"Owlish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "The man is brushed and shaved, dressed in the fashion of a Royal-Institution-Afternoon Lecturer, the very newest shape in frock-coats and long patent shoes, and altogether in a state of extraordinary streakiness between an owlish great man and a scared abashed self-conscious bounder cruelly exposed. He hasn't a touch of colour in the skin of his face, his head juts forward, and those queer little dark amber eyes of his watch furtively round him for his fame. His clothes ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... verses of James Bayle, sometime Fellow of St Anne's, that 'in Tuscan summers as a general rule, the days are sultry but the nights are cool' (he was no flamboyant poet; he loved the quiet diction of the right wing of English poetry), and imagining an owlish habit of sleeping by day could be acquired at once, I lay down under a tree of a kind I had never seen; and lulled under the pleasant fancy that this was a picture-tree drawn before the Renaissance, and that I was reclining ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... are not built along those lines, nor are the nurses sweet young things of fifty odd summers who hand out tracts with the morning's milk or make kittenish love to a lad who may be tied down to a bed or too weak to run away. And the doctors are not owlish-looking creatures with whiskers that would make a goat die of envy and sick-room manners that would scare a Mental Scientist into catalepsy. They are real human beings who understand the troubles of mankind from nostalgia (professional name for homesickness) down to enlargement of the ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... Jane!" he cried, coming just at dusk into the room, where she stood at the window, her back turned toward him. "Yes. Poor Will! He was a good fellow years ago—witty, hospitable. You didn't know him in his prime. Your mother liked him. That is, well—" He sat down by the fire, staring at it with his owlish eyes, pulling off his old boots and soaked coat, for it was raining hard, and wondering a little that Jane had not a warm change of clothes ready for him as usual. But she did not move. "Yes," with a groan. "He knows the great secret now, poor fellow! I wish I'd been kinder to him. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... town or place God made the stars especially; Babies look up with owlish face And see them tangled in a tree: You saw a moon from Sussex Downs, A Sussex moon, untravelled still, I saw a moon that was the town's, The largest lamp on ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Company, after toasting all the beauties of Quebec, desire to drink the health of the fair mistress of Beaumanoir, and in her presence too!" said Cadet with owlish gravity. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... available to the people was in going over the ground, and they flocked to Joe's hut and congregated there, discussing, arguing, and predicting; examining with owlish wisdom the bullet mark on the hut chimney, and counting the blood spots on the worn track near the door where the hero Casey bled in defence of his country's laws. Of course, 'the boy Haddon' was a favourite ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... trees being tenanted by numerous gannets, frigate birds, and terns—the first gazing with a stupid yet angry air; the last—one beautiful little snow-white species in particular—hovering only a few feet above the sketchers' heads, while their large black eyes scanned the drawings with the owlish look of wisdom peculiar to connoisseurs. Noddies also were there, and, on the ground, lizards and spiders and innumerable ants engaged in all the varied activities connected ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... followed by a red admiral. The marsh hawk is on the wing again, and while looking at him I descry a second hawk, too far away to be made out. Now the air behind me is dark with crows,—a hundred or two, at least, circling over the low cedars. Some motive they have for all their clamor, but it passes my owlish wisdom to guess what it can be. A fourth blue heron appears, and drops into ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... was not greatly abashed as he faced the dour tribunal of the faculty. The younger members, among whom were several he knew to be mighty good fellows at heart, sat at the lower end of the long table, and with owlish gravity attempted to emulate the appearance and manners of their seniors. At the head of the table sat Whiskers, as the dignified and venerable president of the university was popularly named. It was generally believed and solemnly sworn to throughout the large corps of undergraduates that ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... began by Wild-Justice; all Law is as a tamed furrowfield, slowly worked out, and rendered arable, from the waste jungle of Club-Law. Valiant Wisdom tilling and draining; escorted by owl-eyed Pedantry, by owlish and vulturish and many other forms of Folly;—the valiant husbandman assiduously tilling; the blind greedy enemy too assiduously sowing tares! It is because there is yet in venerable wigged Justice some wisdom, amid such mountains of wiggeries and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... was as firm as the rock on which he stood. At this time, however, it swayed very slightly to and fro, and in his eyes—which were usually noted for the intensity of their eagle glance—there was just then an owlish blink as they surveyed the circle of ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... the woman with a snub nose and lips molded with a hard pencil to bleed the milk of human kindness over the frailties of the fruity chalice that contained Miss Drew. She could not know, for instance, if her own gaze was merely owlish and thin-lashed, the challenge of eyes that are slightly too long. Miss Drew did. Simply drooping hers must have stirred her with a none-too-nice sense of herself, like the swell of his biceps can bare the teeth ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... accident had become known on the steamer, a little lady appeared on deck. She had come from one of the first-class cabins with certain and determined step. She was dressed from top to toe, and her bonnet strings were tied in a natty bowknot. She was a little old lady, with crimped hair, round, owlish-looking eyes, ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Feraud ran on, holding up his head, with owlish eyes and rapacious beak. A mere fighter all his life, a cavalry man, a sabreur, he conceived war with the utmost simplicity, as, in the main, a massed lot of personal contests, a sort of gregarious duelling. And here he had in hand a war of his own. He revived. The shadow of ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... with delight; Lord Robert drawled out a long owlish laugh; Polly Love said spitefully, "You might give us your friend, the new curate, next, dearest," and then Glory went down like ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... that kind of influence, and often, too, I've tried to make others feel it. I kept turning my head, but could see no one who seemed to be taking an undue interest in me. Presently, however, I caught Tony's eyes, which fixed themselves on mine in an owlish stare. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson |
