"Preternaturally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exceedingly keen competition. Besides fruit, flowers, and vegetables, the exhibits include such produce as butter and eggs, and my wife was very successful with these, but on one occasion was rather disappointed to find a beautiful dish of Langshan eggs, almost preternaturally brown and rich-looking, disqualified. The judges were not acquainted with the peculiarities of the breed—then a new one—and the reason for disqualification, as we afterwards discovered, was "artificially coloured." I believe ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... little horses, and the marvellous brown driver, who seemed to be always going to perdition, but made the horses do apparently impossible things with absolute certainty; and the pretty tiny boy who came to help his uncle, and was so clever, and so preternaturally quiet, and so very small: then the road through the mountain passes, seven or eight feet wide, with a precipice above and below, up which the little horses scrambled; while big lizards, with green heads and chocolate bodies, looked pertly at us, and ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... scarcely more from its unpretending prototype of the woods, than Robert M'Corkindale, Esq., Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway, differed from Bob M'Corkindale, the seedy frequenter of "The Crow." In the days of yore, men eyed the surtout—napless at the velvet collar, and preternaturally white at the seams—which Bob vouchsafed to wear, with looks of dim suspicion, as if some faint reminiscence, similar to that which is said to recall the memory of a former state of existence, suggested to them a vision that the garment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... two vivid eyes looked out preternaturally bright, and from those eyes two tears had ploughed each a furrow through the filth ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... self-confident, clever, shining, with his indubitable virtues mainly on the outside. If ever any man of thirty-two in all this world was eligible, Adam Tellwright was. Decidedly he had a reputation for preternaturally keen smartness in trade, but in trade that cannot be called a defect; on the contrary, if a man has virtues, you cannot precisely quarrel with him because they happen to be on the outside; the principal thing is to have virtues. And then ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... of the Roman intellect it is but justice that we should turn away to contemplate those situations in which that same intellect showed itself preternaturally strong. To face a sudden danger by a corresponding weight of sudden counsel or sudden evasion—that was a privilege essentially lodged in the Roman mind. But in every nation some minds much more than others are representative of the national type: they are normal minds, reflecting, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... is characteristic (Fig. 200). The enormous dome of the skull surmounts a puny and preternaturally old face; the eyes are pushed downwards and forwards by the pressure on the orbital plates, and the eyebrows are displaced upwards. The head rolls helplessly from side to side; the child moans and cries a great deal; and vomiting is often a prominent symptom. In most cases the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at Fairoaks, after a dreary night passed in the mail-coach, where a stout fellow-passenger, swelling preternaturally with great-coats, had crowded him into a corner, and kept him awake by snoring indecently; where a widow lady, opposite, had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all the windows of the vehicle, but had filled ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when the door closed upon the outgoing pair, and Pedro rose and locked it. There was something preternaturally solemn and mysterious in his manner as, placing a chair nearer to the desk for Mrs. Trent, he motioned Wolfgang to take another opposite. Then, standing between them he drew the basket toward himself, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... Her clothes were so well-worn, and her grooming was so meticulous, her accent so clean and crisp, her manner so devoid of patronage, yet subtly remote, her controlled heart so kind that she perennially fascinated the buxom, rather sloppy, preternaturally acute, and wholly unaristocratic young ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... had a theory which came amazingly true in his own daughter. It was, that in high altitudes, with mountain ranges and vast frozen rivers shutting out the rest of the world, the emotions become preternaturally acute; that human beings grew more tragic or more comic, according to their bent, and were closer to primeval men and women than they knew. So it was at Fort Blizzard, standing grimly watchful over the world ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... record of the day. All the self-righteousness latent in human nature comes out, or used to, in her earlier days, in the evening revelations. Here is a specimen, taken at random from the first month's sheaf. She and the Imp had come to my room for their devotions, preternaturally pious, both of them, though quite unregenerate. It was the Elf's turn to begin. She settled herself circumspectly, sighed deeply, and ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... windows sat a young girl of sixteen, a delicate creature of rapid growth, whose every limb and feature seemed preternaturally thin and fragile. She was occupied with some sort of sewing. At another little sewing-table, immediately opposite to her, was a red-cheeked damsel with a frightful mop of light hair and a figure which had all the possibilities of stoutness before it. She was a sort of governess, ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... their affairs; and a melancholy old Frenchman blessed her with the enthusiasm of his nation, because she put a posy in the button-hole of his rusty coat, and never failed to smile and bow as he passed by. Yet Debby was no Edgeworth heroine, preternaturally prudent, wise, and untemptable; she had a fine crop of piques, vanities, and dislikes growing up under this new style of cultivation. She loved admiration, enjoyed her purple and fine linen, hid new-born envy, disappointed hope, and wounded pride behind a smiling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men. That same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing with the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to understand humanity. An ignorance of the ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... with all the assurance and cheerfulness he could command. But she instinctively detected a slight shade of anxiety or uncertainty in his tone. The physician must be a consummate actor who can deceive a patient whose perceptions are preternaturally acute as were Feodora's. He saw that he had ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... dressing; consulting that witness moreover on this last opinion. WAS he looking preternaturally fit? There was something in it perhaps for Chad's wonderful eye, but he had felt himself for hours rather in pieces. Such a judgement, however, was after all but a contribution to his resolve; it testified unwittingly to his wisdom. He was still firmer, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... "specimen day." It is early morning, or to be more precise, about eight of the clock, and the white fog is just beginning to curl and drift away from the surface of the river. Sooner than this it would be idle to go out. The preternaturally early bird in his greedy haste may catch the worm; but the salmon never take the fly until the fog has lifted; and in this the scientific angler sees, with gratitude, a remarkable adaptation of the laws of nature to the tastes of man. The canoes ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... important; he appears to have been the eldest son, exercising the highest offices during his father's life. That the succession fell on the thirteenth son, Mer.en.ptah, was doubtless due to the elder sons having died during the preternaturally long reign ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... pause. The ticking of the little Swiss clock, the joyous warble of the thrushes, the soft rustle of the trees sounding preternaturally loud. Beatrix Stuart sat white to the lips, with anger, mortification, amaze, disappointment. Then she covered her face with her hands, and burst into a vehement ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... then aided Mrs. Wheaton in making the room and bed a little more like what they should be by means of the articles they had brought. Clara wonderingly saw that her little closet was stocked with supplies for days to come. Her mother's preternaturally brilliant eyes followed every movement, also, with a dumb but eager questioning. Tired Belle in the meantime had drawn a chair to the table, and with her head resting on her arms had ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... thicket not unlike some awkward, shy quadrumane, stopping here and there to peer out through the openings over the marshes that lay beyond. His sight, hearing, and even the sense of smell had become preternaturally acute. It was the latter which suddenly arrested his steps with the odor of dried fish. It had a significance beyond the mere instincts of hunger—it indicated the contiguity of some Indian encampment. And as such—it ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... was under tremendous excitement, and all its faculties, especially the imagination, were preternaturally active, vivid, and rapid-working. Such was my mental excitement and bodily irritation that for ten days and nights I slept hardly at all, nor enjoyed one moment's release from pain. That I was thoroughly ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... to a New York belle and heiress. Mrs. Hunter was soon possessed of these momentous rumors, and when, at last, weary from her morning labors, Mara sat down to their simple dinner, she saw that her aunt was preternaturally solemn and dignified. The girl expressed no curiosity, for she knew that whatever burdened her aunt's mind would soon be revealed with endless detail ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... summon the housekeeper. She stood in the inner hall and listened, that she might hear what rooms had inmates. From the kitchen came occasional clinking of cups and plates; the housekeeper had evidently not swerved from her regular work. With ears preternaturally acute, Eliza hearkened to the silence in the other rooms till some slight sound, she could hardly tell of what, led her upstairs to a certain door. She did not knock; she had no power to stand there waiting for a response; the primitive manners of the log house in ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... whipped up his horses. A drive of a half mile brought them to an ideal white cottage surrounded by porches and hidden in a tangle of vines. The door was opened for them by the Rev. John Langdon in person. He seemed a preternaturally grave young man to Anna and his clerical attire was above reproach. Any misgivings one might have had regarding him on the score of his youth, were more than counterbalanced by ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... inquiry from all around, then bows and gestures and murmurs of disavowal. I alone remained irresponsive, for at that very moment every fibre of my being was strained to nervous rigidity. My senses were preternaturally at work. The marble column against which I was leaning with seeming carelessness, vibrated under my hand. Within its circular depths I could see Abdul descending stealthily and slowly, his one free arm pressing a silken bundle ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... the new car: an engine of destruction such as Lancelot had never dreamed of. It was admittedly too high-powered for England; you were across the county in about a minute. And then he had departed in a kind of thunderstorm of his own making. Lancelot, preternaturally moved, said to his mother, "I say, Mamma, what a man—eh?" She, lightly, "Yes, isn't he wonderful?" and Lancelot, with a snort: "A man? Ten rather small men—easily." And James, poor James, saw nothing ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... happening to look into it, she saw something that for the moment caused her heart to stop beating and paralysed her with fear. It was a great gaunt cinnamon bear, which, seated on its haunches, was watching her with a look of comical surprise upon its preternaturally ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... in an idle man would only provoke impatience; but Byron was, during the whole of this period, almost preternaturally active. Detained by bad weather at Ouchy for two days (Juno 26, 27), he wrote the Prisoner of Chillon, which, with its noble introductory sonnet on Bonnivard, in some respects surpasses any of his early ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... organization than that of constant active service. The Fortieth was forever in the field,—its wives "perennially grass-widowed," said the garrison wits,—its children so seldom blessed with the sight of the paternal face as to be preternaturally wise in picking out their own fathers. The Fortieth went as a matter of course. The two companies remaining behind looked upon that as a mere accident that time would surely rectify. The two that went made the customary appeal to the post commander ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... baby!" cried Celia, and shrieked the information into Lanse's ear. His expression of disfavour relaxed a degree, but he still looked preternaturally severe. Celia hobbled over to the baby, and sitting down in a rocking-chair, held out her arms. But Charlotte shook her head and motioned imperatively toward ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... processes of daily business, nor could enlighten an abstract matter with such a wealth of luminous analogy. It is this characteristic of his style which has led to the common comparison of his writing with Shakespeare's; both seem to be preternaturally endowed with more information, to have a wider sweep of interest than ordinary men. Both were not only, as Matthew Arnold said of Burke, "saturated with ideas," but saturated too in the details of the business and desire of ordinary men's ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... fully the lessons which belong to so terrible a picture of frenzy and guilt, consider also the physical circumstances and condition of the criminal at the time,—severe illness, intense labor of the brain, poverty bordering upon famine, the mind preternaturally at work devising schemes and excuses to arrive at the means for ends ardently desired. And all this duly considered, the reader may see the crime bodying itself out from the shades and chimeras of a horrible hallucination,—the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... interest in their affairs; and a melancholy old Frenchman blessed her with the enthusiasm of his nation, because she put a posy in the button-hole of his rusty coat, and never failed to smile and bow as he passed by. Yet Debby was no Edgworth heroine preternaturally prudent, wise, and untemptable; she had a fine crop of piques, vanities, and dislikes growing up under this new style of cultivation. She loved admiration, enjoyed her purple and fine linen, hid new-born envy, disappointed hope, and wounded pride behind a smiling face, and often thought ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... her Uncle in the carriage, Mary was borne swiftly through the town out into the country. It was one of those preternaturally quiet, sultry days when the whole universe appears lifeless and inert, free from loud noise, or sound of any description, days which we occasionally have in early Spring or Summer, when the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... rushed impetuous over the sloping country, till, its force being spent, it waded tediously through the slushing reeds of the hill-land again, and so rolled down to sea. For, while I stood there, it seemed as if my vision were preternaturally sharpened, and I followed the bright river in its course, through the alternating marsh and desert,—through the land where Zeus went banqueting among the blameless Ethiopians, —through the land where the African princes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... had a sense of hearing that was preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer—nearer—nearer till they stopped outside her cell door. With a clank it was opened. She sprang ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... was a startling object to contemplate on a first view of him. His shaven head, tied up in an old yellow silk handkerchief; his tawny, haggard cheeks; his bright brown eyes, preternaturally large and wild; his rough black beard; his long, supple, sinewy fingers, wasted by suffering till they looked like claws—all tended to discompose the rector at the outset of the interview. When ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... snow-girt forest was profound; yet Charles was restless tonight, and kept pausing to listen with an odd intensity of expression. His faculties, both of sight and hearing, had become preternaturally acute of late. More than once this gift of his had saved the party from falling amongst a nest of hostile Indians; tonight it was to prove of service in ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... come to the ass, the boy enfolded in his arms the creature's fuzzy head and gently stroked its preternaturally long ears. And the ass, for its part, responded to the caress by rubbing its head against the boy's breast and by most energetically twitching its scrag of a tail. Thus for a little time these friends manifested for each other their affection; and then the boy seated himself ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... very dusky, but Helen knew perfectly the way she was going. A strange excitement possessed her, and lifted her above all personal fear. The instant she found herself in the open air, her faculties seemed to come preternaturally awake, and her judgment to grow quite cool. She congratulated herself that there had been no rain, and the ground would not betray their steps. There was enough of light in the sky to see the trees against it, and partly by their outlines she guided herself to the door in the park-paling, whence ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... seals our conviction of the truth of his story. In The Manuscript Found in a Bottle, too, we may trace the first suggestion of that idea which finds its most complete and memorable expression in Ligeia (1837). The antique ship, with its preternaturally aged crew "doomed to hover continually upon the brink of eternity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss," is an early foreshadowing of the fulfilment of Joseph Glanvill's declaration so strikingly ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... unsatisfactory state with regard to the world in which they lived. To see this we have only to picture to ourselves the condition of a man living in a savage, or only partially civilized state of society, with his mind preternaturally expanded to that of a Newton, and put into possession of the knowledge which he had on some of those subjects which the Bible touches on. How entirely out of harmony would he be with his fellow-men, and everything around him! ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... great lady with a low bow which, despite herself, she acknowledged by a shudder. She was very pale, and her eyes were dilating and preternaturally bright. Fear began to possess her, yet she suffered herself to be ushered into the chapel, which was dimly illumined by a couple of candles standing beside a basin on a table. The altar light had been extinguished. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... seem to me to be boys or girls; they are preternaturally acute and observant. You seldom see them playing together. They seem to be born with the gift of telling a lie with most portentous gravity. They wear an air of the most winning candour and guileless innocence, when they are all ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... surrenders himself to the spell, feeling almost inclined to enquire "And why may it not be true?''[FN245] His brain is dazed and dazzled by the splendours which flash before it, by the sudden procession of Jinns and Jinniyahs, demons and fairies, some hideous, others preternaturally beautiful; by good wizards and evil sorcerers, whose powers are unlimited for weal and for woe; by mermen and mermaids, flying horses, talking animals, and reasoning elephants; by magic rings and their slaves and by talismanic couches which rival the carpet of Solomon. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... he, fiercely. It was impossible to resist; and Abel and Gabriel moved slowly toward the door. The former was furious at finding himself doomed in company with Gabriel. But he betrayed nothing. He was preternaturally calm. Hope, dismayed and pale, stood looking on, but saying nothing. Gabriel went quietly out of the room. Abel turned to the door, and bowed gravely ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... as indeed it has ended, in the fulness of glory; we all feel that we have had an abundant measure of glory, though painfully earned; every body recollects the sort of electric effect produced upon this town the moment the news now under consideration arrived; the funds were raised preternaturally; one cannot indeed on looking back, account for it, how the omnium should have been up to twenty-eight at that time; there was a considerable elevation beyond that price during the course of that day; it rose to thirty and ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... is taking part in a brilliant and complicated manoeuvre. Tom and Susan Peters flit across the view, and Gene Hollister and Perry Blackwood and the Ewanses,—all of whom had come up in a special car; Ralph Hambleton was "best man," looking preternaturally tall in his frock-coat: and his manner, throughout the whole proceeding, was one of good-natured tolerance toward a folly none but ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stillness. Was I growing deaf? I snapped my fingers to reassure myself, and the sound startled me like the crack of a pistol. Evidently my sense of hearing had become abnormally acute. My mind, too, was preternaturally clear, and the solitude became so irksome that I rose from my seat, and looked out of the scuttles to relieve the tension of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... appeared. He stared and listened; listened for some sound, but the silence round him was absolute—as though he had in a moment grown completely deaf as well as dim-eyed. Then his hearing returned, preternaturally sharp. He heard the patter of a rain-shower on the window panes behind the lowered blinds, and below, far below, in the artificial abyss of the square, the deadened roll of wheels and the splashy trotting of a horse. He heard a ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... here a new astonishment awaited him. Nestling before him in a green amphitheater lay a little wooden farm-yard and outbuildings, which irresistibly suggested that it had been recently unpacked and set up from a box of Nuremberg toys. The symmetrical trees, the galleried houses with preternaturally glazed windows, even the spotty, disproportionately sized cows in the white-fenced barnyards were all unreal, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... wonder," she said, "whether, in our young days, you were so preternaturally observant ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... then they would revive immediately: and it was found, that various kinds of natural actions, done by many of the accused in or to their own bodies, as leaning, bending, turning awry, or squeezing their hands, or the like, were presently attended with the like things preternaturally done upon the bodies of the afflicted, though they were so far asunder, that the afflicted could not at all observe the accused."—Magnalia, Book ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... to depend upon those in daily use. Utensils used for the cooking of fruits, vegetables, meat, etc., unless cleaned with the utmost call will sometimes impart a sufficiently unpleasant flavor to the food to render it wholly unpalatable to an invalid whose senses are preternaturally acute. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Pauline was standing looking at the bird after showing Angeel the various little trifles she had brought with her. The child's infirmity did not prevent her from enjoying the good things of life; indeed, as frequently occurs in such cases, her senses were almost preternaturally acute and her faculties bright and sensitive in the extreme. In place of any system of general education, impossible during those sequestered years at Hawthorne in charge of her incapable mother, she had ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... unusual circumstance to hear of any dream that does violence to the common experience of mankind. One class of dreams, which may be termed RETROSPECTIVE, is of frequent occurrence. These are characterized by the revival of associations long since forgotten. The faculty of Memory appears to be preternaturally exalted; the vail is withdrawn which obscured the vista of our past life; and the minutest events of childhood pass in vivid review before us. There can be no doubt that something analogous to this occurs in drowning; when, after the alarm and struggle for life has subsided, sensations ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... I lay preternaturally awake, hearing the snoring and murmuring of my fellows in the mow ... hearing the horses as they crunched and whickered ... all the noises of the outside night came in at the open door of the mow. Even the hay began to annoy me as it continually ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... her appearance had given her a shock. She was so small and sallow and insignificant, and her short curly hair was parted on one side like a boy, and cropped quite closely behind. The baby was small and brown too, a tiny edition of herself, and they both had dark eyes that looked preternaturally solemn; Babs, indeed, wore an injured expression, and a puckered look of anguish spoke of the pangs of hunger and the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was preternaturally grave as he turned to the little music teacher. "I hope, Miss Marie, that you wear rubber heels on your ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... ordinary life, and mould that to its intention. In truth, all the world was already aware, and delighted. The "school" was soon to pay the penalty of that immediate acceptance, that intimate fitness to the mind of its own time, by sudden [58] and profound neglect, as a thing preternaturally tarnished and tame, like magic youth, or magic beauty, turned in a moment by magic's own last word into withered age. But then, to the liveliest spirits of that time it had seemed nothing less than "impeccable," after the manner of the great sacred products of the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... been preternaturally calm all the afternoon, uttered a shriek of rage, and with a carving-knife chased that man out into the brush. Nor would he be appeased to the point of getting supper ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... have laughed if her friend had not been in such real distress. As for Aurora, she did not know whether she would have laughed or cried if she had not felt that her girl's dignity was at stake. As it was, she grew preternaturally calm. ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... matter, no body understood the reason for the questions about the flowers, and though most of the jury merely looked preternaturally wise on the subject, Mr. Orville scribbled it all down in his little book. I was now glad to see the man keep up his indefatigable note-taking. If the reporters or stenographers missed any points, I could ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... endeavored to relate the story of a boy's early experiences in college life—a boy who was neither unnaturally good nor preternaturally bad, wholesome, earnest, impulsive, making just such mistakes as a normal boy would make, and yet earnest, sincere, and healthy. We all have known just such boys and are grateful that they ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... blurred his senses now became preternaturally acute. His surroundings were no longer dim and formless, rather everything grew inhumanly sharp and vivid. To the end of his life he would preserve an extraordinarily faithful recollection of the room into which Cheniston presently ushered him—the usual hotel bedroom in India, with high ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... shake with it. Then from the window I beheld an extraordinary sight! It was Rutli, swaying from side to side, but steadily carrying with outstretched arms two of the squatter party, his hands tightly grasping their collars. Yet I believe his touch was as gentle as with the violets. His face was preternaturally grave; theirs, to my intense astonishment, while they hung passive from his arms, wore that fatuous, imbecile smile seen on the faces of those who lend themselves to tricks of acrobats and strong men in the arena. He slowly traversed ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... him occupying one very small room, which served him for bed and sitting room, in a small cottage upon the outskirts of the little secluded town of Briarwood. He looked extremely ill; his beautiful countenance was preternaturally pale; his large eyes far too bright and large; his form attenuated; and his voice so faint, husky, and low that it was with difficulty he could make himself heard, at least for any length of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... now its evident dangers, and this being imminent may appear the larger of them; but if a weighing of the conditions dictates it, and conscience approves, the wiser proceeding is to make trial of the untried. Our outlook was preternaturally black, with enormous increase of dangers when the originator of our species venturesomely arose from the posture of the 'quatre pattes'. We consider that we have not lost by his temerity. In states of dubitation under impelling elements, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on Tithes Bill. Not particularly lively. Towards midnight TANNER, preternaturally quiet since House met, suddenly woke up, and, a propos de bottes, moved to report progress. COURTNEY down on him like cartload of bricks; declined to put Motion, declaring it abuse of forms of House. This rather depressing. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... my father, and now my brother, now Mrs. Filmore or her husband, and now our German courier, whose stream of thought rushed upon me like a ringing in the ears not to be got rid of, though it allowed my own impulses and ideas to continue their uninterrupted course. It was like a preternaturally heightened sense of hearing, making audible to one a roar of sound where others find perfect stillness. The weariness and disgust of this involuntary intrusion into other souls was counteracted only by my ignorance of Bertha, and my growing passion ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... the privilege twenty-one years ago, of knowing a younger brother of the deceased, named John, who in less than three years attained to an honoured position in the Finance Department of the Indian Government. He was preternaturally grave and philanthrophic, and died at the age of a youth in England (I think he was not 23 years old) of small-pox contracted at Lahore, in the Punjab, where he was stationed at the time. He had for some time, although but a lad in years, spent his leisure hours in attending the hospital, and reading ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... instantly flashed on the preternaturally-sharpened intellect of Magdalena. Her own immunity from ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Marvell," said Agnes, in that preternaturally calm manner which she had worn from the first. "It ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... serene expanse of placid politeness. I knew just where the radiance, awakened by the luscious, swelling, crimson globes, faded into doubt, settled into certainty, glared into perplexity, fired into rage. I saw the grimace, suppressed as soon as begun, but not less patent to my preternaturally keen eyes. No one deceived me by being suddenly seized with admiration of a view. I knew it was only to relieve his nerves by making faces ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... with intervals of ululation. The women devoid of shawls had nothing around their necks to protect them from the cold, the dusky throats were exposed, and sometimes even the first hooks and eyes of the bodice were unnecessarily undone. The majority wore cheap earrings and black wigs with preternaturally polished hair; where there was no wig, the hair ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... get just the right man and team to do our fall plowing; where we could hire a yoke of oxen if needed; where, in the proper season, we could buy a cow. He introduced me to a man whose specialty was cutting brush, because he had heavy, stooped shoulders and preternaturally long, powerful arms—a sort of anthropoid specimen who wielded a keen one-handed ax that cut a sizable sapling clean through at one stroke. He produced a carpenter properly qualified for repairs on an old house, because he had always lived in one and ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... placing narration within narration as in the "Arabian Nights." The method of allowing a number of persons consecutively to carry on the plot is very attractive, since it offers a way of introducing a personally interested narrator without making him preternaturally wise; and it also affords opportunity for the author to exhibit his skill in viewing events from all sides and through the minds of several very different persons. It is, however, open to most of the first person objections, and it is liable to produce a disjointed narrative; but it is particularly ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... occupations. The conversations of Trimalchio and his freedmen guests are not witty, and their jests are not clever. This adherence to the true principles of realism is the more noteworthy in the case of so brilliant a writer as Petronius, and those of us who recall some of the preternaturally clever conversations in the pages of Henry James and other contemporary novelists may feel that in this respect he is a truer ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... smooth skin was almost as pale as Eva's own, but pale brown, the tint of rich ivory. His eyes were preternaturally bright. And they never glanced my way, but flew straight to Eva, and rested on her very humbly and sadly, as her two hands gripped the arms of the chair, and she leant ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... had anticipated. Lifting the bar from the iron arms that held it, and pushing back the bolt, he silently opened the door. Whether the darkness within was greater than that without, or whether the preternaturally quickened ears of the patients detected the manipulations of the fastenings, he did not know, but he was conscious at once that the tumult within was hushed. It was apparent that they had been visited in the night before, and that the accustomed ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Committee had dealt kindly with Lightmark's Academy picture. When it was passed in review before these veterans, after a long procession of inanely smiling portraits, laboured, wooden landscapes, and preternaturally developed heroes, the expression of satiated boredom and damnation of draughts, which variously pervaded the little row of arbitrators, was for a moment dissipated. There was a movement of chairs, followed by an exchange of complimentary murmurs; and ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... must have been green, or too long drawn, for she seemed preternaturally wakeful afterwards, though Jude, who had not taken any, began to feel heavy; till ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Dr. Crothers could have known a Penguin Person when he wrote that. The Penguin Person is not a wit, there is no barb to his shafts of fun, no uneasiness from his preternatural cleverness, for he is not preternaturally clever. You never feel unable to cope with him, you never feel your mind keyed to an unusual alertness to follow him; you feel, indeed, a sense of comforting superiority, for, after all, you do take the world so much more seriously than he! And yet he is not stupid; he is bright, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... was in the large room, and there was something so extraordinarily characteristic of her husband in those stooping shoulders, in the head hung a little forward, and in the preternaturally solemn voice, that Sheila had to bend a little over the bed to catch a glimpse of the sallow and keener face again. She sighed; and even on her own strained ear her sigh sounded almost like one ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... young lawyer, Eugene Fort, was saying preternaturally bright things to Tiny, who lifted her sweet orbs at intervals and remarked: "How dreadfully clever you are, Mr. Fort; I am so afraid of you!" or "How sweet of you to think I am worth all those real epigrams! You ought to keep them for ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... exaggerated, and yet the likeness is preserved. A straight nose is presented unnaturally straight, a short nose unnaturally depressed; a prominent forehead is drawn unusually bulbous; a protuberant jaw unnaturally underhung; a fat man is depicted preternaturally fat, and a thin one correspondingly lean. This at least was the idea of caricature during the last century. Old Francis Grose, who, in 1791, wrote certain "Rules for Drawing Caricaturas," gives us the following explanation of their origin:—"The sculptors of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... child was exceedingly intelligent—precociously, nay, preternaturally so, it appeared to Mr. Cardross, who, like many another learned father, had been blessed with rather stupid boys, who liked any thing better than study, and whom he had with great labor dragged through a course of ordinary English, Latin, and ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the sweet sunlight it lay drugged, that in those rows of slatternly shacks where the sunlight did not enter men either hid in dark secrecy or lay in some unnatural stupour. The whole settlement seemed preternaturally quiet; the fancy came to her that the town had died long ago and that she merely looked on ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... reach his ears, if the household had been already roused, for the passage was long and tortuous, interrupted by other doors and by a winding staircase. But in his present state he fancied that his senses must be preternaturally sharpened and he listened eagerly. All was still. He ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... attracted his attention; and as he looked in at the window he saw the Duchess sitting at the feet of a real gipsy-queen: her head upturned—her whole being expanding—as the gipsy's hands waved over her, and the gipsy's eyes, preternaturally dilated, poured their floods of life into her own. Then the music broke up into words, and he knew what hope and promise that fainting spirit was drinking in: for he heard what the gipsy said. She was telling the young Duchess that she was one of themselves—that she bore their mystic mark in the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... She was glad to feel that, unknown to him, she was his guardian angel. She began to think about the future, and almost to forget Andy and the possible and very great peril of the present, when, shortly before the hour of one, all her senses were preternaturally excited by the sound of a footfall. It was a very soft footfall—the noise made by a bare foot. Nora heard it just where the shadow was deepest. She stood up now; she knew that, from her present position, the one who was making this dead sort of heavy sound ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... whose intuitive powers have been preternaturally sharpened by a long course of sensation novels will probably leap to the conclusion that Batushka was a mysterious individual, very different from what he seemed—either the illegitimate son of some great personage, or a man of high birth who had committed some great sin, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the stinging freshness of the night to the stale overheated atmosphere of the Haslemere Hotel had checked the preternaturally rapid working of his mind, and he was now scarcely conscious of thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would have thrown himself on the bed had he not feared to oversleep the hour fixed for his departure. He thought it safest, instead, to seat himself once more by the ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... of several Persons in the Neighbourhood, the Indictment being drawn up, according to the Form in such Cases usual. And pleading, Not Guilty, there were brought in several persons, who had long undergone many kinds of Miseries, which were preternaturally inflicted, and generally ascribed unto an horrible Witchcraft. There was little occasion to prove the Witchcraft, it being evident and notorious to all beholders. Now to fix the Witchcraft on the Prisoner at the Bar, the first thing used, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... brought to himself with a jolt that threw him hard upon self-consciousness. "I am superintendent of the public school." The very sound of the words rang as a warning, and he became preternaturally solemn. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... spiritual experiences and discover that when we have been in danger of being contented with moral failure we have been made ashamed and disgusted by it; that when we have been on the verge of yielding to temptation we have been strangely and almost preternaturally protected; that when sorrows have come which would have crushed our unaided strength we have experienced strange peace and have had undreamed-of strength; and that never for a moment have we found rest or peace except ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... evolution in cool suspense or in grave suspicion. In respect to very many questions a wise mans mind rests long in a state neither of belief nor unbelief. But your intellectually short-sighted people are apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find their way very plain to positive conclusions upon one side or the other of every ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Nature. Here, for instance, is Chevalier Ziegler's picture of "St. Luke painting the Virgin." St. Luke has a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves. The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is eying his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life. First take your colors, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cold all over with wrath and shame. Were there any more disgraceful scenes in her past that Susan could rake up? As for Ken, he could have howled over Susan's speeches, but he would not so insult the duenna of his lady, so he sat with a preternaturally solemn face which seemed to poor Rilla ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Some it renders incapable of thought or action, paralysing their limbs and stagnating the blood in their veins; such creatures die in anticipating death. Others under the stress of that grim passion have their wits preternaturally sharpened. The instinct of self-preservation assumes command of all their senses, and urges them ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... He halted abruptly, became preternaturally grave, and presented arms. The young surgeon, Dr. Monteith, who had met Ruth the night before, tramped in from a ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... scene-painter is expended. Shepherds guard their flocks far away, reposing under palm-trees or standing on green slopes which glow in the sunshine. The distances and perspective are admirable. In the middle ground is a crystal fountain of glass, near which sheep, preternaturally white, and made of real wool and cotton-wool, are feeding, tended by figures of shepherds carved in wood. Still nearer come women bearing great baskets of real oranges and other fruits on their heads. All the nearer figures are full-sized, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... since his surrender. With wrists pinioned behind him, he had been hoisted aboard the English ship, and in the waist of her he had stood for a moment face to face with an old acquaintance—our chronicler, Lord Henry Goade. I imagine the florid countenance of the Queen's Lieutenant wearing a preternaturally grave expression, his eyes forbidding as they rested upon the renegade. I know—from Lord Henry's own pen—that no word had passed between them during those brief moments before Sakr-el-Bahr was hurried away by his guards to be flung ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... one—a' excellent time," said Joseph Poorgrass, straightening his back; for he, like some of the others, had a way of resting a while from his labour on such hot days for reasons preternaturally small; of which Cain Ball's advent on a week-day in his Sunday-clothes was one of the first magnitude. "Twas a bad leg allowed me to read the Pilgrim's Progress, and Mark Clark learnt ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... start, and with wavering eyes looked at the saloon clock. I had slept for one hour only, but it appeared to me that I was quite refreshed. My mind was strangely clear, every sense preternaturally alert. I began to wonder what had aroused me. Suddenly the ship shuddered through the very heart of her, and I knew that it was this shuddering, which must have occurred before, ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... revelation, a heavenly system of truth so far beyond human reason, and so intrinsically unrelated to any of our faculties, that it could never have been discovered by man's intelligence, but only preternaturally communicated from without! To Paul, who is alone responsible for the famous scheme, this is the "wisdom hidden from the ages, which none of the princes of this world ever knew"—his peculiar way of describing the superiority of his teaching ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... herself determined to accept the invitation. "I am going," she said to herself, "to show Ellen that I am not too obstinate to take her advice, and I don't care how I appear." So she sat still in a corner and listened to the conversation, which was indeed preternaturally stupid. She felt perfectly at her ease and was quite unconcerned about "making conversation." If anybody asked her a question she answered simply without cudgeling her brains for any wise or witty reply. By and by something was said which did attract her notice, and she actually made a spontaneous ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... till she had closed the door behind her that it struck her that when she came into the room both the princess and Frau von Treumann were looking preternaturally bland. ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... represented as diaphanous, and preternaturally tall—only the upper part of the figure being distinctly outlined, and the lower part fading utterly away. As the Japanese say, 'a ghost has no feet': its appearance is like an exhalation, which becomes visible only at a certain distance above the ground; ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... mentions a young lady of fifteen who spontaneously dislocated her jaw, owing indirectly to this habit. Morris says that from infancy the patient was addicted to this habit, which was so audible as to be heard in all parts of the room. The continued action of the pterygoid muscles had so preternaturally loosened the ligaments and muscular structures supporting the joint as to render them unable to resist the violent action of "tongue sucking" ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... was sure that somebody besides himself was in the wood. Once more the soul and spirit of his great ancestor were poured into him, and for the moment he, too, was the wilderness rover, endowed with nerves preternaturally acute. ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... past objecting to anything, otherwise I have no doubt he would have objected furiously. The index finger of the injured hand had one of those preternaturally long nails, protected by an engraved golden case. However, at least I gave him a chance of life. He was under my care for some time, but I doubt if ever he was properly grateful. He had an iron constitution, though, and I ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... rickets, an affection rarely met with except among the poor in crowded cities, distortion of the limbs is often associated with a peculiar form of the skull, but in this too there is nothing to call for anxiety, still less to excite alarm. It is only a preternaturally small head and shelving forehead, which are found associated with mental deficiency; otherwise the greatest varieties of size and shape, of symmetry, or of want of it, may be associated with an equal variety of intellectual endowment, which ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... issue of the combat being that the Valiant Soldier was slain by a preternaturally inadequate thrust from Eustacia, Jim, in his ardour for genuine histrionic art, coming down like a log upon the stone floor with force enough to dislocate his shoulder. Then, after more words from the Turkish Knight, rather too faintly delivered, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... still using the shelter of the brushwood, flitted silently past them. Three or four hundred yards farther and he lay down, laughing again to himself. It had been ridiculously easy. All his wild instincts were alive and leaping, and his senses became preternaturally acute. He heard some tiny animals of the cat tribe, alarmed by his presence, stealing away among the bushes, and the sound of an owl moving ever so slightly in the thick leaves on a bough came to his ears. But he was so still that the owl became ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and the exposed situation of the house, the night was almost preternaturally quiet. Throughout the vast open country all round us, not even a breath of air could be heard. The night-birds were away, or were silent at the time. But one sound was audible, when we stood still and listened—the cool quiet bubble of a little stream, lost ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... properly—for they knew Brownie was very jealous of strangers, and often played them tricks. But after that piece of civility he would be sure, they thought, to take her under his protection. And sometimes, when the little Shetlander was restless and pricked up her ears, looking preternaturally wise under those shaggy brows of hers, the children used to say to one another, ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... health and constitution, but always seemed to me as if their redundant masses had exhausted hers, and were almost too great a weight for her slim throat and drooping figure. Her complexion was transparently delicate, and she had dark blue eyes that looked almost preternaturally large. It seems strange to remember this ethereal vision of girlish fragile beauty as belonging to my dear cousin, who, having fortunately escaped the doom by which she then seemed threatened, lived to become a most happy and excellent wife and mother, and one ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... circumstances referred to, whilst a passage exists along the centre of the canal that shall permit a daily evacuation to occur. The dejections, even, may be loose in character, and still the same sequence of events ensue. From the irritating influence of preternaturally retained feces, colicky pains are, as a rule, induced, and the ultimate effects may be such as to lead to ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... concerning a small dog that, to judge by the prints in the road, had evidently followed the big, barefooted man who had fled from the Jeffrey precincts after the shooting. A rumor, too, was going the rounds that a detective, reputed preternaturally sharp, who had accompanied the sheriff to the scene of action, had examined these tracks in the road, and declared that the foot-print was neither that of a negro nor a tramp, but of a white man used to wearing shoes something too ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... that in her arms she bore a bundle of white linen, and that her form was singularly attenuated. So preternaturally thin and flexible was Elfride at this moment, that she appeared to bend under the light blows of the rain-shafts, as they struck into her sides and bosom, and splintered into spray on her face. There is nothing like a thorough drenching for reducing the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... in thwarting its purposes. But he knew what was due to it in the way of respect, and, however angry passions might rise, however turbulent the scene, he would never address it looking upon it with the naked eye. As his eye-glass was constantly tumbling out, and as search for it was preternaturally deliberate, it played an appreciable part in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... across the pillow—reddish auburn hair, streaked with grey. She had been brought in, three nights ago, drenched, bedraggled, chattering in a high fever; a case of acute pneumonia. Her delirium had kept Tilda—who was preternaturally sharp for her nine years—awake and curious during the better part of two night-watches. Thereafter, for a day and a night and half a day, the patient had lain somnolent, breathing hard, at intervals ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... been fair, clear, and delicate, but now it was so white, wan, and shadowy that her sweet blue eyes seemed preternaturally large, bright, and hollow. She began to speak, but with an effort ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... calmly. What was possible in broad sunlight was no matter even of difficulty in the dusk. And yet it seemed to him that even for a creature of his brain she was preternaturally natural and solid-looking. Nor was he in the habit of letting her look quite so pale or breathe so hard. But when she spoke he was troubled; not because the sound of her voice was an unusual sound for him to hear, but because in the present instance it was accompanied with distinct vibrations. ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... attackable in that way, by diagrams made roughly, and seen to grow under the lecturer's hand. In this manner you, at any rate, insure the co-operation of the student to a certain extent. He cannot leave the lecture-room entirely empty if the taking of notes is enforced; and a student must be preternaturally dull and mechanical, if he can take notes and hear them properly explained, and ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley |
