"Queer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been rather cold at first, but Herzog's amiability had thawed her. This man, with his slow speech and queer eyes, produced a fascinating effect on one like a serpent. He was repugnant, and yet, in spite of one's self one was led on. He, had at once introduced the grain question, but in this he found himself face to face with the real Madame Desvarennes; and no ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and Brother,—I must write a joint letter for all, with little notes if I have anything more special for anyone of you. I wish you could see this place. The old hut is queer enough certainly, quite open on one side, and nearly so on another, but it is weather-tight in the middle, with forms to sit on and a table or two like a kitchen table, on which I read and write ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... once covered by a congeries of picturesque Halles and streets:—the Halle aux Draps; the Marche des Herborists, with their mysterious stores of simples and healing herbs and leeches; the potato and onion markets; the butter and cheese markets; the fish market; the queer old Rue de la Tonnellerie, under whose shabby porticoes, sellers of rags, old clothes, iron and furniture, crowded against the bread market; the Marche des Prouvaires, beloved of thrifty housewives—all swallowed up by the vast modern structure of iron and glass, known as Les Halles. The ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... of the sandy desert was a queer sort of fold for a shepherd to build. To judge the past, however, by the present is one of the most mischievous of errors. Nothing is easier than to criticise the actions of men in a bygone age, and nothing ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... queer that in so pretty a house, where almost everything was neat and well kept, the floors should be dirty and the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... meaning of all this putting on and taking off of caterpillar habiliments, or in other words, the process of moulting, with the frequent changes in ornamentation, and the seeming fastidiousness and queer fancies and strange conceits of these young and giddy insects seems hidden and mysterious to human observation. Indeed, few care to spend the time and trouble necessary to observe the insect through its transformations; and that done, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... men—they were brothers—died of cholera on the way to Hardwar, poor devils, and the 'rickshaw has been broken up by the man himself. 'Told me he never used a dead Memsahib's 'rickshaw. 'Spoiled his luck.' Queer notion, wasn't it? Fancy poor little Mrs. Wessington spoiling any one's luck except her own!" I laughed aloud at this point; and my laugh jarred on me as I uttered it. So there were ghosts of 'rickshaws ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Chichester—to let the reader into a secret—had, upon the first appearance of the Spanish ship, been greatly exercised in his mind lest he should fail in courage when the two ships came to blows; but with the discharge of the first shot the queer agitated feeling which he had mistaken for fear completely passed away, and was instantly forgotten; and now, his services being no longer required at the helm, he armed himself with a handspike snatched from the deck, and, watching his opportunity, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... eyes, this man may be as old as Methuselah. He has no beard. He wears a large curly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrows are painted a deep olive- green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in these queer old chambers in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... what the little fellows do to you," said Monte. "But you don't want to queer yourself any further with her, do you? Now, listen. She thinks you tried to shoot yourself. By that much I have a hunch she thinks ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... how they were getting on. MacShaughnassy thought they seemed queer, and was of opinion that they were breaking up. Speaking for myself, I can only say that a healthier-looking lot of beetles I ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... than done. In union queer Together yoked were soon winged horse and steer. The griffin pranced with rage, and his remaining might Exerted to resume his old-accustomed flight. 'Twas all in vain—his partner stepped with circumspection, And ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... weren the first roseres and roses, both white and rede, that evere ony man saughe. And thus was this mayden saved be the grace of God. And therfore is that feld clept the feld of God florysscht: for it was fulle of roses. Also besyde the queer of the chirche, at the right syde, as men comen dounward 16 greces, [Footnote: Steps.] is the place where oure Lord was born, that is fulle welle dyghte of marble, and fulle richely peynted with gold, sylver, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... met with some queer folk in my time, but that chap breaks the record for cool impudence! Spanish is not my strong point, but, if I understood him aright, after calmly acknowledging that he had been hired to murder our friend Jack, here, he with equal calmness informs you that ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... "and don't be afraid. Remember—they're a queer lot, those fellows, but they can't hurt you if you are careful. Don't answer 'em back and don't ask 'em too many questions. One