"Whimsical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remarkable alike for his common sense and his eccentricity. That is to say, the basis of his character was good, sound common sense, trodden down and smoothed by education; but this level groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancing-floor, whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. His ruling passion was cold-bathing; and he usually ate his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and reading a newspaper. He kissed every child he met; and to every ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... household pets was of the kind exhibited by persons who have spent some period of their lives in loneliness, with only the companionship of dumb creatures. He was an acute observer of their peculiarities, with the noting of which he combined a whimsical exaggeration. The account of the menagerie which Sam Buckley found at Garoopna on the occasion of his memorable first meeting with Alice Brentwood is almost ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... Kitty O'Hara, the only old maid in the history of the O'Haras, and famed in her day for a caustic tongue and a venomed pen. Dad and Mother—what a pair of children they had been! The very dissimilarity of their natures had been a bond between them. Dad, light-hearted, whimsical, care-free, improvident; Mother, gravely sweet, anxious-browed, trying to teach economy to the handsome Irish husband who, descendant of a long and royal line of spendthrift ancestors, would have none ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the Court of Palms, which was conceived as the Court of Occidental Fairy Tales, just as the Court of Flowers was to have been that of Oriental Fairy Tales. Mrs. Whitney's fountain of the Arabian Nights, a creation of whimsical beauty, was to have stood in the latter court. It was modeled, but was never enlarged; and its place was taken by Beauty and the Beast, the work ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... addressing for the mail the papers which one of the girls was folding. "What are you going to do about it?" he demanded of his sympathizer with whimsical sullenness, not troubling himself to look ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... shooting, and attached himself to the expedition. It was an excellent opportunity of smoothing his cousin's way, and showing that all was not caprice that might so appear: so he began to tell of his most advantageous traits of character, and to explain away his whimsical conduct, with great ardour and ingenuity. He thought he should be perfectly satisfied if he could win but one smile of approbation from that gravely beautiful mouth; and it came at last, when he told of Fitzjocelyn's devoted affection to Mrs. Frost and his unceasing kindness ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not only does his manner conform to the laws laid down by high authorities, but his theme is generally "Society" with a capital S. "Praed," says Locker in "My Confidences," "is the very best of his school: indeed, he has a unique position; for in his narrower vein of whimsical wit, vernacular banter, and antithetical rhetoric, which may correctly be called vers de societe in its most perfected form, and its exactest sense, he has never been equalled." These phrases hit off Praed very well—if one does not exactly see what ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... however whimsical in parts, is well worth more than mere reading,' I answered. 'It is a strangely latinized style, but has its ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... a brilliant mathematician and an ingenious inventor. Brailsford says that his inventions were "partly useful, partly whimsical." They would be, of course. They included a crane, a planing-machine, a smokeless candle and a gunpowder motor—besides his really big and notable invention of the first ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... is connected with a prescribed order of ceremonies, they find in the Christian religion particular enjoyment. The festivals of the Church, the fire-works with which they are accompanied, the processions mingled with whimsical disguises, are a most fertile source of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... State Ceremonials in all the extravagance of fantastic elegance with which Venice had decreed their costumes. A laughing, dainty company, they sprang ashore at the landing of the Piazzetta, doffing their jewelled caps to the admiring crowd with capricious grace and whimsical motions, like a flock of birds of paradise, in doublets of velvet and cloth of gold, with hair floating loose about their throats; with devices of fabulous birds—of stars flashing light—of mystic arabesques and hieroglyphs embroidered on their silken ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... own myself no advocate for hats; I am sorry the ladies ever invented or adopted so tantalizing a fashion: for, where there is beauty, they only serve to shade it; and, where there is none, to excite a most unavailing curiosity. I fancy they were originally worn by some young and whimsical coquette." ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... through the doorway into the hall. MRS BUILDER, following towards the door, meets RALPH BUILDER, a man rather older than BUILDER and of opposite build and manner. He has a pleasant, whimsical face and grizzled hair. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Whimsical Major Doyle often called Uncle John's nieces "the Three Graces"; but Beth was by odds the beauty of them all. Splendid brown eyes, added to an exquisite complexion, almost faultless features and a superb ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... not say but lately that you wanted this masquerade?" asked the king, with a pleasant smile. "Did not you yourself assign the parts, and appoint me to be the miller, the Count de Provence to be mayor, and the whimsical Artois to be schoolmaster de par la reine, as it runs here in Trianon, and do you wonder now that we, as it becomes the obedient, follow our queen's commands, and undertake the charge which she intrusts to us?" "Oh, Louis, how good you are!" said the queen, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... whimsical notion that a development of commercial and manufacturing organization in India would cause converts to flock from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community, has not been verified by experience. Much ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... little impatiently why she remained so faithful to the old brougham which he could remember, or so it seemed to him, all his life. But he did not utter his thoughts aloud; he still went in awe of his mother, and he was proud, in a whimsical way, of her old-fashioned austerity of life, of her narrowness of vision, of her dislike of ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... over "Taming of the Shrew." A creature of fitful impulse, nurtured into an arrogant sense of superiority, he banished all compunctions, persuading himself easily into the belief that as soldier, officer, and lover he was taking the manly course in going straight forward. "The idea of consulting a whimsical girl at such a time," he muttered, "when a Yankee horde may descend on the plantation ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the night, and it took all the seriousness in me to recall that I had other interests among the revellers besides theirs. My elegance in our Highland dress, for to be sure I wore it, cost me many a temptation, and if Madame Angelique, late in the evening, had gone a minute longer with her whimsical measurings of my leg where it garters, why, sir, I should have made a fool of myself. But she merely said she wanted to test whether I was not modelled to perfection for dancing the Highland dances, and wouldn't I ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... an uncertain movement, and covered her face with her hands; whilst Mr. Amherst, clinging to the rock for fear the ebbing tide should carry them out to sea, spoke to her with whimsical entreaty. "Mrs. Beauchamp, please don't faint until Nelson comes back! Pull yourself together—he expects us to do our duty; and, besides, you ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... last remark was true. Bob never hustled; his talk and movements were marked by a languid grace that sometimes pleased and sometimes irritated her. It was difficult to make him angry, and she was often silenced by his whimsical arguments when she knew she was right. But he was her husband, and she meant to baulk the man who hoped to profit by ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... will find it useful, Jonathan, to read a little book by John Ruskin, called Unto This Last. It is a very small book, written in very simple and beautiful language. Mr. Ruskin was a somewhat whimsical writer, and there are some things in the book which I do not wholly agree with, but upon the whole it is sane, strong and eternally true. He shows very clearly, according to my notion, that the mere possession of things, or of money, is not wealth, but that wealth consists in the possession of ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... was closely observant of her niece this evening, and grew confirmed in distrust, in solicitude. Cecily was more than ever unlike herself—whimsical, abstracted, nervous; she flushed at an unexpected sound, could not keep the same place for more than a few minutes. Much before the accustomed hour, she announced ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... the brown head which scarcely rose above his lips, Lorimer's smile ceased to be whimsical and became inexpressibly tender ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... father a whimsical backward look as she departed. Lord Findon watched her with mingled smiles and chagrin. How charmingly she was dressed to-night—his poor Eugenie! And how beautifully she moved!—with what grace and sweetness! As he turned to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... means as unguessable as her motive. Momentarily he considered taking Bannerman into his confidence; but he questioned the advisability of this: Bannerman was so severely practical in his outlook upon life, while this adventure had been so madly whimsical, so engagingly impossible. Bannerman would be sure to suggest a call at the precinct police station.... If she had made way with anything, it would be different; but so far as Maitland had been able to determine, she had abstracted nothing, disturbed nothing ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... all over the country as an authority on fraternities and their influence, and a power for making that influence constantly better and finer. In business, farmer, and school circles in the Middle West Mr. Clark is famous for his whimsical, inspiring speeches. His quick, shaft-like humor, his keen, devastating sarcasm, and his rare, resilient sympathy have made him a personality beloved particularly by ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Philistines than she could help making them at the entertaining but highly ineligible Bohemians, who continually frequented Phil's studio. The fear of man was not before her eyes; and the life she had led had invested her with a whimsical yet shrewd knowledge of human nature, and a business-like habit of looking matters in the face, which made her something of a novelty; and when is not novelty irresistible? And as to the masculine Philistines,—well, the ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Sandy-Knowe, in the residence of my paternal grandfather, already mentioned, that I have the first consciousness of existence; and I recollect distinctly that my situation and appearance were a little whimsical. Among the odd remedies recurred to to aid my lameness, some one had recommended that so often as a sheep was killed for the use of the family, I should be stripped, and swathed up in the skin, warm as it was flayed from ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said, in his Essay on Lyrick Poetry, prefixed to the poem: "For the more harmony likewise I chose the frequent return ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to be short, and her power of doing evil so small. It is almost impossible to discuss gravely nowadays a treatise which, even in its name (which is all that most people know of it), has the air of a whimsical ebullition of passion, leaning towards the ridiculous, rather than a serious protest calculated to move the minds of men. But this was not the aspect under which it appeared to the Queens who were assailed, not as individuals, but ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... ill-treated another, for no reason at all but his own selfish caprice. And men trembled for their lives when they remembered how Wolsey, and More, and Cromwell, and others had been sacrificed to the whimsical temper of this tyrannical sovereign. England, in fact, was tired out when Henry ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... his cousin he bowed ironically, with the most genial of mocking smiles. To that smile I despair of doing justice. It was not from the lips merely, nor yet was it from the good will in him, but had its birth apparently of some whimsical thought that for the moment lent his face a rare charm. A ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... be a misfortune," resumed my host, after a pause, "and I feel you have acted as you ought in warning me. It is, as you imply, not uncommon for an unwedded Gy to conceive tastes as to the object she covets which appear whimsical to others; but there is no power to compel a young Gy to any course opposed to that which she chooses to pursue. All we can to is to reason with her, and experience tells us that the whole College of Sages would find it vain to reason with a ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... made a good story of my misfortunes among my friends and neighbors, and amused them with sundry whimsical accounts of my various adventures in the cow-catching line, I found, when I came to speak of selling, that there was a general coolness on the subject, and nobody seemed disposed to be the recipient of my ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... A whimsical goddess, and a capricious, her strong sense of joy tolerates no dulness, and, live we never so spotlessly, still may she turn ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... more enlightened times, and affect by their mistakes many of our reasonings on affairs of consequence; and it is the error of all ignorant people to rate unknown times, distances, and sums very far beyond their real extent. There is even something childish and whimsical in computing this revenue, as the original author has done, at so much a day. For my part, I do not imagine it so difficult to come at a pretty accurate decision of the truth or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... whimsical smile: "Yes. Isn't he a grand, foolish old dear? He's such a roistering, bragging personage that I've named him Benvenuto Cellini—though he's neither liar nor thief. He must have told ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... that his existence was blighted. This evoked no sympathy from the fickle Hawkridge, who was forgetting his black-eyed lass in the Azores and was already a slave to Dorothy Stuart. She laughed at them both and was their true friend, tender, and whimsical and anxious for their welfare. It was a valuable ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had grown to assume in ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... that this woman was Dame Melusine, whom he had loved to his own hurt (as you have heard) when Perion served King Helmas. She did not speak for a long while, but she lazily considered Perion's honest face in a sort of whimsical regret for the adoration she no longer ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... and in preparations. It attacked it by the three great openings of Italy, Switzerland, and Holland. A strong Austrian army debouched in the duchy of Mantua; it defeated Scherer twice on the Adige, and was soon joined by the whimsical and hitherto victorious Suvorov. Moreau replaced Scherer, and, like him, was beaten; he retreated towards Genoa, in order to keep the barrier of the Apennines and to join the army of Naples, commanded by Macdonald, which was overpowered ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... fanciful, a. whimsical, capricious, visionary, imaginative, unpractical; chimerical, fantastic, illusive, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... my comedy stab and proceeds, chesty and serious, "Really, I am, though. It's this philanthropic executor work that I've been dragged into doing by that whimsical will of your friend, the late Pyramid Gordon, of course. I must admit that at first it came a little awkward, not being used to thinking much about others; but now—why, I'm getting so I can tell almost at a glance what people want and how to ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Death, in the middle, each in the act as if to strike a bell. When, in complete order, Death used to come forward to strike the quarters; and, having struck them, was instantly repelled by our Saviour. When he came forward to strike the hour, our Saviour in turn retreated:— a whimsical and not very comprehensible arrangement. But old clocks used to be full ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... is a genius, but he has some whims and oddities—Such a one has a very general knowledge, but he is superficial, etc. Now in all such cases we should speak more rationally, did we substitute "therefore" for "but": "He is a genius, therefore he is whimsical" ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... collapsed entirely. She and the little girl suffered want, and when Johanna felt herself in the way, she ran away to a place where she could be comfortable. Her grandmother had also been in her way. She had her mother's whimsical, dreamy nature, and now she gave up everything and ran away to meet the wonderful. An older playfellow seduced her and took her out to the boys of the timber-yard. There she was left to take care of herself, often slept out in the open, and stole now and then, but soon learned to earn money for ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of that," he answered, "and there seems to me only one of two things to do—either move into civilization, or import a pedagogue." A pause, and a whimsical inflection came into his voice. "Unfortunately, however, neither plan seems exactly ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... late to learn much more than is known of this structure. Some diligent Fellowes or Layard will arrive, stone by stone, at the whole history, by that exhaustive British sense and perseverance, so whimsical in its choice of objects, which leaves its own Stonehenge or Choir Gaur to the rabbits, while it opens pyramids, and uncovers Nineveh. Stonehenge, in virtue of the simplicity of its plan, and its good preservation, is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... third beauty, in the green dress, whose lute-playing was for me at once touching and striking. She was the one who seemed to notice me the most, and to direct her music to me: only I could not make up my mind about her; for she appeared to me now tender, now whimsical, now frank, now self-willed, according as she changed her mien and mode of playing. Sometimes she seemed to wish to excite my emotions, sometimes to tease me; but, do what she would, she got little out of me; for my little neighbor, by whom I sat elbow to elbow, had gained ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... designs. For that Miss Chipchase, under her aunt's guidance, was not doing her best to entangle Lionel Beauchamp in her toils, no power could have persuaded Lady Mary. Mrs. Wriothesley was one of the few people who thoroughly understood the whimsical perversity of Mr. Cottrell's character, and she shrewdly suspected, as was indeed the case, that he had no more heard of that hack than that he had that ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... have been no word of reproach or direction he would whisper for her, who needed none, possessing all the wisdom of virtue, dear heart! but a warning in my uncle's behalf, as she would have it, against the bottle he served. The maid's whimsical fancy is not incomprehensible to me, neither tainted with irreverence nor untruth: 'twas a thing flowering in the eyrie garden of her days at Whisper Cove—a thing, as I cannot doubt, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... the air for the ordinary uses of man will be swiftly completed, Franklin's good-humoured plea for the fullest experimentation is worth recalling. And the touch of piety with which he concludes his argument is a delightful example of the whimsical fashion in which he often undertook to bolster up a mundane theory with a reference ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... fancy is a mental image or picture founded upon slight or whimsical association or resemblance; a conceit has less of the picturesque and more of the theoretic than a fancy; a conceit is somewhat aside from the common laws of reasoning, as a fancy is lighter and more airy than the common ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... yachting longer than anything else," said Grandcourt; "and I had none last year. I suppose you are beginning to tire of it. Women are so confoundedly whimsical. They expect everything to give way ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... A more honest, simple, clever, warm-hearted, soft, whimsical, romantical, high-spirited young fellow than John Perkins did not exist. When his father, Doctor Perkins, died, this, his only son, was placed under the care of John Perkins, Esquire, of the house of Perkins, Scully, and Perkins, ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man with the iron mask, who, he thought, had become so inexhaustible a source of conjecture only in consequence of the interest which the pen of a celebrated writer had excited respecting the detention of a prisoner of State, who was merely a man of whimsical tastes and habits. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... accuracy—as a mediaeval traveller wished to report—what he has seen in foreign lands. He looks about him with a certain candour, a certain openness to impressions, which is only equalled, we think, among his contemporaries by the whimsical and capricious Mr. Hueffer: an artist whose interest lies wholly in literature, and whose mania it is rather to write well than to arrest the decay ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... for the stranger; at every step he will picture the locale of Daudet's whimsical tale, and will well understand how it was that the prisoners' view from the narrow-barred window of the Chateau at Tarascon ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the whole affair between Ted and Elinor Piper had gone so utterly wrong as the note implied—he had had a whimsical superstition that it must succeed because he was playing property man to it after his own appearance as Romeo had failed—but he knew Ted and the two years' fight against the struggling nervous restlessness and discontent with everything that didn't have ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... cast aside his whimsical phase he was a very simple and direct man. He, too, was becoming adjusted to Priscilla's presence in his home and her rightful ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Chrysantheme and Jonquille really look like little fairies; at certain moments the most insignificant Japanese have this appearance, by dint of whimsical elegance and ingenious arrangement. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Nort," was the response. "This is Dick, my brother. We're going to stay all summer—if you'll keep us," he added, with a whimsical smile. "And after this I'll let you pick my ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... this anecdotical digression. Saadi gives this whimsical piece of advice to a pugnacious fellow: "Be sure, either that thou art stronger than thine enemy, or that thou hast a swifter pair of heels." And he relates a droll story in illustration of the use and abuse of the phrase, "For the sake ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so whimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more delighted with him than we could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an arm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Richard bring a candle, was leading the way out when he suddenly turned us all ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... but the commencement of a horrible series of misfortunes. The two chief officers then decided with one accord, that all should embark at six in the morning, and abandon the ship to the mercy of the waves. After the decision, followed a scene the most whimsical, and at the same time the most melancholy that can be well conceived. To have a more distinct idea of it, let the reader transport himself in imagination to the midst of the liquid plains of the ocean: then let him picture ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... presses heavily upon every reviewer, to seem, if not to be wiser than his author, many of the English periodicals, even those most favorable to America, undertook to doubt his statements of fact, to sneer at his prophecies of the future as ludicrous exaggerations, and to term them striking and whimsical instances of Yankee braggadocio, and of the love of building castles in the air. Cooper could not well overstate the material prosperity and progress of the country, nor the inability of men trained under ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Onondaga, in his whimsical precise manner, "that a large part of our lives, Great Bear, is spent in rescuing Dagaeoga. Do you think when we go into the Great Beyond and arrive at the feet of Manitou, and he asks us what we have done with our time on earth, he will put it to our credit when we reply ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had become acquainted with in Paris. Through Clerselier he came to know Pierre Chanut, who in 1645 was sent as French ambassador to the court of Sweden. Queen Christina was not yet twenty, and took a lively if a somewhat whimsical interest in literary and philosophical culture. Through Chanut, with whom she was on terms of familiarity, she came to hear of Descartes, and a correspondence which the latter nominally carried on with the ambassador was in reality ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... had strict orders to obey him with implicit submission, he became so whimsical and imperious, that he was hated and despised by every one in the house, excepting his parents. Augustus was his only companion who loved him, and it was upon that account he patiently put up with his humours. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... injustice, most (or perhaps all) of these were people that had been long dead; and amongst them, by the way, was Livy, the historian; whom I distinguish by name, as furnishing, perhaps, the liveliest illustration of the whimsical and all but lunatic excess to which these personal hatreds were sometimes pushed; for it is a fact that, when the course of an Italian tour had brought him unavoidably to the birthplace of Livy, Dr. Arnold felicitated ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... certainly would move Thy laughter, If Thou hadst not all merriment unlearned. Of suns and worlds I've nothing to be quoted; How men torment themselves, is all I've noted. The little god o' the world sticks to the same old way, And is as whimsical as on Creation's day. Life somewhat better might content him, But for the gleam of heavenly light which Thou hast lent him: He calls it Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier than any beast. Saving Thy Gracious Presence, he to me A long-legged grasshopper appears ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... liked Julian," he declared. "I always believed that he had capacity. Dear me, though," he went on, with a whimsical little smile, "what ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... up her mind that she would buy the doll—in the morning when the shop opened. It was a whimsical thing to do, to give herself a doll at her time of life. But it would be in a sense symbolic. She had no child to which to give it; she would give it to the child who ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... receipt of this letter afforded me the liveliest pleasure, and I wrote to the king regularly every night and morning. I might here introduce a specimen of my own epistolary style, but I will not; for altho' the whimsical and extravagant things my pen gave utterance to were exactly to the king's taste, they might surprise you; but my royal correspondent loved the wild and bizarre turn of my expressions, and I fulfilled his wishes; perhaps it was not the only instance in which I gratified his inclination. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... responded the doctor, smiling his slightly whimsical smile. He was rather short, with an almost imperceptible limp, and he had, as he put it, "never gone in for sports." "There's so much else when one comes to think of it," he added, pausing, with his hat in his hand, at the door; "there are plenty of ways of having fun even without ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... with his father's name but bearing that name so long honoured in England, and even in the far places of the earth—for had not Benn Claridge, Luke's brother, been a great carpet-merchant, traveller, and explorer in Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Soudan—Benn Claridge of the whimsical speech, the pious life? All this they knew; but none of them, to his or her knowledge, had ever seen David's father. He was legendary; though there was full proof that the girl had been duly married. That had been laid before the Elders by Luke Claridge ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Footnotes: 1. This whimsical account of the Slave-market is probably taken from the following passage in the "Captivity and escape of Adam Elliot, M.A."—"By sun-rising next morning, we were all of us, who came last to Sallee, driven to market, where, the Moors sitting taylor-wise on stalls round ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... stopped a minute at his gate; and, while the two old men were engaged in conversation, I begged leave to warm myself by the kitchen fire. Here, in the chimney-corner, seated on a block, I found Arthur busily engaged in knitting stockings! I thought this a whimsical employment for a young active man. I told him so, for I wanted to put him to the blush; but he smiled in my face, and answered, without the least discomposure, 'Just as whimsical a business for a young active woman. Pray, did you never ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Trant should have drifted into communication George Liddell seemed a most whimsical turn of the wheel of fortune to Katherine, and she thought much ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with the local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. Everything unintelligible ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... with the sleazy, clinging, white draperies wound around her slender form, then the wings of golden maline pinioned on either softly rounded shoulder. Sally was a perfect little beauty, and also possessed that whimsical manner so attractive in this delicate, ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... The amiable and tranquil mansion of the burgomaster, that good Flemish home—where was its former calm? What changes had taken place in your household economy! Madame Van Tricasse had become acrid, whimsical, harsh. Her husband sometimes succeeded in drowning her voice by talking louder than she, but could not silence her. The petulant humour of this worthy dame was excited by everything. Nothing went right. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... reflection as if it had been the dust of the hour. Now he turned to her, and the sweet recognition of his glance was warming her anew. "Don't you go an' play me any such trick," he said, with the whimsical ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... subject, I cannot help suggesting, at the hazard of being thought whimsical, that a literature of such writings as these, embodying the romance of the whole revolutionary and ante-revolutionary history of the United States, might do something to perpetuate the Union itself. The influence of a rich literature of passion and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... period, so distracted my attention, that, despite of the grave subjects on which I was meditating, I could not resist lending an attentive ear to all that passed around me. There was something of originality in the countenance of the Master of the Library which struck me forcibly; and the whimsical answers which he made to his numerous subscribers, and the yet more whimsical tone in which they were pronounced, more than once provoked a smile. The first person who attracted my notice was a fine showy ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... would certainly rather have met her than Pontius Pilate. The people who saw her in her old age—Flaubert, Gautier, the Goncourts—have left us copious records of her odd appearance, her perpetual cigarette smoking, and her whimsical life at Nohant. But then she was only an "extinct volcano;" she must have been much more interesting in full eruption. Of her earlier career—the period of Musset and Pagello—she herself told us something in "Elle et Lui," and correspondence published a year or so ago in ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... that he never forgets this, and never attempts to conceal it. He is seldom dull, never sardonic or cruel, and always clean, healthy, and decent. His heroines are ideal fairy queens, his heroes are all visionary and chivalrous nincompoops; and even, though we know that much of it is whimsical banter and nonsensical fancy, there is an air of refined extravaganza in these books which may continue to give them a ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... kangaroos, as has been remarked, were plentiful; and a large colony of pelicans caused the name of Pelican Lagoon to be given to a feature of the island's eastern lobe. The marsupial, the seal, the emu, and the bag-billed bird that nature built in one of her whimsical moods, had held unchallenged possession for tens of thousands of years, probably never visited by any ships, nor even preyed upon by blacks. The reflections of Flinders upon Pelican Lagoon have a tinting of poetic feeling which we do not often ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... The whimsical fiddler invented new figures, which he "called off" in time to his music, to vary the monotony of a quadrille with two ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... beginning to sob, and great tears were dropping. Captain Brocq, struck dumb, gazed at her sorrowfully. And whilst he clasped her in his arms, anxiety strained at his heart, anguish convulsed his soul. Did she really love him, this woman with her whimsical ways, her independent attitude, this elusive woman who never gave herself entirely? Was he the dupe of a comedy? Did she consent to these meetings three times a week through pity, through sympathy only, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... suddenly out of the dim, enfolding silence of the woods, and Magda paused in the midst of a final pirouette. A man was standing leaning against the trunk of a tree, watching her with whimsical grey eyes. Behind him, set up in the middle of a clearing amongst the trees, an easel and stool evidenced his ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... of drollery and defiance appears in the justly celebrated "Address to the Deil," which, mainly whimsical, is relieved by touches oan in the conception of such a being straying in lonely places and loitering among trees, or in the familiarity with which the poet lectures so awful a personage,"—we may add, than in the inimitable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... this latter is absolutely disdained, but nevertheless, permitted to continue his adoration; and all these rivals live peaceably together. The use of the poignard now only survives among the common people. There is in this country a whimsical mixture of simplicity and depravity, dissimulation and truth, sincerity and revenge, weakness and resolution, which can only be explained by constant observation; the reason being that their good qualities proceed from ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... railing rhymer, a singular mixture of a true and original poet with a buffoon; coarse as Rabelais, whimsical, obscure, but always vivacious. He was the rector of Diss, in Norfolk, but his profane and scurrilous wit seems rather out of keeping with his clerical character. His Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng is a study ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... caprices which were continually shooting through her head. But are we to suppose that suddenly, after a long widowhood, Agrippina put forth so strange a proposal without any arriere-pensee whatever? Furthermore, if this proposal had been merely the momentary caprice of a whimsical woman, would it have been so seriously debated in the imperial household, and would the daughter of Agrippina have recounted the episode in her memoirs? It is more probable that this marriage, too, had a political aim. By giving a husband to Agrippina, they were also ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... the doctor added with a whimsical smile, "the three-day sentence is remitted for ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... constant and inflexible, some variable and arbitrary. But the ultimate point, in which they all professedly terminate, is the interest and happiness of human society. Where this enters not into consideration, nothing can appear more whimsical, unnatural, and even superstitious, than all or most of the laws ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... Examining Magistrate, President of the Roger-Ducos Society, which was a vague scientific backwater, in which the scholars of the neighborhood applied themselves with prodigious incompetence to the most whimsical subjects. One afternoon I stayed in my room on account of a very heavy rain. The good woman was energetically polishing the copper latch of my door. She used a paste called Tripoli, which she spread ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... mists of sleep shredded away. A ragged youth with a crop of fiery red hair was standing in the doorway, regarding the occupants of the shelter with a grin, half-whimsical, half-defiant. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... on matters which usually, and in general society, he would have been inclined to shun, or at all events to pass over lightly. Here we have him at one moment presenting the results of speculations the loftiest that can engage the mind of man; at another making note of whimsical or surprising points in the man or woman he has met with, or in the books he has read; at another, amusing himself with the most recent anecdote, or bon-mot, or reflecting on the latest accident or murder, or good-naturedly noting odd lapses in ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to Dennis in an Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet, called "The Character of Sir John Edgar". What Steele had to say against the cross-grained old Critic discovers ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his wife had made the bread ever so sweet, and had put all sorts of tasty spices in it, because she wanted to hide the flavour of the poison she had put in it also; for she was a wicked, revengeful woman, who wanted to be rid of her tiresome, whimsical little husband. And so, as the elephant charged past, it smelt the delicious spices, and catching up the bread with its long trunk, gobbled it up without stopping an instant. Meanwhile fear lent speed to Vicky's short legs, but though he ran like a hare, the elephant ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... displays a reckless and whimsical humor. Having need of money, Carlos asked of a merchant, named Grimaldo, a loan of fifteen hundred ducats. The money-lender readily consented, thanked the prince for the compliment, and, in the usual grandiloquent vein of Castilian courtesy, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Sir William Harcourt, continuing them long after the time when Sir William could boast the local portliness no more. However, it is certain that the sprig of straw, which really referred only to his pure devotion to the Turf, from 1815 onwards, was first used in 1851, just after the whimsical "Judicious Bottle-Holder" declaration, and, as a matter of fact, added not a little to Palmerston's popularity, as not only representing the Turf, but a Sam ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... against the black shadow of the hill from the crest of which the Judge's place dominated the surrounding country. Little by little Denny Bolton's lean face lost its hint of hardness; the lines that ran from his thin nose to the corners of his lips disappeared as he smiled—smiled with whimsical gentleness—at the light that glimmered from a single window through the tangled bushes, twinkling back ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... in France, that the caps of liberty are without heads, and the trees of liberty without root. The poplar has been selected from all the other trees of the forest, for this distinguished honour, from a whimsical synonymy of its name with that of the people. In french, the poplar is called peuplier, and the word peuple signifies people. This fine building is now converted into an university of learning, and the fine arts. From the number of the students, I should suppose the fashionable ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... which happened at Lyndalberg got upon the lady's nerves. She could have screamed and shaken her fist at the dark mass of rock and stone across the water. But after the birthday ball and during the first days of Leopold's visit at her house, she often threw a whimsical glance at the grim silhouette against the ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... his trousers pocket. He regarded Little Billy with sympathy. For the past few days, the hunchback had again been engaged in a bout with his ancient enemy. Little Billy was fighting manfully, but the strain was telling, aging his mobile face, making rare his sunny smile and whimsical banter. Martin keenly felt the other's suffering, for he had learned to love the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... A whimsical smile appeared upon the pale face resting against one of Georgiana's crimson couch pillows. "How she would make me signals of distress and warning," he mused, "if she could hear me carrying on an antiphonal service in her praise with our lodger, ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... orchestra save the tender and liquid notes, which in South Carolina seemed unattempted except by some stray blue-bird. Jays were as loud and busy as at the North in autumn; there were sparrows and wrens; and sometimes I noticed the shy and whimsical chewink. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... letter to Marian, and when she reread it Linda realized that it was an appealing letter. She thought it certainly would comfort Marian and surely would make her feel that someone worth while was interested in her and in her work. She loved some of the whimsical little touches she had put into it, and she wondered if she had made it so much like Peter Morrison that it would be suggestive of him to Marian. She knew that she had no right to do that and had no such intention. She merely wanted a model to copy from and Peter seemed the ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the Battle of the Boyne. Walpole's romanticism was a thin veneering; underneath it, he was a man of the eighteenth century. His opinions on all subjects were, if not inconsistent, at any rate notoriously whimsical and ill-assorted. Thus in spite of his admiration for Gray and his—temporary—interest in Ossian, Chatterton, and Percy's ballads, he ridiculed Mallet's and Gray's Runic experiments, spoke contemptuously of Spenser, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... The speaker, with a whimsical good humour upon him all the time, looked over the parapet-wall with the greatest disparagement of Marseilles; and taking up a determined position by putting his hands in his pockets and rattling his money at it, apostrophised it with ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... came to me. The simplest, most dramatic idea. Quaint, whimsical, with just that suggestion of pathos blended with it which makes the fortunes of a play. The central idea, to be brief, of The ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... which I should not have arrived at by better motives than the thought of being one day hers. I am pretty well satisfied such a passion as I have had is never well cured; and, between you and me, I am often apt to imagine it has had some whimsical effect upon my brain: For I frequently find, that in my most serious discourse I let fall some comical familiarity of speech, or odd phrase, that makes the company laugh; however, I cannot but allow she is a most excellent woman. When she is in the country I warrant she does not ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... at the door, her butterfly turban somewhat deranged with the violence of her prostration, giving a whimsical air ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... her Vermont home for quaint inscriptions upon old tombstones. It was neither a morbid curiosity nor a spirit of melancholy that attracted her to the weather-beaten slabs of marble and slate, but rather a fondness for studying human eccentricity as revealed in whimsical epitaphs. In almost every graveyard ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various
... it was the opinion of Jane and her mother, that, as he was a whimsical, changeable old chap, it would be right for her to refuse me at first; and so she did, very much to the old man's annoyance, who then set his mind upon it, and swore that if she did not marry me, he would not leave her a farthing. After a few ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... scrap of an infant who seemed to thoroughly dislike the sound of my voice, for as I remember it, she howled vociferously every time I went near her, was not much attraction. And then I just put off going back and kept putting it off, year after year. Now do you still wonder"—suddenly whimsical—"that I could forget ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... resides in town.' 'What!' cried I, 'is my young landlord then the nephew of a man whose virtues, generosity, and singularities are so universally known? I have heard Sir William Thornhill represented as one of the most generous, yet whimsical, men in the kingdom; a man of consumate benevolence'—'Something, perhaps, too much so,' replied Mr Burchell, 'at least he carried benevolence to an excess when young; for his passions were then strong, and as they all were upon the side of virtue, they led it up to a romantic extreme. He early began ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... Violet remembered with a whimsical little smile how Shere All's enthusiasm had wearied her, but she checked the smile ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... said, "one Harley lived there, a whimsical sort of man, I am told. The greatest part of his history is still in my possession. I once began to read it, but I soon grew weary of the task; for, besides that the hand is intolerably bad, I never could find the author in one strain for two chapters together. The way I came by it was this. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... herself, and led the way down to the stranded schooner. Her motive was not only uncertainty about the people left at the camp, who might prove susceptible to bribery if not pity; she also felt a sort of whimsical desire to impress these strangers with the utter ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... deceived you. It was an accident, I say—and who should know better than I?" He was smiling in that whimsical enigmatic way of his. Smiling still he sank back into ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini |
