"Singularly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chanced to look at herself in her mirror, and she said to herself: "Really!" It seemed to her almost that she was pretty. This threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment she had never thought of her face. She saw herself in her mirror, but she did not look at herself. And then, she had so often been told that she was homely; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... about charms to show how prevalent faith in their efficiency was. Ailments of all descriptions had their accompanying antidotes; but it is singularly strange that people professing the Christian religion should cling so tenaciously to paganism and its forms, so that even in our own days, such absurdities as charms find a resting-place in the minds of our rustic population, and often, even the better-educated classes ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... and Muddiman. Nicknames such as Earl may have been acquired in various ways (Chapter XV). Bull and Muddiman are singularly appropriate for Rugby scrummagers, though the first may be from an inn or shop sign, rather than from physique or character. It is equivalent to Thoreau, Old Fr. toreau (taureau). Muddiman is for Moodyman, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... is not so sacred to them. Perhaps it is in this respect that travel is said to enlarge the mind. That it does not sharpen it, however, whatever it may do for the temper, is tolerably certain. In their habits travellers are singularly conventional. They are compelled, of course, to suffer certain inconveniences, but they endure others, and most serious ones, quite unnecessarily, merely because it is the custom so to do. In crossing the Atlantic, for example, a man of means will submit to be shut up in ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Her expression was serious now. Up to the present her eyes, while she talked, had been singularly animated, often full ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... since I first took up my abode at Collingham-Westmore. Miss Collingham had grown from a sickly child into a singularly graceful young woman, full of bright intelligence, eager for information, and with scarcely an outward trace remaining of her former fragile health. Still those mysterious swoons occasionally visited her, forming an insurmountable obstacle ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pastoral solitude of Littlefield London seemed unpleasantly crowded and noisy. The reek of petrol was a poor substitute for the clean country air, and the hoot of innumerable motors and 'buses struck on his ear with new and singularly disagreeable force as he took his ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Tartar steppes and the cold plains of Central Asia. Their names are the suslik (a Central Asian prairie dog), the pika, a little steppe hare, and an extremely odd antelope, now found in Thibet. This is a singularly ugly beast with a high Roman nose, and wool almost as thick as that of a sheep when the winter coat is on. It must have been quite common in those parts, for I have had the cores of two of their horns brought to me during the last ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... This is a singularly beautiful species resembling the latter except that the central tail feathers are bright red, with the extreme tips white. During August and September they breed in large colonies on small islands in the South Seas. On Mauritius Island they build their ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... into a seat with an older and much bigger boy, or youth, with a fuliginous complexion, a dilating and whitening nostril, and a singularly malignant scowl. Many years afterwards he committed an act of murderous violence, and ended by going to finish his days in a madhouse. His delight was to kick my shins with all his might, under the desk, not at all as ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... insurgent Bolsheviki. Karelin was on his feet, protesting. "Three weeks ago the Bolsheviki were the most ardent defenders of the freedom of the Press... The arguments in this resolution suggest singularly the point of view of the old Black Hundreds and the censors of the Tsarist rgime-for they also talked of 'poisoners of the mind of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... placed the parcel under the pillow. Evidently the business drawing him was proceeding as he would have had it. Next he woke the negro with a touch. The black in salute bent his body forward, and raised his hands palm out, the thumbs at the forehead. Attention singularly intense settled upon his countenance; he appeared to listen with his soul. It was time for speech, yet the master merely pointed to one of the sleepers. The watchful negro caught the idea, and going to the man, aroused ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... something calmer; I shall, however, never be at peace till, as far as in me lies, I have done justice to my departed brother's memory. His heroic death (the particulars of which I have now accurately collected from several of the survivors) exacts this from me, and still more his singularly interesting character, and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... known to the polar traveller as a migratory bird of the American continent. Like the others of the same family, it feeds upon vegetable matter, generally on marine plants, with their adherent molluscan life. It is rarely or never seen in the interior; and from its habits may be regarded as singularly indicative of open water. The flocks of this bird, easily distinguished by their wedge-shaped line of flight, now crossed the water obliquely, and disappeared over ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... for clouds had come like a veil over the bright stars, but the night was singularly clear and transparent, as soon after eight bells the informer crept silently up to where the lieutenant was trying to make out the approach of ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... alluding to his own very clever essay, entitled "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III." It failed to convince Hume; but can hardly be denied to be a singularly acute specimen of historical criticism. It does not, indeed, prove Richard to have been innocent of all the crimes imputed to him; but it proves conclusively that much of the evidence by which the various charges are supported is false. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... innocent pleasures ceased. They ceased just as Flossie's palpitating heart told her that she was really making an impression on this singularly unimpressionable young man. She knew it by the sudden softening of his voice as he spoke to her, by the curious brilliant dilation of his eyes as they followed her about the room. For after much easy practice on ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... peculiarly English—I might say singularly English; for I have never seen any thing of exactly the same character anywhere else but in Old England—except indeed in New England, where I know not whether it be from the country having assimilated itself to the people, or from the people ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... came on board during the afternoon—men who, as Captain Cable had stated, had only one language and made singularly small use of that. Music and seamanship are two arts daily practised in harmony by men who have no common language. For a man is a seaman or a musician quite independently of speech. So the running tackle was successfully bent, and in the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... his challenge to Roaring Russell. Slow to anger, Mormon, when his rage mounted was slow of statement. What he said he meant. The insult to Miranda Bailey while under his escort chafed him as a saddle chafes a galled horse. It had to be wiped out at the earliest moment and, singularly enough, the spinster was not particularly prominent in the matter. It was not a personal question; the insult had been offered to womanhood, and Mormon was ever ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... darkness, thus made singularly visible, the white travellers sat dozing and nodding on their luggage, while the cries of metallic-toned horned frogs and other nocturnal sounds peculiar to that weird forest ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... this time of his life, indeed, Ivan might have thrown money into the street by handsful and still have felt no want. But, as if to add mockery to the situation, this Ivan was the least extravagant of young men. His wants were singularly few; and the chief items in his expenditure consisted in the lending of money to his brother officers; all of whom ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... is afraid of being compromised, and does not consider in what an awkward position this coincidence places him—if that be so, he is a singularly thick-headed individual—or—well—Monsieur Thomery ... you are the most rascally scoundrel it has been my lot to admire, up to now! But I assure you, we know how to get even with you! From the moment we have established, in the first ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... ditch at the side of the road, and then their laughter became uproarious. It was harmless enough, but it was all so ugly and insolent, that Hugh thought that he had seldom seen anything which was so singularly and supremely unattractive. The performance seemed to have no merit in it from any point of view. These youths were no doubt exulting in the pride of their strength, but the only thing that they really enjoyed ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... long silence, and for the first time in my life I experienced the wish, well, not to kiss her, but to lay my cheek against hers. It was a wish singularly hard to resist. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... mentioned also the staff of the gentleman's newspaper, which was one of the most prominent and powerful in the country but a merciless critic of the president. He shouted at once: "That settles it. Nothing which that paper wishes will receive any consideration from me." Singularly enough, the paper subsequently became one of his ardent ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... quietness of deportment and expression, a veiled shyness thrown over all her emotions, her language and her manner; making the outward demonstration invariably fall short of what we know to be the feeling within. Not only is the portrait singularly beautiful and interesting in itself, but the conduct of Cordelia, and the part which she bears in the beginning of the story, is rendered consistent and natural by the wonderful truth and delicacy with which this peculiar disposition ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... at least where Major Kinnaird was not concerned, in her quiet way a persistent woman. Besides, Miss Stirling, who was going with her to England, would some day come into considerable possessions, and she had a son who found it singularly difficult to live on the allowance ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... classifications and moral generalities. It is not true that his absorbent vessels begin their task as children begin the guessing game, by asking, "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?" He responds to stimulation and recuperates after the exhaustion of his response, and his being is singularly careless whether the stimulation comes as a drug or stimulant, or as anger or ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... of the nature, as if what was mainly needed was the development of the understanding. We hear about 'reformation' from some who look rather deeper than the superficial apostles of culture. And how singularly the very word proclaims the insufficiency of the remedy which it suggests! 'Re-formation' affects form and not substance. It puts the old materials into a new shape. Exactly so—and much good may be expected from that! They are the old materials still, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... masculine, they did with such a grace take with them who were not acquainted with his accents or idioms, and to all these his acquired learning was answerable, the culture of which he, through the divine blessing, improved with great diligence. History, the eye of learning, he singularly affected, especially sacred history, the right eye. But to him all history was sacred, seeing he considered God's actions more than man's therein. Nor did he value any man, but for the knowledge of God, wherewith he himself ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... traits of moral constitution, to which it is well, I believe, to call attention now. To those traits of character,—as shown through life,—rather than to specific gifts of intellectual power, is Mr. Everett's singularly varied success to be ascribed. You may say, if you please, that it requires a very rare mental genius and even very rare physical endowment to carry out the behests of such resolution as I am to describe. This, of course, is true. But unless you have the moral ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... he feel uncertain as to the ghost-maker's identity. There was something singularly familiar to him in the plaid of the shawl—even in the appearance of the bonnet, although it was now limp and damp. He saw it at "meet'n" whenever the circuit rider preached, and he presently recognized it. ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... ——With the utmost deference for these excellent civilians, I cannot but consider this confusion of the judicial and legislative authority as a very perilous constitutional precedent. It might answer among a people so singularly trained as the Romans were by habit and national character in reverence for legal institutions, so as to be an aristocracy, if not a people, of legislators; but in most nations the investiture of a magistrate ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... ceased to feel, for a chill of body and mind crept over her. Far out between the waves little black and white sea-birds were riding. Rising and falling with smooth and graceful movements in the hollows of the waves they seemed singularly detached and unconcerned. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... that of a boy, nine years of age, healthy, vigorous, who in his play ground and street reactions parallels that of any normal boy of his age. Aside from measles and an occasional disturbance of digestion he has been singularly free from childhood's common diseases. The father and mother are strong Hanoverian Germans holding with puritanic strictness to the dogmas of the Lutheran religious faith. So far as is ascertainable there can be no question of faulty inheritance, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... suffering from. But it was quite different when they heard the higher-toned instruments, especially those of wood, as the flute, the clarionet and the oboe. The pure, vibrating notes gave them intense enjoyment judging from the pleased expression of their countenances and their singularly brilliant eyes. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... morning we rode through the great sugarcane fields to the hacienda of San Nicolas, one of the finest estates in the republic, eighteen leagues long and five wide, belonging to Seor Zamora, in right of his wife. It is a productive place, but a singularly dreary residence. We walked out to see all the works, which are on a great scale, and breakfasted with the proprietor, who was there alone. We amused ourselves by seeing the workmen receive their weekly pay (this being Saturday), and at the mountains of copper piled up ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... my dear boy, I should choose a soldier. You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to America with that wicked Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife, was a soldier, and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt singularly drawn towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your poor dear uncle could not bear them. You will find many allusions to soldiers and men of war in the Old Testament (see Jer. 48,14). Of course one does not ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... finesse and Latin; the licence of the pulpit has usurped the reverence of the altar. It is perfectly true that statements are sometimes made in nonconformist pulpits which are bald and offensive to the ear of scholarly accomplishment. But the complaint of secularization is singularly inept. Nothing could be more secular in the way of complacent acceptance of the worldly reasons for leaving awkward questions alone than the attitude of this type ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... "you don't think we work only to live? I believe you are right. You find the crops so beautiful that you don't mind weeding, and I find Rome so beautiful that I don't mind fighting." "Rome!" The boy's face quivered and his singularly sweet voice sank to a whisper. "Do you fight for Rome? Father doesn't know it, but I pray every day to the Good Goddess in the grainfield that she will let me go to Rome some day. Do you think she will?" Valerius rose and looked down into the child's starry eyes. "Perhaps she will for Rome's own ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... Cauldron," and the Turret and Barvick, oft visited for their pleasing cascades, along with many another rivulet and spring—call up the Promised Land of old—"a land of hills and valleys which drinketh water of the rain of heaven." In climate, also, this part of Strathearn is singularly favoured, sheltered as it is from the biting east wind and fortified from the northern blasts by its mountain barriers. Its rainfall, also, is far from excessive; for many sky-piercing hill-tops tap the rain clouds from the Atlantic long before they ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... Runnington and Parkinson was Mr. Tresayle, whose clerk, however, on looking into the papers, presently carried them back to Messrs. Runnington, with the startling information that Mr. Tresayle had, a few months before, "advised on the other side!" The next person whom Mr. Runnington thought of, was—singularly enough—Mr. Mortmain, who, on account of his eminence, was occasionally employed, in heavy matters, by the firm. His clerk, also, on the ensuing morning returned the papers, assigning a similar reason to that which had been given by Mr. Tresayle's clerk! All this formed a direful corroboration, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... two hours brought us to a second settlement which contrasted most singularly with the first. Here, all the houses were neat and spacious, with fine barns and stables; the fields were well enclosed, and covered with a green carpet of clover, upon which were grazing cattle and horses of a ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... little Alice cried, "your kindness makes me weep, You do these little things for me so singularly cheap— Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget; But O there is another crime I haven't ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... perceived me in the midst of the horses, examining them, studying them with an absorbed, anxious and tired air. This was true, for I found those visits, which overwhelmed me with a sense of the marvelous and kept my attention on the rack, singularly exhausting and bewildering. My wife asked her if I intended to buy the horses. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... more and more able to discriminate the two points—that is, to feel the two at smaller distances; and, further, that the exercise of the skin in this way on one side of the body not only made that locality more sensitive to minute differences, but had the same effect, singularly, on the corresponding place on the other side of the body. This, our experimenters inferred, could only be due to the continued suggestion in the mind of the subject that he should feel two points, the result being an actual heightening ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... cloistered nun except for her appearances at an annual reception given by her father to the dignitaries of the town and college. There was no definite reason either in her physical or mental health for this life of extraordinary seclusion; it seems to have been simply the natural outcome of a singularly introspective temperament. She rarely showed or spoke of her poems to any but one or two intimate friends; only three or four were published during her lifetime; and it was with considerable surprise that her ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the priggish old room. This remarkable young woman could be earnest without being solemn, and at moments when I ought doubtless to have cursed her obstinacy I found myself watching the unstudied play of her eyebrows or the recurrence of a singularly intense whiteness produced by the parting of her lips. These aberrations, I hasten to add, didn't prevent my learning soon enough why she had wished to see me. Her reason for this was as distinct as her beauty: it was to make ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... middle-aged man, with no decided political opinions; and, as parties were then getting very equal, of course very much courted. The throes of Lord North's administration were commencing. The minister asked the new member to dine with him, and found the new member singularly free from all party prejudices. Mr Warren was one of those members who announced their determination to listen to the debates and to be governed by the arguments. All complimented him, all spoke to ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... wore an expression of passive resignation, that told little of the fierce and fiery spirit that burned within. His head was large, his limbs well proportioned, his complexion fairer than that of his bronze-colored nation, and his whole deportment singularly mild and engaging. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... than their former apathy. The sagacity of Le Verrier was felt to be almost superhuman. Language could scarce be found strong enough to express the general admiration. The praise then lavished upon Le Verrier was somewhat extravagant. The singularly close agreement between the observed and computed places of the planet was accidental. So exact a coincidence could not reasonably have been anticipated. If the planet had been found even ten degrees from what Le Verrier assigned as its probable place, this discrepancy would ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... compelled to fall back on revelations and disclosures. Here again I find the American atmosphere singularly uncongenial. I have offered to reveal to the Secretary of State the entire family history of Ferdinand of Bulgaria for fifty dollars. He says it is not worth it. I have offered to the British Embassy the inside story of the Abdication of Constantine ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... surrounds a part of the group of mountains in the Hartz.* (* Die Teufels Mauer near Wernigerode in Germany.) These peaks, when seen from afar in the Llanos, strike the imagination of the inhabitants of the plain, who are not accustomed to the least unequal ground, and the height of the peaks is singularly exaggerated by them. They were described to us as being in the middle of the steppes (which they in reality bound on the north) far beyond a range of hills called La Galera. Judging from angles taken at the distance of two miles, these hills are scarcely ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... enough to show Lord Findon that, in spite of her flicker of gaiety, Eugenie was singularly pale. And he knew well that they were both listening for the same step on the stairs. However, he ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the fullest confidence, to affirm the being of a God, and, in some degree, to determine his character. The parties and schools above referred to answer this question in the negative form. Whether Theologians or Atheists, they are singularly agreed in denying to human reason all possibility ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... he had ridden away from Edom toward Felton Falls to preach there. A mile out of town he had been accosted by a big, bearded man who had yet a singularly childish look—who urged that he come to his cabin to minister to a sick friend. He knew the fellow for one that the village of Edom called "daft" or "queer," yet held to be harmless—to be rather amusing, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... enamoured of her as he saw her among the singing women at a dance held in honour of Diana the rushing huntress of the golden arrows; he therefore—Mercury, giver of all good—went with her into an upper chamber, and lay with her in secret, whereon she bore him a noble son Eudorus, singularly fleet of foot and in fight valiant. When Ilithuia goddess of the pains of child-birth brought him to the light of day, and he saw the face of the sun, mighty Echecles son of Actor took the mother to wife, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the wounded pirates, had doctored up the whole of our own wounded and made them comfortable. As might have been expected from the peculiar character of the engagement and the enormous advantage of position which we enjoyed, our casualties were singularly light, consisting only of five killed and nine wounded. But in the case of the pirates there was a very different story to tell. I had ascertained, while ashore, that they left the settlement one hundred and fifty strong; and now ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... was proud of his second son. When Justin came in at the end of each day and sat down by her bedside, holding her blue-veined hand while she smiled peacefully at him, there was a sweet, sufficing pleasure about those few minutes, singularly soothing, though the interim had no relation to actual living, except in the fact that one anxiety had been lifted. While the expectant birth of the child had been to her, as it is to almost every woman, a separate and distinct calamitous illness to which ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... ones must be singularly blind," said Juanna, "seeing that I, whom you dare to call a false god, am ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... machinery[79]. Generally, the word may be taken to signify a long narrow box, open at one end, and, like nidus and forulus, may be translated "pigeon-hole." Seneca, again, applies the word to books in the passage I have already translated, and in a singularly instructive manner. "You will find," he says, "in the libraries of the most arrant idlers all that orators or historians have written—bookcases (loculamenta) built up ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... day had produced. Mr Pickersgill and his associates had got on board some time before us with fourteen geese; so that I was able to make distribution to the whole crew, which was the more acceptable on account of the approaching festival. For had not Providence thus singularly provided for us, our Christmas cheer must have been salt ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... were men—fully half the feminine guests dining from trays in their rooms or else abstaining altogether in order that not one precious moment might be lost to the creation of their improvised disguises. And the talk at table was singularly disconnected, with an average of interest uncommonly low. People were obviously saving themselves up. There was no lingering over tobacco; the last course served, the guests dispersed in all haste compatible ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... talk of wars, of national dignity, of competition with the Great Powers; no talk of setting limits to personal liberties in the interests of the abstract entity called "State." The word "God," which Crispi sometimes used, was singularly out of place. It was a question rather of bringing the popular classes to prosperity, self-consciousness, participation in political life. Campaigns against illiteracy, all kinds of social legislation, the elimination of the clergy from the public schools, which ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... have met before—once before when I attended you in a kind of official capacity, and when I behaved in a distinctly discreditable professional manner. Dr. Walker was present. Dr. Walker seems to have been singularly short-sighted." ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... to Lady Kingswood to come nearer and sit by the girl as she lay among her pillows more or less exhausted, she herself left the room. As she opened the door on her way out, the strong voice of Roger Seaton rang out with singularly horrible harshness— ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... its immediate ends were concerned, this society of soldier-citizens was singularly successful. The courage and efficiency of Spartan troops were notorious, and were maintained indeed not only by the training we have described, but by social penalties attached to cowardice. A man who had disgraced himself in battle was a pariah in his native land. No one would eat ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... ma'am, to remember," said he, in his singularly precise voice, "that Lord Rotherby even now—and as things have fallen out—is by no means quit of ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Transatlantic type, to which no nation beyond the limits of the States can offer any parallel. These jokes he lets fall with an air of profound unconsciousness—we may almost say melancholy— which is irresistibly droll, aided as it is by the effect of a figure singularly gaunt and lean and a face to match. And he has found an audience by whom his caustic humor is thoroughly appreciated. Not one of the odd pleasantries slipped out with such imperturbable gravity misses its mark, and scarcely ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... student of that war will admit that the army fought well, likewise the navy, and the generals and admirals were skilled and able in the art of war. The British foreign office was weak. Nor was this all. The Americans had counted the cost. They were singularly fortunate in their leader. Thirty-nine years after his death, lord Brougham wrote of Washington that he was "the greatest man of our own or of any age. * * * This eminent person is presented to our observation clothed in attributes as modest, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... his adored minister, Alexander Stewart of Cromarty, 'Mr. Stewart stood alone. Pope refers in his satires to a strange power of creating love and admiration by just "touching the brink of all we hate." Now, into this perilous, but singularly elective department, Mr. Stewart could enter with safety and at will. We heard him, scarce a twelvemonth since, deliver a discourse of singular power on the sin-offering as minutely described by the divine penman in Leviticus. He described the slaughtered ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... conundrums, she had succeeded, however, in sending one sufficiently perplexing to Endymion. Could it be possible that the writer of this letter was the unknown benefactress of the preceding eve? Lady Montfort was not a mystifier. Her nature was singularly frank and fearless, and when Endymion told her everything that had occurred, and gave her the document which originally he had meant to bring with him in order to return it, her amazement and her joy ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... allowed to plash around him nor the bushes to rustle as he passed. Forward he went a yard, then two, five, ten, and his feet were about to rest upon solid earth, when a stick submerged in the mud broke under his moccasin with a snap singularly loud in the silence ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nets, as he labored in the ooze and gravel of the still half-reclaimed river bed. He was far out on the Bar, within a stone's throw of the promontory. Suddenly his quick ear caught an unfamiliar cry and splash. Looking up hastily, he saw Mrs. McGee's red petticoat in the water under the singularly agitated boughs of an overhanging tree. Madison Wayne ran to the bank, threw off his heavy boots, and sprang into the stream. A few strokes brought him to Mrs. McGee's petticoat, which, as he had wisely surmised, contained Mrs. McGee, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his children Kenneth left his house singularly powerful in family alliances, and as has been already seen he in 1554 derived very substantial benefits from them himself. He died at Killin on the 6th of June, 1568, and was burried at Beauly. He was succeeded by his second ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... more! I only talk now and again," answered the priest, with what seemed a suggestion of curtness. He made haste to take the conversation back again. "The names of these dead-and-gone things are singularly pertinacious, though. They survive indefinitely. Take the modern name Marmaduke, for example. It strikes one as peculiarly modern, up-to-date, doesn't it? Well, it is the oldest name on earth—thousands of years older than Adam. It is the ancient ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... at Lady Halifax's, when Janet saw John Kendal reddening so unaccountably, she had felt singularly more tolerant of Elfrida's theories. She combated them as vigorously as ever, but she lost her dislike to discussing them. As it became more and more obvious that Kendal found in Elfrida a reward for the considerable ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... and went softly—very softly back to the hearth. The firelight playing on his face showed it much moved; moved and softened almost to the semblance of a woman's. For there were tears in his eyes—eyes singularly bright; and his features worked, as if he had some ado to repress a sob. In truth he had. In a breath, in the time it takes to utter a single sound, he had hit on the secret, he had come to the bottom of the mystery, he had learnt that which Basterga, favoured by the position of his ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... seems from the cloister, and put together in two central windows in the apse. These are well worth observing with care. No scenes of course can be made out, but the faces, when examined closely, are found to be singularly good. Most of the pieces formed portions of a window or series of windows representing incidents in the life of S. Peter. This is apparent from the few words that can still be made out on the labels, which are all fragments of texts referring to that Saint. The large west window is in memory of ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... unquestioningly tolerates established institutions and existing orders, but has no confidence in aught that proposes to break with these, even though the new has reason and common sense clearly on its side. Thus time and again fashions have been tolerated, although known to be morally enervating and singularly repulsive to all refined sensibilities; while proposals from without for reforms based on the laws of health and beauty have called forth the most determined opposition from this conscientious class, merely because the proposed innovations have not conformed to ideas entertained by virtue ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... more than almost anywhere else, the lecturer, on whom the concentric circles of spectators in their steep amphitheatre look down, focuses the gaze. Huxley never seemed aware that anybody was looking at him. From self-consciousness he was, here as elsewhere, singularly free, as from self-assertion. He walked in through the door on the left, as if he were entering his own laboratory. In these days he bore scarcely a mark of age. He was in the full vigour of manhood and looked the man he was. Faultlessly dressed—the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... avoid, above all things, the vice of intoxication, which he likened unto the filthy habits of swine, and to those poisonous and baleful drugs which being chewed in the mouth, are said to filch away the memory. At this point of his discourse, the reverend and red-nosed gentleman became singularly incoherent, and staggering to and fro in the excitement of his eloquence, was fain to catch at the back of a chair to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... she is very amiable, and her case is indeed singularly cruel and unjust.—Left, at an early age, under the care of her brother, she was placed by him at Panthemont (where I first became acquainted with her) with an intention of having her persuaded to take the veil; ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... is put in, not to make it harder, but because—as a Californiac—I couldn't help it, and to show you what, in the way of a State, the Native Son is accustomed to. You will have to admit that it is some State. The emblem on the California flag is singularly ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... singularly unresponsive to all these forms of emotional appeal, although I became unspeakably embarrassed when they were presented to me at close range by a teacher during the "silent hour," which we were all required to observe every evening, and which was never broken into, even ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... was to get together a sufficient number of gentlemen to form a club where only eminent and distinguished members of society would assemble. Kecskerey himself was a singularly interesting person, and when he had dressed himself for the evening, and laid himself out to be agreeable, he had such a store of piquant anecdotes to draw upon, all more or less personal experiences during his artistic ramblings, that even the tea-tables were deserted and the witty gentleman was ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... stern had picked up a magazine and was lolling back reading it. As the boat passed under him Cleggett saw on the cover page of the magazine a picture of the very man who was perusing it. It was a singularly urbane face; both the counterfeit presentment on the cover page and the real face were smiling and calm and benign. Cleggett could read the legend on the magazine cover accompanying ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... lips—once—twice—and a third time—and a single tear fell upon his cheek. At this moment, and the coincidence was beautiful and affecting, his face became once more irradiated by a smile that was singularly serene and sweet, as if his very spirit within him had recognized and felt the affection and tenderness of ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... other!" declared the Persian, in a singularly mournful voice. "And now, look out! ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... goes hand in hand with natural selection. From the very first I have regarded sexual selection as affording an extremely important and interesting corroboration of natural selection, but, singularly enough, it is precisely against this theory that an adverse judgment has been pronounced in so many quarters, and it is only quite recently, and probably in proportion as the wealth of facts in proof of it penetrates into a wider circle, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... it is equally clear that whether provoked or not by infidelity on the part of Henry, her own conduct had been singularly questionable. We know very little, but waiving for the present the exposures at her trial, we know, by her own confession, that arrogance and vanity had not been her only faults, and that she had permitted the gentlemen who were the supposed partners ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... mistiness of shadow. He had the pallor of the Spanish Creole found frequently in the south of Ireland folk. His mouth was straight, the upper lip a bit fuller than the under one, as is the case when intellect predominates, and his hair was of a singularly dull and wavy black. But set these and many more things down, and the charm of him has not been written at all, for the words give no hint of his bearing, his impertinent and charming familiarity, the surety of touch, the right word, ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... gather. Paul, I am keenly disappointed to have missed Flamby. The child of such singularly ill-assorted parents could not well fail to be unusual. I wonder if the girl suspects that her father was not what he seemed? Mrs. Duveen has always taken the fact for granted that her husband was a nobleman in disguise! It may account ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... Lowell is singularly true to the natural history of his own country. In his "Indian-Summer Reverie" we catch a glimpse of ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... does not seem that the boy Tom, as he was generally called, received much regular instruction. On the other hand, he learned a great deal for himself. He had an inquiring mind, and a singularly early turn for metaphysical speculation. He read everything he could lay hands on in his father's library. We catch a glimpse of him at twelve, lighting his candle before dawn, and, with blanket pinned round his shoulders, sitting up in bed to read Hutton's ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... invested. Even the quiet home-life of so beautiful and renowned a place cannot but be tinted by reflections from the incomparable beauties of its surroundings, and from the grand and vivid passages of its singularly picturesque history. The subordinate figures on the canvas have accordingly an interest greater than what arises from their commonplace individualities and their meagre part in the action—like barndoor fowls pecking and clucking beside larger bipeds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... sea and land, wishing for him; in which wish Dolly heartily shared. It had been one of the pleasures she had promised herself in coming to the Thayers' that she should see Mr. Shubrick again. He had interested her singularly, and even taken not a little hold of her fancy. So she was honestly disappointed when at last a note came from him, saying that he found it impossible to join ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... rejoiced in the name of "Cafe d'Angleterre," but if its owner expected thereby to attract the custom of Mr John Bull, he was singularly mistaken. The chief customers of the place were labourers and navvies, who by their noisy jargon were evidently innocent of all pretensions ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... as I was really unkind to them. There was a gifted and deeply earnest lady, who in a parabolical account of that time, has described both my conduct as she felt it, and that of such as herself. In a singularly graphic, amusing vision of pilgrims, who were making their way across a bleak common in great discomfort, and who were ever warned against, yet continually nearing, "the king's highway" on the right, she says, "All my ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... remarks on the Piazza della Signoria, stood to them, with Judith, as a champion of liberty. He was alluring also on account of his youth, so attractive to Renaissance sculptors and poets, and the Florentines' admiration was not diminished by the circumstance that his task was a singularly light one, since he never came to close quarters with his antagonist at all and had the Lord of Hosts on his side. A David of mythology, Perseus, another Florentine hero, a stripling with what looked like a formidable enemy, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Henry of Prussia, a branch from the great Frederick. Two drums at the top sounded the march; forty stone-cutters were continually at work on the mass during the journey, to give it the proposed form—a singularly ingenious idea. The forge was always at work: a number of other men were also in attendance to keep the balls at proper distances, of which there were thirty, of the diameter of five inches. The mountain was moved by four ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... read Alice in Wonderland he might have remembered what preceded the Caucus Race. But he never had, so he merely thought that she was singularly frivolous and irrelevant. ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... serviceableness of its graduates, whether political corruption is decreasing in American cities. The difficulty that faces an argument in such cases as these is not the loss of the evidence, but rather that it consists of a multitude of little facts, and that the selection of these details is singularly subject to bias and partisan feeling. These questions of a broad state of affairs are like questions of policy in that in the end their settlement depends thus largely on ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... chair and stared into the fire. Carlisle glanced at his face in profile; a virile and commanding face it was, and to her, singularly attractive. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... any collective undertaking, he brought together this highly creditable collection of art. Wartime conditions abroad and the great distance to the Pacific Coast, not to speak of difficulties of physical transportation, called for a singularly capable executive, such as John E. D. Trask has proved himself to be, and the world should gratefully acknowledge a big piece of work well done. I do not believe the art exhibition needs any apologies. Its general character is such as fully to satisfy the standards of former ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... are almost established now. It is only over 80 deg. for a few hours each day, and between 8 p.m. and 9 a.m. I wear a greatcoat. A senior captain having arrived with the draft has taken over "A" Coy. and I remain as second in command. There is singularly little to do at present—about one hour ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... "It was a singularly handsome face, smooth shaven and well shaped with large, dark eyes and a skin very clean and perfect—I had almost said it was transparent. Add to all this a look of friendliness and masterful dignity and you will understand why I rose to my feet and took off my hat. His stature was ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... hand is to be reverently acknowledged. It was not by chance, but through the provident care of Him who sees the end from the beginning, that the writers of the Old Testament found the Hebrew, and those of the New Testament the Greek language ready at hand, each of them so singularly adapted to the high office assigned to it. The stately majesty, the noble simplicity, and the graphic vividness of the Hebrew fitted it admirably for the historical portions of the Old Testament, in which, under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Historic Macao (Hong Kong, 1902, p. 28). A still more positive judgment on this matter is passed by MADROLLE (Chine du Sud et de l'Est, Paris, 1904, p. 17). "The attitudes of the Venerable Ones," he says, "are remarkable for their life-like expression, or sometimes, singularly grotesque. One of these personalities placed on the right side of a great altar wears the costume of the 16th century, and we might be inclined to regard it as a Chinese representation of Marco Polo. It is probable, however, that the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the unexpected guests. Sophy was resting on a sofa drawn towards the hearth. Archie had thrown his travelling cloak of black fox over her, and her white, flower-like face, surrounded by the black fur, had a singularly pathetic beauty. She opened her large blue eyes as Madame approached and looked at her with wistful entreaty; and Madame, in spite of all her pre-arrangements of conduct, was unable at that hour not to answer the appeal for affection she saw in them. She stooped and kissed the childlike ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... who brought it to them. One or two other little groups were having some, too, but Mr. Cloudwater's party were singularly ungregarious, and avoided making acquaintances in hotels. He and Mrs. Howard chatted alone together over theirs for about half an hour. Presently there was the noise of a motor arriving. It whirled into the gate and stopped where they usually do, a little at one side. It was very dusty and travel-stained, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... be known and felt, nay, at the expense of being feared, was my impulse. It has been the impulse of all men who have ever impressed the world. With great talents it is all-commanding: the thunderbolt in the hands of Jove. Even with inferior faculties, and I make no pretence of mine, it singularly excites, urges, and animates. When the prophet saw the leopard winged, he saw a miracle; I claim for my powers only those of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... work were singularly conscientious; even in the days when, as a truant lad, he carried in his pocket one book to read, and another to write in, he was slowly perfecting that style which was to give to his literary work a distinction all its own. He spared himself no trouble in ensuring the accuracy ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... is impossible to exaggerate the deep and abiding interest of such a correspondence; and the seriousness, the devotion, the public spirit that are displayed, without affectation or calculated impressiveness, make the whole series of letters singularly memorable. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... strip the husks from the ears, singing with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the music, and now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant burst of laughter. The songs were generally of a comic character; but one of them was set to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our musicians would do well to reduce to notation. These are ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... an estate managed by an individual who was considered as singularly successful, and who was able to govern the slaves without the use of the whip. I was anxious to see him, and trusted that some discovery had been made favorable to humanity. I asked him how he was able to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... five or six feet high, with purple blossoms gathered into terminal oblong heads; this would be an ornament to our gardens. Along the river we discovered a large tree, about forty or fifty feet in height, with rather singularly disposed horizontal branches and rich dark green foliage; its leaves were oblong acute, and frequently a foot long; its flowers formed dense heads, which grew into a fleshy body marked with the arcoles of every ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... dignitaries solemnize the marriage of a German kaiser; have sat under the ministrations of sundry archbishops of Canterbury; have been present at high mass performed by the Archbishop of Athens under the shadow of Mars Hill and the Parthenon; and, though I am singularly susceptible to the influence of such pageants, especially if they are accompanied by noble music, no one of these has ever made so great an impression upon me as that simple Anglo-American service ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... attend upon the table; and it came about that Catriona and I were left almost entirely to ourselves. We had the next seats together at the table, where I waited on her with extraordinary pleasure. On deck, I made her a soft place with my cloak; and the weather being singularly fine for that season, with bright frosty days and nights, a steady, gentle wind, and scarce a sheet started all the way through the North Sea, we sat there (only now and again walking to and fro for warmth) from the first blink of the sun till eight or nine at night ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disclosed himself as the donor, and some further advances were promised. The Library was commenced in 1623, and the books finally placed in it in 1628. The style of the building is Jacobean Gothic, and its interior, with the whitewashed walls and dark oak roof and bookcases, is singularly striking. John Evelyn visited it while at Cambridge in 1654, and describes it as "the fairest of that University"; after 250 years ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... Peter senior tried to kill time there, because a library seemed to his daughter the right background for a father, and Peter junior, who had saved mother's poor old furniture for his own rooms, found it singularly difficult to open his heart between walls that smelled of money and newness. However, he did his best to blunder out the offer of himself; while the chill gleam in his father's eyes (so remarkably like that of the bookcase glass ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... time the Sherman Act like the Interstate Commerce Act was singularly ineffective and futile. Trusts were nominally dissolved, but the separate parts were conducted under a common and uniform policy by the same board of managers. The Standard Oil Company changed its ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... honest commonplaces) of the Philistines whose graces you regard with lofty scorn. And every one will say, As you squirm your wormy way, "If this young man expresses himself in terms that stagger me, What a very singularly smart young man this smart young ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... these is singularly partial; so much so, that M. De Koninck of Liege, the eminent palaeontologist, once stated to me that, in making his extensive collection of the fossils of the Mountain Limestone of Belgium, he ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... you see! My party was such a singularly animated soiree that I haven't undressed all night. Oh, it was the liveliest affair conceivable! And, like a true Norwegian host, I tracked LOeVBORG home; and it is only my duty, as a friend of the house, and cock of the walk, to take the first opportunity of telling you that he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... taken shape yet, Tayoga, but if 'tis fancy then 'tis singularly persistent. I see the black mote too, to the left, toward the western shore of the lake, is ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... passion—remembering what she had suffered, and how she had been relieved—for her to act in her turn the guardian angel to the afflicted. During one of their walks a poor cot in the foldings of a vale attracted their notice as being singularly disconsolate, while the number of half-clothed children gathered about it spoke of penury in its worst shape. One day, when my father had gone by himself to Milan, my mother, accompanied by me, visited this abode. She found a peasant and his wife, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... chuckled, and Daylight rode on, singularly at peace with himself and all the world. It seemed that the old contentment of trail and camp he had known on the Yukon had come back to him. He could not shake from his eyes the picture of the old pioneer coming up the trail through the sunset light. He was certainly ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... statue of the Blessed Virgin, which we mentioned to you in our former communication. Teach them, especially, their entire dependence on Mary, on her prayers to God for their deliverance and welfare. Reveal to them her singularly powerful influence in the shaping of all great historical events of the world; how never has she refused our prayers to exert her mighty influence with her all-potent Son, when she has been appealed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... lost his head and endeavored to escape, he might have been able to pass himself off as a prospector or something of the sort, but the mere sight of his all-too-evident anxiety to get away wakened the suspicions of the sergeant. The Grampians and the country surrounding them had hitherto been singularly free from crime, and no malefactors from other parts of the State were known to be at large in that neighbourhood. Obviously this man, who displayed such a disinclination to meet the police, must be a criminal, and just as ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh |
