"Queer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sacred rights of the Orthodox Church, and pretended (as is usual with all parties in going to war) that he was challenged to the fight, and that his cause was just. He then invoked the aid of Almighty Power. It was rather a queer thing for a warlike sovereign, entering upon an aggressive war to gratify ambition, to quote the words of David: "In thee, O Lord, have I trusted: let me not be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... "It is rather queer. I've often taken the gas myself—just for fun. Now, Alma, if you will let down the curtains, and close the shutters, and make the room dark, I'll light the lantern ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... she slipped out, while the other teachers gathered in one of the larger rooms to chat and unroll their luncheons. These were wrapped in little fancy napkins that were carefully shaken and folded to serve for the next day. As the Everglade teachers had dismissed Mrs. Preston from the first as queer, her absence from the noon gossip was rather ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... 'It's a queer business that book. My chief here is awfully sick about it. So are a good many other English. Why should an Englishman come out here and write a book to run down Italy?—And an Englishman that's been in the Government, too—so of course what he says'll have ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The position of the queer old door and the odd presence of the leering mask suggested one thing above all others as appertaining to the mansion's past history—intrigue. By the alley it had been possible to come unseen from all sorts of quarters in the town—the old ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Parson launched it in the air again, raising two fingers in whimsical blessing, then he looked down at Ishmael with a queer expression in his eyes. That was Ishmael's fate, of which he was as yet unconscious—no one looked at him absolutely naturally. His mother saw him with aversion, Archelaus with resentment, and the younger brothers and the little ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... and the little trapped creatures clung to its bars, gesturing at the youngsters with queer, quick motions—almost as though ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... horse was going a little too fast, and Tom was calling out, 'Gently! gently!' two strangers came up. 'What an odd thing that is!' said one: 'there is a cart going along, and I hear a carter talking to the horse, but yet I can see no one.' 'That is queer, indeed,' said the other; 'let us follow the cart, and see where it goes.' So they went on into the wood, till at last they came to the place where the woodman was. Then Tom Thumb, seeing his father, cried out, 'See, father, here I am with the cart, all right and ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... down here are a queer lot; but I have hunted up two or three jolly cocks, and we contrive to keep the place alive between us. Of course, all the knockers came off the first night I arrived, and to-morrow we are going to climb out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 25, 1841 • Various
... repeated treble whistlings: they still distressed him with a mysterious unriddled summons, but Mike Terrier had told him that the secret of respectability is to ignore whatever you don't understand. Careful observation of this maxim had somewhat dulled the cry of that shrill queer music. It now caused only a faint pain in his mind. Still, he walked that way because the little meadow by the pond was agreeably soft underfoot. Also, when he walked close beside the water the voices were ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... "You queer little person," he said affectionately. "Tell me instead about yourself. What is a day like at your place of business? Do you mind—it helps to concentrate my attention—if I hold your hand ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... to explain for a few readers how floods do their ill work. The rain which falls on treeless mountains is not absorbed there. The water washes down the mountain sides, bringing with it first good soil and then subsoil, stones and rock. The hills eventually become those peaked deserts the queer look of which must have puzzled many students of Japanese pictures. The debris washed away is carried into the rivers, along with trees from the lower slopes, and the level of the river beds is raised. Because there is less space in the river beds for water the rivers overflow their ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the fish-houses and flakes that crop out like queer mushrooms on stilts all over the edges of the cove, and it was a shaky damsel who shuddered over the passing of a wobbly plank. The crew of two waited below in the boat, and smiled encouragingly, so that I had to try and show more bravery than I really felt. I had no desire ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... care what the little fellows do to you," said Monte. "But you don't want to queer yourself any further with her, do you? Now, listen. She thinks you tried to shoot yourself. By that much I have a hunch she thinks ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... little way from the house he threw away his cigarette. The scavenger thought the whole business a little queer, and he picked up the cigarette and ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... small yard, and as plainly seen through my glass as though not six feet away. I saw his beak and throat, and am absolutely certain that he delivered every note. The absorbed singer stood there motionless a long time, and carried on this queer conversation with himself. It sounded precisely like two birds, one of whom was mocking or ridiculing the other ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... the velvet carpet as they walked under the dim arches to the front seat. His aunts and his uncles and his brother's big friends from the training camp seemed suddenly to appear out of the shadows and silently fill the front rows. In the queer light he kept recognizing familiar faces that smiled and nodded at him in the dimness. Even Miss Shake and Nannie looked queer in the pew behind. Nannie was dressed in her "day-off" clothes. She was crying. Herbert looked about him wonderingly: yes, Miss ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... children—there were three of us, one brother and two sisters—used to watch for the post, on the all-important day, as anxiously as a cat ever watched for a mouse. Peter Packer, the bearer of these weekly dispatches, deserves a little notice. He was a queer man, at least he had that reputation in our