thing in particular—if they offer you anything to eat, don't taste a mouthful of it. If you do it'll be the worse ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... He leaned over and studied it intently, his eyes widening and shining. Suddenly with a queer gesture he rose and went to a window. He stood there, back turned to ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... but the impression had been hastily made, and the letters were past anything more certain than a shrewd conjecture. Ida Payne had always worn a signet-ring in preference to any other finger decoration. Geddie thought he could make out the familiar "I P"; and a queer sensation of disquietude went over him. More personal and intimate was this reminder of her than had been the sight of the vessel she was doubtless on. He walked back to his house, and set ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... queer, acting as the supervisor of an educational institution in space. He did not like it. There were twenty-four men beside himself crowded into the Med Ship's small interior. They got in each other's way. They trampled on each other. There was ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... I could read the queer implications of this speech. The present owner's superior virtue as well as his deeper craft spoke in his reference to the late editor as one of that baser sort who deal in false representations. Mr. Deedy would as soon have sent me to call on Neil ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... was when I was a strolling actor in Clark's corps. We used to go the western circuit, and by that means got the name of 'the Connaught Rangers.' There was a queer fellow in the company, called Ned Davis, an honest-hearted fellow he was, as ever walked in shoe leather. Ned and I were sworn brothers; we shared the same bed, which was often only a 'shake-down' in the corner of a stable, and the same dinner, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... with himself to hold that picture of her, to utter some word, make some movement. But the power to see and to live died out of him. He sank back with a queer sound in his throat. He did not hear the answering cry from the girl as she flung herself, with a quick little prayer for help, on her knees in the soft, white sand beside him. He felt no movement when she raised his head in her arm ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... notoriety in the sheeplands to a lucky blow, would fail, leaving him far ahead on the deal. He tightened his girths and set his foot in the stirrup, ready to mount and ride home; paused so, hand on the saddle-horn, with a queer, half-puzzled, half-suspicious look in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... country, the people were, of course, fairy people; but that does not mean that all of them were very unlike the people of our own world. There were all sorts of queer characters among them, but not a single one who was evil, or who possessed a selfish or violent nature. They were peaceful, kind hearted, loving and merry, and every inhabitant adored the beautiful girl who ruled them and delighted to obey her ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... hear in any of the clubs. She has a liberal nature, my boy, and loves nobody, that I can find, in particular. What bewitches me in talking to her is a sort of serious background. I hate a woman all surface as I hate a flat house. The Trefoil—queer name, isn't it?—can put a tremor in her voice suddenly. The Trefoil has memories—a fact: something which she doesn't give to the world, generous as she is. It is the shade to her abounding and sparkling passages of light. Only her deep ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... queer-like feeling of death and sorrow and tears of blood and not lifting your head for groans," said Widow Anne incoherently, "and there's meanings in mubble-fumbles, as we're told in Scripture. Not but what ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... shaking his bridle again, "there she is, and it's quite queer, by thunder, how much she seems to give a man to think of and what will it be when she begins to talk." And his smile ended in a jovial laugh which rather startled Jake, who was not expecting it, and caused him to ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was; I am sure of it; I can read Dietrich's writing fast enough," answered Blasi, and he added to himself, "The women-folk are queer creatures. No fellow can understand them. A moment ago she looked all broken-down, and as if she could be blown out with a puff of wind, and now she looks bright and strong as the ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... In a few months Allie had become almost a stranger to him. It was a marked and yet a subtle change that had come over her; she was anything but a polished young woman, of course; nevertheless she had been modified, toned down, vastly improved, and not until her first queer emotion at seeing him had disappeared was the full extent of that improvement manifest to the newcomer. He wondered why she had acted so oddly at first; surely she did not fear him. No, Allie's face at this moment was alight with supreme joy ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... them. He only appeared there from time to time. He lived in the native quarter, with a native woman, in a native house standing in the middle of a plot of fenced ground where grew plantains, and furnished only with mats, cooking pots, a queer fishing net on two sticks, and a small mahogany case with a lock and a silver plate engraved with the words "Captain H. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... breakers without difficulty, and rowed toward the fishing-ground. It is queer that fishermen call the place where they fish, "the ground," but that is only one of the many queer things that they do. By this time, daylight had come. The eastern sky was gorgeous with purple and red, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... worship, acquired the accomplishment of public prayer, and made himself a student at their feet. It is thus—it is by the cultivation of similar passing chances—that he has learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak his queer, personal English, so different from ordinary "Beach de Mar," so much more obscure, expressive, and condensed. His education attended to, he found time to become critical of the new inmates. Like Nakaeia of Makin, he is an admirer of silence in the island; broods ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said I. "The fact is, I've been queer for a couple of days. I had a beastly time on the river. Talk about life and death! Why, man, it was the narrowest scratch with me you ever saw. I didn't go to Point ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... we later recognize details without its help. Definite conditions may bring to light very great distinctions. A body close to the face or in the middle distance looks different according as one eye or both be used in examining it. This is an old story and explains the queer descriptions we receive of such objects as weapons and the like, which were suddenly held before the face of the deponent. In cases of murderous assault it is certain that most uncanny stories are told, later explained by fear or total confusion or intentional dishonesty, but really to be ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... lot. Fact is, before we landed I almost had him sized up for queer, but when he introduced me to the Countess I saw my mistake. He must be the real thing. She certainly is! You come ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... As a consequence, his acquaintance is miscellaneous, and he is often seen at other places than rich men's feasts. I do believe he is a gainer by reason of his vagrant ways. He comes in contact with the queer corners and the out-of-the-way places of human life. He knows more of our common nature, just as the man who walks through a country, and who strikes off the main road now and then to visit a ruin, or a ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... a queer company," I added, with a grim attempt at jocularity, "they're almost as rough ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... graceful body was most expensively attired. Kisses were exchanged between her and Mrs. Jameson. She bowed to the rest of the assembly, and stole a half glance and a smile at Faull. The latter gave her a queer look, and Backhouse, who lost nothing, saw the concealed barbarian in the complacent gleam of his eye. She refused the refreshment that was offered her, and Faull proposed that, as everyone had now arrived, they should adjourn to the ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... frequently seen, queer little creatures with the nature of a fish and the ambition of a bird. Dolphins sometimes played round the ship for hours together, and a few hideous man-eating sharks kept in our wake day after day, as if they hoped for a stray victim to tumble from the decks and appease their ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Hay Market, the number of establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the trading and working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in the heart of Petersburg, types so various were to be seen in the streets that no figure, however queer, would have caused surprise. But there was such accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young man's heart, that, in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags least of all in the street. It was a different matter when he met with acquaintances or with former fellow ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of nursing Tommy Atkins at the front faded into the prosaic reality of putting hundreds of cold compresses on German feet, that they might be ready all the sooner to go out and kill our men. War is a queer thing!! ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... deal of mystery about the late Miss Grice," resumed Mr. Tatt, still playing with the terrier. "Nobody but Dix and Nawby can tell exactly when she died, or how she's left her money. Queer family altogether. (Rats, Pincher! where are the rats?) There's a son of old Grice's, who has never, they say, been properly accounted for. (Hie, boy! there's a cat! hie after her, Pincher!) If he was only ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... queer woman talked to Giglio on a variety of subjects, in which the poor Prince showed his ignorance as much as she did her capacity. He owned, with many blushes, how ignorant he was; on which the lady said, 'My dear Gigl—my good Mr. Giles, you are a young man, ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cavalcade. Two large soap boxes, knocked together, had been placed on old perambulator wheels, and in this roughly fashioned chariot, on a bundle of straw and an old shawl, reclined a little, thin, white-faced girl. One sturdy boy of ten was pushing the queer conveyance, while a younger pulled it by a piece of rope, and the small occupant, her lap full of flowers, smiled as proudly as a queen on coronation day. Against the background of green hedgerow and red village roofs, the happy children ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... Cabuliwallah, I was immediately transported to the foot of arid mountain peaks, with narrow little defiles twisting in and out amongst their towering heights. I could see the string of camels bearing the merchandise, and the company of turbaned merchants, carrying some of their queer old firearms, and some of their spears, journeying downward towards the plains. I could see—but at some such point Mini's mother would intervene, imploring me to "beware ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... her. I was glad to do this since I was pleased that she liked you. But you talked more and more with her and cut me short; that hurt me a good deal; but I consoled myself by saying it was only natural since you were with me all the time; and, besides, Ernestine was more grown-up than I. Still queer feelings filled my heart, so young it was, and so warmly it beat even then. When we went walking you talked to Ernestine and poked fun at me. Father shipped me off to Dresden on that account, where I again grew hopeful, and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... but no one knows who "Batty" was. As I have mentioned The Doctor, &c., I may was well jot down two more odd sayings from the same old curiosity-shop:—"As proud as old COLE's dog which took the wall of a dung-CART, and got CRUSHED by the wheel." And, "As queer as Dick's hat-band, that went nine times round his hat and was fastened ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... Stafford. "Send me up the pretty one. I couldn't stand the red-haired girl just now. I've got an important deal on hand. She might queer my luck. Do that for me, old chap. Tell her as you go out, ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... the road, the Subaltern could not help thinking that this was indeed a queer send-off. A few sergeants' wives, standing at the corner of the Parade ground, were saying good-bye to their friends as they passed. "Good-bye, Bill;" "Good luck, Sam!" Not a hint of emotion in their voices. One might have thought that husbands and fathers went away to risk their lives ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... would queer me for a job," he said. "You see, Gregory, when a man hires a fellow he figures he's all there. He kind of rents him all over and when he's shy on somethin', he kind of figures the fellow's holding back on him. I didn't want to slip anything over on you. Because you were white to me ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Then he came slowly, and touched me in a queer evasive way on my shoulder. Finally he drew a long breath, and gripped me by the arm. "Don't you recognize it?" "It's the dream! See! The stone wall—the field—the sumac! Now ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... know myself. I am the King's locksmith, my dear, and I and the King worked together many years. Why, I know every creek and corner of the palace, aye, and I know everything that's going on in them, too—queer doings! Lord, my pretty damsel, I made a secret place in the palace to hide the King's papers, where the devil himself would never find them out, if I ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... come to the queer part of the business. I was in diggings out Hampstead way, 17 Potter's Terrace. Well, I was sitting doing a smoke that very evening after I had been promised the appointment, when up came my landlady with a card which ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... that he was in a trance that day. His father, at the breakfast table, jovially prodded him about being late, until he barely caught himself on the verge of telling his queer secret. And so absent-minded was he at the office that he found he had entered the account of a prosaic old firm as "Mermaid ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... us all about this queer game!" commanded Dave Darrin, his eyes flashing warningly. "If you don't, we'll shake it out of you; or we'll roll you in the snow until we soak the truth out of you! What do Fred Ripley and his crowd mean to do out ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... make innocent love in our youth in a college town. I got a note from her yesterday, written in the clear, beautiful hand I recognised from the memory of little perfumed things she used to send me. You don't know what a queer sick feeling came over me when I recognised from the street number that she was in prison. I haven't seen her in fifteen years. She was the village belle and made what was supposed to be a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... suppers and cards and theatres and all sorts of things. Some of them could be led, and some had to be driven like Paddy's pig who thought he was going the other way. Some of them had wives who could talk to them, and some—hadn't," said Mrs. Baker, with a queer ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... so. I saw at once he was a Basque. Now you'll hear what a queer language he speaks. Doesn't he look silly? He's like a cat that's ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... was the ring leeder and had led Pewt and Beany into temptasion and old Decon Aspinwall sed it was mity queer that we dident put up ennything on fathers house and the boy was the father of the man and that he wood see that i was sent to the reform school and ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... his door locked. He is said to have declaimed part of it one still evening from the top of the commonty like one addressing a multitude, and the idlers who had crept up to jeer at him fell back when they saw his face. He walked through them, they told, with his old body straight once more, and a queer light playing on his face. His lips are moving as I see him turning the corner of the brae. So he passed from youth to old age, and all his life seemed a dream, except that part of it in which he was writing, or printing, or stitching, or binding "The Millennium." ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... sharply, tilted, and very nearly fell into a side-slip. Quimbleton was just able to pull her up again and climbed steeply to a safer altitude. He looked at his dashboard dials and indicators with a puzzled face. "Very queer," he said to Theodolinda through the speaking tube, "the air here has very little carrying power. It seems extraordinarily thin. You might think we were flying ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... the world is that?" queried one of the riders of the other, evidently taken aback at being addressed in English in such a queer place and at such a ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Jack, old fellow, I didn't mean to be disrespectful. We are all in the same fix as far as clothes go. Even Evelyn looks a little queer. 'All the world is a little queer,' he quoted, 'and ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... pretend not to notice, though it stares you in the face from every wall—come home, only asking to make the best of of it, live on good terms with my fellows, and be happy for the first time in my life—damn them, they won't fling me a kind look! What have I done?—that's what I want to know. The queer thing is, they behaved more decently at first. There's that Gillespie, who brought you ashore: he came over the first week, offered me shooting, was altogether as pleasant as could be. I quite took to the fellow. Now, ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Madame Babette's suspicions, for she was unacquainted with the Normandy accent, and consequently did not perceive the exaggeration of it which Monsieur de Crequy adopted in order to disguise his pure Parisian. But after he had for two nights slept in a queer dark closet, at the end of one of the numerous short galleries in the Hotel Duguesclin, and paid his money for such accommodation each morning at the little bureau under the window of the conciergerie, he found himself no nearer to his object. He stood outside in ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Ga's and Krumen and Bubi, and in all cases the tunes are only voice tunes, not for instrumental performance. The instrumental music consists of that marvellously developed series of drum tunes—the attempt to understand which has taken up much of my time, and led me into queer company—and the many tunes played on the 'mrimba and the orchid- root-stringed harp: they are, I believe, entirely distinct from the song tunes. And these peaceful tunes my men were now singing were, in their florid elaboration very different from the one they fought ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... so?" Lila smiled a little doubtfully. "It sounds like one of the sophists—'to make the worse appear the better reason.' I'd love to believe it, and you are sweet to me." She laid one arm caressingly across Bea's shoulders. "It is queer that I don't mind more when you scold ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... pleasanter and kindlier resort along that coast. The beach was wonderful, and all summer long it attracted bathers and children at play. Bathing machines lined the beach, of course, within the limits of the town; those queer, old, clumsy looking wagons, with a dressing cabin on wheels, that were drawn up and down according to the tide, so that bathers might enter the water from them directly. There, as in most British towns, women bathed at one part of the beach, men at the other, and ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... of the gloomy old room the boys and girls looked queer—almost ghostly. They were gathered about a shabby old trunk, and beside this trunk a man was kneeling. As Billie Bradley spoke, the man, who was her father, rose to his feet and thoughtfully brushed ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... and much rouge. The d'Harcourt at midnight is ablaze with light, but the crowd is common and you move on up the boulevard under the trees, past the shops full of Quartier fashions—velvet coats, with standing collars buttoning close under the chin; flamboyant black silk scarfs tied in a huge bow; queer broad-brimmed, black hats without which no ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... what you've been used to, we know," observed Miss Annabel. "Mr. Langley, our former pastor, was a sweet old gentleman, but he was old-fashioned and his tastes were queer, especially in art. Have you noticed that 'fruit piece' in the dining room? Isn't ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sham bark and senna from the real articles; that he ought to know Zoology, because—well, I really have never been able to learn exactly why he is to be expected to know zoology. There is, indeed, a popular superstition, that doctors know all about things that are queer or nasty to the general mind, and may, therefore, be reasonably expected to know the "barbarous binomials" applicable to snakes, snails, and slugs; an amount of information with which the general mind is usually completely satisfied. And there is a scientific ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... queer old thing it was! I liked it at first because you gave it to me, though it seemed to have an unlucky look, somehow. I 'd much rather have had just a little ring, with a solitary diamond ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... "Queer how many silly asses one knows!" Anthony said. "Still, considering what a mess I seem to have made of things, fellows were jolly kind, at the Turf Club. Nobody cut me, and only a few let me alone. Maybe there'd have been still fewer if there hadn't been a hero present who ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Fraeulein Judith Mannheim would serve perfectly to fill his evening, old Lothair in some amusement had taken his seat by the fire: he read his paper, listening vaguely and ironically to Christophe's crotchets and his queer music, which sometimes made him laugh inwardly at the idea that there could be people who understood it and found pleasure in it. He did not trouble to follow the conversation: he relied on his daughter's cleverness to tell him exactly what the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... scuttle. The captain is much vexed at the loss of time. I persist in thinking it a very pleasant, but utterly lazy life. I sleep a great deal, but don't eat much, and my cough has been bad; but, considering the real hardship of the life—damp, cold, queer food, and bad drink—I think I am better. When we can get past Finisterre, I shall do very well, I ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... was—for she was not one of us. She came here from foreign parts, and when she died she left a trinket with strange letters on it. We must show it to one of the prisoners of war, after you have got her safe; perhaps they could make out the queer inscription. She comes of a good stock, that I am certain; for Uarda is the very living image of her mother, and as soon as she was born, she looked like the child of a great man. You smile, you idiot! Why thousands of infants have been in my hands, and if one was brought to me ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eerie impression which we attach to the girl herself. The best portraits subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and if plain it should throw ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... her madly! Why does one love? Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one's mind, only one desire in the heart, and only one name on the lips; a name which comes up continually, which rises like the water in a spring, from the depths of the soul, which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... from his pages. The elderly waiter of the forlorn out-dated hotel to which we went for our whitebait lunch at Greenwich was as much of his invention as if he had created him from the dust of the place, and breathed his elderly-waiter-soul into him. He had a queer pseudo-respectful shuffle and a sidelong approach, with a dawning baldness at the back of his head, which seemed of one quality with these characteristics: his dress-coat was lustrous with the greasiness of long ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... was thinking of turning in. He was beginning to fell a little queer. He was thinking of the sexton, and could not get the fixed features of the dead man out of his head, when he heard the sharp though distant ring of a horse's hoof upon the frozen road. Tom's instinct apprized him of the approach of a guest to the George and Dragon. His experienced ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... could not go out, postponements of outdoor frolics, when, still the centre, he sat and drowsed in the big chair, waking, at times, in that unexpected queer, bright way of his, to roll a cigarette and call for his ukulele—a sort of miniature guitar of Portuguese invention. Then, with strumming and tumtuming, the live cigarette laid aside to the imminent peril of polished wood, his full baritone would roll ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... along was a singular commixture of an upper and under current of thought. Deep down in our hearts we were going back to English days; the cumbrous, quaint, queer, old, picturesque times; the dim, haunted times between cock-crowing and morning; those hours of national childhood, when popular ideas had the confiding credulity, the poetic vivacity, and versatile life, which distinguish ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... much, but it used to divert me to see her order around her big brothers, just as if she was their mother. She and I got to be great friends; but she was a queer piece. One day at school the girls in her row were communicating, and annoying me, while the third class was reciting in 'First Steps in Numbers,' and I was so incensed that I called Lizzie—that's her name—right out, ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... others to help me dare? This has to do with me! And it has to do with me now—with this moment! Am I to give up and let myself go down for such a phantom as this! For such a dread as that wooden-headed men and women will think me "queer"! Am I to stay in a prison such as that—to be bound by a chain such as that? I—I, who go about trying to persuade myself that this world is nothing to me—that this world is nothing to any one—that it is a phantom—that the soul ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... advantage over his friends. "I assure you that's not so," he would say. "You can't judge Tchehov till you've read him in the original. Wait till you can read him in Russian." "No, I don't think the Russian characters are like that," he would declare. "It's a queer thing, but you'd almost think I had some Russian blood in me... I sympathise so." He followed closely the books that emphasised the more sentimental side of the Russian character, being of course grossly sentimental himself at heart. He saw Russia glittering with fire and colour, and Russians, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... knitting all day for two months but I'm going to begin to sit up at night," sobbed the lady from a queer Keokuk name as I took her into my embrace on account of her ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... may learn two lessons, the first being that utterly baseless but plausible stories may arise in queer ways. In the above case, the most far-fetched hypothesis to account for the origin of the legend could hardly have been as apparently improbable as the reality. Secondly, we may learn that if a myth once gets into the popular mind, it is next ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... word, which undoubtedly derives from cuculus, cogul, cocu, a cuckoo, has taken a queer twist, nor can I explain how its present meaning arose from a shebird which lays her egg in a strange nest. Wittol, on the other hand, from Witan, to know, is rightly applied to one whom La Fontaine calls "cocu ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... M'Allister," I answered. He again looked at me keenly, with a queer smile on his face; and remarked, "Mon, I'm thinking you are that, and that you have left ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... told you nothing. Natalie is one of those persons that we generally call a 'queer girl' because we haven't the intelligence or the expression to define them. Our local wit said that she was a girl whom every man considered himself good enough for, but that considered herself too good for any man. That was unjust, but it sounded true because sooner or later ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... man to have let out a yell on making this discovery but he did not have the chance to give tongue, at least fully, for Perk made a lightning-like spring and had both hands clasped about his throat effectually throttling the intended shout so that it emerged only as a queer sound, rather on the order of a bull alligator's ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... "Yes. Queer, isn't it? But he wants the job. No," at the unspoken question in her face, "it wasn't Van. But he came in just as the trouble began to show and—well, you know we're the best of friends now, and I think I'd rather have him—and Buller, good ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... Bob answered. "I don't remember it, though. Everything looks queer and different in the storm. It's a regular ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... in the early eighteen hundreds," said Bob, "and a queer lot he must have found. They say that there was a crop of younger sons of good English families which had been planted here as a good country for the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... to the very edge of your ragged skirt, yanked in that first day to the Cruelty when the neighbors complained your crying wouldn't let 'em sleep nights. The old woman had just locked you in there, hadn't she, to starve when she lit out. Mothers are queer, ain't they, when they are queer. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... can't fool me. I knew there was something queer about this whole arrangement." Then her voice changed. "It's very, very kind of you, Mr. Kelley, and I deeply appreciate it, and if you don't want me to do it—I will not let ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... that bird a mile away—she's never done talking!" said Mrs. Darke as the indignant gabble grew fainter in the distance. "But 'ere's my old man a-come to look at the plum tree. Wonder what he'll say to it? This be a queer job, sure enough!" ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... say th' advantage is all on his side, for all I take credit for improving him above a bit. Sometimes he says a rough thing or two, which is not agreeable to look at at first, but has a queer smack o' truth in it when yo' come to chew it. He'll be coming to-night, I reckon, about them childer's schooling. He's not satisfied wi' the make of it, and ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and booklets advertising personally conducted excursions. And, with the arrival of each new circular or booklet, she picked out, as she had just done, the particular tours she would go on when her "some day" came. It was funny, this queer habit of hers, but not half as funny as the thought of her really going would have been. I would have as soon thought of our front door leaving home and starting on its travels as of Hephzy's doing it. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the grisette, wiping with the back of her hand the tip of her little nose, down which a tear was trickling, "you may tell me that you did not know where I had taken up my quarters. It's a queer story, I can tell you. When I say queer," added Rose-Pompon, with a deep sigh, "it is quite the contrary—but no matter: I need not trouble you with that. One thing is certain; you are getting better—and you and Cephyse will not do such a thing again. She is said to be very ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... all people sometimes lost their way on bitter nights when the white stars hung just above the tree-tops and the frost-fairies filled the air with the little snaps and crackles of their orchestra—the queer, marred music of winter. The reddening of dawn found these poor adventurers frozen unless they had the good fortune to find what all the countryside knew as "The ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... and their officers merciful? Well then, it kinder puzzles me to see the way they're getting to work. It's no wonder the Belgian is set agin them. They're a little lot, them Belgians are, and it's a queer thing, ain't it, that they should make all this trouble? But I dunno. Maybe, there's something to be said for 'em if we only knew. Then there's the English. They say they're fighting for freedom this time, and maybe they're right to stick to their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... a sad farewell, but many friends accompanied us to the station, and the rotund major and his rounder wife did us the like honour. Our major was a queer mixture: he was jolly because he was fat, and he was stern because he had a beaky nose, and in any interview one had first to ascertain whether the stomach or the nose held the upper hand, so to speak. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... playing upon the violoncello: I had not observed the circumstance, but my perrucchiere's distress was evident; he writhed and twisted about like a man pinched with the cholic, and pulled a hundred queer faces: at last—What is the matter, Ercolani, said I, are you not well? Mistress, replies the fellow, if that beast don't leave off soon, I shall run mad with rage, or else die; and so you'll see an honest Venetian lad killed ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Macfarlane, "there was not sufficient proof to warrant such a proceeding. Moreover, the actual meenister of the parish declared it was a' richt, an' said this Gueldmar was a mon o' vera queer notions, an' maybe, had buried his wife wi' certain ceremonies peculiar to ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... finery. I'll bet Lucy was a beauty. And she's dead too, you can bet, and Charles was her lover, and likely he's dead too. 'Bide the time,' eh? You see they're waitin' around yet—somewheres. Isn't it queer?" ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... has got some hold over him," opined his sister-in-law, darkly; "either she is helping him to finance the show, and presumes on the fact, or else, which Heaven forbid, he's got some queer infatuation for her. Men do ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... undiscovered caches left by Franklin, in the hope that relief expeditions would find them. It would be as incongruous to attribute these things to the Eskimos as to attribute tablets and lettered stones to the aborigines of America. Some time I shall take up an expression that the queer-shaped mounds upon this earth were built by explorers from Somewhere, unable to get back, designed to attract attention from some other world, and that a vast sword-shaped mound has been discovered upon the moon—Just now we think of lettered things ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Cotswould, HAVE you seen those delightful, clever, amusing French pictures at that place in Suffolk Street? There's a man there—a Parisian—I forget his honoured name—Leblanc, or Lenoir, or Lebrun, or something—but he's a most humorous artist, and he paints monkeys and storks and all sorts of queer beasties ALMOST as quaintly and expressively as you do. Mind, I say ALMOST, for I never will allow that any Frenchman could do anything QUITE so good, quite so funnily mock-human, as ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... time to time. They all wore their hair tied behind in a short, thick queue which looked quite dandified. "Here you are," I said to myself, as I ate my supper, "here you are in the country from which such queer people used to come to the Herr Pastor's with mouse-traps, and barometers, and pictures. How much a man learns who makes up his mind not to stick close to his own ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... you do not like caterpillars," said this queer fellow to Little Bear. "Men call me the Pied Piper," he went on when he saw that Little Bear was too surprised to speak. "And I know a way to draw after me everything that walks or flies or swims! What will you give me if I rid your ...
— Little Bear at Work and at Play • Frances Margaret Fox
... the strains of a penny whistle and a child's drum taken from a toyshop in a wrecked French town. I remember in India, in a cholera camp, where the men were suffering very badly, the band of the Tenth Lincolns started a regimental sing-song and went on with that queer, defiant tune, "The Lincolnshire Poacher." It was their regimental march that the men had heard a thousand times. There was nothing in it—nothing except all England, all the East Coast, all the fun and daring ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... expecting something to happen. A barrel-organ played like an obscene nightingale beneath wet leaves. Children ran across the road. Here and there one could see brown panelling inside the hall door.... The march that the mind keeps beneath the windows of others is queer enough. Now distracted by brown panelling; now by a fern in a pot; here improvising a few phrases to dance with the barrel-organ; again snatching a detached gaiety from a drunken man; then altogether absorbed by words the poor shout across the street at each other (so outright, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf |
