"Quaintly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for such imaginings," Francis replied, "but there is a quaintly artificial air about it all. We must go and look for ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... quaintly puts it that smell and taste form only one sense, having the mouth as laboratory, with the nose for the fire-place or chimney; the one serving to taste solids, the other gases. George Dallas, too, the gifted author of THE BOOK OF THE TABLE, also expresses the association ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Palmetto restaurant, looming up prominently in the centre; and on another plate were some chipped beef and biscuits. A large lamp was suspended from the ceiling in the centre of the room and was quaintly, if not grotesquely, shaded; while other lamps flanked by composition metal reflectors concentrated light upon the Girl's bureau, the book-shelf and mantel, leaving the remainder of ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... it out," remarked Rushcroft quaintly. "I will be everlastingly grateful to you, Mr. Barnes, if you'll fix things up with Jones. God knows when or whether I can ever reimburse you, but as I am not really a dead-beat the time will certainly come when I may begin paying in installments. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... painted with Cupid's trailing ribands, he judged by some artist of the period shortly preceding the French Revolution, and two or three Arcadian figures hinted at the same date. There were other things—a luster chandelier, quaintly-wrought hearth-irons, a carved wood mantel—that ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... this last gay army of the flowers passes in review before her. Blazing stars in pink and purple, tall and picturesque, with long rows of brilliant buttons; regiments of asters in blue and white and purple; rattle-snake root with big and quaintly slashed leaves and hundreds of tassels in delicate shades of lilac, purple and white; swamp sunflowers in dazzling yellow, camped in millions along the creek bottom to make it more glorious than the historical pageant of the Field of the Cloth of Gold; plumy battalions of golden-rod, ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... pour forth shoals of short novels, romances, and essays, and pamphlets on various subjects. Among other productions is Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," a storehouse of odd learning and quaintly-original ideas; it is deficient, however, in style and power of consecutive reasoning. Far above Burton in eloquence and strength of thought is Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), whose writings have all the characteristics of the age in a state of extravagant exaggeration. The thoughtful ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... wondered very quaintly what he would say, when, in a few days, he heard of the failure of John Meavy & Co. for three millions of dollars. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... planets in the more immediate neighborhood of the sun. But such an assumption would put us entirely at sea as regards the forms of organic life that could exist upon a planet of that description, and, like Sir Humphry Davy in the Vision, that occupies the first chapter of his quaintly charming Consolations in Travel, or, the Last Days of a Philosopher, we should be thrown entirely upon the resources of the imagination in representing to ourselves the nature and appearance of its inhabitants. ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... at a distance appear like the things they most resemble in disposition, as doves, hawks, goats, lambs, swine, and so on, I'm sure that I shall see his true and kindly soul in the guise of a noble old Folio, quaintly lettered across his back in old ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the shop-keepers were stones; whereupon I threw away the goldsmiths' ware and carried off as many jewels as I could carry, regretting that my brothers were not with me, so they might take what they would of those costly gems. Then I left the jewel-market and went on till I came to a great door, quaintly gilded and decorated after the fairest fashion, within which were wooden benches and in the porch sat eunuchs, and body-guards; horsemen, and footmen and officers of police each and every robed in the richest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... fallibility, M. Langlois and his excellent collaborator have supplied in their canons of criticism and maxims the best corrections of any mistakes into which they may have fallen by the way. Is not the House of Fame, as the poet tells us, a more wonderful and quaintly wrought habitation than Domus Dedali itself? And may not honest historians be pardoned if they are sometimes confused for a brief moment by the never-ending noise and marvellous motion of that deceptive mint and treasury, and fatigued by the continual trial and examination ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... nothing of all this, but at a sign from Myra drew open the outer door, and she stood in the dimly lit entry as if framed; she let her hood fall back, and gazed straight before her into the quaintly furnished room as if wondering that she did not at once see the object of ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... a long, double row of clean white-painted iron beds, on which lay or sat figures of men. Other figures, of women, glided here and there noiselessly. They wore long, spreading dove-gray clothes, with a starched white kerchief drawn over the shoulders and across the breast. Their heads were quaintly white-garbed in stiff winglike coifs, fitting close about the oval of the face. Then Thorpe sighed comfortably, and closed his eyes and blessed the chance that he had bought a hospital ticket of the agent who had visited camp the month before. For these were ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... aspire to this kind of liberal education. It was on the side of Mount Clinton that I heard two Blackburnians, both in full sight and within a few rods of each other, who were singing two entirely distinct songs. One of these—it is the common one, I think—ended quaintly with three or four short notes, like zip, zip, zip; while the other was not unlike a fraction of the winter wren's melody. Those who are familiar with the latter bird will perhaps recognize the phrase referred to if I call it the willie, willie, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... two great theories of the universe may be expressed in two comparatively parallel phrases. The first was what may be called the hope which lies in the imperfection of man. The characteristic poem of "Old Pictures in Florence" expresses very quaintly and beautifully the idea that some hope may always be based on deficiency itself; in other words, that in so far as man is a one-legged or a one-eyed creature, there is something about his appearance which indicates that he should ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... of furniture. A few strange chairs, whose arms and legs looked as though they had dwindled away with age; a table, the very spectre of its race: a great old chest that had once held records in the church, with other quaintly-fashioned domestic necessaries, and store of fire-wood for the winter, were scattered around, and gave evident tokens of its occupation as a dwelling-place at no ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... long line of troubadours, Dolly Vardens, brigands, fairies snow queens, Italian peasants, Kate Greenaway rustics, and other interesting characters took their departure through the gate. But there were further items on the programme, and all eyes turned eagerly to the band of quaintly dressed little maidens who now ran out joyously hand in hand to perform the ancient ceremony of plaiting the Maypole. The children had been well drilled, and had practised assiduously, so each took her ribbon with confidence, and started off at the sound of the music, to tread the intricate ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... something was disturbing me. Elizabeth. A daughter is being delivered unto me this morning. I have a feeling it will be more painful than the original delivery. She has been, as they quaintly say, educated; prepared for her ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... of Broad Street, were laid out for the convenience of markets, which in those days were placed in their center. A few of these old-time markets still remain, notably that at Second and Pine streets, its market house or central building of quaintly interesting design embracing features such as the octagonal cupola, marble lintels, sills and belt, and the elliptical and semicircular fanlights ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... with exciting rivals against Dryden in the public opinion, but assailed him personally in an imitation of Horace, which he quaintly entitled, "An Allusion to the Tenth Satire." It came out anonymously about 1678, but the town was at no loss to guess that Rochester was the patron or author. Much of the satire was bestowed on Dryden, whom Rochester for the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... neuk, this Braehead, preserved almost as it was two hundred years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie,—two quaintly cropped yew-trees,—still thrive; the burn runs as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune,—as much the same and as different as Now and Then. The house is full of old family relics and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep windows with their plate-glass; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... love's stratagem, and she determined to make a full confession to her lover. The Grand Duke was thunderstruck, but at once he recognised the emphatic importance of secrecy; for, as Vincenzio Borghini quaintly said: "Florence was the greatest market in the world for tissues and materials of all kinds, and full of evil eyes, and ears, and tongues!" Meanwhile Ferdinando had not let the water run under the Arno bridges for nothing. He discovered the surgeon-accoucheur who had attended Madonna Bianca—one ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... not seem to me to be like one of the fairy tales that we have seen so gracefully and quaintly modernised; and at the risk of seeming to travestie the Farnese statue in a shooting-coat and wide-awake, I could not help going on, as the notion ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quaintly observed that the road to heaven is a narrow path, not intended for wheels, and that to ride in a coach here and to go to heaven hereafter, was a happiness too much ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... those two words;—Old Maid. And she had written them in her book, making each letter a capital, and round them she had drawn a scroll, ornamented after her own fashion, and she had added the date in quaintly formed figures,—for in such matters Lily had some little skill and a dash of fun to direct it; and she had inscribed below it an Italian motto:—"Who goes softly, goes safely;" and above her work of art she had put a heading—"As arranged by fate for L. D." Now she thought ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... well paid," said Ralph laughing, and he stepped forward leading his horse, for now the wood was light all about, as the fire waxed and burned clear; so that Ralph could see that the new-comer was clad in quaintly-fashioned armour after the fashion of that land, with a bright steel sallet on the head, and a long green surcoat over the body armour. Slender of make was the new-comer, not ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... of the Rose a little square garden is described, with its beds of flowers, its orchard-trees. The beauty of the place lies partly in its smallness, but more still in its running waters, its shadowy wells, wherein, as the writer says quaintly enough, are "no frogs," and the conduit-pipes that make a "noise full-liking." And again in that beautiful poem of Tennyson's, one of his earliest, with the dew of the morning upon it, he describes The Poet's ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of a marlinespike I am," replied the Captain quaintly. "I'd have got you out of Salem jail, unless it is a good deal stronger than the ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... You do not in France find such advertisements as he had heard of in England, 'Wanted a curacy in a good sporting country, where the duty is light and the neighbourhood convivial.' The proper exercise for a country clergyman, he rather quaintly observes, is agriculture. The ideal parson, that is, should be a squire in canonical dress. The clergy of the eighteenth century probably varied between the extremes represented by Trulliber and the Vicar of Wakefield. Many of them were excellent people, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... experience that which makes up personality is "connected with nerve structures," so that we cannot attribute such a quality to "a Being who is described to us as devoid of any nerve structure." "I know of no answer," he quaintly adds, "that could be called satisfactory from a theistic standpoint." [1] It is evident that Mr. Vivian does not remember the famous passage in the Essay on Theism where John Stuart Mill explains that "the relation of thought to a material brain is no metaphysical ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... him in his apprenticeship—when he tamed as well as his rough nature would permit, his hand to the delicate graving so cherished by his master, Ellis Gamble; and when freed from his apprenticeship, he sought art through the stirring scenes of life, saying quaintly enough, that "copying other men's works resembled pouring wine out of one vessel into another; there was no increase of quantity, and the flavor of the vintage was liable to evaporate;"—whoever would study the great, as well as the small, peculiarities of the painter ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... were in Rotterdam, steaming slowly between two lines of dignified quays, ornamented with rows of trees and backed by quaintly built, many-colored brick houses—blue and green and pink, some nodding forward, some leaning back. The front walls were carried up to conceal the roofs; many of the facades tapered into triangles; others had double curves like a swan's ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... ancient mansions in the United Kingdom, and there is still, happily, a large selection, none perhaps is so picturesque and quaintly original in its architecture as the secluded Warwickshire house Compton Winyates. The general impression of its vast complication of gable ends and twisted chimneys is that some enchanted palace has found ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... camel-drivers, and ill-looking, sallow youths stand idle everywhere, insulting those whom they dare, and cringing to their betters like slaves. Persian gentlemen, too, with grand hooked noses, high caps, and quaintly-cut dresses of gay patterns, saunter about, discussing their grievances, or quarrelling with each other, to pass the time, for, unlike an Arab, a Persian shows at once whatever ill-humour he may feel, and has no shame in giving it utterance before whomever may be present; ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... entirely dependent upon the charity of his son. Honest Jock had not married until late in life, that he might more comfortably provide for the wants of his aged parents. His mother had been dead for some years. She was a good, pious woman, and Jock quaintly affirmed "that it had pleased the Lord to provide a better inheritance for his dear auld mither than his arm could win, proud an' happy as he wud ha'e been to ha'e supported her, when she was nae langer ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... just attributed to him that she should be in simplest coolest white, of a character so old-fashioned, if he were not mistaken, that Madame Roland must on the scaffold have worn something like it. This effect was enhanced by a small black fichu or scarf, of crape or gauze, disposed quaintly round her bosom and now completing as by a mystic touch the pathetic, the noble analogy. Poor Strether in fact scarce knew what analogy was evoked for him as the charming woman, receiving him and making him, as she could do such things, at once familiarly and gravely ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... usually sheer clatter. Some few stories necessarily include a little explanation, and stories of the fable order may quaintly end with an obvious moral. But here again, the rule ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... Democrats had nominated him for governor, and that his party throughout the country had expressed its sympathy with him. President Lincoln met one of their committees, and agreed with them that Vallandigham's arrest was unusual, but he quaintly added: He could not be persuaded that the government should not take measures in time of war which must not be taken in time of peace, any more than he could be persuaded that a sick man must not take medicine which was not good ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Alfred put himself at the head of the forces which had collected at the Egbert Stone, or, as it is quaintly spelled in some of the old accounts, Ecgbyrth-stan. There is a place called Brixstan in that vicinity now, which may possibly be the same name modified and abridged by the lapse of time. Alfred moved forward toward Guthrum's camp. He went only a part of the way the first ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... river, in mazes of little narrow streets; curious old quays project over the water at different points; coast-trade vessels are being loaded and unloaded, built in one place and repaired in another, all within view; while the prospect of hills, harbour, and houses thus quaintly combined together, is beautifully closed by the English Channel, just visible as a small strip of blue water, pent in between the ridges of two promontories which stretch out on ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... the Turks and Arabs to a kind of great mangonel? This was known also in Europe as Carabaga, Calabra, etc. It is mentioned under the former name by Marino Sanudo, and under the latter, with other quaintly-named engines, by William of Tudela, as used by Simon de Montfort the Elder against ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... company that Edinburgh could afford; he was admitted a member of the Select Society, and his circle embraced such men as Lord Somerville, Lord Hailes, Dr Blair, Kames, Robertson, Hume, Home, Jupiter Carlyle and others. 'Lord Auchinleck,' he quaintly adds, 'took the trouble himself to give him a regular course of instruction in law, a circumstance of singular benefit, and of which Mr Boswell has ever expressed a strong and grateful sense.' But his sense was not such as to restrain him from a mock-heroic correspondence with Andrew Erskine, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... that only one endowed as he could feel. This part of him was often the subject of talk with those of us who knew him well. But what charmed me most, more even than his brilliant mental gifts, were the sweetness of his disposition and his quaintly quizzical and happy humour. Ambition was not strong in him, was in fact all but absent, and he often rallied me on mine. He never in all his life asked for any improvement in salary or position; but, in spite of his inveterate modesty, rose high, became ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... very strange, and was quite as much out of the perpendicular as Harris had represented it to be. The quiet air of Pisa too; the big guard-house at the gate, with only two little soldiers in it; the streets with scarcely any show of people in them; and the Arno, flowing quaintly through the centre of the town; were excellent. So, I bore no malice in my heart against Mr. Harris (remembering his good intentions), but forgave him before dinner, and went out, full of confidence, to see ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... lovely scent, And rosemary, dear ornament, Sword-lilies proud, unfurled, And basil, quaintly curled, And fragile violet blue— He soon will seize ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... greatest master of the black chords: his black is more precious than other people's crimson. Yet it is not simply black and white that must be made valuable, rare worth must be given to each colour employed; but the white and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the other colours should be continually passing one into the other, being all plainly companions in the same gay world; while the white, black, and neutral grey should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. Crimson may be melted into purple, purple into blue, and blue into ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... note that if the lecture had not seemed misleading to him, it would surely not have been worth uttering at all, I come to the copy in question—this could only have been a printed proof, quaintly acquired—as will be seen by the following letter from Messrs. Chatto and Windus, which I must beg you Sir, to publish, with this note—as it deals also with the remaining point, the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... fields has vanished and the soldiers are in undisputed possession. Then even the soldiers seem left behind, and you enter the strange solitude where the war is waged. Before you rises the great mound of Ypres. In the distance it looks like a living city with quaintly broken skyline, but as you approach you see that it is only the tomb of a city standing there desolate and shattered in the midst of a ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... and invested the cellar-opening and the outstanding corner of the house with striking and unwonted dignity, in a light that revealed nothing except to the imagination. Nothing was more fancifully dignified or more quaintly travestied by that light than the figures around it, busy and flitting about and shewing themselves in every novel variety of grouping and colouring. There was Earl Douglass, not a hair different from what he was every day in reality, but with his dark skin and ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... talk like that, Olga, even in jest," she said, with a little touch of matronly dignity that sat rather quaintly and sweetly upon her. "I know you don't like Max—never have liked him—but please recollect that ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... who figured most prominently in these parts at this eventful period was the ardent royalist Sir John Winter. His case is thus quaintly stated by Sanderson:—"From the pen, as secretary to the Queen, he was put to the pike, and did his business very handsomely, for which he found the enmity of the Parliament ever after;" so that Corbet, one of their devoted ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... of two quaintly carven stone blocks placed at the foot of the oak-tree, on which, doubtless, many a monk had sat in meditation, he set himself to get his fishing-gear together. Presently, however, struck by the beauty ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... remembered that we are here in a land of stage-drivers and highwaymen: a land, in that sense, like England a hundred years ago. The highway robber—road-agent, he is quaintly called— is still busy in these parts. The fame of Vasquez is still young. Only a few years go, the Lakeport stage was robbed a mile or two from Calistoga. In 1879, the dentist of Mendocino City, fifty miles away upon the coast, suddenly threw off the garments of his trade, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down the grains she cracked, while her little ones hastily began to feed. All the charm of infancy was theirs. Half-naked as it were, with round heads, eyes sparkling like steel needles, beaks so queerly set, and down so quaintly ruffled up, they looked like penny toys. Desiree laughed with enjoyment ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... in the least, missed the suffering behind Miltoun's mask; his eyes were still good, and there was a little matter of some twenty years' suffering of his own on account of a woman—ancient history now—which had left him quaintly sensitive, for an old man, to signs of suffering ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to you," said Mrs. Adlerfeld quaintly; "I shall like to go very." Having made sure of the others, Polly ran off to make her invitation general, stopping at various doors on her ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... o'ergrown, Ran stream, or bubbling fountain's wave did spin, On bark or rock, if yielding were the stone, The knife was straight at work or ready pin. And there, without, in thousand places lone, And in as many places graved, within, MEDORO and ANGELICA were traced, In divers cyphers quaintly interlaced. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... plain and clear, came the sound of footsteps on the road near by. Sighing, Barnabas turned thitherwards and beheld advancing towards them one who paused, now and then, to look about him as though at a loss, and then hurried on again. A very desolate figure he was, and quaintly pathetic because of his gray hair, and the empty sleeve that flapped helplessly to and fro with the hurry of his going—a figure, indeed, that there was no mistaking. Being come to the finger-post, he paused to look wistfully on ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... mutual glance was irresistible, and they both laughed. Sylvia's Arab page entered in response to her summons, a pretty dusky-skinned lad of some twelve years old, picturesquely arrayed in scarlet, and bearing a quaintly embossed gilt salver with coffee prepared ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... kitchen. But the material fabric is now dust; soon, with the last of its inhabitants, its very memory shall follow; and they, in their turn, shall suffer the same law, and, both in name and lineament, vanish from the world of men. "For remembrance of the old house' sake," as Pepys once quaintly put it, let me tell one story. When the tide of invasion swept over France, two foreign painters were left stranded and penniless in Grez; and there, until the war was over, the Chevillons ungrudgingly harboured them. It was difficult to obtain supplies; but the two waifs ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deliver a more perfect address than he gave that night. He began with the beginning, the meagerness of that little hamlet that had seen his birth, and sketched it all so quaintly and delightfully that his hearers laughed and shouted, though there was tenderness under it, and often the tears were just beneath the surface. He told of his habits of life, how he had reached seventy by following a plan of living that would probably kill anybody else; ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the girls of 23, Charlotte Square were told that two girls from Tasmania were coming to the school, and a certain feeling of surprise that the said girls were just like ordinary mortals, though the big, earnest brows and the hair quaintly parted in the middle and done up in plaits fastened up at the back of the ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... given place to green-clad bluffs sown thick with cottages of all sorts, from the quaintly hideous and the obviously inexpensive to the bewitchingly pretty and the pretentiously ornate —a haphazard arrangement that ran suddenly into a plot of streets linking a clutter of utilitarian buildings, all converging upon the focal ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... still standing up looking around her. Suddenly her eyes fell upon a quaintly built cottage, perched upon the edge of the ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an old Armenian church, which was gaudily decorated with red brocade hangings and very antiquated paintings quaintly representing scenes from Bible history. In the court-yard of the church a young Armenian kindly offered us a pitcher of water, which he said had been brought from a spring outside the city for the use of the monks in the adjoining convent. We received it most gratefully, for ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... happily, thirstily, drinking in Billy's evident interest with delight. There were, too, a quaintly-set ring and a cat's-eye brooch; and to each belonged a story which William was equally glad to tell. There were other treasures, also: buckles, rings, brooches, and necklaces, some of dull gold, some of equally dull silver; but all of odd design and curious workmanship, ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... gather'd by the marge Of lapsing Gihon. 'Thus one spoke, I stood, I ate.' Or next the mariner-saint enlarge Right quaintly on his ark of gopher wood To wandering men through high grass meads that ran Or ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... are beautifully tiled, each tile having a double curvature, while the corners of the buildings are quaintly turned up, giving a Chinese look to the building. The whole appearance of the houses and temples carries one far from the mud-huts or close cities of the plains of India, into the land of chopsticks and small feet, ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... engraved brasses, and a stone coffin, and an alabaster knight of Saint John, and an alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large as life, and in perfect preservation, except for a slight modern touch at the tips of their noses. In the chancel we saw a great deal of oaken work, quaintly and admirably carved, especially about the seats formerly appropriated to the monks, which were so contrived as to tumble down with a tremendous crash, if the occupant ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... figure enters, quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unalter'd by these scenes of woe, With speed that, ent'ring, speaks his haste to go. He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries fate and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... preceded them; and, dropping his speculation, Morton peered among these faces, not quite sure that he would know Lambert if he saw him. As a matter of fact, he would have missed him had not the miner laid a hand upon his arm, saying, quaintly: "Howdy, professor, howdy! What's ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... best and most attractive portrait in the collection) of the mother whom all of them united to adore. There is an actual photograph of her here, taken at the age of twenty, which goes far to explain how she came to be the heroine of the story; the lurking gaiety and laughter of it quaintly foretelling the great ecclesiastical lady who, on one occasion when the Archbishop was absent, could announce to her enraptured children that family prayers should be remitted, "as a treat!" Schooldays at Wellington; Cambridge; some topical memoirs of the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... and look down from its top as from a domestic Mont Blanc; some climb about the bellows; some scale the shaft of the shovel; while some, forming in magic ring, dance festively on the yet glowing hearth. Tiny troops promenade the writing-table. One perches himself quaintly on the top of the inkstand, and holds colloquy with another who sits cross-legged on a paper weight, while a companion looks down on them from the top of the sandbox. It was an ingenious little device, and gave me the idea, which I often expressed to my wife, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... happy in this office, moving about on felt shoes that he might make no noise, and most reverently keeping the Church clean, and watching over it in every way. He also continued in the post of schoolmaster, which at first he had only taken temporarily, and quaintly managing it. He was found setting as a copy "A blind man's wife needs no paint," which he defended as "Proverbs, sir, Proverbs." Giving up part of his business to his nephew, he still sat up at night baking, for the ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... among the tall boulders beyond the Carson place, where there was no possibility of anyone finding her. Here she dressed, and under one great rock hid the once admired but now despised green gingham. Then with her long cape covering her quaintly gowned figure, she hurried up to Carrie's door to call for her playmate, having waited until the last minute in the hope that her friends would be gone. Nor was she disappointed. The doors were locked ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the only thing my ancestors left me," said I. "I don't wonder you laugh. It really is quaintly funny." ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Quaintly delicate and tender are the love-songs of Brother Hans, an otherwise unknown monk of the fourteenth century. He himself tells us that he deserted his earthly mistress for the Queen of Heaven. Perhaps the dualism ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Persians," wood is abundant; and the Persian architect, taking advantage of his opportunity, has designed his houses with wooden piazzas—not found elsewhere—and with "beams, lintels, and eaves quaintly, sometimes elegantly, carved, and tinted with brilliant hues." Another feature of the decorative woodwork in this part of Persia is that produced by the large latticed windows, which are well adapted ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... which the Chinese M. P.'s resent so hotly, which they quaintly term "cruel and unreasonable," virtually amount to the annexation of Tibet by the British Government. It is amusing to think that it was the Japanese press which first gave them publicity. We are so accustomed to hearing ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... (1829, v. 314, 315), "Graecia Verax." His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues—learning, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... these, Professor Lowell quaintly remarked that, "To chronicle thus the very weather on our neighbour will convince any one that interplanetary communication has already commenced; and that, too, after the usual ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... grandfather's,' said Mrs. Edmonstone; 'that old-school deference and attention is very chivalrous, and sits prettily and quaintly on his high spirits and animation; I hope it ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... favourably. We learn to live with her, as people learn to live with fretful or violent spouses: we dwell lovingly on what is good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or inharmonious. We learn, also, to come to each place in the right spirit. The traveller, as Brantome quaintly tells us, 'fait des discours en soi ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... without the spiritual fervour which influences the lives of men. The chivalry of the middle ages was as dead as its religion. Men spoke of women as coarsely as they spoke of their cattle. Human nature indeed could not be entirely crushed. John Paston's wife (see p. 321), for instance, was quaintly affectionate. "I would," she once wrote to her husband, "ye were at home, if it were for your ease ... now liever than a gown, though it were of scarlet." But the system of wardship (see p. 116) made marriages a matter of bargain and sale. ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... glen; in past times the fortress of a fighting Welsh chieftain; in present times a dreary land-lighthouse, built up in many stories of two rooms each, with a little modern lean-to of cottage form tacked on quaintly to one of its sides; the great hill, on whose lowest slope it stands, rising precipitously behind it; a dark, swift-flowing stream in the valley below; hills on hills all round, and no way of approach but by one of the loneliest and ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... swans could have been cited in a simile illustrating profusion. Bass quaintly stated that the "dying song" of the swan, so celebrated by poets, "exactly resembled the creaking of a rusty ale-house sign on a windy day." The remark is not so pretty as, but far more true than, that of the bard who would have us believe that the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... wait no longer. Some one is already in a fever of impatience. 'Tis a quaintly pretty room; I am happy to have seen its curious treasures. Good-by again, child; my service once more to your mother and sister;" and so, with many compliments, she passed chatting and laughing out ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... hand on a short hickory bow, while the other rather touched than sought support, from the long, delicate handle of an ashen lance. A quiver made of the cougar skin, from which the tail of the animal depended, as a characteristic ornament, was slung at his back, and a shield of hides, quaintly emblazoned with another of his warlike deeds, was suspended from his neck by a ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... whose broad, low, mullioned stone window opened into what had been the inner court of the castle, whose ramparts and flanking corner towers were still there; but the echoing stones that had once paved it had given place to verdant lawn, trim flower-beds ablaze with bloom, quaintly-cut shrubs, and creepers which beautified the walls once so bare ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... curious illustration of insanity being induced, not cured, by superstition in Scotland. John Law's servant "rane wode" when John Knox had retreated to St. Andrews during the civil contentions of his later years. The story is thus quaintly told in Bannatyne's "Journal" (p. 309). John Law of that city, being in Edinburgh Castle in January, 1572, "the ladie Home wald neidis thraip in his face that he was banist the said toune because that, in the yarde reasit (rose) sum sanctis, among whome cam up the devill with hornis, which when ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... had been taken bodily out of one room. Why? As she asked herself this question Barrie threaded her way delicately along narrow paths between chairs, extraordinary leather or hairy cowhide trunks and thrilling bandboxes of enormous size, made quaintly beautiful with Chinese wall-paper. She wanted to examine the grouped furniture whose pale coverings and gilded wood glimmered attractively even in the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... by one of the walls and a violin lay carelessly on a chair not far off. There were piles of new music and some tempting, small, neatly bound books lying about. A fire glowed on the hearth and a little brass kettle sang merrily on the hob. The cocoa-table was drawn up in front of the fire and on a quaintly shaped tray stood the bright little cocoa-pot and the oddly devised ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... the fresh morning air, examining the leaves and the flowers with extraordinary interest. From time to time a deep, sad sigh broke from his oppressed chest; he passed his hand over his brow as if to efface the importunate images. He sat down amid the quaintly clipped boxwood which ornamented the garden in the antique fashion, called his son again to him, held him between his knees, interrogating him again, in a low voice, as he had done before; then drew him toward him ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to be understood too literally; for although Dryden never so far copied himself as to fall into what has been quaintly called mannerism; yet accurate observation may trace, in his works, the repetition of some sentiments and illustrations from prose to verse, and back again to prose.[24] In his preface to the AEneid, he has enlarged on the difficulty of varying ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... youth it was who sat up facing me, with a flush of gentle surprise on his face, and dapper hands that felt cautiously about his anatomy for injured places. He looked so quaintly rueful yet withal so good-tempered that I could not help bursting into laughter in spite of my own amazement. Then he laughed too, a sedate, musical chuckle, and said something incomprehensible, pointing at the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Wingfield decided to end both quarrels and John Smith. So he ordered a gallows to be set up and, having accused Smith of mutiny, made ready to hang him. But John Smith stoutly defended himself. Nothing could be proved against him. He laughed at the gallows, and as he quaintly puts it "could not be ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... jessamine, sweet-peas, tulips shameless in their extravagance of green and crimson, red and white carnations, red, white, and yellow roses. The sunshine broke into colour, it laughed, it danced, it almost rioted, among the flowers; but in the prim alleys, and on the formal hedges of box, and the quaintly-clipped yews, and the old purple brick walls, where fruit trees were trellised, it lay fast, fast asleep. Without the walls, in the deep cool greenery of the park, there was a perpetual drip-drip of bird-notes. This was the web, upon which a chosen handful of more accomplished ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Dr. K—— will." He adds that it is now four weeks since he has been to school, "and I don't know but it will be four weeks longer." This weighing of possibilities, and this sense of the uncertain future, already quaintly show the disposition of the man he is to grow into; though the writing is as characterless as extreme youth, exaggerated distinctness, and copy-books could make it. The little invalid has not yet quite succumbed, however, for the same ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the same bleak and inhospitable wilderness;[73] but the harbors were numerous, convenient, and abounding in fish. He describes the natives as well-proportioned men, wearing their hair tied up over their heads like bundles of hay, quaintly interlaced with birds' feathers.[74] Changing his course still more to the south, he then traversed the Gulf of St. Lawrence, approached the main-land, and on the 9th of July entered a deep bay; from the intense heat experienced there, he named it the "Baye de Chaleurs." The beauty ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Chairs to match are at the table. There are coloured prints of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort on the walls on each side of the door at the back, and a plain one of Lord Beaconsfield over the fire-place. Antimacassars abound, and the decoration is quaintly ugly. It is an overcrowded, "cosy" room. HOBSON is quite contented with it, and doesn't realize that it is at present ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... immediate execution." Jones's art was manifested in this instance, according to his account, by showing the captains "a large heap of gold at the end of the prospect." During this enforced conference, however, the wind shifted, and the undertaking had to be given up. Fanning quaintly remarks: "All his [Jones's] vast projects of wealth and aggrandizement became at once a shadow that passeth away, ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... others, stretching themselves upon the ground near by. Then a garland was set up at the far end of the glade, and thereat the bowmen shot, and such shooting was done that day as it would have made one's heart leap to see. And all the while Robin talked so quaintly to the Bishop and the Knight that, the one forgetting his vexation and the other his troubles, they both laughed aloud ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... the Chiesa di S. Rocco at Venice is first, in his Life of the Castelfranco painter, ascribed by Vasari to Giorgione, and then in the subsequent Life of Titian given to that master, but to a period very much too late in his career. The biographer quaintly adds: "This figure, which many have believed to be from the hand of Giorgione, is to-day the most revered object in Venice, and has received more charitable offerings in money than Titian and Giorgione together ever gained ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... A writer quaintly describes it thus:—"The limbs of a bear, the body of a badger, the head of a fox, the nose of a dog, the tail of a cat, and sharp claws, by which it climbs trees like a monkey." We cannot admit the similarity of ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... part they play, or used to play, in love-making, those hands! How quaintly they are squeezed at that period of life! How they are pushed into conversation! what absurd vows and protests are palmed off by their aid! What good can there be in pulling and pressing a thumb and four fingers? I fancy I see Alexis laugh, who is haply reading this page ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... know it, but there was the least show of wrinkles between her eyes and her mouth was puckered quaintly. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... before it, and accented the blackness of the rocky ledge beyond. A small curly-headed boy, bearing a singular likeness to a smudged and blackened crayon drawing of Minty, was mechanically blowing the bellows and obviously intent upon something else; while her father—a powerfully built man, with a quaintly dissatisfied expression of countenance—was with equal want of interest mechanically hammering at a horseshoe. Without noticing Minty's advent, he lazily broke into a querulous drawling chant of some vague ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... when The Merchant of Venice was finely revived at Wallack's theatre, with the elder Wallack as Shylock, the cast included Lester Wallack as Bassanio, John Brougham as Gratiano, A. W. Young—a quaintly comic actor, too soon cut off—as Launcelot Gobbo, Mary Gannon—the fascinating, the irresistible—as Nerissa, and handsome Mrs. Sloan as Jessica. The eminent German actor Davison played Shylock, in New York, in his own language; and many German actors, no one of them comparable with him, have ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... to talk yet," said Charlie, as if admonishing a child who has choked on a swallow of water. "Anyhow," he went on quaintly, after a moment, "it makes you forget all ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... chronicle, rather quaintly, of more temporal and material benefits, the Infant D. Pedro, then Regent of the kingdom, gave to his brother Henry a charter, granting him the whole of the fifth of the profits which appertained to the King, and, considering that it was by him alone that the whole ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... of wet leaves, and the fragrance of mignonette and roses mingling with the salty scent of the sea,—then he found himself in a small, low, oak-raftered kitchen, with a wide old-fashioned hearth and ingle-nook, warm with the glow of a sparkling fire. A quaintly carved comfortably cushioned armchair was set in the corner, and to this his guide conducted him, and gently made ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... of the mouth, or twisted in the hatband, and would never be in the way. Thus ended this alarming insurrection, which was long known by the name of the Pipe Plot, and which, it has been somewhat quaintly observed, did end, like most plots and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving |
