provincetown, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... to sacrifice directness and simplicity of style. Where he has been obliged to use the Sanskrit term for lack of an exact English equivalent, he has invariably interpreted it by a familiar English word in brackets; and everything has been done to remove the sense of strangeness in order that the Occidental reader may not feel himself an alien in the new regions of thought opened ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... that talk late at night by a dying fire made me feel afraid for the second time since I had come to Blaauwildebeestefontein. I had a clue and had been on the look-out for mysteries, but that another should feel the strangeness for himself made it seem desperately real to me. Of course I scoffed at Mr Wardlaw's fears. I could not have him spoiling all my plans by crying up a native rising for which he had not ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... poetry of the daily task. We have already touched upon the purely romantic side of American energy and of American imagination, and we must shortly look more closely still at those impulses of daring, those moods of heightened feeling, that intensified individualism, the quest of strangeness and terror and wild beauty, which characterize our romantic writing. But this romanticism is, as it were, a segment of the larger circle of idealism. It is idealism accentuated by certain factors, driven to self-expression by the passions of scorn or of desire; it exceeds, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... disdain to creep in beside them, while Hendricks occupied his usual berth inside his waggon. In a few minutes all voices were hushed, but though Crawford and Percy did not speak, the strangeness of the scene prevented them from going to sleep. Some time had passed, and they were at length beginning to get a little drowsy, when they were startled by a terrific roar, which seemed to come almost from above them. Starting up, and knocking their ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... there was a chaos of strangeness, the wrench to my sense of the transition. I had been the inhabitant of a little world, the Cometara, with a gravity beneath my feet. Now, in a breath, I had no world to inhabit. I was alone in space. No gravity; nothing ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... had the sort of strangeness in her ideas which is often noticeable in characters that have developed late, in savages, who think much and speak little. Her peasant's wit had acquired a good deal of Parisian asperity from hearing the talk of workshops and mixing with workmen and workwomen. She, whose ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... doorway. He looked round the small dining-room as if he were still puzzled by its strangeness. Papa was not what he used to be. A streak of grey hair showed above each ear. Grey patches in his brown beard. Scarlet smears in the veined sallow of his eyes. His bursting, violent life had gone. He went stooping and shuffling. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... to attempt the journey by way of the Dent du Nivolets, as it was on a higher level than the summit of Mont Revard, and we should risk being again extinguished under a nightcap of snow. We descended, therefore, by the simpler and shorter route, but it was full of interest for the strangeness of the landscape, and the buildings which we reached on ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Despite his strangeness and remoteness, Apicius is not dead by any means. We have but to inspect (as Gollmer has pointed out) the table of the Southern Europeans to find Apician traditions alive. In the Northern countries, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... decorum came into her bearing. She ceased to ask questions. She waited for them to be put to her—from the head of the table—and smiled where an hour earlier she would have laughed. Above all, she felt in her spirit the same dreamy strangeness she had so lately felt in her bodily frame when the boat first began to move: a feeling as if the young company about her were but stayers behind on a shore from which she was beginning to be inexorably borne away. The wide river of a world's life, to which the rillet of her own small ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... of his strangeness over-come, I adored Carlos, and Veronica liked him, and laughed at him, till one day he said good-by and rode off along the London road, followed by his Tomas Castro. I had an intense longing to go with him out into the great world that brooded all ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... thought since that during that pause, while we faced each other, my aunt had for the first time fully realized how little she knew of me; she must surely have detected in my glance a strangeness, a contemptuous indifference, an implacable obstinacy, which she had never seen in it before. And, indeed, these things were in my glance. Yet I loved my aunt with a deep affection. I had only one grievance against her. Although excessively proud, she would always, in conversation ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Judy's face, felt the strangeness descend on him. He was back in the nightmare perception of that moment in his room. This time it was as though he were watching a machine in a laboratory. The object of this operation was the evocation ...
— Warm • Robert Sheckley |
