"Quaintness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... freshness of youthful enjoyment. I felt also an interest in the scene, from the consideration that these fleeting customs were posting fast into oblivion, and that this was, perhaps, the only family in England in which the whole of them were still punctiliously observed. There was a quaintness, too, mingled with all this revelry, that gave it a peculiar zest; it was suited to the time and place; and as the old Manor House almost reeled with mirth and wassail, it seemed echoing back the ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... noticed in an account of Rydal Mount which appeared in the first volume of Once a Week. Coleridge, of course, has made a number of notes in it, and in one of these he describes the translation as 'an exquisite poem, spite of its frequent and perverse quaintness and harshnesses, which are, however, amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... think anything is apt to be altogether agreeable, Dr. Sandford?" Daisy said, with a demure waiving of the subject which was worthy of much older years. The quaintness ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... called truly Dantesque. Indeed, the Castilian Muse never before ventured on so bold a flight; and, notwithstanding the deformity of the general plan, the obsolete barbarisms of the phraseology, its quaintness and pedantry, notwithstanding the cantering dactylic measure in which it is composed, and which to the ear of a foreigner can scarcely be made tolerable, the work abounds in conceptions, nay in whole episodes, of such mingled energy and ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... man of intellect and education; his funniest sayings are often based on profound knowledge or deep thought. Like Lear, he never spoiled his quaint fancies by over-exaggerating their quaintness or their fancifulness, and his ridiculous plots are as carefully conceived, constructed, and elaborated as though they embodied the soundest facts. No funny detail is ever allowed to become too funny; and it is in this judicious economy of extravagance that his genius is shown. As he remarks ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... recommend them. They will not be of that unhappy kind which nobody has desired to possess for their own sake, and nobody ever will. Something there will be of original genius, or if not that, yet of curious, odd, out-of-the-way information, or of quaintness of imagination, or of characteristics pervading some class of men, whether a literary or a polemical,—something, in short, which people desirous of information will some day or other be anxious to read,—such are the volumes which it is desirable to save from annihilation, that they may ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the "daring fiery spirit" which animates his translation, and says that it is not unlike what Homer himself might have written in his youth—surely not a grudging praise. But though this is true, I will venture to assert that Chapman also sins, not merely by his love of quaintness, but by constantly indulging in sheer doggerel. If his lines do not stagnate, they foam and fret like a mountain brook, instead of flowing continuously and majestically like a great river. He surpasses Pope chiefly, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... past, and that lay as it were in the beauty of time's sunset. How unlike the United States! The contrast has always, I confess, seemed to me a piquant one. It has often struck me with a feeling of quaintness that the two countries which Dickens specially visited and described, were, the one this lovely land of age and hoar antiquity, and the other that young giant land of the West, which is still in the garish strong light of morning, and whose great day is in the future. Nor, I think, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... thinker. Osborne Gordon had recommended him to read Hooker, and he caught the tone and style of the "Ecclesiastical Polity" only too readily, so that much of his work of that winter, the more philosophical part of vol. ii., was damaged by inversions, and Elizabethan quaintness as of ruff and train, long epexegetical sentences, and far-sought pomposity of diction. It was only when he had waded through the chaos which he set himself to survey, that he could lay aside his borrowed stilts, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... abstains from sloppiness. His book is not only witty and humorous but fresh and original in style. It is admirably written. His prose is good,—which is moderate praise, striking a balance between the pros and cons of criticism. Prosit! To all holiday-makers who like quaintness and fun touched with pathos and refinement, I say again, buy and read ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... nursery (which, if its literature is a guide, was in those days less of a nursery than a conventicle) were in every shop. She poured them forth—little rushing streams of didacticism. The present work, from which, for its quaintness, I have chosen 'The Journal,' is a kind of Ann and Jane Taylor in very obvious prose. Little girls having spent their half-crowns on themselves, at once meet members of the destitute class, and, having nothing to give them, are plunged into ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... reproduced by such severe consistency of rendering as is perhaps desirable in the case of the Epic writers before and the philosophical writers after his time: nor again must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be reproduced in the form of archaisms of language; and that not only because the affectation of an archaic style would necessarily be offensive to the reader, but also because in language Herodotus is not archaic. His ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... come meanwhile from the party at the guest table. Miss Waddington, the full-blown golden girl, had seated herself and cooed an appreciative word or two about the quaintness and difference of the Marseillaise, when her eyes clutched at the two young men in the corner, whose dress made them stand out so queerly among the lost and soiled. As Bertram looked up with his glance of recognition, ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... The Italian masters who followed Van Eyck's system were in the constant habit of relieving their principal figures by the darkness of some object, foliage, throne, or drapery, introduced behind the head, the open sky being left visible on each side. A green drapery is thus used with great quaintness by John Bellini in the noble picture of the Brera Gallery; a black screen, with marbled veins, behind the portraits of himself and his brother in the Louvre; a crimson velvet curtain behind the Madonna, in Francia's best picture ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to recompose the Bible, the broad vulgar colloquial diction, which has been used by our theological writers, is less tolerable than the quaintness of Castalion and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... first found that his artless rhymes could touch the heart of the ewe-milker who partook the shelter of his mantle during the passing storm. If "the shepherd" of Professor Wilson's "Noctes Ambrosianae" may be taken as a true portrait of James Hogg, we must admit that, for quaintness of humour, the poet of Ettrick Forest had few rivals. Sir Walter Scott said that Hogg's thousand little touches of absurdity afforded him more entertainment than the best comedy that ever set the pit in a roar. Among ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... "bungalow." Missy had often regretted that her own home had been built before the vogue of the bungalow. And now, when she beheld Aunt Isabel's enchanting house, the solid, substantial furnishings left behind in Cherryvale lost all their savour for her, even the old-fashioned "quaintness" of grandma's house. