"Strange" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strange to Eph to emerge from a wilderness and to see such evidences of civilization, but, young as he was, he had already passed through many strange scenes, and braced himself up for the business ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... direction, to satisfy a strange curiosity he felt, Desmond halted in amazement as he saw, faintly silhouetted against the sky, a ladder placed against the wall, resting on the sill of the strong room. His surprise at seeing lights ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the Magi pictures of the fifteenth century, with their gorgeous eastern monarchs and retinues of countless servants and strange animals. No other story in the New Testament gives such opportunity for pageantry as the Magi scene. All the wonder, richness, and romance of the East, all the splendour of western Renaissance princes could lawfully ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... on 7th January Chauvelin, acting on the order of Lebrun, sent in a sharp protest against the Aliens Bill as an infraction of Pitt's Treaty of Commerce of 1786. On one count Chauvelin certainly had a right to complain; for, strange to say, the Act was put in operation against Talleyrand, nominally his adviser, and the champion of the Anglo-French entente. The ex-Bishop of Autun penned an eloquent protest, which apparently had some effect, for he was not expelled until March ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... even amazed, to witness the evolutions of a toothbrush, which were not only interesting but instructive as involving an idea perfectly new—hard also to comprehend from so distant an inspection. Surely he thought this strange implement must be a novelty imported from ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... had come by boat, by camel, by horse, and by means of the strange litters which ran on rails of iron. They had advanced in all their proud strength, with standards flying and their men playing savage, barbarous strains upon hideous instruments; and as they came on they shouted in their pride and folly, little thinking what was to come. For the new Mahdi had come ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... a strange thing! What a pretty little member, intelligent and adroit, which executes whatever one wills—books, laces, houses, pyramids, locomotives, pastry, or caresses, which ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... there a door closed violently, only to open again cautiously as they drew opposite, revealing sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes five pairs of black eyes, all ranged timidly one pair over another in the opening. Dogs skulked before their approach, snarling in strange savagery, while whole flocks of chickens, ruffling in dusty hollows, took frantically to wing at their coming, fleeing before them in unwonted disorder. And finally, as they moved past the well, a half-grown boy, only partly dressed, hurtled out of the side ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... rust on a tin plate and watched him put on the bacon and eggs. Wondering if cats were used for this purpose in the Daggett family, she put soaked, unhappy Vere de Vere on her feet, to her own great comfort and the cat's delight. It was an open car, and the rain still rained, and a strange young man was a foot from her tending the not very crackly fire, but rarely had ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... pontificate, Augustine, Paulinus, Justus, and the other Saints by whom our barbarous ancestors were converted. Their names, which are now written up upon the pillars of the portico, would almost seem to have issued forth, and crossed over, and confronted the venerable Paul; for, strange to say, the thought of England came into his ordinary prayers; and in his last years, after a vision during Mass, as if he had been Augustine or Mellitus, he talked of his ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... was a bold one, and I was glad when I saw that it had succeeded, Gunga Dass changed his tone immediately, and disavowed all intention of asking for my boots. At the time it did not strike me as at all strange that I, a Civil Engineer, a man of thirteen years' standing in the Service, and, I trust, an average Englishman, should thus calmly threaten murder and violence against the man who had, for a consideration it is true, taken me under his ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... said to have offended several of the partisans of Voltaire by observing that, through a strange inconsistency, the constant flatterer not only of royalty in general, but of kings in particular, and of all the great men and vices of the age in which he lived, here shares the gratitude of a republic with the man of nature and truth, as Jean-Jacques ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... pains has been habitual in the race, the definite ideas of such pains which individual experience has given, are accompanied by the indefinite pains that result from inherited effects of experiences—vague feelings which we may call organic representations. In an infant, crying at a strange sight or sound while yet in the nurse's arms, we see these organic representations called into existence in the shape of dim discomfort, to which individual experience has ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... was, however, in the drawing-room standing at first by Madame Melmotte, and afterwards retreating among the crowd. To some ladies she was a person of interest as the young woman who had lately run away under such strange circumstances; but no one spoke to her till she saw a girl whom she herself knew, and whom she addressed, plucking up all her courage for the occasion. This was Hetta Carbury who had been brought ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... SCULPTURE: SPHINXES AND COLOSSI.—A strange immobility, due to the influence of religion, attached itself, at an early period, to Egyptian art. The artist, in the portrayal of the figures of the gods, was not allowed to change a single line in the conventional form. Hence the impossibility ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... It may appear strange that he did not swim towards it, and share the fortunes of his former associates. Why he did not do so is easily explained. By an accident, arising from his own negligence, the ship had been set on fire. He was aware of this; and he knew also that both captain and crew ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Europe found her dove—as the name Columbus signifies—to fly over the wild, western {11} waves, and bring her news of strange countries. The effect of these discoveries, enormously and increasingly important from the material standpoint, was first felt in the widening of the imagination. Camoens wrote the epic of Da Gama, More placed his Utopia in America, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... fill a large part of our survey. It marks a strange trait of our own age that this revival of the national idea falls in the very time when other barriers are broken. Ancient folk-song grew like the flower on the battle-field of races. But here is an anxious striving for a special dialect in music. Each nation must have ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... old hat was not in the left corner; in its place was a pin cushion, the gift of some woman. All at once the strange anxiety with which she had watched the opening of this trunk disappeared, and in its place came an intense sadness as she followed each article with her eyes as Lantier took them out and wondered which belonged to ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the Spirit of the Lord," he whispered to himself, as he marched to the rhythm, his hand closely held by the smallest Breeze boy, whose yellow streamers and profuse decoration of orange lilies were at strange variance with his companion's priestly robes. But on this day nothing was at variance. The spirit of the West was upon them, unifying, mellowing, harmonizing all conflicting emotions—the spirit of the West ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... and seemed to burn with his eyes both Ashvatthama and Phalguna as he looked at them repeatedly. Filled with rage, Krishna addressed Partha in an affectionate tone, saying, "This, O Partha, that I behold in battle regarding thee, is exceedingly strange, since Drona's son, O Partha, surpasseth thee today! Hast thou not now the energy and the might of thy arms thou hadst before? Hast thou not that Gandiva still in thy hands, and dost thou not stay on ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... her heart would break. Vulgar young person as she was, she had a heart, and, quite apart from everything else, the thought of the calamity which had befallen the fatherless family was in itself enough to move her deep pity; but when to that was added her own strange but constant affection for Reginald himself, despite all his aversion to her, it was a blow that fell heavily ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... climbed to the deck. He stood near the hatch, looking about with a doubtful, bewildered air at the docks and shipping. Then his face cleared a little, and like a cat in a strange street he moved slowly and hesitatingly along the rail towards the fore rigging. Then with one bound he swung himself to the top of the rail, and a mighty upward jump landed him on the string-piece of the dock. Here he paused long enough to sink to his knees and elevate ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... him, and Helen's face reshaped itself—a strange and lovely beacon over the engulfing waters. She saw his torment and she understood. 'Go to her if you must,' she said; 'and I know that you must. But don't go with mistaken ideas. Remember what I tell you. Nothing is changed—for me, or in me. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... frequent and so exhausting that Esther became desperate and felt that some relief must at any cost be found. The poor little prairie flower found New York at first exciting; she felt shy and awkward among the swarms of strange people to whose houses Mrs. Murray soon began to take her by way of breaking her in at once to the manners of New York society; and whenever she could escape, she fled to Esther and her quiet studio, with the feelings of a ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... "Night before last a strange man got tipsy in our village and began to blab and talk. He asked for a bottle without a bottom, and for some woollen rags. He was suspected of having a dynamite project, and the mayor was fetched at one in the morning to look after him, so he ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Deep groans, oft started from soliloquies Which they believe assuredly were meant For spirits who attended him unseen. But when from his illuded eyes retired That figure Fancy fondly chose to raise, He clasped the vacant air and stood and gazed; Then owning it was folly, strange to tell, Burst into peals of laughter at his woes. Next, when his passion had subsided, went Where from a cistern, green and ruined, oozed A little rill, soon lost; there gathered he Violets, and harebells of a sister bloom, Twining complacently their tender stems With plants of kindest pliability. ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... rifle he did some wonderful shooting, and in the "City of Gold" made some strange discoveries, part of the fortune he secured enabling him to build his sky racer. It was in a land of giants that Tom was made captive, but he succeeded in escaping, and brought two giants, of whom Koku was ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... He's one of us. We agreed that you shouldn't take on to mind me before people, but we didn't mean Mr Clennam. He's one of us. He's in it. An't you, Mr Clennam?—Eh, Miss Dorrit?' The excitement of this strange creature was fast communicating itself to Clennam. Little Dorrit with amazement, saw this, and observed that ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... curiously characteristic of Uncle Meshach that he should write her a letter on her fortieth birthday; she could imagine the uncouth mixture of wit, rude candour, and wisdom with which he would greet her; his was a strange and sinister personality, but she knew that he admired her. The note was written in Meshach's scraggy and irregular hand, in three lines starting close to the top of half a sheet of note paper. It ran: 'Dear Nora, I hear young Twemlow is come back from America. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... simple "Amen!" I sat down wet with perspiration. It might have been wiser, as the Chairman afterwards suggested, to have given them the blessing in Aniwan, but I feared to set them alaughing by so strange a manifestation of the "tongues." Worst of all, it had been announced that I was to address them in the afternoon; but who would come to hear a Missionary that stuck in the benediction? The event had its semi-comical aspect, but ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... words were for Lyon the finishing touch; they made his whole vision crumble—his theory that she had secretly kept herself true. Even to her old lover she wouldn't be so! He was sick; he couldn't eat; he knew that he looked very strange. He murmured something about it being useless to cry over spilled milk—he tried to turn the conversation to other things. But it was a horrid effort and he wondered whether they felt it as much as he. He wondered all sorts of things: whether they guessed ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... thousand grains 20 That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get. And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain; For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor; 25 For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, The mere ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... children had a part—making rather a scramble of it, for there was rivalry as to which of them should light the most—and in a moment a constellation of little flames covered the Bethlehem hill-side and brought into bright prominence the Holy Family and its strange attendant host of quite impossible ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... bloom and the welter of yellow violets ran in the grass under it like fire, Greenhow built a lean-to to his house and made the discovery that the oak which jutted out from the barranca behind it was of just the right height from the ground to make a swing for a child, which caused him a strange pleasant embarrassment. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... Milo come to life. And Olga is slowly but surely losing a little of her Arcadian simplicity. Yesterday I caught her burning up her cowhide boots. She is ashamed of them. And she is spending most of her money on clothes, asking me many strange questions as to apparel and carrying off my fashion magazines to her bedroom for secret perusal. For the first time in her life she is using cold cream. And the end seems to justify the means, for her skin is now like apple blossoms. Rodin, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... mathematicians, football players, engineers, bishops, wrestlers, runners, boxers, and players on zithern-strings. But these are not necessarily very great men, any more than poets, painters and pianists, with wonderful hirsute effects and strange haberdashery ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... A strange vessel seen to the southward, had induced me to carry little sail all the morning; it was now perceived not to be the Lady Nelson, but probably one of the two whalers known to be fishing off the coast; ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... The name sounded strange to himself, for he had always been called Tom; but his street-life was over. He had entered upon a new career, and it was fitting that he should resume the name to which he had a ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... man of superior physique, tall, straight, with the muscles of a Vulcan; and while he lay stretched on the ground half clad and motionless, he would have been a grand model for an heroic figure in bronze. Yet from every lineament there came a strange repelling influence, like that from a snake. Alice felt almost unbearable disgust while doing her merciful task; but she bravely ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... gradually through the veil of vapour which hung over the river, and seemed to advance and grow larger; but, strange to say, the fire floated on the water, and, intense as was the fog, the mass of flames dissipated it as the sun disperses the clouds. The three hunters had barely time to be astonished at this apparition, before they guessed its cause. A long course of life ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... written soon after his resignation, General Washington thus expressed the feelings attendant upon this sudden transition from public to private pursuits. "I am just beginning to experience the ease and freedom from public cares, which, however desirable, takes some time to realize; for strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that it was not until lately, I could get the better of my usual custom of ruminating, as soon as I awoke in the morning, on the business of the ensuing day; and of my surprise at finding, after revolving many things in my mind, that I was no longer ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... solemn antiquarians. I can see those visitors. If it has ever been your lot to witness the performance of a 'literary' play in London and cast an eye over the audience it attracts, you too will know them and their stigmata—their ineffable attire, their strange hirsuteness, their air of combining instruction with amusement, their soft felt hats indented along the crown. No! We may, perhaps, produce new religious dramas in these ancient Rounds: decidedly we cannot revive the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tried the lighter, which did not work. I was a prisoner. Undoubtedly, the next German communique announced that the gallant Lieutenant X. had brought down his thirtieth machine; it is probable that this gallant officer had heard strange rumours of what lay behind the British lines, but preferred cruising on the safer side. I could hardly believe that these grey-clad, rather unshaven men who jabbered excitedly were genuine "Huns." I was ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... all inconceivable and strange. The glamour of love mingled with the soft, fitful firelight reflected in Miriam's eyes, till they twain seemed the only realities. So that when she began to speak of her husband, it seemed at first no more to John Arniston than if she had told him that her shoeblack was yet alive. He and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Salem, that strange village to which the horseman was wending his way, in October, 1684, was a different village from the Salem of to-day. It is a town familiar to every American student, and, having derived its fame more from its historic recollections ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... was then the suburb of Melcombe Regis, a city and port. Now Melcombe Regis is a parish of Weymouth. The village has absorbed the city. It was the bridge which did the work. Bridges are strange vehicles of suction, which inhale the population, and sometimes swell one river-bank at the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... President Garfield, as already mentioned, and also by Captain McEvoy to detect the position of submerged torpedoes or lost anchors. Professor Roberts-Austen, the Chemist to the Mint, has also employed it with success in analysing the purity and temper of coins; for, strange to say, the induction is affected as well by the molecular quality as the quantity of the disturbing metal. Professor Hughes himself has modified it for the purpose of sonometry, and the measurement of ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... he had expected to marry when he was arrested and imprisoned. She did not go back to his childish memories. He had met her when first youth had passed, and yet, somehow, the savor of the wintergreen leaves brought her face before him. It is strange how the excitement of one sense will sometimes act as stimulant for the awakening of another. Now the sense of taste brought into full activity that of sight. He saw the woman just as she had looked when he had last seen her. She had not been pretty, but she was ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... clever tongue, though she said it was getting stiff for want of exercise. She wanted to know all about our travels, and was never tired of listening to Jim's stories of the wonders we had seen in the great cities and the strange places we had ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... in the envelope were connected with a South American trade concession. Alcatrante had plainly concluded that his interests and those of the Japanese were identical. He must have communicated with the strange Japanese the first thing in the morning. That would account for his failure to call at the Pere Marquette at ten o'clock. Learning that the bill had been taken from Orme, and that the coveted documents were in the possession ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... if you keep at it long enough, or even by walking out to the University on the railroad tracks and saving your street car nickels. But taken thus, these exercises constitute a mere medicine. And people don't take medicine until they have to. And for some strange reason they won't take this kind even then unless some doctor prescribes it in consideration of the payment of a good sized fee. Why is it? Simply because we prize things in ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... of minute organisms. These organisms were derived not from the air, but from something contained in the air, which was destroyed by a sufficiently high temperature. There never was a more determined opponent of the doctrine of spontaneous generation than Schwann, though a strange attempt was made a year and a half ago to enlist him and others equally opposed to it on the side of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... think back and remember it, it all seems kind of strange, but it seem like old Master and old Deacon both think the same way. They kind of understand that old Master had a right to beat his Negro all he wanted to for running off, and he had a right to set the hounds on him if he ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... for the truth is I don't much care for Northampton, and I have never been quite comfortable with my relatives there. But now, of course, everything is different. It seems a great pity that I should have had such a relative as Lady Ogram and known nothing about it doesn't it? Strange how the branches of a family lose sight of each other? Can you tell ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... is adapted to the trained explorer in the fields of learning, to one who has been over the ground and knows all of its details, and not to the young novice just starting his discoveries in regions that are strange to him. The logical plan will teach the young child the general plan of salvation, man's fall and need of redemption, the wonder and significance of the atonement, and gracious effects of divine regeneration working in the heart—all of which he needs finally to know—but not ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... May Fail.—Many co-operative enterprises fail, and this is not strange. There is always the natural conservatism and individualism of the American people to contend with; there is jealousy of the men who have been elected to responsible offices, and there is lack ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... in response to his strange prophecy, the telephone jangled once more. Frederik returned to the desk and put the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... to remove yet one other difficulty, and one that seems to me to be the greatest of all. What of the criminals, against whose immigration you are not protected? To me it seems most strange that, with the millions of your Freeland population, you can dispense with both police and penal code; and I am utterly at a loss to understand how you dispose of those vagabonds and criminals who are sure to be drawn hither, like wasps ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... April with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote... Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken strange strondes... And especially, from every shires ende Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende The holy blisful martyr for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... collations, gallantry, were not more forbidden in the parlours than at the casinos. There were a number of casinos for the purpose of public assemblies, where gaming was the principal pursuit of the company. It was a strange sight to see persons of either sex masked, or grave in their magisterial robes, round a table, invoking chance, and giving way at one instant to the agonies of despair, at the next to the illusions of hope, and that without uttering ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... I learned that in my geography when I first went to school; and it is strange that I should have ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... earth, The curves of his sad mouth so tremulous With more than woman's love and tenderness, And in each word and act such gentleness, That the quaint thought possessed and held my mind, That by some strange hap an angel soul, As penance for some small offense in heaven Had been compelled to traverse in this wise Our darkened world. And not alone his look Which made his rusty vesture fine, nor yet Alone ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... ungodly; if he love and study GOD'S Word it will make him wiser than all such counsellors. If he seek for and observe all the counsel of GOD, through the guidance of the HOLY SPIRIT, he will not walk in darkness even as to worldly things. The directions of GOD'S Word may often seem strange and impolitic, but in the measure in which he has faith to obey the directions he finds in the Scripture, turning not to the right hand nor to the left, will he make his way prosperous, ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... assume too much when he said, that if both slavery and the Slave Trade could be abolished with safety to their property, it deeply concerned their interests to do it. Such a measure, also, would only be consistent with the principles of the British constitution. It was surely strange that we, who were ourselves free, should carry on a Slave Trade with Africa, and that we should never think of introducing cultivation into the West Indies ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... boy stared at them, unable, it seemed, to speak a word. They dragged him upright and pushed him on between them. The bull had run towards the river and had not come back; so the friends, with their strange find, hurried on to the public road and crossed the bridge at the creek, turning off into the orchard path that led ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... Lady Elizabeth H. Vere's when he got it. The Queen had imagined that the House of Lords was still sitting, and therefore desired them to take the box there, but never had intended it should follow him to dinner; she begs Lord Melbourne to excuse this mistake which must have appeared so strange. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... times when the bravest heart shrinks with dread, and, for all that Frank was a lad with remarkable nerve, it is not strange that he felt a thrill of fear ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... I brought them. While we were at table Eckert was informed by telegram of Meyerbeer's death in Paris, and Weisheimer burst out in boorish laughter to think that the master of opera, who had done me so much harm, had by a strange coincidence not lived to see this day. Herr von Gall also made his appearance, and had to admit in friendly surprise that I certainly did not need his good services any more. He had already given the order for Lohengrin, and now paid me the stipulated sum on the spot. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... strength, sought to drag some of them under the water, but I quickly repented my temerity. The amphibious young creatures swarmed about me like a shoal of dolphins, and seizing hold of my devoted limbs, tumbled me about and ducked me under the surface, until from the strange noises which rang in my ears, and the supernatural visions dancing before my eyes, I thought I was in the land of the spirits. I stood indeed as little chance among them as a cumbrous whale attacked on all sides by a legion of swordfish. When at length they relinquished their hold of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... and beheaded John in prison." Had the Baptist heard aught of the unseemly revelry? Had any strain of music been waited down to him? Perhaps so. Those old castles are full of strange echoes. His cell was perfectly dark. He might be lying bound on the bare ground, or some poor bed of straw. Was his mind glancing back on those never-to-be-forgotten days, when the heaven was opened above him, and he saw the descending Dove? Was he wondering ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... There was a strange look in his eyes. It was evident to George, watching him with close interest, that here was a revelation of the man's soul; that thoughts, locked away for years in the other's bosom were crying ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... horses came, but very late. In the crowd watching our departure was an old Albanian without a moustache. That was a strange sight; we looked harder. It was a woman. She must have been one of those who had sworn eternal virginity, and so achieve all a man's privileges, even eating with them instead of getting the scraps left over from the meal. But the punishment of death awaited ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... because he likes to tell us things about himself. We are so fond of him, and we always want to hear him talk about where he has been and what he has done. I tried to stop them and make him talk, but I couldn't. It's strange how liking a person gets them on your mind so that even if you don't talk about them you think about them all the time, isn't it? But I oughtn't to blame them, for I was so afraid they wouldn't leave enough of things for you that I forgot to ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... very strange words, my lord," he replied. "You will pardon me if I confess that I ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... as she had clung to him in those early days when the suspicion of his worthlessness had been only a dark shadow for ever brooding between the man and his only child. I knew this, and I had no hope that she would ever forgive me for my part in the weaving of that strange chain of evidence which made the condemnation of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... this I lead! It is a dark, mild, drizzling evening, and as the foggy air breeds sand-flies, so it calls out melodies and strange antics from this mysterious race of grown-up children with whom my lot is cast. All over the camp the lights glimmer in the tents, and as I sit at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... learn that this amazing attitude of his was typical rather than exceptional. Strange as it may seem, no Han rendered any respect to another, nor expected it in return; that is, not genuine respect. Their discipline was rigid and cold-bloodedly heartless. The most elaborate courtesies were demanded and accorded among equals and from inferiors to superiors, but ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... to convey to the reader an adequate conception of the strange character of the hilly country we had now entered: no parts of Wales or even the varied groupings of the Swiss mountains offer a correct analogy. After passing the defile of the Suffaed K[a]k the hills recede to a distance of about two miles on either side of the road, ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... shining brightly when he awoke, and the palm-trees outside were nodding gracefully in a warm breeze. From the court came the odor of strange flowers, and from the window he could see the ocean brilliantly blue, and with the sun coloring the spray that beat against the coral reefs ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... is at least very far off, and that many another may bring home the same cordial recollections of the boatmen of the Tarn, the aubergistes and voituriers of the Causses, the peasant owners of the Cite du Diable. I need hardly add that I give a mere record of travel. The geology of the strange district visited, its rich and varied flora, its wealth of prehistoric remains, are only touched upon. For further information the reader is referred to other writers. On the subject of agriculture I have occasionally dwelt at more length, being somewhat of a farmeress, as Arthur Young styles it, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... read Dan better; gave her a better insight into the look that she sometimes caught in his steely, inscrutable eyes, and the grave lines in his sun-bronzed face. And in the light of this knowledge her soul went out to this man, this type of man, so strange, so utterly foreign to a girl brought up in an environment where such types do ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... journey; before she could neither eat nor sleep, nor would she take notice of anything. She never mentioned the Emperor but once when she offered his compliments, and there was not the slightest allusion to politics. It is altogether very strange. She remains