"Quirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quirk of the voice the singer paused, gayly flicked the strings of the banjo, then put her hand flat upon them to stop the vibration and smiled round on her admirers. The group were applauding heartily. A chorus said, ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees—a legion of them! No sooner did they start with a new quirk when it turned political. Coponius, procurator fourth before Pilate, had a pretty time crushing the Gaulonite sedition which arose in this fashion and spread ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... 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
... arrested on the soil of Pennsylvania, this lawyer stood ready, free of charge, to use in their behalf his skill and every fair interpretation of the letter and spirit of the law, and availing himself of every quirk for postponements, thus adding to the expense and anxiety of the pursuer, and giving the engineers of the underground railroad added opportunities to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the suffering and persecuted of ail classes, Messrs. Quibble and Quirk, attorneys-at-law, beg to offer their professional services at the following fixed and equitable rate,—they, Messrs. Q. and Q., pledging themselves that on no occasion shall the charge exceed the sum opposite the particular amusement ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... bad, is equally to be deplored. Your grandfather always said that the man who was better than his neighbours was quite as unfortunate as the man who was worse. Who knows but that your dislike of tobacco and your aversion to marriage may result from the same peculiar quirk in your brain?" ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... wondrous growth of blockheads, even in our business. And if it were not for Shephard and Frazier, a hundred years hence, they would not think that in our times there were fellows bold enough to get sixpence out of a legal road, or dare to do anything without a quirk of the law ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... poor woman was slowly wasting, worn out by the regrets of the past, the vain desires of the present, and the dreary prospect of the future. And now she had been openly insulted, her feelings as a mother wounded to the quirk; and her husband's uncle, instead of defending and consoling her, could give only cold counsel ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... through poverty and riches, through sickness and in health, for better or for worse—with all the strain and stress and struggle that life puts upon the yoke that binds the commonplace man to the commonplace woman rising to eminence by some unimportant quirk of his genius reacting on the times—these indeed ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... 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 ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Lords, or Commons, and it would be quite time enough to consider that point when we were assembled. It always required considerable address and presence of mind to keep the upper hand of these legal quirk-dealers, these impudent under-strappers, whose whole trade consists in trick and chicane; but I do not recollect ever having been outwitted by any one of them as to the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... 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
... you are, 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 made good the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... flashes to 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. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ludicrously new. His notion of honesty in that kind was to cheat the buyer for his master if he could, proud to write in his book a large sum against the name of the animal. He would have scorned in his very soul the idea of making a farthing by it himself through any business quirk whatever, but he would not have been the least ashamed if, having sold Kelpie, he had heard—let me say after a week of possession—that she had dashed out her purchaser's brains. He would have been a little shocked, a little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... there: his eyes gloated over the board, a malicious quirk sat astride his fat lips. The Funny Fellow spoke ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... 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 ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... origin of the skips of the augmented and (to a lesser degree) diminished intervals to be found in the music of many nations. It consists of the trick of alternating chest tones with falsetto. It is a kind of quirk in the voice which pleases children and primitive folk alike, a simple thing which has puzzled folklorists the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... don't look surprised. I've thought of this possibility. My God!" she said with a bitterness that startled him. "I've thought of every possibility, every possible crook and quirk of this business." ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... somethin'." Pinkey's mouth had a funny quirk at the corners. "Maybe it'll take the kinks ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... Book, writing, compilation, work Attend the while I pen a pome, A jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... there, as he let his eyes drift from Betty, whom he loved, to her mother, whom his father had loved and lost. She had made his father suffer through love. Her daughter was making Donald MacRae's son suffer likewise. Again, through some fantastic quirk of his imagination, the stodgy figure of Horace Gower loomed in the background, shadowy and sinister. There were moments, like the present, when he felt hatred of the man concretely, as he ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... smooth tongue out o' his head!" thought Andrew; "but though I hae nae chance in speaking balderdash wi' him, and though he did thraw me (and it was maybe by an unmanly quirk after a'), I'll let her see, if he has the glibest tongue, wha has ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... steady, hard grind of 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 ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nothing came of the little artifice. No Buddha's graven face was less indicative than the squat man's. Perhaps his face was too sore to permit mobility of expression. The drollery of this thought caused a quirk in one corner of Kitty's mouth. The squat man stopped at the foot of the bed with the air of a mere passer-by and seemed more interested in the investigations of the policeman than in the man on the bed. But ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... see her glance.... Mademoiselle, standing there all disfigured and blotchy about something... it was nothing... it couldn't be anything.... If anyone were dead she would not be standing there... it was just some silly prim French quirk... her dignity... someone had been "grossiere"... and there she stood in her black hat and black cotton gloves.... Hurriedly putting on her hat and long lace scarf she decided that she would not change her shoes. Somewhere out in the sunshine ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... informed you are a man skilled in 'magic,' Medic. You certainly display the traditional sorcerer's quickness of wit. But this rumor is also truth." The quirk of good humor had gone again, and there was an edge in the Chief Ranger's voice which cut. "Poachers on Khatka would welcome the Patrol in place of the attention they ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... a great favorite with ladies; in fact, some ladies seem so infatuated with work of that kind, that, according to the new theory of the Future, a fruition of fancy-work will be amongst their other blissful realizations. And so, after surveying Deacon QUIRK'S spiritual potato fields, or perhaps some fresh (spiritual) manifestation of Miss PHELPS'S piety and intelligence, we may have the pleasure of seeing the sun and moon hung with tidies, and a lamp-mat under ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... Olive Osberta Orphelia Octavia O'Dyke, Your conduct is outrageous and unladylike. Polly Patience Prudence Paulina Pitt, You really are our champion tell-tale-tit. Quilla Quintina Quinburga Quendrida Quirk, How very, very, dirty you have made your fancy-work. Rose Ruth Rachel Rebecca Ritting, Now stop that crying and get on with your knitting. Sarah Sophia Selina Susannah Stacies, Don't spoil your face by making those grimaces. Tilda Theresa Tabitha Theodora Tapping, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... holding aloof from the world, conservative and 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 him to ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... form, something like a jellyfish. As these died, they had sunk into the sea-bottom ooze; sand had covered the ooze and pressed it tighter and tighter, until it had become glassy flint, and the entombed jellyfish little beans of dense stone. Some of them, by some ancient biochemical quirk, were intensely thermofluorescent; worn as gems, they glowed from ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... decreed that it should be otherwise. Having achieved the incredible conviction of O'Connell, by an Irish jury, the great culprit baffled the vengeance of the law by a quirk which a lawyer only could have devised. As regards his Irish policy, Sir Robert Peel never recovered this blow, the severity of which was proportionably increased by its occurrence at a moment of unprecedented success. Resolute ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... optimistic pokes and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyceums and other folks, to Rotarys, Kiwanis' Clubs, and feel I ain't like other dubs. And then old Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who's always waitin', he gives his tail a lively quirk, and gets in quick his dirty work. He fills me up with mullygrubs; my hair the backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than a hound, on Sunday when the folks ain't round. And then b' gosh, I would prefer to never be a lecturer, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... that would turn out dollars and other coins, remarkably like the real thing. He was not a clever forger; he had learned to write somewhat late in life, and the large, bold round hand, with the capital letters that invariably began with the wrong quirk or twirl, was too characteristic, though he wrote anonymous letters sometimes, risking detection in the enjoyment of what was to him a dear delight, only smaller than that other pleasure of moulding bodies to his own purposes, of malice, or gain, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... straight at him, a humorous little quirk to her mouth. "Say, what're you askin' me to ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... estate, praised be Heaven! I and mine have lived rent-free, time out of mind, voluntarily undertaken to publish the MEMOIRS of the RACKRENT FAMILY, I think it my duty to say a few words, in the first place, concerning myself. My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I have always been known by no other than "honest Thady"—afterward, in the time of Sir Murtagh, deceased, I remember to hear them calling me "old Thady," and now I'm come to "poor Thady;" for I wear ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 went ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
