"Quirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The same strange quirk in human nature which takes the impractical into the marts, takes many ambitious but inherently unfit into art and literature. The stage-struck girl who has not one scintilla of dramatic ability is so common as to be a joke—to all but herself and her friends. Every editor is wearied ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... he have narrow eyes too close together. He have a quirk to his mouth Ba'teese no like. He have habit nev' talkin' about himself—he ask you question an' tell you nothing. He have hatchet-face; Ba'teese no like a man with a hatchet-face. Beside, he ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... answer, but there flashed into his mind the legend of the Tyrian who beached his galley in order to save the secret of Cornwall. Caradoc's narrative was oddly prophetic of the fate of the Vulcan. And Madden wondered with a quirk of grim humor if there were a foreigner aboard that Tyrian's galley, and what he ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... existence, and was for the first time seeing the point of some of those jokes of life for which his natural temperament had given him a relish. He acquired in those days a quizzical cock to his right eyebrow, and a comically confidential quirk to his mouth, which were in themselves enough to provoke ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... white as anybody, and his father's a doctor. It got whispered round that he was a nigger, and the boarders where he stayed raised a fuss about it. The nigger's father had two of them sued for slander, but they proved the nigger by a quirk of law that'd make a volume bigger than Blackstone; and instead of the old Jew getting satisfaction, the judges, as a matter of policy, granted him time to procure further proof to show that his son wasn't a nigger. It was a very well-considered insinuation of the judges, but the young-un stands ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Moll all cock-a-hoop with a new delight, by reason of her dear husband offering to take her to London for a month to visit the theatres and other diversions, which put me to a new quirk for fear Moll should be known by any of our former playhouse companions. But this I now perceive is a very absurd fear; for no one in the world who had seen Moll three years ago—a half-starved, long-legged, raw child—could recognise her ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... covers it as completely as the vines on the wall," answered Rose Mary quickly, with a humorous quirk at her mouth that relieved the note of pain in her voice. "I know we can never pay it, but if something could be done to keep it for the old folks always, I think Stonie and I could stand it. They were born here and their ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... out by dozens, together with the dace, and wreck themselves upon a floating plank. It is the little light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or silver spangles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is almost dissolved by the summer heats. A slighter and lighter colored ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the alienists, say that all of us are insane on certain subjects, however sane we may be upon other subjects. Certainly in the mental composition of every one of us is some quirk, some vagary, some dear senseless delusion, avowed or private. As for Trencher, the one crotchet in his cool brain centred about that worthless trade dollar. With it in his possession he had counted himself a winner, always. Without it he felt himself to be a creature predestined ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... whisper, "I'm a lady in disguise!" And I quirk my little finger as I drink my coffee and order Eleanor to peer without to see ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... not gone far beyond the nearest bushes before Yan found another quirk in the trail. It doubled back at Z. He unravelled the double, glanced around, and at O he plainly saw the Deer lying on its side in the grass. He let off a triumphant yell, "Yi, yi, yi, Deer!" and the others came running ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... vindictive about being involved in action injurious to Pelton's commercial interests; just another odd quirk of ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... the unexpected clatter of hoofs still set his pulses a-flutter. Why had fate snatched so gentle a youth from his law desk and flung him into such turbid waters to sink or swim? All he had asked was peace—friends, books, a quiet life. By some ironic quirk be found himself in scenes of battle and turmoil. As the son of John Beaudry he was expected to show an unflawed nerve, whereas his eager desire was ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... himself and his rider too, and both on 'em lose flesh in the long run. I'd e'enamost as lives use the whip sometimes, as to be for everlastinly a-pullin' at the rein. One's arm gets plaguy tired, that's a fact. I often think of a lesson I larnt Jehiel Quirk once, for lettin' his ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... sacrifice, is to think to take refuge with the Son from the righteousness of the Father; to take refuge with his work instead of with the Son himself; to take refuge with a theory of that work instead of the work itself; to shelter behind a false quirk of law instead of nestling in the eternal heart of the unchangeable and righteous Father, who is merciful in that he renders to every man according to his work, and compels their obedience, nor admits judicial quibble or subterfuge. God will never ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... exaggerated his proportions, but he seemed to Trixie the biggest man she had ever seen, and nearly the ugliest. Close-curling coarse black hair capped his high-domed skull, and his stern, powerful, swarthy face, big-nosed and long-chinned, with a humorous quirk at the corners of the heavy-lipped mouth, that redeemed its sensuousness, was lighted by eyes of the intensest black, burning under heavy beetle-brows. His khaki uniform, though of fine material and admirable cut, was that of a common ranker, and a narrow strip of colours over the heart, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... with a love for old fashions and old friends, a contempt for things that are modern. As he stood at the gate he thought that the mansion was glaring at him with an upturned nose and this imaginative quirk caused ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... return again into the house and desire some conduct of the lady. I am no fighter. I have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others to taste their valour: belike this is a man of that quirk. ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... ingenuous enough to be irresistible. Like two floating logs they met in a head-on rush, caught, and sped along together. Yet had Jeffrey Curtain kept at scrivening for twoscore years he could not have put a quirk into one of his stories weirder than the quirk that came into his own life. Had Roxanne Milbank played three dozen parts and filled five thousand houses she could never have had a role with more happiness and more despair ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... have read something in his eyes, or caught something in his tone that pleased them: for the midwife's mouth had a peculiar quirk and the other women ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... range of action of the other endocrines. Let there be some quirk or weakness elsewhere in the chain of hormones, and instead of the successful woman, behold the spinsters, the maiden aunts, the prudes and cranks who never satisfactorily adapt themselves in society. To them must be given a good deal of credit for the suffrage ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Edmund, he did not even show him common justice. While others in the Eastern Counties were adorning and enlarging with rich gifts St. Edmund's resting-place, which had become a city of refuge for many things, this Earl of Essex flatly defrauded him, by violence or quirk of law, of five shillings yearly, and converted said sum to his own poor uses! Nay, in another case of litigation, the unjust Standard-bearer, for his own profit, asserting that the cause belonged not to St. Edmund's Court, but to his in Lailand Hundred, 'involved us in travellings ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... he, clearing his throat, and looking up at the farmer with a face of baby-like innocence, "I guess you don't know me—do you? My name's Johnny Quirk, and this boy here's my ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... reasoning, vicious reasoning, circular reasoning; petitio principii [Lat.], ignoratio elenchi [Lat.]; post hoc ergo propter hoc [Lat.]; non sequitur, ignotum per ignotius [Lat.]. misjudgment &c 481; false teaching &c 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism^; quibble, quirk, elenchus^, elench^, fallacy, quodlibet, subterfuge, subtlety, quillet^; inconsistency, antilogy^; a delusion, a mockery, and a snare [Denman]; claptrap, cant, mere words; lame and impotent conclusion [Othello]. meshes of sophistry, cobwebs ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... meant 'do not SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say 'SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP meant 'do not JUMP'; the unconditional form was JUMPA. However, hackers never did this. By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST} (Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... tremble in that weak, pipin' voice, or the meek look in them watery old eyes. For Cubbins is more or less of a human wreck, when you come to size him up close,—a thin, bent-shouldered, faded lookin' old party, with wispy, whitish hair, a peaked red nose, and a peculiar, whimsical quirk to his mouth corners. Old Hickory looks him over curious for ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... it's raining gall and bitters— You may think it is a pipe To erect a Tower of Titters With a lot of lines o' type, To be whimsical and wheezy, Full of {quip and quirk and quiz. {quibbles queer and quaint. Do you fancy that is ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... and actually smiled when Kitty was gone. Somehow a grievous burden had fallen off her mind. Likewise, by some psychological quirk, the idea of leaving Granville and making her home elsewhere no longer struck her as running away under fire. She did not wish to subject Kitty Brooks to the difficulties, the embarrassment that might arise from having her as a guest; ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... briefly upon the note of calm authority in his voice. He did not know, evidently, that she was more accustomed to giving commands than to obeying them; her lips gave a little quirk of amusement at ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... caught no fever for paper and ink, though you may have learned many a quirk I was the better of myself. I could never even write my name; and I've kept compt of wages at the mines with ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... to do with it?" Mangan asked; and then he continued, in his indolent fashion: "Why, I thought you knew all about Quirk. Quirk belongs to a band of literary weaklings, not any one of whom can do anything worth speaking of; but they try their best to write up one another; and sometimes they take it into their heads to help an acquaintance—and then their cry is like that of a pack of beagles? ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... left the pension bourgeoise our front door was hung with heavy black curtains, and our Maiden passed forth into the broad day for the first time in ten years. She went out unsmiling, uncooing, without flutter or quirk, and no date upon her pine coffin, for with her last breath she had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... loyalty, follows his master with quip and quirk into exile. When all, even his daughters, had forsaken King Lear, the fool bares himself to the storm and covers the shaking old man with his own cloak; and when in our day we meet the avatars of Trinculo, Costard, Mercutio and Jacques, we find they are men of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture, but still it was the torture of the happy:—in this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... my nimble wit-cracker!" he cried, as the jester stepped boldly out. "'Twas a pretty piece of foolery you played on the monster and us, but quip for quirk, my merry wag!" And, so speaking, he directed a violent thrust which, had it taken effect, would, indeed, have ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... heard the echoes away off among the hills; and, looking across the lot, he saw old Mother Quirk hobbling on ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... rehearsal, their treaty was signed and sealed. They were to be chums, bosom friends! The notion of it gave Rose the most spontaneous smile she'd had in days; the first one that hadn't had a bitter quirk in it. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... he was so long connected. The prayers of those whose interests he cared for so earnestly will doubtless be fervently offered for his eternal rest. The funeral took place from the Church of the Immaculate Conception, on the morning of November 10th. The Rev. Father Quirk celebrated the Requiem Mass. The Rev. Father Boursaud, rector, and the Rev. Father Charlier accompanied the body to Calvary Cemetery. May he rest ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... unable to speak from indignation, could only shake his head and frown terribly, at which the midshipmen, as he was not their captain, laughed the more heartily. The Admiral had heard, too, of the trick Jack and his messmates had played with Quirk, the monkey, on Lieutenant Spry, of the marines, and while he told the story as he had received it from Jack, with a few amplifications of his own, the tears ran down his eyes, till Captain Sourcrout, boiling ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... experiments, passed with the greatest swiftness. The boys were soon accustomed to their surroundings and threw themselves with enthusiasm into their studies and drill. Every possible moment was spent on the aviation field. Bill was learning every quirk and crank of such work as he could do in Ernest's plane without leaving ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... Samuel C. Warren. With Portraits of Snap, Quirk, Gammon, and Tittlebat Titmouse, Esq. Two large octavo vols., of 547 pages. Price One Dollar; or an edition on finer paper, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... a dot with a quirk," whispers little Miss Comma, "And you'll please not to pause long for me." "I'm a dot over Comma," says Miss Semicolon, "And you'll pause twice as long where ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... principii[Lat], ignoratio elenchi[Lat]; post hoc ergo propter hoc[Lat]; non sequitur, ignotum per ignotius[Lat]. misjudgment &c. 481; false teaching &c. 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism[obs3]; quibble, quirk, elenchus[obs3], elench[obs3], fallacy, quodlibet, subterfuge, subtlety, quillet[obs3]; inconsistency, antilogy[obs3]; "a delusion, a mockery, and a snare" [Denman]; claptrap, cant, mere words; "lame and impotent conclusion" [Othello]. meshes of sophistry, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... bought, flesh and soul. In what part of the unsightly baby-carcass had been stowed away these old airs, forgotten by every one else, and some of them never heard by the child but once, but which he now reproduced, every note intact, and with whatever quirk or quiddity of style belonged to the person who originally had sung or played them? Stranger still the harmonies which he had never heard, had learned from no man. The sluggish breath of the old house, being ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... some little quirk in his brain that makes him different—some trait that isn't quite normal. I've come to watch for it, and it's always there, even in the most commonplace people. It's the quirk which, when accentuated, makes religious fanatics, screaming suffragists ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... queer little quirk to his mouth the gruff Senior Surgeon jerked his glance back from the open window where with the gleam of a slim torn-boyish ankle the frisky young Spring ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... paces, to bring up against the desk; while Lanyard, making no move more than to drop his rejected arms, remained where she had left him, and requited her indignant stare with a broken smile of understanding, a smile at once tender, tolerant, and sympathetic, with a little quirk of rueful humour ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... illuminate them. His correggiosity was at times overpowering. His vocabulary overcame him often, bore him away from his thought and landed him in some swamp out of which he was wont to extricate himself, to the great delight of the semi-educated reader by some quip or quirk equally meretricious and mephitic. Thus would he, metaphorically, throw filth at himself. He felt all the time that he was pursuing the best course, bending things he despised and loathed to better purposes. Mr. Brann ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... consideration of Professor Hugo Munsterberg and other students of our national psychology. So far the Munsterberg school has overlooked it—but the canny Parisians have not. They long ago studied out every quirk and wriggle of it, and capitalized it to their own purpose. Liberality! Economy! Frugality!—there they are, everywhere blazoned forth—Liberality for you, Economy and Frugality for them. Could anything on earth be fairer ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... quirk in this," he said at last, "that I don't like. Take back your ring, lassie. Mr. Dishart, give Nanny your arm, and I'll carry her ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the quirk in human nature that shows great gratification at the sight of a man betting on something where he is bound to be the loser: in inelegant language, this relates simply to the universal impulse to laugh at a "sucker." It is just ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... seats a prim little body, full of a severe quaintness in every quirk of dress, tilted her head toward a neighbor, and whispered, "It's that racin' gal of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... at him, a humorous little quirk to her mouth. "Say, what're you askin' me to do—t'row ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... acquired—Inevitably must be—My passions must be masked: I must pretend to have conquered them. In their naked and genuine form they are indecent, immoral, impure, I know not what! But catch a metaphysical quirk, and let vanity and dogmatic assertion stand sponsors and baptize it a truth, and then raptures, extravagance, and bigotry itself are deities! Be then as loud, as violent, as intolerant as the most rancorous of zealots, and it is all the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... old place!" he said. "Its windows twinkle merrily, and the front door is only waiting for the key I have in my pocket. We've got home, Quirk—haven't we, Phil?" ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price |