another week in England, and then goes back as she came. I gave her your message, and she enquired after ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... to know whether this belief of Curtis, shared by Westwood and other distinguished entomologists, but originally put forward merely as a conjecture, has ever been tested by careful observation and experiment. If not, then it is strange that it should have crept into many important works, where it is stated not as a mere guess, but as an established fact. Thus, Van Beneden, in his work on parasites, while classing female mosquitoes with his "miserable wretches," yet says, "If blood fails them, they live, like the males, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... for the time being, stunned and full of uncertainty as to what to do next. Feeling very unwell, exhausted, and at the same time excited from want of sleep, I reached my destination and put up at the Hotel Valois, where I remained a week, struggling to gain my self-control and to face my strange position. Even if I had wished to resume the plans which had been instrumental in bringing me to Paris, I soon convinced myself that little or nothing could be done. I was filled with distress and anger at being called upon to waste my energies in a direction contrary to my tastes, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... his comrades of the strange manner in which the king had received him, gave them to understand that he was beginning to fear that not only would the promises they had received be broken, but that some strange trick would be ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Kings was very still as Olivia rose. She stood with one hand touching her veil's hem, the other resting on the low, carved arm of the throne, and at the coming and going of her breath her jewels made the light lambent with the indeterminate colours of those strange, joyous banners ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... by his new master to paint portraits and frescoes, to construct canals, arrange masques and pageants, or invent mechanical contrivances for use on the stage or in the house. A thousand different studies in his sketch-books and manuscripts bear witness to the strange variety of subjects upon which his versatile genius was brought to bear. But the most important work upon which Leonardo was engaged, and that which lay nearest to Lodovico Sforza's heart, was the equestrian statue of Duke Francesco Sforza. This, we learn from the master's own words, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... by their regard for their wives. With them the woman stood nearer to heaven than the man. She was in some sense a priest, a law-giver, and a physician, and she was worthy of the position. Is it strange that with such foremothers we should love liberty? Something of this spirit has always marked the race. And now women ask for the right of suffrage, not because they are abused, but because they are half of humanity—the other half of man. They want ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the North and at the South of that most beautiful lake, the so-called Dead Sea, whose tranquil loveliness, backed by the grand plateau of Moab, is an object of admiration to all save patients suffering from the strange disease "Holy Land on the Brain."[FN390] But I found no traces of craters in the neighbourhood, no signs of vulcanism, no remains of "meteoric stones": the asphalt which named the water is a mineralised ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... ill, I left her lying in bed and stepped into the parlor preparatory to going out for breakfast. It was late—nine o'clock, probably—and I was hastening to leave, when I heard a sound behind me—or did I merely feel a presence?—and, turning, saw a strange and totally unknown woman coming toward me from my ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... up her things. There was a ring many deep about her of curious natives, Arabs, Moors, Jews, Turks—she knew not how many nationalities were gathered together in that circle. In the broad light of day she had felt no qualm of uneasiness at the strange dusky faces. Nobody had molested her, and Marjorie, partly through temperament, partly through ignorance, had been perfectly fearless in this strange old city. But with the dimness of evening gathering, she began to wish herself safe on board the Oratava again; and though ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... automobiles would slip, and away the column would go again without having been disturbed or impeded noticeably. No stage manager ever handled his supers better; and here, be it remembered, there were uncountable thousands of supers, and for a stage the twisting, medieval convolutions of a strange city. Now for a space of minutes it would be infantry that passed, at the swinging lunge of German foot soldiers on a forced march. Now it would be cavalry, with accouterments jingling and horses scrouging in the close-packed ranks; ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... The story was told with the accent and in the manner common to a most ordinary good peasant lad. To hear it told by a prisoner dressed in this degrading clothing, and inside a prison, seemed very strange to Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff listened, and at the same time kept looking around him—at the low bedstead with its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall, and the piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant in his prison cloak and shoes, and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... how absolute this ascendency often becomes, are frequently surprised at it. They think there is some mystery about it; they say it is "a knack that some people have;" but there is no mystery about it at all, and nothing unusual or strange, except so far as practical good sense, considerate judgment, and intelligent observation and appreciation of the characteristics of childhood are unusual ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... carry out, and yet my failure to do so slays my honor and self-respect. Now, I have been as explicit with you as you were with me, and with what you have seen of yourself, you know the whole miserable truth. By a strange fate we who only met a few months since have come to share a common, very sad knowledge. The memory of your own past, and I suppose, your Christian faith also, have made you very merciful and generous, but I shall tax these ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Customs Among Orientals.—Observances that to us seem strange, weird, and out of place, prevailed from very early times among oriental peoples, some of which customs were common to the Jews in the days of Christ. Noise and tumult, including screeching lamentations by members of the bereaved family and by professional mourners, as also the din of instruments, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... I d'know as I ever thought it out fairly before; but just now when I was pickin' the pease for you, my mind got to dwellin' on Lyddy, and then it come to me all at once: there she was, the only one among a whole shipful, and I—I didn't know but what she might think it rather of a strange position ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... respect. To stalk and shoot the elk and the grizzly bear is to him what wooing and winning a beloved maiden would be to another man. Far from being the foe or exterminator of the game he follows, he, more than any one else, is their friend, vindicator, and confidant. A strange mutual ardor and understanding unites him with his quarry. He loves the mountain sheep and the antelope, because they can escape him; the panther and the bear, because they can destroy him. His relations with them are clean, generous, and manly. And ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... here often. How strange it was that to him alone Veronica gave her hand when they met! Indeed, she gave him both ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... him therein.' General History of Printing; p. 343. It is not necessary to collect, in formal array, the authorities of foreigners upon this important subject; although it may be as well to notice the strange manner in which Momoro, in his Traite elementaire de L'Imprimerie, p. 185, refers us to an elucidation of the Gothic letter ('appele du nom de certains peuples qui vinrent s'etablir dans la Gothie, plus de quatre cens ans avant J.C.') in one of the plates of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in his mind over Cowperwood's affairs—as much as he knew of them. He felt keenly that the banker ought to be shaken out. This dilemma was his fault, not Stener's—he felt. It was strange to him that his father did not see ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Bernard of Weimar, the Franconian Bishoprics; to the Duke of Wirtemberg, the Ecclesiastical domains, and the Austrian counties lying within his territories, all under the title of fiefs of Sweden. This spectacle, so strange and so dishonourable to the German character, surprised the Chancellor, who found it difficult to repress his contempt, and on one occasion exclaimed, "Let it be writ in our records, for an everlasting memorial, that a German prince made such a request of a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... admirers and to distinguish herself in society; but as age advanced, they had been confirmed by habit and weakness, so that what in the beginning might have been affectation, was in the end reality. She was alarmed, she said, by the series of strange coincidences which, from my earliest childhood, had occurred, seeming to connect my fate, in some extraordinary manner, with these Jews. She recalled all the circumstances of my illness when I was a child: she confessed that she had retained a sort of antipathy to the idea ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... experiment; discouragement, hope, effort and final success—this is the history of many an invention; a history in which excitement, competition, danger, despair and persistence figure. This merely suggests the circumstances which draw the daring Boy Inventors into strange experiences and startling adventures, and which demonstrate the practical use of their ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... the pines. A querulous coyote complained. Strange noises were everywhere around us. Scampering sounds echoed back and forth in the cabin. My cot was hard and springless as a rock, and when I stretched into a more comfortable position the end bar fell off and the whole structure collapsed, I with it. Modesty ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... the King's Government, freed from the internal difficulties the force of which you have yourself so formally admitted, was preparing to present the bill for giving sanction to the treaty of July 4, when the strange message of December 1 came and obliged it again to deliberate on the course which it ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... distinguish objects clearly in gloom which no ordinary eye could penetrate; and now he walked fearlessly forward and stirred up the smouldering embers, whose dull red glow all could see, into a quick, bright, palpitating flame which illumined every corner of the strange place into which ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... "It's very strange," observed Hycy, "that such a robbery could be committed in a house where there are so many servants, without any clue whatsoever ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... he pondered on the possibilities they grew darker and more distorted in his mind; he thought vaguely of things remote and repulsive, strange forms of slavery or sorcery, and then of ugly things yet more unnatural but nearer home. The figure of Verner seemed to be blackened and transfigured in his imagination, and to stand against ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... up masses of shadows everywhere. A line of men, stripped to the waist, is before the furnace doors. They bend over, looking neither to right nor left, handling their shovels as if they were part of their bodies, with a strange, awkward, swinging rhythm. They use the shovels to throw open the furnace doors. Then from these fiery round holes in the black a flood of terrific light and heat pours full upon the men who are outlined in silhouette in the crouching, inhuman attitudes of chained gorillas. ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... nature of that bribe, affected our young man powerfully and strangely. He felt as if he had heard the sudden blare of a trumpet, yet felt at the same time as if he had received a sudden slap in the face. Nick's bribe was "art"—the strange temptress with whom he himself had been wrestling and over whom he had finally ventured to believe that wisdom and training had won a victory. There was something in the conduct of his old friend and playfellow ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... perspective; before him were the pointed caps of the towers. He stood amazed; his suicide was postponed to his admiration. The phenomena of hallucination are in these days so fully recognized by the medical faculty that this mirage of the senses, this strange illusion of the mind is beyond dispute. A man under the stress of a feeling which by its intensity has become a monomania, often finds himself in the frame of mind to which opium, hasheesh, or the protoxyde of azote might have brought him. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... William Louisa," he went on quizzically, when he had seated himself opposite her and was helping himself to the potatoes, "when a young lady invades strange territory, and hides behind strange doors, and jumps out at an unsuspecting but terribly well-meaning young man, she's apt to get a surprise. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... whom alone I confided what had passed between me and my admirer, scouted the notion of my alliance with the 'son of a nigger,' as he expressed it; but strange to tell, he did not seem angry at the fact of matrimony ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... and entire misapprehension of the true state of affairs, but showed a nerve and purpose which promised well. General Bragg must certainly, when he issued it, have supposed that General Buell's whole army was coming from that direction. How strange is it that a commander who could thus resolve to fight his foes, when he believed them to be united, should fear to encounter them separately. Whatever may be the verdict upon General Polk's disobedience of orders, whether it was one of those ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... and I entered with Elaine and we placed the chauffeur on a couch near Del Mar's desk. I remember that there was this strange woman all in black, heavily veiled, in the room at ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... supposed to be their actions; thus, the god Ichneumon made war against the god Crocodile; the god Wolf liked to eat the god Sheep; the god Ibis devoured the god Serpent; and the deity became a strange, capricious, and ferocious being, whose idea deranged the judgment of man, and corrupted his ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Brother Marbodius, by a strange misunderstanding, substitutes an entirely different image for the one created by ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... them responsively. Standing there under the strange flickering light of her torch, with the black folds of the rubber coat swathing her, her face, with its fine eyes, was cut out for Steering sharp ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... as Tom still guided on the little patch of light, it fell upon a red hand visible as far as the wrist. This had been thrust out beside the edge of the cover after a portion had been hacked away with a knife, and the fingers, rust covered and strange looking, were working away, industriously easing down link after link on to the deck, their weight helping the worker, while the heap on the hatch was steadily, ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... convulsive movements, and the fine eyebrows were knit with a faint perplexity. Essentially the talk was a mixture of fragments of sentences heard, of passages read, or arguments indicated rather than stated, and all of it was served in a sauce of strange enthusiasm, thin yet intense. Ann Veronica had had some training at the Tredgold College in disentangling threads from confused statements, and she had a curious persuasion that in all this fluent muddle there was something—something ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... of our thousands upon thousands of railed miles without the slightest risk of a disagreeable occurrence if she is herself dignified and reserved. She should be particularly careful if she is young and pretty not to allow strange men to "scrape an acquaintance" with her. If a stranger happens to offer to open a window for her, or get her a chair on the observation platform, it does not give him the right to more than a civil "thank you" from her. If, in spite of etiquette, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... embalmed in "How Reuben Allen Saw Life" and in "Bohemian Days." In the latter he says: "I had been there a week,—an idle week, spent in listless outlook for employment, a full week, in my eager absorption of the strange life around me and a photographic sensitiveness to certain scenes and incidents of those days, which stand out in my memory today as freshly as on the day ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... bid the Indians good bye, but before they left us one of them stooped down and with a finger marked out the route we should take, thinking we did not know the country we must pass over, and strange to say, the route this wild Indian marked out in the sand was accurate in every particular. He made dots for the places where we should camp and a little mark for a stream of water, then little piles of sand for mountains, ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... strange, perhaps, that I should jump to sudden understanding of the matter when all my thoughts just then were of my own concerns. But love, I think, if somewhat selfish, is a mighty quickener of the understanding, and even though all one's ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... of vodka? How strange! And yet, it is not so strange after all. I met the magistrate on the road, and I must admit that we did drink about eight glasses together. Strictly speaking, of course, drinking is very harmful. Listen, it is harmful, isn't it? Is it? ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... It was not strange that this sort of diplomacy, developed and exposed as it was in the Senate, in spite of the unfair and partisan maneuvering of the prosecution to prevent it, should have reacted, and contributed to turn against the impeachment movement gentlemen who entered upon the investigation under ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... since I set out on this journey Egypt begins to appear somehow strange to me? At times I ask my own self if I am not in some foreign region. Then again my heart is disturbed, as if I had a curtain before me, behind which all kinds of villainy are practiced, but which I myself cannot see with my ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... of you and of the poems that you will write, and of that strange rainbow crown called fame, until the vision is before me.... My pride and my hopes seem altogether merged in you. At my time of life and with so few to love, and with a tendency to body forth images of gladness, you cannot think what joy it is to anticipate....' So wrote the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... before me the same florid foreign blazon, a cherub's head blowing on three lilies on a gold field. This discovery was not only of interest, but afforded me much actual relief; for it accounted rationally for at least one item of the strange story. Mr. Gaskell had no doubt noticed at some time this shield stamped on the outside of the book, and bearing the impression of it unconsciously in his mind, had reproduced it in his imagined revels. ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... strange, and a thing much to be marueiled, that the laborer to repose himselfe hasteneth as it were the course of the Sunne: that the Mariner rowes with all force to attayne the porte, and with a ioyfull crye salutes the descryed land: that the traueiler is neuer quiet nor ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... he said, in a harsh and untuned voice, "You come comparatively sober. Strange that you should choose to be unintoxicated when you face the greatest ordeal of ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... did not last many seconds after his awaking, for he felt a strange sensation of heat come over him; his hands grew moist, and in a state of intense excitement he lay wondering what it was that ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... this about your caring for me, Jim," Julia said. "In a strange, mysterious way I feel that giving you up—giving you up, my best and dearest, is purification! When—when this is over, I shall have paid! It may be"—tears flooded her eyes, and she came back to her chair and laid her head on her arm—"it may ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... strange that a question like this, which related, as it would appear, to only an empty title, should have been deemed so important; but, in reality, there was something more than the mere title at issue. Although, for the time being, the Christians were excluded from Jerusalem, they were all continually ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Much of the strange and outre, as well as the commonplace, in human activity conceals energy transformations of inestimable value in the work of sublimation. The race would go mad without it. It sometimes does even with it, a sign that sublimation ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... disfranchisement as they would. A dear and noble friend, one who aided our work most efficiently in the early days, said to me, "Why do you say the 'emancipation of women?'" I replied, "Because women are political slaves!" Is it not strange that men think that what to them would be degradation, slavery, is to women elevation, liberty? Men put the right of suffrage for themselves above all price, and count the denial of it the most severe punishment. If a man serving a term in State's prison has one friend outside ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... mischievous, but bright and wonderfully gifted, girl, the eldest of the children, getting, at one time, possession of his manuscript, pretended to be, for the moment, incapacitated, by the Devil, for reading it; and he further informs us, "She'd hector me at a strange rate for the work I was at, and threaten me with I know not what mischief for it. She got a History I was writing of this Witchcraft; and though she had, before this, read it over and over, yet now she could not read (I believe) ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... away the tea, and brought in a paraffin lamp, small but cheerful. She was a middle-aged woman, much younger than her husband—with an ironic half-dreamy eye, and a native intelligence much superior to her surroundings. She was suffering from a chronic abscess in the neck, which had strange periodic swellings and subsidences, all of which were endlessly interesting to its possessor. Mrs. Halsey, indeed, called the abscess "she," wrapped it lovingly in red flannel, describing the evening dressing ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... effects,—the struggle of two determinations; one which impelled Minoret to drive his victim from Nemours, the other which gave Ursula the strength to bear persecution, the cause of which was for a certain length of time undiscoverable. The situation was a strange and even unnatural one, and yet it was led up to by all the preceding events, which served as a preface to what was now ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... a strange meeting—this facing for the first time between the supreme representative of the dominant race of the new era and the freed black men whose very existence the President held to be an eternal menace against the Nation's future. It is remarkable that the first words Abraham ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... set his teeth and went on with his task. In the soiled linen basket, among his own handkerchiefs as he counted them, he found one queerly scented and of a strange, arresting pattern. It had the monogram "L. M." stitched into the corner. She must have borrowed it from the beast. Or else—the beast had been in the house ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... and prayer with her afterwards, and I trust her heart is touched. But I've noticed that in these villages where the people lead a quiet life among the green pastures and the still waters, tilling the ground and tending the cattle, there's a strange deadness to the Word, as different as can be from the great towns, like Leeds, where I once went to visit a holy woman who preaches there. It's wonderful how rich is the harvest of souls up those high-walled streets, where you seemed to walk as in a prison-yard, and the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... or kingdom," (he continues,) "which has not contributed its specimens of the animal kingdom to these gardens: from the elephant and rhinoceros, to the fly and the mosquito, all are to be seen here"—but not even the giraffes, strange as their appearance must have been to him, attract any particular notice; though the sight of the exotics in the garden draws from him a repetition of his old complaint, relative to the want of fragrance in the flowers as compared with those produced under the genial sun of India. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... "Strange as it may seem, however, I am not inclined to see in the existing and increasing degradation of French politics an actual danger to the form of government which has been adopted in France. It is, on the contrary, an undoubted ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... and listen. I'm Jerry Tucker, late Bo'sun in 'is Britannic Majesty's navy,—'Bully-Sawyer,' Seventy-four. D'ye get that? Well, now listen again. According to orders I hove anchor and bore up for London very early this morning, but being strange to these 'ere waters, was obleeged to haul my wind and stand off and on till I fell in with a pilot, d'ye see. But, though late, here I am all ship-shape and a-taunto, and with despatches safe and sound. Watch, now!" Hereupon the Bo'sun removed the glazed hat, held it to his ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... What should my knave advance, To draw this company? he hung out no banners Of a strange calf with five legs to be seen, Or a huge lobster with ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... failure to secure the glittering prize of the Presidency. Mr. Adams is perhaps the only person to whom the gaining of that proud distinction has been in some measure a cause of chagrin. This strange sentiment, which he undoubtedly felt, was due to the fact that what he had wished was not the office in and for itself, but the office as a symbol or token of the popular approval. He had held important and responsible public positions during substantially his whole active (p. 176) life; he ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... hear. The people of these towns are, most of them, specially accustomed by their own trades to the application of scientific laws. To them, therefore, the application of any fresh physical laws to a fresh set of facts, would have nothing strange in it. They have already something of that inductive habit of mind which is the groundwork of all rational understanding or action. They would not turn the deaf and contemptuous ear with which the savage and the superstitious receive the revelation ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... addressed to myself, who had been about to remark, "The same with me also," but on seeing the pair exchanging a strange glance (as though involuntarily they had surprised one another), had left the words unspoken. My companions then set themselves to a mutually eager questioning with respect to their respective identities, past ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... excite us most intensely which we know most of and love most. But as we may learn to know them all and to love them all, and what is dark to-day may be luminous to-morrow, and things, dumb to-day, to-morrow grow voiceful, and the strange voice of to-day be plain and reproach us to-morrow; who shall adventure to say that this or that is the highest? And if it appear that all these subjects in nature may affect us with equal intensity, and that the artist's representations affect as the subjects affect, then ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... of his clothes, the unsightliness of his heavy knapsack, in short his inferiority in every detail of the business of war except fighting. There he is much too swift to be smart. He is much too practical to be precise. By a strange illusion which can lift pork-packing almost to the level of patriotism, the American has the same free rhythm in his romance of business. He varies his conduct not to suit the clock but to suit the case. He gives more time to more ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... saying she had a perfect recollection that the late king intended and understood that we were to pay the Third to England, and had talked with her very seriously on the subject. If he were living, he would think it very strange, she said, that we refused; and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... long to live now," he thought. "I am a dead man, and ought not to stand in the way of the living. It would be strange and stupid to insist upon one's rights now. I'll have it out with her; let her go to the man she loves. . . . I'll give her a divorce. I'll ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... it to her, at tea time, with a gay and kindly word, the color that deepened vividly upon her face, and the quiet way in which she laid it down beside her plate, were nothing strange, perhaps; but—was he wrong? the eyes that drooped so quickly as the blushes rose, and then lifted themselves again so timidly to him as he next addressed her, were surely brimmed with feeling that was not quite, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the country, of average practical ability, knows as it were by instinct, they have to learn slowly, and, after all, imperfectly, by study and experience. The laws, the customs, the social relations for which they have to legislate, instead of being familiar to them from childhood, are all strange to them. For most of their detailed knowledge they must depend on the information of natives, and it is difficult for them to know whom to trust. They are feared, suspected, probably disliked by the population; seldom sought by them except for interested ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... him anxiously, and was so shocked that he forgot the strange blithe little farm entirely. For Lionel was as wan and wasted as though he had been through a fever, and his rosy face was white, and his merry eyes were melancholy. And suddenly, as Hobb clasped him, he flung his arms round his big brother's ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... another. We clambered up the side of a rugged hill, from the summit of which we could see the harbour, a mile distant, and there was the Britannia lying at anchor, and being attacked by two vessels! As we watched the fight we saw one of the strange ships, which were both under sail, fire a broadside at our vessel, and the second, putting about, did the same. These two broadsides, we afterwards heard, were terribly disastrous, for the captain and three men were killed, and nine wounded. The crew, however, under the mate, still ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke
... had sent her letters from Paris, Stockholm, Hamburg, Vienna and Constanza. His huge circle of friends was unequalled. In almost every city on the Continent he knew somebody, and he was a perfect encyclopaedia of travel. His strange reticence, however, always increased the mystery surrounding him. Those vague whispers concerning him had reached her ears, and she often wondered whether half she ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... what seemed to be a grove of tall yellow-green sea-weeds, waving against a strange purple sky. There was a path between the stems of the sea-weeds, and up this path trotted a pig, rather soft and smudgy about his edges, as if he were running a little into the background. His quirly tail was smudgy also; and altogether it was more like the ghost of a pig than a real ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... a start. He suddenly understood—it seemed strange at first, though it was quite natural—that Hortense had not for a moment suspected and did not yet suspect the terrible danger which she had run. Her mind had not connected with her own adventure the murders committed by the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... whistle, as if to frighten away some cows in the distance. Gladys started, and with a terrified face glanced at him. He found that she had very beautiful, violet eyes, with lashes so long and black, that when she looked to the earth again they made a strange contrast to her ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... a moose's person is that pair of strange excrescences, his horns. Like fronds of tree-fern, like great corals or sea-fans, these great palmated plates of bone lift themselves from his head, grand, useless, clumsy. A pair of moose-horns overlooks me as I write; they weigh twenty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various |
