"Grotesquely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the mother said, heaving a deep sigh, as she looked at his thin face grotesquely covered with tufts ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... vanquished animal rising and following with the former. Again, and yet again, and again, a fresh animal came up, seemed to be reasoned and certainly was fought with and overcome by Lina, until at last, before they were out of the wood, she was followed by forty-nine of the most grotesquely ugly, the most extravagantly abnormal animals imagination can conceive. To describe them were ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... where she received Was Louis Quatorze, and relieved By Chinese cabinets, conceived Grotesquely by the heathen; The sofas were a classic sight,— The Roman bench (sedilia hight); The chairs were French in gold and white, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... beauty; her almost perilous self-possession while she stood talking to those two men. Of me there was nothing left but the eyes. I had no mind, no thoughts. I saw the three figures go through the attitudes of conversation—she very animated, de Mersch grotesquely empresse, Gurnard undisguisedly saturnine. He repelled me exactly as grossly vulgar men had the power of doing, but he, himself, was not that—there was something ... something. I could not quite make out his face, I never could. I ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... with Austrian equipment thrown away in the confusion of departure, rifles, steel helmets (grotesquely shaped, like high-crowned bowler hats), ammunition, coats, packs (handsomely got up, with furry exteriors), mail bags, maps, office stores, tin despatch boxes, photographs of blonde girls, bayonets, hand bombs, ... ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... to compose their strife and unite in a league of defence and aggression. Another personage, wholly mortal, yet wonderfully endowed, a renowned warrior and a mighty magician, stands, with his hair of writhing snakes, grotesquely conspicuous through the dim light of tradition at this birth of Iroquois nationality. This was Atotarho, a chief of the Onondagas; and from this honored source has sprung a long line of chieftains, heirs not to the blood alone, but to the name of their ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... own credulity and conceit. For I looked back over time past and I said like Solomon—I don't know whether he ever said it, but he's the most blase Johnnie I remember—'All is vanity.' As it was in the beginning, so it ever shall be. We are not made in the image of God. We are made rather grotesquely out of dust, and to dust we shall return, all our hopes, all our aspirations, all the pretty plans we form for defeating death and time. And who made us and put us on this dark planet where it is next to impossible to see a step ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... completeness! No perfection grows 'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose, And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied. Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape, Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape, Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed, Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways From sanity and from wholeness and from grace. How can love triumph, how can solace be, Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee? Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell Simple as our thought and as perfectible, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... pleasure of making some interesting acquaintances, and the missionaries gave me much valuable information about the natives and their customs. When the tone of the conversation in the evening threatened to become too serious, our jovial Captain S. speedily improved matters by his grotesquely comical sallies. A strenuous life was that of the missionary who was responsible for the organization of the voyage; he had to visit the native communities, and went ashore at every anchorage, sometimes through an ugly surf or dangerous shoals, generally with overcrowded ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... There she lay, grotesquely on her side, half rotted, half buried in the sand, but still discernible. And to Larry's wildly racing imagination, a flood of gold and jewels seemed to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Beverley was in his very best form. Beverley is really a creation. How much the author's and how much the player's it would be an impertinence to inquire. This imperturbable trickster with his thin streak of genuine sensitiveness to psychic influence; his grotesquely florid style—the man certainly has style; his frank reliance on apt alcohol's artful aid; his cadging epicureanism; his keen eye for supplementary data for his inductions and prophecies; his cynical candour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... tree to tree, by dint of hand. It was indeed a hard and heavy tug; and I had pretty tough work, what between the exertion of the ascent, and the incessant fits of laughter into which I was thrown by the grotesquely agile movements of fat Tom; who, grunting, panting, sputtering, and launching forth from time to time the strangest and most blasphemously horrid oaths, contrived to make way to the summit faster ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... for that matter—should take pains with her hands and her hair. Coiffures that might be appropriate in a ball room are out of place in an office, and heavily jeweled hands, whether the jewels are real or imitation, are grotesquely unsuited to office ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Chillon thought he had said sufficient. She was under his protectorship, otherwise he would not have alluded to the observance of class distinctions. He felt them personally in this case because of their seeming to stretch grotesquely by the pretentious heterodoxy of the young fellow, whom, nevertheless, thinking him over now that he was mentioned, he approved for his manliness in bluntly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... absolute to human consciousness, it is just precisely the form of Being which my theory postulates as the Self-existing All. In order to constitute such a Being God, it must be shown, as we have already seen, to be something more than a merely Causal Agent which is absolute in the grotesquely restricted sense of being independent of 'one petty race of creatures with an ephemeral experience of what is going on in one tiny corner of the universe;' it must be shown to be something more than absolute even in the wholly unrestricted sense of being Unconditioned; ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... perhaps, throw some light on a past that now seems hopelessly lost. But the ruins thus far described are so numerous, their similarity is so evident, that we feel we have but little to hope from such undiscovered ruins. There are, doubtless, richly ornamented facades, grotesquely sculptured statues, and hieroglyphic-covered altars, but they would prove as much of an enigma as those already known. Our only hope is that some fortunate scholar will yet discover a key by whose aid the hieroglyphics now known may be read. Then, but not until then, will the darkness that now ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... He smiled grotesquely as he staggered toward the car door. "About time you got here," he said. "A man could catch his death of cold standing ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... the greater part of the surface of this wonderful sphere. In these great red-hot seas live the monsters of the deep, as well as a motley variety of other species, veritable salamanders, some grotesquely hideous, others surpassingly beautiful ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... by turn, at a sardine can set up on the sand about twenty paces out. Their shadows stretched slantwise before them, grotesquely lengthened by the last efforts of the disappearing sun. Some aimed carefully from under pulled-down hat brims; others, their brims flared back, fired quickly, the instant the gun came to the level. The heavy balls sent the loose soil flying ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... his own. The pleasure of being allied to a man of the Baron's high worth, and who was so much valued by his uncle Sir Everard, was also an agreeable consideration, had anything been wanting to recommend the match. His absurdities, which had appeared grotesquely ludicrous during his prosperity, seemed, in the sunset of his fortune, to be harmonized and assimilated with the noble features of his character, so as to add peculiarity without exciting ridicule. His mind occupied with such projects ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... persuasion. She will do as he wishes or—ruin. It is capital—a flawless scheme. And then to leave Foss River forever. God, but I shall be glad," with a return to his nervous dread. He looked about him; eagerly, his great paunchy figure pictured grotesquely ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Some of them were humpbacked, like Evan, the one who had carried the message to the tower. Some, like Evan, were grotesquely barrel-chested, with or without the hump. Some were as thin as skeletons, with huge heads; some were hulking miniatures of Brute. One steatopygean girl was so bulky in legs and hindquarters that she could waddle only a few inches ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... to portray some noticeable characteristics in Lela and Majoli, how are Celina and Guerrabella occupied? You see Guerrabella has a pencil in her hand. She is sketching a head; if we look closely, we shall probably recognize our own, grotesquely drawn, for there is no denying that our young genius is fond of caricaturing her friends. Celina sits by a table; her large, open eyes have a distant, dreamy expression. Her pen moves rapidly across the page; she is writing a Musical Recollection, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... exaggerated and artificial; but these two accusations against poetry can be satisfactorily answered. The charge of silliness, of being ridiculous, however, cannot be refuted by argument. There is no logical answer to a guffaw. This sense of the ridiculous is merely a bad, infantile habit, in itself grotesquely ridiculous. You may see it particularly in the theatre. Not the greatest dramatist, not the greatest composer, not the greatest actor can prevent an audience from laughing uproariously at a tragic moment if a cat walks across the stage. But why ruin the scene by ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... was characteristic everywhere of the foul den; but there was nothing but boards beneath one's feet; and the wretched bar at the uppermost end of the chamber was no more than a plain deal bin with a high stool behind it for the serving man; he being a great negro, grotesquely attired as a man of fashion. Indeed, had not the whole place been so threatening, I should have paused to laugh at this dusky scoundrel, whose white hat sat jauntily on the side of his woolly head, and whose well-cut black coat was ornamented with a great bunch of white flowers. But there ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... displayed rich wares in infinite variety and profusion—silks, muslins, the most dazzling cutlery, the most magnificent jewels and gems. Besides these things, were seen, on all sides, banners and palanquins, litters with stately dames close veiled, elephants gorgeously caparisoned, idols grotesquely hewn, drums, banners, and gongs, spears, silver and gilded maces. And amid the crowd, and the clamor, and the general intricacy and confusion—amid the million of black and yellow men, turbaned and robed, and of flowing beard, there roamed a countless ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... bank. It may be observed, respecting one of them, in latitude 23 deg 10', that if the promontory in latitude 24 deg were worn down to the level of the sea, and coated with corals, a very similar and grotesquely formed reef would be produced. Many of the reefs on this part of the coast may thus have originated; but there are some sickle, and almost atoll-formed reefs lying in deep water off the promontory in latitude 24 deg, which lead me ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... as "old Mis' Meade," gave a majestic clearing of her throat. She brought her gaze indoors and bent a frowning glance on the two at the stove. A shade of vexation passed over her face, grotesquely elongating ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... cries very easily and readily, but her tears are easily dried and her joy is grotesquely childlike. She is readily frightened, worries without restraint and finds a melancholy satisfaction in the worst. At the same time, her fears do not persist and are easily dissipated by encouragement or good fortune. She is readily angered and "raises a row" with great facility and without ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... chairs, picturesque, but uncomfortable—the two old dower chests— the quaint three-legged stools and upright settles, were a collection that would have been precious to the art dealer and curio hunter, as would the massive eight-day clock with its grotesquely painted face, delineating not only the hours and days but the lunar months, and possessing a sonorous chime which just now struck eight with a boom as deep as that of a cathedral bell. The sound appeared to startle the old farmer ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... came shambling rapidly forward on powerful bowed legs, and with the tips of their long hairy arms brushing the ground, they looked like grotesquely distorted apes. The crowning horror of those shambling figures, however, lay in the fact that ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... a tumult in the neighborhood. They were the men of Henri Barbusse—his comrades. There were middle-aged men and boys mixed together in a confraternity of misery. They were plastered with wet clay, and their boots were enlarged grotesquely by the clots of mud on them. Their blue coats were soddened, and the water dripped out of them and made pools round their feet. They were unshaven, and their wet faces were smeared with the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... happiest month of May that life had yet offered, fading behind the present, and probably beyond the past, somewhere into abstract time, grotesquely out of place with the Berlin scheme or a Boston future. Adams explained to himself that he was absorbing knowledge. He would have put it better had he said that knowledge was absorbing him. He was passive. In spite of swarming impressions he knew no more when he left ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... brightness, were there before him. Meanwhile within him strange things took place. It was literally true that his impression began again, after a lull, to make him nervous and anxious, and for reasons peculiarly confused, almost grotesquely mingled, or at least comically sharp. He was distinctly an agitation and a new taste—that he could see; and he saw quite as much therefore the excitement she already drew from the vision of Addie, an image intensified by the sense of ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... Mr. Darwin's great essay on the "Origin of Species" by Natural Selection. This solemn and mysterious subject had been either so lightly or so grotesquely treated before, that it was hardly regarded as being within the bounds of legitimate philosophical investigation. Mr. Darwin, after twenty years of the closest study and research, published his views, and it is sufficient to say that they instantly fixed ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... pushed something fiercely from him, and the body of a woman crashed heavily into the sage. Levelling the gun, he fired. The shot rang loud, and upon the edge of the depression a horse snorted nervously. The man pitched forward and lay sprawled grotesquely upon the ground and Endicott saw that his extended ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... Twice identically accused. Once grotesquely accused; once, on the surface, rightly accused. Both times aware how poignant and pathetic was the cry; not moved the first time, not moved the second. Recurring to her now, she knew again how broken-hearted sad it was, and knew again it ought to move, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... no reply for a moment. Her face, which was rather straw-colour than white, worked grotesquely as if under the influence of some strong emotion that she was trying to suppress. At length she said, in a chill, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... case of Louis Bonaparte was somewhat different. Nurtured as he had been in his early years by Napoleon, he had rewarded him by contracting a dutiful match with Hortense Beauharnais (January, 1802); but that union was to be marred by a grotesquely horrible jealousy which the young husband soon conceived ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... only when Retta come back Mahs Matt tell her little Rhoda dead long time ago—dead down in Georgy, an' no one evah heah her ask a word from that day to this. But one Larue's niggahs tole me"—and the voice and manner of Nelse took on a grotesquely impressive air—"they done raise a mighty handsome chile 'bout that time what was called Rhoda, an' she went to ferren parts with Mahs Larue an' his family an' didn't nevah come back, no mo', an' Mahs Matt raise some sort o' big row with ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... This dialogue merged grotesquely into his mind's most familiar state—a grotesque blending of desires, worries, exterior impressions ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... It was grotesquely reported, for instance, that he had murdered his nephew, who in reality did not exist. The leave of absence, moreover, must have been to a man of his ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... fastened to a long iron bar; then he set fire to the wood with his torch. Marie saw with terror that the man was the same Pille-Miche to whom her rival had delivered her, and whose figure, illuminated by the flame, was like that of the little boxwood men so grotesquely carved in Germany. The moans of his prisoner produced a broad grin upon features that were ribbed with wrinkles and ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... Charta were intended to bring an independent force to bear upon the Government, or that the nation should be treated as more than a fringe round the compact and lasting body of the administration. The language in which Vaublanc introduced his measure was grotesquely candid. Montesquieu, he said, had pointed out that powers must be subordinate; therefore the electoral power must be controlled by the King's Government. [273] By the side of the electors in the Canton and the Department there was accordingly placed, in the Ministerial scheme, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... had the appearance of being on her knees when she stood before him. Her complexion was sallow, and though her eyes, like his own, were fine, they were not fine enough to redeem the dull plainness of her face. Her black hair was grotesquely dressed, with a long fore-top and two great ribbon bows standing out, one on each side of her head, like a pair ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the floor with pale Indian matting, with a bit of strong colour, here and there, in the shape of a modern Turkish rug. For furniture, he had picked up some old chairs and a large straight-backed settee with grotesquely-carved legs, which, with the aid of a judicious arrangement of drapery, looked eminently attractive, and conveyed an impression of comfort which closer acquaintance did not altogether belie. Then there was the platform, covered with dark cloth, on which his models posed; the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... is an ordinary human figure riding on a white horse and brandishing a sword. He wears white clothes and a crown or turban. He is perhaps Kalki who, as suggested above, had some connection with the Kalacakra. The Eight Terrible Ones and their attendants are represented by grotesquely masked figures in the dances and mystery plays enacted by Lamas. These performances are said to be still known among the vulgar as dances of the Red Tiger Devil, but in the hands of the Yellow Church have become a historical drama representing the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... rude rock throne just in front of Powell was a grotesquely fat, mangy-furred old rat-man who was obviously the king of the horde. Some thirty or forty rat-men, larger and stronger than their fellows, wore the gray-metal collars that apparently ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... to call your attention to one thing. When Lewis arrived the other evening, after saving those lives by a feat which I think is the most marvelous of any I can call to mind—when he arrived, hunched up on his manure wagon and as grotesquely picturesque as usual, everybody wanted to go and see how he looked. They came back and said he was beautiful. It was so, too—and yet he would have photographed exactly as he would have done any day these past 7 years that he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Morocco, even in the coast towns, and greatly misleads the globe-trotter. There was a fine carving and colouring in many rooms, but the European furniture was, for the most part, wrongly used, and at best grotesquely out of place. Hygiene has not passed within the Mellah's walls, but a certain amount of Western tawdriness has. Patriarchal Jews of good stature and commanding presence had their dignity hopelessly spoilt by the big blue spotted handkerchief ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... not only those excellent drinking songs, John Barleycorn and Willie {218} Brewed a Peck o' Maut, but the headlong fun of Tam O'Shanter, and the visions, grotesquely terrible, of Death and Dr. Hornbook, and the dramatic humor of the Jolly Beggars. Cowper had celebrated "the cup which cheers but not inebriates." Burns sang the praises of Scotch Drink. Cowper was a stranger to Burns's high animal ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... that he hung with his wild beseeching eyes on Smaltz's scared face while his frail, old body acted as a wedge for the racing water and the rocks. Then he let go and turned over and over tumbling grotesquely in the wide sluice-box while the rocks pounded and ground him, beat him into insensibility. He shot over the tail-race into the river limp and unresisting, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... the club, holding up a finger. But all this is very innocent and there are not many people who talk like that. Others, on the other hand, do not deny his acuteness, but point out that he was utterly ignorant of real life, that he was terribly theoretical, grotesquely and stupidly one-sided, and consequently shallow in the extreme. As for his moral qualities all are agreed; about that there ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... misfortunes. Less difficult it was to guess whom he hated than whom he did not hate. For I had come to see a malignant devil in him which impelled him to hate all the world. I sometimes thought that he hated even himself, so grotesquely had life dealt with him, and so monstrously. At such moments a great sympathy welled up within me, and I felt shame that I had ever joyed in his discomfiture or pain. Life had been unfair to him. It had played him a scurvy trick when it fashioned him into the thing he was, and it had played him scurvy ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... ideas she had gropingly to learn. Unfamiliar (in any practical sense) with life, even in her own country, she had no landmarks or finger-posts, of any kind, in this new land. Her sentiment had never been narrowly British, but now she realized her nationality over-keenly; she felt herself almost grotesquely English, and had a sense of insular clumsiness amidst a uprightly, dexterous people. Conscious of a thousand illusive, but very real differences in point of view, and in nature, between the two nations, she had a baffled impression of walking among mysteries ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... thick clusters of gently nodding pines; the white-washed walls of cottages, glistening amid the dark green denseness of the thickly leaved box trees, and the light, feathery foliage of the golden laburnum; the undulating meadows, besprinkled with gorse and grotesquely moulded crags of granite; the white, the dazzling white roads, saturated with moonbeams; all—all were overwhelmed with stillness—the stillness that belongs, and belongs only, to the mountains, and trees, and plains—the stillness of shadowland. I even counted the buttons, the horn ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... the room which he had made a place of murder, there rose out of them taunting, accusing figures. He seemed to see Hagan, the detective, grotesquely converted into an executioner clad in red and Sam Haymond launching against him the anathema of the Church. There were shapes of strange things neither human, animal nor reptile—but wholly monstrous—emerging greedily from filthy lairs and creeping toward him with sinuous movements through ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... death; For death were bliss, and the convulsive wrath Of living torture peace, to the dread weight That pressed upon sensation, while the light Of reason gleamed but horror, and strange hosts Of hideous phantasies, like threatening ghosts. Grotesquely mingled, preyed upon his brain: Then would he dream of yesterdays again, Or view to-morrow's terrors thick surround His fancy with forebodings. While the sound Of his own breath broke frightful on his ear, He, bathed in icy sweat, would start in fear, Trembling and pale; then ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... them with curious eyes. Her smile of recognition as she caught sight of Professor Burgess, gave place to an expression of half-concealed ridicule, as she glanced down at Vic Burleigh, the big, heavy-boned young fellow, so grotesquely impossible to the harmony of ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... next two hours, Standish, who was on one of his periodical fits of comedy, stuck to his piano, and dominated the evening. He played grotesquely inappropriate melodies, he commanded singing, once he stopped the show and with the assistance of a dozen recruits put on the burlesque of an amateur night at a music-hall. He made the occasion a historical event, and when at last it ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... continues in bloom: its vividly-scarlet flowers have delighted us ever since the middle of March. The figs commenced leafing with the month: now they are green with broad leaves, and in the axil of each appears the rudiment of a fruit. They are grotesquely gnarled and twisted, taking most unthought-of shapes and positions. The mocking-birds have mated and begun the construction of their nests. Their music is delightful: nearly all the day long they sing, and sometimes in the night. It seems almost wicked—to mercenary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... even hands and faces are green; they wear greenstone sandals, they walk with knees extremely wide apart, as having sat cross-legged for centuries, their right arms and right forefingers point upwards, right elbows resting on left hands: they stoop grotesquely: halfway to the footlights they wheel left. They pass in front of the seven beggars, now in terrified attitudes and six of them sit down in the attitude described, with their backs to the audience. The leader stands, still stooping. Just as they wheel left, OOGNO cries out.) The ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... in the morning, his drowsy face grotesquely surmounted by the folds of a silk handkerchief which falls over his left temple like a police cap, he is certainly a laughable object, and it is difficult to recognize in him the glorious spouse, celebrated in the strophes of Rousseau; but, nevertheless, there is a certain gleam of life to illume ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... grotesquely the white shape behind it, but could not make its movement unfeminine; and, when the lower sash was slowly raised until it jammed about a foot above the sill, and two hands showed their fingers under ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... twenty-two minutes to eight, sir!" said Mr. Shrig, and rising to his feet, set off briskly along the path. We had almost reached the wood I have mentioned when Mr. Shrig raised his knobbed stick to point at something that sprawled grotesquely across the path. The hat had fallen and rolled away and staring down into the horror of this face fouled with blood and blackened with powder, I recognised ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... cotton industry of the fifties, and with the falling prices of the eighties he packed up and stole away. Yonder is another grove, with unkempt lawn, great magnolias, and grass-grown paths. The Big House stands in half-ruin, its great front door staring blankly at the street, and the back part grotesquely restored for its black tenant. A shabby, well-built Negro he is, unlucky and irresolute. He digs hard to pay rent to the white girl who owns the remnant of the place. She married a policeman, and lives ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... My answer seemed grotesquely out of key with this, but its sequence was clear in my mind. I got up, saying: "Oh, that reminds me—I must go and see Ev'leen Ann. I'd forgotten to plan ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... which approximate in time to our New Year's Day and Christmas show the importance they attach to concentrated thought. Early in the morning of what corresponds to our New Year's Day, two young men, one of them grotesquely dressed in women's garments, visit every igloo and blow out each seal-oil lamp. The lights are afterwards renewed from a freshly-kindled fire. The chief, asked the meaning of the ceremony, replied, "New light, new sun," showing ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... look round Maisie's rooms at first. Now, as soon as she came in, she perceived, sticking out beyond the bed, a small pair of feet in high-heeled shoes. Maisie had died in the effort to strap up a great portmanteau. She had died so grotesquely that her little body had fallen forward into the trunk, and it had closed upon her, like the jaws of a gigantic alligator. The key was in her hand. Her dark hair, like the hair of a Japanese, had come down and covered her ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... the feet of evil-doers who had there been disciplined. At one corner of the meeting-house was the pillory and at the other the stocks, and, by a singular good fortune for our sketch, the head of an Episcopalian and suspected Catholic was grotesquely encased in the former machine, while a fellow-criminal who had boisterously quaffed a health to the king was confined by the legs in the latter. Side by side on the meeting-house steps stood a male and a female figure. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... manuscript, just as it is, could never have been written by Alix. On "this 22d of August, 1795," she could not have perpetrated such statements as these two. Her memory of persons and events could not have been so grotesquely at fault, nor could she have hoped so to deceive any one. The misstatements are of later date, and from some one to whom the two events were historical. But the manuscript is all in one simple, undisguised, feminine handwriting, and with no interlineation save only ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... hall-way into the kitchen. How dark it was! Her quick glance comprehended the whole scene, and the contrast between it and that other home-coming smote her with a keen sense of physical pain. She looked at the solitary lamp with its grotesquely hideous ornament of red flannel, at Susan's expressionless, freckled face, at the boys in their copper-toed boots and overalls, at the good-natured, but hopelessly common-place Martha Spriggs, with her thin hair drawn tight into a knob the size of a bullet, and her bare ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... get some satisfaction from this, when, turning a bend of the path within two hundred yards of the castle, behold an unmistakable enemy barred his way!—an ugly, hoggish, obese man, with bare legs most grotesquely like pillars of granite, and a protuberant paunch; but the devil must have been in his legs to carry him more swiftly than thoroughbred limbs had borne Count Victor. He stood sneering in the path, turning up the right sleeve of a soiled and ragged saffron ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... carried no expression whatever, save one of cool interest, just touched with a craftsman's confidence. His barrel was steady as his head. The little figure below was moving over the rough ground towards the black spot. They could see its legs working grotesquely, like a mechanical toy. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... soul! What's happened? Where's Captain Whidden? Bless my soul! Who are you?" The speaker was big, well dressed, comfortably well fed. He stared at the six of us sprawled out grotesquely on the deck, where we had thrown ourselves when the ship swung at her anchor. He looked up at the loose, half-furled sails. He turned to Roger, who stood gaunt and silent before him. "Bless my ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... encouraging him, he took the wig off again and wiped his face with it: still no expression from the audience. Lemaitre then put the wig in his pocket: the audience remained silent. Surprised at their indulgence, the actor advanced to the prompter's hole at the front of the stage, bent down grotesquely, took out his snuff-box and offered some to the invisible functionary: the audience broke out in a fury. Lemaitre drew the wig from his pocket and threw it at the souffleur's head: a frightful tumult followed. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... leaping out of the darkness into light. It was a terrible object, a monstrosity of indeterminate sex and nature, but surmounted by a woman's head and face of extraordinary, if devilish loveliness, sunk back between high but grotesquely small shoulders, like to those of a lizard, so that it glared upwards. The workmanship of the thing was rude yet strangely powerful. Whatever there is cruel, whatever there is devilish, whatever ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... so it seemed, this singular, interesting, absorbed immobility lasted; then a seedy little man rose, and approached the girl. His manner was grotesquely graceful as he said: "We are all glad to greet you ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... cosey enough, with good company well-met within, the risen wind clamoring through the night, the rain lashing the black panes, the sea rumbling upon the rocks below, and, withal, a savory smell abroad in goodly promise. My uncle, grown fat as a gnome in these days, grotesquely fashioned, miscellaneously clothed as ever, stood with legs wide upon the black wolf's-skin, his back to the fire, his great hands clasped over his paunch, lying as upon a shelf; regarding the direct importation and myself, the rise of my admiration, the room, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... been established, and churches built. Honoruru, in the Island of Cahu, is the capital of the group. Some of the houses are built of stone; but the natives still prefer living in their huts, so that the town is grotesquely irregular. The principal public building is the English school, where children of both sexes are taught to read and write. The place is altogether in a flourishing condition, and so advanced in the refinements of life, that the news-paper, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting for the silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, with his suitcase clutched in his hand, no Armenian peddler of laces and ointments could have felt more grotesquely out of ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... preclude the possibility. Goldsmith is supposed to have had no learning because one day he called upon Gibbon, who gulled him. He questioned the author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" upon some historic issue, and the historian led him grotesquely astray. Who would not have accepted anything Gibbon said without criticism? Who would have expected this great personage capable of indulging in a school-boy prank? Goldsmith's writings prove him well instructed and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... she whispered, as we passed into the room. It was an incongruous remark, and stirred again an hysterical feeling that had been driving me to laugh when I felt most sad amid all the grotesquely dreary preparations for the "burying." But, like some other sayings that offend ears polite, it ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... man, incredibly old, so that one thought first of his age. His beard and hair were not all grey, but he had grotesquely brown and wrinkled flesh. His stuff robe hung in straight folds about his singularly erect figure, and there was in his bearing the dignity of one who has understood all fine and gentle things, all things of quietude. But his look was ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... that I speak of them for the moment, but rather as figures in the popular imagination. As such, Davis was credited with all the qualities of a powerful statesman; while Lincoln showed as a not ill-meaning, but grotesquely inadequate and misplaced oddity, a sort of mere accident of mob-favor, and made abundant mirth for the mirthful: how justly the event has perhaps demonstrated. Among the Northern generals, I think that the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... which were in all probability influenced by the tradition and preaching concerning Jesus. Dositheus, Simon Magus, Cleobius, and Menander appeared as Messiahs or bearers of the Godhead, and proclaimed a doctrine in which the Jewish faith was strangely and grotesquely mixed with Babylonian myths, together with some Greek additions. The mysterious worship, the breaking up of Jewish particularism, the criticism of the Old Testament, which for long had had great difficulty in retaining its authority in many circles, in consequence ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... He gathered his thin fingers in a bunch at his lips, and made an airy salute to the warm space between the candles. He drew himself together with a youthful air, and held his grey head gallantly. Youth and age in him seemed almost grotesquely mingled. Sprightly notes from the song of a cafe chantant hovered on his thin, dry lips. Medallion, amused, yet with a hushed kind of feeling through all his nerves, pushed the Avocat's tumbler till it touched his fingers. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were still in motion, the mother at intervals seizing her hairy offspring, and grotesquely caressing it; then letting it go free to dance fantastically around the recumbent form of the unconscious captive child. This it did, amusing itself by now and then tearing off a strip of the girl's dress, either ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... situation. It was not only a city, but a state; not only a state; but an empire; and on the crest of its little mountain called itself sovereign of a territory, or at least of scattered towns and counties, with which its present aspect is grotesquely out of relation. The lords of Les Baux, in a word, were great feudal proprietors; and there was a time during which the island of Sardinia, to say nothing of places nearer home, such as Arles and Marseilles, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... shrank back as if she had been struck. She pressed her hands against her cheeks and stepped away with a look of horror and disgust as the Ramblin' Kid backed out of the stall with the Gold Dust maverick. Outside he fumbled grotesquely at the silky mane and climbed ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... hour of peril in the Lydstep caves: Down the steep gorge, grotesquely boulder-piled And tempest-worn, as ocean hurrying wild Up it in thunder breaks and vainly raves,— My haste hath sped me to the rippled sand Where, arching deep, o'erhang on either hand These halls of Amphitrite, echoing clear The ceaseless mournful music of the waves: Ten thousand beauteous ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... shadowy forms twisted up grotesquely, weaving in and out. There were voices of expostulation and strong words of anger; but the new serious business that had materialized had most effectually put a stop to reflections upon the innocent girl who had ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the team wagon were already lengthening grotesquely over the flat, cultivated fields, which for some time had taken the place of the plains of wild oats in the branch road into which they had turned. The gigantic shadow of the proprietor, occasionally projected before it, was ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... where some of his goods were still stored. There was no sense of terror in this bland obliteration of the little settlement; the ruins of a single burnt-up cabin would have been more impressive than this stupid and even grotesquely placid effect of the rival destroying element. People took it naturally; the water went as it had come,—slowly, impassively, noiselessly; a few days of fervid Californian sunshine dried the cabins, and in a week or two the red dust lay again as thickly before their doors as the winter mud had ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a little to one side of Patty, a horse went down, a big roan colt, and she got one horrible glimpse of a grotesquely twisted neck, and a tangle of thrashing hoofs as another horse plunged onto his fallen comrade. A horrible scream split the air as he, too, went down, and the sudden side-surge of the herd all but unseated the clinging girl. In a second it was over ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... themselves do not possess—and consequently also do not "deserve,"—and who yet BELIEVE in this good opinion afterwards. This seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable, that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is doubtful about it in most cases when it is spoken of. He will say, for instance: "I may be mistaken about my value, and on the other ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the Government of London Bill." But the truth was, says the Memoir, 'that he could think of nothing but the dynamite conspiracy.' A Bill to meet this was being rushed through Parliament, with an almost grotesque haste, that was as grotesquely ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... upon another, with the strange light of the noonday sun playing over them and turning their colours into a blaze of glory. Beyond was a stretch of sand, broken here and there by sage-brush, greasewood, or cactus rearing its prickly spines grotesquely. ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... ground. Enormous hands hung on these poor limbs—hands for a very big woman, beautiful hands; for in spite of their huge size they were wonderfully modelled and imposingly strong, with the long, nervous fingers of the artist or the enthusiast. The head was grotesquely oversized, though essentially beautiful; but it seemed like some sculptor's masterpiece placed upon a ridiculous figure, or some fine boulder rock balanced absurdly on a narrow, crooked flower-stem. The face arrested ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... vision. That which had been, for her, alternate gibberish and silence, had become an intelligible tongue. The blank features had stirred and shifted into a countenance; she saw a face, where she had seen only odds and ends of modelling grotesquely flung abroad. With no stupid pantheism to befuddle her, she yet felt the earth a living thing. Wood and stone, which had not even been an idol for her, now shaped themselves to hold a sacrament. Put it as you please; for I can find no way to express it to my ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to another distant cholla, led the way on again. But she too was growing a little light-headed. The distant cactus danced grotesquely and black spots flitted between her and the molten iron over which, her fancy said they traveled. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... making her debut with the Metropolitan: Opera Company, decorated the Bannister bench, arrayed in one of the substitutes' baseball suits. It was too large for his splinter-structure, so that it flapped grotesquely, giving him a startling resemblance to a scarecrow escaped from a cornfield. With the thermometer of his spirits registering zero, the dismayed youth, whose punishment was surely fitting the crime, heard ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... and valued him, a not uncertain element of charm: for it was akin to the shyness, the absence of assertiveness, the entirely genuine modesty, which were of his dominant traits. Yet in his contact with the outer world this incurable shyness sometimes, as I have said, led him into giving a grotesquely untrue impression of himself: he was at times gauche, blunt, awkwardly infelicitous in speech or silence, when he would have wished, as he knew perfectly how, to be considerate, gentle, sympathetic, responsive. On the other hand, his shyness and reticence were seemingly contradicted ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... too much for speech. She moved swiftly across to the what-not at the head of the bed. If he did not suffer, there could be no selfishness, surely, in trying to keep death at bay for a little space yet? But, alas, with what grotesquely paltry and inadequate weapons are all—even the most gallant—reduced to fighting death at the last! Here, on the one hand, a half wine-glass of champagne in a china feeding-cup, with a teapot-like spout to it, or a few spoonfuls of jelly, backed by the passion of a woman's ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... pathetic. How I did my part I cannot tell. Those weeks are to me now like the memory of an ugly nightmare. The ghostly old man moving out and in of his little daughter's room in useless, dumb agony; Ponka's woe-stricken Indian face; Joe's extraordinary and unusual but loyal attempts at fun-making grotesquely sad, and The Duke's unvarying and invincible cheeriness; these furnish light and shade for the picture my memory brings me of ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... the medicine, and Beulah stood before the bright wood fire and watched the ruddy light flashing grotesquely over the pictures on the wall. The gas had not yet been lighted; she crossed the room, and sat down before the window. A red glow still lingered in the west, and, one by one, the stars came swiftly out. She took ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... himself.] let the everlasting fire consume thee.' Whilst Luther with the other teachers returned to the town, some hundreds of students remained upon the scene, and sang a Te Deum, and a Dirge for the decretals. After the ten o'clock meal, some of the young students, grotesquely attired, drove through the town in a large carriage, with a banner emblazoned with a bull four yards in length, amidst the blowing of brass trumpets and other absurdities. They collected from all ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... and also there appeared, midway between the framing shadows, down at the lower end of the slender line of the cord, an exaggerated, wriggling manifestation like the reflection of a huge and misshapen jumping-jack, which first would lengthen itself grotesquely, and then abruptly would shorten up, as the tremors running through the dying man's frame altered the silhouette cast by the oblique sunbeams; and along with this stencilled vision, as a part of it, occurred shifting shadow movements of two legs dancing busily on nothing, and of two foreshortened ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the republic of Mexico. Among the numberless churches, a curious one will long be remembered, namely, the Santa Vera Cruz, the facade of which very much resembles that of a dime museum, having a lot of grotesquely-colored figures of saints ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... called the high political case against censorship as a principle is now complete. The pleadings are those which have already freed books and pulpits and political platforms in England from censorship, if not from occasional legal persecution. The stage alone remains under a censorship of a grotesquely unsuitable kind. No play can be performed if the Lord Chamberlain happens to disapprove of it. And the Lord Chamberlain's functions have no sort of relationship to dramatic literature. A great judge of literature, a farseeing statesman, a born champion of liberty of conscience and intellectual ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... when Private Wakeman, in his grotesquely tattered clothes, limped through the door. Only a few men were in the hut, writing or playing draughts. A boy at the piano was laboriously beating out a discordant version of "Tennessee." Mrs. Jocelyn sat on a packing-case, a block of paper on her knee, writing a letter to a man who had left ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... seemed to Frederick to have gone mad. The Hamburg was entering the narrow harbour, the basin surrounded by skyscrapers, veritable towers of Babel, and alive with numberless grotesquely shaped ferry-boats. The scene, perhaps, would be a ridiculous monstrosity, were it not so truly gigantic. In that crater of life civilisation bellows, howls, screeches, roars, thunders, rushes, whizzes and whirls. Here is ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... covered chair by the window, relapsed into a positive orgy of enjoyment. His whole attitude toward the universe had been altered by a bubbling potful of brown liquid, and the tremendous result—so grotesquely out of proportion to its cause—appeared to him at the minute entirely right and proper. Everything was entirely right and proper, and he felt able to approve with a clear conscience ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... so—the very stones of the convent church seemed dissolving into tears. The statues of the saints appeared to weep, and the great statue of Saint Gregory de Northbury over the porch seemed bowed down with grief. The grotesquely carved heads on the spouts grinned horribly at the abbot's destroyers, and spouted forth cascades of water, as if with the intent of drowning them. So deluging and incessant were the showers, that it seemed, indeed, as if the abbey would be flooded. All the inequalities ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to Timothy Pickering. Fiery as his temper had often proved, and grotesquely obstinate as he had sometimes shown himself, Hamilton's most erratic impulse appears like the coolness of Jay when contrasted with the conduct upon which he now entered. The letter he proposed to write, ostensibly in justification of himself, was apparently intended for private circulation at some ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... suspension of tariff regulations in his favor, but a future statue of heroic size in the palace plaza. Whereat Mr. Howland turned swiftly to Dan at his side, and from behind his napkin momentarily altered an expression of beatific if humble gratitude, and winked almost grotesquely. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... of expressing them. His talk recalled to me a time in my child- hood when, having found a knob of glass, twisted, striated with different colors, and filled with air bubbles, I enjoyed looking at the landscape through it. Everything became grotesquely transfigured. A cabbage in the foreground became opalescent, and an ear of corn a mass of jewels, but the whole atmosphere above and beyond was lurid, and the chimneys ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... simply. As the speech ended we heard a loud boom and the sound of falling masonry as a shell struck the far end of the building. We hurried to the hotel, the shells screaming overhead. We saw the buildings tumbling into ruins, glass falling in fine powder and remnants of furniture hanging grotesquely ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... Passing along Forty-second Street one afternoon, I came upon a little crowd, and joining it I found that it was grouped in amused curiosity, and with a certain kindness, round an old hatless Irishman, who was leaning against a shop front, weeping bitterly, and, of course, grotesquely. The old man was very evidently drunk, but there was something in his weeping deeply pitiful for all that. He was drunk, for certain; but no less certainly he was very unhappy—unhappy over some mysterious something ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... regretfully: "If only I had been open with papa from the first! But then what an impossible life he would have led me!" Yes. Men were absurd in many ways; lovably like Jasper, impracticably like her father, odiously like that grotesquely supine creature in the chair. Was it possible to talk him over? Perhaps it was not necessary? "Oh! I can't talk to him," she thought. And when Heemskirk, still without looking at her, began resolutely to crush his half-smoked cheroot on the coffee-tray, she took alarm, glided ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... intervened, and made sustained darknesses along the road, woods that frayed out at the edges to weirdly warped and stunted trees. Then isolated pine witches would appear, and make their rigid gestures at me as I passed. Grotesquely incongruous amidst these forms, I presently came on estate boards, appealing, "Houses can be built to suit purchaser," to the silence, to the shadows, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... wood-soled shoes and a shovel was working a mass of clay over which at intervals he sprinkled water, and at intervals halted to make pliable lumps of a uniform size which he added to a pile wrapped in damp cloths. There were a number of modeling stands with twisted wires grotesquely resembling a child's line drawing of a human being; while a stand with some modeling tools on its edge bore an upright figure shapeless in its swathing ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shadow on the horizon, the light from the crater shedding a lurid glare upon the surrounding gloom. In time the glow of the burning lava, reflected in the icy mirror, fell upon the troop of skaters, and cast their lengthened shadows grotesquely on the surface of ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... a prophylactic enforced by law, this illusion is intensified grotesquely, because only vagrants can evade it. Now vagrants have little power of resisting any disease: their death rate and their case-mortality rate is always high relatively to that of respectable folk. Nothing is easier, therefore, than to prove that compliance with any public regulation ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... of them, their barbaric headdresses and grotesquely painted faces, together with their many metal ornaments and gorgeously coloured feathers, adding to their ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... arms and shoulders bare. From time to time these women come forward and sing—songs not always strictly adapted to the family circle, perhaps. But the favorite vocalist is a comic man, who emerges from behind the scenes in a grotesquely exaggerated costume—an ill-fitting, long, green calico tail-coat, with a huge yellow bandana dangling from a rear pocket; a red cotton umbrella with a brass ring on one end and a glass hook on the other; light blue shapeless trousers; a flaming orange—colored vest; a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... have tried to look still more lugubrious ever since. It seems monstrous to you, but that, I believe, is the kind of thing I shall always be doing. But it does not mean that I feel no real remorse. They were greetin' eyes before I knew it, and though I may pose grotesquely as a fine fellow for finding Grizel a home where there is no child and can never be a child, I shall not cease, night nor day, from tending her. It will be a grim business, Gemmell, as you know, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... rubbed each other in confusion. For several seconds they faced each other thus. Suddenly the half breed whistled twice, and out from the trees trotted an ugly little pinto. Its right ear turned forward for Mahon's familiar welcome, the left, struggling to follow, fell away grotesquely in its upper half. But the weirdly coloured blotches that made it a pinto were unlike any colour of living hide; and the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Fayette has been here. He was in this very Cabildo. The old hero of New Orleans, who blessed Dorothy and me, walked these streets. Now he is long gone. Clay is gone, Webster, Calhoun. The country is at a pause. Hawthorne's friend is President. And Douglas is in St. Petersburg, riding a horse grotesquely, and bringing his western ways into the very presence of ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... fecundity of nature; it consisted of a representation, generally grotesquely exaggerated, of the male genital organs; the phallophori crowned with violets and ivy and their faces shaded with green foliage, sang improvised airs, called 'Phallics,' full of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... as he spoke, and Cocardasse and Passepoil, descending from their post upon the bridge, advanced towards the brilliant group, bowing grotesquely as they did so, with their big hats in their hands and their long rapiers tilting up their ragged cloaks. All the party gazed in amazement at the whimsical apparitions, to the great indignation of Cocardasse, ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... grand air—and on their way back they went into Saint Mark's for a hushed ten minutes. Later they took up and kept up the fun of it to the very end; and it seemed to Pemberton a part of that fun that Mrs. Moreen, who was very angry when he had announced her his intention, should charge him, grotesquely and vulgarly and in reference to the loan she had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting lest they should "get something out" of him. On the other hand he had to do Mr. Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognise that when on coming in they heard the cruel news ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... cause,—Emily, in particular, not speaking with her school-mates or teachers except when obliged to do so. The other pupils thought them of outlandish accent and manners and ridiculously old to be at school at all,—being twenty-four and twenty-six, and seeming even older. Their sombre and grotesquely-ugly costumes were fruitful causes of mirth to the gay young Belgian misses. The Brontes were not especially brilliant students, and none of their companions had ever suspected that they were geniuses. Of the two, Emily was considered to be, in most respects, the more talented, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... bad-looking, but with a pallid and haggard appearance from recent illness. She was clothed in a kind of tawdry blue dress, much soiled and torn, and had over her shoulders an old tartan shawl, which she drew tightly across her breast as the strangers entered. Her grandmother, who looked more weird and grotesquely horrible than ever, saluted Calton and the detective on their entrance with a shrill yell, and a ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... 'Things are not what they seem.' You appear disinclined to believe that I am one of those 'whited sepulchres,' outwardly fair and comely, but filled with unsavoury dust and ugly grinning skulls? Life is a huge sham, and we are all masked puppets, jumping grotesquely, just as the strongest hands pull the wires. Regina, I have gone to and fro upon the earth long enough to learn that the most acceptable present is never labelled advice; nevertheless, I would fain warn your unsophisticated ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... dated from the day that Lewis went away. Late that night mammy and Mrs. Leighton, aided by trembling Natalie, had had to carry the Reverend Orme from his chair in the school-room to his bed. The left side of his face was drawn grotesquely out of line, but despite the disfigurement, there was a look of peace in his ravaged countenance, as of one who welcomes night joyfully and calmly ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... at these incomprehensible remarks. A peasant soon appeared on the road; he was dancing grotesquely and flinging his arms about with meaningless gestures. Almost paralyzed with curiosity, I glued my eyes on the hilarious spectacle. As the man reached a point in the road where he would vanish from our view, Sri Yukteswar said, "Now, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... produced the most singular contrasts. The Roman gods, the ritual, military, and juristic terms of the Romans, present a strange appearance amid the Greek world; Roman -aediles- and -tresviri- are grotesquely mingled with -agoranomi- and -demarchi-; pieces whose scene is laid in Aetolia or Epidamnus send the spectator without scruple to the Velabrum and the Capitol. Such a patchwork of Roman local tints distributed over the Greek ground is barbarism ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... pale and her weak mouth foolishly agape. Cyrus Kilfane was indistinguishable from the pile of rugs amid which he sprawled by the table, and of Sir Lucien Pyne nothing was to be seen but the outstretched legs and feet which projected grotesquely from a recess. Seated, oriental fashion, upon an improvised divan near the grand piano and propped up by a number of garish cushions, Rita beheld Mrs. Sin. The long bamboo pipe had fallen from her listless fingers. Her face wore an expression of mystic rapture like that characterizing ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... which are fastened like sandals to her feet by creeping plants. During her seclusion she is in charge of her aunts or other female relatives. At the end of the time she bathes, her person is loaded with ornaments, her face is grotesquely painted with red stripes on a white ground, and thus adorned she is brought forth in public to be admired by everybody. She is now marriageable.[95] Among the Ot Danoms of Borneo girls at the age of eight or ten years ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... respect for death. By virtue of the malady that had killed him, of his plethoric habit of body, and of the sweltering August heat, the corpse was decomposing rapidly, so that the face had become almost black and assumed an aspect grotesquely horrible, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini |
