"Strangeness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... staring on the hungry nothingness of air and water he would stare on the skin-stretched fabric of his boat as on a strangeness, or he would examine his hands and the texture of his skin and the stiff black hairs that grew behind his knuckles and sprouted around his ring, and he found in these things ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... rehearsals of a play are varied in finish and intensity, but the variety which Mr. William Rooney conducted was of the most brilliant, and he expected them to go as well as the opening night. He made small allowance for the strangeness of lights, scenery, and costuming, and that allowance was only for time, not in smoothness. As he willed, his cast generally performed. The cast of "The Purple Slipper" was of experienced actors, and he felt certain that they would meet his expectations. At six-thirty o'clock he seated ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... natural with congenial playmates. Even Sedley's tortures were preferable to Peregrine's attentions, since the first were only the tyranny of a graceless boy, the other gave her an indescribable sense of strangeness from which these ordinary mundane comrades ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they are at all times sure of finding returns. Besides the influence of these extraordinary causes on the uncertainty and irregularity of external commerce, no small share must also be attributed to the strangeness of the peculiar constitution of the country, or the principles on which ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Asmiel touched his hand, and broke the thread Of fine-spun thought, and very gently said, "The One of whom thou thinkest bids thee go Alone to Spiran's huts, across the snow, To serve Him there." With sorrow and surprise Malvin looked up, reluctance in his eyes. The broken thought, the strangeness of the call, The perilous passage of the mountain-wall, The solitary journey, and the length Of ways unknown, too great for his frail strength, Appalled him. With a doubtful brow He scanned the doubtful task, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... even as it was brought down,[FN117] and albeit she have not ceased declaiming from the hour of the dawn- prayer until this time, yet hath none given her a single dirham: no, nor even one mite;[FN118] and what strangeness can be stranger than this I tell thee?" The Caliph, hearing his words, entered the mart wherein he descried an ancient dame sitting and reciting the Koran and she had well nigh reached the end thereof. He was charmed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... her singing, the four of us—or five it may be, for I can not now rightly recall whether Sawney MacAllister came ashore that night or not—sat before her beauty as though it were a part of witchery, for there was a bookish strangeness to it that on this wild coast, in a nest of smugglers and free-traders, after a cruise of rough living and deep drinking, we should be listening to the voice of a girl whose beauty was upsetting to the senses of man and whose bearing denoted ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... he whispered, striving to wipe the dimness from his eyes. Was it only two years or twenty since he had left his country to go to war? A sense of strangeness dawned upon him. His home-coming, so ceaselessly dreamed of by night and longed for by day, was not going to be what his hopes had created. But at that moment his joy was too great to harbor strange misgivings. How impossible ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... only ephemeral clear spots in our sky, and the cries which accompanied them only grew more bitter and terrible. I knew that Elaine was growing more and more uneasy at the apparent strangeness of my character, that she suffered from it and that it affected her nerves, that the existence to which I was condemning her in spite of myself, that all this immoderate love of mine, followed by fits of inexplicable coldness and of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... sound from her room brought before him more vividly the reality of the situation and the strangeness of the vast swarming solitude in which he and she were momentarily isolated, amid long lines of rooms each holding its separate secret. The nearness of all these other mysteries enclosing theirs gave Darrow a more intimate sense of the girl's presence, and through the fumes of his cigar ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... chiefly to bewilderment, the discomfort of strangeness and an annoying sense of my own extreme insignificance. I was a new boy. I wanted to behave properly, to do the right thing, and I had no way of knowing what the right thing was. I was absurdly anxious not to "cheek" anybody, and thereby ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... that to die is to be transferred suddenly, and with violence, into strange scenes, which must overwhelm and distract the senses. It seems to them that it must be like being whirled instantly into a distant, unknown city, and waking up amidst the confusion and strangeness of that place. We cannot believe that such is the experience of dying Christians. It would rather seem that there is, at first, a perception of spiritual forms, of ministering spirits, whispering peace to the soul, and assuring it of safety, and bidding it ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... strangeness of his being at such a place came back as a marvel into the young man's lively mind. Twenty years in prison, he thought, and hardly aware of it! And he glanced at the silent priest. A man so evidently fond of music, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... year for this release. Meanwhile I had plenty of time to contemplate my mysterious affliction; the mystery of it was so great that I had little chance to notice how painful it actually was. There is enough strangeness in feeling with absolute certainty that a limb exists where actually there is nothing, but the strangeness is compounded when you look down and discover that not only is the leg gone but that another, mechanical one has taken its place. Dr. Erics, who had performed the operation, said this difficulty ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... take more thought for myself and what might be meant by this journey. At first I had been so stunned and dazed by the release—as my removal from the dungeon seemed to me—that I had been content to feel the light and air play about me once more; but that strangeness had worn off now, and the consciousness of being yet a ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... thought whither he meant to go, he found himself out of sight of the house—in a favourite haunt, but one in which he always had a peculiar feeling of strangeness and even expatriation. He had descended the stream that rushed past the end of the house, till it joined the valley river, and followed the latter up, to where it took a sudden sharp turn, and a little farther. Then he crossed it, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... tell";[127] Osbern Bokenam will speak and write "plainly, after the language of Southfolk speech";[128] John Capgrave, finding that the earlier translator of the life of St. Katherine has made the work "full hard ... right for the strangeness of his dark language," undertakes to translate it "more openly" and "set it more plain."[129] This conception of the audience, together with the writer's consciousness that even in presenting narrative he is ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered is from other worlds, It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though I know not where. It has the strangeness of the luring West, And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee I am aware of other times and lands, Of birth far-back, of lives in many stars. O beauty lone and like a candle clear In this dark country of the world! Thou art My woe, my ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... social scale, as to warrant such assumption of superiority? No, I felt that this was not the cause of her cold suspicion, her proud, unapproachable bearing. Undoubtedly it arose from the manner in which she had fallen into our hands, the strangeness and delicacy of our situation, the knowledge that I was a "Rebel" in arms against her people. These were the things which had reared such a barrier between us. She but resorted to what was apparently her only available weapon of defence. Well, ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... sleeping aspect, the place was certainly more harmonious and more chaste than by day; mirrors and pictures loomed from the white walls with a mystery that would disappear when the lusters contained their light; and the King lingered to take in the pleasant strangeness of it all, and to wonder what was this new ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... endurance on it, I still regard with unmitigated amazement. I know, indeed, that all around me is wonderful—but I cannot answer it with wonder:—a dark veil, with the foolish words, NATURE OF THINGS, upon it, casts its deadening folds between me and their dazzling strangeness. Flowers open, and stars rise, and it seems to me they could have done no less. The mystery of distant mountain-blue only makes me reflect that the earth is of necessity mountainous;—the sea-wave breaks at my feet, and I do not see how it should have remained ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... were; some, like the Waverley novels and Shakespeare, grow better on every fresh reading. There are books which filled me, in boyhood or in youth, with a sort of admiring rapture, and a delighted wonder at their novelty, their strangeness, freshness, greatness. Thus Homer, and the best novels of Thackeray, and of Fielding, the plays of Moliere and Shakespeare, the poems of—well, of all the real poets, moved this astonishment of admiration, and being read again, they move it still. On a different ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... to them, or whether he never even saw them, Denys could not tell, but as they neared him, he stopped suddenly and looked into a shop window, showing the baby something that made it shout and crow with delight; but in one instant Denys forgot everything else in the world, but the strangeness of another sight that ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... and, keenly alive to the future consequences, neither wore his diadem or appeared in public, nor would he even transact the serious business which pressed upon his attention, but sought retirement, being full of consternation at the strangeness of the recent events. This continued till one of the decurions of the palace (which is an office of dignity) came in great haste to the standards of the Petulantes and of the Celtic legion, and in a violent manner exclaimed that ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of womankind in fascination, courtship, and marriage—the whole teeming with ideas bright as mirrors and just as unsubstantial, yet forming a brilliant argument to justify the ways of girls to men. The pervading characteristic of the mass was the means of forcing into notice, by strangeness of contrast, the single mournful poem that the book contained. It was placed at the very end, and under the title of 'Cancelled Words,' formed a whimsical and rather affecting love-lament, somewhat in the tone of many of Sir Thomas Wyatt's poems. This was ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... what—to the entail? Poor old me! Since his loss my brother has preferred to be quite alone. I'm sorry he's away. But you must wait till he comes back. I expect him in a day or two." She talked more and more, as if our very strangeness led her on, about her circumstances, her solitude, her bad eyes, so that she couldn't read, her flowers, her ferns, her dogs, and the vicar, recently presented to the living by her brother and warranted quite safe, who had lately begun to light his altar candles; ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... three hundred feet, I lay suspended between the fairyland stretched beneath me and the brilliantly starred heavens. I was perfectly aware of the direction in which I was to go, but for a few moments I lay thus suspended, enjoying as could only an inhabitant of Earth, the strangeness and marvel of ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... filled Garnett with such deepening wonder that he could not, for the moment, even do justice to the strangeness of its being written out for publication in the bride's own hand. Hermione a bride! Hermione a future countess! Hermione on the brink of a marriage which would give her not only a great "situation" in the Parisian world but a footing in some of the best houses in England! Regardless ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... of the whole scene was a little sinister, even a little frightening. The strangeness of Africa, the African jungle, was here, and one was a white man in it all alone among grinning savage faces. But for the figures about one being clothed, the illusion had been complete; but for that and the kind-hearted salutations from comely white-turbaned mammies which soon ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Hardress went to his wife's room, and found her troubled because of the strangeness ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Stackpole fleeing to the shelter of home like a man hunted by a terrible pursuer. But with all his desperate need for haste he ran no straightaway course. The manner of his flight was what gave added strangeness to the spectacle of him. He would dart headlong, on a sharp oblique from the right-hand corner of a street intersection to a point midway of the block—or square, to give it its local name—then go slanting back again to the right-hand corner of the next street ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... for the moment touching elbows with Kimbark on one side and with Merriam on the other, all three belonging to the "Hornung crowd." Their answering challenge of "Sold" was as the voice of one man. They did not pause to reflect upon the strangeness of the circumstance. (That was for afterward.) Their response to the offer was as unconscious, as reflex action and almost as rapid, and before the pit was well aware of what had happened the transaction of one thousand bushels was down upon Going's trading-card ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... will have made but a small impression upon him—at any rate consciously. It will not be until the handling of his machine becomes less laborious, and he has time to accustom himself to his unique view-point, and the strangeness and beauty of the scene below him, that the novice will realise some of the fascinations of aerial travel; fascinations that it is difficult to describe. The sensation of having thrown off the bonds of earth-bound ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... True indeed, the strangeness of this opinion will detract much from its credit; but yet we should know that nothing is in its selfe strange, since every naturall effect has an equall dependance upon its cause, and with the like necessity doth follow from it, so that 'tis our ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... too, were like a dream. We sometimes have strange, impossible dreams, contrary to all the laws of nature. When we awake we remember them and wonder at their strangeness. You remember, perhaps, that you were in full possession of your reason during this succession of fantastic images; even that you acted with extraordinary logic and cunning while surrounded by murderers who hid their intentions and made great demonstrations ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... snow, and a hopeful glow in the west. Just here, by the barberry bush at the corner, he had stood still under the spell of Northern Lights. That was the night when his wife lay first in Tiverton churchyard; and he remembered, as a part of the strangeness and wonder of the time, how the north had streamed, and the neighboring houses had been rosy red. But at this hour of the brooding, sultry fall, there was a bitter fragrance in the air, and the world seemed tuned to the somnolent sound ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... been talking about you with Faustina," he said. "We are both much interested by the strangeness of your fate, by the difficulty and delicacy of your situation and by the wonderful constancy of you both. Faustina and I are a most united pair, never happy out of each other's company and very proud of our domestic felicity. We are, if I may use the word, rather prone to gloat ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... this business is strange, my friend; but take my word for it, the strangeness you now feel is nothing to the strangeness that's ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... Mrs. Gerald Tribe and Miss Mallowcoid had arrived at Brineweald Park twenty-four hours after the Delarayne household had been completed, and now everybody was busy settling down to the novelty of life, effacing the traces of strangeness wherever they appeared, and measuring each other's skill and power at pastimes not necessarily confined to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... I.ii.306 (22,1) [Mira. The strangeness of your story put Heaviness in me.] Why should a wonderful story produce sleep? I believe experience will prove, that any violent agitation of the mind easily subsides in slumber, especially when, as in Prospero's relation, the last images ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... accept him without the slightest reserve, for Queen issued edicts; and through all those big people he would acquire immense prestige and influence, which he could use greatly. Ambition flared up in him—ambition to impress himself on his era. And he reflected with satisfaction on the strangeness of the fact that such an opportunity should have come to him, the son of a lawyer, solely by virtue of his own individuality. He thought of Christine, and poor little Christine was shrunk to nothing at all; she was scarcely even an object of compassion; ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... he had been struck by the strangeness of the murder. All the circumstances were unusual, and quite outside his previous experience of big crimes. He had also come to the conclusion that the ease with which the murderer had found his way into the moat-house, and afterwards escaped, pointed ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... it represents Johnson. The statue is by Bacon, but is not one of his best works. The figure is, as often in eighteenth-century sculpture, clothed only in a loose robe which leaves legs, arms, and one shoulder bare. But the strangeness for us is not one of costume only. If we know anything of Johnson, we know that he was constantly ill all through his life; and whether we know anything of him or not we are apt to think of a literary man as a delicate, weakly, nervous, and probably valetudinarian ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... fields has eyes less for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in the path, of which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure in fortunate accident of form. For love of a little grotesque strangeness he will load himself with the stone and carry it home to his garden. The art of such a people is not liberal art, not the art of peace, and not the art of humanity. Look at the curls and curves whereby this people ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... quota to the all-pervading loveliness of the scene by the delicate purple tints of their stamens; while the curious, pendent nests of the weaver-bird, hanging here and there from the longer and coarser grass-stalks curving over the water, added a further element of strangeness and singularity to the picture. Brilliant-plumaged birds flashed hither and thither; kingfishers of all sizes perched solemnly upon the roots and overhanging branches of the mangroves, intently watching the surface of the muddy water for the tiny ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the pirate's ship return, and yet I never once spake o' the map and chart. And methinks the secret cast a shadow betwixt us that grew ever deeper, for as the days passed and no sail appeared, there came a strangeness, an unlove betwixt us that grew until one day we fell to open quarrel, disputation and deadly strife, and the matter no more than a dead man's shirt (and that ragged) that had come ashore. And we (being in rags and the sun ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... patience to sift out its gems from the mountain of dross, and attempt to reduce its wide-weltering chaos to order. Even Waite, with all his gift of research and narration, finds little more than gleams of dawn in a dim forest, brilliant vapors, and glints that tell by their very perversity and strangeness. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... air of strangeness in the way we were met at Nicholas Marsh's house. I do not mean inhospitality, rather the reverse, with a tinge of embarrassment, as of one entertaining the awkward guest. We were evidently expected, and a steaming supper was laid ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... upon the things she had read about in the poets and historians. She was very fond of the poets and historians, of the picturesque, of the past, of retrospect, of mementos and reverberations of greatness; so that on coming into the English world, where strangeness and familiarity would go hand in hand, she was prepared for a multitude of fresh emotions. They began very promptly—these tender, fluttering sensations; they began with the sight of the beautiful English landscape, whose dark richness was quickened ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... column of smoke and fire shooting upward from the funeral pyre, and looking like one of the gigantic torches of Pandemonium—the war of the elements combined with the worst effects of frenzied superstition of man—the suddenness and strangeness of the awful scene—all the circumstances produced such an impression upon the French as to deprive them for a moment of the powers of volition and action. Rooted to the ground, they stood aghast with astonishment and indignation at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... at least for a few weeks in order that he might be present at the time of her confinement. Though it would have been in the last degree unkind, or even inhuman, that a request of this sort should have been refused, yet I will confess to you that my brother's recent strangeness had prepared me for behaviour on his part however wild; and it was with a feeling of extreme relief that I heard from Mrs. Temple a little later that she had received a short note from John to say that he was already on his return journey. I believe Mrs. Temple herself ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... the address she watched him, still fascinated with the delicious strangeness of it all. It was like an adventure to have George whisk her so peremptorily into a cab, and then stand with his foot on the step while he curtly directed the driver. Nothing could surpass the romance—the supreme exciting romance of life. Every ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... subjects, emancipating literature from provinciality of theme, while the modes of his romantic treatment, the way he felt about his subjects, still owed much to his American birth. In all this literature by the three writers there was little complexity, and there was no strangeness in their personalities. Irving was more genially human, Cooper more vitally intense; Bryant was the more careful artist in the severe limits of his art, which was simple and plain. Simplicity and plainness characterize ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... move Hansel and Grethel into the second-grade work and Sleeping Beauty preferably into the work of the first grade. The child soon gains sufficient experience so that later the story impresses, not the strangeness. ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... difference does exist between the French language and his own. The complex origin of the English tongue has enabled English writers to obtain those effects of diversity, of contrast, of imaginative strangeness, which have played such a dominating part in our literature. The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction—in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... time beside the corpse, admiring its strength and beauty. He made no boastful speech, and showed no joy in his countenance, as a man who had slain a troublesome and dangerous enemy, but, wondering at the strangeness of his ending, he drew the ring from the dead man's finger, and had the corpse decently attired and burned. The relics he gathered into a silver urn, upon which he placed a golden crown, and sent it to Marcellus's son. But on the way some Numidians fell in with the party who were escorting ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... The strangeness of the undertaking is no less pronounced than the rigour of its obligations. Mark Twain began his career as a professional humorist and fun-maker; he frankly donned the motley, the cap and bells. The man-in-the-street is not easily persuaded ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... unconventional creature, and dazed by the strangeness of the whole affair, Emerson gained his feet and followed her, with "Fingerless" Fraser at ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Struck by the strangeness of this manoeuvre, he looked quickly round, to recognize the moon-like mask of De Morbihan grinning sardonically at him over the steering-wheel ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Secretary dined together. As the Duke sat at table, he began to think how long it was since such a state of things had happened to him before, and his heart softened towards her. Instead of being made angry by the strangeness of her proceeding, he took delight in it, and in the course of the evening spoke a word to signify his satisfaction. "I'm afraid it won't last long," she said, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... master, who felt that everything would depend upon his repressing the children's exuberant curiosity and maintaining the discipline of the school for the next few minutes, with supernatural gravity addressed the young girl in Spanish and placed before her a few slight elementary tasks. Perhaps the strangeness of the language, perhaps the unwonted seriousness of the master, perhaps also the impassibility of the young stranger herself, all contributed to arrest the expanding smiles on little faces, to check their wandering eyes, and hush their eager ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... back to her, and she burst into tears. Her self-control deserted her, and, clinging to him for protection, she sobbed as though her heart would break. She was shaking from head to foot. The strangeness of this last horror had overcome her, and she ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... it was no surprise to me to hear of this extinct species lingering on Lundy; the strangeness and wildness of the place might lead one to expect it to be the haunt of the Dodo, or that monstrous and fabulous bird of the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... we'll see. Give them the lace on their wedding-day. I can do nothing with you; talk to Tiet Nikonich who is coming to dinner." And she wondered what would come of such strangeness. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... drew on the talk grew less and less. It broke out now and again in little uneasy bursts. Someone would tell a joke. Half hysterical laughter would greet it, and die suddenly, as it began. These were all hard-faced men of the mountain-desert, warriors of the frontier. What unnerved them was the strangeness of the thing which was about to happen. The big wooden clock on the side of the long barroom struck once for half-past two. All ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... in America, the difficulty would naturally seem to be the newness of the discipline, the strangeness of the requisite obedience. Something must be true of all that is said of the scattering about of food, and other things which have no business to lie about on the ground. A soldier is out of his duty who throws away a crust of bread or meat, or casts bones ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... further indication, and as it seems to the present writer a very striking one, that Cod. B is the older of the two. Cod. {HEBREW LETTER ALEF} is evidently familiar with the phenomenon which astonishes Cod. B by its novelty and strangeness. ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... broadening daily, both in the student body and among the instructors. Most of the strangeness of this new college world had worn off. Ruth and Helen and Jennie were full-fledged "Ardmores" now, quite as devoted to the college as they had been to ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... the choirs of the Sirens and Tritons. The which I do not avouch for truth, neither rashly deny, having seen myself such fertility of Nature's wonders that I hold him who denieth aught merely for its strangeness to be a ribald and an ignoramus. Also one of our men brought in two great black fowls which he had shot with a crossbow, bodied and headed like a capon, but bigger than any eagle, which the Spaniards call curassos; which, with that sea-cow, afterwards made us good cheer, both roast and sodden, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... without a name held continuous receptions in the boudoir, and the boudoir gradually grew into an abode of mystery and strangeness, hypnotizing the entire house. People went thither; people came back; and those who had not been pictured to themselves something very incantatory, and little by little they made up their minds to go. Some thought ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... notice some rare pieces of knowledge and names but little known to the Romans; indeed they have never been produced before to-day, but yet, thanks to my toil and study they have been so translated from the Greek, that in spite of their strangeness they are none the less of Latin mintage. Do you deny this, Aemilianus? If so, let your advocates tell me in what Latin author they have ever before read such words as those which I will cause to be recited to you. I will ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the incident one of phenomenal strangeness, but it did not in the least disturb his unselfish judgment or mental equipoise. There was in his answer no trace of excitement or passion. He pointed out in a few sentences of simple, quiet explanation that what the administration had done was exactly a foreign and domestic ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... encore, the couples stood about chatting, the hum of lively voices bespeaking eager enjoyment. There was no early chill upon the assembly, to be dissipated as the dance wore on; the day of festivity outdoors had thawed the thin crust of icy strangeness which is so natural a part of such a function as this. Already it seemed that everybody was on the most cheerful ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... why it was that fear crept into my breast last night," she told herself severely, when the first wave of strangeness and grief had broken over her, and she had come up again into the sparkling air. "Great dangers have threatened me, but I have escaped them all with great luck; it is poor-spirited of me to despair. And it must be that witches had thinned my blood with water that I should have thought of running ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... other hand, he defines the romantic characteristics in art as consisting in "the addition of strangeness to beauty"—a definition which recalls Bacon's saying, "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." "The desire of beauty," continues Pater, "being a fixed element in every artistic organization, it is the addition of curiosity to this desire of beauty that constitutes ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... done, the mother hastened to set before us a substantial meal, while the boys, anxious to make their new acquaintance feel at home among them, were doing their best to amuse her. She herself, after the first feeling of strangeness had worn off, entered fully into all their fun; and by the time they sat down to supper was laughing and chattering as gaily as any one of the rest. She admired the various dishes, tasted our mead, and, without alluding ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... grey-white line that is the sand dunes at Ambleteuse, north of Boulogne. I knew Ambleteuse. It gave a sense of strangeness to see the old tower at the water's edge loom up out of the sea. The sight of land was comforting, but vigilance was not relaxed. The attacks of submarines have been mostly made not far outside the harbours, and only a few days later that very boat was to make a sensational escape ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had the sort of strangeness in her ideas which is often noticeable in characters that have developed late, in savages, who think much and speak little. Her peasant's wit had acquired a good deal of Parisian asperity from hearing the talk of workshops and mixing with workmen and workwomen. She, whose ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... bedroom attaching her garters to the tops of her stockings; Anna tautening her body as she slipped out of her nightgown ... or a picture of her pressing his head against her breasts and whispering passionately, "Erik, I adore you." The strangeness then would leave her and again she was something he had absorbed. When he looked for her she had vanished in the scribble of the crowd and he walked with the same curious unconsciousness of her existence as ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... study of nature leads the intelligent to desire to know why the cleaved rock shows its sharp divisions as if cut by a knife, why yellow light gives such strangeness of tints, and thus draws on my pupil to larger explanatory ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... and upon which they might work themselves off in a meaningful reaction, are interwoven into the sounds,—they and the sounds come to us as a single indissoluble whole of experience. The emotions become the content of the sounds. And hence the strangeness of the musical experience—the fact that we feel so deeply ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... ceremony; and when the chaplain had pronounced a blessing, which was listened to reverently by the young people, who were all very devout and responsive to religious influences, the unconstrained chatter began again almost at once, and the Welsh lads lost all sense of strangeness as they sat at the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... as the weighty compactness of his style, have given many of them the currency of proverbs. "Revenge is a kind of wild justice." "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune." "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." Bacon's reason was illuminated by a powerful imagination, and his noble English rises now and then, as in his essay On Death, into eloquence—the eloquence of pure thought, touched gravely and afar off ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Romances have generally endeavoured to pick out the most pleasing Stories; to pass over the dry Parts in them; and to hurry the Reader on from one striking Event to another. Their only Aim seems to be that of making a Tissue of Adventures, which by their Strangeness and Variety are meant only to surprise and please. Nature they have not much in View; and Morality is often quite out of the ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... hours with her, either at Mrs. Miller's house or her own. The grace and beauty of the child were remarkable; and as, with the happy facility of childhood, she began to recover from the first feeling of strangeness and fear, the little creature was soon happy in her new, humble home. She was too young to appreciate and lament the change in her lot; and, as she was well fed, well cared for, and treated with the most caressing ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... suggested by passages of the old Kazak Hetman's biography, the Mazepa of Pushkin is a most spirited and faithful version of the real history of the romantic life of the hero; the actual events adopted by the Russian poet as the groundwork of his tale, being certainly not inferior in strangeness, novelty, and romantic incident, to the short fiery tale, dawning rosily in mutual love, and finishing with the wild gallop on the desert steed, which thrills us so deeply in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... closely about him, perhaps because his under garments were shabby. Philemon perceived, too, that he had on a singular pair of shoes; but, as it was now growing dusk, and as the old man's eyesight was none the sharpest, he could not precisely tell in what the strangeness consisted. One thing, certainly, seemed queer. The traveler was so wonderfully light and active, that it appeared as if his feet sometimes rose from the ground of their own accord, or could only be ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of Key West scenery that appear, at first glance, to be most salient, and that contribute most to the impression of strangeness and remoteness made by the island as a whole, are, unquestionably, the color of the water and the character of the vegetation. The ocean in which the little coral key is set has a vividness and a delicacy of color ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... come so near to her or what concerned her inmost life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation—these always attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long she had fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and the secrecy and strangeness of her father's course had made this not only possible, but in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gaze as she spoke, and the latter gained an impression of strangeness in her friend's manner. As they all strolled away from the table and out of doors, Sylvia made a movement to link her arm in Edna's. Was it a coincidence that the latter suddenly drew away, saying, "I'm going to get my golf cape for you, Sylvia. It will be ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... Novelists would cease their dalliance with Dame Fiction and turn to Truth, writing a simple record of the life of Schliemann, it would eclipse in strangeness all the Knighthoods that ever were in Flower, and Ben Hur would get the flag in his Crawfordsville chariot-race ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the strangeness of his glance she did not persist; questions would have taught her nothing. And besides, now that he no longer went to bed at the same time as she did, there was nothing extraordinary in ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... I began to appreciate the reason for the strangeness of the landscape that had haunted me from the first with an illusive suggestion of the bizarre and unnatural—THERE WAS NO HORIZON! As far as the eye could reach out the sea continued and upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in the distance reduced ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the weird circle. Neither the strangeness of the group nor the squalor of the hearth were of a nature to be new things to the curate. His eyes fixed themselves on Dart's face, as did the eyes of the thief, the beggar, and the young thing of the street. No one glanced ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... decrees were carried in force on corpses and on pictures, and the grave itself was no asylum from its tremendous arm. The presumptuous arrogance of its decrees could only be surpassed by the inhumanity which executed them. By coupling the ludicrous with the terrible, and by amusing the eye with the strangeness of its processions, it weakened compassion by the gratification of another feeling; it drowned sympathy in derision and contempt. The delinquent was conducted with solemn pomp to the place of execution, a blood-red flag was displayed before him, the universal clang of all ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "cleaning" in a distant part of the College. She felt incapable of getting into bed again and waiting for some one to come, so she began dressing herself with trembling hands. Every detail increased the sense of strangeness. There were a number of strange clothes, ball-dresses and others, hanging in her cupboard, strange odds and ends thrust confusedly into her bureau. She found at length a blue cotton frock of her own, which seemed just home from the wash. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... a certain strangeness, however, in the thought that words in his presence and to his honor should be spoken by me. The freaks of time and fortune are indeed strange. I cannot but remember that when John Gilbert was yet in the full flush of his young manhood and already crowned with the laurels of success the friend ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... excitement had been on the previous day's trial, it seemed, if possible, greater now, or rather it was an excitement of a different nature. Hitherto a sense of strangeness and wonder had predominated; a morbid curiosity and a desire for sensationalism had possessed the minds and hearts of those who had witnessed the trial. But to-day another element was added—an element of terror. On the previous days there ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... was addressed to both of them, but Ruth was too much occupied with the strangeness of the thought that she was again being counted among "Christian people" to make any answer. Not so Marion. Her eyes danced with merriment, but she answered with ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... slipping into the vernacular, and Val noticed it, and wondered dully if she would ever do likewise. She had not yet admitted to herself that Manley was different. She had told herself many times that it would take weeks to wipe out the strangeness born of three years' separation. He was the same, of course; everything else was new and—different. That was all. He seemed intensely practical, and he seemed to feel that his love-making had all been done by letter, and that nothing ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... from the horizon or sinks into it. It stays perfectly, immovably still. After a while it rises very slowly. The meals on board are as irregular as the time; they are served according to the adaptability of one's appetite to the strangeness of the new element of constant daytime. We scarcely want to sleep, or know when to do so. Fortunately our furs are handy, for there is snow and ice on the wild, barren rocks on either side ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... a moment fingering each piece of his scanty clothing, recalling every piece of labor or battle which had added pouch, belt, strip of fabric to his equipment. Yet—there was still that odd sense of strangeness, as if none of this ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... found such places of vantage as they could, their number, indeed, amounting, with my household, to two hundred persons. In the centre of the open space a small forge-fire had been kindled, the red glow of which added much to the strangeness of the scene; and on the anvil beside it were ranged a number of horses' and donkeys' shoes, with a full complement of tools used ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... fine were those far-off days in July which led us up to the brink of such undreamt-of happenings. On the Tuesday night I was sitting alone on the Terrace, when Redmond came out. For once, he was in a mood to talk. His mind was full of the strangeness and interest of that first day's Conference—a council, or parley, so momentous, so unprecedented. It touched what was very strong in him—the historic imagination. He told me how the King had received them all, stayed with them for some intercourse of welcome, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... embodiment of the divine energy that makes life worth living; and in the scenery, as in the tale and the music of the opera, nothing is left out that could help to give us a vivid and lasting impression of the beauty, freshness, strangeness, and endless interest of life. Take the first scene—the cave with the dull red forge—fires smouldering in the black darkness, and the tools of the smith's trade scattered about, and, seen through the mouth of the cave, all the blazing colours of the sunlit forest; or again the second—the darkness, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... rounds, could talk to the children and old people in German as well as in their local dialect; and, as far as a passing observer could discern, it seemed as though everything had been done to reduce to a minimum the sense of strangeness and friction which is inevitable in the transition from one rule to another. The interesting point was that this exercise of tact and tolerance seemed to proceed not from any pressure of expediency but from a sympathetic understanding of the point of view of this people of the border. I heard in ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... the strangeness of his instructions, Coates, an object-lesson for those who decry the excellence of British Army ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... not that the most momentous event of my life, the event that was the beginning of the great change in that life—if that event were not so close at hand, I should be tempted to linger upon those first few days. They were strange and wonderful and funny to Hephzibah and me. The strangeness and the wonder wore off gradually; the fun still ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... injured? Or had it meant a blind to veil real, serious illness? For three years, Barry Houston had known Agnes Jierdon in day-to-day association. But never had he remembered her in exactly the light that he had seen her to-day. There had been a strangeness about her, a sharpness that he could ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the habit of petty analysis, nor the inclination toward it; yet there arose within him a wonder at his own emotion, at its strangeness and the violent reaction of it. A moment ago his soul had been steeped in satisfaction over the figure he had cut with his speech and the extreme enthusiasm which had been accorded it—an extraordinarily pleasant feeling: suddenly this was gone, and in its place ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... transferred her to other rooms, as barred and screened, in the palace of some husband!... That thought was brushing Ryder ... with other thoughts of her present risk ... of her lovely eyes, visible again, above the veil, thoughts of the strangeness and unreality of it all ... there in the shrubbery of a pasha's garden, the pasha's daughter whispering ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... great gladness and courage on him then, and ale and food were given out to them all. And there was a gold cup put in the hand of the master of the house, and Cormac was wondering at it, for the number of the shapes on it, and for the strangeness of the work. "There is a stranger thing yet about it," the man said; "let three lying words be spoken under it, and it will break into three, and then let three true words be spoken under it, and it will be as good ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... of everything that struck me, not by its beauty but by its strangeness, and not wishing to confess myself an imitator I resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original. According to my idea nothing was good or even tolerable; nothing was worth the trouble of turning the head, and yet when I had become warmed ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... by that discussion as to rain or no rain, and Miss Halliday and Mr. Hawkehurst talked pleasantly for some time, while Diana still walked silently by her friend's side, only speaking when compelled to do so. The strangeness of her manner would have been observed by any one not utterly absorbed by that sublime egotism called love; but Valentine and Charlotte were so absorbed, and had no idea that Miss Paget was anything but the most delightful ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... I would have been accepted as one of the rest of the outfit, and all strangeness would have passed off, the attitude of my fellow cow-punchers being one of friendly forgiveness even toward my spectacles. Night guards for the cattle herd were then assigned by the captain of the wagon, or perhaps by the round-up foreman, according to the needs of the case, the guards ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... waited, and I daresay the bareness and darkness of the room put us into excellent receptive condition. I know that I myself, probably owing to an astigmatism, once or twice felt that I saw wavering shadows in corners, and I felt again some of the strangeness I had felt during the day. We spoke in whispers, and Alice Robinson recited the history of a haunted house where she had visited in England. But Herbert was still cynical. He said, ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the hero as a man can well be; but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility—the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune, and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect—as in the scene where he kills Polonius; and, again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrantz ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... old-fashioned passages, but, as it seemed, to quite a different part of the house, Agatha went with her husband and his sister. The strangeness and gloom of the place, the doubt as to what sort of person she was going to see—for all she had heard was that from some great physical suffering Elizabeth never quitted her room—made the young girl feel timid, even afraid. Her hand trembled ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... it is in a place of strangeness - a room full of sunshine, making entrance through windows of much number. The walls and carpets are of the blue of the sky; the chairs, dressing-table and couch upon which I lie are all of a whiteness; the Mieng about me is again blue. I shut my eyes in wonderment; all ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... be, urged her toward their creator. And the unconquered maidenhood that was still hers, recoiled with trembling reluctance from its demanded death. Love had not yet come to lead her into a new and wonderful world. She only felt the sense of strangeness and fear, of leaving the familiar ways to enter new ones that led through shadows to ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... little excited, not through fear, but through the mystery of adventure, she drew off her glove and knocked vigorously. The door opened wide and noiselessly on its hinges, and across it stood a mite of a girl, dressed in white woollen. For a moment Zulma did not stir. She could not. The strangeness of that child's face, its weird beauty, the singular light in the wide-open eyes arrested her footsteps and almost the beating of her heart. And near the child was a huge black cat, with stiff tail, bristling fur and glaring green eye, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... dark brown eyes and golden hair, that strange combination, provocative of men's glances, which is said to be the mark of a weak character. And the full, soft pallor of her neck and shoulders, above a gold-coloured frock, gave to her personality an alluring strangeness. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... current suddenly changed, and the cold blast which had before blown out of the cave, now blew almost as strongly in. The arch of entrance was so low, that the top was about on a level with my waist; so that our faces and the upper parts of our bodies were not exposed to the current, and the strangeness of the effect was thus considerably increased. As a matter of curiosity, we lighted a bougie, and placed it on the edge of the snow, at the top of the slope of 3 or 4 feet which led down the surface of the ice, and then stood to watch the effect of ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... she was afterward to recall out of all the next day's incredible strangeness was the sudden and complete recovery of her ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... a look of mixed gladness and anxiety. Her eyes swiftly noted the change in his dress, for he had considerably modified, though not as yet wholly laid aside, the external marks of his profession. She held back from him with a certain strangeness and timidity, so that lie did not kiss her cheek, but only her hand. The first words of greeting were constrained and conventional, but at last ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... repression, such as were pursued by the new king who "knew not Joseph." The name and renown of the great minister seems still to have protected his kinsmen in the peaceful enjoyment of their privileges in the land that must by this time have lost for them most of its strangeness. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... The King, who was sitting at the Council-board with his ministers, stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence, and remained with his mouth open, in the act of uttering a word, and nobody remarked the strangeness of his conduct, for all his ministers were asleep too, just as they sat. Outside the door the sentry leaned upon his pike. In the Queen's chamber the ladies-in-waiting fell into a profound slumber in the very midst of what they were doing—one as she was hemming a handkerchief, another ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... presence of some encompassing medium of our lives. The illustration aptly fits the minds of multitudes in this generation, who live, as we all do, in the atmosphere of progressive hopes and yet are not intelligently aware of it nor conscious of its newness, its strangeness and its penetrating influence. We read as a matter of course such characteristic ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... bitterly regretted that she had no child. In this, she envied Constance. A child seemed to be the one commodity worth having. She was too free, too exempt from responsibilities. In spite of Constance she was alone in the world. The strangeness of the hazards of life overwhelmed her. Here she was at ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... corresponding to the vast dimensions of his personages. Hence he abounds in harsh compounds and over-strained epithets, and the lyrical parts of his pieces are often, from their involved construction, extremely obscure. In the singular strangeness of his images and expressions he resembles Dante and Shakspeare. Yet in these images there is no want of that terrific grace which almost all the writers of antiquity commend ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... sounds they use are the same as those he is familiar with but that there is a mysterious "accent" to these foreign languages, a certain unanalyzed phonetic character, apart from the sounds as such, that gives them their air of strangeness. This naive feeling is largely illusory on both scores. Phonetic analysis convinces one that the number of clearly distinguishable sounds and nuances of sounds that are habitually employed by the speakers of a language is far greater than they themselves recognize. Probably ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... more and more by the strangeness of the fancy, which evidently fascinated him, he buried himself in the indulgence of the thought of the possibility of some sort of communication with his wife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... doorway. He looked round the small dining-room as if he were still puzzled by its strangeness. Papa was not what he used to be. A streak of grey hair showed above each ear. Grey patches in his brown beard. Scarlet smears in the veined sallow of his eyes. His bursting, violent life had gone. He went stooping and shuffling. The house was too small for ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... in proud dejection as she meditated on the strangeness of things. Her daughter's wedding; and a detective and a journeyman printer among the honored guests! The homely disgrace of it quite bowed the heart of Mrs. Hanway-Harley. She was taken doubly aback when she learned that Mr. Gwynn was on his way ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... pause, they returned to the rest of the family. Charlotte did not stay much longer, and Elizabeth was then left to reflect on what she had heard. It was a long time before she became at all reconciled to the idea of so unsuitable a match. The strangeness of Mr. Collins's making two offers of marriage within three days was nothing in comparison of his being now accepted. She had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible that, when called into action, she would have ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... while the perfume of the roses was growing stronger and more penetrating, a light wind that had sprung up bringing it through the open window. It thrilled Dick in some singular manner, and the strangeness of the scene heightened its effect. It was like standing in a room in a dim old castle to which he had been brought as a prisoner, while the terrible old woman was his jailer. Then the click of the knitting needles brought him back to the present and reality, but ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... reaction to my presence, I discovered that she trembled at shadows, seemed like a frightened deer with a step always on its trail, was afraid of the dark. Then I wondered why I had not long before divined one cause of her strangeness. The house where I had killed one of her kin would ever be haunted for her. She had said she was a Southerner and that blood was thick. When I had thought out the matter a little further, I deliberately sat up in bed, scaring the wits out of ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... it was built up of sentry-boxes, and Hansom's cabs, and dovecots, and windmills, and pig-sties, and all sorts of other things. It was built, I see, by Ivan the Cruel, and it is said that he was so pleased with its strangeness that he put out the eyes of the unfortunate architect, to prevent his ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... were brought To this old house, an orphaned little girl, Whose large shy eyes, pale cheeks, and shrinking ways Filled all our hearts with wonder, as we stood And stared at you, until your heart o'erfilled With the oppressive strangeness, and you wept. Yes, I remember how I pitied you— I who had never wept, nor even sighed, Save on the bosom of my gentle mother; For my quick heart caught all your history When with a hurried step you sought the sun, And pressed your eyes against the windowpane ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... there are exceptions. But I should be very sorry if any young man I knew—no; why shouldn't I say you, at once?—should involve himself in any such way. One thing leads to another, especially with the young; and the very fact of irregularity, of romance, of strangeness in an acquaintance, throws a false glamour over the relation, and appeals to the sentiments ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... some measure payments according to mens abilities and estates" But the colonial legislators soon found a just distribution of the taxes a matter of great difficulty, and we are told that the new measures, "through the strangeness thereof could not but require much time of controverting and debating".[319] In 1648 the experiment was abandoned and the old oppressive tax ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one's eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in the circumstances of this sweet tragicomedy, which are unlike anything in the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge. Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of them finer geniuses than ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... unusual. It does not matter whether it is a thing, a person, an action, a misfortune; so long as it is strange and out of the range of ordinary lives, it is interesting. Many, if not most, newspaper stories have nothing but the element of strangeness in them to give them news value, but if they are sufficiently strange and unusual they may be copied all over the country. An unusual origin or an unusual rescue will give an unimportant fire great news value. And so with ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... all sense of reserve or strangeness with Mrs. Harold, but they did not know Mrs. Howland, and for a moment there seemed an ominous lull. Then ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Somewhere—somewhere—he knew of hundreds of them—or were there only a few? He tried to remember, but he could not. He did remember, however, that he had once heard them laughing; and he found himself wondering now at the strangeness of it. He hoped there was some one who would always keep them laughing—they deserved that much out of life, anyway; and some one who could understand and could administer to them lovingly—yes, that was the word—lovingly! As for himself, there was no one who could supply for ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... owned a mine in the Laurentides, some thirty miles from Quebec City—a fabulously productive mine of gold. It was an anomaly that gold should be produced in this region. No vein oL gold-bearing rock had been found, except the one on Polter's property. Alan had seen a newspaper account of the strangeness of it; and just upon the chance had come to Quebec, seen Frank Rascor on the Dufferin Terrace, and recognized him ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... Grace became accustomed to the strangeness of the faces round her, and managed to eat her dinner without much perturbation of spirit. When after dinner the squire proposed to her that they should drink the health of her papa and mamma, she ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... professor was just on the point of laying down his instrument, preparatory to seating himself at the table, when a small group of animals, which were grazing upon the crest of a distant eminence, swept for a moment across his field of view. A certain something of peculiarity and strangeness in the appearance of the creatures caused the motion of the telescope to be arrested in mid-sweep, and in another instant von Schalckenberg, deaf to the calls of his companions and the respectful reminder of the faithful steward, had his instrument focused full upon the group of animals. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... though still attended with strangeness and a sensation of incredulity. But the sight of Delvile at her lodgings, contrary to their agreement, wholly recovered her senses from the stupor which had dulled them. He came, however, but to acknowledge how highly she had obliged him, to see ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... twenty years, I ain't never yet seen a comfortable, respectable, satisfied, old maid—they ain't permitted here, and you know it. In season, of course, you'd marry—that's to be looked for. It chances to be Jude—and after you get over the strangeness, he'll do as well as any other. They are all powerfully alike when they have their senses. The sameness lies in their having their faculties. The only man as was ever different in St. Ange was Timothy Drake. He got smashed on the head by ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... from Lambert to the Baroness remained unanswered. The memory of Madame de Stael's good intentions with regard to Louis remains, therefore, only in some few young minds, struck, as mine was, by the strangeness of the story. ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... and bales now, instead of books and bat; the strange faces of the clerks, and the easy manners and handsome appearance of the rich boy, Ashton, just above him in the store,—all these contributed not a little to his sense of the newness and strangeness of ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... back in a better humour to the White Rooms, and sat down resolutely to her buttonholes. There would be no walk this morning, evidently; well, when she had done her hour's stint, she would go for a little stroll by herself. After all, perhaps Uncle John would, when the strangeness had worn off a little, enjoy having some one of his own age to talk to; of course she was very young, too young to be much ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... powers and accomplishments. I did not wonder that they were admired by you. On the rectitude of your judgement, however, I relied to keep this admiration within discreet and scrupulous bounds. I assured myself, that the strangeness of his deportment, and the obscurity of his life, would teach you caution. Of all errors, my knowledge of your character informed me that this was least likely to ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... figure, whose hand was done up in voluminous bandages, did not come out, and Jack wondered the more at what he thought was a growing strangeness on the part ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... paper lay ready cut for him in its accustomed place, but for some five minutes Mr. Taynton did not appear to notice it, though evening papers, on the money-market page, might contain news so frightfully momentous to him. But something, this strangeness in Morris, no doubt, and his general anxiety and suspense as to how this dreadful knot could unravel itself, preoccupied him now, and even when he did take up the paper and turn to the reports of Stock Exchange dealings, he was conscious of no more than a sort of subaqueous ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... prisoner a traitor and an atheist, the bystanders, who after all were Englishmen, though they had met prepared to tear Raleigh limb from limb, could bear it no longer, and they hissed the judge, as a little before they had hooted Coke. To complete the strangeness of this strange trial, when sentence had been passed, Raleigh advanced quickly up the court, unprevented, and spoke to Cecil and one or two other commissioners, asking, as a favour, that the King would permit Cobham to die first. Before he was ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse |
