|
|
|
More "Oddity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... easier to overcome than a prude; even experience does not undeceive them. How often are they exposed to a severity all the keener that it was unexpected? Their custom then, is to accuse women of caprice and oddity; all of you use the same language, and say: Why such equivocal conduct? When a woman has decided to remain intractable, why surprise the credulity of a lover? Why not possess an exterior conformable to her sentiments? In a word, why permit a man to love her, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... the colour of this Irish society of which Bernard Shaw, with all his individual oddity, is yet an essential type? One generalisation, I think, may at least be made. Ireland has in it a quality which caused it (in the most ascetic age of Christianity) to be called the "Land of Saints"; and which still might give ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... act which could have moved a stranger to anything but a smile at the oddity of it, but it touched Paul almost to tears when the gray old man lugged out of his coat-tail pocket a whole newspaper, and having pinched from it a most economical fragment, singed his fingers at the bars in the act of lighting it. He had laughed ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... In like fashion, the average person grins or guffaws at sight of a stranger in an outlandish costume, although, as a matter of fact, the dress may be in every respect superior to his own. Simply, its oddity somehow tickles the risibilities. Such surprise is occasioned by contrasting circumstances. When a pompous gentleman, marching magnificently, suddenly steps on a banana peel, pirouettes, somersaults, and sits with extreme violence, we laugh before asking ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... days," said Mrs. Nougat- Jones, "for not having bought up his entire portfolio of sketches. At the same time, when there is so much real talent going about, one does not feel like planking down ten shillings for what looks like a bit of whimsical oddity. Now that picture that he showed us last week, 'Sand- grouse roosting on the Albert Memorial,' was very impressive, and of course I could see there was good workmanship in it and breadth of treatment; but it didn't in the least convey the ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... spoke to the waiter absent-mindedly in that tongue—did not make her less different, for she was like no English person that Althea had ever seen. She engaged at once the whole of her attention, but at first Althea could not have said whether this attention were admiring; her main impression was of oddity, of something curiously ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... same time a marvellous and absolutely genuine autobiography." His ultimate burst of appreciation is a beautifully characteristic example of what has before been called Saintsburyese—not because of any obscurity in it, but because of its oddity of phrase and metaphor: ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... was perfectly shaped, was yet marred by a cruel, sullen, and sensual expression. Something in both face and figure, something exquisitely intangible, like the echo of an echo, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and I stood a while unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the resemblance. The common, carnal stock of that race, which had been originally designed for such high dames as the one now looking on me from the canvas, had fallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes, sitting on the shaft ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... themselves with no other preconception than that which we have attempted to give him, would doubtless be startled at the strangeness of the style which prevails more or less throughout them. They are not careless, headstrong, passionate, confused; but they bear a constant look of oddity which seems at first mere wilful wantonness, and which we only afterwards find to be the discriminating stamp of original and strong feeling. This— this feeling, rooted in profound susceptibility and matured into a central vivifying power—is, we should say, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... its welcome. But the young man's eyes stare and it would seem almost that he is dead. Then he talks. His voice has a lifeless sound, his words are like a child reciting sleepily. There is a gruesome oddity about him. But an old man explains. "They come back like that," he says. "There is one who came back who shrieks all night. And another who cannot ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Temple, and he proceeds to instance a nobleman who was the greatest wit of the court of Charles I., and the greatest dullard in that of Charles II.* But Heavens! how awful are the revolutions of coxcombry! what a change from Beau Fielding the Beauty, to Beau Fielding the Oddity! ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... usually follow the wishes of the bride in the matter of dress. Should she desire any particular style of dress, entailing considerable expense, on account of novelty or oddity, she usually presents them the outfit, which it is permissible for them ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... is such an oddity. Her wandering life, I presume, accounts for it; but she is altogether unlike any girl I ever know. I am certain," with a little malicious glance, "she will ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... it is odd for a philosophic bachelor to maintain in his establishment a young and detached female of prepossessing appearance. For the oddity I care not two pins. Io son' io. But the question that exercises me occasionally is: In what category are my relations with Carlotta to be classified? I do not regard her as a daughter; still less as a sister: not even as a deceased wife's sister. For ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... possession of a single fact to enable him to determine. Of one Miller, a manager, he has heard H. speak, but not with any interest. James Whiteley was the theme on which he most liked to dwell. Whiteley was perhaps the greatest oddity on the face of the earth; but of a heart sound, and benevolent beyond the generality of mankind. Violently passionate, and in his passions vulgar, rude, boisterous, and so abhorrent of hypocrisy, that he laboured ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... n, which may be mistaken for a u, or the change or omission of a punctuation mark, which may involve claims to thousands of dollars. Even the separation of one word into two may reverse the meaning of the sentence, yet not betray itself by any oddity of phrase, as when the atheist who had asserted that "God is nowhere" found himself in print standing sponsor for the statement that "God is now here." The same trick of the types was played on an American political writer in his own paper ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... without previously assuming that physical objects are composed of points, is an agreeable problem in mathematical logic. The solution of this problem and the perception of its importance are due to my friend Dr. Whitehead. The oddity of regarding a point as a class of physical entities wears off with familiarity, and ought in any case not to be felt by those who maintain, as practically every one does, that points are mathematical fictions. The word "fiction" is used glibly in such connexions ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... scolding this matron with a lurking smile in every tone, hugging that baby, boxing the ears of the other little tyrant, passing this one's rent, and threatening that other with awful vengeances, but it was a very lovely oddity. Their property was not large, and she knew every living thing on the place down to the dogs and pigs. And Miss Jemima, as the people always called her, transferring the MISS CROWTHER of primogeniture to the younger, who kept, like King ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the promised oddity of this work occurs in the first page—in fact, several pages before it—in the assertion that 'this work is respectfully dedicated to the first young lady who can truthfully assert that she has read from title page to colophon WITHOUT ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the completely strange environment. He was the more conscious of a general strangeness because he was so completely an urban product. Yet he and Holden were vastly less aware of the real strangeness about them than men of previous generations would have been. They did not notice the oddity of croaking sounds, like frogs, coming from the tree-tops. When they had threaded their way among leaning charred poles and came to green stuff underfoot and merely toasted foliage all around, Cochrane heard a sweet, high-pitched trilling ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Nichol and his manner was intolerable; and in addition, he was almost as much care as a child. Everything struck him as new and strange, and he was disposed to ask numberless questions. His vernacular, his alternations of amusement and irritation, and the oddity of his ignorance concerning things which should be simple or familiar to a grown man, attracted the attention of his fellow- passengers. It was with difficulty that Martine, by his stern, sad face and a cold, repelling manner, kept curiosity from ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... effectual effort to overcome his irritation. He ought to have known better than to turn to an oddity like ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... that the parish paid his fees, although, indeed, they were hardly worth paying—made very little difference to his position amongst his school-fellows. Nor did the fact of his being ragged and dirty affect his social reception to his discomfort. But the accumulated facts of the oddity of his personal appearance, his supposed imbecility, and the bad character borne by his mother, placed him in a very unenviable relation to the tyrannical and vulgar-minded amongst them. Concerning his person, he was long, and, as his name implied, lean, with pale-red hair, reddish eyes, no visible ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... is to you, sir," said Lorna, who could never quite check her sense of oddity; "but I fear that you have smoked ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Oddity as he was, he did not stop to see as he wrote if the assemblage of letters made intelligible words. No; during the first stage his mind refused all verification of that sort. What he desired was to give himself the ecstasy of reading it all ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... like a whirlwind that had caught up the contents of an old-clothes-shop. It is no wonder that he should have produced in our minds an indescribable mixture of awe and delight—awe, because no one could tell what he might do next, and delight because of his oddity, agility, and music. The first sensation was always a slight fear, which gradually wore off as we became anew accustomed to the strangeness of the apparition. Before the visit was over, wee Davie would be playing with ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... obscure part in this statement, namely, the reference to the former affidavit and the matter of the bedstaff. The former affidavit is not in the bundle of papers. It is to be feared that it was taken out to be read because of its special oddity, and not put back. Of what nature the story was may be guessed later, but as yet no clue has been put into ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... whenever any droll idea passed through his mind. It was with a twitch of this kind, and a certain indescribable twinkle of his somewhat melancholy eye, as he seemed intuitively to form a hasty conception of the oddity of his appearance to a stranger unused to the bush, that he welcomed me to his clearing. He instantly threw down his handspike, and leaving his "niggers" to finish their work at their leisure, insisted on our going to his house ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... time in this situation, and to the mortifications experienced there we doubtless owe the picturings given in his writings of the hardships of an usher's life. "He is generally," says he, "the laughingstock of the school. Every trick is played upon him; the oddity of his manner, his dress, or his language, is a fund of eternal ridicule; the master himself now and then cannot avoid joining in the laugh; and the poor wretch, eternally resenting this ill-usage, lives in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... side-glances while all eyes should be turned together to the same. Thought is growing agreement, and that in which the race cannot meet me is some whim or notion, a personal crotchet, not a cosmic and eternal truth. Genius is freedom from all oddity, is Catholicity,—and departure from it so much departure in me from Nature and myself. We say a man is original, if he lives at first, and not at second hand,—if he requires a new tombstone,—if he takes law, not from the many or the few, but from the sky,—if he is no subordinate, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... possible that he was normal for the first year or so. The records we did manage to get on that period, however, were very much confused, and there was never any way of telling anything at all, for certain. It's easy to see what caused the confusion, of course: telepathy in an imbecile is rather an oddity—and any normal adult would probably be rather hesitant about admitting that he was capable of it. That's why we have not found another subject; we must merely sit back and ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... especially peculiar to Mr. Lincoln, let me ask one question. Were Mr. Lincoln's expression and language odd and original, standing out peculiar from those of all other men? What does this imply? Oddity and originality of vision as well as expression; and what is expression in words and human language, but a telling of what we see, defining the idea arising from and created by vision and view in us? Words and language are but ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... restless hunt for novelty, always novelty, he grows too original, too unconventional, this sin is unusual enough to approach the estate of a virtue. But his oddity is not mere sensation-mongering. It is his individuality. He could make the same reply to such criticism that Schumann made; he thinks in strange rhythms and hunts curious effects, because his tastes are irrevocably ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... days following, so many selfdestructions succeeded this one that the grass became known in the papers as the Green Horror. Perhaps a peculiar sidelight on human oddity was revealed in most of these suicides choosing to immolate themselves, not in the main body of the grass, but in one of the many smaller nuclei ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... other two were in utter darkness; and, moreover, at the instant when the eye was passing from hand to hand, neither of the poor old ladies was able to see a wink. I have heard of a great many strange things, in my day, and have witnessed not a few; but none, it seems to me, that can compare with the oddity of these Three Gray Women, all peeping ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... an oddity— I deem it a most portable commodity, A sort of magic wand, Which, if 'tis used with ingenuity, Although a utensil of much tenuity, In place of something solid, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... beard began very high up in his face, just under the cheek-bones. His complexion was neither sallow nor livid, but on the contrary rather clear and youthful; yet this gave a pink-and-white wax look which somehow (I don't know why) rather increased the horror. The only oddity one could fix was that his nose, which was otherwise of a good shape, was just slightly turned sideways at the tip; as if, when it was soft, it had been tapped on one side with a toy hammer. The thing was hardly a deformity; yet I cannot tell you what a living nightmare it was ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... by such a man as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her. Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position, her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified? No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally. He felt savage, but ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... hearts you would find in all a stone. In their normal state they have the prettiest exterior, stake their friendship at every turn, are captivating alike. The same badinage dominates their ever-changing jargon; they seek for oddity in their toilette, glory in repeating the stupidities of such and such actor who is in fashion, and commence operations, it matters not with whom, with contempt and impertinence, in order to have, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the characters; than the temper, the morality, and the conduct of the poem. The Arthurian poets, Malory himself, would have jumped out their skin with amazement, even with indignation, had they read it. And a great deal of this oddity, this unfitness of the matter to the manner, arose from the romantic story being expressed in poetry written in accordance with classic traditions. Of course, there were other sources for these inharmonies in the poem, but that was one, and not the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... childhood in California; and she told him a great deal more about South Bradfield. She described its characters and customs, and, from no vantage-ground or stand-point but her native feeling of their oddity, and what seemed her sympathy with him, made him see them as one might whose life had not been passed among them. Then they began to compare their own traits, and amused themselves to find how many they had in common. Staniford related a singular experience of his on ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... oddity of inventing as a remedy for the inconveniences resulting from this situation a supernumerary conceptual object called an absolute, into which you pack the self-same contradictions unreduced, I will say something in the next lecture. The absolute is said to perform its feats ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... been remarkable a few years back, but now that ladies are reverting to the fashions of their grandmothers, it passed unnoticed. With a plain black dress, a black cloak trimmed profusely with beads, mittened hands and an ebony cane, she looked quite funereal. To complete the oddity of her dress a black satin bag dangled by ribbons from her left arm. In this she carried her handkerchief and—something else. As usual, she was perfumed with the Hikui scent. Caranby noticed this, and when she did not reply to his remark, ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... to Jack Penny, saying that he was an oddity, but not a bad fellow. I began to like him better myself, though he did nothing to try and win my liking, being very quiet and distant with us both, and watching us suspiciously, as if he thought we were always making plots to get rid of ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... Miss Rosetta, all her old maidishness and oddity falling away from her like a garment, and all her innate and denied motherhood shining out in her face like a transforming illumination. "Oh, the sweet, dear, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... much probably as you have gained by killing Harran and Annixter. But that's all passed now. You're safe from me." The strangeness of this talk, the oddity of the situation burst upon him and he laughed aloud. "It don't seem as though you could be brought to book, S. Behrman, by anybody, or by any means, does it? They can't get at you through the courts,—the law can't get you, Dyke's pistol missed ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... been one of the very few persons who had always been able to appreciate the Prince Consort's jokes; and, when those were cracked no more, she could still roar with laughter, in the privacy of her household, over some small piece of fun—some oddity of an ambassador, or some ignorant Minister's faux pas. When the jest grew subtle she was less pleased; but, if it approached the confines of the indecorous, the danger was serious. To take a liberty called down at once Her Majesty's ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... corner of New Mexico was worked over by the roundup, and again the mustang bunch was seen. The dark colt was now a black yearling, with thin, clean legs and glossy flanks; and more than one of the boys saw with his own eyes this oddity—the mustang was a born pacer. Jo was along, and the idea now struck him that that colt was worth having. To an Easterner this thought may not seem startling or original, but in the West, where an unbroken horse is worth $5, and where an ordinary ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... that Mr. Rudolph Rayne was the sort of "oddity" I later found him to be, I should have refused to accept the situation even had he offered ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... battalions, carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul, associated with destiny; the stream, the plain, the forest, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... But somehow this oddity did not change his feelings. Jill could be in danger from creatures Vale said were not human. Lockley didn't wholly accept that non-human angle, but something was happening there and Jill was in the middle of it. So he went to see about it for the sake of his self-respect. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the enemy's territory, and you were in peril all the time. Now you come off in a schooner, which appears to be loaded with cotton, and how or where you picked her up is a mystery to me;" and the commander indulged in a laugh at the oddity of the young officer's reappearance. "Your messenger reported that the Trafalgar would sail at three o'clock in the morning, and I judge that she left at ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... disguised as bears, others like unicorns, bringing presents. Those who could not procure masks rubbed their faces with soot, or painted them. In the Christmas mummings the chief aim was to surprise by the oddity of the masks, and singularity and splendour of the dresses. Everything was out of nature and propriety. They were often attended with an exhibition of gorgeous machinery.[69] It was an old custom also to have mummeries on Twelfth night. They were the common holiday amusements of young people ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... from actuality, though it would be wanting in any hint of tragedy. It is this intimacy which at once attracts and repels readers, attracts all those who are, in however small a degree, kindred spirits, and repels, perhaps, others. The quaintness, oddity, flippancy, are wrought together with deep thought, poetry, and feeling to a wonderful degree. The very diversity of theme and manner—this varying change from grave to gay, from lively to severe—is indeed but a reflection of life itself, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... hand, had not been impressed by the clothes; or, at any rate, he had been more impressed by something which robbed them of their oddity. His observing eyes were fixed with growing interest on the purposeful face still thrust forward, and for a moment they were startled by something uncanny, something back of a normal human enthusiasm. It was only for a moment, ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... further oddity, that above the nape of his neck was a whitish tuft which, though he took great pains to conceal it, continually obtruded through the darker hair like the cottontail on the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... about," as they say in Orham, and did some housework, after a fashion, but she never again set foot across the granite doorstep of the Winslow cottage. Probably the poor woman's mind was slightly affected; it is charitable to hope that it was. It seems the only reasonable excuse for the oddity of her behavior during the last twenty years of her life, for her growing querulousness and selfishness and for the exacting slavery in which she kept ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... this singular entry will appreciate its oddity if no one else does. After making it, one of the lawyers, on recovering from his astonishment, ventured to enquire: 'Well, Lincoln, how can we get this case ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the Hecatompathia, though called sonnets, are in a curious form of eighteen lines practically composed of three six-line stanzas rhymed A B, A B, C C, and not connected by any continuance of rhyme from stanza to stanza. The special and peculiar oddity of the book is, that each sonnet has a prose preface as thus: "In this passion the author doth very busily imitate and augment a certain ode of Ronsard, which he writeth unto his mistress. He beginneth ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... prevailed in ancient Corsica, according to Strabo among the Iberians of Northern Spain (where we have seen it has lingered to recent times), according to Apollonius Rhodius among the Tibareni of Pontus. Modified traces of a like practice, not carried to the same extent of oddity, are also found in a variety of countries besides those that have been named, as in Borneo, in Kamtchatka, and in Greenland. In nearly all cases some particular diet, or abstinence from certain kinds of food and drink, and from exertion, is prescribed to the father; in some, more positive ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was a Frenchwoman—we have some of her books in my study. She never got on with England and English people—and at last, after her husband's death, she never went outside the house and park. My father owed much of his shyness and oddity to her bringing up. When she felt herself dying she went over to her family to die at Nantes. She is buried there; and my father was sent to the Jesuit school at Nantes for a long time. Then my mother—But I mustn't bore ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... insolently lounging figure did nothing to sooth his irritation. This escape was not the way he wanted to deal with a threat. There was an oddity in the man's waiting. The range was poor, and he probably was not firing, although he would look as if he were not in any case, but if he were not going to take this chance for his murder attempt, why did he openly ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... love with all the poets one after another; but being of an impressionable nature the last acquaintance disgusted me with the rest. I had made of myself a great warehouse of odds and ends, so that having no more thirst after drinking of the novel and the unknown, I became an oddity myself. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... plain clothes, and in the white hats worn by the last generation of radicals. Originality of nature is sure to show itself in more ways than one. The mention of George Fox's suit of leather, or Pestalozzi's school name, "Harry Oddity," will at once suggest the remembrance that men who have in great things diverged from the beaten track, have frequently done so in small things likewise. Minor illustrations of this truth may be gathered in almost every circle. We ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... himself at the controls. He slipped headphones over his ears. He listened. Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wave lengths and wave forms he could discover in use on Weald. There was no mention of the oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft. There was no mention of the ships at all. There was plenty of mention of Dara, and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going on to see which political party could promise the most complete protection ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... pane had been cleared of its dinginess; not a cobweb had been swept from its ceiling; nothing had been removed, except the pair of living skeletons who once acted as his attendants. They had been removed by the Remover of all things; and were succeeded by a pair, so similar in meagreness and oddity of appearance, that I could not have known the change, except for its mention by their master, congratulating himself on being so "fortunate" in finding substitutes. I found Mordecai immersed in day-books and ledgers, and calculating the exchanges with as much anxiety as if he were not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... was meant to be repulsive, and so far forth the young artist must be admitted to have wrought successfully. She is somewhat minutely described as a 'tall and plump widow of twenty-five; a proud coquette, her beauty spoiled by its oddity; dazzling and not pleasing, and with a wicked, cynical expression.' That such a woman should befool Fiesco and rejoice in her triumph is quite thinkable, but her qualities are those which usually go with a certain amount of discretion. That she should suddenly lose her head and throw herself ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... four merry children' is distinguished by its charming realization of the quaintness and oddity and merriness of children, by its romantic, almost sentimental, pathos, and by its crisp, fluent ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... of dahlias is a curious sign of the times. It rivals in oddity that of the Racing Calendar. Next to the peerage, Shakspeare and Homer seem to be the chief sources whence they have derived their appellations. Thus we have Hectors and Dioedes of all colours, a very black Othello, and a very fair ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... is a man evidently pertaining to the class of human eccentrics who excite the interest of their fellow-men "to see what they will do next," but without any idea of the final value of that which may come by what seems to them to be mere unbalanced oddity. Such people are invariably misunderstood until they succeed. When he invented the automatic repeating telegraph he was discharged, and walked from Decatur to Nashville, 150 miles, with only a dollar or two as his entire possessions. With a pass thence ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... she said, "is oddity. For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics,—business, if you will,—the rest can come later. However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that have no affinity, and compels me to avoid discords; ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... textbooks could tell him about sex and copulation he still had the quaint notion that the reason why Judge Carter and his wife were childless was because they had not yet gotten around to Doing It. He made no attempt to correlate this oddity with its opposite in Jake Caslow's ladies of the night who seemed to go on their ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Savenaye in her improvised bedroom, wet as she was, could hardly betake herself to disrobing, so amused was she in surveying the fresh and romantic oddity of her surroundings, with their mixture of barbarous ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... himself upon every Occasion, without any Deference to others, there is this Circumstance against him; that he is the most stung by a Defeat, upon any Topic, of all Men living; And although he disregards Accusations of Roughness and Oddity, and rather esteems them to be meritorious; yet he will never admit, that he has been fairly overthrown ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... soon developed a philosophy of his own; and his reputation as a 'character' sprang from the first diffident, wayward expressions of this philosophy. Perceiving that the town not unadmiringly deemed him odd, he cultivated oddity. Perceiving also that it was sometimes astonished at the extent of his information about hidden affairs, he cultivated mystery, the knowledge of other people's business, and the trick of unexpected appearances. At forty his fame was assured; at ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... singing it over and over again in childish sort, with so little appreciation of the meaning of the words that the oddity of the ditty was the first thing to attract my attention ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... dare say, a very faithful one. But so minute is his narration, that he takes care to inform posterity that he was very irregular in his method of walking, and that he preferred sweet wine to hard. In short, he was a man of considerable parts, with a great simplicity and oddity of character." ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... eye. Homer has the idea that the gods curb the pride of prosperity and are jealous of it. His heroes are taught as a life policy to avert envy. Self-disparagement is an approved pose.[1822] Plutarch[1823] explains the efficiency of objects set up to avert witchcraft on the theory that by their oddity they draw the evil eye from persons and objects. Fescennine verses of the Romans, which were used at weddings and triumphs, were intended to ward off ill luck. Soldiers followed the chariot of the triumphing general and shouted to him derisive and sarcastic verses to avert ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... cap of Brussels lace, so much too large for her that it gave her face a ridiculously diminutive expression. When I had first seen her, she was attired, most becomingly, in deep mourning. There was an air of oddity, in short, about the dress of the whole party, which, at first, caused me to recur to my original idea of the "soothing system," and to fancy that Monsieur Maillard had been willing to deceive me until after dinner, that I might experience no uncomfortable feelings during the repast, at finding myself ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... An oddity of the Mississippi Delta is the habit the little streams have of running away from the big ones. The river makes its own bed and its own banks, and continuing season after season, through ages of alternate overflow and subsidence, to elevate those ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... (the Peer who writes letters, For which the waste-paper folks much are his debtors) Hath one little oddity well worth reciting, Which puzzleth observers even more than his writing. Whenever Lord Kenyon doth chance to behold A cold Apple-pie—mind, the pie must be cold— His Lordship looks solemn (few people know why), And he makes a low bow to the said apple-pie. This ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... word interpretation is only part of the oddity of this chapter. Several other aspects are worth pondering. The whole chapter has a well-worn feeling, as though the author had told and re-told it many times. It reads like a deposition, taken down by ...
— The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel • Arthur W. Orton
... the most elaborate care could possibly have made it so bad as it is. It is distinguished by harsh phrases, strange collocations, occasional solecisms, frequent obscurity, and, above all, by a peculiar oddity, which can no more be described than it can be overlooked. Nor is this all. Mr Mitford piques himself on spelling better than any of his neighbours; and this not only in ancient names, which he mangles in defiance both of custom and of reason, but in the most ordinary words of the English language. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said, "but it isn't true. Anyhow: I want every one of those cars checked for any oddity, no matter how small. If there's an inch-long scratch on one fender, I want to know about it. If you've got to take the cars apart, ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a mind of vigorous appetite, but since I have grown mentally to man's estate and developed a more and more comprehensive view of our national process and our national needs, I am more and more struck by the oddity of the educational methods pursued, their aimless disconnectedness from the constructive forces in the community. I suppose if we are to view the public school as anything more than an institution that has just chanced to happen, we must treat it as having ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... head through the opening, and suffered it to fall to her feet. Something seemed forgotten, and after some little search, she found a small cotton bag, into which she dropped a polonce, then secured it beneath the blanket. Queerly enough she looked, thus accoutered; but apparently the oddity of her appearance never once crossed her mind, for, stepping across the floor, she held the pieces of paper over the lamp till ignited, then quickly thrust them one by one between the small crack or chink in the center of the door. It was of wood, old and dry, and caught like tinder. She ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it. The bankers discussed the monument with me. We met several times. They proposed an indestructible memorial, to cost twenty-five thousand dollars. The insane oddity of a monument set up in a village to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without any such help, would advertise Elmira to the ends of the earth —and draw custom. It would be the only monument on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... considered one, and his eagerness to become familiar with the flora of his vicinity so far overcame offended formality, that he also got down on his knees and directed his imperfect vision to the pungent specimen. The two men, each an oddity, presented a ludicrous picture as they knelt on the grass, their heads almost in contact, and their long noses only a few inches above the ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Honora from Mrs. Seward’s own daughters by the light of anything in Mrs. Seward’s treatment or conduct. Honora was very beautiful and accomplished, and had attracted many admirers, as well as lovers. Anna Seward relates a whimsical story of an “oddity,” an “awkward pedantic youth, once resident for a little time at Lichfield, who, when asked how he liked Honora, replied, ‘I could not have conceived that she had half the face she has,’ adding that Honora was finely rallied about this imputed plenitude of face. ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... sedulous life, month after month, year after year, known among the studios as a quaint oddity, drawn out indulgently by the men, somewhat petted, monkey-fashion, by the women, forgotten by both when out of their presence, but developing imperceptibly day by day along the self-centring line. A kindly adviser suggested a gymnasium to keep ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... did manage to get on that period, however, were very much confused, and there was never any way of telling anything at all, for certain. It's easy to see what caused the confusion, of course: telepathy in an imbecile is rather an oddity— and any normal adult would probably be rather hesitant about admitting that he was capable of it. That's why we have not found another subject; we must merely sit back and wait for ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought the shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe. The man at the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added smartly, "True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... severe criticism and declared that his daughter should accept any invitation from Mrs. Cooke that she chose, and paid but little attention to the coolness resulting therefrom. He was fast getting a reputation for oddity. And the Celebrity tried to conciliate both parties, and succeeded, though none but he could have done it. At first he was eyed with suspicion and disgust as he drove off to Mohair in his Hempstead cart, and was called many hard names. But he had a way about him which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... living in this fellow's house (by fellow, I mean Mr Pecksniff, of course), there is a certain person of the name of Pinch. Don't forget; a poor, strange, simple oddity, Mary; but thoroughly honest and sincere; full of zeal; and with a cordial regard for me. Which I mean to return one of these days, by setting him up in life in some ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... telling the story of the triumph of his shrewdness over the dealer's ignorance, would have made a subject for a Dutch painter; but it was all thrown away upon the audience. Mother and daughter exchanged cold, contemptuous glances.—"What an oddity!" ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... eccentric actions for a few days past, and his well-known oddity of character make him an object of suspicion," declared the president in judicial tones. "As for Tom, we have, I regret to say, even ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... destiny, they only glance from time to time to glean a hint for their own mimetic reproduction. Two children playing at soldiers are far more interesting to each other than one of the scarlet beings whom both are busy imitating. This is perhaps the greatest oddity of all. "Art for art" is their motto; and the doings of grown folk are only interesting as the raw material for play. Not Theophile Gautier, not Flaubert, can look more callously upon life, or rate the reproduction more highly over the reality; and they will parody an execution, a deathbed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... risen to his feet, and Mrs. Light began to exclaim on the oddity of their meeting and to explain that the day was so lovely that she had been charmed with the idea of spending it in the country. And who would ever have thought of finding Mr. Mallet and Mr. Hudson sleeping under ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in the midst of good company, precisely because she wished to appear thoroughly at home. If I prattled away with some of my trilling nonsense, she would stare at me, and in her anxiety not to be thought stupid, she would laugh out of season. Her oddity, her awkwardness, and her self-conceit gave me the desire to know her better, and I began ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... royal family at Yaoorie by way of leave-taking, is only equalled by the following oddity:—"The captain of the palm oil brig, Elizabeth, now in the Calabar river, actually white-washed his crew from head to foot, while they were sick with fever and unable to protect themselves; his cook suffered so much in the operation, that the lime ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... Notwithstanding the oddity of his dress, no one who had any knowledge of humanity could have failed to see in Cosmo Warlock, the elder, a high bred gentleman. His face was small, and the skin of it was puckered into wrinkles innumerable; his mouth was sweet, but he had lost his teeth, and the lips had fallen in; his ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... this last declaration with the sympathy it deserved, might have commended the noble aspirations of his kinswoman. But what struck him, rather, was the oddity of so sudden a sharpness of pitch in an intercourse which, an hour or two before, had begun in perfect amity, and he burst once more into an irrepressible laugh. This made his companion feel, with intensity, how little she was joking. "I don't know why I should care what you think," ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... "It's the oddity that takes you;"—she had lost what went before—"that will soon wear off. But I'm glad enough you're not as wise as I, to prefer the other. What makes you so sure, though, that he has secured your—?" In some movement she ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... Jenny Hitchcock's pony, which, with old John and Sharp, mounted three of the company; they took turns in walking. Nobody minded that. The fine weather, the beautiful mountain-top, the general pleasure, Mr. Humphreys' uncommon spirits and talkableness, the oddity of their way of travelling, and of a tea-party up on the "Cat's Back," and, furthermore, the fact that Nancy stayed at home and behaved very well the whole time, all together filled Ellen's cup of happiness, for the time, as full as it could hold. She never forgot that afternoon. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of Manderson's having arisen long before his usual hour to go out and meet his death, there were two minor points of oddity about this affair which, I suppose, must have occurred to thousands of those who have read the accounts in the newspapers; points apparent from the very beginning. The first of these was that, whereas the body was found at a spot not thirty yards ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... breakfast-room—delicately-fragrant tea, an unpurchasable luxury, one of the many angel-gifts that had fallen like dew upon us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce while I am writing, from the old Manse into a Custom House! As a story-teller, I have often contrived ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... crucial test. We both wrote for a minute or two. Somehow, in Hilda's presence, I forgot at once the strangeness of the scene, the weird oddity of the moment. That sombre plain disappeared for me. I was only aware that I was with Hilda once more—and therefore in Paradise. Pison and Gihon watered the desolate land. Whatever she did seemed to me supremely ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... service in the diabetes, diarrhoea, and night sweats, when the secretions are too much increased, must not they do harm in the same proportion, where the humours are obstructed, as in the asthma, scurvy, gout and dropsy? — Now we talk of the dropsy, here is a strange fantastical oddity, one of your brethren, who harangues every day in the Pump-room, as if he was hired to give lectures on all subjects whatsoever — I know not what to make of him — Sometimes he makes shrewd remarks; at other times he talks like ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... her consent to the match, by telling her father that he has got it; disappoints her by not returning at the time he has promised to wed her, and when he returns, creates no small consternation by the oddity of his dress and equipage. This however is nothing to the astonishment excited by his madbrained behaviour at the marriage. Here is the account ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... odd-looking and odd-mannered little man, rather intellectual in appearance, who listened attentively to what others said, but who, so far as I noticed, never said a word himself. Up to the time of which I am speaking, I did not even know his name, as there was nothing but his oddity to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Intelligence Office" and "A Virtuoso's Collection," also remnants of old-fashioned ingenuity. In such fantasy Hawthorne found a better channel for that play of his mind which had earlier sought expression in the grotesque; oddity of thought he had in plenty, and the sense of oddity was often as far as his humorous faculty reached, for it was perceptive rather ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... nor there. The oddity of our adventure was in discovering such an establishment in such a place. Since that time we have often had similar surprises, especially in New England, where curious industries have established themselves in the most out-of-the-way nooks. In a hamlet of three or four houses and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... several books which had aroused attention through the oddity of their themes, and their gratifying success had made it possible for him to establish himself in a comfortably furnished bachelor apartment on the corner of the rue de Vaugirard and ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... room and put him to bed. Then she undressed, put on a nightgown she found in the washstand drawer, and scrambled sleepily in between very nice lavender-scented sheets. She was so tired, after her adventures and exertions, that not even the oddity of her situation could keep her awake; she was sound asleep in ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dispute, The Love, being naked, should promote a suit: But doth not oddity to him attach Whose fire's so oft ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... late before my kind hosts had finished their narrations, and I was not sorry, after all the exercise I had taken, to return to my cell, where everything invited to repose. I was charmed with the neatness and oddity of my little apartment; its cabin-like bed, oratory, and ebony crucifix; in short, everything it contained; not forgetting the aromatic odour of the pine, with which it was roofed, floored, and wainscoted. The night was luckily dark. Had the moon appeared, I could not have prevailed upon ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... rather a melancholy mood to the end. The long straight vista from the Foscari to the Rialto, the great middle stretch of the Canal, contains, as the phrase is, a hundred objects of interest, but it contains most the bright oddity of its general Deluge air. In all these centuries it has never got over its resemblance to a flooded city; for some reason or other it is the only part of Venice in which the houses look as if the waters ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... monuments are those of Caterina Cornaro (or Corner) the deposed queen of Cyprus, in the south transept; of three Cardinals of the Corner family; and of the Doges Lorenzo and Girolamo Priuli, each with his patron saint above him. The oddity of its architecture, together with its situation at a point where a little silence is peculiarly grateful, makes this church a favourite of mine, but there are many buildings in Venice which ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... would it have done had I been dressed in feathers and a bell hoop—such is its circumference. Mr. Smelt led the way, walking also upright ; and my father followed. After we were gone, the bishop and Dr. Douglas were tempted, for its oddity, to make ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... rich man and an oddity; one of those who love to surprise folk. Moreover, he had no children, and detected his nephews and nieces being unnaturally civil to him. "Waiting to cut me up," was his generous reading of them. So with this he made a will, and there defied, as far as in ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... was irregular, and had not passed through the proper treasury forms. It was ascertained, however, that the money so lent had been repaid. In discussions of the affair, before those concerned were fully cleared of the odium of bribery, taunting remarks had been made on the oddity and sordid specialties of the items of payment. Thus the allowance to the Lord Banff was, in sterling money, eleven pounds two shillings. It would have had a richer sound, and perhaps resolved itself into round numbers, in Scots money; but as it is, there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... words which they contain do not stamp them out as medieval. Both of these qualities are rococo and superficial rather than essential and distinctive in their style. After making due allowances for either element of oddity, a true connoisseur will gratefully appreciate the spontaneous note of enjoyment, the disengagement from ties and duties imposed by temporal respectability, the frank animalism, which connects these vivid hymns to Bacchus and Venus ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... titter all over the room. The name was very odd, and an oddity is always to be laughed at by the average person, boy or man. Did you ever think of that, my dear pedagogue; you who would fain amuse children, and yet will spit them upon the spear of public ridicule by asking them to tell their names out loud ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... vellum, all printed before 1496. The chapter-house at Padua has a "Catullus" of 1472 on vellum; let Mr. Robinson Ellis think wistfully of that treasure. The notable Count M'Carthy of Toulouse had a wonderful library of books in membranis, including a book much coveted for its rarity, oddity, and the beauty of its illustrations, the "Hypnerotomachia" of Poliphilus (Venice, 1499). Vellum was the favourite "vanity" of Junot, Napoleon's general. For reasons connected with its manufacture, and best not inquired ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... fact, more wonderful, for every day increases the marvel of its not being washed away by the sea. Its cities have grown, and some of its peculiarities have been washed away by contact with other nations; but it is Holland still, and always will be—full of oddity, courage and industry—the pluckiest little country on earth. I shall not tell you in this letter of its customs, its cities, its palaces, churches, picture galleries and museums—for these are described in the story—except to say that they ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... accompanied by this respectable official, we should scarcely have dared to venture in such a place, and at such a period. Mohammed and the donkey-man attended at the side of Miss E. and myself, and though some of the people could not help laughing at the oddity of our appearance, we met with no sort of insult or hinderance, but made our way through without the slightest difficulty, much more easily, in fact, than two Arabs in their native costume, even if attended by a policeman, would have traversed a ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... said Lord Colambre. Miss White, Lady Killpatrick's companion, said 'he was a great oddity;' Lady Dashfort, 'that he was singular;' and the clergyman of the parish, who was at breakfast, declared 'that he was a man of ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... her part of the task." Sophia is a lovely creature, just what she should be. We are not quite sure of Mr Burchell: possibly he may look too young; he was a character, and must have borne about him some little acquired oddity, sturdy, and not undignified. In the illustration he is too prettily genteel; but we do not wish to see any but Sophia—delightful, loving, lovable Sophia. In the background, Moses lies on the ground with his book, and the vicar has rather too suspicious a look; but we can forgive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... along, enjoying the balmy freshness of the air, the picturesque scenery of the neighbouring mountains, the beauty or fragrance of some vegetable productions, and the oddity of others, until, having passed through a thick wood, we came to an extensive plain, which was covered with rose-bushes. The queen of flowers here appeared under every variety of colour, size, and species—red, white, black, and yellow—budding, full-blown, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Jenkins," said Lucy vivaciously; "he owns three or four acres near the public-house and will not allow them to be built over, although he has been offered a lot of money. I noticed myself, Archie, the oddity of finding a cornfield surrounded by cottages. It's like Alice ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... their endeavor. This last would appear in the occasional suffering it caused Moxy, the youngest, to do as his father required, but oftener in the incongruity between the lovely expression of the boy's face, and the oddity of it when it became the field of certain comicalities required of him—especially when, stuck through between his feet, it had to grin like a demon carved on the folding seat of a choir-stall. Its sweet innocence, and the veil ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... not a disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yet he, too, in his way was an idealist, and for all his oddity a man of intellectual integrity, a trifle exaggerated perhaps in its methods and illustrations, but true to his convictions of right and duty, as Emerson would have had him be. For was it not Emerson who exclaimed, "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... had fallen like dew upon us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce while I am writing, from the old Manse into a Custom House! As a story-teller, I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none like this. The treasure of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... they only glance from time to time to glean a hint for their own mimetic reproduction. Two children playing at soldiers are far more interesting to each other than one of the scarlet beings whom both are busy imitating. This is perhaps the greatest oddity of all. "Art for art" is their motto; and the doings of grown folk are only interesting as the raw material for play. Not Theophile Gautier, not Flaubert, can look more callously upon life, or rate the reproduction more highly over the reality; and they will parody an execution, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made from time to time, during the last fifty years, to give us a passable portrait of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, have no equal for variety. The stamps of the first South African Republic, made in Germany, are very appropriate in their roughness of design and execution. For oddity of appearance the palm must be awarded to those of Asiatic origin, such, for instance, as the stamps of Afghanistan, of Kashmir, and most of the local productions of the Native States of India, marking as they do their own independent attempts ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... sent down from town to clothe a waiter had worked a miracle with his exterior. Brush and comb had partially subdued the wild disorder of his hair. Now he might have passed for no more extravagant a thing than one of those poseurs in art and music who affect such oddity of guise. The man's countenance and demeanour, as he approached the table, exhibited nothing of the awkwardness or confusion to be expected from his Arabian Nights change. He allowed Absalom to seat him at Grandemont's right hand with the manner ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... scarcely begun a reply, when the old minister made his appearance. He was a tall, well-built man, with strong features, rather handsome than otherwise; but his hat hung on his occiput, gave his head a look of weakness and oddity that by nature did not belong to it, while baggy, ill-made clothes and big shoes manifested a reaction from the over-trimness of earlier years. He greeted the doctor with ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... a curious form of eighteen lines practically composed of three six-line stanzas rhymed A B, A B, C C, and not connected by any continuance of rhyme from stanza to stanza. The special and peculiar oddity of the book is, that each sonnet has a prose preface as thus: "In this passion the author doth very busily imitate and augment a certain ode of Ronsard, which he writeth unto his mistress. He beginneth as followeth, Plusieurs, etc." Here is a complete example ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of this kind, that she made her entrance, after I had exchanged a few words with Miss Ambient. Her husband presently followed her, and there being no other company we went to dinner. The impression I received from that repast is present to me still. There were elements of oddity in my companions, but they were vague and latent, and did n't interfere with my delight It came mainly, of course, from Ambient's talk, which was the most brilliant and interesting I had ever heard. I know not whether he laid himself out to dazzle a rather ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... and out of the cottages, scolding this matron with a lurking smile in every tone, hugging that baby, boxing the ears of the other little tyrant, passing this one's rent, and threatening that other with awful vengeances, but it was a very lovely oddity. Their property was not large, and she knew every living thing on the place down to the dogs and pigs. And Miss Jemima, as the people always called her, transferring the MISS CROWTHER of primogeniture to the younger, who kept, like ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Spain, a man who is remarkable for his extraordinary powers as a linguist, and for the originality of his character, not to speak of the wonderful adventures he narrates, and the ease and facility with which he tells them. He kept us laughing a good part of breakfast time by the oddity of his remarks, as well as the positiveness of his assertions, often rather startling, and, like his books, partaking of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... a man evidently pertaining to the class of human eccentrics who excite the interest of their fellow-men "to see what they will do next," but without any idea of the final value of that which may come by what seems to them to be mere unbalanced oddity. Such people are invariably misunderstood until they succeed. When he invented the automatic repeating telegraph he was discharged, and walked from Decatur to Nashville, 150 miles, with only a dollar or two as his entire possessions. With ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... this further oddity, that above the nape of his neck was a whitish tuft which, though he took great pains to conceal it, continually obtruded through the darker hair like the cottontail on the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... "I must be going," said I, and walked off down the street. The act, under the circumstances, did not seem to me entirely natural, but it was the best I could do; these men, I hoped, would merely think me an oddity. ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... wonderful pantomime, his vivid, eager way of telling the story of the triumph of his shrewdness over the dealer's ignorance, would have made a subject for a Dutch painter; but it was all thrown away upon the audience. Mother and daughter exchanged cold, contemptuous glances.—"What an oddity!" they seemed to say. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the oddity impressed me; it was a new string to me. I have never seen one like it ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... preconception than that which we have attempted to give him, would doubtless be startled at the strangeness of the style which prevails more or less throughout them. They are not careless, headstrong, passionate, confused; but they bear a constant look of oddity which seems at first mere wilful wantonness, and which we only afterwards find to be the discriminating stamp of original and strong feeling. This— this feeling, rooted in profound susceptibility and matured into a central ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... them and send them off." I replied that I could do them as quickly myself. The old man smiled. "You do not send letters in shorthand. I can take a hundred and forty words a minute, and you can do your correspondence and go away." The oddity of the proposal attracted me. I agreed to dictate. The old man took out his notebook, and in ten minutes the work was done. We came back in an hour, and by that time each letter was transcribed in a beautiful, delicate longhand. I handed the scribe a shilling, and he was satisfied. The Gentleman, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... his face and his attitude, as he stared curiously at Carrigan, there was no sign of resentment or unfriendliness. Nor did he seem to be ashamed. He merely stared, with the curious and rather puzzled eyes of a small boy gazing at an inexplicable oddity. Carrigan, standing before him, knew what was passing in the other's mind, and the humor of it brought a smile ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... intercepted letter,* written by this commander to monsieur Raymond, French resident at Pullicat...... The billet is no bad sketch of the writer's character, which seems to have a strong tincture of oddity and extravagance. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Moronval Academy himself took his pupils—his children of the sun, as he called them—out for their daily walks; and the comings and goings of this singular party gave the finishing touch of oddity to the appearance of ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... was ragged and dirty, and in some cases was really of ancient style; some wore roughly made garments of the skin of the tigre. Each band had its leader, and each tried to outdo the others in the oddity of performance, vigor of dancing and coarseness of jest. Much fun and laughter were caused by their antics. Meantime, boys and young women were busied as waiters. Cups of steaming atole, delicious tortillas, hot tamales were distributed until ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... Masqueraders. Bull Baitings, Races of Gondoles, and other Amusements, too tedious to enumerate, also take place. But among the several Shows which attract the eyes of the Populace, I cannot forbear describing one which is remarkable for its oddity, and perhaps peculiar to the Venetians. A number of Men, by the help of Poles laid across each other's Shoulders, build themselves up almost as children do Cards—four or five Rows of 'em standing one ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... impatient of squinting and side-glances while all eyes should be turned together to the same. Thought is growing agreement, and that in which the race cannot meet me is some whim or notion, a personal crotchet, not a cosmic and eternal truth. Genius is freedom from all oddity, is Catholicity,—and departure from it so much departure in me from Nature and myself. We say a man is original, if he lives at first, and not at second hand,—if he requires a new tombstone,—if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... singing the Valse Bleu, and Cynthia was upstairs, longing for an excuse to venture forth into the night, and three people, at least, in the crowded lounge were thinking of anything but the amazing oddity that had puzzled Ducrot, who did not ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... of merriment induced by hearing that the American people ruled themselves. In like fashion, the average person grins or guffaws at sight of a stranger in an outlandish costume, although, as a matter of fact, the dress may be in every respect superior to his own. Simply, its oddity somehow tickles the risibilities. Such surprise is occasioned by contrasting circumstances. When a pompous gentleman, marching magnificently, suddenly steps on a banana peel, pirouettes, somersaults, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... looked up in the old lady's face, and something—the oddity of the whole situation, some indefinite sympathy which unconsciously sought for an outlet—made her smile. Jacinth's smile was charming. Already to her thin young face it gave the roundness and bloom it wanted—every ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Select Party" and "The Hall of Fantasy," together with "The Intelligence Office" and "A Virtuoso's Collection," also remnants of old-fashioned ingenuity. In such fantasy Hawthorne found a better channel for that play of his mind which had earlier sought expression in the grotesque; oddity of thought he had in plenty, and the sense of oddity was often as far as his humorous faculty reached, for it was perceptive ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... very night, and though she paid us frequent visits, she was Cousin Susan's for life. I fear indulgence dulled her moral sense. She was an immense happiness to her mistress, whose silent and lonely days she made glad with her oddity and mirth. And yet the small creature, old, toothless, and blind, domineered over her gentle friend—threatening her sometimes if she presumed to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own bed, into which it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I believe it is ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... down with floss silks. All sorts of forms are employed for these figures—stars, crescents, circles, trefoils, shields, palm-leaves, griffins, imps; and little wheels and comets in feather-stitch and cat-stitch are inserted between, to add to the oddity of the whole. These forms can be bought at a low price in almost any fancy shop. A good deal of ingenuity and taste can be shown in arranging and blending the figures richly and brilliantly, without making them too ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... in the act which could have moved a stranger to anything but a smile at the oddity of it, but it touched Paul almost to tears when the gray old man lugged out of his coat-tail pocket a whole newspaper, and having pinched from it a most economical fragment, singed his fingers at the bars in the act of lighting it. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... charwoman came every two or three days, effecting an extraordinary consumption of food and alcoholic liquids: yet it was not for this that Pierston dreaded her presence, but lest, in conversing with Avice, she should open the girl's eyes to the oddity of her situation. Avice could see for herself that there must have been two or three servants in the flat during his former residence there: but his reasons for doing without them seemed never ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... just as we were having tea. She was full of excitement at the return of the owners of Ledstone, and gave us a quantity of information about them in spite of grandmamma's aloofness from all gossip. It appears, even in the country in England, Mrs. Gurrage is considered quite an oddity, but every one knows and accepts her, because she is so charitable and gives hundreds to any scheme ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... wearing a hoop and farthingale, with high-heeled shoes, and a dirty cap of Brussels lace, so much too large for her that it gave her face a ridiculously diminutive expression. When I had first seen her, she was attired, most becomingly, in deep mourning. There was an air of oddity, in short, about the dress of the whole party, which, at first, caused me to recur to my original idea of the "soothing system," and to fancy that Monsieur Maillard had been willing to deceive me until after dinner, that I might experience no ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... fond of conviviality, of gaming and a stiff glass of grog, but never off his guard. He went by the name of "Tom Bowline." The seventh was as broad as he was long; the cockpitonians dubbed him "Toby Philpot." He was an oddity, and fond of coining new words. He knew the ship had three masts and a sheet anchor. He was a strict disciple of Hamilton Moore, fond of arguing about dip and refraction, particularly the former, as he put it in practice on himself, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... with other animals will favour this view. On the other hand, there is the important and really remarkable fact that familiar as man has been for ages with Ruminants of many kinds—such as sheep, goats, cattle, deer—there is absolutely no case on record of an "oddity" or "monstrosity" resembling the rat-goat's condition occurring in the teeth of any of the hundreds of thousands of these animals killed and eaten by man, and therefore closely examined. Professor Bateson, who a few years ago ransacked the museums of Europe for instances of "discontinuous ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... whirlwind that had caught up the contents of an old-clothes-shop. It is no wonder that he should have produced in our minds an indescribable mixture of awe and delight—awe, because no one could tell what he might do next, and delight because of his oddity, agility, and music. The first sensation was always a slight fear, which gradually wore off as we became anew accustomed to the strangeness of the apparition. Before the visit was over, wee Davie would be playing with the dangles of his pipes, and laying ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... necessity contemptible, that when she did anything which was unusual, its reason was never examined, nor did the possibility that it might be better done in that way occur to anybody. It was merely a new evidence of her oddity. ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... future poet, to use a familiar expression, wanted "an ear." Throughout life he, however, was highly susceptible of the delights of music, though his own execution was confined to a single song, with which he attempted to enliven the social board, but, it is stated, with such unmusical oddity as to content his hearers with a single specimen of his vocal talent. His early rambles around the "hills and holms of the border," is said to have kindled in Scott the love of painting landscapes, not strictly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... woman led the way; and the four maidens (one of them had sea-green hair, another a bodice of oak bark, a third sprinkled a shower of water drops from her fingers' ends, and the fourth had some other oddity, which I have forgotten), all these followed behind, and hurried the guests along, until they entered a magnificent saloon. It was built in a perfect oval, and lighted from a crystal dome above. Around the walls were ranged ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long wanted to build a mansion equal to their wealth, but the Councillor would never leave the house he built at their marriage. Madame will now build, and her children take their places among the great ones of the city. De Vrees was an oddity; very few people will be sorry to lose him. He had no good quality but money, and he was the most unhappy of men about its future disposal. I never understood until I knew him, how wretched a thing it is to ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... dark-red stratum of port wine upon the surface and a sprinkling of nutmeg strewn over all. As we touched our glasses together, my legendary friend made himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tiffany, and I rejoiced at the oddity of the name, because it gave his image and character a sort of individuality in my conception. The old gentleman's draught acted as a solvent upon his memory, so that it overflowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes of famous dead ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... extraordinary influence—whether it were the oddity of William Harewood's face, or the novelty of his perfect insouciance in the household whither care had come only too early—some infection seized on the young Underwoods, and before the end of the evening ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the oddity's sake from the "Autobiography of a Cornish Rector," by the late James ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... Welsh, Scotch, and Irish of "Henry V.," and Malvolio especially later; though Shakespeare never employed the method of humours for an important personage. It was not Jonson's fault that many of his successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated, that is, degrade "the humour" into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later, "The Humourous Lieutenant," ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... reminds the student of Renaissance art. Conversely, the scholastic plays on words which they contain do not stamp them out as medieval. Both of these qualities are rococo and superficial rather than essential and distinctive in their style. After making due allowances for either element of oddity, a true connoisseur will gratefully appreciate the spontaneous note of enjoyment, the disengagement from ties and duties imposed by temporal respectability, the frank animalism, which connects these vivid hymns to Bacchus and Venus with past Aristophanes ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... here nor there. The oddity of our adventure was in discovering such an establishment in such a place. Since that time we have often had similar surprises, especially in New England, where curious industries have established themselves in the most out-of-the-way nooks. In a hamlet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... said, "is oddity. For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics,—business, if you will,—the rest can come later. However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... leaning back in the open tonneau, crossed one delicately slender shank over another, gazed in a kind of ecstasy at the countryside, and talked gaily about his days as a young curate. Gissing sat holding his hat on. He saw only too well that, by the humiliating oddity of chance, they were going to take the road that led exactly past his own house. He could only hope that Mrs. Spaniel and the various children would not be visible, for explanations would be too complicated. Desperately he praised the view to be obtained on another ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... of names which does gladden us, partly from their oddity, and partly from a feeling at first sight that they are names really suggestive of something which has happened,—and this is apt to turn out the fact. Thus, Painted-Post, in New York, and Baton-Rouge, in Louisiana, are honest, though quaint appellatives; Standing-Stone is another; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... "Tigers, have you ceased to be Frenchmen? From being brave fellows have you turned assassins?" The Princess Elizabeth, fearing lest he should fall out of the carriage, grasped the skirt of his coat; and the queen told Madame Campan afterwards that she could not but be struck with the oddity of seeing the Princess Elizabeth taking care of the safety of a man whom they had all abhorred as a rebel and a traitor. So vehemently had the whole Court thus detested him, that Madame Campan could scarcely believe her senses when she heard the queen speak with ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... the curiosity or oddity in question. A young fellow, whom we will call for avoidance of all identification Delamere Smith— he is now Lieutenant Delamere Smith—was spending his holidays on the coast of west South Wales at ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... fashion of singing at home marriages would be considered an oddity—and, where civil marriages are legal, a superfluity—but in the religious ceremony, just after the prayer that follows the completion of the nuptial formula, it will occur to some that a hymn would "tide ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... read these stanzas so as to make the rhymes perceptible, even tri-syllable rhymes could scarcely produce an equal sense of oddity and strangeness, as we feel here in finding rhymes at all in sentences so exclusively colloquial. I would further ask whether, but for that visionary state, into which the figure of the woman and the susceptibility of his own genius had placed the poet's imagination ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... quitted their seats to get near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, "Pray, Sir, do you know any good weather in the world?" After staring a little at the singularity of Swift's manner and the oddity of the question, the gentleman answered, "Yes, Sir, I thank God I remember a great deal of good weather in my time."—"That is more," replied Swift, "than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too wet ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... in pondering on this national oddity, and are free to admit that the conclusions arrived at are not so satisfactory as could be wished. Nevertheless, in default of any better explanation of the phenomenon, what we have to say may possibly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... was every inch a sailor, and sometimes did some very strange things, which would annoy his superiors; but the very oddity of his actions gained the hearts and confidence of those who served under him, and he could rely on every one acting as one machine ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... more easily managed, and sooner displayed, than a great quantity crowded together. There is very seldom anything extraordinary in the appearance and address of a good writer; whereas a dull author generally distinguishes himself by some oddity or extravagance. For this reason I fancy that an assembly of grubs must be ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... book still in his hand, he sat down before the fire and began to tell her the story of Old Crow. Nan had known it, in its outer eccentricities; but had Old Crow been unhappy? That was new to her. She had heard of him as queer, the country oddity who, being frenzied over God or love, had madly incarcerated himself in the loneliness of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Juan indeed has great power; but its power is owing to the force of the serious writing, and to the oddity of the contrast between that and the flashy passages with which it is interlarded. From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. You laugh and are surprised that any one should turn round and travestie himself: the drollery is in the utter discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... his queer sedulous life, month after month, year after year, known among the studios as a quaint oddity, drawn out indulgently by the men, somewhat petted, monkey-fashion, by the women, forgotten by both when out of their presence, but developing imperceptibly day by day along the self-centring line. A kindly adviser suggested a gymnasium to ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... one of the figures, which I recognized as that of William II, and I, a little tardily, saluted with them. And now we turned sharply on our heels and saluted the second figure of these twin German heroes. For German it was unmistakably in every feature, save for the one oddity that the Teutonic face wore a flowing beard not unlike that of Michael Angelo's Moses. As we moved forward my eye swept in the lettering on the pedestal, "Unser Alte Deutche Gott," and I was aware that I had acknowledged my allegience ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... functions in one resemble those in all, though on the Continent some shrines still retain relics and customs of the period when local saints had their peculiar rites. But it was a very different thing in Greece. The pilgrim who arrived at a temple never could guess what oddity or horror in the way of statues, sacrifices, or stories might be prepared for his edification. In the first place, there were HUMAN SACRIFICES. These are not familiar to low savages, if known to them at all. Probably they were first offered to barbaric royal ghosts, and thence transferred to ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the deep significance underlying the myths we present—the poetry and imperishable beauty of the Greek, the strange and powerful conceptions of the Scandinavian mind, the oddity and fantasy of the Japanese, Slavs, and East Indians, and finally the queer imaginings of our own American Indians. Who, for instance, could ever forget poor Proserpina and the six pomegranate seeds, the death of beautiful Baldur, the luminous Princess Labam, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... nervously and looking at his daughter as though for an explanation of this oddity. 'This is peculiar. It has an ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... 'His oddity? That's the very thing which makes him my own, and nobody else's, Mr. Pendy! Listen, Honor. Sit down, you don't half know him, nor did I know my own heart till now. He came to us, you know, when my father's health began to break after my mother's ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul, associated with destiny; the stream, the plain, the forest, the hill, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... struck by the oddity of a girl in this wilderness buying six trunks full of clothes; but it then occurred to me that Efaw Kotee would encourage extravagant buying of all things, when the Orchid visited a city, in order that he might get bona fide change for his spurious bills. At ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... was very sentimental about her own loneliness and lack of opportunity, in contrast with Aurelia, who was seeing the world. That elegant beau, Sir Amyas, had just given a sample to tantalise their rusticity, and then had vanished; and here was that oddity, Mr. Arden, more wearisome and pertinacious ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the developments and merits of those scenes themselves. My mind was in any case running more on my lost friend than on the piece; but it was not till near the end of the first act that the growing oddity of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... he, reddening, looked round himself, and round himself, to see if anything was amiss in his garb. The man, the man! honest friend, I could have said, (but had too much reverence for my husband,) is the oddity! Nothing amiss in the garb. I quickly recollected myself, however, and put him in a good humour, by proper marks of my gracious acceptance. On reflection, I could not bear myself for vexing the honest man when he ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... painful to read,—the stiffness as of one walking in new boots,—the result of dressing the words of one language in the grammatical construction of another. Mr. Curtis gives us the sentiment and wit and fancy and humor and oddity of the German's stories, but in an English way. Indeed, his is manly and graceful English, such as we hope we are not now by any means ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... facility, and readily conforming himself to our habits, and the discipline of the ship. He was very cleanly in his personal habits, and paid much attention to his dress, which was always kept neat and tidy. I was often much amused and surprised by the oddity and justness of his remarks upon the many strange sights which a voyage of this kind brought before him. The Nemesis steamer under weigh puzzled him at first—he then thought it was "all same big cart, only got him shingles** on wheels!" He always expressed ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... the need of an oddity, a novel note which should make itself heard among the clamors for Belgian relief, for Polish relief, for Armenian succor, for German, French, Italian, Russian ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to as Jimmy Ollerenshaw, and he may strike you as what is known as a "character," an oddity. His sudden appearance at a Royal Levee would assuredly have excited remark, and even in Bursley he diverged from the ordinary; nevertheless, I must expressly warn you against imagining Mr. Ollerenshaw as an oddity. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... friends to witness and enjoy the discomfiture of his "oddity," but the bright retort turned the tables against him, and established the opinion with them that Ralph instead of being half-witted was at any rate on that occasion very ready-witted. They said they would not have lost the sight of seeing ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... to be left of the raging, shouting creature of my first visit, who was Napoleon at one moment, and Shakespeare at another. Mr. Dexter of the morning was a mild, thoughtful, melancholy man, who only recalled Mr. Dexter of the night by the inveterate oddity of his dress. His jacket, on this occasion, was of pink quilted silk. The coverlet which hid his deformity matched the jacket in pale sea-green satin; and, to complete these strange vagaries of costume, his wrists were actually adorned with massive bracelets ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... Bell telling? It is old, very old, as we have already observed; it was there long before grandmother's grandmother was born; and yet it is but a child in comparison with the Au-mann, who is quite an old quiet personage, an oddity, with his hose of eel-skin, and his scaly Jacket with the yellow lilies for buttons, and a wreath of reed in his hair and seaweed in his beard; but he looks very ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... balls, to be sure, but not to dance. We left that to the younger generation, for the reason that my wife did not care to jeopardize her attire or her complexion. She was also conscious of the fact that the variety of waltz popular thirty years ago was an oddity, and that a middle-aged woman who went hopping and twirling about a ballroom must be callous to the amusement that followed ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... found him at Catskill. He's an English-man, and they say had more to his name once. It was Wharnecliffe, or Wharneleigh, or something, and there's a baronetcy in the family. I don't doubt, myself, that it's his, and that a part of his oddity has been to drop it. He was a poor preacher, years ago; and then, of a sudden, he went out to England, and came back with plenty of money, and since then he's been an apostle and missionary among the poor. That's his winter work; the summers, as ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... were disguised as bears, others like unicorns, bringing presents. Those who could not procure masks rubbed their faces with soot, or painted them. In the Christmas mummings the chief aim was to surprise by the oddity of the masks, and singularity and splendour of the dresses. Everything was out of nature and propriety. They were often attended with an exhibition of gorgeous machinery.[69] It was an old custom also to have mummeries on Twelfth night. They were the common holiday amusements of young ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... "It's an oddity," replied the old detective. "But it isn't a certainty that these are the initials of the person who ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... Mariages de Province.' 'L'Homme a l'Oreille Cassee' (The Man with the Broken Ear)—the story of a mummy resuscitated to a world of new conditions after many years of apparent death—shows his freakish delight in oddity. So does 'Le Nez du Notaire' (The Notary's Nose), a gruesome tale of the tribulations of a handsome society man, whose nose is struck off in a duel by a revengeful Turk. The victim buys a bit of living skin ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... most observers as a very tempting one in any respect, though it carried with it some exceptional and rather eccentric guarantees for that position at court and in society on which Germaine was set. The King of Sweden, Gustavus, whose family oddity had taken, among less excusable forms, that of a platonic devotion to Marie Antoinette, gave a sort of perpetual brevet of his ministry at Paris to the Baron de Stael-Holstein, a nobleman of little fortune and fair family. This served, using clerical language, as his ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... Austrian, is she?" Thus the stranger; who then, after a slow glare up and down the Court, in search of further widows perhaps, turned to go, saying merely:—"I'll wish you a good-morning, guv'nor. Good-morning!" Uncle Mo watched him as he lurched up the Court, noting the oddity of his walk. This man, you see, had been chained to another like himself, and his bias went to one side like a horse that has gone in harness. This gait is known in the class he belonged to as the "darby-roll," from the name by which fetters are ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... calling on a cousin afflicted, and bored for his pains; and though he denied on the spot the "bored" he could so far see it as an impression he might make that he wondered if the same image wouldn't have occurred to Milly. As soon as Kate appeared again the difference came up—the oddity, as he then instantly felt it, of his having sunk so deep. It was sinking because it was all doing what Kate had conceived for him; it wasn't in the least doing—and that had been his notion of his life—anything he himself had conceived. The difference, accordingly, renewed, sharp, sore, was ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... pleasingly hoarse voice of a prairie warbler, or a black-throated green. It is soft and very pretty; not so perfect a piece of art as the vesper sparrow's tune,—few bird-songs are,—but taking for its very oddity, and at the same time tender and sweet. More than one writer has described it as resembling the song of the white-throat. Even Minot, who in general was the most painstaking and accurate of observers, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... the ridge on the left, a few hundred yards away, is broken and humped with barrows; far away to the east lies Charterhouse, grey in the haze by Godalming; behind, to the south-east, the Devil's Jumps, three little squat, conical hills whose very oddity is one of their attractions. They edge the horizon like inverted pudding bowls covered with bracken, and with bell-heather kindling to crimson in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... a jerk. Then he rose, and went toward the door, catching sight of his face in a mirror as he passed. It was very pale, and he crinkled his nose at it derisively, and then smiled at the whimsical oddity of his reflected expression. On the threshold he paused, looking toward the west, blazing with the red and saffron ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... before us very readily as a boy, for I had a mind of vigorous appetite, but since I have grown mentally to man's estate and developed a more and more comprehensive view of our national process and our national needs, I am more and more struck by the oddity of the educational methods pursued, their aimless disconnectedness from the constructive forces in the community. I suppose if we are to view the public school as anything more than an institution that has just chanced to happen, we must treat it as having a definite ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... implored the protection of the judges. I do not, said he, understand Sisenna; I am circumvented; I fear that some snare is laid for me. What does he mean by sputatilica? I know that sputa is spittle: but what is tilica? The court laughed at the oddity of a word so strangely compounded. Rufio accusante Chritilium, Sisenna defendens dixit quaedam ejus SPUTATILICA esse crimina. Tum Caius Rufius, Circumvenior, inquit, judices, nisi subvenitis. Sisenna quid dicat nescio; metuo insidias. SPUTATILICA! ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... hands tenderly, and pressed them to his heart. For a few moments he seemed to forget my presence. For this I was glad, for it gave me a little time to recover from my astonishment, and to consider rapidly what it might mean. As I look back now, and think of the oddity of the situation, I rather wonder at my own self-possession. It was a sufficiently trying position. At first I thought it was a hoax, an intentional piece of practical fun, of which I was to be the object. But even in the moment allowed me to think, I decided that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... dark, pretty eyes - and the most considerate manner. She took me up into an upper hall, where there were a couple of curious chimney-pieces and a fine old oaken roof, the latter representing the hollow of a long boat. There is a certain oddity in a native of Bourges - an inland town if there ever was one, without even a river (to call a river) to encourage nautical ambitions - hav- ing found his end as admiral of a fleet; but this boat- ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... change or omission of a punctuation mark, which may involve claims to thousands of dollars. Even the separation of one word into two may reverse the meaning of the sentence, yet not betray itself by any oddity of phrase, as when the atheist who had asserted that "God is nowhere" found himself in print standing sponsor for the statement that "God is now here." The same trick of the types was played on an American political ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... children, in the oddest attitudes of children—of Dr Levitt, resting his book on the end of his nose, as he read in his study-chair—of Mrs Plumstead, exasperated by the arrival of an illegible letter—of almost every oddity in the place. Then out came the pencils, and the girls supplied omissions. They sketched Mr Hope himself; listening to an old woman's theory of her own case; they sketched each other. Mr Enderby was almost the only ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... their young life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence, and what might have been a grand tree, expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical, misshapen trunk. Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow which has crushed and maimed the nature just when it was expanding into plenteous beauty; and the trivial, erring life, which we visit with our harsh blame, may be but as the unsteady motion of a man whose best ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... colour of this Irish society of which Bernard Shaw, with all his individual oddity, is yet an essential type? One generalisation, I think, may at least be made. Ireland has in it a quality which caused it (in the most ascetic age of Christianity) to be called the "Land of Saints"; and which still might give it a claim to be called the Land of Virgins. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... by the name of Little Benjamin, was a fellow of great oddity and humour, which had frequently let him into small inconveniencies, such as slaps in the face, kicks in the breech, broken bones, &c. For every one doth not understand a jest; and those who do are often displeased ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... fine doorway beneath the organ. The most imposing monuments are those of Caterina Cornaro (or Corner) the deposed queen of Cyprus, in the south transept; of three Cardinals of the Corner family; and of the Doges Lorenzo and Girolamo Priuli, each with his patron saint above him. The oddity of its architecture, together with its situation at a point where a little silence is peculiarly grateful, makes this church a favourite of mine, but there are many buildings in Venice ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... The oddity of the question from such a being and the queer Normandy accent amused the girl, and she burst out laughing. She did not answer the question, but going over to a man seated at another table whispered to him. Then they both looked at the queer ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... down on Saturday, Len and I,' whispered Mina at her elbow; 'but now you will stay, and that will do as well. How are you supporting life down there just now? and how is that sweet little oddity, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... under his left eye, and pulled down the corners of his mouth. To a man acquainted with the language of signs, this meant that the Englishman understood Italian, and was an oddity into the bargain. The young man smiled slightly and touched his forehead, in answer to Mattei's sign, as though to indicate that every Englishman had a bee in his bonnet. Then he sat down beside them, and began to look very attentively, though ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... isn't true. Anyhow: I want every one of those cars checked for any oddity, no matter how small. If there's an inch-long scratch on one fender, I want to know about it. If you've got to take the cars ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... stiff and sore, where the stick hurled by Lindela had struck him. That was a bad preparation for the most perilous kind of cliff-climbing. Then the incident recalled to mind Lindela herself. Her sudden change of front was just such an oddity as any of the half-ironical incidents which go to make up the sum of life's experiences. Well, savage or civilized, human nature was singularly alike. A touch of superstition and the god of yesterday ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... are—change it. If the attention of your audience is called to your gestures, they are not convincing, because they appear to be—what they have a doubtful right to be in reality—studied. Have you ever seen a speaker use such grotesque gesticulations that you were fascinated by their frenzy of oddity, but could not follow his thought? Do not smother ideas with gymnastics. Savonarola would rush down from the high pulpit among the congregation in the duomo at Florence and carry the fire of conviction to his hearers; Billy ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... then that Mr. Rudolph Rayne was the sort of "oddity" I later found him to be, I should have refused to accept the situation even had he offered me two ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... and his contemplative mind at the same time. The second battalion, as the first, were fine fellows all, suggesting the might of the Allies and the futility of the enemy's protracted resistance. Again the comic relief was provided by the travelling cuisine, reminding Jones of the oddity of human affairs and the need of his own meal, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... heels and knees together, shoulders squared, head and eyes straight to the front, the left hand, fingers extended, after the precise teachings of the ante-bellum days, the right hand raised and held at the salute. Strange figure indeed, yet soldierly to the last degree, despite the oddity of the entire make-up. The fur-trimmed cap of embroidered buckskin sat jauntily on black and glossy curls that hung about the brawny neck and shoulders. The buckskin coat, heavily fringed as to the short cape ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... undertaken. Indeed, none could have singled out Honora from Mrs. Seward’s own daughters by the light of anything in Mrs. Seward’s treatment or conduct. Honora was very beautiful and accomplished, and had attracted many admirers, as well as lovers. Anna Seward relates a whimsical story of an “oddity,” an “awkward pedantic youth, once resident for a little time at Lichfield, who, when asked how he liked Honora, replied, ‘I could not have conceived that she had half the face she has,’ adding that Honora was finely ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... is an oddity indeed," exclaimed Tallyho, "and I think he ought to be exhibited as the eighth wonder ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... before my kind hosts had finished their narrations, and I was not sorry, after all the exercise I had taken, to return to my cell, where everything invited to repose. I was charmed with the neatness and oddity of my little apartment; its cabin-like bed, oratory, and ebony crucifix; in short, everything it contained; not forgetting the aromatic odour of the pine, with which it was roofed, floored, and wainscoted. The night was luckily dark. Had the moon appeared, I could not have prevailed upon myself ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... him all I knew about it. If he did not seem exactly interested, he certainly behaved with some oddity. When I told him what my grandmother had said about some battle in which an ancestor had worn it, his arm rose with a jerk, and the motions of his face, especially of his mouth, which appeared to be eating its own teeth, were for a ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Calhoun had smashed a chair. It was an oddity because it was make of wood. Calhoun had owned it because it was odd. Now he smashed it to splinters and piled them up and flung blaster-bolt after blaster-bolt into the heap. The air inside the Med Ship grew pungent; stinging; strangling. Murgatroyd sneezed. Calhoun coughed. ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... opinion,' he says, 'the ideal of a sound English policy is the dismemberment of the British Empire, and above all the abandonment of India. To save England, it is necessary first to destroy her.' To the shrewd and experienced Austrian diplomatist, these ideas seem to be absolutely ruinous, but the oddity of it is that thousands of persons in England cling to them with a sort of idolatry, as if within them was compressed the sum and substance of human wisdom. The Radical party to-day lives upon these theories of dismemberment, although it is careful to keep its ultimate aim as much as possible ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... the first year or so. The records we did manage to get on that period, however, were very much confused, and there was never any way of telling anything at all, for certain. It's easy to see what caused the confusion, of course: telepathy in an imbecile is rather an oddity—and any normal adult would probably be rather hesitant about admitting that he was capable of it. That's why we have not found another subject; we must merely sit back and ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... and how afraid she was! After Paul and Maggie returned from that summer holiday she saw that Paul too felt Maggie's strangeness. To Grace, from the beginning of that autumn, every movement and gesture of Maggie's was strange. The oddity of her appearance, her ignorance of everything that seemed to Grace to be life, her strange, half-mocking, half-wondering attitude to the Church and its affairs ("like a heathen in Central Africa"), her dislike of the Maxses and the Pynsents and her liking for the Toms and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... me, just as if she loved me with such a passionate love that it would make up for everything I have ever missed in my life. Now, Verena is affectionate and sweet, and open as the day. As to Pen, she is an oddity—no more and no less. I wish I could think her quite straightforward and honorable; but it must be my mission to train her in those important attributes. Pauline is the one ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... alone is the real thing. All the quaintness of childhood, its originality, its tenderness and its teasing,—its infinite, unconscious drollery, the serious earnestness of its fun, the fun of its seriousness, the natural religion of its plays, and the delicious oddity of its prayers,—all these waited for dear Little Prudy to embody them. Sam Weller is not more piquant; Hans Anderson's nutcrackers and knitting-needles are not more thoroughly charged with life. There are six little green volumes in the series, and of course other ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... to write, there were two streams flowing in his brain, and these were, like everything else about him, inconsistent with one another. The faithful tender colour of modern life competed with the preposterous oddity of burlesque erudition. When he started the annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and there is plenty of evidence that it vastly dazzled and entertained readers of that day. But it no longer ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... a beloved mistress deceased. The casement being thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the incident and the oddity of the visitor's demeanor, demands of it, in jest and without looking for a reply, its name. The raven addressed answers with its customary word, 'Nevermore'—a word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... quote SYDNEY SMITH as your authority for observing, that the only possible sport for M.F.H.'s at this time of the year must be "hunt—the slipper!" If the point of this "good thing" is not immediately obvious, the fault will be with SIDNEY SMITH, and not with you. And this quaint oddity should satiate your audience with mirth and merriment until next ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... a lad about seventeen, who at that time had laboured under this extraordinary disease for more than twelve years. His body was so distorted, and the legs and arms so twisted round it, by the continued convulsive working, that no words can give an adequate idea of the oddity of his figure; the agitation of the muscles was perpetual; but in general he did not complain of pain nor sickness; and had his senses perfectly, insomuch that he used to assist his mother, who kept a little school, in teaching children ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... the room from cupboard to cupboard, from shelf to shelf, in search of some new oddity. His eyes fell at last on an old chest, pleasantly and quaintly carved, which stood in a dark corner ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... be ever memorable, as the year of the Black War—that campaign, which formed the first military lesson given to the colonists. In the ferment of the public mind, innumerable plans were propounded for their capture: some merit remembrance from their oddity, and some for their kindness. It was suggested, that those natives in custody should be driven forward, secured by a tether, and thus compelled to guide the pursuit. It was also proposed, that depots of flour, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... a certain amount of his oddity is owing to the fact that he's never been to school or mixed with other boys. I'm told he's a good scholar, but he's a shocking speller! Where's the good of knowing Latin and Greek if you can't spell such a simple word as chocolate—he spells it 'chockolit.' Still, I'm bound to ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... tower and roof. Moreover, apart from his wife's dislike of Apollonius which he had continued to combat in vain, it would be a useless torture to his brother to refresh in his mind all that he must be glad to have forgotten. He would easily find an excuse for refusing to obey a command which only oddity had suggested. The conclusion of the letter contained a teasing insinuation of a relation between our hero and his cousin's youngest daughter, of which his home town was talking. His brother sent his regards to her as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... mastered the story of the goose as a torche-cul, and perhaps two or three chapters more; but as for reading through or enjoying it, "that was not in their minds." All complained, or at least showed, that they "did not understand it." It was to them an aggravating farrago of filth and oddity, under which they suspected some formal allegory or meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable. Learn this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a dolt or ignoramus. Even the Old Testament, with all its stores ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... and colored a little the next moment, recognizing the oddity of her speech, and her little laugh was very sweet ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... chapter-house at Padua has a "Catullus" of 1472 on vellum; let Mr. Robinson Ellis think wistfully of that treasure. The notable Count M'Carthy of Toulouse had a wonderful library of books in membranis, including a book much coveted for its rarity, oddity, and the beauty of its illustrations, the "Hypnerotomachia" of Poliphilus (Venice, 1499). Vellum was the favourite "vanity" of Junot, Napoleon's general. For reasons connected with its manufacture, and best not inquired into, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... unwanted by such a man as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her. Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position, her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified? No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally. He felt savage, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... some amusement at dancing and other festivals, and also at public meetings. If a chief of importance went to any of these assemblies he had in his train one or two humourists, who, by oddity in dress, gait, or gesture, or by lascivious jokes, ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... more. So he signified this in his cradle and gave him what he called a lucky name, to begin with. The wife of the elder Mr. Argenter had been a Muchmore; her only brother had been named Increase, either out of oddity, such as influenced a certain Mr. Crabtree whom I have heard of, to call his son Agreen, or because the old Puritan name had been in the family, or with a like original inspiration of luck and thrift to that which influenced the later ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... easy to discover at first; for Scoutbush felt so strongly the oddity of taking a pretty young woman into his counsel on a question of sanitary reform, that he felt mightily inclined to laugh, and began beating about the bush, in a ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of children, its originality, its tenderness and its teasing, is infinite uncommon drollery, the serious earnestness of its fun, the fun of its seriousness, the naturalness of its plays, and the delicious oddity of its progress, all these united for dear Little Prudy to ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... alone is the real thing, all the quaintness of childhood, its originality, its tenderness and its teasing, its infinite unconscious drollery, the serious earnestness of its fun, the fun of its seriousness, the natural religion of its plays and the delicious oddity of its prayers—all these waited for dear Little Prudy to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... which we have now a difficulty in realizing, although in the seventeenth century the Church of England also had some great artists in her pulpits. If Jeremy Taylor had been a Frenchman, the work of La Bruyere might have been different. But the French orators lacked the splendour and oddity of the author of "The Great Exemplar," and we can feel that La Bruyere, who was instinct with the need for colour, was dissatisfied with the broad outlines and masses of character for which the French ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... grammar, without any reference to the fact that he had already taken his part in the horrible competition and actuality of the age of manufactures. It was like giving a sacked bank manager a satchel and sending him to a dame's school. Nor was the third stage of this career unconnected with the oddity of the others. On leaving the school he was made a clerk in a lawyer's office, as if henceforward this child of ridiculous changes was to settle down into a silent assistant for a quiet solicitor. It was exactly at this moment that his fundamental ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... she as evidently required and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence. Her sister's attitude would have told you so even if her own appearance had not. There was that in her manner to the young man—a perceptible but indefinable shade—which seemed to legitimate the oddity of his having asked in particular for her, asked as if he wished to see her to the exclusion of her father and sister: the note of a special pleasure which might have implied a special relation. And yet a spectator looking from Mr. George Flack to Miss Francie Dosson would have been much ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... however; for on his way thither his attention was arrested by a very small shop which he had not noticed before, and which, in the new-looking city of Havre, appeared to be fully a century old. Entering, he was struck with the oddity of its interior. The place was small, not larger than the smallest room at Lakewood, and though its front window displayed only watches, and a notice in French and English that Monsieur Bajeau repaired jewelry at ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... One oddity about the book is that throughout it conversations are merged into single paragraphs. This made it a little hard to get the paragraphing correct in our rendition, but we think we have got ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... can any drawing exceed in beauty the line that leads from the flank along the ribs and arm of Mars up to his lifted elbow. The whole design, like one of Piero di Cosimo's pictures in another key, leaves a strong impression on the mind, due partly to the oddity of treatment, partly to the careful work displayed, and partly to the individuality of the artist. It gives us keen pleasure to feel exactly how a painter like Botticelli applied the dry naturalism of the early Florentine Renaissance, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... social forms, our politics, and schools, and religion. I say our, for it cannot have escaped you that a lecture upon these topics written for England may be read to America. Evermore thanks for the brave stand you have made for Spiritualism in these writings. But has literature any parallel to the oddity of the vehicle chosen to convey this treasure? I delight in the contents; the form, which my defective apprehension for a joke makes me not appreciate, I leave to your merry discretion. And yet did ever wise and philanthropic author ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and the introduction to his sister brought a new interest. Perhaps the very novelty was what first attracted him, the oddity of feeling that he was on terms of friendship, for it amounted to that with surprising quickness, with a famous woman, whose face smiled out at him from his morning paper or, huge and shockingly colored, from the sheets on ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the best-hearted and most unsuspicious of the class of female idolaters, and worshiped her brother with the most undoubting faith and devotion—wholly ignorant of the constant amusement she gave him by a thousand little feminine peculiarities, which struck him with a continual sense of oddity. It was infinitely diverting to him to see the solemnity of her interest in his shirts and stockings, and Sunday clothes, and to listen to the subtle distinctions which she would draw between best and second-best, and every-day; to receive her somewhat prolix admonition ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