neighborhood. As long as I can remember, he went his rounds; and, for aught I know, he is going to ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... her voice, no sound of apology. She spoke like one who had a right there, and this it was which angered me and made me lose my self-command. Starting to my feet, I confronted her where she sat in my chair, by Guy's bedside, with those queer blue eyes of hers fixed so questioningly upon me as if she wondered at ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... called from the hillside their quaint "Spring o' the year," the song sparrows sang their tinkling melody from the live oaks, catbirds mewed from the thicket, and occasionally a linnet sang its rollicking solo as it performed queer acrobatic feats while on ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... all about it. Mrs. Sewall has got a niece or somebody or other with her, for the rest of the summer, and the ball is being given in her honor. Gale Oliphant, I believe the girl's name is. But look here, it seems very queer to me that I'm the one to be giving you this information instead of Breck. What does it all mean anyhow? Come, confess. You must have had a tiff ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... putting on flesh," said Doyle, "it's a queer thing, for the life's fair tormented out ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... speak of must have been contiguous to the house we occupied—I recall it as most intimately and objectionably near—and carried on in the interest of those parents from New York who, in villeggiatura under the queer conditions of those days, with the many modern mitigations of the gregarious lot still unrevealed and the many refinements on the individual one still undeveloped, welcomed almost any influence that might help at all to form ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... now leaning forward on his elbows and laughing foolishly, stupidly. It was a queer laugh, and struck terror into Brent as he himself coughed and clutched involuntarily at his throat. Brent ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... A queer thrill ran through the impressionable man. The tiny fingers seemed to close round his heart.... It was a bonny, good-natured, gurgling scrap—and the pure eyes looked truthfully ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... found himself tucked in Mrs. Tobin's bundle for Jack Tobin, who had never had that sort of valentine, or indeed any sort, in his life. And it was queer how all day long the thought of that new sort of valentine he had sent out made Davie ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 7, February 15, 1914 • Various
... pier - a queer old wooden pier, fortunately without the slightest pretensions to architecture, and very picturesque in consequence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, sails, ballast, and rickety capstans, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... for two months but I'm going to begin to sit up at night," sobbed the lady from a queer Keokuk name as I took her into my embrace on account of her ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... you know how Sophia will insist upon explaining. She will call up the servants, and 'fend and prove,' and make complaints and regrets, and in the long end have all on her own side. And I can tell you that Ann has been queer lately, and Elizabeth talks of leaving at Martinmas. O Charlotte! put up with things, my dear. There is only you ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... than 'elmets, I will say that for them. (They enter Modern Venice, amidst cries of "This way for Gondoala Tickets! Pass along, please! Keep to your right!" &c., &c.) It does have a foreign look, with all those queer names written up. Think it's like ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... played, they are always successful. Those philanthropic folk who want to reform women's dress, and call upon the world to observe how the present style contracts the chest, and forces the organs of the body out of place (what a queer expression it seems, "organs"!) have not a chance in Brighton. Girls lace tight and "go in" for the tip of the fashion, yet they bloom and flourish as green bay trees, and do not find their skirts any obstacle in walking or tennis. The horse-riding that goes on is a thing ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... of drawers in the room, with shining brass handles and ornaments; and at one side, near the door, was a heavy mahogany table, on which I saw a large leather-covered Bible, a decanter of wine and some glasses, beside some cakes in a queer old tray. And there was no other furniture but a great number of chairs which seemed to have been collected from different parts of ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... I'll write them all down most explicitly. And then I want a scarf, a very long one, cream-coloured ground, with a Persian border in blues and greys. But not a palm-leaf border—I mean that queer stencilled sort of a design; I'll draw a pattern of it ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... said Courtier: "Alive as a face; no end to its queer beauty! And, by Jove, if you went deep enough, you'd find ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at this state of affairs, and he was consequently happier, Jo, for some reason unexplained, was not. In fact, he was decidedly queer; now gay, now horribly cynical, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... shaken and the majority opined that it was a great pity. The Master was a likely young fellow; he could have his pick of almost anybody, you might think; it was too bad that he should go and take up with that queer, dumb niece of the Gordons who had been brought up in such a heathenish way. But then you never could guess what way a man's fancy would jump when he set out to pick him a wife. They guessed Neil Gordon didn't like it much. He seemed to have got dreadful moody ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not obliged to answer them, Roxbury," she said. The flush had deepened in her cheek. It convinced him that she was in love—and engaged. He experienced a queer sinking of the heart. "You can say that you don't know, if anyone should be so rude as to ask." Suddenly she caught her breath and stared at him in a sort of panic. "Heavens," she whispered, the toast poised half-way to her ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... "And you must know they've three children, no servant, and scarcely any means. He gets something from the Academy," she went on briskly, trying to drown the distress that the queer change in Anna Pavlovna's manner to her had ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... should think it was!" cried Marjorie; "and Mother, will we all have motor coats and goggles, and all those queer things that ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... through Redman's Dell, dank and dark with tall romantic trees, was left behind in another moment; and we were now traversing the homely and antique street of the little town, with its queer shops and solid steep-roofed residences. Up Church-street I contrived a peep at the old gray tower where the chimes hung; and as we turned the corner a glance at the 'Brandon Arms.' How very small and low that palatial hostelry of ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... style. His appearance had already caught my attention when we were sitting among the desks, and had given me an impression that he was not bad-looking. Also I had noticed that he was very talkative. Yet what struck me most about his physiognomy was a tuft, of queer red hairs which he had under his chin, as well as, still more, a strange habit of continually unbuttoning his waistcoat and scratching ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... of all sorts. He sifted it carefully for good ammunition and bombs, and formed the rest into a parapet with the assistance of sandbags. Sometimes when he was tired he took a turn at keeping the enemy from becoming too venturesome on the cliff brink. Queer shapes stood out against the stars, but whether they were always Turks he could not tell, as from long sleeplessness and strain his sight was inclined to play him tricks. Anyhow he ran no risks. Somehow or other the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... him!" answered the boy. "If he were the devil folk think him, I would not fear him; but though there is something queer about him, he's no more a devil than you are, and that's what I would not tell ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and, I ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I looked at him in silence. He was a curious wizened man, apparently over fifty years of age, with thin hands that looked as tough as wire. His nose was much sharper than is usual among these races, and he had a queer habit of holding his head sideways like a bird when he spoke, which, in addition to the humour that lurked in his eye, gave him a most comical appearance. Another strange thing about him was that he had a single white lock of hair among his black ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... last two weeks I've felt very queer about keeping Tom's disappearance a secret. At first I dreaded to have any one know, on account of Fairy Godmother's horror of gossip and on my own account, too. She was afraid that some malicious person might start the story that he had purposely dropped out of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... the unity of the Supreme Being. Vandin avails himself of various system of Philosophy to combat his opponent. He begins with the Buddhistic system. The form of the dialogue is unique in literature being that of enigmas and the latent meaning is in a queer way hid under the appearance of puerile ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... came slowly, and touched me in a queer evasive way on my shoulder. Finally he drew a long breath, and gripped me by the arm. "Don't you recognize it?" "It's the dream! See! The stone wall—the field—the sumac! Now that's the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... inner office, and he had a last glimpse of the queer, deformed little figure, book under arm, velvet hat cocked over one ear, in the act ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... names which attract our notice as we pass an inn door have some queer stories to tell. We notice a very curious collection of animals sometimes, and a strange assortment of things; and the reason why our ancestors put some of these curious things together is somewhat difficult for us to find ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... all. The yellings of the crowd, men chiefly, are not polite; the yelpings of the dogs, set on by sympathetic spectators; the sickening blaze of the sun and the reflected glare from the houses; the blinding dust in your eyes, and the queer feel of ashes down your neck; above all, the sense that this sort of thing does no manner of good—for it is not persecution (nothing so heroic), and it will not end in martyrdom (no such honours ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... "A queer place this," he remarked, as they emerged from the narrowest passage they had yet traversed into a neat, snug, and most unexpected little square, with a garden in the middle of it, and a flagstaff in ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... of their views. Even the Independents of the Assembly disowned these views. Mr. Nye had said of the book that "there was in that book gross Brownism which he nor his brethren no way agreed with him in;" and Edwards had heard stories of queer goings-on in Mr. Burton's church, and his quarrel with "a butcher and some others of his church" about prophesying. Among the Brownists, besides Burton, Edwards names prominently "Katherine Chidley, an old Brownist, and her son, a young Brownist, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Mrs. Palmer and all said so. Gideon said I saved the day, but Palmer held me back, he wouldn't let me sing or dance. I heard him tell Gideon: "I'll have hell with that gilly kid, he thinks it a minstrel show; I got to hold him down or he'll queer the fake." I don't know what he ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... make of it," Walter confessed. "Every few hundred feet there are branches partly broken off and left hanging. Queer, isn't it?" ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... restaurant encounter she essayed it; trying both the indirect approach and the method of extreme frankness. Neither answered. Julien responded to her advances by alternate moods of extreme gloom and slyly inexplicable amusement. Bobbie gave it up, concluding that he was in a very queer mood, anyway. She ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... behind the tea-table, and he stood at a little distance, watching her pull off her gloves with a queer comic twitch of his elastic mouth. "Well, I guess it's only when you want to be," he said, grasping a lyre-backed chair by its gilt cords, and sitting down astride of it, his light grey trousers stretching too tightly over his plump thighs. Undine was perfectly aware ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... that the women wondered. Saying nothing so good to make men strong, he bought for the mistress a big piece of boiled pork, which, sliced thin, we enjoyed either with bread or our ship-biscuit. We watched the baking of bread. It was fired in queer little white plastered ovens set in front of each house, looking somewhat like beehives placed on top of strong tables. The ovens are filled with wood, which is set on fire, and when the oven is hot enough the wood is raked out, the loaves shoved in, ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... creek-bed, which was now very stony. The water was impregnated with ammonia from the excreta of emus, dogs, birds, beasts, and fishes, but the horses drank it with avidity. Above this we got some sweet water in rocks and sand. I called the queer-looking wall the Ruined Rampart. There was a quantity of different kinds of water, some tasting of ammonia, some saltish, and some putrid. A few ducks flew up from these strange ponds. There was an overhanging ledge and cave, which gave us a good shade while we remained ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Tom, coming so abruptly on the subject, that he interrupted himself in the act of cutting a slice of bread, and left the knife sticking in the loaf, 'what a queer fellow our landlord is! I don't believe he has been home once since he got me into that unsatisfactory scrape. I begin to think he will never come home again. What a mysterious life that man ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... "Per Bacco, it's queer!" said Farini, slapping his hand against his thigh. "I have heard," he continued in the tone of one speaking of some strange and almost incredible monstrosity,—"I have heard of such women taking a turn to devozione. It's not that with La Lalli, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the shipping agent's scented something queer, I think. James Seaton. That was the name ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... over. I have submitted it to my Edmonton friends; at last (O Argus' penetration), I have discovered a dash that might be dispensed with. Pray don't trouble yourself with such useless courtesies. I can well trust your editor, when I don't use queer phrases which prove themselves wrong by creating a distrust in the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... researches to operations on the lower animals. His knowledge of the structure and arrangement of the bones, however, was fairly accurate, but the anatomy of the softer tissues, as he conceived it, was a queer jumbling together of blood-vessels, muscles, and tendons. He does refer to "nerves," to be sure, but apparently the structures referred to are the tendons and ligaments, rather than the nerves themselves. He was ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... in it like the Persians in the creek of Sciathos. On the strip of shore, below the sheer wall of Kallidromos, men were fighting-myriads of men, for away towards Locris they stretched in ranks and banners and tents till the eye lost them in the haze. There was no sail on the queer, muddy-red-edged sea; there was no man on the hills: but on that one flat ribbon of sand all the nations of the earth were warring. He remembered about the place: Thermopylae they called it, the Gate of the Hot Springs. The Hellenes were ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... lurid light had we arrived in so short a space of time. It was for me to decide whether my aesthetic need of giving life to my idea was such as to justify me in destroying it in a woman after all in most eyes so beautiful. The situation was indeed sufficiently queer; for it remained to be seen what I should positively gain by giving up Mrs. Brash. I appeared to have in any case lost Lady Beldonald, now too "upset"—it was always Mrs. Munden's word about her and, as I inferred, her own about herself—to meet me again on our previous ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... queer that in so pretty a house, where almost everything was neat and well kept, the floors should be dirty and the beds ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... conscience. Nor, as it was, did I feel in any very serene humor. For the consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass. Even Jarl's glance seemed so queer, that I begged him ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the corridors or on the stairways, and one day I was going up-stairs, carrying a hod of coals, as he was coming down. Looking up at him, I made a misstep, and came near dropping a portion of my burden. 'My good man,' said he, with a queer smile, 'if you would learn to carry your coals as well as you carry your age you would do well.' I don't remember what I said in reply; but I know I thought if Charles Lamb could be made aware of my real ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... Smythe smiled a queer livid smile. 'Yes, I thought of that all along, since the boy mentioned the porch,' he said. 'I've just been looking up the old belief in that new book of yours. I was seen going in, therefore I must look to go out in ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... "Go round to queer little, interesting little places. We've had a glorious time to-day, haven't we?—and we haven't been talked ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... than ten years, and had a good part of the business of buying and shipping copra and selling supplies to the natives and a few whites. He lived in a shack back of his little store, with his native woman and four or five half-naked children. They told me queer stories about his madness for women. They said he would go out of his house and into the jungle near the trails and would lie in wait. If a woman he coveted passed, he would seize her, and even if her husband or consort was ahead of her, in the custom of these people, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... nothing, so far as Anna saw, about the stranger in plain mufti, to make her father drop his head, pull down his hat and hurry on, almost as if in sudden panic, dragging her by a slender wrist clasped in a hand which trembled; but he did do all these things, while the queer gentleman with the upturned moustaches (Anna had no notion who he was) stopped stonestill in his stroll and gazed after them with puzzled eyes in which a semi-recognition and a very lively curiosity ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... amusing French pictures at that place in Suffolk Street? There's a man there—a Parisian—I forget his honoured name—Leblanc, or Lenoir, or Lebrun, or something—but he's a most humorous artist, and he paints monkeys and storks and all sorts of queer beasties ALMOST as quaintly and expressively as you do. Mind, I say ALMOST, for I never will allow that any Frenchman could do anything QUITE so good, quite so funnily mock-human, as your marabouts ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... companions of Dorothy and had turned out to be very agreeable people. The exception I speak of was the wonderful Wizard of Oz, a sleight-of-hand performer from Omaha who went up in a balloon and was carried by a current of air to the Emerald City. His queer and puzzling tricks made the people of Oz believe him a great wizard for a time, and he ruled over them until Dorothy arrived on her first visit and showed the Wizard to be a mere humbug. He was a gentle, kind-hearted little ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... from steep banks; and it was in dense darkness that we arrived above what appeared to be a valley with twinkling lights, lying at the foot of a precipice, and walled in on all sides but one by lofty mountains. It was rather queer, diving over the wooded pali on a narrow track, with nothing in sight but the white jacket of the native, who had already indicated that he was at the end of his resources regarding the way, but just as a river gleamed alarmingly through the gloom, a horseman on a powerful horse brushed ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... to work. The work was Aristotle's Ethics, and she was going through it for the second time, amplifying her notes. But this second time the Greek seemed more difficult, the philosophic argument more intricate than ever. She had had very little sleep for weeks, and her head ached in a queer way as though something inside it were strained very tight. It was plain that she had come to the end of her powers of work for the present—and she had calculated that only by not wasting a day, except for a week's holiday at Easter, could she get ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... the Germans Christians? Ain't their soldiers generous and their officers merciful? Well then, it kinder puzzles me to see the way they're getting to work. It's no wonder the Belgian is set agin them. They're a little lot, them Belgians are, and it's a queer thing, ain't it, that they should make all this trouble? But I dunno. Maybe, there's something to be said for 'em if we only knew. Then there's the English. They say they're fighting for freedom this time, and maybe they're right to stick ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... sudden burst of flame and thunder, could not but make us feel very queer at first, especially as we were young hands, and had never been engaged in such an awful scene before. But a few rounds presently brought us all to rights again, and then, with heads bound up, and stripped to the buff, we plied our ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... tears could have come then; but she laid the letter down on the table, and her eyes were aching and dry. The quaintness of the spelling, the almost complete absence of punctuation. That queer little repetition, of words—"she is she is"—none of these things moved her, even to smile. Maurie had said good-bye properly. That, and that he was only just fond of her, was all that reached her understanding. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... lunch at a queer auberge, in an abortive village appropriately named Les Deserts, where the highroad for Chambery began. An outer room roughly flagged with stone, was kitchen, nursery, and family living-room in one. It swarmed with children, and ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... my having mentioned him in what I fear was a very patronizing and, indeed, almost supercilious way, as having written an occasional good poem. I am much struck by Robinson's two poems which you sent Mother. What a queer, mystical creature he is! I did not understand one of them—that about the gardens—and I do not know that I like either of them quite as much as some of those in "The Children of the Night." But he certainly has got the real ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... the road followed the side of rugged limestone cliffs surmounted by fortifications and signal stations. At the old, queer-looking town of La Turbie, while the horses rested for an hour, we selected postal cards and took kodak views. Soon after leaving La Turbie, while descending the mountain, we looked down upon the little principality ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... very, very much, to feel his teeth sink into the neck of the queer animal that he had learned to hate and fear, and because of this, he came often with his tribe to reconnoiter, waiting for a time when the white ape should be ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of a leaping carp; now great spiders skating on the surface, making little circles and driving one against another, stopping, going back and making new rounds; then, near him on the ground, Durtal noticed jumping, green grasshoppers with vermilion bellies, or, scaling the oaks, colonies of queer insects on whose backs a devil's head was painted in red lead on a ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... The close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating odor of dark, sweating skins. For four years Peter Siner had not known that odor. Now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer quality of intimacy and reminiscence. The tall, carefully tailored negro spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... well enough," he wrote, "until one night a queer thing happened. As evening came on, a man drove up bringing a coffin to be sent by train to the next village for burial. When I was left alone with the thing, the man inside got up—he really did, I saw him. I shut him in and ran to fetch the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... "It's very queer all the same. Rose says that a lot of the young men in the village have heaps of money lately, and I thought it might have something to do ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... to give Colette my arm nearly every day. She never talked to me much, and then only about the other girls. When I sat down next to her she used to look at me queerly. She said she thought I was a queer little thing. One day she asked me if I thought her pretty. Directly she said it, I remembered that Sister Marie-Aimee said that she was as black as a mole. I saw, however, that she had a broad forehead, fine big eyes, ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... such a lot to do. I suppose she sometimes gets a bit queer in her head," said Lancelot, conceiving he was somehow safe-guarding Mary Ann's ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... his lordship must have fainted," he said. "I heard a queer noise, and when I went in, he had fallen forward across the table. Parkins has rung ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... live, because lay-men have such queer ideas," said Judge CLUER in a recent case. Nevertheless, the view that lawyers shouldn't be allowed to live is not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... the South," he answered, "but it is said to be full of dangers to travelers. There are wild beasts in the woods, and a race of queer men who do not like strangers to cross their country. For this reason none of the Quadlings ever come to the ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... simple answer, but something in it touched a tender place. Mr. Stafford winced and cast a queer startled look at the speaker. Before he could reply, however—if he intended to reply—a knock came at the door and Marcus put in his head. "My lady is waiting breakfast, sir," he suggested timidly. What could a poor butler do between an impatient ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the queer part of the business. I was in diggings out Hampstead way, 17 Potter's Terrace. Well, I was sitting doing a smoke that very evening after I had been promised the appointment, when up came my landlady with a card which had 'Arthur Pinner, Financial Agent,' printed upon ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... He's not mad, far from it. He's just a bit queer—he's got 'bats in the belfry', as men say. He gets these attacks when he's at home in the dark winter days and has nothing to occupy him. But there's little sign of it in the summer. And ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... arm. My matchbox was out in a moment and I struck a match, holding it high over my head. As it burned a queer little halo of light seemed thrown over the table. The door was wide open and blocked with people rushing out. The banker was still sitting in his place. At first I seemed to have the idea that Mr. Parker was by his side. Then, to my astonishment, I saw him at ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... my first fight; and yet I had not myself drawn a single trigger. Many a time I took a certain aim; but my heart beat quick, and I felt queer at the idea of taking the life of a man. This did not prevent me from being highly complimented; henceforward Owato Wanisha was ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... are cannibals I've heard," commented the mate. "In times of famine they eat the old folks and the girl babies. Queer world, isn't it?" ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... of ideas he viewed all the world in connexion only as it was or was not related to his little society. He considered queer and out of fashion all opinions that were exploded by his circle of intimates, and he became at the same time dogmatic and yet fearful of not coinciding with the only sentiments he could consider orthodox. ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... in for queer advertisements yet, I believe," replied the older man. "If one could take the time to follow them up—-but it would mean ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Such a queer feeling as possessed him all the next day, while he went around the village! He went everywhere. He felt like walking through every street, and stepping on every stone on which his feet had trod in the old life, ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... tells, and in a half hour more we discover the small opening to be the entrance to a valley, and the dwelling-house to be the fort of the Cabanas. Still, no town and no harbour; and yet ahead we see, high upon a rocky cliff, a queer-looking old castle, with guns frowning from its embrasures, and its variegated walls looking as if they were ready to fall into the waves dashing at their base. That is the Morro Castle, which, with the battery of Aguadores, ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... Willie,' cried my old friend, with a look of the most sincere self-gratulation I ever saw. 'But it's a queer story, and one I shouldn't care for telling; only, you were always a discreet boy, and it rather presses on my mind at times. The master won't be back for awhile; he'll have the roast to try, and the pudding to taste—not to talk of seeing the table laid out, for there are to be some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... greatly by telling me, long after Oscar's death, that it was this address of mine that moved Oscar to try his hand at a similar feat by writing 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism.' (4) A chance meeting near the stage door of the Haymarket Theatre, at which our queer shyness of one another made our resolutely cordial and appreciative conversation so difficult that our final laugh and shake-hands was almost a reciprocal confession. (5) A really pleasant afternoon we spent together on catching ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the street-door; a very decided application of the queer, twisted knocker. Leslie roused herself: not a beggar's tap that; none of the janitors; and this was not Dr. Murdoch's or Dr. Ware's hour: the girl was accurate in taps and footsteps. Some one was shown in; a man's voice was heard greeting "Dr. Bower," before the study door ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... EZRA: Queer, all went wild, your sons, like collies bitten With a taste for mutton bleeding-hot. Cold lead Cures dogs of that kidney, peppering them one fine night From a chink in a stell; but, when they're two-legged curs, They've a longer run; and, in the ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... their swift way along the south shore of the great lake, did they talk of Paymaster Bullen and wonder what had become of him. Donald was inclined to believe that he had either returned to New York, or still remained where they had left him; but Christie only smiled, and said Bullen was such a queer fish that there was no predicting what he might or ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... cannon; when we all live in real concord,—perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will be respected, and will find that men are not more savage to the weak than are the cougars and panthers. If the little spotted fawn can think, it must seem to her a queer world in which the advent of innocence is hailed by the baying of fierce hounds and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ought to have been in at Rock Quay yesterday evening, and our stores were not adapted to hold out any longer! We shall have another curious experience, though Mrs. Griggs says it won't be so bad as once when they were off the coast of Ireland, and when they put into a bay with a queer name, all Kill and Bally, they could get nothing ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the breakfast, and the splendours of the cake; how Charlotte recovered her spirits while distributing the favours: and Lady Eveleen set up a flirtation with Markham, and forced him into wearing one, though he protested, with many a grunt, that she was making a queer fool of him; how often Charles was obliged to hear it had been a pretty wedding; and how well Lord Kilcoran made his speech proposing the health of Sir Guy and Lady Morville. All the time, Laura was active and useful,—feeling as if she was acting a play, sustaining the character of Miss ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... instead of rushing right off to rehearse his oration, which he couldn't do in the workhouse, owing to an accountable prejudice the tramps and other prisoners had against oratory, he took the evening off and went driving with Martha Scroggs—about as queer a thing for him to do as it would be for the Pope to take a young lady to the theatre. But we didn't ask any questions. We cheered him off on the midnight train, and the next night, when he won and we got the news, we turned out and built a ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... to hear you say that, sir. There's all the troops coming back. What queer-looking chaps they are, with their long ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... that queer glitter in her eyes it goes through me like a knife. Will she ever get ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... The Goblin was a very fine specimen of quaint stone carving, and lived up in the corbel on the wall opposite the niche of the little Saint. He was connected with some of the best cathedral folk, such as the queer carvings in the choir stalls and chancel screen, and even the gargoyles high up on the roof. All the fantastic beasts and manikins that sprawled and twisted in wood or stone or lead overhead in the arches or away down in the crypt were in some way akin to him; consequently he ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... Musgrave saw the undeniable resemblance. It gave him a queer sort of shock, too, as he comprehended, for the first time, that the faint blue vein on that lifted arm held Musgrave blood,—the same blood which at this thought quickened. For any person guided by appearances, Rudolph Musgrave considered, would have surmised that the vein ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... of Mrs. Pontellier and the children. Robert scanned the distance for any such apparition. They would doubtless remain away till the dinner hour. The young man ascended to his mother's room. It was situated at the top of the house, made up of odd angles and a queer, sloping ceiling. Two broad dormer windows looked out toward the Gulf, and as far across it as a man's eye might reach. The furnishings of the room were light, cool, ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... all classes, sects, and shades, indulged in a perfect frenzy of rejoicing. Festivals, illuminations, every token of triumph for her and condemnation for him accompanied what was equivalent to her acquittal. She went in something like State, with her queer, motley household—Bohemian, English and Italians—and her great ally, Alderman Wood, to offer up thanksgiving in St. Paul's, where, at the same time, she found her name omitted from the Church service. She wore white velvet and ermine, and was surrounded by thousands of shouting ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... moored alongside. These vessels bear the signs of traffic with a savage people in the high boarding nettings which guard them from stem to stern, and which are in their more solid parts pierced for musketry. Here, too, you see a queer little old steamboat, the first that ever vexed the waters of the Pacific Ocean with its paddle-wheels. And as your own steamer hauls up to the wharf, you will notice, arrayed to receive you, what is no doubt the most shocking and complete collection ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... old enough to remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... he said, "we had a queer point arise in that Aztec Street inquiry. The original dispute arose owing to a discussion between a crowd of people in a pub as to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... that she had heard from old Princess Bielokonski, who had given her most comforting news about "that queer young prince." Her friend had hunted him up, and found that all was going well with him. He had since called in person upon her, making an extremely favourable impression, for the princess had ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "progressive ACTION," is all any passive verb or participle ever means! No marvel, that awkward perversions of the forms of utterance and the principles of grammar should follow such interpretation. In Wright's syntax a very queer distinction is apparently made between a passive verb, and the participle chiefly constituting it; and here, too, through a fancied ellipsis of "being" before the latter, most, if not all, of his other positions concerning ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... either bank a few leagues apart, and we stopped at wood-yards on the west bank. Indians worked around them. At one such yard the Indians were evidently part of the regular force. Their squaws were with them, cooking at queer open-air ovens. One small child had as pets a parrot and a young coati—a kind of long- nosed raccoon. Loading wood, the Indians stood in a line, tossing the logs from one to the other. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... little watching of either frog or toad will show exactly how the legs are used and wherein they differ from, and also resemble, the child's own legs. The little hands of the frog and toad, their way of sitting, leaning on their short arms, their eagerness to snap up a tempting fly, the queer tongue fastened the other way round from ours, and its lightning-like speed which is a result of this same position in the mouth,—a hundred interesting things can be learned ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... of the lesser states, to whom one should not look for impartial judgments, formulated some queer theories to explain the Allies' unavowed policy and revealed a frame of mind in no wise conducive to the attainment of the ostensible ends of the Conference. One delegate said to me: "I have no longer the faintest ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... you make of these?" he cried. "They told me that you were fond of queer mysteries, and I don't think you can find a queerer one than that. I sent the paper on ahead, so that you might have time to study ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains with a queer feeling of desolation in ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... it seems to me that he is just what I expected he would be. I suppose they all put in equal shares, but the other men quite look upon him as their leader. Sometimes when he is talking to me he speaks just as people do at home. When he talks to the men he uses the same queer words they do. He is taller than father was, and more strongly built. What I like in him is, he is always the same. Sometimes the others used to get grumbly when we were shut up so long, but it never seemed to make any difference ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... sir. I'd know ours anywhere. There's three of the steel studs worn close down on the off driving wheel, which makes a queer little mark in dust or mud. I could even see, once I got on to the tracks, that you'd followed the Duke's car, for your tracks came sometimes on his, almost obliterating his trail for a bit. I can tell you, sir, it cheered ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it on deck then. I heard it distinctly, and at the same time I heard the real whistling of the wind in the weather rigging, sharp and clear as the steam-whistle on a Dago's peanut-cart in New York. That was all right, that was as it should be; but the other wasn't right; and I felt queer and stiff, as if I couldn't move, and my hair was curling against the flannel lining of my sou'wester, and I thought somebody had dropped a lump of ice ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... following formula: "Command this, your vassal, at all hours at the orders of his respected chief, on whom he will never turn his back, and whom he will never forswear. God preserve you, Captain General, many years." P.I.R., 1080. 1. Every now and then we find a queer use of the term "royal family." This seems to have been common among the mass of the people. Heads of towns and men of position often used the expression "royal orders" in speaking of the orders and decrees issued ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... Vinci. It is difficult to appraise his work accurately because it is not yet fully known, and still more because of its extraordinary form. Ho left thousands of pages of notes on everything and hardly one complete treatise on anything. He began a hundred studies and finished none of them. He had a queer twist to his mind that made him, with all his power, seek byways. The monstrous, the uncouth, fascinated him; he saw a Medusa in a spider and the universe in a drop of water. He wrote his notes in mirror-writing, from right to left; he illustrated ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... another witness]. I felt the need of some ceremony, and I think others felt the need of it too. There were little half-articulate attempts, in the darkness, of men trying to show what they felt—a whisper or two—in the queer jargon that is growing up between the two armies. An English sentry mounted upon the fire-step, and looked out into the darkness beside the Frenchman, and then, before the Frenchman stepped down, patted him on the ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "That girl was a queer case," said Jim, and he reflected for a moment. "Why, do you know, you had her running to clairvoyants for advice. She didn't think anything of putting up five dollars to learn how it was going to turn out. As soon as I heard that I quit calling ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... soup in small lacquer bowls, another fish, a third cakes, a fourth tea in very tiny cups, and others various things, and finally saki, the wine of the country, was produced, served in small cups like the tea. Then came the girls. Seven approached, each carrying a musical instrument of queer construction. They bowed profoundly, but I noticed did not touch the mat with their foreheads, their rank being much superior to that of the servants, and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... queer little choke in his voice. "The heroes in life generally aren't found on the high spots, ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... waking, morning after morning, with an energetic and lucid brain that throws out a dozen war pictures to the minute like a ghastly cinema show, till horror becomes terror; the hunger for breakfast; the queer, almost uncanny revival of courage that follows its satisfaction; the driving will that strengthens as the day goes on and slackens its hold at evening. I remember one evening very near the end; the Sunday evening when the Commandant ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... sensitive than the rest of the body, besides being less protected and more temptingly filled with blood. A mosquito would surely think he had struck it rich if he landed on the hot, palpitating end of a Wapiti's thin-skinned, blood-gorged antlers. It is quite probable that some of the queer bumps we see on the finished weapons are due to mosquito or fly stings suffered in the ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... queer statement of the case, but was constrained to admit that it was at least fair in the main, if a little severe on the well-meant efforts ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... touched rock bottom. He was going into the British Army, but had to throw it up, and went out to the Orient for some Company which failed soon after, leaving him stranded. Since then everything he had been in has turned out wrong; and now this has gone.... Queer how some men do get the cards dealt them that way.... He's clever, writes very well, and might have done something at it. Locke's death will be an ugly blow to him." Being a kindly man and none too successful himself, he sighed in sympathy, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the girl in the sparkling dress and transparent cloak into the Strand again. But something queer was happening there. People were shouting and running. A man with a raucous, alcoholic voice, yelled words Annesley could not catch. A woman gave a squeaking scream that sounded both ridiculous and dreadful. Breaking glass crashed. A growl of human anger mingled ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... fashionable to be of any worth. What is a church out of Fashion? Who goes there? God never will hear a prayer in such a church, nor pardon a penitent, nor give grace to a striving soul. That antiquated pulpit! Those plain old pews! That queer-looking gallery! Oh, yes; the pews are very comfortable; the singing sounds most admirably; the preaching is God's unvarnished truth quickened by divine love and mercy. Oh, how it would melt one's soul if it was only in a fashionable church. And then the minister. He is such a plain man, and ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver |