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... and out of the rooms, delighted with the quaintness of it all, and Clare grew quite enthusiastic over the ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... said slowly to himself. "The wolf guards the head of St. Edmund as it does in the seal of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, while the Virgin with the Child is over the canopy. And the verse is indeed curious for its quaintness:" ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness—who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment: "And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... gave the friendly Andalusian greeting. I saw a woman hanging clothes on the line outside her house; she had blue eyes and flaxen hair, a healthy red face, and a solidity of build which proved the purity of her northern blood. The houses, too, had a certain exotic quaintness; notwithstanding the universal whitewash of the South, there was about them still a northern character. They were prim and regularly built, with little plots of garden; the fences and the shutters were bright green. I almost expected to see German words on the post-office and on the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... in the post-waggon for Paris, and arrived there after thirty-six hours' travel. Harry was struck with the roads, which were far better tended and kept than those in England. The extreme flatness of the country surprised him, and, except in the quaintness of the villages and the variety of the church towers, he saw little ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... brings us to the summit of a hill overlooking Caudebec and a great sweep of the beautiful river. The church raises its picturesque outline against the rolling white clouds, and forms a picture that compels admiration. On descending into the town, the antiquity and the quaintness of sixteenth century houses greet you frequently, and you do not wonder that Caudebec has attracted so many painters. There is a wide quay, shaded by an avenue of beautiful trees, and there are views ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... and indeed in one or two cases I have come across success on these lines would seem to have been almost achieved. Yet I cannot bring myself to believe that such are anything more than mere accidents. The German is practical, and I fail to see the object of a griffin. If mere quaintness of design be desired, is there not already the Dachshund! What more is needed? Besides, about a house, a griffin would be so inconvenient: people would be continually treading on its tail. My own idea is that what the Germans are trying for is a mermaid, which they ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... with good pasturage; so that they had already imported cows, and a bull whose lowings terrified the Esquimaux. They had found self-sown corn too, probably maize. The streams were full of salmon. But they had called the land Vinland, by reason of its grapes. Quaint enough, and bearing in its very quaintness the stamp of truth, is the story of the first finding of the wild fox-grapes. How Leif the Fortunate, almost as soon as he first landed, missed a little wizened old German servant of his father's, Tyrker by name, and was much ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... buildings and her furniture, and Rouen carvers and joiners became famous for their work, the neighbouring province, Brittany, was conservative of her earlier designs. The sturdy Breton has through all changes of style preserved much of the rustic quaintness of his furniture, and when some three or four years ago the writer was stranded in a sailing trip up the Ranee, owing to the shallow state of the river, and had an opportunity of visiting some of the farm houses in the country district a few miles from Dinan, ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... have liked a more grave and ancient mode of conveyance; but how silly to desire that! The Lady of Shalott's boat was no doubt of the latest and neatest trim, fully up to her drowsy date; and as for quaintness, no doubt a couple of hundred years hence, when our river-craft may be cigar-shaped torpedoes of aluminium for all I know, a picture of myself in my homely motor-boat, with antiquated hat and odd grey suit, will appear quaint and old-timed enough. And, anyhow, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... letters, contrary to modern usage, are printed with all the peculiarities of eighteenth century orthography. It was felt that they would lose their quaintness and charm if Holbach's somewhat fantastic English were trifled with or his ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and their rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us to-day with a vivid delight, and which delight, in many instances, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... man was soon among the blankets, but Narcissus dallied over undressing, looking at this and that country quaintness on the wall; and then, while he was in a state of half man and half trousers, the voice of the woman called from the foot of the stairs: Were they in bed yet? 'Surely, it cannot be! it is too irresistibly simple,' was his thought; but he had immediately answered, 'In a moment,' as ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... friends. The pomps and vanities of the past disappeared as a mist from the traveller's mind, and he saw Entrevaux as it really is, without the comforts of this world's goods, without the greatness of a Bishopric, a small Provencal village whose perfection of quaintness—so charming to him who passes on—means hardship and discomfort to those who have been born and must live and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... gathered at the neck, and falling to the edge of the dress. The cloaks are gay in color—forest-green, red, bright blue; in shape something like the well-known "Shaker" cloaks. Some of the cloaks have hoods that lend an air of quaintness. Several of the girls wear bead chains, evidently the work of their ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... room was a large tree. Near it stood the Fraeulein, smiling and courtesying to each one as she entered. A quaint little figure she was; yet, with all her quaintness, there was enough of dignity to suppress any merriment her appearance might ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... yours! Ef ye could spin it out to fill two chapters of a book—yer fortune's made! For you'll show that a successful hoss trade involves the highest nash'nul characteristics. That what common folk calls "selfishness," "revenge," "mean lyin'," and "low-down money-grubbin' ambishun" is really "quaintness," and will go in double harness with the bizness of a Christian ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... Don Ippolito, but the quaintness of the place had been so vividly impressed upon him, that he had a certain familiarity with the grape-arbor of the anteroom, the paintings of the parlor, and the puerile arrangement of the piano and melodeon. Veneranda led him through these rooms to the chamber ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... build the pioneer craft at Pittsburg. She was completed, "built after the fashion of a ship with portholes in her side," says a writer of the time, dubbed the "Orleans," and in 1812 reached the city on the sodden prairies near the mouth of the Mississippi, whose name we now take as a synonym for quaintness, but which at that time had seemingly the best chance to become a rival of London and Liverpool, of any American town. For just then the great possibilities of the river highway were becoming apparent. The valley was ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... on quaintness, my love, and the narrowness and tyranny of it is intolerable. I hate it. When I go away from Bruges I never want to set eyes on it again as ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of Dr. Johnson when you come to read it, as you will be sure to do by and by, has left a living picture of this great and good man for all future generations to enjoy, extenuating nothing to his quaintness, directness, and proneness to contradiction for its own sake, yet unveiling everywhere the deep piety and fine magnanimity of his character. He suffered much, but never complained, and certainly ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... more than the first outlines of a comedy loosely sketched in. It is the story of a novel dramatized with very little labour or pretension; yet there are passages of high poetical spirit, and of inimitable quaintness of humour, which are undoubtedly Shakespeare's, and there is throughout the conduct of the fable a careless grace and felicity which marks it for his. One of the editors (we believe, Mr. Pope) remarks in a marginal note to the TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA: 'It is observable (I know ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... among tales intended for children, alike for pleasant instruction, quaintness of humor, gentle pathos, and the subtlety with which lessons moral and otherwise are conveyed to children, and perhaps to their ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... a place as the yard was, it had an air of completeness, a pretty quaintness. Two tiny brick walks curved from the door to the gate. On either side of these spread out microscopic flower-beds, crowded tight with plants. Late-blooming dahlias and asters made spots of starry color in the green. A vine, running over the door to the second story, waved like ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... should imagine so," Eleanor remarked. "You have been brought up in the style of one hundred years ago, and yet, except for a certain quaintness in your speech, one would not think you very different from any girl brought up ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... moment. It would therefore be most misleading to give to this collection an air of having been inspired by its most famous contributor. The little lyrics of this little book must surely be counted individual, even by those who may count them mysterious. A variety verging on quaintness is the very note of the ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... the pruriency which stains his best work. Like many contemporaries he was reading old authors and turned them to account in a way which exposed him to the charge of plagiarism. He valued them for their quaintness. They enabled him to satisfy his propensity for being deliberately eccentric which made Horace Walpole call Tristram Shandy the 'dregs of nonsense,' and the learned Dr. Farmer prophesied that in twenty years it would be necessary to search antiquarian ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... his choice of hundreds and thousands of those delightful curiosities and knickknacks, recommendable less for their quaintness than for the certainty one feels that there is no possible use in the world ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... I think that their quaintness is a sufficient apology for the following little children's stories. With the exception of that of the "Elves and the Envious Neighbour," which comes out of a curious book on etymology and proverbial lore, called ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... of 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 ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... sympathise with the indignation of some of my cotemporaries at the alteration by MR. PAYNE COLLIER'S mysterious corrector, of "losses" into "leases." I am sorry to see a reading which we had cherished without any misgiving as a bit of Shaksperian quaintness, and consecrated by the humour of Gray and Charles Lamb, turned into a clumsy misprint. But we must look at real probabilities, not at fancies and predilections. I am afraid "leases" is the likelier word. It has also ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... in the parlor, a small, square room, through whose western windows the sinking sun streamed boldly. Mrs. Phelps had never seen a room like this before. There was no note of quaintness here; no high-boy, no heavy old mahogany drop-leaf table, no braided rugs or small-paned windows. There was not even comfort. The chairs were as new and shining as chairs could be; there was a "mission style" rocker, a golden-oak rocker, a cherry ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... stranger visiting Chesterton would get? He would, I think, be impressed by his genial kindliness; he would be amazed by his extraordinary powers of memory and the depths of his reading; he would be gratified by the interest that Chesterton displays in him; he would be charmed by the quaintness of his home. That Chesterton has humour is abundant by his conversation; that he has pathos is not so apparent. I am not perfectly sure that he can appreciate the things that make ordinary men sad. It has been said that he is not concerned ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... is a great deal of wit in them, rather too much; for, according to the taste of those times, they are full of what the Italians call 'concetti spiritosissimi'; the Spaniards 'agudeze'; and we, affectation and quaintness. I hope you have endeavored to suit your 'Traineau' to the character of the fair-one whom it is to contain. If she is of an irascible, impetuous disposition (as fine women can sometimes be), you will doubtless place her in the body of a lion, a tiger, a dragon, or some ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... sun, and no words of mine can give any idea of the motley crowd in the most brilliant costumes, the perfect orgie of colour presented by the neighbourhood of the plaza, on which, as a finishing touch to the quaintness of the scene, a squadron of yellow dragoons did duty as police! From Cadiz we sailed in company with the frigates La Gloire and La Medee and two steam corvettes which we had found there, and reached Cape Saint Antonio, the most westerly ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... its Tartarins to be proud of, besides the noble old castle where King Rene used to spend his springs and summers when he was tired of living in state at Aix. There is the church of Saint Martha, and the beautiful Hotel de Ville, and—almost best of all for its quaintness, though far from beautiful—the great Tarasque lurking in a ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... had lost half its charm and quaintness since the fire, we are surprised to find so much of interest when we are out at the "top of the morning" next day, and are reluctant to leave; but here the Octave disintegrates, scatters to finish the season elsewhere; and each member, on arrival at home, ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... alongside, who appeared to be the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld; and his dress was worthy of attention. He had on a full-laced uniform; his lank unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail, of an extraordinary length; the old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice; for I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was, nor what he came about. My doubts were, however, removed ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... at. Paulding is dubbed "The Cabbage Bard," and the caustic reviewer proceeds to write: "We had a Dennie and a Clifton, yet the classical elegance of the one has not availed to preserve his countrymen from being intoxicated by the quaintness and affectation of the Salmagundi school, and the purity and wit of the other have as little proved powerful to save his work from being deserted for the bathos and silliness of the 'Backwoodsman.' I remember them both. In private life they united qualities which are seldom found together, brilliancy ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... about it, his handling is steady and assured, and he has distinctly the literary touch, as well as the marks of genius; having a very great quaintness withal. The title of his famous book is 'The Anatomy of Melancholy. What It Is, with All the Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Prognostics, and several Cures of it. In three Partitions. With their several ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the heart of so large a city there should be an abode so sequestered, so isolated, so desolate, and yet so close to the thickest throng of life. But there are others such, perhaps many others such, in Prague; and Nina Balatka, who had been born there, thought nothing of the quaintness of her abode. Immediately over the little square stood the palace of the Hradschin, the wide-spreading residence of the old kings of Bohemia, now the habitation of an ex- emperor of the House of Hapsburg, who must surely find the thousand chambers of the royal mansion ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... paraphrase, "When in doubt, tell the truth," is of this sort. "Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it," he once said to the writer, apropos of a little girl's remark. His daily speech was full of such things. The secret of his great charm was his great humanity and the gentle quaintness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... or two found out exactly how it had been; and then Faith put the inquiry, simple to quaintness, "Did I do better to-day?"—"If you are so anxious for me—" he said, stroking back her hair. "They did not deserve to have one of my wife's words, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... 1766 can be assigned to the same literary period as the sermons of 1761. The one set seems as manifestly to belong to the post-Shandian as the other does to the pre-Shandian era; and in some, indeed, of the apparently later productions the daring quaintness of style and illustration is carried so far that, except for the fact that Sterne had no time to spare for the composition of sermons not intended for professional use, one would have been disposed to believe that they neither were nor were meant to be delivered from the pulpit at all.[1] ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... if not an interesting character; and partly for the charm of his society, and still more because his work has an invariable attraction for "man that is born of woman," I was accustomed to spend some hours a day at his workshop. The quaintness of his remarks, and their not infrequent truth,—a truth condensed and pointed by the limited sphere of his view,—gave a raciness to his talk, which mere worldliness and general cultivation would at once ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... talked to me of her journey I had time to enjoy again the quaintness of her dress,—the quaintness of forty years before. There was the same old-fashioned, soft gray silk with up-and-down stripes spotted with sprigs of flowers, the lace cap with its frill of narrow pink ribbons ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hearing, last autumn, of the death of the warm-hearted and gifted friend whose name heads this article; for there was much in his character and genius to remind us of the gentle author of Elia. He had the latter's genial humor and quaintness; his nice and delicate perception of the beautiful and poetic; his happy, easy diction, not the result, as in the case of that of the English essayist, of slow and careful elaboration, but the natural, spontaneous language in which his conceptions at once embodied themselves, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... what is of more consequence, a receptive man. I should have little hope for any one who came from a quiet talk with Mrs. Yocomb in a complacent mood or merely disposed to indulge in a few platitudes on the sweetness and quaintness of her character, and some sentimentalities in regard to Friends. If the depths of one's nature were not stirred, then I would believe that there were no depths. She is doing me much good, and giving me ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... - for if my recollection serve me, it has been a manufacturing town barely one-and-twenty years - Lowell is a large, populous, thriving place. Those indications of its youth which first attract the eye, give it a quaintness and oddity of character which, to a visitor from the old country, is amusing enough. It was a very dirty winter's day, and nothing in the whole town looked old to me, except the mud, which in some parts was almost knee-deep, and might have been deposited there, on the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... were standing in front of a dwelling-house appeared to be as inconsistent, and out of proportion to the silent houses, as were the actors on a stage to the painted canvas thoroughfares before which they strutted. Mr. Clinch usually had no fancies, had no eye for quaintness; besides, this was not a quaint nor romantic district, only an entrepot for silks and velvets, and Mr. Clinch was here, not as a tourist, but as a purchaser. The guidebooks had ignored Sammtstadt, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... passionate tenderness of the Italian words must exhale in an English translation, but enough may remain to show that the hymns with which Savonarola at this time sowed the mind of Italy often mingled the Moravian quaintness and energy with the Wesleyan purity and tenderness. One of the great means of popular reform which he proposed was the supplanting of the obscene and licentious songs, which at that time so generally defiled the minds of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... circumstances were at one time so prosperous, that he could afford to bear losses; and he, even then, had a superfluity of wardrobe in "two gowns, and everything handsome about him." But this little word losses, the perfect Shakspearian quaintness of which is universally acknowledged, is to be changed into leases; if it should be leases, how is it that it does not follow upon "householder," instead of being introduced so many words after? as, if leases were the proper word, it would assuredly have suggested itself immediately ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... a comedy face," he commented. "It's hard to associate intellectuality with such quaintness of expression. Are you ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... shape of barrels, in the shape of human heads,[862] have little fitness, and in the Cyprian specimens have little beauty; the mixture of Assyrian with Egyptian forms is incongruous; the birds and beasts represented are drawn with studied quaintness, a quaintness recalling the art of China and Japan. If there is elegance in some of the forms, it is seldom a very pronounced elegance; and, where the taste is best, the suspicion continually arises that a foreign model has been imitated. Moreover, from first to last the art makes little ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... gentleman, finding it rather difficult to open, incautiously applied a dessert-knife to the lid. Poor Brummell was on thorns; at last he could not contain himself any longer, and, addressing the host, said, with his characteristic quaintness, "Will you be good enough to tell your friend that my snuff-box ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... other three celebrated prose authors of this time has anything in common. He stands apart from them in his fervently religious and romantic temperament, in his richness of representation and ingenuity of analogy, and in his forcible quaintness of style, as completely as he did in social status and in personal surroundings. In complete contrast to the romantic productions of the self-educated tinker of Bedford, the works of Walton and Evelyn ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Charles Lamb are an excellent illustration of the value of reserve in literature. Below his quiet, his quaintness, his humour, and what may seem the slightness, the occasional or accidental character of his work, there lies, as I said at starting, as in his life, a genuinely tragic element. The gloom, reflected at its darkest in those hard shadows ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... contact—from him. He is like Borrow or De Quincey (though he goes even beyond both) in the singular knack of endowing or investing known places and commonplace actions with a weird second essence and second intention. He is like Charles Lamb in his power of dropping from quaintness and almost burlesque into the most touching sentiment and emotion. Mr. Lang, in his Introduction to Poe, has noticed how Gerard resembles America's one "poet of the first order" in fashioning lines "on the further ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... moments of impatient bitterness,—to split it up for firewood. But it could at least be exiled. She would have a good cook-stove, and the great fireplace should be walled up. The tin kitchen, sitting now beside the hearth in shining quaintness, should also go into the attic. The old clock—But at that instant the clash of bells shivered the frosty air, and Amelia threw her vain imaginings aside like a garment, and sprang to her feet. She clasped her hands in a spontaneous gesture of rapt attention; and when the ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... quaintness of those stories set them apart in a niche of distinction, where they have no rivals.—Literary ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... dreamy, ballad, The Poet's Vow. We are almost tempted to pause and criticise the work of an artist of so much inspiration and promise as the author of this poem, and to exhort him to a greater clearness of expression, and less quaintness in the choice of his phraseology, but this is not the time or ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... quaintness about the young lady's costume that reminded Henley of an old portrait. Evidently her attire had been modeled after that of some remote ancestor, but it was picturesque and singularly becoming, and Paul found it difficult ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... home, for a long, long time of the Reads, three sisters. One married Dr. Post, who was a missionary to Syria, but Miss Jane and Miss Isabella lived here many years after. The house next door still has its old-time doorway, but, unfortunately, one owner in the eighties spoiled its quaintness by adding a corner tower. It was here, I think, that Dr. William Barton Rogers, first President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lived ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... safe place. Of course I can't show you that," said Newman. "You might want to take hold of it," he added with conscious quaintness. "But that's a very correct copy—except, of course, the handwriting. I am keeping the original ...
— The American • Henry James
... of age, and published poems at ten. Her first effusions appeared in a local paper at Reading, Pa. Being a born poetess, her success as a writer was assured from the first, and her warmth of expression and richness of imagery, combined with a curious quaintness, the outgrowth of the deep vein of mysticism that pervades her nature, soon attracted the attention of the literati of this country, one of the most distinguished of whom, the late George D. Prentice, did not hesitate to pronounce her the most extraordinary ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... preserved throughout the orientation of the verses and figures of speech instead of Anglicising them. It is this, combined with his profound oriental scholarship, his fine old-world style, and the richness, variety, and quaintness of vocabulary, which has given to his original edition its ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... regions of the tower on village and hamlet and cottage, calling aloud—for who could dissociate the words from the music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?—written none the less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with laughing at their quaintness—calling aloud, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... not doubt your statement." She paused, and he knew that his accusation had been rude. "It would not occur to me"—there was still the slight quaintness of one unaccustomed to English—"that you could do anything unworthy of a gentleman." Another pause, and Caius knew that he was bound over to keep the peace. "I think O'Shea got himself into trouble, and that he did the best he could for you; but O'Shea lives not far from ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... wrinkled faces, and hooked noses, their crotchets and ludicrous eccentricities of dress, portraits which possessed all the racy flavor of truth. He delighted in their "Normanisms," in the primitive quaintness of their ideas and characters. For a short time he flung himself into their squirrel's life of busy gyrations in a cage. Then he began to feel the want of variety, and grew tired of it. It was like the life of the ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... is shown in. He is a frank, genial young man of twenty-five who honestly admires the ladies, though he is amused by their quaintness. He is modestly aware that it is in the blue and white room alone that he ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... but she had lived alone with her constellations, having little contact with the world or practical knowledge of it, so that in many respects she was still as much a child as I was, and I immediately knew her for my friend and playmate and loved her with all my heart. There was a charming quaintness and innocence about her, and an immense, healthy curiosity about this new old world and its contents. She had a great flow of native, spontaneous humor, and could say nothing that was not juicy and poignant. She was old-fashioned, yet full of modern impulses and ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... What general truth is there, the merits of which all the world, or the one hundredth part has examined? It is smartly said somewhere, That the priest only continues what the nurse began. But the life of the remark consists in the quaintness of the antithesis between the nurse and the priest; and owes its support much more to sound than to sense. For is it possible that children should not hear something of the common and popular opinions of their country, whether these opinions be true or false? Do they not learn the common maxims ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... and learning in the inner man, was carried out to fulness and finished by the spirit of innovation in government. It was, no doubt, reasonable to expect that the simple organization of the primitive republics should survive the quaintness of primitive manners and of the relations of antiquity. But, instead of rising to a higher and nobler degree of animal life, this organization degenerated into a common and coarse mechanism. The zoophyte condition of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a pity to replace the vivacity and quaintness and felicity of Susy's innocent free spelling with the dull and petrified uniformities of the spelling-book. Nearly all the grimness it taken out of the "expergating" of my books by the subtle mollification ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... occupations a year or two ago printed in the Tribune. It is in as lively a vein as may be, but such an anatomy is unavoidably sometimes repulsive. The authors perhaps endanger the designed effect of their performance by attempting to invest it with the attractions of quaintness and humor. We quote from the second part the following description of coster-mongers in the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... correspondent's curiousity respecting their name might be fully satisfied, and his interest increased, if he should happen to be in Bristol on some sunny afternoon in the later part of May, or the beginning of June, by a sight of this bright "regiment of women"—the gay colour of their gowns subdued by the quaintness of their fashion, and the clean whiteness of their aprons, collars, &c.—proceeding, in double file, towards the downs, for air and recreation. An account of their foundation may be found in Barret's Hist. of Bristol, p. 415. "Blue-Boys," so called for a similar reason, are a parallel case ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... having acted on their unseasoned skins as boiling water does on the lobster by dyeing his dark coat scarlet. The man was evidently a denizen of the north, his accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and bony build, and self-confident and dogmatic in his opinions. The precision and quaintness of his language, as well as his eccentric remarks on common things, stimulated my mind. Our icy islanders thaw rapidly when they have drifted into warmer latitudes: broken loose from its anti-social system, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Lay Reader. "Bibles? Why, really, Miss Flame, I couldn't countenance any sort of mock service! Even just for—for quaintness,—even for ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... numberless associations with it, have left traces of that city in almost everything he wrote. From the time when Mr. Snodgrass first discovered the castle ruin from Rochester Bridge, to the last chapter of Edwin Drood, we observe hints of the city's quaintness or silence; the unending pavements, which go on and on till the wisest head would be puzzled to know where Rochester ends and where Chatham begins, the disposition of Father Time to have his own unimpeded way therein, and of the gray cathedral ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... she been suddenly thrown into the society and under the protection of a youth, who evidently as little contemplated evil towards herself as if he had been her brother. The freshness of his integrity, the poetry and truth of his feelings, and even the quaintness of his forms of speech, all had their influence, and aided in awakening an interest that she found as pure as it was sudden and deep. Hurry's fine face and manly form had never compensated for his boisterous and vulgar tone, and her intercourse with the officers had prepared her ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... him, argues a want of confidence in their country, tantamount to a confession of failure. Had they a little more trust in the attractive qualities of their land, a little more imagination to realise that in other eyes its flatness and quaintness might be even alluring, they would accept and acknowledge the compliment by doing as little as possible to make ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... ponderous with learning and stiff with allusions, digressions, conceits, anecdotes, and quotations from the Greek and the Latin. A page of the Magnalia is almost as richly mottled with italics as one from the Anatomy of Melancholy, and the quaintness which Mather caught from his favorite Fuller disports itself in textual pun and marginal anagram and the fantastic sub-titles of his books and chapters. He speaks of Thomas Hooker as having "angled many scores of souls into the kingdom of heaven," anagrammatizes ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... road for some minutes together, the stranger admiring all the way the golden tresses of the laburnum and the rich perfume of the lilac, and talking much as he went of the quaintness and prettiness of the suburban houses. Philip thought them pretty, too (or rather, important), but failed to see for his own part where the quaintness came in. Nay, he took the imputation as rather a slur on so respectable a neighbourhood: for to be quaint is to be picturesque, and to be picturesque ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... period has such a command of pure English, unadulterated by xenomania and unweakened by purism, as Daniel. Whatever unfavourable things have been said of him from time to time have been chiefly based on the fact that his chaste and correct style lacks the fiery quaintness, the irregular and audacious attraction of his contemporaries. Nor was he less a master of versification than of vocabulary. His Defence of Rhyme shows that he possessed the theory: all his poetical works ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... market town on the Barle, 21 m. W. from Taunton, pop. (in 1901) 1369. The station on the G.W.R. branch line to Barnstaple is 2 m. distant. Dulverton is a primitive and not very prepossessing little place. Its quaintness is quite unpicturesque, and it is generally unworthy of its situation. It is, however, deservedly beloved of the angler and the huntsman. It possesses one of the best trout streams in the W. of England, and its proximity to Exmoor, the haunt of the red ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... a banjo from the wall and, striking a few chords, began to sing. His songs seemed to be original, even improvisations, and he sang them with a certain quaintness and point that made them very piquant. I remember one of the choruses. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... work of Johnstone, a quaintness which he, probably, did not learn from Elkington, and which illustrates the character of his mind as one not peculiarly adapted to a plain and practical history of another man's system and labors. For instance, in speaking of the arrangement ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... more brightly than before. A few steps further would hide them and the edifice, and all that belonged to it from his sight, possibly for ever. There was something in the thought which led him to linger. The chapel had neither beauty, quaintness, nor congeniality to recommend it: the dissimilitude between the new utilitarianism of the place and the scenes of venerable Gothic art which had occupied his daylight hours could not well be exceeded. But Somerset, as has been said, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... fall, to which the man replied: "No, the fall didn't hurt me a bit, it was stoppin' so quick that did all the mischief!" The humour of the story was not very brilliant, yet somehow it seemed to Escombe at that moment to be ineffably amusing, and he laughed aloud at the quaintness of the conceit. And, as he did so, the remaining yarns of the second strand parted with a little jerk that thrilled him through and through, and he hung there suspended by a single strand, but still being lowered rapidly from ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... save that which was lost.' It is because of the light that it throws upon that great thought that he tells this fascinating story of Zacchaeus. I need not repeat it. We all remember it, and the quaintness and grotesqueness of part of it fix it in people's memories. We know how the rich tax gatherer, pocketing his dignity, and unable to see over the heads of the crowd, scrambled up into the branches of the sycamore ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the old inscriptions, often deciphered with difficulty after scraping away the moss and lichen, we occasionally discover one that has the charm of quaintness, or which touches our heart or sense of humour in such a way as to tempt us to copy ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... sympathy or by the flashes of his whimsical humor. Next, we note in the Essays their air of literary culture, which is due to Lamb's wide reading, and to the excellent taste with which he selected his old authors,—Sidney, Brown, Burton, Fuller, Walton and Jeremy Taylor. Often it was the quaintness of these authors, their conceits or oddities, that charmed him. These oddities reappear in his own style to such an extent that even when he speaks a large truth, as he often does, he is apt to give the impression of being a little harebrained. Yet if you examine his queer idea or his merry ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of the sort," retorted the General. "I trust I am not so lacking in manners. I merely remarked its beauty and quaintness and massiveness and general artistry. My host expressed pleasure at my appreciation of its qualities and volunteered the information that it was a little thing he had picked up in a curio shop on Regent Street, London, last summer. He had acquired it in perfect good faith. What ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... developed into diphtheria, and that Ellen had caught it, and the two women were even now lying helpless and unattended in the dark house, and he brought down the knocker on the door like a hammer. The little square, which a moment ago had seemed an amusing setting for Ellen's quaintness, now seemed like a malignant hunchback in its darkness and its leaning angles, and the branches of the trees in the park beyond the railings swayed in the easy wind of a fine night with that ironical air nature always assumes to persons convulsed by human passion. But presently he heard the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... aloud with the comic quaintness of the director. There a little lady, new to the stage, is made to feel at home and confident. The proud old-timer is sufficiently ameliorated to approve of the change suggested. The leading lady trembles with the shock of realization imparted by the stout little man with chubby smile who, seated ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Berrien Springs. There is a cottage that eyes the lake Between pines and silver birches At South Haven. There is the inviolable wonder of wooded shore Curving for miles at Saugatuck. And at Holland a beach like Scheveningen's. And at Charlevoix the sudden quaintness Of an old-world place by the sea. There are the hills around Elk Lake Where the blue of the sky is so still and clear It seems it was rubbed above them By the swipe of a giant thumb. And beyond these the little Traverse Bay Where the ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... till, unable to bear it longer, he again rushed for distraction to the real Christminster life. He now sought it out in an obscure and low-ceiled tavern up a court which was well known to certain worthies of the place, and in brighter times would have interested him simply by its quaintness. Here he sat more or less all the day, convinced that he was at bottom a vicious character, of whom it was ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... answering: "Do you know," she said at length, "he forgets often to remember that the children are not his very own. The little Margaret there creeps into his lap nights, calls him daddy, and melts the heart of him. And the boy with his quaintness, follows him about the house on Saturdays, and Reynolds says often enough: 'He'll be a great man, this chap, Peggy. He says some of the things I thought when I was his age.' He's taken to calling me Peggy since the children came to make a distinction, the little girl ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... published the Leviathan, a sketch of an ideal commonwealth. Baxter, with his Saints' Everlasting Rest sent a book of religious consolation into every household. In 1642 Dr. Thomas Browne, with the simplicity of a child and a quaintness that fascinates, published his Religio Medici; and in 1653 dear old simple-hearted Isaak Walton told us in his Compleat Angler how to catch, dress, and cook fish. Thomas Fuller, born a score or more of years before Dryden, in the same town, Aldwinkle, published ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... hymn-writing, very often, at home or elsewhere, writing down an entire hymn at one sitting. They are all deeply devotional in spirit, and have not infrequently the merit of great simplicity and a pleasing quaintness of expression, of which I think the German language is more capable than our ruder ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... is the independent spirit, with which they stemmed the torrent of fashion, and forestalled the second thoughts of their countrymen. There was a time when Tristram Shandy was applauded, and Churchill thought another Dryden. But who reads Tristram now? There prevails indeed a certain quaintness, and something "like an affectation of being immoderately witty, throughout the whole work." But for real humour not a grain. So said the Monthly Reviewers, (v. 21. p. 568.) and so says the immortal Knox. Both indeed grant him a slight ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... and very beautiful little churches in Athens, "delicious little Byzantine churches," as Renan calls them. They are very peculiar, and unlike what one generally sees in Europe. They strike the observer with their quaintness and smallness, and he fancies he here sees the tiny model of that unique and splendid building, the cathedral of St. Mark at Venice. But yet it is surprizing how little we notice them at Athens. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... morning the quaintness and quiet of the village tempted her into a stroll down its long street, before she should seek the pine woods farther back, in search of hidden beauties, and one picture that she came upon held her spell bound ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... were large, and low, the ceilings, walls, floors, and staircase all of oak. The diamond-lattice windows, and narrow, tortuous passages, and innumerable nooks and crannies and cupboards, created an atmosphere of combined quaintness and comfort that irresistibly appealed to the Murphys. Viewed under the searching rays of the sun, and cheered by the voices of the visitors, the interior of the house, for artistic taste and cheerfulness, would ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... or other forms thus reduced to angularity argues, of course, no affectation of quaintness on the part of the worker, but was the unavoidable outcome of her way of work. There is a pronounced and early limit to art of this rather naive kind, but that there is art in some of the very simplest and most modest peasant work built up on those lines no artist ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... of the most agreeable and most interesting and most amiable beings that could be imagined. His face had a sort of Quixote quaintness, so had his talk, while his humour had a pleasant flavour. He lived at his place in the country, but I always looked forward—and now look back, alas!—to the many pleasant talks we would have together, ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... greatest comfort to him, for whenever he was off his sleep, which sometimes happened to him, he had only to take one of the novels, and before he read two pages it was sure to set him asleep. Tom, with the usual shrewdness common to his countrymen in that class of life, joined a quaintness and drollery in his notions and mode of expressing himself that was very amusing; he was familiar, but at the same time perfectly respectful, although he was sometimes tempted to deal sharp cuts, particularly ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... detail of more polished, but not less sanguinary, contests. I rather suppose, that James never was himself disposed to pay particular attention to the laws of the duello; but they were defined with a quaintness and pedantry, which, bating his dislike to the subject, must have deeply interested him. The point of honour was a science, which a grown gentleman might study under suitable professors, as well as dancing, or any ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... esteem I had of those exercises which are the employments of the Schools: I knew that Languages which are there learnt, are necessary for the understanding of ancient Writers, That the quaintness of Fables awakens the Minde; That the memorable actions in History raise it up, and that being read with discretion, they help to form the judgment. That the reading of good books, is like the conversation with the honestest ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... man smiled faintly at the quaintness of an old gentleman in a frock-coat, a director of the steamboat company in modern Venice, talking Chaldaic, wholly unconscious of the incongruity, rolling out the sonorous syllables with unction, propped up ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that it is the work of an outsider. He has never once got under the skin of any one of his people, and this is true, because he was impelled to write about them, not because they were human, and therefore endowed with all human characteristics of hatefulness, and lovableness, and quaintness, and humour, and vanity, and jealousy, but because he saw good copy in them. He neither loves nor hates, nor, indeed, except for his own sake, is for a. second even faintly interested. He is there to make a book, and these people offer excellent material for a book. He is astonishingly industrious, ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... other and more fertile conditions. Hawthorne had an ancestry behind him connected with a singular and impressive history, had remarkable parents, and especially a mother pure and lofty in spirit; lived in a suggestive atmosphere of private sorrow and amid a community of much quaintness; he was also enabled to know books at an early age; yet these things only helped, and not produced, his genius. Sometimes they helped by repression, for there was much that was uncongenial in his early life; yet the clairvoyance, the unconscious wisdom, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... indulged pleasant reminiscences of later years, when, with Uncle Daniel and Tom Anderson, he attended the secret prayer-meetings. Iola rode along, conversing with Aunt Linda, amused and interested at the quaintness of her speech and the shrewdness of her intellect. To her the ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... I must be quaint. That's all there is. It's not life that counts, it's the quaintness ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... lived at Dartmouth, and of this place Johnson gave me such descriptions, that to this day the name of Dartmouth has a romantic sound in my ears, though I know now that all the marvels were Johnson's own invention, and barely founded upon the real quaintness of the place, of which he must have heard from his mother. It became the highest object of my ambition to see the captain's native city. That there must be people—shopkeepers, for instance, and a man to keep the post office—who lived ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... were they in the hall than Emilia called for her bedroom candle in a thin, querulous voice that made Tracy shout with laughter and love of her quaintness. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical." He was the very antipodes of a retailer of other men's thoughts in other men's words: {170} every chapter of Boswell brings its evidence of Johnsonian eloquence, of Johnsonian quaintness, raciness, and abundance, of the surprising flights of his fancy, of the inexhaustible ingenuity of his arguments and illustrations. No talk the world has ever heard is less like the talk of a commonplace man. Yet the supreme quality of it is not the ingenuity ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... with 'Little Prudy.' Compared with her, all other book-children are cold creations of literature only; she alone is the real thing, all the quaintness of childhood, its originality, its tenderness and its teasing, its infinite unconscious drollery, the serious earnestness of its fun, the fun of its seriousness, the natural religion of its plays and the delicious oddity of its prayers—all ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the quaintness and singularity of its form," said I; "it appears to be less adapted for real use than ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow |
