"Whimsical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pitiable child-bride marrying perhaps a man three times her age because he could take care of her. There being so many in the family Pappy and Mammy were glad to be rid of one of their flock. Though both pictures were often as overdrawn as that evoked by a daughter of the Blue Ridge—a whimsical picture of a pretty maid in full-skirted crinoline with a soft southern accent—moonlight and honeysuckle, a gallant, goateed colonel paying court to her charm and beauty while he sips a mint julep. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... are influenced by the known fact that the Colonel has more than once closed his kennel doors to a long string of safe prizes by refusing to exhibit a second time some hound who, on a first showing, has won golden opinions and high awards. But these refusals were never whimsical. They were due always to the Colonel's decision, based upon close and sympathetic observation, that, for the particular hound in question, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... are so different, according to the Nation that they belong to, that it is impossible to recount all the whimsical Figures that they sometimes make by their Antick Dresses. Besides, Carolina is a warm Country, and very mild in its Winters, to what Virginia, Maryland, Pensylvania, New-York, the Jerseys, and New-England are; wherefore, our Indians Habit ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... good enough, mother dear; but he's unmistakably funny," Esther would reply, with a whimsical thought of the family tree. Yes, they were ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... believed she was breeding, and I was mightily pleased with it, for though I had had two children before by Patty, yet I had never seen either of them, so that I longed to be a father. I sometimes amused myself with whimsical conjectures, as, whether the child would have a graundee or not; which of us it would be most like; how we should do without a midwife; and what must become of the infant, as we had not milk, in case Youwarkee could not suckle it. Indeed, I had leisure enough for indulging such reveries; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... great fuss about what is no mystery at all,—a schoolgirl's secrets and a whimsical man's habits. I mean to give up such nonsense and mind my own business.—Hark! What the deuse is that odd noise in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... states, thrones, and churches; rear a race of chattering, conceited coxcombs who can always find books in plenty to excuse them from doing their duty; make the poor discontented, the rich crotchety and whimsical, refine away the stout old virtues into quibbles and sentiments! All imagination formerly was expended in noble action, adventure, enterprise, high deeds, and aspirations; now a man can but be imaginative by feeding on the false excitement ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... calling in the aid of their imagination to assist in the curative process. This was illustrated in his behaviour toward me upon the occasion of which I am now speaking. He came and stood by the side of my hammock, looking down upon me with a whimsical expression as he took my wrist in his hand and pressed his fingers ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the Onondaga, in his whimsical precise manner, "that a large part of our lives, Great Bear, is spent in rescuing Dagaeoga. Do you think when we go into the Great Beyond and arrive at the feet of Manitou, and he asks us what we have done with ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... jealousy overspread Doe's face. Quickly passing, it gave place to a whimsical glance, as ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Belford.— Pities Tomlinson. Finds that he is dead in prison. Happy that he lived not to be hanged. Why. No discomfort so great but some comfort may be drawn from it. Endeavours to defend himself by a whimsical case which he puts between A. a miser, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... what seemed a very long time indeed to the anxious watchers, the thinker sat up, looked upon his friends with his most whimsical expression, and said: ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... passed to Mexico, where it was translated by the Licentiate Faustino Chimalpopocatl Galicia, but in a very imperfect and incorrect manner. The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg copied the original and the translation, and bestowed on the document both a new name, Codex Chimalpopoca, and a whimsical geological signification. In 1879, the Museo Nacional of Mexico began in their Anales the publication of the original text, this time under still another title, the Anales de Cuauhtitlan, with two translations, that of Galicia, and a new one by Profs. G. Mendoza and Felipe Sanchez Solis. ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... which no one was better aware than the professor. As he, too, rose and sauntered toward the house he could not deny that Olivia's ideas were usually good. The only trouble was that she had too many of them; and here was the kernel of truth that gave substance to his whimsical argument. The beauty of the garden was not lost upon him, nor yet the skill and industry of the young gardener. But more important than either was the advantage to the girl's health. Olivia was sound as a nut; of course she was! There could be no ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... barbed-wire fence intervening, and it pleased him to take it "on the fly." He had undoubtedly been going down-hill of late, but his legs, at least, had held their own, he assured himself, with some satisfaction, as he alighted, right side up, within the enclosure. He thought, with a whimsical turn, of Pheidippides, the youth who used his legs to such good purpose; who "ran like fire,"—shouted, "Rejoice, we conquer!"—then "died in the shout for his meed." How simple life once was, according to Browning and the ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... down on my bed, and turned the scene over in my mind, rubbing my hands gently. At last I went off into a mad roar of laughter; it struck me as so whimsical and original an adventure. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... aside his whimsical phase he was a very simple and direct man. He, too, was becoming adjusted to Priscilla's presence in his home and her rightful ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Indeed, Prescott sometimes wondered at his patience, for he imagined that his comrade had outgrown what love he had borne her. The man had his virtues: he was rash, but he seldom failed to face the consequences with whimsical good-humor. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... together, I found myself feeling drawn to him as I can imagine a young father is drawn to a young son; and sometimes I seemed to see in his eyes the suggestion of a confidence he was on the edge of making me—a whimsical, pondering expression, as though wondering whether he dare to tell ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... for the mail the papers which one of the girls was folding. "What are you going to do about it?" he demanded of his sympathizer with whimsical sullenness, not troubling himself to look ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Jan, why I seek always anger and hatred. I wonder at times myself. Why do generous thoughts never come to me, as to other men! Listen, Jan; I am in a whimsical mood. Such things cannot be, but it is a whim of mine to think it might have been. Sell me your soul, Jan, sell me your soul, that I, too, may taste this love and gladness that I hear about. For a little while, ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome
... of human action or thought remained unaffected by this struggle between the old fashion and the new. Even political relations were largely influenced by it The whimsical project of emancipating the Hellenes, the well deserved failure of which has already been described, the kindred, likewise Hellenic, idea of a common interest of republics in opposition to kings, and the desire of propagating Hellenic polity at the expense of eastern despotism—the two principles ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... for study; delights in important and judicious readings; extremely attentive to methodical sciences, moderately so as to others; well versed in mathematics and geography; silent, a lover of solitude, whimsical, haughty, excessively prone to egotism, speaking but little, pithy in his answers, quick and severe in repartee, possessed of much self-love, ambitious, and high ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... fact, it did its best to conceal an opening which it would be an insult to the human countenance to call a mouth; within, three or four tusks were visible, endowed, as it seemed, with a proper motion and fitting into each other. His fleshy ears drooped by their own weight, giving the creature a whimsical resemblance ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... per cents in France, to furnish a test for the patriotism and public spirit of the lovers of French liberty. But there is another fund which may equally answer our purpose—the capital of three per cent stock which formerly existed in France has undergone a whimsical operation, similar to many other expedients of finance which we have seen in the course of the revolution—this was performed by a decree which, as they termed it, republicanized their debt; that is, in other words, struck off, at once, two-thirds of the capital, and left the proprietors ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... The whimsical Fates, however, decided to make one trial of the experiment of bringing two musicians of the first class into a sphere of mutual influence and affection. The result was so beautiful, so nearly ideal, that—needless to say—it has not been repeated. But while the experiment has not been ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... German literature, the esteem in which his own works have been held, and the connection between the sentimental, whimsical, contradictory English clergyman and his German imitators have been noted, generally speaking, by all the historians of literature; and several monographs and separate articles have been published on single phases of the theme.[2] As ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... began more lightly to talk of other matters. Thus and thus he would do in France, such and such trinkets he would fetch back—"as toys for the most whimsical, the loveliest, and the most obstinate child in all the world," he phrased it. And they would be married, Pevensey declared, in September: nor (he gaily said) did he propose to have any further argument about it. Children should be seen—the proverb was dusty, but it ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... me over, in whimsical astonishment. He vowed that he could not have a suit ready for me by ten the next morning, as Milton ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... of a Court in Nevada dealt differently with a man who, charged with intoxication, thought to gain acquittal by a whimsical treatment of his offence. On being asked whether he was rightly or wrongly charged he pleaded, "Not guilty, your honour. Sunstroke!"—"Sunstroke?" queried Judge Cox. "Yes, sir; the regular New York variety."—"You've had sunstroke a good deal in ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... author's whimsical notion that a development of commercial and manufacturing organization in India would cause converts to flock from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community, has not been verified by experience. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... frequently the favorite subject between him and Tom Sheridan. I was present at many of their discussions and disputes, and sometimes took a very active part in them,—but Richard was not present. The father, you know, was a wrong-headed, whimsical man, and, perhaps, his scanty circumstances were one of the reasons which prevented him from sending Richard to the University. He must have been aware, as Sumner and I were, that Richard's mind was not ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... the talk approached; she stands close to the table, and says in a determined but whimsical tone: I'll pray that such may be your destiny. But, when it finds ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... the marriage he had recommended delay,—a course quite in accordance with Elsie's desire, who, curiously enough, ever since her treaty of marriage with Antonio had been commenced, had cherished the most whimsical, jealous dislike of him, as if he were about to get away her grandchild from her; and this rose at times so high that she could scarcely speak peaceably to him,—a course of things which caused Antonio to open wide his great soft ox-eyes, and wonder ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... something more.—Gone! Think of you? To think of a whirlwind, though 'twere in a whirlwind, were a case of more steady contemplation, a very tranquillity of mind and mansion. A fellow that lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodged in a woman. There is no point of the compass to which they cannot turn, and by which they are not turned, and by one as well as another; for motion, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... want you to go!" The moment she had said it, she caught herself with a nervous little laugh, and added a postscript of whimsical nonsense to disarm her utterance of its telltale feeling. "Why, I'm just getting you civilized, yourself. It took years ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... excited to the highest degree of their power or driven to utter disorganization. Physiologists have long wondered at this phenomenon, which overturns their systems and upsets all theories; it is in fact a thunderbolt working within the being, and, like all electric accidents, capricious and whimsical in its course. This explanation will become a mere commonplace in the day when scientific men are brought to recognize the immense part which electricity ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Miss Carnegie was certainly not an heiress, and she was a young woman of very decided character, but her blood was better than the Hays', and she was . . . attractive—yes, attractive. Most likely she was engaged to Lord Hay, or if he did not please her—she was . . . whimsical and . . . self-willed—there was Lord Invermay's son. Fancy Kate . . . Miss Carnegie in a Free Kirk manse—Kildrummie was a very . . . homely old man, but he touched the point there—receiving Doctor Dowbiggin with becoming ceremony and hearing him on the payment of probationers, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... world outside of their own house she cared not at all. They had their own vocabulary, their own phrases for moments of mirth or tenderness; among her gowns he had his favorites. among the many expressions of his sensitive face there were some that it was her whimsical pleasure always to commend. Their conversation, as is the way with lovers, was all of themselves, and ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... stomach sometimes wholly changes one's outlook upon the world. Shad was beginning now to view his adventure from a whimsical standpoint, a result induced partially by his dinner, largely by ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... his manner conform to the laws laid down by high authorities, but his theme is generally "Society" with a capital S. "Praed," says Locker in "My Confidences," "is the very best of his school: indeed, he has a unique position; for in his narrower vein of whimsical wit, vernacular banter, and antithetical rhetoric, which may correctly be called vers de societe in its most perfected form, and its exactest sense, he has never been equalled." These phrases hit off Praed very well—if one does not exactly see ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... hundred years. We are not yet too late to learn much more than is known of this structure. Some diligent Fellowes or Layard will arrive, stone by stone, at the whole history, by that exhaustive British sense and perseverance, so whimsical in its choice of objects, which leaves its own Stonehenge or Choir Gaur to the rabbits, while it opens pyramids, and uncovers Nineveh. Stonehenge, in virtue of the simplicity of its plan, and its good preservation, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... now reaches the edge of the sill, and, taking a fresh grip on her burden, starts off in a bee-line across my drawing-board and towards the open door, and disappears. Wondering what her whimsical destination might be, my eye involuntarily began to wander about the room in quest of nail-holes or other available similar crannies, but without reward, and I had fairly settled back to my work and forgotten the incident, when the same visitor, or another just like her, again appeared, this time ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... the Judge's place dominated the surrounding country. Little by little Denny Bolton's lean face lost its hint of hardness; the lines that ran from his thin nose to the corners of his lips disappeared as he smiled—smiled with whimsical gentleness—at the light that glimmered from a single window through the tangled bushes, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... achieve his triumph over matter. In this light chronicle I would offer the reader an anodyne for a few hours, of transport to the other side of our sphere, where are the loveliest scenes the eyes may find upon the round of the globe, the gentlest climate of all the latitudes, the most whimsical whites, and the dearest ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... tales. The writer's whimsical humor and inventive genius find fitting scope in the title ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... her Ladyship's letters were the most whimsical rodomontades that ever blue-stocking penned. She was a woman who took up and threw off a greater number of dear friends than any one I ever knew. To some of these female darlings she began presently to write ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a relief to turn to another pair of hands. Mrs. Brett was an amusing young creature, and her hands were very characteristic, and prettily odd in form. I allowed myself to be rather whimsical about her nature, and having begun in that vein, I went on in it, somehow, even after she had turned her palms. In those palms were reduplicated the signs I had seen in Mrs. Elbourn's. It was as though they ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... solemn about a tale which has here been told for the whimsical fancy of its unseemliness and because it is probably the worst that there is to tell, we may here look forward and face the well-known fact that the unseemliness in talk of rough, rustic boys flavoured the great President's conversation through life. It is well to be plain ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... RITSON, JOSEPH, a whimsical and crabbed antiquary; his industry was great, his works numerous, among them one entitled "Ancient English Metrical Romances," containing a long and still valuable ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... uniformity, is more likely to be the key to progress. The genius of being is whimsical rather than consistent. Our strata show broken bones of histories all forgotten. How can it be otherwise? There can be no purpose of eternity. It is process all. The most sublime result, if it appeared as the ultimatum, would go stale in an hour; it ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... and her picture-hat and her open-work stockings and her absurd little high-heeled, silver-buckled shoes she had somehow regained the feminine self-confidence which her thick boots and sober brown woods dress had filched from her. For the first time in this whimsical visit to a new environment she was completely happy. Dear little Barbara; she ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... glad to have one on my side, anyhow. I only wish—You couldn't talk my wife 'round to your way of thinkin', could you?" he shrugged, with a whimsical smile. "My wife's eaten sour cream to save the sweet all her life, an' she hain't learned yet that if she'd eat the sweet to begin with she wouldn't have no sour cream—'twouldn't have time to get sour. An' there's apples, too. She eats the specked ones always; so she don't never ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... merely fantastical. Besides the prejudice which we have in favour of ancient dresses, there may be likewise other reasons, amongst which we may justly rank the simplicity of them, consisting of little more than one single piece of drapery, without those whimsical capricious forms by which all other ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... to the nonsense they talked. In their company she lost all sense of reality; Mrs. Crowley was so fragile, and Dick had such a whimsical gaiety, that she could not treat them as real persons. She felt herself a grown-up being assisting at some childish game in which preposterous ideas were bandied to and fro like answers in the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... stems of this plant. The similar HOARY FROST-WEED (H. majus), whose showy flowers appear in clusters at the hoary stein's summit, in June and July, also bears them. Often this ice formation assumes exquisite feathery, whimsical forms, bursting the bark asunder where an astonishing quantity of sap gushes forth and freezes. Indeed, so much sap sometimes goes to the making of this crystal flower, that it would seem as if an extra reservoir in the soil must pump ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... glorious haters of cant. Forgive me, I have put you two together twenty times in my thought as the only writers who have the old briskness and vivacity. But you must leave me to my bad taste and my perverse and whimsical combinations. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... handle it. You will allow me this pleasure, I am sure, if only because of the love I bear Tara's son." (One of the whelps this lady had bought from him was a son of Tara.) "I know Mrs. Forsyth quite well—a whimsical, fanciful little person, who takes up a new fad every month, and is apt to change her pets as often as her gloves. I could not possibly let a stranger buy the beautiful mother of my Dhulert, and it gives me ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... tendency puzzled me considerably, remembering, as I did, with the greatest vividness, the fastidious and distingue personality of the author. I found it difficult to believe that he was in earnest. The book seemed to me to betray the whimsical sans-culottism of a man of pleasure who, when the ball is at an end, sits down with his gloves on, and philosophizes on the artificiality of civilization and the wholesomeness of honest toil. An indigestion makes ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... whole day, quiet, kind, and attentive—at once a little matron and a tender bashful girl. The three who had known her longest expected every moment to see some whimsical vagary of her capricious spirit burst forth; but they waited in vain for it. Undine remained as mild and gentle as an angel. The holy father could not take his eyes from her, and he said repeatedly to the bridegroom, "The goodness ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... is of a middle size, slender, strong and pretty, without distinctive characteristic. Mentally, she is lively, industrious, sometimes whimsical, and subject to slight ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... facts or problems, that give the seriousness, the earnestness to the literature of the Bible. Men who express great ideas in literary form are not dilettante about them. One of the English writers just now prominent as an essayist is often counted whimsical, trifling. One of his near friends keenly resents that opinion, insists instead that he is dead in earnest, serious to the last degree, purposeful in all his work. What makes that so difficult to believe is that there is always a tone ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... waves aside my comedy stab and proceeds, chesty and serious, "Really, I am, though. It's this philanthropic executor work that I've been dragged into doing by that whimsical will of your friend, the late Pyramid Gordon, of course. I must admit that at first it came a little awkward, not being used to thinking much about others; but now—why, I'm getting so I can tell almost at a glance what people want and how to ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... distinct from the other. First came the loa, a kind of prologue; then the entremes, a kind of interlude or farce; and last, the autos sacramentales, or sacred acts themselves, which were more grave in their tone, though often whimsical and extravagant. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... at last to the powers that be in order to gain a safe and sheltered harbor for his declining years, then another man of 29 stands ready to denounce him and to take up the rebel cry of youth to which he has become a traitor. Hamsun's ironical humor and whimsical manner of expression do more than the plot itself to knit the plays into an organic unit, and several of the characters are delightfully drawn, particularly the two women who play the greatest part in Kareno's life: his wife Eline, and Teresita, who is one more of his many feminine ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... heater at her back; better than the little room with the sagging bed and the doors covered with wall paper. Her feet had stopped aching, too, She could have sat there for hours. And—why evade it?—she was interested. This whimsical and respectful young man with his absurd talk and his shabby clothes had ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... paused, her head a little turned to listen. "Here she comes. No one else on this floor"—with a whimsical smile—"could take the last flight of those awful stairs at ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the trunks in the baggage-room and there was nothing to keep him longer; so with another whimsical glance at Melvin, who had sauntered behind ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... last Saturday, a diary of the siege of Troy. But man is a creature very inconsistent with himself: the greatest heroes are sometimes fearful, the sprightliest wits at some hours dull; and the greatest politicians on some occasions whimsical. But I shall not pretend to palliate, or excuse the matter; for I find, by a calculation of my own nativity, that I cannot hold out with any tolerable wit longer than two minutes after twelve o'clock ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... had set out to annihilate the aborigines of the West; but if such a fancy came to the man, it must have vanished when he noticed their intelligent appearance and the completeness of their outfit. Boys who start on such whimsical careers are never rightly prepared, and have no conception of the absurdity of their schemes until it is forced upon them by ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... of our undeveloped sensitivity, the emotional reactions to color are found to be largely personal and whimsical: one person "loves" pink, another purple, or green. Color therapeutics is too new a thing to be relied upon for data, for even though colors are susceptible of classification as sedative, recuperative ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... the facetious author of The London Spy, gives a whimsical account of a journey to Sturbridge, in the second volume ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... down in a net— Pull me up through the other!' And when I began To grow old, it would happen That sometimes I drove 220 With the Prince in the Winter; The snow would block up Half the road, and we used To drive five-in-a-file. Then the fancy would strike him (How whimsical, mark you!) To set me astride On the horse which was leading, Me—last of his slaves! Well, he dearly loved music, 230 And so he would throw me A fiddle: 'Here! play now, Ipat.' Then the driver Would shout to the horses, And urge them to gallop. The snow would half-blind me, My hands ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... Imperfect as the study of the Anglo-Saxon then was, he would thus have possessed a needful mastery over the manuscripts, upon which, as it was, he wholly depended; and he would have been saved from some unguarded philological assertions and whimsical speculations. Wanting this guidance, the work, so well executed as it is, is a monument only the more to be wondered at of his indefatigable industry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... After this ceremony he conducted his guest homeward by a pleasant and circuitous route, commanding an extensive prospect of different villages and houses, to each of which Mr. Bradwardine attached some anecdote of history or genealogy, told in language whimsical from prejudice and pedantry, but often respectable for the good sense and honourable feelings which his narrative displayed, and almost always curious, if not valuable, for the information ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... in the towns, and never was Aristotle or Galen so honoured, especially by the common people, as was our said Master. And his fame so increased that his advice was asked on every subject, and he was so incessantly in demand that he did not know what to do. If a woman had a bad, or whimsical, or capricious husband, she went to this good master for a remedy. In short, if any could give good advice it was thought that our physician was at the top of the tree in that respect, and people came to him from all parts to ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... out," he said, with his whimsical smile. "But the rank and file will have to constitute the big end. We don't want a lot of busybodies, pussy-footing around with guns and looking for trouble. We had enough of that during the war. We would want ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in its deepness. She was a handsome woman, stubbornly resisting the work of time. In her eyes was restless seeking, in her movements an energy that could not be exercised in the limits of her little world; and Claudia, watching her, felt sudden whimsical sympathy. She was so big, so lordly, so ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... a whimsical fact. Mr. Cambridge had a rage for news; and living in effect at Richmond, though on the other side of the Thames, he had the command of many political reporters. As I was then in professional business at my chambers, I knew less of public news than ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... inimical party to be ostensibly civil. Lady Wilts, who did me the honour to patronize me almost warmly, complimented me on my manner of backing him, as if I were the hero; but I felt his peculiar charm; she partly admitted it, making a whimsical mouth, saying, in allusion to Miss Penrhys, 'I, you know, am past twenty. At twenty forty is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... handkerchiefs, cowls; men with hair and beard matted and flying; now one helped himself to a louder yell by tossing in air the dirty garment he had torn from his body, hirsute as a goat's; now one leaped up agile as a panther; now one turned topsy-turvy; now groups of them swirled together like whimsical eddies in a pool. Some went slowly, their arms outspread in silent ecstasy; some stalked on with parted lips and staring eyes, trance-like or in dead drunkenness of soul; nevertheless the great majority of them, too weary ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... to be elsewhere found,—flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame. They are here published as they were written, with very few and superficial changes; although it is fair to say that the titles have been assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... as she did this year to that august meal—I hardly know. Millais's faces, Pettie's knights, or Calderon's beauties—all fared the same. You could not say it was ill-natured; it was simply the bare truth of things put in the whimsical manner which is natural ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... genius is the most indebted man. A poet is no rattle-brain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says everything, saying at last something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... a seat for a few minutes, and his thoughts somehow wandered back to that night when he had strolled over the hills and found a lonely boy gazing downward through the tree tops to the fading landscape. He remembered his own whimsical generosity, the feelings with which he had made his offer. He remembered, too, the conditions which he had made. With a sudden swift anger, he realized that those conditions had not been kept. Saton had told him little or nothing of his doings out in the world, of his ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... world might once more be delighted with such spectacles as Leonardo devised for the entertainments at the Villa Medici—those fanciful banquets, where, instead of a mere vulgar display of Medici money—"a hundred dollars a plate," so to say—whimsical wit and beauty entered into the creation of the very dishes. Leicester's famous welcoming of Elizabeth to Kenilworth was perhaps the last spectacular "revel" of its kind to strike the imagination; though we must not fail to remember with gratitude the magnificent Beckford, with his glorious ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... courses, whither it had to go. A restless, ostentatious, far-grasping, strong-handed man; who kept the world in a stir wherever he was. All which has proved voiceless in the World's memory; while the casual Shadow of a Feather he once wore has proved vocal there. World's memory is very whimsical now and then. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... you'll be—what is it they call hysterical people? Neurasthenics, I believe. I mean to have a jolly good time with plenty of lovers and dances and fun and get married. I'm not going to be a sighing, whimsical old ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... [Cusins and Barbara exchange glances. Then Cusins sits on the step and buries his face in his hands. Barbara gravely lays her hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at her in a sort of whimsical desperation]. Well, Stephen, what do ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... together with several quite flattering Western press notices. The young man read these slowly, wondering why they should particularly interest him, and on a sudden his rather grave face brightened into a smile, a whimsical thought flashing into ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... said he, in a tone of whimsical apology. "This won't do, you know. I'm floating off on my hobby (and there's a mixed metaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!). I'm boring you to extinction, and I don't want to do that, for I'm anxious that you should ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... volumes of poems under his own name, and the Joan of Arc. The censures of the critics by profession are extant, and may be easily referred to:— careless lines, inequality in the merit of the different poems, and (in the lighter works) a predilection for the strange and whimsical; in short, such faults as might have been anticipated in a young and rapid writer, were indeed sufficiently enforced. Nor was there at that time wanting a party spirit to aggravate the defects of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... How ignominously he failed to carry out his wishes in this particular is known to every student of Upper Canadian history; but what is not known, either to students of history or anyone else, is—What was the motive power which directed his choice? By what whimsical combination of circumstances it came about that the appointment was finally offered to, and accepted by, one of the most unlikely men in the three kingdoms, is one of those official riddles which appear to defy solution. The fact ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... he greeted, nodding toward a stool by the hearth. "Come over 'n sit down to the entertainment." A whimsical smile struggled through the heavy whiskers. "I've been seeing all sorts of things in there"—a thoughtful nod toward the fire. "Guess, though, a fellow generally does see what he's looking for in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... a living example of one yourself," was the whimsical reply. Stacy pondered over the Professor's retort all the rest of that day. But when noon came and passed and no stop was made for a noonday meal, the fat ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... play with it? Who could tweak it passionately, as a prelude to kissing? Who could linger over it tenderly with a candle, or a lump of mutton fat, when cold had laid its cruel hand upon it? It is not tip-tilted like a flower; it is not whimsical with some ravishing and unexpected little crook. It is straight, like a mathematical line. But it has no parts. Her cheeks are round and fair. Each has its dimple and blush. They are thoroughly healthy, ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... expressions. With persons indifferent to him, or whose nullity he discerned, his phrases, scarcely begun, were never finished: his ideas turned only on insignificant, common-place matters, which, by way of amusing himself, he was apt to season with biting sarcasm, or jokes more whimsical ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... gentlemen, instead of being the lumber-room of those Birmingham rogues the baronets abominated, Christmas Eve was celebrated with all the hospitalities usual in baronial halls, but the opening of the evening's performances was of so whimsical a character that it attracted attention even a hundred years ago, when queer and quaint customs were anything but strange. An old chronicler thus describes it:—"On this day, as soon as supper is over, a table is set in the hall; on it is set a brown loaf, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... which gives us some insight into the poet's mind. 'This, my dear Sir, is one of the many instances of the folly in leaving the guidance of sound reason and common sense in matters of religion. Whenever we neglect or despise those sacred monitors, the whimsical notions of a perturbed brain are taken for the immediate influences of the Deity, and the wildest fanaticism and the most inconsistent absurdities will meet with abettors and converts. Nay, I have often thought that the more out of the way and ridiculous ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... back in his chair after his whimsical protest, and was unfolding his morning paper in a leisurely fashion, when our attention was arrested by a tremendous ring at the bell, followed immediately by a hollow drumming sound, as if someone were beating ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... abilities," said Lancelot, with the whimsical expression that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most unamiable moments. "You must deduct the Thalers I made in exhibitions. As for living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it's an economy, for every ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... men's. Shall we walk back, my dear?' But as he gave her his hand to rise, the gentle melancholy of his smile smote her with a sudden sense of sadness, for it spoke of some hidden pain that even her sympathy could not reach; and she knew that his whimsical words only cloaked some vague uneasiness. 'Come, dear, come,' he continued; 'these Scotch twilights are somewhat damp and chilly. We will burn that pine log this evening, and we will sit round ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey |
