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More "Quaint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resented the doubt with quick jealousy, and, opening the bottom drawer of the chest, drew forth a battered portfolio. Out rolled manuscripts, faded and worn, and arose a faint far scent of sweet-kept age. The writing was delicate and curled, with the quaint fineness of half a century before. She read a ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... to us by men whose accuracy and truthfulness cannot be doubted. The Honorable Robert Boyle, a scientist of unquestioned seriousness, tells in his New Experiments, Physico-Mechanical touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects about Drebel's work in the quaint language ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... crews of the other ships, secreted themselves on board the Caesar, and the day after the action presented themselves on the quarter-deck, with a request that intercession might be made for them with their captain, telling their story in the following quaint manner:—"Sir, we belongs to the Le Pompee, and finding our ship could not get out, we stowed ourselves away in this ship, and, in the action, quartered ourselves to the "10th gun, and opposite —— on the lower deck," referring, at the same time, to the officer in command ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... and they amused themselves by making up stories about their fellow passengers. There was the quaint little man in number four who reminded them of Professor Arnold Dempsey and who might very easily have been a professor, judging from the number of ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... exquisite crayon portrait of Jim at three, and Derry a delicious eighteen-months- old. There was the white bowl that had always been filled with violets, empty now. And there were the low bookcases where a few special favorites were kept, and the quaint old mahogany sewing- table that had been old Mrs. Gregory's ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... pointed arches on each side, beneath which were as many chapels. The walls were rich with pictures, not only in the chapels, but up and down the nave, above the arches. There were gilded virgins, too, and much other quaint device that produced an effect that I rather liked than otherwise. At the end of the church, farthest from the high altar, there were four columns of exceedingly rich marble, and a good deal more of such precious material was wrought into the chapels and altars. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of setting out for the English Prospect on Saturday evening when there was a knock on my door, and to my surprise Nicholas Markovitch came in. He was in evening dress—rather quaint it seemed to me, with his pointed collar so high, his tail-coat so much too small, and his large-brimmed bowler hat. He explained to me confusedly that he wished to walk with me alone to the church... that he had things ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... little Quakeress, She is so quaint; I like her dress, Her very, very plain white bonnet, Her stuff gown with no trimming ...
— Little People: An Alphabet • T. W. H. Crosland
... London, according to our quaint Lutheran, "a pious, true, and godly spirit, a clear understanding, a sound youthful elbow-grease, and the wish to put it to good use." During the two years of his residence in the British metropolis, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... many charges and countercharges. She had that almost impossible gift in a woman—the power of telling a tale whimsically. It was said that once, when Orvay Lafarge, a new Inspector of Customs, came to spy out the land, she kept him so amused by her quaint wit, that he sat in the doorway gossiping with her, while Tarboe and two others unloaded and safely hid away a cargo of liquors from the Ninety-Nine. And one of the men, as cheerful as Joan herself, undertook ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... nobler Future, broken, snatched away from her allotted place in the long chain of the ages! Heiress of infinite hope, and dowered with latent fitness to fulfil her part, now so suddenly fallen by the wayside! That quaint dialect silent so soon! and for ever vanished from this earth that keen, eager perception, that fathomless love and devotion! But such ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... a capital joke, Piers disbursed the coin. Quaint, comical fellow, this brother of his I He liked him, and was ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... So did the quaint fellow announce his engagement to us. It was quite a romantic little history, for it turned out that he had loved the girl for full two years, but for a long time had not been able even to make her acquaintance, and when that was accomplished, had hardly dared to speak of ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... way. Outside, in the slippery streets, over which the red-capped children passed with shouts of glee, I had seen something of the preparations; the men, steel-like and stolid, marching by, the officers, stiff and martial-looking, saluting right and left under the quaint arcades of this charming city. Colored photographs of corps commanders adorned the windows and seemed to find a ready sale. These things pointed in the same direction. Switzerland, posted on her crests, was watching the issue of the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... conveying that peculiar Simla-by-South-Kensington atmosphere of retired Anglo-Indian society which she suggests with such intimate understanding. But, to be honest, the others (with the exception of one quaint little comedy of a canine ghost) are but indifferent stuff, too full of snakes and hidden treasure and general tawdriness—the kind of Orientalism, in fact, that one used to associate chiefly with the Earl's Court Exhibition. Mrs. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... unsurpassable, no less perfect, than the "Ode to the Nightingale" of Keats, or the Lycidas of Milton. It were superfluous to linger over the humour of Thackeray. Only Shakespeare and Dickens have graced the language with so many happy memories of queer, pleasant people, with so many quaint phrases, each of which has a kind of freemasonry, and when uttered, or recalled, makes all friends of Thackeray into family friends of each other. The sayings of Mr. Harry Foker, of Captain Costigan, of ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... Gilbert, with their half-brother, Walter Raleigh, here, when little boys, played at sailors in the reaches of Long Stream; in the summer evenings doubtless rowing down with the tide to the port, and wondering at the quaint figure-heads and carved prows of the ships which thronged it; or climbing on board, and listening, with hearts beating, to the mariners' tales of the new earth beyond the sunset; and here in later life, matured men, whose ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... of her hiding place, and, going with two or three quick strides down the yard, waited within a foot or two of the man, who now proceeded to lift himself up by the window ledge preparatory to opening the barn window. With the aid of a claspknife he could very easily push back the quaint and imperfect fastening; then it was but to push in the glass, and he could enter the barn. He sat on the window ledge with his back to Nora. His huge, gaunt form looked larger than ever, intensified now by the light of the moon. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... until he saw that the little creature who waddled at the rear of the party was a Japanese in European clothes. Notwithstanding her western garb, she resembled a print of Utamaro. Beside her walked a tall, grave girl, with dark hair and gray eyes, attired in the quaint garb of some early nineteenth-century epoch—1840 or thereabouts. As old-fashioned as she looked, a delicate girlish beauty was hers, and when she indifferently gazed at Davos, straightway he heard humming in his head the "glance motive" from Tristan and Isolde. They passed on, but not leaving ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... my day and week was devoted to the study of this quaint people, and the following are the results. Those who have dealings with the Fan universally prefer them in point of honesty and manliness to the Mpongwe and Coast races; they have not had time to become thoroughly corrupt, to lose all the lesser without gaining anything of the greater virtues. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... upon to be. You can shine, and by shining show how dark the darkness is. The obligation is laid upon us all; the commandment still comes to every Christian which was given to the old prophet, 'Declare unto My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sin.' A quaint old writer says that the presence of a saint 'hinders the devil of elbow room to do his tricks.' We can all rebuke sin by our righteousness, and by our shining reveal the darkness to itself. We do not walk as children of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the fire. And now he enjoyed the pleasure of a new experience. The stereotyped fashionable house he knew all about, but this old house that looked small, and yet stretched itself out into many cosy rooms; it was quaint, it was unique, and so was the little household. It was like stepping into a book, and that a book of poems. What was the charm of that low-browed room he sat in? Could it be the broad fireplace, wherein blazed and snapped a veritable back-log? Mr. Winters ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... the Iscam, where a bathing-shed had been built, and after enjoying the bathe as only the first bathe in a season can be enjoyed, they struck off over the fields towards some neighbouring villages, which De Vayne had often wanted to visit, because their old churches contained some quaint specimens of early architecture. On the way they passed through Barton Wood, and there found some fine specimens of herb Paris, with large bright purple berries resting on its topmost trifoliations, one of which Julian eagerly seized, saying ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the manageress's room, a cosy apartment in the back of the quaint old hostelry, when a waitress came and announced Inspector Deane. The official was at once shown ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... officially, and their States are, officially, as well administered as Our territories. Also, the private allowances to various queer people are not exactly matters to put into newspapers, though they give quaint ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... The hunter's quaint speech is encouraging; but for all, it does not hinder him and his comrade from soon after returning to a condition of despondency, if not ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... admiring, but which will fill you with pleasure on account of the novelty and freshness of everything you meet; whether it is the old bonnet-less, short-petticoated women walking arm and arm with their grandsons, whether the church with its quaint sculpture of the Entombment of our Lord, and the sad votive candles ever guttering in front of it, or whether the plain evidence that meets one at every touch and turn, that one is among people who live out of ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... small shops or bazaars, where wares of all sorts were offered for sale. At one of these, a booth of oriental trinkets, Mr. Banks stopped and bought each of the girls a necklace of gay-coloured beads. They were not valuable ornaments, but had a quaint, foreign air, and were very pretty in their own way. Patty was greatly pleased, and when they passed another booth which contained exquisite Armenian embroideries, she begged Ethel to accept the little gift from her, and picking out some filmy ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... while Beth quietly introduced me. And Miela spread her wings, curtsied, and replied in a quaint, soft little voice: "I am honored, sir." Then she laughed prettily and, extending her hand, added: "How ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... He was always an agreeable companion. There was a good deal of bonhomie and pleasantry in his conversation. He was not exactly witty, nor was he very humorous, though he gave a light turn to table-talk and enjoyed exceedingly any pleasantry or fun, even. He often made a quaint or slightly caustic remark, but he took care that it should not be too trenchant. On reading his letters one discovers this playful spirit in many of them, as, for instance, in his letter to the spiritualist who asked his opinion of Von Moltke and the French war. He wrote in reply ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... look very homelike," said Mrs. Hamilton, glancing at the photographs which adorned desk, mantel and table. "Are these all friends of yours?" she added with a sly smile, as her eye caught the picture of the little Queen of Holland in quaint peasant costume. ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... on the north side of the island of Voorne, at the mouth of the New Maas, 51/2 m. N. of Hellevoetsluis. Pop. (1900) 4107. It is a fortified place and has a good harbour, arsenal, magazine and barracks. It also possesses a quaint town hall, and an orphanage dating from 1533. The tower of the Groote [v.04 p.0562] Kerk of St Catherine serves as a lighthouse. Most of the trade of Brielle was diverted to Hellevoetsluis by the cutting of the Voornsche Canal in 1829, but it still has some business in corn and fodder, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... and Chiswick was then enough of a country village to supply him amply with material. But, although a keen satirist, it is certain that he had as much tenderness for the lower orders of creation, as a young loving girl. In a corner of this quaint old garden, two tiny monuments are affixed to the wall, one chiselled perhaps by Hogarth's own hand, to the memory of his canary bird! The thinking character of the painter's mind is evidenced in this as in every thing he did—the engraving ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... you're too quaint!" his mother exclaimed, putting out to caress him a practised but ineffectual hand. He slipped out of it, but looked with intelligent innocent eyes at Pemberton, who had already had time to notice that from one moment to the other his small satiric face seemed to change its time ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... the other digested; when one slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped the usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable in all the details of their daily life—I mean this quaint and arbitrary distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the two —between, I may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or, in other words, that the one was always the creating force, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hearts with poetic afflatus Took wing and impulsively soared As the lead-line (a quaint ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... not ringed with roses blowing, Nor set in meadows where cool waters croon; Parched wastes were round it, and no shade was going, Nor breath of violets nor song-birds' tune; Only at times from the adjacent dwelling Came down with Boreas the quaint, compelling Scent of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... of Edith's life. She also provided a good deal of romance in the lives of several other people. Her position was unusual, and her personality fascinating. She had no parents, was an heiress, and lived alone with a companion in a quaint little house just out of Berkeley Square, with a large studio, that was never used for painting. She had such an extraordinary natural gift for making people of both sexes fond of her, that it would have been difficult to say which, of ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... when the children joined hands and danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree's song, the song of L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont. They sang it to a quaint sweet air—a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my dreaming spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me and carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that. One old Sag-Harbor whaleman's chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this: —He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head —a peculiarity only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the contracted forehead, while his lips closed about a short brier-wood pipe of a kind only used by men. The pipe had gone out, unnoticed by the smoker; and he did not seem to mind the fierce heat thrown out by the broken coals. Above the mantel was the portrait of a gentleman in the quaint costume of the latter Victorian age; the absurd starched collar and shirt, the insignificant cravat, the trousers reaching to the ankles, and the coat and waistcoat of black cloth and fantastic cut, familiar to the readers of the London Punch. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... There was something quaint and straightforward in the letter, in spite of the utter ignorance of grammar and spelling; and while I smiled at the evident pride in the "brutther" who was a "verry good hite," and the offer to take less wages if "I would do his washin," I found myself wondering ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... simple. It was to help them drive a flock of sheep to the market of the city. One morning early we made the venture in a melancholy drizzle of rain, and passed through the frowning gates unmolested. Our friends had friends living over a humble wine shop in a quaint tall building situated in one of the narrow lanes that run down from the cathedral to the river, and with these they bestowed us; and the next day they smuggled our own proper clothing and other belongings to us. The family that lodged us—the Pieroons—were ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... cool within the little cottage after the blazing sunshine outside. The place was evidently no longer used for anything but a storehouse and a shelter for picnics of this kind, but it was a quaint, attractive little dwelling and evidently very old. The main room where they sat had a big-beamed ceiling, deep casement windows, and a door that swung open in two sections, one above the other. The upper half was wide open now, framing a sun-bathed ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door— ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... healthy wholesome reading, full of breezy life and movement, full of quaint stories vigorously told, will not be excelled by any book to be published throughout the year. Sound, hearty, ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... to go with me to our house beyond the Seine," he said. "It is a quaint old place hidden away, as so many happy homes are in this city. You will find nobody there but my mother, my sister Julie, and a faithful old servant, Antoine ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bottle; from the wedding dress of a Solomon Islander to the exquisite models of the ships he had sailed in, executed by Jack's skilful fingers. He had also rigged up shelves, or made cupboards into which to put his curiosities; and every addition of his handiwork increased the air of quaint comfort ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... with choicest sports, All pastime fit for Phoebus Courts; And Thou great Master of the Revels, joyne The Graces, to thy Daughters nine; Witt pure and quaint, with rich conceits and free From all obscaene scurrilitie: Here free from care, nimbly let's dance a round Upon ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... my hopes haue end in their effects, When blood and sorrow finnish my desires: Horatio murdered in his Fathers bower, Vilde Serberine by Pedrigano slaine, False Pedrigano hang'd by quaint deuice, Faire Isabella by her-selfe misdone, Prince Balthazar by Bel-imepria stabd, The Duke of Castile an his wicked sonne Both done to death by olde Hieronimo, My Bel-imperia falne as Dido fell, And good Hieronimo slaine by himselfe! I, these were ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... limit. Not infrequently the public welfare is imperilled by too much, rather than too little, legislation. It was the belief of Jefferson that government should touch the citizen at the fewest possible points. The quaint lines of the old English poet have lost nothing ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... went back to his study to do some more thinking and planning. And very late he came up to his sleeping-chamber. And he was just cuddling his head into the soft pillow for the night, when the door opened, so softly, and in there came a little body in simple white night garb, with a quaint old-fashioned nightcap on, candle in hand. She came in very softly. And he ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... metal monster. He walked in the eight-foot track of one of its treads. As he went, he continued the cleaning of sand from the rifle in his hands. The rifle was useless against such a monster, of course, but it is quaint to reflect that in that automatic rifle, firing hexynitrate bullets, each equivalent to a six-pounder T.N.T. shell in destructiveness, Sergeant Walpole carried greater "fire-power" than ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... was a good scene for such a narrative, with the oak-wainscoting, quaint, and clumsy furniture, the heavy beams that crossed its ceiling, and the tall four-post bed, with dark curtains, within which you might imagine what shadows ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... stammering fashion, to imitate the high artistic culture of the neighbouring people. The wide deviations from the original have arisen not from the freedom, but from the rudeness of the imitation; the treatment is sometimes insipid, sometimes turgid, the language harsh and quaint.(9) We have no difficulty in believing the statement of the old critics of art, that, apart from the compulsory reading at school, none of the poems of Livius were taken up a second time. Yet these labours ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... believe there is always Golden Seal, but it is the kind that comes in bottles, and not in the gloom of "deep, cool, moist woods," where Mrs. Creevey describes it as growing, along with other wildings of such sweet names or quaint as Celandine, and Dwarf Larkspur, and Squirrel-corn, and Dutchman's breeches, and Pearlwort, and Wood-sorrel, and Bishop's—cap, and Wintergreen, and Indian-pipe, and Snowberry, and Adder's-tongue, and Wakerobin, and Dragon-root, and Adam-and-Eve, and twenty more, which must have got their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... transformations, and by which she may always be recognized through her disguises. In the next scene we find Amie suffering from the effect of Karol's kiss. She is ill at ease, she knows not why, and the innocent description of her love-pain possesses, in spite of its quaint artificiality, something of the naivete of Daphnis ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... insensible breaches here and there, mildewed and rusted the surface everywhere; then, political and religious revolutions, which, blind and fierce by nature, fell furiously upon it, rent its rich array of sculpture and carving, shivered its rose-windows, shattered its necklaces of arabesques and quaint figures, tore down its statues—sometimes because of their crown; lastly, changing fashion, even more grotesque and absurd, from the anarchic and splendid deviations of the Renaissance down to the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... (smiling) what a quaint noise! (Approaching Mr. FERNANDEZ.) Monsieur, allow me to offer you my snuff-box—it is heartily at your service. (Mr. FERNANDEZ accepts the courtesy with effusion.) And now, my old friend, take this packet, which I fancy is from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... upon a midnight dreary, While I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious Volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, Suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, Rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "Tapping at my chamber door Only this, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... The fashion quaint, the time-worn flaws, The narrow range, the doubtful tone, All was excused awhile, because It seemed a creature ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... more to the purpose, Nance was able to avenge herself in the flesh, only a few months after these contemptuous lines had been penned. It happened at Bath, in the summer of 1703, and the story of her triumph, brief as it is, sounds quaint and pretty, as it comes down to us laden with a thousand suggestions of fashionable life in the reign of Queen Anne—a life made up of gossip and cards, drinking, gaming, patches and powder, fine clothes, full perriwigs and empty heads. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... deacon's maiden sister, was a character in her way, and was surely not one of those vain, frivolous females to whom the Apostle Paul had reference when he condemned the plaiting of hair and the wearing of gold and jewels. Quaint, queer and simple-hearted, she had but little idea of any world this side of heaven, except the one bounded by the "huckleberry" hills and the crystal waters of Fairy Pond, which from the back door of the farmhouse were plainly ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... told to one another by a party of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. According to our gentle author, who was one of them, they stopped over night at a house in England called the Tabard Inn, and here they passed the hours repeating fine stories. Afterward Chaucer wrote these down in a book in quaint old English. One might look at these words all day long and not know in the least what what some of them meant, though they do ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... being testified to by Mr. Larkyns and Mr. Bouncer (who was considered a high authority in canine matters), and Verdant also liking the quaint appearance of the dog, Mop eventually became his property, for "four-ten" minus five shillings, but plus a pint of buttery beer, which Mr. Lucre always pronounced to be customary "in all dealins whatsumever atween gentlemen." Verdant was highly gratified at possessing ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... that she has heard something about the Pacific Ocean, and has set out to see for herself whither the reports are correct," was the quaint thought of the Irish lad, as he pushed vigorously through the undergrowth, which was dense enough to turn him aside more than once and compel him to keep his wits about him to prevent going ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... last he decided: "A little man, well groomed, clean shaven, a soldierly appearance." The other smiled: "All right, come along." A quaint building in the form of a chalet appeared to the left; and to the right side, almost opposite, was the main house. It was a strange-looking building, where there was a mixture of everything, a mingling of Gothic fortress, manor, villa, hut, residence, cathedral, mosque, pyramid, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Sanom, and myself, were marched onward through the gate and up a steep narrow winding street, where the solidly-built houses were set close together to obtain the shade, to the market-place. Here, amid the promiscuous firing of long flint-lock guns and quaint ancient pistols, such as one sees in curiosity shops at home, a further demonstration was held, our carriers themselves infected by the popular enthusiasm, seeming also to lose their senses. They heaped upon Omar every indignity, scoffed and spat at ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... side of the valley, following the graceful curves and swellings of the hills. The little towns are so lost in the recesses that one comes upon them quite unexpectedly, and, whirling through their one long main street, catches glimpses of quaint churches and buildings which fairly overhang the highway, and narrow vistas of lawns, trees, shrubbery, and flowers; then all is hidden by the next bend ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... equally to the priest of Nemi himself, the nominal hero of the long tragedy of human folly and suffering which has unrolled itself before the readers of these volumes, and on which the curtain is now about to fall. He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears and the gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him before laying him up in ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... an oak, with his back against the trunk of the tree, while the boy lay full length on the soft grass, looking up into the green depths of foliage where a tiny brown bird flitted from bough to bough. In his quaint way, Pete was carrying on a conversation with his little friend in the tree top, translating freely the while for his less gifted, but deeply interested, companion on the ground below, when Brave, the shepherd dog, lying near, interrupted the talk by a short ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... the merchants were implored to take pity on their poverty-stricken lord, were cast into utter oblivion. It was harvest tide for skilled craftsmen and artisans. Any one blessed with a clever or fantastic idea easily found a market for the product of his brain. He could see his poetic or quaint conception presented to an applauding public with a wealth of paraphernalia that a modern stage manager would not scorn. How much the nobles spent can only be inferred from the ducal accounts, which are eloquent with information ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... birds there is nothing to compare for beauty and speed with the swift, or for power and cleverness with the hawk. On moist evenings, when the swifts fly low and level, backward and forward, with a quaint little musical squeak, like a mouse's, they remind one of fish that dart through the water of clear streams under bridges. The hawk, even in a high wind, can remain, by tilting his body at the needed angle, perfectly still in the air, while his steady wide ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... and I could see trouble ahead for him as plainly as though I had been a palmist reading his hand at two guineas a visit. There are other proverbs fully as wise as the one which Mortimer had translated from the Swahili, and one of the wisest is that quaint old East London saying, handed down from one generation of costermongers to another, and whispered at midnight in the wigwams of the whelk-seller! "Never introduce your donah to a pal." In those seven words is contained the wisdom ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... "This quaint English custom!" he said lightly. "All you women go into another room to gossip and we men are condemned to the society of one another! I'm afraid even I'm not British enough to appreciate such a droll arrangement. Especially ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Romantic School can be pretty definitely set at about 1796; its cradle was in the quaint university town of Jena, at that time the home of Schiller and his literary-esthetic enterprises, and only a few miles away from Goethe in Weimar. Five names embody about all that was most significant in the earlier ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... bazaar without any trouble. In her chubby hand was clasped a little gold five-franc piece, which had been given her the previous day, and visions of glittering treasures which should be bought with that tiny gold piece floated before her eyes. She hurried on by the quaint fountains which are placed at the corners of the bazaars, to cheer those water-worshiping people, and soon found herself amid the charms and mysteries of the bazaar, and in front of the little shops like bow-windows, with their owners sitting cross-legged in the midst ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... a quaint little Kate Greenaway dress, and big-brimmed hat of dark green velvet with white feathers tumbling over its brim. The frock was ankle length and short-waisted and she wore old-fashioned little slippers, with crossed ribbons, and black lace mitts. A shirred silk workbag hung at her ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... iron works built in the present United States that were commercially successful, were established in Massachusetts, in the town of Saugus, a few miles from Boston. The company had a monopoly of manufacture under grant for ten years. [Footnote: Some quaint records exist of the incidents of ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... little commercial importance—a quaint and quiet old place, with a fine cathedral and many notable buildings which testify ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... bodies, Hebrew, Persian, and various cabalistic characters, the dark enigmas of the work of transmutation, and the invocations or prayers for success employed by the alchymist. Here and there pieces of their quaint and uncouth shaped apparatus, the aludel, the alembic, and the alkaner, the pelican, the crucible, and the water-bath, occupy their respective stations. The clumsy, heavy, oaken table in the centre is covered with copies of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... to the Mermaid Inn, One dark May night, Fiddling a tune that quelled our motley din, With quaint delight, It haunts me yet, as old lost airs will do, A phantom strain: Look for me once, lest I should look for you, And look ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... editors who wanted to get hold of his next book. It is almost incredible to what stratagems publishers will descend to influence an author. Andrew had written in "Paradise Regained" of the tramps who visit us, how quaint and appealing some of them are (let me add, how dirty), and how we never turn away any one who seems worthy. Would you believe that, in the spring after the book was published, a disreputable-looking vagabond ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... of a quaint corner of New England, where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to the young people on the staff of a newspaper—and it is one of the prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old-fashioned ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... the most popular orators of his day. He had a deep, sonorous, flexible voice, which he used to great advantage. He had a wonderful gift of touching the human heart, now melting his hearers by his pathos, then convulsing them with his quaint humor. He was attractive in manner, generous in feeling, spontaneous in expression, and free from ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... the Karaoli Raja, whose following was the most quaint of all. Amongst the curious signs of his dignity he had on his escort four tigers, each chained on a separate car, and guarded by strange-looking men ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... jovial, and pressing; he almost scolded Maggie because she would not take more than twice of his favorite pudding: but she remembered what her mother had said, and that she would be watched all day; and this gave her a little prim, quaint manner, very different from her usual soft charming unconsciousness. She fancied that Edward and Master Buxton were just as little at their ease with each other as she and Miss Harvey. Perhaps this feeling on the part of the ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... forever doing good in his quiet yet earnest way. Not only on Sunday when he preached solid gospel sermons, full of quaint familiar expressions, such as I fear few of my readers could take up, full of solemn, affectionate, appeals, full of his own simplicity and love, the Monday also found him ready with his every-day gospel. If he ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Quaint reis Marcs nus out conjeies E de sa curt nus out chascez, As mains ensemble nus preismes E hors de la sale en eissimes, A la forest puis ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... one else wanted to live in such a desolate place, so far from the scattered hamlets, she had got it for a small rent. The house was a tiny imitation of a castle, with crenelated parapet and tower. Crumbling now and weather-stained, it had a quaint, human, wistful air. Its face was turned away from the road toward a bit of garden, which was fenced off from the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... complaint that came to Anwoth from Kilmacolm was expressed in the quaint and graphic language natural to that day. 'Security, strong and sib to nature, is stealing in upon us.' The holy law of God, they mean, was never preached in their parish; at any rate, it was never carried home to any man's conscience. Nobody was ever disturbed. ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... Hospitality demanded that he should do all in his power to secure his guest's material comfort; but there, in his opinion, immediate obligation ceased. In thus remaining standing he had a quaint sense of safeguarding the sanctities of the place. The man's tone was curiously offensive. Involuntarily Mr. Iglesias' back stiffened ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and me, ma'am, we have thoughts of applying for Dunmow flitch. Quaint old custom, Dunmow flitch. Heard of it, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nearly eight o'clock that night when Selwyn alighted from a train at the village where he and Elise had heard the fateful announcement of war. He walked through the quaint street, silent and deserted in the November night. Except for two or three people at the station, there was no one to be seen as his footsteps on the cobbled road knocked with their echo against the casement windows of the slumbering dwellings. Reaching the inn, he bargained for a conveyance, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... little room, daintily furnished, individual in its quaint colouring, and the masses of perfumed flowers set in strange and unexpected places. A great bowl of scarlet carnations gleamed from a dark corner, set against the background of a deep brown wall. A jar of pink roses upon a tiny table ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... voice she joined the birds, and woke the echoes from the brown cliffs. The tune was quaint and rapid; both it and the words had come down to her with the old folklore ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... florid exordium. The voice was clear and cold and distinct; not especially musical, not at all magnetic. The orator was incessantly moving; not rushing vehemently forward or stepping defiantly backward, with that quaint planting of the foot, like Beecher; but restlessly changing his place, with smooth and rounded but monotonous movement. The arms and hands moved harmonious with the body, not with especial reference to what was said, but apparently because there must be action. The first part of the discourse ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... which the foregoing observations are directed, is this. As most of the peculiar terminations by which the second person singular is properly distinguished in the solemn style, are not only difficult of utterance, but are quaint and formal in conversation; the preterits and auxiliaries of our verbs are seldom varied in familiar discourse, and the present is generally simplified by contraction, or by the adding of st without increase of syllables. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... old street, with only a few yards of ground between it and the road, it had a large and ancient garden behind it. A large garden of any sort is valuable, but an ancient garden is invaluable, and this one had retained a very antique loveliness. The quaint memorials of its history lived on into the new, changed, unsympathetic time, and stood there, aged, modest, and unabashed. Yet not one of the family had ever cared for it on the ground of its old-fashionedness; its preservation ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... interesting everyone with whom she came in contact. Her wise, fat face, somewhat solemn in expression, was the essence of good-humor. Her blue eyes were as serene as an unruffled summer pool. She could say heaps of old-fashioned, quaint things. She had strong likes and dislikes, but she was never known to be cross. She adored Judy, but Judy only liked her, for all Judy's passionate love was already disposed of. It centered itself ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... glimpse of the bride, with her sweet, patient, dewy face shadowed like a honey-drop in the gauzy calyx of her artisanne cap; for she was in the simplest of morning dresses—something gray, with a clean white apron. The quaint, old-fashioned house where we met was decorated with exquisite trifles, the memorials of the mistress's old fashionable taste, but scattered over the tables also were lecture programmes, hospital reports and photographs of eminent philosophers. As I took up for a plaything a gold pen-case, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the right-hand side of this surface of the sherd, painted obliquely in red on the space not covered by the uncial characters, and signed in blue paint, was the following quaint inscription:— ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the town where the report had come to us before of the finding of the body of Rena Taylor. There was, of course, no one at the station to meet us, and, after wasting some time in learning the direction, we at last walked to Dr. Mead's cottage, a quaint home, facing the state road that led from Suffern up to the ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... moustache. Awfully attractive blue eyes! He lives on a farm at Sollers, Maryland. No one else, it seems, is so familiar with the unusual corners of New York City, the sort of places that get themselves called "quaint." No one else manages the affairs of young lovers (on paper) with quite so much of the airy spirit of young love. I can think of no one else who could write such a scene as that in The Owl Taxi, where the dead-wagon, on its way in the night to the vast cemetery in a New ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... The quaint methods of previous witnesses are amplified by M. de la Rive. Like Dr Bataille, he tells us that the Order of Oddfellows, though quite distinct from Palladism, is "essentially Luciferian," but he does not ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome, leads due north out of Hudson Bay, being parted by Southampton Island from the strait through which we entered. Its name is quaint, for so was its discoverer, Luke Fox, a worthy man, addicted much to euphuism. Fox sailed from London in the same year in which James sailed from Bristol. They were rivals. Meeting in Davis Straits, Fox dined on board his friendly rival's vessel, which was very unfit ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... an account which he gave me, in his quaint way, of an excursion he went upon with a botanist, to collect specimens of the plants and flowers of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... stout lady in a quaint black dress, who looks young enough to wear much smarter raiment, if she would—I call her Agnes Helstone. She married my brother James, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... life of a trapper and hunter among the Indians, and was known as the "Female Hunter of Long Eddy." She published a book regarding those experiences. I have not been able to see it, but it is said to be quaint and well written. She regarded herself as practically a man, and became attached to a young woman of good education, who had also been deserted by her husband. The affection was strong and emotional, and, of course, without deception. It was interrupted by her recognition and imprisonment ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... an old-fashioned, rather massive, gold chatelaine; heavy and rich and quaint, with various trinkets fastened ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... of the facts of Wilkins' life, as well as of his character. It is given in one of those "Brief Lives" which might well serve as models to modern biographers; lives compressed into two pages of nervous English, adorned here and there, rather than disfigured, by quaint pedantic words and phrases, relics of the euphuism of the sixteenth century. Aubrey is credulous, appallingly frank, a strong partisan, a man of great industry and learning, by no means trustworthy, but none the less entertaining ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... Dutch is a capital instance of wit as distinguished from fun. It rather exercises than tickles the mind, so full is it of quaint fancy: ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... taken place unknown to the defenders, who, from the narrowness of the entrance, were shut off from seeing the quaint, sardonic face of the old miner, as he stood holding the bag, with the burning fuse spluttering and sending up ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... very much to either of them now; but rather implied by her words and manner, and by many a pathetic touch here and there, that she was dwelling on it as a pleasant reminiscence of the dear old friend, whose quaint sayings were household words among them, because of their wisdom, and because of the honour and the love they gave her. Her earnestness increased, as, by and by, she saw the impatience pass out of her sister's face and manner; and it never came into her mind that ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... is such a place; a quaint old hunting and fishing camp, where a few nature lovers hide away from; the world every summer and really "rough it." I caught there some of the finest mountain trout I have even seen; I also saw a party of men bring in a very fine deer one afternoon, a feat which caused quite ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... for us, who were accustomed to toil over the long combers and stormy banks of the North Sea. The variety of fish taken alone made the voyage of absorbing interest, numbering cod, haddock, ling, hake, turbot, soles, plaice, halibut, whiting, crayfish, shark, dog-fish, and many quaint monsters unmarketable then, but perfectly edible. Among those taken in was the big angler fish, which lives at the bottom with his enormous mouth open, dangling an attractive-looking bait formed by a long rod growing out from his nose, which lures small victims into the cavern, whence, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... be seen in Singapore; their quaint architecture is always interesting to the occidental tourist, and the hideous images to be seen within will repay the trouble of removing one's shoes, which must be done before admittance ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... With what quaint simplicity does the thirteenth chapter tell of the Holy Spirit's initiation of those great missionary journeys of Paul from the new center of world evangelization? "the Holy Spirit said, etc." And how like it is the language of James in delivering the judgment ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... quaint Picardy town which the Germans had transformed into an almost impregnable stronghold and fortress, was a special cause for rejoicing by the British troops. It was a prize they had longed for through many weary months. There was no waving ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... family of quaint dolls for Elizabeth, labeled by Dorothy's husband, "Heathen dolls: ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... fulfilment of his engagements as a magazine writer, Mr. Bone's literary tastes are chiefly with the older works of English literature. He is a close student of what is known as Early English, delighting in his intervals of leisure to pick from the quaint and curious relics of the earliest English literature bits of evidence that serve to throw some light on the actual social and intellectual condition of our English ancestors four or five centuries ago. He has been for years, and still is, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... breaches here and there, mildewed and rusted the surface everywhere; then, political and religious revolutions, which, blind and fierce by nature, fell furiously upon it, rent its rich array of sculpture and carving, shivered its rose-windows, shattered its necklaces of arabesques and quaint figures, tore down its statues—sometimes because of their crown; lastly, changing fashion, even more grotesque and absurd, from the anarchic and splendid deviations of the Renaissance down to the necessary ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the room quickly, crossed quickly to a quaint old escritoire against the opposite wall, and stooped beside it. The lower right-hand drawer, she had said. The little steel instrument with which he had opened the vestibule door was still in his hand, but he did not use it now! Instead, with a low, dismayed ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in Sally's features. The nose, of course, was tipped up a bit, and the mouth too large, but Anthony discovered that it was almost impossible to centre his criticism on either feature. The tip-tilt of the nose suggested a quaint and infinitely buoyant spirit; the mouth, if generously wide, was exquisitely made. She was certainly not pretty, but he began to feel with equal certainty that ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Lagrange in the rose garden, Sibyl Andres had looked, every day, for that promised letter. She found it early in the afternoon. It was a quaint letter—written in the spirit of their meeting—telling her the probable time of her neighbor's return; warning her, in fear of some fanciful horror, to beware of the picture on the easel; and wishing her joy of the adventure. With the ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... and branded the innovator with the old-fashioned gridiron. Tin was then supposed to be made only for cups and coffee-pots: pie-pans had not yet even entered "the land of dreams;" and the tea-kettle, which then "sang songs of family glee," was a quaint, squat figure, resembling nothing so much as an over-fed duck, and poured forth its music from a crooked, quizzical spout, with a notch in its iron nozzle. If its shut-iron lid was ornamented with a brass button, for a handle, it was thought to be manufactured in superior ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... and stormy banks of the North Sea. The variety of fish taken alone made the voyage of absorbing interest, numbering cod, haddock, ling, hake, turbot, soles, plaice, halibut, whiting, crayfish, shark, dog-fish, and many quaint monsters unmarketable then, but perfectly edible. Among those taken in was the big angler fish, which lives at the bottom with his enormous mouth open, dangling an attractive-looking bait formed by a long rod growing out from his nose, which lures small victims ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the near vicinage of Irving's grave. In its little twelve-inch counterpart, every point of the ancient structure is preserved in exact detail. The dull red walls, the beetling roof, the narrow pointed windows and low, arched door; the quaint Dutch weathercock, and odd-shaped tower—aye, even the bell within, no bigger than a doll's thimble—and upon all a sentimental traveler in the person of a china figure perhaps three inches in height, is gazing half pensively, half curiously, as ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... to get to that old, forgotten quarter, to the old quaint street where they lived. They were old-world Jews who read the Talmud, and seemed to be quite isolated, out of touch with the modern world. It was like going back to the Middle Ages; this queer old couple moving like ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... had, the Baconians will allow, GENIUS. By the miracle of genius he MAY have found time and developed inclination, to begin by furbishing up older plays for a company of actors: he did it extremely well, but what a quaint taste for a courtier and scholar! The eccentricities of genius MAY account for his choice of a "nom de plume," which, if he desired concealment, was the last that was likely to serve his turn. He may also have divined all the Doll Tearsheets and ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... employed a delicate piece of strategy to place me in her father's lounging-chair where I could watch her as she leaned back among the pillows, and in a voice, more soothing than any I had ever heard, described to me in quaint phrases the character of six imaginary persons who might among themselves make up a world, with all the traits of personality which we find in our own. From this piquant attempt, she emerged to plunge into a light ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... altogether, these young fellows," he said once with his quaint half-melancholy smile. "When the King and Queen rode in armor at the head of their troops in Granada, our cavaliers dreamed of conquering the world—now it ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... which it is placed. The ornamentation is very rich; one spiral column is especially noteworthy. There is a trefoiled arch, the cusps having circular terminations with the star ornament. In the spandrels are quaint, crouching monks, each holding a pastoral staff. Above are ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... Earthen jar of quaint design, Fragile clay and slender mould, I shall soon have drained the wine Which you still contrive to hold,— Wine that sixty years ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... led out to die she was tied to a stake, but the faggots would not burn, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and struck off her head. St Agnes is the patron saint of young girls, who, in rural districts, formerly indulged in all sorts of quaint country magic on St Agnes' Eve (20th-21st January) with a view to discovering their future husbands. This superstition has been immortalized in Keats's poem, "The Eve of St Agnes.'' St Agnes's bones are supposed to rest in the church of her name at Rome, originally built by Constantine ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... crew, as they strained at the oars,—two pulling and an extra one facing them and pushing to try to keep pace with the other boats,—"A new moon! Turn your money over, boys! That is, if you have any!" We laughed at him for the quaint superstition at such a time, and it was good to laugh again, but he showed his disbelief in another superstition when he added, "Well, I shall never say again that 13 is an unlucky number. Boat 13 is the best friend ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... of the Norsemen, Stories quaint and weird and wild, There's a strange and thrilling story, Of a mother and her child. And that child, so runs the story, In those quaint old Norsemen books, Fell one day from dangerous play ground, Dashed in pieces on the rocks; ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... the harbor of Scarborough, lying half-hid amongst the narrow streets which run up towards the Castle Hill, a quaint and curious inn known as the Three Jolly Mariners. At its door stands a figure carved in wood, which at some time, no doubt, acted as figurehead to a ship, but whether it represents Venus or Diana, Hebe or Minerva, I do not know. Inside, the house more resembles ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... still popular, of the Grand Canal of Cairo, whose banks, by-the-by, are quaint and picturesque as anything ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Bechstein in any way, for we read his tales too, and would not have submitted to anything approaching a recapitulation; but the character of the little Wizard was one which fascinated her, and even more so, perhaps, the quaint picture of him, which stood at the head of the tale; and she wove round this skeleton idea a rambling romance from ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... coy mistress: the expressions were proper to the occasion, and in some degree characteristic. It passed with several, but an old lady who was a more discerning critic than the others remarked that it was "katta katta saja"—mere conversation; meaning that it was destitute of the quaint and figurative expressions which adorn their own poetry. Their language in common speaking is proverbial and sententious. If a young woman prove with child before marriage they observe it is daulu buah, kadian bunga—the fruit before the flower. Hearing ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... little one. "Won't you come in and sit down by the fire?" she added, with a quaint air ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... is like a mouse," those would-be purchasers would say, so "Hoolool" she became, even to her little son, who called her the quaint word as a white child would call its mother a pet name; and she in turn called the little boy "Tenas," which means "Youngness"—the young spring, the young day, the young moon—and he was all these blessed things to her. But all ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... or three hours these gentlemen met again in the green drawing-room of Monmouth House. Mr. Rigby was sitting on a sofa by Lord Monmouth, detailing in whispers all his gossip of the morn: Lord Eskdale murmuring quaint inquiries into the ear of the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... be recognized through her disguises. In the next scene we find Amie suffering from the effect of Karol's kiss. She is ill at ease, she knows not why, and the innocent description of her love-pain possesses, in spite of its quaint artificiality, something of the naivete of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... with apparent enjoyment. Then they once more slowly opened their ponderous jaws and quietly waited for another meal. We had gone on our way several hours without speaking, there was so much to see and it was all so new. The quaint song of the natives amused us. They never seemed to weary of the same "Yenze, yenze, ah yenze." At the third "Yenze" the boat would shoot up the stream twice its length. It was nearing noon and the sun was getting torrid and the air close and stifling. Without any warning ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... was prepared to discredit her clock in their interests. But there was not much delay on the part of the guests. The women were dying to question Sis, and Woodward was anxious to be alone; and so they said "Good night," the earnestness and quaint simplicity of the old women carrying Woodward back to the days of his childhood, when his grandmother leaned tenderly over his little bed, and whispered: "Good night, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... a grim humor about this marriage of a race by wholesale, millions at a time, and nunc pro tunc; but especially quaint was the idea of requiring each freed-man, who had just been torn, as it were naked, from the master's arms, to pay a snug fee for the simple privilege of entering upon that relation which the law had rigorously ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... are neat and trim in white duck, while their women walk a step or two behind them, in native dress, with a baby on their backs. The Japanese children, in bright coloured frocks, their little heads shaven, look like quaint dolls. Then there are the Chinese. The men, fat and prosperous, wear their American clothes oddly, but the women are enchanting with their tightly-dressed black hair, so neat that you feel it can never be disarranged, and they are very clean in their tunics and trousers, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... his triumphant taunts hurled against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty, but those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems conscious of his own infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct by thought and time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May the quaint but affecting aspiration expressed in one of these be fulfilled, that as he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may wear off, and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... proved to be a quaint old tavern, modernized, and its patrons, the Governor explained, were limited to cultivated people who sought the peace and calm of the hills. After a leisurely luncheon they took their coffee in a pleasant garden on one side of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... brimmed hat trimmed with roses and fluttering ribbons. High-heeled slippers with bright buckles and a crook tied with blue ribbons added to the quaint effect, and the whole costume was very becoming to ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... Wish," "Kill Deer," and "Kill Buck," and cherished them almost as living things. Many of them camped out at the wayside gunshops until a specially ordered weapon was begun and finished, so as to supervise every detail of its fabrication. Quaint and full of historic lore were these mystic wayside shrines of arms, which are alas with a few exceptions no more. Billy de Shera's on Larry's Creek near Jersey Shore instilled the love of arms in several generations of mountain boys, and the last gunshops in existence, those of Seth Nelson, ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... is but the first moment; the later ones are the Comic, the Humorous, and the Dramatic. His fertile imagination found metaphors and similes in everything: for instance, he called the goat the Devil, opposed to the lamb, Jesus. His remarks on men and women are full of quaint fancies. He granted to women grace, but not beauty, which resides in equilibrium. This is proved by her falling down so easily when she walks; by her bow legs, which have to support her wide hips, made for gestation; by her narrow shoulders, and her opulent breast. ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... patrimony along that river), brought back again the sovereignty to the centre, and in happier days might have become the second founder of Tara. But it was plain enough then, and it is tolerably so still, that this was not to be an age of restoration. The kings of Ireland after this time, says the quaint old translator of the Annals of Clonmacnoise, "had little good of it," down to the days of King Brian. It was, in fact, a perpetual struggle for self-preservation—the first duty of all governments, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... conferred on the Deity; and "Fair Father Jesu Christ" was by no means an uncommon title used in prayer. In like manner, Saint Louis, when he prayed, said, "Sire Dieu," the title of knighthood. Quaint and almost profane as this usage sounds to modern ears, I think their instinct was right: they addressed God in the highest and most reverential ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... Her accent was quaint and fascinating, but her voice was very musical. To the man who knelt at her feet it was the sweetest music in ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... harmony with the low, artistic white houses and vine-covered walls. It is such a pity that these high, red buildings could not have been kept outside, and the old mormon city left in its original quaint beauty. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... the day at Abbeville, wandering through its quaint streets and seeing its fine unfinished cathedral. The following day we posted to Amiens, visiting its very beautiful cathedral, posted the following day to Beauvais, again slept, passed next day there, and on the following day posted up to Paris, and drove to Meurice's ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... a repressed voice. On that subject he could not trust himself just yet. Every curve and fold of her sari, and the half-seen coils of her dark hair, every movement, every quaint turn of phrase, set his nerves vibrating with an ecstasy that was pain. For the moment, he wanted simply to be aware of her; to hug the dear illusion that the years between were a dream. And illusion was heightened by the trivial fact that her appearance ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth the spirit of revolt in England took a wholly literary form. In France it was what people did that was wild and elemental; in England it was what people wrote. It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... an ancient landmark of the early time, made of locust poles, and swinging to a long beam that rested on a huge post in perfect balance. Easily pushed open, it closed of its own weight. A gate of striking artistic fitness, now long crumbled with the wooden plough and the quaint ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... geometry, the only course in which he had not been sent to the "kitchen." Then Chad saw Harry turn quickly when the professor called his name. Confused though he was for a moment, he gave his demonstration in his quaint speech with perfect clearness and without interruption from the professor, who gave the boy a keen look as he ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... 'twixt two streams, Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams; That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief; Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things, Vague, whispering' touches, gleams and twitterings, Dews and cool shadows—that the mystic soul Of Nature permeates with suave control, And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... to fight with our simple, peaceful, almost quaint device -a banner. A little more fiery, perhaps; pertinent to the latest political controversy, but still only a banner inscribed ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... me, proposed a change of Seller's Christian name. Ten years before, in a remote corner of the West, he had come across a man named Eschol Sellers, and he thought that Eschol was just the right and fitting name for our Sellers, since it was odd and quaint and all that. I liked the idea, but I said that that man might turn up and object. But Warner said it couldn't happen; that he was doubtless dead by this time, a man with a name like that couldn't live long; and be he dead or alive we must have the name, it was exactly the right one and we couldn't ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... watching with vigilant eyes,) Calmly a lady walk'd holding a little innocent child by either hand, Whom seating on their stools beside her on the platform, She, first preluding with the instrument a low and musical prelude, In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... replied, naturally flattered. She was delicately pretty, and her quaint, oracular air, so incongruous with the dainty face and the fluffy brown hair, piqued me not a little. That special mysterious commodity of CHARM seemed to pervade all she did and said. So I added: ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Why, Beulah Benton, of course! Where is she? Come out of that corner, you quaint, solemn statue!" She held out her hand, and a warm, glad smile broke over her pallid ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of this natural fortress some old Georgian chief had, in the good old days of independence, built a massive castle, and nestling beneath its protecting shadow around the base of the butte is the town, a picturesque town of adobe and wattle walls and quaint red tiles. So intensely verdant is the valley, so thickly wooded the dark surrounding mountains, so brown the walls, so red the tiles, and so picturesque the elevated castle, that even K goes into raptures, and calls the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Cuvier, are usually small, of this appreciable proportion the bulk is comparatively not great. The great kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), though the inhabitant of an island which ranks among the continents, would not much exceed in bulk, tried by Raleigh's quaint scale of measurement, a sheep and a half, or at most two sheep; and yet I know not that discovery in the islands has added a larger animal to the previously known ones than the great kangaroo. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... if to follow his thoughts into the innermost labyrinth of the mind. It seemed to Ernest, under the spell of this passing fancy, as though each vase, each picture, each curio in the room, was reflected in Clarke's work. In a long-queued, porcelain Chinese mandarin he distinctly recognised a quaint quatrain in one of Clarke's most marvellous poems. And he could have sworn that the grin of the Hindu monkey-god on the writing-table reappeared in the weird rhythm of two stanzas whose grotesque cadence ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... was said of Scarlett, that he gained his verdicts because there were twelve Scarletts in the jury-box; and Mason so contrived to blend his stronger mind with the minds of the jurymen, that his thoughts appeared to be theirs, expressed in the same simple words and quaint illustrations which they would have used if asked to give their opinions on the case. It is to be added, that Mason's almost cynical disregard of ornament in his addresses to the jury gave to an opponent like Webster ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and smoothed his ready-made suit on the rocking-chair back. Sitting on the edge of his bed, quaint in his cotton night-gown, like a rare little bird of dull plumage, he rubbed his head sleepily. Um-m-m-m-m! How tired he was! He went to open the window. Then his tamed heart leaped into a waltz, and he forgot ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... foot, from point to point, He told the arming of each joint, In every piece how neat and quaint, For Tomalin could do it: How fair he sat, how sure he rid, As of the courser he bestrid, How managed, and how well he did; The King which ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... purpose, as the sequel proved—to calm the feverish pulse of the people. On a Friday night (May eighth), the storm broke out, and it raged the whole of the next day. Church, chapel, and monastery could testify to its violence. Quaint windows of stained glass and rich old organs were dashed in pieces. Saints' effigies, to employ the quaint expression of a Roman Catholic eye-witness, "were massacred." "So great was the damage inflicted, without any profit, that the loss was estimated at more than a hundred ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... picture-teaching; that a calf, a lion, an eagle, and a beast with a man's face, should in all ages have been preferred by the Christian world, as expressive of Evangelistic power and inspiration, to the majesty of human forms; and that quaint grotesques, awkward and often ludicrous caricatures even of the animals represented, should have been regarded by all men, not only with contentment, but with awe, and have superseded all endeavors to represent the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... for its ability to sleep or to roister than to protect life or purse. Under these circumstances the citizen who would escape an assault by ruffians or thieves remained prudently indoors at night and retired early to bed. Picturesque and quaint the sixteenth-century town may have been; but it was also an uncomfortable and an unhealthful place in which ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... however, beyond the rank of a small and questionable looking public-house was apparent, until at a distance somewhat remote from the theatre, and in a quaint, old-fashioned, deserted square, a neat, newly whitewashed house displayed upon its frontispiece, in large black letters ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chasers of seal and whale, With their weapons quaint and grim, And bands of warriors in glittering mail, And herdsmen and hunters huge of limb. There are naked arms, with bow and spear, And ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... Dyer's quaint poem of "The Fleece" we could cull a hundred passages relating to sheep; but we have already exceeded our space. We cannot, however, close this brief notice of the allusions that have been made to sheep by our poets, without quoting a couple of verses from Robert Burns's "Elegy on Poor ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Vale. Now there is a rush of the crowd, and a tinkling bell is heard, and shouts of laughter; and Master Tom mounts on Benjy's shoulders, and beholds a jingling match in all its glory. The games are begun, and this is the opening of them. It is a quaint game, immensely amusing to look at; and as I don't know whether it is used in your counties, I had better describe it. A large roped ring is made, into which are introduced a dozen or so of big boys and young men who mean to play; these are carefully blinded ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... became as great a family joke as "Aunt Dorothy's lunatics;" indeed, scarcely a day passed that the household was not amused by some quaint mistake of hers. Every one chaffed her, especially Bob; and as the two patients rapidly recovered, the house-party was a merry one. In spite of the thought of parting with his family so soon, Mr. Orban ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... tinsel Dickens gives a fine example of it in Sergeant Buzfuz' speech in the "Pickwick Papers." Among other varieties of style may be mentioned the colloquial, the laconic, the concise, the diffuse, the abrupt the flowing, the quaint, the epigrammatic, the flowery, the feeble, the nervous, the vehement, and the affected. The manner of these is sufficiently indicated by the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... the thoughts that swelled the seaman's broad chest during that walk, and numerous, as well as wild and quaint, were the plans of escape which he conceived and ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... as quaint and amusing a work of light literature as exists. Bracebridge Hall is well known from its genuine merit, and has taken its place among the standard works in the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... childhood. She was expert with the rifle, lived the life of a trapper and hunter among the Indians, and was known as the "Female Hunter of Long Eddy." She published a book regarding those experiences. I have not been able to see it, but it is said to be quaint and well written. She regarded herself as practically a man, and became attached to a young woman of good education, who had also been deserted by her husband. The affection was strong and emotional, and, of course, without deception. It was interrupted by her recognition ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... don't, really; you can't know how dear and strange and familiar it all sounded: the old New York names that kept coming up in your mother's talk, and her charming quaint ideas about Europe—their all regarding it as a great big innocent pleasure ground and shop for Americans; and your mother's missing the home-made bread and preferring the American asparagus—I'm so tired of Americans who despise even their own asparagus! And then your married sister's spending ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... matter of great importance that no notice should be taken in his presence of the quaint sayings which result from the simplicity of the ideas in which he is brought up, nor should they be quoted in a way he can understand. A foolish laugh may destroy six months' work and do irreparable damage for life. I cannot repeat too ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... from a college-mate, Mr. Joseph Hillhouse, written in Boston on July 12, 1813, gives a pretty picture of Morse's home, and contains some quaint ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the matter scowling. Musq'oosis had made him angry, and he distrusted him. Yet he could not but be drawn to the quaint little philosopher, too. He could not but remember that Musq'oosis had been kind to him at a time when he ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... an arrangement proved easy. No especial furniture for the living room had been provided, but by stealing a few chairs and odd pieces from the ample supply provided for the bedrooms, adding the two quaint sofas and the upright piano and spreading the rugs in an artistic fashion, Ethel managed to make the "parlor part" of the room appear very cosy. The dining corner had a round table and high-backed ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... find the booty," said Thorndyke. "It just depends on whether the hiding-place was known to more than one of the gang. Well, it has been a quaint case, and instructive, too. I suspect our friend Barton and the evasive Schoenberg were the collaborators who ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Oxford scholar of family and fortune; but quaint and opinionated, despising every one who has not had the benefit of ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... the quaint description given in "Magna Britannia," published 1724:—"The western Front is very Noble and Majestick of Columel Work, and supported by three such tall Arches, as England can scarcely shew the like, which are adorned with a great Variety of curious Imagery. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Gratton did not appear in the least to resent her day of adventuring with King. He was interested; he did shake his head with one of his suave smiles and murmur "Lucky dog!" when King was referred to. But his interest seemed to be chiefly in "that quaint little relic of past, turbulent days, Coloma." He had her tell him all about it; of the deserted houses, the store, everything. Hence his curiosity in Honeycutt and Brodie, and just what happened between ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... night gloom o'erhead, in The still silent change, All fire-flush'd when forest trees redden On slopes of the range. When the gnarl'd, knotted trunks Eucalyptian Seem carved, like weird columns Egyptian, With curious device, quaint ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... intimate friends, Pater was rarely quite at his ease, but he liked being among people, and he made the greater satisfaction overcome the lesser reluctance. He was particularly fond of cats, and I remember one evening, when I had been dining with him in London, the quaint, solemn, and perfectly natural way in which he took up the great black Persian, kissed it, and set it down carefully again on his way upstairs. Once at Oxford he told me that M. Bourget had sent him the first volume of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... way of preface, I beg my readers to fancy themselves wafted away to the shores of the Bay of Yedo—a fair, smiling landscape: gentle slopes, crested by a dark fringe of pines and firs, lead down to the sea; the quaint eaves of many a temple and holy shrine peep out here and there from the groves; the bay itself is studded with picturesque fisher-craft, the torches of which shine by night like glow-worms among the outlying forts; far away to the west loom the goblin-haunted heights of Oyama, and beyond ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... could tell. The prescriptions of the books were many and various; the most interesting of them is the famous ver sacrum, an old Italian custom, already referred to, but here prescribed by a Greek authority. This was submitted to the people in Comitia, and carried with quaint provisions suited to protect them against any unconscious mistake in carrying out the vow, such as might produce further religio. We will only notice that though, according to the old tradition, it was to Mars that the Italian stocks were wont in time of famine and distress to dedicate ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the chamber grew murky. One morning a tallish man, past middle age, with iron-gray locks drooping on his shoulders, and wearing a mixed suit of plain clothes, took the floor. I noticed that pens, newspapers, and all else were laid down, and every eye fixed on the speaker. I supposed he was some quaint old joker from the backwoods, who was going to afford the House a little fun. The first sentences arrested my attention. A beam of light shot through the darkness, and I began to get glimpses of the question at issue. Soon a broad belt of sunshine spread over the chamber. 'Who ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... and quaint simplicity of the mode taken by the father to ascertain the hidden characters of his children, and the tone and character of these questions and answers, show the curious education which was made by the circumstances surrounding the Brontes. They knew no other children. They ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... out the top tray to disclose another on which rested three small leather bags. He loosened the draw-string of the nearest and shook out into his palm a pair of earrings of a quaint pattern in twisted gold set with dull red stones. Charity pronounced them garnets. Though they were not of great value, they were precious in Ricky's eyes, and even Charity ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... fast to the Ponte Rubaconte, and there leaned against the wall of one of the quaint little houses that rise at even distances on the bridge, looking towards the way by which Tessa would come. It would have softened a much harder heart than Tito's to see the little thing advancing with her round face much paled and saddened since ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... himself, and bought Quaint monsters for the market of those times, A gilded dragon, also, for ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... trochaic measures; and it seems to be equally popular, whether written with single rhyme, or with double; in stanzas, or in couplets; alone, or with some intentional intermixture. By a careful choice of words and style, it may be adapted to all sorts of subjects, grave, or gay; quaint, or pathetic; as may the corresponding iambic metre, with which it is often more or less mingled, as we see in some of the examples above. Milton's L'Allegro, or Gay Mood, has one hundred and fifty-two lines; ninety-eight of which are iambics; fifty-four ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the Upper Yellowstone has a thin, rocky soil, almost worthless for farming land. But what a paradise it would be for Izaak Walton and Daniel Boone! Quaint old Izaak would have realized a dream of Utopia in watching in the crystal stream its millions of speckled trout. It almost seems as if the New England trout had learned their proverbial wariness from long experience. There is none of it in these Yellowstone fish. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... now for Swedenborg. His home at Stockholm, with its quaint gambrel roof, its summer houses, its neat flower beds, its curious box trees, instantly became a Mecca for the inquisitive, burning to see the man who held converse with the dead and was instructed by the latter in many portentous secrets. Most of those who gained admission, and through ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... resumed, it was a case of fighting dog owners all the way. Seal Islands, about ninety miles farther down the coast, we reached on Saturday night, April 30th. There we had the good fortune to be entertained by a quaint character in the person of Skipper George Morris, a native trader. He had been expecting us, and he greeted me as if I had been ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... we know each other!" she resumed. "You could help me so much if you would! Next time you come, you must tell me something about those old French rhymes that have come into fashion of late! They say a pretty thing so much more prettily for their quaint, antique, courtly liberty! The triolet now—how deliriously impertinent it is! Is ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... Grimshaw and her dilemma on a schooner in mid-Pacific, when the captain, a gentle ancient, thinking that the dark women were having it all their own way, offered to embrace Miss Grimshaw, finding in return a gun pointing at his middle, filling him with quaint surprise that anyone could possibly offer violence in defence of a soul in ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... A delicate color touched her cheeks and neck. She held up the little garment, all fluffy with misty lace and wrought with quaint embroidery. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... hand is painted in vivid colours to resemble the face of an old woman. We know that he has a bundle that contains caps and bonnets, dresses and skirts that will convert his hand and arm into a quaint human figure. Many a droll story can he tell, for he has "padded the hoof" from one end of England to the other; he knows every lodging-house from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Plymouth. He is a graceless dog, fond of a joke, a laugh and a story; he is honest enough ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... which, somehow or other, had got a bad name in the neighbourhood. I had the curiosity to go and look at the place for myself. It's a saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough to be mean and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint. As far as I could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished, and almost every door has three bells to it. Here and there the ground floors have been made into shops of the commonest ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... between rich and poor, which the collapse of feudal relations had strained to breaking-point, was not perhaps normally so intense as it is to-day; yet there was certainly much oppression and unnecessary hardships to be suffered by the weak, even in that age. The Ancren Riwle, that quaint form of life for ankeresses drawn up by a Dominican in the thirteenth century, shows that even then, despite the distance of years and the passing of so many generations, the manners and ways and mental attitudes of people depended very much as to whether they were among those who had, ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... the most remarkable woman of her age, has published a book—half farce, half novel—in which she treats by turns with the clap-trap agony of a Bulwer, the quaint sneer of a Dickens, and the effrontery of an Ainsworth, that serious charge which employed the careful investigation of the most experienced men in France for many weeks, and which excited a degree of interest in domestic England almost unexampled in the history of foreign trials. This ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... At any other time I might have smiled at the girl's quaint phraseology. But I did not smile just then. Dulce est desipere in loco. Wild as the story sounded, it was making me feel decidedly uncomfortable. A slight perspiration had broken out on my forehead. But I threw a strong note of assurance into my voice ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... china, much of it pretty, and some of it valuable, though the finest pieces are not hung, but are placed in glass cabinets. One cannot see an inch of wall space anywhere in bedrooms, dining- or sitting-rooms for the huge delft platters, whole sets of the old green dragon pattern, quaint perforated baskets, pitchers and mugs of British lustre, with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, and clocks of china. The massing of colour is picturesque and brilliant, and the whole effect decidedly unique. The landlady's father and grandfather had been Bideford ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... slopes shadowed by fine old yew trees, a land of verdure, lonely and exceeding fair; and in a hollow of this undulating district nestles the village of Kingthorpe, with its half-dozen handsome old houses, its richly cultivated gardens, and quaint old square-towered church. It is a prosperous, well-to-do little settlement, where squalor and want are unknown. Its humbler dwellings belong chiefly to the labourers on the Wendover estate, and those are liberally paid and well ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... humour him like a child. But, in whatever manner the reconciliation was accomplished, the passengers partook of the blessings of the peace. Byron, during the following day, as we were sailing along the picturesque shores of Sicily, was in the highest spirits overflowing with glee, and sparkling with quaint sentences. The champagne was uncorked and in the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... it appears to us quite as certain in its effects on the animal economy as many others of the inert substances that have been lauded to the skies both in our country and in other parts of the world as antidotes, we take the liberty of transcribing it, as also of adding a translation of his quaint French. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... more than when I told you that your only real interest is women." He paused, his hand upon the door-knob. "I'm a quaint mixture, however: perhaps I ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard: The fold stands empty in the drowned field, And crows are fatted with the murrion flock; The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud; And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, are undistinguishable: The human mortals want their winter here; No night is now with hymn or carol blest:— Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... terrifying to the gay lords and ladies who come suddenly upon them as ever they were, though doubtless of no more lasting effect with such sinners than they would be nowadays. But what one must chiefly lament is the waste of the whole quaint and charming series of Scripture incidents by Benozzo Gozzoli. This is indeed most lamentable, and after realizing the loss one is only a little heartened by the gayety of certain grieving widows, sitting in marble for monuments to their husbands at several points under the arcades. What cheer they ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... stands, A statesman' raw experiment. If ill, Shall more experiments and more be tried In stress of jeopardy that stirs demand For sureness of proceeding? Must this House Exchange safe action based on practised lines For yet more ventures into risks unknown To gratify a quaint projector's whim, While enemies hang grinning round our gates ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... O pale thin man, At the end of the room By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan? —It is cold as a tomb, And there's not a spark within the grate; And the jingling wires Are as vain desires That have ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... dormer-windows of Derwood Manor, surmounting the spacious colonial porch with its high pillars, rose above the skirting of trees. Then came the quaint gate with its brick posts topped by stone urns, through which swept a wide road bordered by lilac bushes. Dismounting at the horse-block the young painter handed the reins to a negro boy who had advanced to meet him, and, making his ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... small, quaint, middle-aged person with squinting glance and bushy hair, was not only very much in awe of his lovely prisoner, but so accustomed to going about in his shirt-sleeves that he suffered acutely in the confinement of his heavy coat. Nevertheless, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... a strange little room into which the Lady Ysolinde brought me, full of quaint, changeful scents, and all ablaze with colors the like of which I had never seen. For not only were rugs and mats of outlandish Eastern design scattered over the floor, but there was vividly colored glass in the small, deeply set windows. Yet that which affected ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Thomas.) I shall never forget that presence marching up to the throne invisible with bowed head. This procession is to illustrate the line: "He is sifting out the hearts of men before his Judgment Seat." Later Lincoln is pictured on the steps of the White House. It is a quaint tableau, in the spirit of the old-fashioned Rogers group. Yet it is masterful for all that. Lincoln is taking the chains from a cowering slave. This tableau is to illustrate the line: "Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel." Now it ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... how from the robust follies of the North came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of honor, and the sweet, harmonizing influences of woman. He tracked the ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics, and Attilas. Full of all curious and quaint anecdote, of original illustration, of those niceties of learning which spring from a taste cultivated to the last exquisite polish, the book amused and allured and charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry, now in the simplicity of Montaigne, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Gurneys were lunching with Cappy Ricks at the one New York club to which Cappy belonged—quaint old India House in Hanover Square, haunt of shipping men and shippers, perhaps the best and least-known club in New York City. Joey had been unaffectedly glad to see his godfather; so much so, indeed, that Cappy rightly guessed Joey had designs on ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... ancient high-backed settee lies an item of fancy work, unfinished—just as she left it. In the "study" an open book, face downwards, has been left on a chair. It is the last book he was reading—it has never been disturbed. A pipe of quaint design is cold upon the lintel of the lattice window. No one will ever smoke that pipe again: it must have been difficult to smoke at any time. The sight of the artistic room, as depicted in the furniture catalogue, always ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... it, though. It was for that she was going in. As yet she had no money. But there were the rings and one more or one less, what did it matter? Of the lot she preferred the string of hoops. It was quaint, there was nothing philistine about it and probably it had not cost so very much. The emerald was different. It was a stone that would please any woman with plenty of money and a modicum of taste. Probably it had cost a thousand on Fifth Avenue, in which case it would fetch a hundred on Broadway. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... back and tapped at the garret door. Mademoiselle de Beauseant showed the way into the second room of their humble lodging. Everything had been made ready. The Sisters had moved the old chest of drawers between the two chimneys, and covered its quaint outlines over with a splendid altar cloth of ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... presented itself to their imagination, would reject; and on one of which he also remarks, that it is "one of the few airs that time has not the power to injure; it is of all ages and all countries." There is doubtless much in Purcell, which, though quaint and antiquated, the musician may nevertheless admire; but excellence of this kind is necessarily lost upon a general audience. Melody in his day was rude and unpolished; for there were no singers to execute, even if the composer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... that they had already imported cows, and a bull whose lowings terrified the Esquimaux. They had found self-sown corn too, probably maize. The streams were full of salmon. But they had called the land Vinland, by reason of its grapes. Quaint enough, and bearing in its very quaintness the stamp of truth, is the story of the first finding of the wild fox-grapes. How Leif the Fortunate, almost as soon as he first landed, missed a little wizened old German servant ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... book pleased Des Esseintes. He had caused to be printed, in violet ink and in a frame of cardinal purple, on a genuine parchment which the judges of the Rota had blessed, a copy of the Diaboliques, with characters whose quaint quavers and flourishes in turned up tails and claws ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... who governed the country. Each of them was from one point of view an official, but each also regarded his office as part of his property. The country belonged to him and his class rather than he to the country. We occasionally find the quaint theory which deduced political rights from property in land. The freeholders were the owners of the soil and might give notice to quit to the rest of the population.[29] They had therefore a natural right to ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... at any rate like no other that has hitherto been discovered, in which the pronouns form an inseparable part of numerous substantives and verbs, and in which gutturals are still in a state of transition to vowels. This people practise a code of religion and of quaint immorals fortunately confined to themselves, but which is not without some bearing on the question of the "Mahdi," now giving us some trouble in Africa. As some Kafirs call themselves "Kureishis," wnich favours a Shia notion in ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... of us—Louise, Cal and I, who rejoiced in the quaint cognomen of Pen, named for a rich, eccentric, old aunt, who had never left me any money because ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... visited the Huntingdon home. He was not the Towncrier then, but a seafaring man who had sailed many times around the globe, and had his fill of adventure. Tired at last of such a roving life, he had found anchorage to his liking in this quaint old fishing town at the tip end of Cape Cod. Georgina's grandfather, George Justin Huntingdon, a judge and a writer of dry law books, had been one of the first to open his home to him. They had been great ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that I had guessed her associations with the old plow- horse, and, sore-hearted as I was, I laughed long and silently over the quaint fancy. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... A quaint thing has happened to me! Came down here to take over the place, and to say decidedly I would not marry Miss Travers, and I find her with red hair and a skin like milk, and a pair of green eyes that look at you from a ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... poet, in this burst of loving sympathy, said would happen, did happen almost as he foretold it. Maecenas "first deceased;" and Horace, like the wife in the quaint, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... glaciers over the rocky ledges and through the hanging forests, and a swift river ran through this happy, fertile valley of peace and plenty in which our roadway wound. The peasants looked content and well-to-do, and were picturesquely clothed. We stopped an old man and bargained for the quaint, antique silver buttons on his coat, and paid him twice its weight in silver money for the big silver buckle at his belt. We were stopped at the frontier, and accommodatingly rose while the custom-officers politely looked under the carriage-seats. The wine we had just drunk was not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the Bible where the relation between man and woman is stated, it is thus said, with quaint simplicity:—'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.' Woman the helper of man, not his toy,—not a picture, not a statue, not a work of art, but a HELPER, a doer,—such is the view of the Bible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... of the possibility of colonizing the regions thus to be discovered. The quaint language in which he describes the chances of what is now called 'imperial expansion' ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... satisfaction, and wish you had the opportunity of seeing the glorious original. I am no antiquarian, but I believe the building itself possesses great interest for those who indulge in that musty study, on account of its vast antiquity and uncertain history. To me it is only a Hindoo temple of quaint architecture and unwholesome smell. Inside it is a small marble idol in the form of a pillar with a snake carved ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Kaiser Max is dust; it soars up on one side of this road, very steep and very majestic, having bare stone at its base, and being all along its summit crowned with pine woods; and on the other side of the road are a little stone church, quaint and low, and gray with age, and a stone farmhouse, and cattle sheds, and timber sheds, all of wood that is darkly brown from time; and beyond these are some of the most beautiful meadows in the world, full of tall grass and countless ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... and fair novelists Ruth-like in the fields of barley, or more mischievously coming through the rye,—what will the public, so vigorously sustained by these, care to hear of the lovely writers of old days, quaint creatures that they were?—Merry Miss Mitford, actually living in the country, actually walking in it, loving it, and finding history enough in the life of the butcher's boy, and romance enough in the story of the miller's daughter, to occupy all her mind with, innocent of troubles ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that one of them was; let us rather rejoice that you were not hurt by your fall, for that would indeed have been a serious matter. Now I'm sure you want to resume looking over that 'Abbe Marite;' isn't it quaint? and perhaps among Mr. Blackwood's glasses we may be able to find a pair that would suit your eyes for the nonce. I know how perfectly lost one feels without one's 'second eyes.' Shall we make the selection? Come, Felix and Nannie,—you, too, Max,—and ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... finished, the company now engaged in those less active sports, that exercise the subtility of the wit, more than the agility or strength of the body. Their untutored minds delighted themselves in the sly enigma, and the quaint conundrum. Much was their laughter at the wild guesses of the thoughtless and the giddy; and great the triumph of the swain who penetrated the mystery, and successfully removed the abstruseness of the problem. Many were the feats of skill ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... to answer these letters. In signing one of them, she took a look at her new signature and smiled. "What a dear, quaint little name mine is!" said she. "Lucy Dodd;" and she kissed ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... character. He is a very kindly, generous man, and anyone who has ever written stories will know that it is much more difficult to make kindly, generous characters interesting than unkindly and mean ones. But Dolittle is interesting. It is not only that he is quaint but that he is wise and knows what he is about. The reader, however young, who meets him gets very soon a sense that if he were in trouble, not necessarily medical, he would go to Dolittle and ask ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... facing the tall monster that guarded the deserted room and challenged him. "You haven't stopped," he answered in his beard. "Why not?" And as he said it, a new expression stole upon its hardened countenance, the challenge melted, the obdurate stare relaxed. The quaint, grandfatherly aspect of benevolence shone over it like a smile; it looked not only kind, but contrite. He saw it as it used to be, ages and ages ago, when he was a boy, sliding down the banisters towards it, or towards its counterpart in ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
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