"Quaint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... according to an old legend, her lithe, active form should gradually turn to stone. But if the reverse could ever be true—if the beautifying Christian graces could dwell within her soul and light up her face—as lamps illumining some rare and quaint transparency, the resulting loveliness would realize ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... joy of that lively little spirit; who, though he had been a faithful servant to his master, was always longing to enjoy his free liberty, to wander uncontrolled in the air, like a wild bird, under green trees, among pleasant fruits, and sweet-smelling flowers. "My quaint Ariel," said Prospero to the little sprite when he made him free, "I shall miss you; yet you shall have your freedom." "Thank you, my dear master," said Ariel; "but give me leave to attend your ship home with prosperous gales, before you bid farewel to the assistance of your faithful ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in a comfortable bed in a quaint old bedroom with roses nodding in at the half open casement windows. By the light of the candles they could see the strange old and carved furniture and tired as they were how they ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... bear heart-hunger is For her quaint words and bits of bird-like song; The touch of dimpled hands, the soft warm kiss, O Friend, it makes the "little ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... by way of preface, I beg my readers to fancy themselves wafted away to the shores of the Bay of Yedo—a fair, smiling landscape: gentle slopes, crested by a dark fringe of pines and firs, lead down to the sea; the quaint eaves of many a temple and holy shrine peep out here and there from the groves; the bay itself is studded with picturesque fisher-craft, the torches of which shine by night like glow-worms among the outlying forts; far ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... in several French- Canadian families, manuscript copies then made at Quebec exist to this day, of the Latin and French classics from the difficulty of procuring books; there being little intercourse then with Paris book-stores, in fact, no importations of books. Among many quaint relics of the distant days of the Messrs. Jourdain and of their successor, Monsieur Audiverti dit Romain, we saw a most curiously inlaid Marqueterie table, dating, we might be tempted to assert, from the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... his comrades, the former whose quips and quiddities, in childhood's happy days, many of us still lovingly remember; the wonderment with which we gazed at the magical tricks wrought by Harlequin and his wand; the quaint conceits and ambling gait of Pantaloon; and, last but not least, bewitching Columbine, with whom, most likely as each year came round, in youthful ardour we fell anew in love's toils, are all rapidly vanishing into ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... that midst their sportive pennons waved Thousands of angels, in resplendence each Distinct and quaint adornment. At their glee And carol smiled the Lovely One of heaven That joy was in the eyes ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... it did, for the best of all magic was shut up in the quaint little case that Polly wore inside her frock, and kissed so tenderly each night and morning. The thought that, insignificant as she was, she yet might do some good, made her very careful of her acts and words, and so anxious to keep head contented and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... are rather pretty," said Henry. He was conscious of an admiration for the old blue-and-white ware with its graceful shapes and quaint decorations savoring of mystery and the Far East, but he realized that his view was directly opposed to his wife's. This time Sylvia spoke quite in earnest. As far as the Indian china was concerned, she had her convictions. She was a ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... very odd, and it attracted my attention for that reason. I am a great collector of curios, and especially of quaint and curious rings. I have traveled the world over in search of the quaint and curious, and I have a collection of nearly five hundred rings of all patterns, makes and values. This collecting of rings has become a fad, or mania, with me. Whenever I see an odd or peculiar ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... any hour he chose, the prudent Knight [4] Desisted, and the quarry and the mound Are monuments of his unfinished task. The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps, Was once selected as the corner-stone 15 Of that [5] intended Pile, which would have been Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill, So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush, And other little builders who dwell here, Had wondered at the work. But blame him not, 20 For old Sir William was a gentle Knight, Bred in this vale, to which he appertained [6] With all his ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... quaint little bureau which he used, were kept the relics of his father; very few and poor, and of no interest to any one but himself,—only the letter telling of his death, a worn-out watch-chain, and a photograph of Senor Jose ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... The quaint little old-fashioned garments were musty and faded. A frock of blue merino braided in an elaborate pattern in black lay on top. There was a cape to match, and a little cloth cap. Beside these ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... think the promises were not made to be sat on, Sam?" said I, feeling much diverted with Sam's quaint ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... quaint picture in the warm June sunlight as the little procession neared it. The rude cross surmounting the gable above its entrance was twined with morning-glory vines that had found their way to it after hiding ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... feet, through dark circuitous ways, I plunged and stumbled; round me, far and near, Quaint hordes of eyeless phantoms did appear, Twisting and turning in a bootless chase, — When, like an exile given by God's grace To feel once more a human atmosphere, I caught the world's first murmur, large and clear, Flung from a singing river's ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... does not enjoy her quaint surprise," laughed a light voice behind me, and a slim finger directed my gaze toward the lady whom I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... helplessly with Baedeker. Nor was he a bit of a prig, Miss Winchelsea said, and indeed she detested prigs. He had a distinct undertone of humour, and was funny, for example, without being vulgar, at the expense of the quaint work of Beato Angelico. He had a grave seriousness beneath it all, and was quick to seize the moral lessons of the pictures. Fanny went softly among these masterpieces; she admitted "she knew so little about them," and she confessed that to ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... interior abounding in rich and costly detail; in heavy crimson draperies, precious old Italian cabinets, damascened armor, carved chairs with upright backs and twisted legs, old paintings in massive Florentine frames, and strange quaint pieces of Elizabethan furniture, like buffets, with open shelves full of rare and artistic things—bronzes, ivory carvings, unwieldy Majolica jars, and lovely goblets of antique Venetian glass laced with spiral ornaments of blue and crimson ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... with a well-to-do friend of mine in a beautiful little town up in Connecticut. We went to church. It was an old colonial edifice, quaint, clean, and outside on the green before it were forty or fifty automobiles, for, as my friend told me with pride, it was the richest congregation in that part ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... "You quaint child!" said the man, with a quiver of strong feeling in his tone. "You would like something prized by the giver, would you?" he added, musingly. "Well, ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the gown was completed, another group of the clever little creatures clambered up to the top of the high-backed chair in which Betty was seated, and began to arrange her hair. Some had quaint little pots in their hands from which they poured delicate perfumes over Betty's head,— Joan picked up one of the pots, which they threw aside when empty, and found to her astonishment that it was only a poppy head. Then they carefully arranged every curl and wave of Betty's hair, until she ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... by the old church and the tomb within, so I went across after leaving you and wandered about the churchyard. Close beside the corner of the north transept was the empty grave, as you know, and beside it a quaint old headstone with an interesting coat-of-arms upon it. I knelt down and tried to decipher ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... The Dragoeiro (Dracaena Draco Linn., Palma canariensis Tourn.), which an Irish traveller called a 'dragon-palm,' owed its vulgar name to the fancy that the fruit contained the perfect figure of a standing dragon with gaping mouth and long neck, spiny back and crocodile's tail. It is a quaint tree of which any ingenious carpenter could make a model. The young trunk is somewhat like that of the Oreodoxa regia, or an asparagus immensely magnified; but it frequently grows larger above than below. At first it ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... final repose. I should like to feel that my old churches were safe from demolition: that my old convents and monasteries should always shelter the pious indolence of friars and nuns. It would be pleasant to have studious monks exploring quaint corners of my unphilosophized annals, and gentle, snuff-taking abbes writing up episodes in the history of my noble families, and dedicating them to the present heirs of past renown; while the thinker and the reviewer should never penetrate ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... story told by lines of action only in the main group, no accessories being admitted. There is no undercutting anywhere, nor exhibition of technical skill, but the fondest and tenderest appliance of it; and one of the principal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subject to its quaint limit. The tale must be told within the four petals of the quatrefoil, and the wildest and playfulest beasts must never come out of their narrow corners. The attention with which spaces of this kind are filled by the Gothic designers ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... made, and which is still sometimes used, was fool-happy; but other words, like idlesse, dreariment, drowsihead, are hardly seen outside his poetry. One reason for this is that Spenser was telling stories of quaint and curious things, and he used quaint and curious words which would not naturally pass ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... characteristic act by which Ida had identified the tree—once so bruised and broken—with herself, she sat down again at its foot and thought long and deeply. The deep hush and quiet of the quaint old garden was just what she needed after the delirium of her passion and despair. Her pulse began to grow more even, and her beautiful face sweet and noble with the better thoughts she now was entertaining. As she sat there leaning her head against the bole of the tree, the shadows of the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... called out,—he always called her that when he wished to annoy her, for Nan had a special dislike to her quaint, old-fashioned name; it had been her mother's and grandmother's name; in every generation there had been a Nancy Challoner,—"come, come, Miss Nancy! we cannot have you playing at hide-and-seek in this fashion. We want some music. Give us something rousing, to keep us all awake." And Nan had reluctantly ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... awe-struck and that Washington himself sat with his head bowed in deep meditation. As the Convention adjourned, Franklin, who was then over eighty-one years of age, arose and pointing to the President's quaint armchair on the back of which was emblazoned a half sun, brilliant with gilded rays, observed: "As I have been sitting here all these weeks, I have often wondered whether yonder sun is rising or setting, but now I know that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... a note, "read (it well deserves the attention) that quaint, but most curious and learned writer's excellent ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... these profound truths prevented her from gathering some quaint ferns and berries, or from keeping her calm gray eyes open to certain practical changes that were taking place around her. She had noticed a singular thickening in the atmosphere that seemed to prevent the passage of the sun's rays, yet without ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... power. The state of business in all trades and professions may be heartbreakingly bad, but there is one profession in which there are no bad seasons—one that will survive and flourish until the world ceases to play the quaint comedy of love. All the world loves a lover, and none more so than the tattoo artist, or, to give him his professional name, Professor Sylvanus Ruffino, the world's champion, whose studio is in Commercial Road. When a young man of that district has ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... all manner of rich and quaint devices in the garniture of her room, her person, and her feminine belongings. In nothing was this more apparent than in the visiting card which she had prepared for her use. For such an article one would say that she, in her present state, could have but small need, seeing how ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to the roads?" I said, as I stood on the step looking at the quaint old fellow. "Do, lad? Why, there's plenty of stuff ar'n't there? Cutoff all the tops of the hills, and lay in the bottoms, and there you are, level road all ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... large audience, comprising an extraordinary number of literary celebrities, Mr. Artemus Ward, the noted American humorist, made his first appearance as a public lecturer on Tuesday evening, the place selected for the display of his quaint oratory being the room long tenanted by Mr. Arthur Sketchley. His first entrance on the platform was the signal for loud and continuous laughter and applause, denoting a degree of expectation which ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... handsome matronly lady, standing side by side with the horny-handed mechanic, the office-boy, the overgrown schoolboy, and the Buchanan Street "swell." They all watch the game and surroundings in their own particular way. I once heard a quaint, but nevertheless true, idea of how some of the more familiar visitors give way to a certain failing, which in itself can scarcely be called such, but is not unfrequently looked upon with amazement by the stranger. The Scotchman, it is said somewhere, is not so much respected ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... part was what he offered to the world of routine—the world he hated. The spark part—cheery, warm, enthusiastic, full of dreams, of imaginings, with an absorbing love for little bits of beauty, such as old Satsuma, Cloisonne, quaint miniatures and the like—all good, and yet within reach of his purse—this part he gave ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth avenue, and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... of the outlaw confessing to the trembling monk how, besides other crimes, he had once pushed into the Rhine a priest who had just heard his confession, and how the wife of the assassin comforted Suso when he was about to drop down from sheer fright, forms a quaint interlude in the saint's memoirs. But a more grievous trial awaited him. Among other pastoral work, he laboured much to reclaim fallen women; and a pretended penitent, whose insincerity he had detected, revenged ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... still remains in the Catholic Baptistery. The interest of this building consists in the mosaics of its cupola. On the disk, in the centre, is represented the Baptism of Christ. The Saviour stands, immersed up to His loins, in the Jordan, whose water flowing past Him is depicted with a quaint realism. The Baptist stands on His left side and holds one hand over His head. On the right of the Saviour stands an old man, who is generally said to represent the River-god, and the reed in his hand, the urn, from which water gushes, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... As Lafcadio Hearn described it—"the quaint, whimsical, wonderfully colored little town, the sweetest, queerest, darlingest little city in the Antilles.... Walls are lemon color, quaint balconies and lattices are green. Palm trees rise from courts and gardens into the warm blue sky, indescribably blue, that appears almost to touch ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... movements and heard the words, which attracted her both by their subject and by their accent—a strange one for those parts. It was quaint ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... whether civil or external, which disturbed the repose of the capital; and at the present day, no traces of it remain except the indestructible monoliths on which it stood. A "world of stone columns," to use the quaint expression of Knox, still marks the site of the Brazen Palace of Dutugaimunu, and attests the accuracy of the chronicles ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... more striking picture of desolation than that presented by one of these quaint birds, standing upon a single leg, feeling as the story has it, "den Jammer ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... daffodils danced And jostled, turning sideways to the wind. A dropping cherry petal softly glanced Over her hair, and slid away behind. At the far end through twisted cherry-trees The old house glowed, geranium-hued, with bricks Bloomed in the sun like roses, low and long, Gabled, and with quaint tricks Of chimneys carved and fretted. Out of these Grey smoke was shaken, which the faint Spring breeze Tossed into nothing. Then a ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... it very entertaining," she said. "I never saw so many quaint people. There is one girl, a Miss Dean, whom I am really getting acquainted with. She's as country as can ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower among its erect seed capsules until the first cool days of autumn kill the gnats and small winged insects not driven to cover. Then the swallows, dependent on such fare, must go to warmer climes where plenty still fly. Quaint old Gerarde claims that the Swallow-wort was so called because "with this herbe the dams restore eyesight to their young ones when their eye be put out" by swallows. Coles asserts "the swallow cureth ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... thistles, and roses; its ceiling, also of oak, beautifully panelled and ornamented. There was a great square recess in the middle of the gallery, and along one side of it a row of bow-windows, through whose diamond panes a fine view was afforded of the quaint old garden and balconies below. Here, doubtless, knights and dames of the olden time had danced, coquetted, quarrelled, and been reconciled. Within those deep embrasures courtiers in ruffs and plumes had sued for ladies' favors, and plotted deep intrigues ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his village!" I continued. "The circumstance is quaint enough. It seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts that make life beautiful, and people and places dear—and from which it would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yet arrived only at the close of the fourth century B.C., and the fall of the Thirty Tyrants. Two of the six compartments in which he proposes, to use his own quaint phrase, "to exhaust the free life of collective Hellas," still remain to be accomplished. But the history of Greece is written. Stirring events and great names are still to come; the romantic enterprise of Cyrus and the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the elective ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... me indirectly through a friend by Mr. Andrew Lang. They have been translated from the modern version written by Sadanami Sanjin. These stories are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The house was quaint, with clapboards running up and down, neatly trimmed, and there were five rooms, a tiny porch, a rosy front yard, and unbelievably delicious strawberries in the rear. A South Carolinian, lately come to the Berkshire ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ways of amusing his leisure. He was a tolerable actor in private theatricals, and was particularly successful in the part of Lothario. A handsome leg, to which both painters and satirists took care to give prominence, was among his chief qualifications for the stage. He devised quaint dresses for masquerades. He dabbled in geometry, mechanics, and botany. He paid some attention to antiquities and works of art, and was considered in his own circle as a judge of painting, architecture, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... itself was old and quaint and rambling, part of the old wattle and dab walls yet remaining in some of the outhouses, as well as the grey shingle roof. There was a more modern part, for the house had been added to from time to time by different owners, though no additions had been made since Norah's father brought ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... truth is wrenched from its old combinations, and presented to us in new, impassable, abysmal contrast with its opposite error. A trifle, some slender character, some jest, quip, or spiritual toy, is shaped into the most quaint, yet often truly living form; but shaped somehow as with the hammer of Vulcan, with three strokes that might have helped to forge an AEgis. The treasures of his mind are of a similar description with the mind itself; his knowledge is gathered from all the kingdoms ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... seen color on any solid forms, that did not, to my mind, neutralize all other power; the porcelains of Luca della Robbia are painful examples, and in lower art, Florentine mosaic in relief; gilding is more admissible, and tells sometimes sweetly upon figures of quaint design, as on the pulpit of St^a. Maria Novella, while it spoils the classical ornaments of the mouldings. But the truest grandeur of sculpture I believe to be in the white form; something of this ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... have been revealed to the English reader by Mrs. Trollope; and when, some time since, her letters upon the "Social Aspects of Revolution in Italy," were collected and published in book-form, they met with the cordial approbation of the critics. These letters are marked by purity of style, quaint picturesqueness, and an admirable couleur locale. As a translator, Mrs. Trollope possesses very rare ability. Her natural aptitude for language is great. A residence in Italy of seventeen years has made her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... of rest here captivating?" she continued. "Look at that quaint garden, and this ragged lawn, and the great river in front, and the superannuated fort beyond the river! Everything is peaceful, even down to the poor old General's little bed-room. One would like to lie down in it and sleep a century or two. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... when it suddenly turned and bolted through the hole into the beehive, I observed that it had no tail—not even a vestige of such a creation,—and thus discovered that it was a "Tottie," or Hottentot boy. The sublime, the quaint, the miserable, the ridiculous, and the beautiful, were before me in that scene. Let me expound these five "heads" ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... palm-leaves and covered in at top, a regular native African hut, in short, such as is pictured in books, and such as I once got up from dried palm-leaves, for a fair, at home. This hut is now crammed with men, singing at the top of their voices, in one of their quaint, monotonous, endless, negro-Methodist chants, with obscure syllables recurring constantly, and slight variations interwoven, all accompanied with a regular drumming of the feet and clapping of the hands, like castanets. Then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... being occupied, and every nook in the garden too, we are accommodated with a rustic table in the "Grand Salon," part of which is screened off as a kind of bar. The "Grand Salon" is also full of quaint pictures and eccentric curiosities; it is cool and airy, bright flowers are in the windows, and the floor is sanded. We had stopped here to refresh the horses, intending to breakfast at Etretat. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... clean streets, handsome buildings, and attractive homes. Many quaint and picturesque old buildings line its avenues; but in the newer parts of the town and in the suburbs ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... of newspapers which had been carefully preserved from time to time, including copies of the "Pennsylvania Gazette," edited by Benjamin Franklin, and also of the latter's publications known as "Poor Richard's Almanack," full of quaint sayings and maxims. Over the shelf were some deer's antlers and on these rested two muskets, with the powder horns and bullet pouches hanging beneath. Behind the door stood another musket, loaded and ready for use, should an enemy or a wild ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... subjects who decided to try their fortune in the Western World after the signing of the Peace of Paris in 1763 was one Andrew Jackson, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian of the tenant class, sprung from a family long resident in or near the quaint town of Carrickfergus, on the northern coast of Ireland, close by the newer and ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... light, bright though soft, of the tall candles burning in grotesque holders fell on the curtains of violet velvet, starred with the golden lilies of France, on the rare tapestry, that covered the walls, on embroidered cushions and quaint carvings. There were flowers in abundance everywhere; but their scent was killed by something that burned in a cup held by a little bronze Ganymede, the odour of which filled the room with a sweet but heavy scent. This room, like the other, was likewise ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... antagonism between rich and poor, which the collapse of feudal relations had strained to breaking-point, was not perhaps normally so intense as it is to-day; yet there was certainly much oppression and unnecessary hardships to be suffered by the weak, even in that age. The Ancren Riwle, that quaint form of life for ankeresses drawn up by a Dominican in the thirteenth century, shows that even then, despite the distance of years and the passing of so many generations, the manners and ways and mental attitudes of people depended very much as to whether they were among those ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... world And the wide sweep of billows lightly curled. Each page the Master writ she read, close furled In lotus blooms, or, 'mong the storm-clouds whirled; Or traced, star-lettered, on the flaming scroll The night unwinds toward the southern pole. And sometimes wiling idle days, she wove In quaint device, gems from her treasure-trove, Rare garlanded, or set in flashing zone Soft emerald, sapphire pale, and many a stone Out-gleaming amethyst. Her yellow hair Among, the glinting diamonds shone. And there The ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... My two friends had entered upon a theme which they could never exhaust; one pleasantly narrating the wonders and sights of Paris, the other describing with his true native eloquence the beauties of his country, and repeating the old local Irish legends, which appeared to me quaint ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... to divert his thoughts from his crime, and at the same time tried to reap its reward by studying the stolen recipe; but his attempt was not successful. The cramped letters, brown with age, on the brown parchment, danced before his eyes; and the quaint, intricate High German phraseology became more and more involved. He could make nothing of it at all. And the thought occurred to him that perhaps he never would be able to make anything of it—that, without losing any part of the penalty justly attendant upon his crime, ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... moaned and the snow danced fitfully, within a certain quaint farmhouse in Northern New York was warmth and comfort, all the more apparent by the ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... the willows, he caught a glimpse of a mill near-by on a branch stream, and of the thatched roof of the mill-house where the house-leeks were growing. For all ornament, the quaint cottage was covered with jessamine and honeysuckle and climbing hops, and the garden about it was gay with phloxes and tall, juicy-leaved plants. Nets lay drying in the sun along a paved causeway raised above the ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... very romantic, with all its memories of olden times. Nobody should go to Belgium without visiting Bruges, once so famous and now so fallen, not only because it is picturesque, with its old buildings and quaint views such as artists love to paint, but also because it is so quiet that you can watch the customs of a Belgian town without being disturbed by a crowd—the market-folk with their wares spread out on the stones of the street, the small ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... timber, which led the eye down by slow descents into the beautiful valley of the Ell. Here the silver river wound its gentle way through lush and poplar-bordered marshes, where the cattle stand knee-deep in flowers; past quaint wooden mill-houses, through Boisingham Old Common, windy looking even now, and brightened here and there with a dash of golden gorse, till it was lost beneath the picturesque cluster of red-tiled roofs that marked the ancient town. Look which way he would, the view was lovely, and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... balconies and gratings and fretwork of iron painted in gaudy colors gave an Oriental touch. The fronts were a riot of color. The fronts of the joss houses and the restaurants were brightened with many colored lanterns, quaint carved gilded woodwork, potted plants and dwarf trees. Up and down these narrow streets every hour in the twenty-four you could hear the gentle tattoo, for he seemed never to sleep, never to be in a hurry and always moving. Stop on any corner five minutes ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... a tiny old woman with a little, softly-triangular face, and large, soft blue eyes that were alight with unquenchable youth, and as full of hopes as a girl's. She had pink cheeks and snow-white hair which she wore in quaint little puffs ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the emeutes which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the picture-gallery of modern French artists, whom ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you loiter, flowing-gowned And hugely sashed, with pins a-row Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, Demure, inviting—even so, When merry maids in Miyako To feel the sweet o' the year began, And green gardens to overflow, I loved you once in ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... apple tree?" The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... their picturesque line of gables, their fretted fronts, their gilded turrets and fanciful vanes, their castellated gateways, the jutting oriels from which the great noble looked down on his new Italian garden, on its stately terraces and broad flights of steps, its vases and fountains, its quaint mazes, its formal walks, its lines of yews cut into grotesque shapes in hopeless rivalry of the cypress avenues of the South. Nor was the change less within than without. The life of the Middle Ages concentrated itself in the vast castle hall, where the baron looked from his upper dais ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... is nothing else appointed.—Tell me, however, what has become of your Book on England? We shall really be obliged to you for that. A piece of it went through all the Newspapers, some years ago; which was really unique for its quaint kindly insight, humor, and other qualities; like an etching by Hollar or Durer, amid the continents of vile smearing which are called "pictures" at present. Come on, Come on; give us the Book, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... very old and very cunning; but in either state exercising much more influence in life than women in the East do now; of good-natured, capricious, though sometimes tyrannical monarchs; and of life full of quaint mysteries, quite unintelligible in every phasis, and on that account ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... faith and hope had sustained her in those terrible hours, when the shrieks of the mangled and the cries of the dying had pierced her heart, and when torture and death stared her full in the face. Ethan, in his own quaint terms, had confessed that her prayers and her unwavering trust in God had awed him and solemnized his mind, thus raising him to a level with the momentous issues he was to meet. She felt that her prayers for herself and the brave prairie boy had been answered, not only ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... quaint hamlets that nestled more far, Were contrabands pining to know the north star; And home guards so loath to leave home and its joys, But who dreamed not they staid prize for Averill's boys. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... why, I love not this day's doings half so well As our quaint meeting-time at Compiegne. A clammy air creeps round me, as from vaults Peopled with looming spectres, chilling me And ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the doctor's quaint conceit about the garters, but Murphy called them back to the business ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... now - it may be, something more - Woman and man were human to the core. The hearts that throbbed behind that quaint attire Burned with a plenitude of essential fire. They too could risk, they also could rebel, They could love wisely - they could love too well. In that great duel of Sex, that ancient strife Which is the very central ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... about this in a minute, and says how quaint and jolly Bohemian it will be. The Bigler barn is just the place, with no horse there since Metta bought one of the best-selling cars that ever came out of Michigan, and Vernabelle says she has written a couple of stunning ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Rollick's preserves, for a quiet stroll with my father by the old peach wall,—sometimes silent, indeed, and already musing over the future, while he was busy with the past, but amply rewarded when, suspending his lecture, he would pour forth hoards of varied learning, rendered amusing by his quaint comments, and that Socratic satire which only fell short of wit because it never passed into malice. At some moments, indeed, the vein ran into eloquence; and with some fine heroic sentiment in his old books, his stooping form rose ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peculiar charm ungranted as yet to her European sisters. It is the charm of freedom, of ease, of a certain external and skin-deep emancipation—an emancipation which goes but a little way down, yet adds a quaint and piquant grace of manner. What she conspicuously lacks, on the other hand, is essential femininity; by which I don't mean womanliness—of that she has enough and to spare—but the wholesome physical and instinctive qualities which go to make up a sound and well-equipped ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... party began to talk in German with great animation. They told each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly over 'Billy'—this being a nickname discovered for the German Emperor—and what he would be saying of the Czar's trip; they questioned each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were going to see, with great interest, displaying ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... franc piece, and waved him off; I had no idea what I owed him; I did not want to hear his voice; it might break the spell; mutely I followed my fate. I overtook the boy in a short time and asked him to come and have a drink, and he said to me in his quaint French way: ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... you might read the 'Odyssey'; the 'Iliad' is fine, but less equal in the translation, as well as less interesting in itself. What is stupidly said of Shakspeare, is really true and appropriate of Chapman; mighty faults counterpoised by mighty beauties. Excepting his quaint epithets which he affects to render literally from the Greek, a language above all others blest in the happy marriage of sweet words, and which in our language are mere printer's compound epithets—such as quaffed ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... than that," answered Madam, smiling over the recollection of some of her quaint speeches. "She is lovable. She has 'the divine ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... linger about London of certain ancient societies, the members of which may still occasionally be seen in quaint gilt barges pursuing their own difficult way among the swarming steamers; when on certain days, the traditions concerning which are fast dying out of memory, the Fishmongers' Company, the Goldsmiths' Company, the Mercers' ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Helped in this quaint fashion and in others the colony prospered and grew ever larger. It would have prospered even more had it not been for the outbreak of a kind of plague, which the colonists simply called "the sickness." It attacked chiefly the new settlers, and was ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... feeling. The brilliant pictures of feudal society in the romances of Scott and Fouque give no faithful image of that society, even when they are carefully correct in all ascertainable historical details.[1] They give rather the impression left upon an alien mind by the quaint, picturesque features of a way of life which seemed neither quaint nor picturesque to the men who lived it, but only to the man who turns to it for relief form the prosaic, or at least familiar, conditions ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... quaint, pretty fashion of calling Lady Peters by the French appellation maman. She turned to her now, with a charming smile. She shook out the perfumed folds of her dress—she smoothed the fine ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... in bringing some quaint, old-fashioned little body, before a gathering of your more fastidious friends, at once to reconcile them to his or her strange, ungainly mien, and to justify yourself for acknowledging an intimacy with so eccentric a creature, by following up the prosy and ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... wind, as wandering winds will do, Brought to the baby there Sweet smells from some quaint flower that grew Out on ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... his own superb chantry as memorials of his architectural skill. Elsewhere in this book is a fuller description of this beautiful tomb demolished by Wyatt. He himself was buried at Windsor; in an arch opposite his tomb was a missal carved in stone with a quaint inscription, beginning, "Who leyde this boke here." He is said to have been the first chancellor of the Order of the Garter, although Dr. Milner assigns that honour to William de Edingdon. Whether the first or not, he and his ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... and her nephew, both felt particularly wide awake. They considered it the finest place they had seen since the capital of Ohio. The people wore quaint, but handsome clothes. They saw Quaker bonnets and broad-brimmed hats. Richmond is yet called the Quaker city of Indiana. But what Robert Day and Corinne noticed particularly was the array of wagons moved ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Luke's Church, Sault Ste. Marie, on the 27th of October; the Bishop took a great fancy to Ningwinnena, became his godfather, and gave him his own name, Frederick. Everyone indeed loved the Neepigon boy; he was so gentle in his ways, so quiet and polite in his manner, and made such quaint efforts to converse in English. He seemed so pleased too at any ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... lead to what was right. Insensibly almost, my pride was quelled, and I became humble and religiously inclined. Even the peculiarities of the sect, their meeting at their places of worship, their drawling, and their quaint manner of talking, became no longer a subject of dislike. I found out causes and good reasons for everything which before appeared strange—sermons in stones, and good in everything. Months passed away—my ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker; and Mr. Hawthorne's personality is peculiar, and specially peculiar in a new country like America. He is quiet, fanciful, quaint, and his humour is shaded by a meditativeness of spirit. Although a Yankee, he partakes of none of the characteristics of a Yankee. His thinking and his style have an antique air. His roots strike down through the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... service, to the great joy of that lively little spirit; who, though he had been a faithful servant to his master, was always longing to enjoy his free liberty, to wander uncontrolled in the air, like a wild bird, under green trees, among pleasant fruits, and sweet-smelling flowers. 'My quaint Ariel,' said Prospero to the little sprite when he made him free, 'I shall miss you; yet you shall have your freedom.' 'Thank you, my dear master,' said Ariel; 'but give me leave to attend your ship home with prosperous gales, before you bid ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... pages visited Sulgrave a few years since. It was in a quiet rural neighborhood, where the farm-houses were quaint and antiquated. A part only of the manor house remained, and was inhabited by a farmer. The Washington crest, in colored glass, was to be seen in a window of what was now the buttery. A window on which the whole family arms was emblazoned had been removed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... these pieces of sculpture are genuine old Italian. This quaint little fountain came from ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... should certainly be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the house of his foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carved oak mantels and curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within the dock-gates, with a quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to a Swiss chalet, leading down into the yard. In London these apartments were his sole domicile; though, to his friends, none of whom lived nearer to him than Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece of conduct too flagrantly eccentric—on ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... several of the men on guard were assembled, amusing themselves at the expense of the departing peasantry, whose uncouth physiognomy and strange clownish appearance afforded abundant food for the quaint jokes and comical remarks of the soldiers. The market people were, for the most part, women, old men, and boys; the able-bodied men from the country around Pampeluna, having, with few exceptions, left their homes, either voluntarily or by compulsion, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... round. Close behind me stood the tall figure of a man, dressed in raiment of quaint and singular fashion, but of goodly materials. He was in the prime and vigour of manhood; his features handsome and noble, but full of calmness and benevolence; at least I thought so, though they were somewhat shaded by a hat of finest beaver, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... one of which showed Billy Neilson in one pose or another. Up-stairs, where William's chaos of treasures filled shelves and cabinets, the place of honor was given to a small black velvet square on which rested a pair of quaint Battersea enamel mirror knobs. In Cyril's rooms—usually so austerely bare—a handsome Oriental rug and several curtain-draped chairs hinted at purchases made at the instigation of a taste ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... The quaint and honest fellow had taken a great liking to his guests, and looked forward to their speedy departure with ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... little room. My room was in a wing of the house, over the dining-room, and the windows looked out on the river. It was not large, but was very pretty. The windows were curtained, and the bed was dainty, and the little mantel was draped, and the ornaments and pictures were quaint and ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... Rochester, in Kent—Shakespeare's Gad's Hill, where Falstaff engaged in the robbery—is a quaint little country-house of Queen Anne's time. I happened to be walking past, a year and a half or so ago, with my sub-editor of "Household Words," when I said to him: "You see that house? It has always a curious interest for me, because when I was a small boy ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... characteristic. It passed with several, but an old lady who was a more discerning critic than the others remarked that it was "katta katta saja"—mere conversation; meaning that it was destitute of the quaint and figurative expressions which adorn their own poetry. Their language in common speaking is proverbial and sententious. If a young woman prove with child before marriage they observe it is daulu buah, kadian bunga—the fruit before the flower. Hearing of a person's ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... filled his pipe, while Meyer helped himself to squareface in an absent manner. As for Benita, she stared at the quaint old coin, which had a hole in it, wondering with what scenes of terror and of bloodshed ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... on the ocean wave!" sang out Whopper. "This steam yacht would take the first prize at any cattle show, eh?" And this quaint remark ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... gutta-bearing forests. Its inhabitants are a ruffianly lot of Malays, who are preyed upon by a family of Wans, a semi-royal set of nobles who do their best to live up to their traditions. Below the rapids the natives are chiefly noted for the quaint pottery that they produce from the clay which abounds there, and the rude shapes and ruder tracery of their vessels have probably suffered no change since the days when Solomon's fleets sought gold and ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... he the requisite accent, might just have arrived from Bond Street. He has a trim moustache. Awfully attractive blue eyes! He lives on a farm at Sollers, Maryland. No one else, it seems, is so familiar with the unusual corners of New York City, the sort of places that get themselves called "quaint." No one else manages the affairs of young lovers (on paper) with quite so much of the airy spirit of young love. I can think of no one else who could write such a scene as that in The Owl Taxi, where the dead-wagon, on its way in the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... crowned by the Doctor's residence, with a perpendicular avenue straight up hill, and a negro attendant opening the gate at the foot for Dr. Stevenson, mounted on his horse and returning home. It is a very quaint and ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... a room screened off into three sections. One shaded lamp high up near the ceiling served to light all the cubicles, which were heated by small charcoal stoves. These cubicles were identical in shape and appointment, each being draped with quaint Chinese tapestry and containing rugs, a silken divan, an armchair, and ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... so quiet as during the calm which succeeded the storm of the past week, especially as that calm came on a Sunday, that quietest of all days in the North. Even the twittering of the sparrows on the quaint housetops seemed less noisy than usual, and the women who stood in groups in the narrow street, with their clean mutch caps, their crimson hubbie jackets and coarse blue gowns, suppressed their voices almost into whispers as they talked ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... years before had read the history of Ghent, was greatly interested in the quaint old town; though it was difficult to imagine from the appearance of its quiet streets that its inhabitants had once been the most turbulent in Europe. Here Von Artevelde was killed, and the streets often ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... An old English writer, with quaint eloquence, declares, "There is a proportion between an atom and the universe, because both are quantitative. All this excesse vanisheth into nothing as soon as the lowest substance shineth out of that orbe where they ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... oracle, and mothers, who were not troubled with a superfluity of servants, were glad to welcome one to their household who had such a wondrous talent for amusing them, and keeping them still. In spite of all her oddities, she was respected for her industry and simplicity, and a certain quaint, old-fashioned, superstitious piety, that made a streak of light through ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... he decided: "A little man, well groomed, clean shaven, a soldierly appearance." The other smiled: "All right, come along." A quaint building in the form of a chalet appeared to the left; and to the right side, almost opposite, was the main house. It was a strange-looking building, where there was a mixture of everything, a mingling of Gothic fortress, manor, villa, hut, residence, cathedral, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... stayed in John's dirty little shanty, caring for little Murdock as tenderly as a mother. He cooked for the child, he sang to him, he carried him in his arms for hours, and soothed him with a hundred quaint fancies. He superintended the cleaning of the house and scolded John's wife soundly on her shiftless ways; he showed her how to bake bread and cook little dishes to tempt the child's appetite, winning thereby her undying gratitude. She understood but little of the scolding, but ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... no fault of his; but sooner or later all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to powder, like the golden calf,—word-images as well as metal and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm,—but the only way to get at truth. It is, indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers," hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie occupation; veritas odium parit, truth never goeth without a scratcht face; he that will be busie with voe vobis, let him ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the neighborhood assert the origin of the manor and its quaint, happy and not unmusical ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... one passes along High Street, that one might be some days in town without so much as suspecting that one of the finest cathedrals in England was a near neighbor. It was almost by chance, I remember, that as we turned into a long, quaint alley-way, filled up with little, low shops, we caught a glimpse of a green plot of grass and some trees in the distance. Our guiding instinct divined these to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... the days of church-building—the days of the circular arch, round column, and zigzag moulding; of doorways whose round arch, adorned with border after border of rich or quaint device, almost bewilder us with the multiplicity of detail; of low square towers, and solid walls; of that kind of architecture called Norman, but more properly a branch of ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... not of the quaint type, nor was their home picturesque. The place and the people were merely old-fashioned, and they were almost primitive in their ways. They were kind-hearted and hospitable, but they were of the rugged New England class that has lost the ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... ceaseless worry to Lucy, who had developed into a "stylish" girl, and would have died sooner than she would have rejected the universal pompadour of the period. It was the single vanity that Virginia had ever permitted herself, this adhering at middle-age to the quaint and rather coquettish hairdressing of her girlhood: and Fate had punished her by threading the little curls with grey, while Susan's stiff roll (she had adopted the newer mode) remained bravely flaxen. But Susan was one of those women who, lacking a fine fair skin and ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... bully!" she echoed, in such quaint reflection of his exclamation that Peter laughed outright. "Now, sit down again, sar," she invited. And when Peter had again disposed himself at the side of this light-hearted ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... replied Miss Smith, laughing so that a number of little bracelets jingled most tunefully together. "I came to see you. We smiled at one another in chapel. It was your first time, wasn't it? Didn't you think it all awfully quaint?" ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... nevertheless managed to enjoy herself. She loved the country, and was delighted with the variety of the English landscape. Though less rich than the vineclad south, the greenness of its fields and hedges never failed to amaze her, and she was fascinated by the quaint villages, their thatched roofs, church spires, and flowery gardens. They had been running through Gloucestershire en route for Somerset and Devon, and were to call a halt at various show places on the way. Major ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... mobilisation, and does not necessitate the employment of the pernicious system of enforced celibacy. Lastly, I have scarcely spoken of the domestic and family customs of the Kukuanas, many of which are exceedingly quaint, or of their proficiency in the art of smelting and welding metals. This science they carry to considerable perfection, of which a good example is to be seen in their "tollas," or heavy throwing knives, the backs of these weapons being made of hammered iron, and the edges of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... to the plane of the vulgar or common-place. The very perfection of his work hinders the reader from perceiving at once how good of its kind it is. * * With the added charm of a most delicate humor—a real humor, mellow, tender, and informed by a singularly quaint and racy fancy—his stories ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston |
