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More "Whimsical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the beginning of a new day. And thus the primitive ceremonial, the dread of which had kept Everett late in bed every morning for a month, had resolved itself into what seemed to him but the embrace of a tender, whimsical brotherhood in which the old mystic both assumed and accounted for a stewardship in behalf of the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... force and in preparations. It attacked it by the three great openings of Italy, Switzerland, and Holland. A strong Austrian army debouched in the duchy of Mantua; it defeated Scherer twice on the Adige, and was soon joined by the whimsical and hitherto victorious Suvorov. Moreau replaced Scherer, and, like him, was beaten; he retreated towards Genoa, in order to keep the barrier of the Apennines and to join the army of Naples, commanded by Macdonald, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... The story has been recently told over again in a little volume by Mr. C. J. Rowe, entitled Bonds of Disunion, or English Misrule in the Colonies (Longmans, 1883). The title is somewhat whimsical, but the book is a very forcible and suggestive contribution to the discussion ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... noble and valiant nature; it is a custom of this country to give surnames, and, when only fifteen, he was called 'The Generous'—by which was, of course, meant generous in heart and mind. By another custom, no less touching than whimsical, this name was reverted to his parent, who is called 'The Father of the Generous,' and who might, with equal propriety, be called 'The Just,' for this old Indian is a rare example of chivalrous honor and proud independence. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... black shadow of the hill from the crest of which the Judge's place dominated the surrounding country. Little by little Denny Bolton's lean face lost its hint of hardness; the lines that ran from his thin nose to the corners of his lips disappeared as he smiled—smiled with whimsical gentleness—at the light that glimmered from a single window through the tangled bushes, twinkling back ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... strayed a yard from his sober rut. But his mind, like the Dying Gladiator's, had been far away. As a boy he had voyaged among books, and they had given him a world where he could shape his career according to his whimsical fancy. Not that Mr. McCunn was what is known as a great reader. He read slowly and fastidiously, and sought in literature for one thing alone. Sir Walter Scott had been his first guide, but he read the novels not for their insight into ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... warmth and a strange happiness. It was a face of wonderful beauty, he thought—of a wild sort of beauty, yet with something so gentle in the shining eyes that he sighed restfully. In these first moments of his returning consciousness the whimsical thought came to him that he was dying, and the face was a part of a pleasant dream. If that were not so he had fallen at last among friends. His eyes opened wider, he moved, and the face drew back. Movement stimulated returning life, and reason rehabilitated ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... Cho-Cho As Author and Manager. The play has defects— It has good points— And bad points— Like the world itself— Like life! Perhaps the author of the world Is something like me, A little grotesque, A little whimsical, Serious often, Sometimes all the more serious Seen through a Fool's words With cap and jingle of bells. In this droll world There are lots of children Who are the children of fools— Like me. Good people! ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... diary of the siege of Troy. But man is a creature very inconsistent with himself: the greatest heroes are sometimes fearful, the sprightliest wits at some hours dull; and the greatest politicians on some occasions whimsical. But I shall not pretend to palliate, or excuse the matter; for I find, by a calculation of my own nativity, that I cannot hold out with any tolerable wit longer than two minutes after twelve o'clock at night, between the 18th and 19th of the next month. For which space of time ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all mankind,—although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into the most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers; topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the day scattered over ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... which existed among the Indians as to the manner in which this plant was first bestowed upon mankind, is extremely whimsical, somewhat discreditable, and withal of such a nature as to preclude the propriety of our introducing it in this place to the acquaintance of our readers. But writers are not wanting who have carried ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... advancement. Human anatomy, as a study, had not been introduced, and physiology was almost unknown. In medicine, the standard of practice was the writings of Hippocrates, and the Materia Medica consisted of remedies suggested by the whimsical ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... laughter, especially as I imagined one of our new "spiritual" doctors ascending the pulpit under the new dispensation, to indulge in exhortations to a keener chase, of this world, and "the things of this world." I found afterwards similar thoughts were passing through Harrington's mind, rendered more whimsical by the recollection that, during college life, his friend (though very far from vicious) had certainly never seemed to take any deficient interest in the affairs of this world, nor to exhibit any predilection ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... lessons, just giving me breathing time, and sufficient strength to finish the service. The instant this was over, I walked away for the other church, determined, at all events, to persevere, for in a whimsical mood I had ever resolved to perform the Sunday's duty punctually, in spite of time, tide, or anything else. As I crossed each field, I was obliged to get on the top of every gate in order to rest ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... a high house in the Via Ripetta,[2.15] with a balcony which projects far over the street so as at once to strike the eye of any one entering through the Porta del Popolo, and there dwells perhaps the most whimsical oddity in all Rome,—an old bachelor with every fault that belongs to that class of persons—avaricious, vain, anxious to appear young, amorous, foppish. He is tall, as thin as a switch, wears a gay Spanish costume, a sandy wig, a conical hat, leather gauntlets, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Jean Paul Richter, "Der einsige." German writer and philosopher. His rather whimsical and fragmentary book on education, called "Levana," contains some rare scraps of wisdom much used by later ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... at this time, when the young Emperor gave fullest flight to his dreams, was a Department of the Navy. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate how whimsical was the mind of the Austrian ex-admiral and how slight was his grasp of the situation. Long-postponed issues, involving vital questions of policy and of administration, were awaiting his decision, and he busied himself with frivolities and with impossibilities. ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... My foolishly whimsical imagination translated that queer medley of sounds into the thought of a stable-pump. I heard the clank of the handle and then the musical rush of water ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... the whimsical habit of diverting herself, when visiting portrait galleries, by looking for faces that resembled those of her heroines. She was continually on the watch for Elizabeth, but never came upon her. She found Mrs. Bingley, "in a white gown with green ornaments," ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... god of this world sticks to the same old way, And is as whimsical as on creation's day; Life somewhat better might content him, But for the gleam of heavenly light which thou hast lent him. He calls it Reason—thence his power's increased To be far beastlier than any beast. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... pile it's all been ante'd up since, and now Billings comes in fresh—never draws but he gets a full hand—and he scoops the deck. He has too much luck for a white man." The remark was one that, said by Ray himself in his whimsical and downright manner, was destitute of any hidden meaning, and Billings, who had not seen Ray for years, would never have misunderstood it, but when he first heard it six months afterwards, and while Ray and himself had yet to meet, it was told semi-confidentially, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... said Bolingbroke, "who, at the age of fifteen, has in him the power to be the greatest man of his day, and in all probability will only be the most singular. An obstinate man is sure of doing well; a wavering or a whimsical one (which is the same thing) is as uncertain, even in his elevation, as a shuttlecock. But look to the box at the right: do you ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... anything to be elsewhere found,—flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame. They are here published as they were written, with very few and superficial changes; although it is fair to say that the titles have been assigned, almost invariably, by the editors. In many cases these verses ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... ludicrous can be conceived than the expedients of substituting, shifting, and patching, which ingenuity devised, to eke out wretchedness, and preserve the remains of decency. Nor was another part of our domestic economy less whimsical. If a lucky man, who had knocked down a dinner with his gun, or caught a fish by angling, invited a neighbour to dine with him, the invitation ran, 'bring your own bread.' Even at the Governor's table this custom was constantly observed. Every man who ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... only man who experienced the whimsical fatality, that seemed to delight in disuniting hearts, in order to engage them soon after to different objects. One would have imagined that the God of Love, actuated by some new caprice, had placed his empire under ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... he had only succeeded in showing that his resignation was unnecessary. He was criticised as the possessor of a kind of supernatural virtue that could scarcely be popular with the slaves of party, and he was considered whimsical, fantastic, impracticable, a man whose 'conscience was so tender that he could not go straight,' a visionary not to be relied on—in fact, a character and intellect useless to the political manager." "I am greatly alarmed at Gladstone's resignation. I fear it foretells measures ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... suggested both firmness and a sense of humor. The quality of decision appeared in the mouth which the smooth-shaven upper lip displayed above the white chin-whisker, while the tousled shock of white hair and twinkling blue eyes were indicative of the whimsical turn of mind that manifested itself in witty and sententious sayings. His long experience in the court-room made him alive to the vast expense which the trial and punishment of criminals imposes upon the State, and led to his belief ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... complaining," remarked the other young aviator, with a whimsical expression on his good-natured face. "But don't you know I hate to go back without having fired even one shot." He stopped short and pointed upward. "Hold on, Tom; there's some kind of bird going to pass over right now! Crow or ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... in the growing dusk, under the cold glitter of Thirteen Star, two hundred strong, and beside the garish glories of the agricultural engine, Mamie and Jim were made one. The scene was incongruous, but the business pretty, whimsical, and affecting; the typewriters with such kindly faces and fine posies, Madame so demure, and Jim—how shall I describe that poor, transfigured Jim? He began by taking the minister aside to the far end of the office. I knew not what he said, but I have reason to believe he was protesting his unfitness, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... style of mask here, is the dress of an English sailor, straw hats, blue jackets, white trowsers, and very white masks with pink cheeks: we saw hundreds in this whimsical costume. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... in fine, by the obstacles it opposed to the usurpations of supreme power, and the innumerable guarantees it secured to the nation, established public and private liberty on foundations not to be shaken; yet, from the most whimsical of all inconsistencies, it was considered as the work of despotism, and occasioned Napoleon the loss ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the lockup. In Goethe's circle at Strassburg, which numbered, among others, Lenz, Klinger, and H. L. Wagner, this Shakspere mania was de rigueur. Lenz, particularly, who translated "Love's Labour's Lost," excelled in whimsical imitations of "such conceits as clownage keeps in pay."[7] Upon his return to Frankfort, Goethe gave a feast in Shakspere's honor at his father's house (October 14, 1771), in which healths were drunk to the "Will of all Wills," and the youthful host delivered an extravagant ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... closely, and I saw before that year ended that you were taking your medicine rightly. I wanted to tell you of my contentment, but being slow of speech I—couldn't. So"—the iron face broke for a second into a whimsical grin— "so I offered you a motor. And you wouldn't take it. I knew, though you didn't explain, that you feared it would interfere with your studies. I was right?" Johnny nodded. "Yes. And your last ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... fantastical. Besides the prejudice which we have in favour of ancient dresses, there may be likewise other reasons, amongst which we may justly rank the simplicity of them, consisting of little more than one single piece of drapery, without those whimsical capricious forms by which all other ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... nearer—"I'm sorry for your disappointment, but I wish I could make you see how much you have to live for. Get in the habit of looking at the sunsets, Beason. Take a good many long looks at the mountains and the rivers. It's not unscientific. You know,"—with a little whimsical toss of his head—"we only have so many looks to take in this world, and when we're about through we'd hate to think they'd all been into microscopes and culture ovens. And don't worry too much, Beason, about things running into your plans and knocking them over. You ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... texture and form of mind and character to be observed by human perception, that among such friends—and enemies—as so slight a thing could claim she was prettily known as "Feather". Her real name, "Amabel", was not half as charming and whimsical in its appropriateness. "Feather" she adored being called and as it was the fashion among the amazing if amusing circle in which she spent her life, to call its acquaintances fantastic pet names ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... II, Napoleon and Louis XVIII, is sheer nonsense and mere verbiage—it is as if one should compare the house-dog and the wolf, and argue that the terror inspired by the latter was very much to his honour. All this is such a mystery to Mr. Macaulay that he wanders into two theories so whimsical, that we hesitate between passing them by as absurdities, or producing them for amusement; we adopt the latter. One is that Cromwell could have no interest and therefore no personal share in the death of Charles. "Whatever Cromwell was," says Mr. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... follow this singularly bold English traveller and whimsical writer, in all his crudities, as he has quaintly termed his own writings, it has seemed proper to give some abbreviated extracts of his observations, which may serve in some measure to illustrate those of Sir Tomas Roe and the Reverend ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... and alarms it; it feasts on suspicion and anxiety, fictitious hopes and deceitful reports; it seizes with avidity on the things that please it, but scarcely is it in possession of the sought for objects when it abandons them with disgust. Hence the impressions to which it gives rise are as whimsical and as inconstant as itself; they appear and disappear in the soul without any apparent reason for their presence ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... his humour, by shaking his head, as if his whole soul was amused by the whimsical image his rude fancy had conjured, and indulged in a hearty laugh; and again his white companion muttered certain exceedingly heavy and sententious denunciations. The young man, who seemed to enter very little into the quarrels and witticisms of his singular associates, still kept his gaze ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Gods of destiny act in whimsical ways. Doubtless the voyage would have finished without the betterment of our acquaintance; doubtless our paths would have parted, nevermore to cross; doubtless our lives would have been lived out to their fulness and this ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... lady was no sooner dead than the old boy married a Bulgarian snake charmer, whom he had picked up in Constantinople! You may well smile"—for Verisschenzko had raised his eyebrows in a whimsical way—this did sound such a ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... science received considerable improvements. After the addition of a bridge, purer notes were extracted; and the different students, pursuing the bent of their inclinations, constructed instruments of various forms, according to their individual fancies; and to this whimsical accident we are indebted for the tuneful ney and the heart-exhilarating rabab, and, in short, all the other instruments ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... was in appearance a short, stout, bald-headed man, with cordial manners and whimsical views of things that amused all who met him. He died at Natick, ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... have his own way. With a boy's impetuous desire he became obsessed by the idea of her. When he was not with her, he devised schemes to remind her of him, making love to her by proxy in a dozen foolish, whimsical ways. When it was not flowers or candy, it was a string of nonsense verses laid between the pages of her type-writer paper, sometimes a clever caricature of himself or Monte, and always it was love ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... instant's break in the music, he dropped into a whimsical and really humorous rendering of "Yankee Doodle." Quickly the V. A. D. moved from the stool, caught Paula and thrust her into the vacant place. Then together the violin and piano rattled into a fantastic ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... all the old abuses practiced in the petty courts in the eighteenth century were revived. William of Hesse-Cassel returned, on the fall of Napoleon, to his domains. True to his whimsical saying, "I have slept during the last seven years," he insisted upon replacing everything in Hesse exactly on its former footing. In one particular alone was his vanity inconsistent: notwithstanding his hatred toward Napoleon, he retained the title of ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... much welcome News of fair Celesia's. Often he read the Letters o're and o're, but there his Fate lay hid, for 'twas that very Fondness proved his Ruin. He lodg'd at a Cousin's House of his, and there, (it being a private Family) lodged likewise a Blackamoor Lady, then a Widower; a whimsical Knight had taken a Fancy to enjoy her: Enjoy her did I say? Enjoy the Devil in the Flesh at once! I know not how it was, but he would fain have been a Bed with her, but she not consenting on unlawful Terms, (but sure all Terms are with her unlawful) ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... came to Iglesias, looking down at him, that among the many millions of his fellow-mortals, this whimsical childlike being stood nearest to him in sympathy and in love. The thought moved him strangely, at once deepening his sense of isolation and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... So terrible was the alarm in Europe, that the inhabitants of Sweden and the north of Germany neglected, in 1238, to send their ships, as usual, to the herring-fishery on the coast of England; and, as observed by Gibbon, it is whimsical enough to learn, that the price of herrings in the English market was lowered in consequence of the orders of a barbarous Mogul khan, who resided on the borders of China[4]. The tide of ruin was stemmed at Newstadt ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... whimsical reaction rather incoherently by saying that those nice old words were so much more fun than the others, and in spite of remonstrance she clung to her fancy with so lightly laughing an obstinacy that neither she nor anyone ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... response. "This is Dick, my brother. We're going to stay all summer—if you'll keep us," he added, with a whimsical smile. "And after this I'll let you pick ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... Aunt Sarah will 'knit fast,'" she was thinking, with whimsical eyes. "But if she doesn't—Theodosia Baxter, dear, if Aunt Sarah is a slow knitter, you are in for it! I've no idea of letting you off. ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Kitty O'Hara, the only old maid in the history of the O'Haras, and famed in her day for a caustic tongue and a venomed pen. Dad and Mother—what a pair of children they had been! The very dissimilarity of their natures had been a bond between them. Dad, light-hearted, whimsical, care-free, improvident; Mother, gravely sweet, anxious-browed, trying to teach economy to the handsome Irish husband who, descendant of a long and royal line of spendthrift ancestors, would ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... his evils mysterious and remote causes. In the general order of the universe his condition is, doubtless, subject to inconveniences, and his existence governed by superior powers; but those powers are neither the decrees of a blind fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical and fantastic beings. Like the world of which he forms a part, man is governed by natural laws, regular in their course, uniform in their effects, immutable in their essence; and those laws,—the common source of good and evil,—are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden in codes ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... either be dumpish or unneighbourly, or talk of such matters as no wise body can abide; wherefore, for my part, I shall never be sorry for her departure. Let her go, and let better come in her room. It was never a good world since these whimsical ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Roman literature has made us so accustomed to the idea of a Cupid awakening love by shooting arrows that we fail to realize how entirely fanciful, not to say whimsical, this conceit is. It would be odd, indeed, if the Hindoo poets had happened on the same fancy as the Greeks of their own accord; but there is no reason to suppose that they did. Kama is one of the later gods of the Indian Pantheon, and there is every reason ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... upon them lava torrents, and frequently convulse them with a mighty earthquake? If so, New Mexico and Arizona must have been her favorite playgrounds. At many points her rock formations look like whimsical imitations of man's handicraft, or specimens of the colossal vegetation of an earlier age. Some are gigantic, while others bear a ludicrous resemblance to misshapen dwarfs, suggesting, as they stand like pygmies ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Emerson himself than whimsical eccentricity or churlish austerity. But there was occasionally an air of bravado in some of his followers as if they had taken out a patent for some knowing machine which was to give them a monopoly of its products. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... present proportions solely from the intrinsic merits of its object. The Violin has not come suddenly to occupy the attention of the curious, like many things that might be named, which have served to satisfy a taste for the collection of what is rare or whimsical, and to which an artificial value has been imparted. In those days when the old Brescian and Cremonese makers flourished, the only consideration was the tone-producing quality of their instruments; the Violin had not then taken ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... of those who believe that the world is growing cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug surpasses everything, it may be observed that these signs, of which the origin seems so whimsical to many Paris merchants, are the dead pictures of once living pictures by which our roguish ancestors contrived to tempt customers into their houses. Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey, and ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... coltish but certainly not, at first glance, feminine. Close-cut curls, blue-black and wispy, cast the faintest of shadows over a squarish sunburnt face, and her eyes were so thickly rimmed with heavy dark lashes that I could not guess their color. Her nose was snubbed and might have looked whimsical and was instead oddly arrogant. Her mouth was wide, and her chin round, and altogether I dismissed her as not at ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... through the tensely eager throng. In their hands they bore each a golden jar, curiously shaped and chiseled, and bearing a whimsical ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... it in them to do good," (Jer. x. 5.) The case is quite otherwise with this image. It has "life, speaks, and has power to kill," (Rev. xiii. 15.) These properties of John's "image" are so opposite to those of the Papal images, that they effectually confute Mr. Faber's fanciful, not to say whimsical theory. It has been already shown that the "image" symbolizes the Papacy, the fac-simile ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... progress when evil fortune knocked at his door and, conspiring with circumstances and a friend or two, induced the young poet to devise what afterward seemed to him the gravest of mistakes,—the Poe-poem hoax. He was then writing for an audience of county papers and never dreamed that this whimsical bit of fooling would be carried beyond such boundaries. It ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... the common people, as was our said Master. And his fame so increased that his advice was asked on every subject, and he was so incessantly in demand that he did not know what to do. If a woman had a bad, or whimsical, or capricious husband, she went to this good master for a remedy. In short, if any could give good advice it was thought that our physician was at the top of the tree in that respect, and people came to him from all parts ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... resplendent a dress that she has fairly ousted in our affections, not only her sister profession of "High Toby and the Road," but every other splendid and villainous vocation. Yet Teach, Kid, and Avery were as terrible or grim as Duval, Turpin, and Sheppard were courtly or whimsical. And the terrible is a more vital affair than the whimsical. Is it, then, unnatural that, after a lapse of nigh on two centuries, we should shake our wise heads and allow that which is still nursery within us to deplore the loss of those days when we ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... answered, "and there seems to me only one of two things to do—either move into civilization, or import a pedagogue." A pause, and a whimsical inflection came into his voice. "Unfortunately, however, neither plan seems ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Lancelot, with the whimsical expression that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most unamiable moments. "You must deduct the Thalers I made in exhibitions. As for living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it's an economy, for every now and again it occurs to you that you are saving an awful lot, and ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... sat down with an uncertain movement, and covered her face with her hands; whilst Mr. Amherst, clinging to the rock for fear the ebbing tide should carry them out to sea, spoke to her with whimsical entreaty. "Mrs. Beauchamp, please don't faint until Nelson comes back! Pull yourself together—he expects us to do our duty; and, besides, ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... healthy face of former days. The lines of weariness and pain that never could be fully erased were all for her, she thought with a little catch of her breath. Then with a pitying, affectionate look at the sleeping man came a whimsical smile. Once she had thought no one could equal John in physical vigor. Now she pictured Kut-le's panther ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... officer with whom she was promenading, and without a moment's hesitation, placed her left hand, fan-bearing, close to the shoulder knot on his stalwart right arm, her black-gloved right in his white-kidded left, and instantly they went gliding away together, he nodding half in whimsical apology, half in merriment, over the black spangled shoulder, and the roseate light died slowly from the sweet, smiling face—the smile itself seemed slowly freezing—as the still dilated eyes followed the graceful movements of the couple, slowly, harmoniously winding and reversing about ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... One with a whimsical face spoke freely; "I?—I sought some stir, Some urge in living, Some sense in dying. I sought a ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... pass from the vague sense of power or mana felt by the savage to the personal god, to Dionysos or Apollo, though it may seem a set back it is a real advance. It is the substitution of a human and tolerably humane power for an incalculable whimsical and often cruel force. The idol is a step towards, not a step from, the ideal. Ritual makes these idols, and it is the business of science to shatter them and set the spirit free for contemplation. Ritual must wane ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... Hoyt's view of the world is whimsical, and he likes to be bothered neither with the disagreeable nor the mysterious. That is the reason he loathes and detests going to a house of mourning to photograph a corpse. The bad taste of it offends ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... golden, billowing sea where a wild wind was harping. For a few moments there was silence in the little dark-walled room. Then he turned and looked down into Anne's sympathetic face with a smile, half-whimsical, half-tender. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... (first and foremost, because the earliest of our acquaintance) the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind-hearted, whimsical, pedantic; and Flora MacIvor (whom even we forgive for her Jacobitism), the fierce Vich Ian Vohr, and Evan Dhu, constant in death, and Davie Gellatly roasting his eggs or turning his rhymes with restless volubility, and the two stag-hounds that met Waverley, as ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... mind was always busy with plans and inventions, many of them of serious intent, some semi-serious, others of a purely whimsical character. Once he proposed a "Modest Club," of which the first and main qualification for membership was modesty. "At present," he wrote, "I am the only member; and as the modesty required must be of a quite aggravated type, the enterprise did seem for a time doomed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... trellis, as is shown by the square pillars in front and the holes in the walls which enclose two sides of the triclinium. These walls are elegantly painted in panels, in the prevailing taste; but above the panelling there is a whimsical frieze, appropriate to the purpose of this little pavilion, consisting of all sorts of eatables which can be introduced at a feast. When Mazois first saw it the colors were fresh and beautiful; but when ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... emanates from the sovereign, even when the first human beings to enunciate it are the judges, or you may think that law is the voice of the Zeitgeist, or what you like. It is all one to my present purpose. Even if every decision required the sanction of an emperor with despotic power and a whimsical turn of mind, we should be interested none the less, still with a view to prediction, in discovering some order, some rational explanation, and some principle of growth for the rules which he laid ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... of the rough drafts of his famed discourses delivered at the Oratory are preserved in the library of the Guildhall, London. The advertisements he drew up for the papers, announcing their subject, are generally exceedingly whimsical, and ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... a bad opinion of women. Now am I very whimsical in supposing that this disappointed candidate will be hurt at her rejection, and angry or cast down according to her nature? "Angry, indeed!" says Juno, gathering up her purple robes and royal raiment. "Sorry, indeed!" cries Minerva, lacing on her corselet again, and scowling ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O'Shuffleton, with the Whimsical Adventures of the Halibut Family, and Other Eccentric Characters in the French Metropolis. Embellished with Twenty-One Comic Vignettes and Twenty-One Colored Engravings of Scenes from Real Life, by George Cruikshank. London: Printed for John Cumberland. 1828." This "Life in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the author of The London Spy, gives a whimsical account of a journey to Sturbridge, in the second volume ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... all fresh, and if the adverse breeze approaches to a gale, they at once fumigate St. Nicholas, and put up the helm. The consequence of course is that under the ever-varying winds of the Ægean they are blown about in the most whimsical manner. I used to think that Ulysses with his ten years’ voyage had taken his time in making Ithaca, but my experience in Greek navigation soon made me understand that he had had, in point of fact, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... well as in the great cities fate plays its changing and whimsical hand. If Baree had dragged himself into the timber half an hour later he would have died. He was too far gone now to hunt for crayfish or kill the weakest bird. But he came just as Sekoosew, the ermine, the most bloodthirsty little pirate ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... lingered. The Apaches had done some damage. One driver had been lanced mortally. One muleteer had been shot through the heart with an arrow. Another arrow had scraped Shubert's ankle. Another, directed by the whimsical genius of accident, had gone clean through the drooping cartilage of Phineas Glover's long nose, as if to prepare him for the sporting of jewelled decorations. Two mules were dead, and several wounded. The sides of the wagons bristled with shafts, and their canvas tops were pierced with fine holes. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... muscular and a splendid half back. He was eager and chivalrous and had a charming smile and was a famous schemer of things to do, and places to go. The University was co-educational and Roger had no rival with the girls except perhaps Ernest. Ernest was whimsical and sweet and very musical, and he took the girls seriously, which Roger ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... chaos was better. At least it expressed something human. And then the picture of that other room, so exquisite, so impregnated with the Far-away Princess spirit of its creator, rose up before him, and he sighed and rubbed his fingers through his red stubbly hair, and made a whimsical grimace, and said, "Oh Damn!" And Elodie then bursting in, with a proud "Isn't it pretty, ton petit chez-toi!" What could he do but smile, and assure her that no soldier home from the wars could have a more ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Mythist worshipped it reflected on the outer world and endowed with supernatural attributes, clothed with mist-caps and wishing-caps that gave it dominion over space and time. The restless, glittering, whimsical sprites of fairy mythology, that were believed of old to have so large a share in shaping the course of Nature and of human life, have vanished from the precincts of the schoolmaster at least. They could not endure the clear eyebeam of Science, which has searched their subterranean abodes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... spending the greater part of even a winter's day in the open air. Her garden, too, which daily occupied more and more of her attention, as it increased in beauty, had the same tendency; and her anxiety to profit by the experience of others on one occasion inflicted a whimsical disappointment of the free-thinkers of the court. The profligate and sentimental infidel Rousseau had died a couple of years before, and had been buried at Ermenonville, in the park of the Count de Girardin. In the course of the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... published at irregular intervals, when they suddenly ceased to appear. The authors, who wrote under fictitious names, affected from the start complete indifference to fame or profit. Their purpose, they said with whimsical assurance, was simply "to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age." The audacity of the thing caught the town; it was a decided success, and very profitable—for the publisher. There is a mildly sophomoric flavor about the "Salmagundi" papers, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... ever took himself less seriously. Prominent citizens came with fair words and he listened to them and printed them; bribes were offered and accepted only for publication; while threats were received joyously and made the subject of half-whimsical comment. ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... thing, said the private tutor; one of those grotesque and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life. I lost the best situation which I am ever likely to have through it. But I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I gained—well, as I tell you the story you will learn what ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she knew so well. She moved happily that way, suddenly surprised to know that she was not at all concerned because her husband sat in the distant corner with Mrs. Cartle. She felt for him to-night only a whimsical comradeship. Stopping many times on her way to exchange a word and a smile, she finally drew near the corner where the sleek dark head and the merry eye had drawn her. Mrs. Meredith, seeing her, came to meet her, ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... his arms, then dropped them with a kind of whimsical desperation. "How can I be well, or look well? My pride has suffered as well as my health. I'm ill, ashamed, and sorry. What'll we do, Pauline, if ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... fact that he must forage on to other fields and look for better luck in newer ventures, yet not quite forgetful that life, after all, is rather a blithe adventure and that the man who refuses to surrender his courage, no matter what whimsical turns the adventure may take, is still to be reckoned the conqueror. But later on he was jolly enough and direct enough, when he got to showing Dinky-Dunk his books and curios. I suppose, at heart, he was about as interested in those things as an aquarium angel-fish is in a Sunday afternoon ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... some passages of satirical verse, which were to be inserted in a new edition of "Terrible Tractoration." Years before, I had lighted on an illustrated copy of this poem, bestrewn with venerable dust, in a corner of a college library; and it seemed strange and whimsical that I should find it still in progress of composition, and be consulted about it by Dr. Caustic himself. While Mr. Fessenden read, I had leisure to glance around at his study, which was very characteristic of the man and his occupations. The ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Julian," he declared. "I always believed that he had capacity. Dear me, though," he went on, with a whimsical little smile, "what a blow ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... me long to discover that Parnassing all alone had lost some of its charms. I missed the Professor: missed his abrupt, direct way of saying things, and his whimsical wit. And I was annoyed by his skipping off without a word of good-bye. It didn't seem natural. I partially appeased my irritation by stopping at a farmhouse on the other side of the river and selling a cook book. Then I started along the road for Bath—about five ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... turned out to be a sort of patrol leader and scoutmaster in one, had a kind of whimsical look of inquiry on his face which was his permanent expression, and which was made the more humorous by red hair which he wore decidedly pompadour. There was that in his look which indicated his taking everything as he found it, his attitude being always quietly ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... about a tale which has here been told for the whimsical fancy of its unseemliness and because it is probably the worst that there is to tell, we may here look forward and face the well-known fact that the unseemliness in talk of rough, rustic boys flavoured the great President's ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... particular flare of importance of an arriving customer, a lady whose meals were apparently irregular, yet whom she was destined, she afterwards found, not to forget. The girl was blasee; nothing could belong more, as she perfectly knew, to the intense publicity of her profession; but she had a whimsical mind and wonderful nerves; she was subject, in short, to sudden flickers of antipathy and sympathy, red gleams in the grey, fitful needs to notice and to "care," odd caprices of curiosity. She had a friend who had invented ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... [Footnote 1: This whimsical prevention of a consequence which no one would have thought of deducing,—setting up an absurdum on purpose to hunt it down,—placing guards as it were at the very outposts of possibility,—gravely giving out laws to insanity and prescribing moral fences to distempered intellects, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... to appear otherwise than ordinary, for in the gleam of the match my watch-glass showed as the face of a little old gray man, uncommonly like the folk-lorist himself, peering up at me with an expression of whimsical laughter. My own reflection it could not possibly have been, for I am clean-shaven, and this face looked up at me through a running tangle of gray hair. Yet a second and third match revealed only the white surface with the thin black hands ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... houses are deep in controverted points. Miss F——e, we are credibly informed, is Sub-, and Madame V——a Supra-Lapsarian. Mr. Pope is the last of the exploded sect of the Ranters. Mr. Sinclair has joined the Shakers. Mr. Grimaldi, Senior, after being long a Jumper, has lately fallen into some whimsical theories respecting the Fall of Man; which he understands, not of an allegorical, but a real tumble, by which the whole body of humanity became, as it were, lame to the performance of good works. Pride he will have to be nothing but a stiff neck; irresolution, the nerves shaken; an inclination ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... place between them but a short time after she had told her story of his tricking of his creditors. 'Twas at a Court ball and was a whimsical affray indeed, though chiefly remembered afterwards because of the events which followed it—one of them occurring upon the spot, another a day later, this second incident being a mystery never after unravelled. At this ball was my Lady Dunstanwolde in white and silver, and looking, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... whom the King had delighted to honour—with whimsical glances at my clothes, which tended to "sincerity rather then ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... full of whimsical mirth, Lined by the wind, burned by the sun; Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth, As whose children we ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... bursts from its cell with a horrible yell and in the lulls between pangs you go forth among men with the haunted look in your eye of one who is listening for the footfalls of a dread apparition, and one half of your head is puffed out of plumb as though you were engaged in the whimsical idea of holding an egg plant in the side of your jaw. A kind friend meets you, and, speaking with that high courage and that lofty spirit of sacrifice which a kind friend always exhibits when it's your tooth that is kicking up the rumpus and not his, he tells you you ought ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... {74a} However whimsical this claim may appear, observes Mr. Smirke, it is almost exactly paralleled in the law ascribed to Rob. I. of Scotland:—"Si debitor per vim a parte creditoris namos abstulerit, creditor cum secta vel ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... him in grave silence; but when Ferrers, concluding his fourth letter before another man would have got through his first page, threw down the pen, and looked full at Maltravers, with a good-humoured but penetrating stare, there was something so whimsical in the intruder's expression of face, and indeed in the whole scene, that Maltravers bit his lip to restrain a smile, the first he ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of either side, with a regard to the possible onslaught of dogs. There is something about a man with a pack on his back that infuriates the average dog, as I have on several occasions found to my annoyance. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his whimsical and altogether delightful "Travels with a Donkey," thus vents his ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... and Death, in the middle, each in the act as if to strike a bell. When, in complete order, Death used to come forward to strike the quarters; and, having struck them, was instantly repelled by our Saviour. When he came forward to strike the hour, our Saviour in turn retreated:— a whimsical and not very comprehensible arrangement. But old clocks used to be ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... spaces. Tut—tut—tut would echo from the hills, then a whinging past his ears or a spurt of dust in too close proximity, and he would redouble his pace. The shelter of the bank on the farther side gained, he would turn to laugh at the expressions, whimsical, serious as death, or thoroughly amused, of his cobbers as they rapidly ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... we still apply the old French term "aver," averium, in Guernsey, to the hog or pig; in Jersey, to a child. In France "aver" denoted the animal produce or stock on a farm; and there were "averia lanata" likewise. Similar apparently whimsical adaptations of words will not shock those who are aware that "pig" in England properly means a little fellow of the swine species, and that "pige" in Norse signifies ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... me, as though he had been in the habit of seeing me every day of his life from my earliest childhood, with a whimsical remark on the appearance of a stout negro woman who was sitting upon a stool near the edge of the quay. Presently he observed amiably that I had ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... won't do!" said he, in a tone of whimsical apology. "This won't do, you know. I'm floating off on my hobby (and there's a mixed metaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!). I'm boring you to extinction, and I don't want to do that, for I'm anxious that you should ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... to this impious Folly, expose the sacred Mysteries of Christianity, and make its Votaries the common Topick of their Raillery, it cannot thence be concluded, that they are certain that those whom they thus deride, as whimsical, stupid, and deluded Men, have not the least Reason to support their Religious Principles and Practice; for if they were sure of this, they would treat such unhappy Persons as Men rob'd of their Senses, with Tenderness and Compassion; ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... Latin is taught throughout the world, and no education is considered as finished without a more or less perfect knowledge of Latin. But where in a foreign country is the professor who teaches the Ugro-Finnish tongue, even if there were some whimsical parent who wished that his son ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... My old favourite cynic, with all his rough honesty and acute discrimination, Anthony Wood, engraved a sketch of Stockdale when he etched with his aqua-fortis the personage of a brother:—"This Edward Waterhouse wrote a rhapsodical, indigested, whimsical work; and not in the least to be taken into the hand of any sober scholar, unless it be to make him laugh or wonder at the simplicity of some people. He was a cock-brained man, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... at the court of St. Petersburg, Paul loaded with reproaches and even with insults. His conduct became so whimsical as to lead many to suppose that he was actually insane. He had long hated the French republicans, but now, with a new and a fresher fury, he hated the allies. The wrecks of his armies were ordered to return to Russia, and he ceased to take ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... hut, residence, cathedral, mosque, pyramid, a, weird combination of Eastern and Western architecture. The style was complicated enough to set a classical architect crazy, and yet there was something whimsical and pretty about it. It had been invented and built under the direction of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... first that has hitherto been discovered in Australia, abounds in the valley where we halted; the sides and abrupt projections of the hills being composed entirely of it, and worn by the operation of time into a thousand whimsical shapes and forms. A small stream runs through the valley, which in June 1815 was dry; the bottom of this rivulet was covered with a variety of stones, but the bases of the hills which projected into it, and from which the earth had been washed, were of pure ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... City of my Discontent, Down from the sky, up from the smoking deep Wild legends new and old burn round my bed While trees and grass and men are wrapped in sleep. Angels come down, with Christmas in their hearts, Gentle, whimsical, laughing, heaven-sent; And, for a day, fair Peace have given me In this, the ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... very bright star in the west and smiled with whimsical ruefulness. "I love music—that is, what I call music. When I was in the Ozarks I fiddled a lot, but discovered it did not bring me what I wanted, so I went to work. I got a job in a bank at Oakville; ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... I came a simple soldier's boy from Ireland To Prague—and with a master, whom I buried. 55 From lowest stable-duty I climbed up, Such was the fate of war, to this high rank, The plaything of a whimsical good fortune. And Wallenstein too is a child of luck, I love a fortune that is like my ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... they were when you left, Jo," said the one addressed in whimsical tone. "You've only been gone ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... the cabman to drive straight to a street leading out of Holborn, a very quiet-looking street, where you could buy diamonds enough to set up all the jewellers in the Palais Royale and the Rue de la Paix, and where, if you were so whimsical as to wish to transform a service of plate into "white soup" at a moment's notice, you might indulge your fancy in ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was about eighteen or nineteen years old (began Dr. Simsen). I was studying at the University, and being coached in anatomy by my old friend Soelling. He was an amusing fellow, this Solling. Full of jokes and whimsical ideas, and equally merry, whether he was working at the dissecting table or brewing a ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... phraseology are equally meritorious. Mr. Hoag's poetical attainments are such that we await with eagerness the appearance of the pieces predicted in his biography. "To Flavia", by Chester Pierce Munroe, is a sweet lyric addressed to a young child and pervaded throughout with a quaintly whimsical, almost Georgian, semblance of stately gallantry. The first word of the seventeenth line should read "small" instead of "swell". As misprinted, this line conveys a rather incongruous impression. "Mountains in Purple Robes of Mist", a vivid and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... coffee-house in Covent Garden when he left the locksmith's, Mr Chester sat long over a late dinner, entertaining himself exceedingly with the whimsical recollection of his recent proceedings, and congratulating himself very much on his great cleverness. Influenced by these thoughts, his face wore an expression so benign and tranquil, that the waiter in immediate attendance upon him ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... of people who owned their houses but did not spend much money on them. Number 48 was a good deal like the others. "Decent enough, but commonplace," Randolph pronounced. "Yet what could I have been expecting?" he added; and his whimsical smile told him not to ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... mighty good to a tired man," said Shif'less Sol in his whimsical tone. "I never worked so hard in my life before ez I hev lately, an' I think I need to rest for the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... horns of Bacchus. Cf. Sidon. Apoll. Burg. Pontii Leontii, vs. 26, "Caput ardua rumpunt Cornua, et indigenam jaculantur fulminis ignem." See some whimsical reasons for this in Isidor. Origg viii. 2. Albricus de Deor. Nu. xix. But compare above, vs. 920. [Greek: Kai tauros hemin prosthen hegeisthai dokeis, kai soi ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... was for our family the commencement of a horrible series of misfortunes. The two chief officers then decided with one accord, that all should embark at six in the morning, and abandon the ship to the mercy of the waves. After this decision, followed a scene the most whimsical, and at the same time the most melancholy that can be well conceived. To have a more distinct idea of it, let the reader transport himself in imagination to the midst of the liquid plains of the ocean; then let him picture to himself a multitude of all classes, of every ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... individuality unimpaired; not lost in a dull, ugly, monotonous repetition of the same unmeaning garb: which is really an important consideration. The wisdom of encouraging a little harmless pride in personal appearance even among the blind, or the whimsical absurdity of considering charity and leather breeches inseparable companions, as we do, requires ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... up a part of a life which I thought delightful. Nothing that was performed around me, nothing that I was obliged to do, suited my taste, but everything suited my heart; and I believe, at length, I should have liked the study of medicine, had not my natural distaste to it perpetually engaged us in whimsical scenes, that prevented my thinking of it in a serious light. It was, perhaps, the first time that this art produced mirth. I pretended to distinguish a physical book by its smell, and what was more diverting, was seldom ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... strange, peculiar, unwonted, rare, extraordinary, exceptional, odd, whimsical, eccentric, bizarre, queer, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 13. The author's whimsical notion that a development of commercial and manufacturing organization in India would cause converts to flock from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community, has not been verified by experience. Much capital is now concentrated ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a young wife's affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew—two homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair who seemed strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... church in these times, would have "cried fire in the deluge." This is more than a metaphor; for a remnant of these antediluvians appear actually to have come down to us, with fire in their mouths and water in their brains, to disturb and perplex mankind with their whimsical outcries. And as it is an infallible symptom of that distressing malady with which I conceive them to be afflicted (so any doctor will inform your Lordships), for the unhappy invalids to perceive a flame perpetually flashing before their eyes, particularly when their eyes are shut (as those ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... answered, with a sort of whimsical pathos, "isn't it sad, so few delightful things as there are, that two of them should come together, so that I can't ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... manhood, broad-shouldered, tall, blue-eyed, and blond-haired, like his father and like you. From the moment of their first meeting Helene exerted all the power of her fascination to draw him to her. Never had she been so whimsical, so imperious, so bewitching! Loyal to his friend, faithful to his own high sense of honor, he struggled against a growing weakness, and finally fled. I will never forget the night he went away. A ball had been ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... because the earliest of our acquaintance) the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind-hearted, whimsical, pedantic; and Flora MacIvor (whom even we forgive for her Jacobitism), the fierce Vich Ian Vohr, and Evan Dhu, constant in death, and Davie Gellatly roasting his eggs or turning his rhymes with restless volubility, and the two ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... one of the recruiting officers told me the other day," put in Allen, with a whimsical smile. "He said he had talked to hundreds of American enlisted men, and the great majority of them were ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... knew Talano di Molese, a man right worthy to be had in honour; who, having married a young wife—Margarita by name—fair as e'er another, but without her match for whimsical, fractious, and perverse humours, insomuch that there was nought she would do at the instance of another, either for his or her own good, found her behaviour most grievous to bear, but was fain to endure what he might not cure. Now it so befell that Talano and Margarita being together ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... your way to take extreme views, Caron," he observed, with a certain whimsical regret of tone. "That, no doubt, is what has made a statesman of you. You had chosen more wisely had you elected to serve the Republic with your sword instead. Come, my friend," and he pointed to the wine, "let us pledge ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... sentences, was actually writing about something. Yes, he had something of uncommon interest to impart. And a gentleman, by Jove! So different from what one runs up against nowadays. He had an original way of looking at things—a human way. Very human. Those quaint streaks of credulity, those whimsical blasphemies, those spicy Court anecdotes dropped, as it were, in the smoking room of a patrician club—a rare old fellow! He would have given anything to have ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... His manner was whimsical and kindly,—his tone of voice playfully tender, as though he were speaking to some naughty child whom, notwithstanding its temper, he loved too well to scold,—and Maryllia was completely taken aback by this unexpected method of treating her combative ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... surprise, found it adopted by but a few. It seems they were either deceiv'd in themselves, or deceiv'd the Parliament; but common sense, aided by present danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsical opinions. ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... in the past; why not now? And I grant that your interest in the ultimate destination of my diamonds is the most natural thing in the world. Incidentally, your friendship shall not go unrewarded." He waved aside Bullard's quick protest. "But I have grown whimsical in my old age, and you must bear with me." He smiled gently and became grave. "Ultimately my diamonds will be divided into three portions. But—and I emphasise this—nothing shall be done, nor will the diamonds be available for division, till ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... but their enemies taken in battle. Their dress of ceremony is a kind of vest made of paroquets' feathers, woven together, and so arranged that the large wing and tail-feathers form a sort of girdle round their loins, which gives them a whimsical and ridiculous appearance." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... men were working, we applied. We went to the stevedores on the East Side, but they were all "full up." "For God's sake," I said to some of them, but I was brushed aside with a wave of the hand. I never felt so like a beggar in my life. Tim trotted at my heels, encouraging me with whimsical Irish phrases, one of ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... remarked the duke, enraptured. With a touch here and there, the touch of a master, he had gathered the whole little story of Miss Alicia, and had found it of a whimsical exquisiteness and humor. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... reunion between the husband and wife, such as can never endure, and which only humiliated and fatigued a woman whose apparent superiority was unreal, while her unseen superiority was genuine. This whimsical medley is commoner than people think. Dinah, who was ridiculous from the perversity of her cleverness, had really great qualities of soul, but circumstances did not bring these rarer powers to light, while a provincial life debased the small change of her wit from ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... was to appear at State Ceremonials in all the extravagance of fantastic elegance with which Venice had decreed their costumes. A laughing, dainty company, they sprang ashore at the landing of the Piazzetta, doffing their jewelled caps to the admiring crowd with capricious grace and whimsical motions, like a flock of birds of paradise, in doublets of velvet and cloth of gold, with hair floating loose about their throats; with devices of fabulous birds—of stars flashing light—of mystic arabesques and hieroglyphs embroidered on their silken hose, in ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... religiously guarded the distinctions of blood and name: a lion rampant gardant, between three schallop-shells argent, on a field azure. I should not however have been tempted to blazon my coat of arms, were it not connected with a whimsical anecdote. About the reign of James the First, the three harmless schallop-shells were changed by Edmund Gibbon esq. into three ogresses, or female cannibals, with a design of stigmatizing three ladies, his kinswomen, who had provoked him by an unjust law-suit. But this singular mode of revenge, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... more honest, simple, clever, warm-hearted, soft, whimsical, romantical, high-spirited young fellow than John Perkins did not exist. When his father, Doctor Perkins, died, this, his only son, was placed under the care of John Perkins, Esquire, of the house of Perkins, Scully, and Perkins, those celebrated attorneys in the trading town of Oldborough, which ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comment. One looking over her shoulder as she read, however, might have caught snatches of sentences here and there on the heavily scrawled page. They were such as these: "You had led me to hope,"..."for years I have been your faithful admirer,"... "Nor have I wavered for an instant despite your whimsical attitude,"... "therefore I felt justified in believing that you were sincere in your determination to defy your father." And others of an even more caustic nature: "You are going to marry this prince after all,"..." not ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... my guest. His whimsical gray eyes had become studious and detached from our surroundings. He had a generous mouth, which he seemed habitually to sew up in a close-drawn seam, but this would suddenly and pleasantly rip in moments of forgetfulness. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... published in a collection of stories, "The Playfellow," along with "The Crofton Boys", "The Peasant and the Prince" and "The Settlers at Home." However, being of a somewhat whimsical nature, it later attracted artists and publishers with a bent in that direction. This is the original version, dating from the mid ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... invention for my own conveniences, and I had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon; and that was, to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and then try to brew myself some beer: this was really a whimsical thought, and I reproved myself often for the simplicity of it; for I presently saw there would be the want of several things necessary to the making my beer, that it would be impossible for me to supply; as, first, casks to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... soil or gravel could be handled by any particular gang. If the quantity fell short, there was usually trouble. However, he said nothing to the others that morning, but beckoned Weston aside, and stood a moment or two looking at him, with a grimly whimsical twinkle ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... producing vertigo, headache, dimness or perversion of vision (i. e., seeing double) and confusion of thought. (N. B. What else does liquor do?) In larger doses (still like liquor,) you obtain these symptoms aggravated; and then a delirium, sometimes whimsical (snakes in your boots) and sometimes furious, a stupor, convulsions, and death. A fine drink this stramonium? Sugar of lead is what is called a cumulative poison; having the quality of remaining in the system when taken in small quantities, and piling itself up, as it ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... d'Aranda, the count of her own making, was a scion of the nobility, that he was born for a mysterious operation unknown to the rest of mankind, that I was only his caretaker (here I spoke the truth), and that he must die and yet not cease to live. All these whimsical ideas were the products of her brain, which was only occupied with the impossible, and I thought the best thing I could do was to agree with everything. If I had tried to undeceive her, she would have accused me of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... called the sufferer (il patito); this latter is absolutely disdained, but nevertheless, permitted to continue his adoration; and all these rivals live peaceably together. The use of the poignard now only survives among the common people. There is in this country a whimsical mixture of simplicity and depravity, dissimulation and truth, sincerity and revenge, weakness and resolution, which can only be explained by constant observation; the reason being that their good qualities proceed from the fact that nothing is done from vanity, and their bad ones ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... true that the complete work affects the reader most powerfully with that wide unity of impression which it is the highest aim of dramatic art, and perhaps of all art, to produce. After we have listened to all the whimsical dogmatising about beauty, to all the odious cant about morbid anatomy, to all the well-deserved reproach for unpardonable perversities of phrase and outrages on rhythm, there is left to us the consciousness that ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... on November 24. He was welcomed at the prison gates by a crowd of sympathisers, and entertained at a breakfast in the Hall of Science, where he made an interesting speech. By a whimsical calculation, I reckoned that I had still to swallow twenty-one gallons of prison tea and ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... raising his eyebrows with a puzzled, whimsical air, which made me tremble with suppressed anger. As he advanced his, eyebrows contracted, and his lips seemed to form ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... inclined to consumption, of which she finally died. Of course his paternity is unknown, though rumor has not been silent in regard to it. It is said that a stubborn refusal on his mother's part to reveal it led Colonel Desmit, in one of his whimsical moods, to give the boy the name he bears. However, he was as bright a child as ever frolicked about a plantation till he was some five or six years old. His mother had been a house-servant before she was sent to Knapp-of-Reeds, and being really ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to make an excuse to himself for not executing his supposed sentence upon Adam; putting, I say, those things aside as matter of distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called the christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the creation—the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple—the amphibious idea of a man-god—the corporeal idea of the death of a god—the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all irreconcilable, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Thorne, with a whimsical smile, held up his finger for silence. Through the thin screen of azalea bushes that fringed this open-air dining room Bob saw two men approaching down the forest. They were evidently unaware of observation. With considerable circumspection they drew near and disappeared within the little tool ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the rough drafts of his famed discourses delivered at the Oratory are preserved in the library of the Guildhall, London. The advertisements he drew up for the papers, announcing their subject, are generally exceedingly whimsical, and calculated to attract ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Thirty emus were observed on one day; kangaroos, as has been remarked, were plentiful; and a large colony of pelicans caused the name of Pelican Lagoon to be given to a feature of the island's eastern lobe. The marsupial, the seal, the emu, and the bag-billed bird that nature built in one of her whimsical moods, had held unchallenged possession for tens of thousands of years, probably never visited by any ships, nor even preyed upon by blacks. The reflections of Flinders upon Pelican Lagoon have a tinting of poetic feeling which we do not often ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Her whimsical air of woe disarmed all save the mildest disapproval. It was one of Evelyn Desmond's unfair advantages that she always did manage to disarm disapproval, even in her least admirable moments; and the smile deepened ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the most notorious and fortunate of the adventurers who swarmed at the court of St. James. By dint of these and kindred qualities he had become an intimate companion of the Prince of Wales. The man had a wide observation of life; indeed, he was an interested and whimsical observer rather than an actor, and a scoffer always. A libertine from the head to the heel of him, yet gossip marked him as the future husband of the beautiful young heiress Antoinette Westerleigh. For the rest, he carried an itching sword ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... fancy he could still feel the chill shock as he had plunged in, the sharp catching of his breath, the resounding splash, the shower of icy drops, the soft yielding of the water—then the delicious buoyancy that had pervaded his limbs. He wondered, with a whimsical smile, how long he could "stay under," and if he could hold his eyes open while he dived, and if he could still swim "dog fashion" and back-handed on his back, and if he could float ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... slightly educated, greatly out-number the educated. Suppose by means of complete and trustworthy criminal statistics, we could work out the percentage criminality of the different classes. I fancy that the poor man would not then show—even judged by our whimsical legal and moral standards—a greater percentage criminality than the educated. And if in our statistics we could include degrees of provocation to the various crimes, such as hunger, poverty, want of the money to leave exasperating surroundings—it ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... his steps without hesitation toward the magnificent red head of the whimsical poet, Paul Sillery, a handsome young fellow with a wide-awake face, who was nonchalantly stretched upon the red velvet cushion of the window-seat, before a table, around which were three other heads of thick hair ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... literature again in my scraps of time. It is a mere accident that I wrote a pair of "funny" books, or put serious criticism of contemporary manners into a shape not understood in a country where only the dull are profound and only the ponderous are earnest. The Bachelors' Club was the result of a whimsical remark made by my dear friend, Eder of Bartholomew's, with whom I was then sharing rooms in Bernard Street, and who helped me greatly with it, and its publication was equally accidental. One spring day, in the year of grace 1891, having lived unsuccessfully for ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... at her. Her whimsical smile, trembling to a piteously pretty hint of terror, overwhelmed him. He hesitated, then shoved back his chair and, rising, caught her to him so tightly that she gasped out, "Oo!" There it was again! He laughed like an overgrown ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... and particles, cubic, conic, striate, oblong, globular, hooked, crooked, spiral and angular: for who the devil but a mere tipsy, giddy brains, could have dished up such a confounded hotch-potch and gallimatias of whimsical rotations, or fancied that the whole earth whirled round like a town-top, had not Vinorum materia subtilis, the circling effluvia of Liber Pater, abundantly ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... never permitted us to know his whereabouts. At regular intervals, we received his letters—many whimsical descriptions of his new life and new pursuits, but we always addressed him in New York, and our letters, bearing the English seal, came to him under an American disguise. We did not so much as know the name he ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... were the most whimsical rodomontades that ever blue-stocking penned. She was a woman who took up and threw off a greater number of dear friends than any one I ever knew. To some of these female darlings she began presently to write about my unworthy self, and it was with a sentiment of extreme satisfaction ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old Mr. Oliver, who made several humorous allusions to a former hard run of our huntsman's over the same line of country; allusions which called forth loud laughter from all present, including the subject of them, although I observed his merriment to be accompanied by a whimsical air of embarrassment. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... was evil.[1172] In 1903 in a suit charging that the registration procedure prescribed by statute was fraudulently designed to prevent Negroes from voting, the Court, in an opinion written by Justice Holmes, refused to order the registration of an allegedly qualified Negro, on the whimsical ground that to do so would make the Court a party to the fraudulent plan.[1173] The opinion was careful to state that "we are not prepared to say that an action at law could not be maintained on the facts alleged in the bill." Such an action was brought ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Notwithstanding the whimsical parade made by Lady Lillycraft on her arrival, she has none of the petty stateliness that I had imagined; but on the contrary she has a degree of nature, and simple-heartedness, if I may use the phrase, that mingles well with her old-fashioned manners and harmless ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... into my temper, which I should not have arrived at by better motives than the thought of being one day hers. I am pretty well satisfied such a passion as I have had is never well cured; and, between you and me, I am often apt to imagine it has had some whimsical effect upon my brain: For I frequently find, that in my most serious discourse I let fall some comical familiarity of speech, or odd phrase, that makes the company laugh; however, I cannot but allow she is a most excellent ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... a spirit of friendliness, rather than of hostility. Nevertheless, the eccentric young man had unmistakably threatened them. While Varney had been more interested by the man, personally, than by his whimsical menaces, the editor's conversation could certainly not be called reassuring. Smith owned a corrupt newspaper; he was a clever man and, by his own confession, an unscrupulous one, bought body and soul by the local freebooters; and if he thought the headlong ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... not the feelings of a man,' said my father: 'know the dignity of your sex. I cannot determine to what kind of a being you have been united by the ceremony of a contract. I should suppose it entirely whimsical, if so strong proofs, and particularly the last, had not been given us of its reality. Be ashamed, that a man like you, who are well descended, and who might have aspired to a connection with the best families in Bagdad, has been hurried away by a foolish passion to so extraordinary ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... scrappy mediaevalism of Percy, from the genial but slightly superficial mediaevalism of Scott, and even from the more exact but narrow and distinctly conventional mediaevalism of Tennyson. . . . Moreover, though it may seem whimsical or extravagant to say so, these poets added to the very charm of mediaeval literature, which they thus revived, a subtle something which differentiates it from—which, to our perhaps blind sight, seems to be wanting in—mediaeval literature itself. It is constantly complained (and some ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... keep you fellows out," he said, with his whimsical smile. "But the rank and file will have to constitute the big end. We don't want a lot of busybodies, pussy-footing around with guns and looking for trouble. We had enough of that during the war. We would want some men who would answer a riot call ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mournful towers harbour innumerable shapes, all busy in preying upon the damned. One capital devil, in the form of an enormous lobster, seems very strenuously employed in mumbling a miserable mortal, who sprawls, though in vain, to escape from his claws. This performance, whimsical as it is, retains all that softness of tint and delicacy of pencil for which ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Eudora's voice; something whimsical crept into the love-light of the other women's eyes. Again a soft ripple of ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... typical Browning lover, who will not reproach nor scorn nor whine. But I think that this one had perhaps a little excess of whimsical humour. She would herself have needed a good deal of such humour to take this farewell just as it was offered. "Does truth sound bitter, as one at first believes?" Somewhat puzzling to her, it may be, that very philosophical reflection! . . . This ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the singular poems of Lewis, Walter Scott, and others, under the whimsical titles of "The Cloud-King," "The Fire-King," etc., the following burlesque ballad may ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... the writings of Hippocrates, and other Greek physicians, were in general the standard of practice; but the Materia Medica contained few remedies of approved quality, and abounded with useless substances, as well as with many which stood upon no other foundation than the whimsical notions of those who first introduced them. Architecture flourished, through the elegant taste of Vitruvius, and the patronage of the emperor. Painting, statuary, and music, were cultivated, but not with that degree of perfection which they had obtained in the Grecian ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... plane of brotherhood, the bond of emotional woe. He had often with no other or better reason liberated the trophy of his snare, calling after the amazed and franticly fleeing creature, "Bye-bye, Buddy!" with peals of his whimsical, joyous laughter. ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... clouds, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubsantial^ &c 4; illusory &c (fallacious) 495. fabulous, legendary; mythical, mythic, mythological; chimerical; imaginary, visionary; notional; fancy, fanciful, fantastic, fantastical^; whimsical; fairy, fairy-like; gestic^. Phr. a change came o'er the spirit of my dream [Byron]; aegri somnia vana [Lat.]; dolphinum appingit sylvis in fluctibus aprum [Horace]; fancy light from fancy caught [Tennyson]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Renaissance, especially the Novelle, turn upon adultery. Judging by the majority of these romances, by the comedies of the time, and by the poetry of Ariosto, we are compelled to believe that such illicit love was merely sensual, and owed its principal attractions to the scope it afforded for whimsical adventures. Yet Bembo's Asolani, Castiglione's panegyric of Platonic Love, and much of the lyrical poetry in vogue warn us to be cautious. The old romantic sentiment expressed by the Florentines of the thirteenth century still survived to some ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... When we behold its walls levelled, its ditches filled up, and all its buildings embarrassed with ruins, we scarcely can believe we view that celebrated metropolis which formerly withstood the efforts of the most powerful empires, and for a time resisted the arms of Rome itself; though, by a whimsical change of fortune, its mouldering edifices now receive her homage and reverence. "In a word," says Volney, "we with difficulty recognize Jerusalem." Still more are we astonished at its ancient greatness, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... been discovered in Australia, abounds in the valley where we halted; the sides and abrupt projections of the hills being composed entirely of it, and worn by the operation of time into a thousand whimsical shapes and forms. A small stream runs through the valley, which in June 1815 was dry; the bottom of this rivulet was covered with a variety of stones, but the bases of the hills which projected into it, and from which the earth had been washed, were of ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... quarter; they rarely go on a wind if it blows at all fresh, and if the adverse breeze approaches to a gale, they at once fumigate St. Nicholas, and put up the helm. The consequence of course is that under the ever-varying winds of the Ægean they are blown about in the most whimsical manner. I used to think that Ulysses with his ten years’ voyage had taken his time in making Ithaca, but my experience in Greek navigation soon made me understand that he had had, in point of fact, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... no one could enjoy more than Corwin himself; for he was not only an impassioned orator, but a delightful humorist. He could put a principle or a reason in the form of a jest so that it would go farther than even eloquence could carry it with the whimsical Western people; and perhaps nothing more effective was said against the infamous Black Laws which forbade the testimony of negroes in the courts than Corwin put in the form of self-satire. He was of a very dark complexion, so that he might have been taken for ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Anarchy. Consider how much liberty we gain by the loss of the common liberty to kill. Thereby one may go to and fro in all the ordered parts of the earth, unencumbered by arms or armour, free of the fear of playful poison, whimsical barbers, or hotel trap-doors. Indeed, it means freedom from a thousand fears and precautions. Suppose there existed even the limited freedom to kill in vendetta, and think what would happen in our suburbs. Consider the inconvenience of two households ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... one, and put away another, and ill-treated another, for no reason at all but his own selfish caprice. And men trembled for their lives when they remembered how Wolsey, and More, and Cromwell, and others had been sacrificed to the whimsical temper of this tyrannical sovereign. England, in fact, was tired out when ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... praise of her companion. I went so far as to say that I should be delighted to see her again: she had been so very courteous to me, considering how odd she must have thought me—a declaration which drew from Miss Bordereau another of her whimsical speeches. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... the keeper of the madhouse. "What whimsical ideas these lunatics have! He imagines that one can propel ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... by the obstacles it opposed to the usurpations of supreme power, and the innumerable guarantees it secured to the nation, established public and private liberty on foundations not to be shaken; yet, from the most whimsical of all inconsistencies, it was considered as the work of despotism, and occasioned Napoleon the loss of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... last sentence in such a whimsical tone and with such a frank smile that they were all forced to laugh, even the Michigan man. But Harley felt relief. The candidate had ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... for few have so eminently possessed the magic gift of identifying themselves with their writings. We read his character in every page, and grow into familiar intimacy with him as we read. The artless benevolence that beams throughout his works; the whimsical, yet amiable views of human life and human nature; the unforced humor, blending so happily with good feeling and good sense, and singularly dashed at times with a pleasing melancholy; even the very nature of his mellow, and flowing, and softly-tinted style, all seem to bespeak his moral ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... his wife had made the bread ever so sweet, and had put all sorts of tasty spices in it, because she wanted to hide the flavour of the poison she had put in it also; for she was a wicked, revengeful woman, who wanted to be rid of her tiresome, whimsical little husband. And so, as the elephant charged past, it smelt the delicious spices, and catching up the bread with its long trunk, gobbled it up without stopping an instant. Meanwhile fear lent speed to Vicky's short legs, but though he ran like a hare, the ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... And it was much more striking in situation, with the bay offering an immense, flat blue extension at one side and the city hills, pricked with lights, slanting up and away from the other. By day, the joyous, whimsical fantasy of the colossal Tower of Jewels, which caught the light in millions of rainbow sparkles, must, for children at least, have made of its entrance the door to fairyland. At night, there was the tragedy of old ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... a whimsical little smile how Shere All's enthusiasm had wearied her, but she checked the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... the old abuses practiced in the petty courts in the eighteenth century were revived. William of Hesse-Cassel returned, on the fall of Napoleon, to his domains. True to his whimsical saying, "I have slept during the last seven years," he insisted upon replacing everything in Hesse exactly on its former footing. In one particular alone was his vanity inconsistent: notwithstanding his hatred toward Napoleon, he retained the title of Prince Elector, bestowed upon him by Napoleon's ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... writer has seen, but she cannot tell what she has seen; she has felt, but she cannot express her experience so as to enkindle a like experience in others. These poetical utterances of inarticulate poets are sometimes whimsical but oftener pathetic; sometimes they are like the prattle of little children who exercise their vocal organs before they have anything to say; but oftener they seem to me like the beseeching eyes of a dumb animal, full of affection and entreaty for which he ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... doctor's report yet." There was a gleam of whimsical gayety in his eyes as he added: "I was going to find him when I had the good luck to meet up ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... answered very well with the fellows outside—nothing like a high-sounding name or title to awe your British rustic. And now," said he, with an expression half-whimsical, half-rueful, as he picked up his woebegone hat, "having by your courtesy eaten and drunk my fill, I will do my best to repay you by ridding you of ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... fulsome, turgid, and even whimsical expressious of praise might be named, for the Puritans were rich in classic sesquipedalian adjectives, and their active linguistic consciences made them equally fertile in producing ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... mile, and talked volubly of the prospects of the Wet and the resources of the Territory; but when Flash was released, and after a short tussle settled down into a free, swinging amble, he offered congratulations in his own whimsical way. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... think of a square. Thirdly, several buildings are by no means of the form of that particular square, which are notwithstanding planned by the best architects, and produce an effect altogether as good, and perhaps a better. And certainly nothing could he more unaccountably whimsical, than for an architect to model his performance by the human figure, since no two things can have less resemblance or analogy, than a man, and a house or temple: do we need to observe that their purposes are entirely different? What I am apt to suspect ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Brother, or sister, I never had any—to know them. Lamb is writing strictly as the imagined Elia, Elia being Lamb in mind rather than Lamb in fact. It amused him to present his brother John and his sister Mary as his cousins James and Bridget Elia. We have here an excellent example of his whimsical blending of truth and invention: brothers and sisters he denies, yet admits one sister, Elizabeth, who died in both their infancies. Lamb had in reality two sisters named Elizabeth, the former of whom he never knew. She was born in 1762. The second Elizabeth, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... occur between the lessons, just giving me breathing time, and sufficient strength to finish the service. The instant this was over, I walked away for the other church, determined, at all events, to persevere, for in a whimsical mood I had ever resolved to perform the Sunday's duty punctually, in spite of time, tide, or anything else. As I crossed each field, I was obliged to get on the top of every gate in order to rest myself, notwithstanding the exertion of it. On coming to the fatal little stream in the ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... and the same thing, for they preserve the dead scorpions to be applied to the sting of the living ones, and they aver it to be a certain cure. Quackery is the native growth of the ingenious as well as the whimsical and hypochondriacal ideas of men. In dropsy the native doctors cut the body to let out the water, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... whose strange appearance soon attracted attention. The latter was about sixty years of age, of middle height, and well made. He had been handsome, if one could judge from the purity of the lines of his features, which time had not entirely effaced. His coiffure alone would have made him appear whimsical and ridiculous, had not his head been noble and distinguished. He wore powder; and locks such as once were known as a l'aille de pigeon, were on each side of his face. A cloak of light silk was buttoned over ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to be a facsimile of Solomon's famous seal. I have a whimsical desire to have a copy of it. You observe two triangles interlaced and inserted in a circle?—the pentacle, in short. Yes, just so. You need not add the astrological characters: they are the senseless superfluous accessories of the dreamer who wrote the book. But the pentacle itself has an intelligible ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... do him any injustice, most (or perhaps all) of these were people that had been long dead; and amongst them, by the way, was Livy, the historian; whom I distinguish by name, as furnishing, perhaps, the liveliest illustration of the whimsical and all but lunatic excess to which these personal hatreds were sometimes pushed; for it is a fact that, when the course of an Italian tour had brought him unavoidably to the birthplace of Livy, Dr. Arnold felicitated himself ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... "the power of forming pleasing, graceful, whimsical, or odd mental images, or of combining them with little regard to rational processes of construction," and imagination, in its more philosophical use, as "the act of constructive intellect in grouping the materials of knowledge or thought into new, original, and rational systems," ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... enjoyed her dinner, she was so excited with the prospect of some unknown coming events, and she had the satisfaction of observing that once Count Roumovski actually turned his head in their direction and met her eyes. His were full of a whimsical smile for the instant he looked, and then he ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... Thackeray calls it. They are certainly not enlivening- -those cumbrous "atlas" folios of 1803-5, and they helped to ruin the worthy alderman. Even courtly Sir Joshua is clearly ill at ease among the pushing Hamiltons and Mortimers; and, were it not for the whimsical discovery that Westall's "Ghost of Caesar" strangely resembles Mr. Gladstone, there would be no resting-place for the modern student of these dismal masterpieces. The truth is, Reynolds excepted, there were no ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... capital!' shouted Brass, from the mere force of habit. 'Excellent! How very good he is! He's a most remarkable man—so extremely whimsical! Such an amazing power of taking ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the inhabitants of Gothia (Sweden) and Frise were prevented, by their fear of the Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring fishery on the coast of England; and as there was no exportation, forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling, (Matthew Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical enough, that the orders of a Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have lowered the price of herrings ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... too black, whose shoes do not shine very much, who never wear gloves to conceal their hands. It is true, there are some queer specimens of humanity attracted to our festival, but all are welcome. I am pretty sure to meet once more that weak-minded and whimsical fellow, generally weak-bodied too, who prefers a crooked stick for a cane; perfectly useless, you would say, only bizarre, fit for a cabinet, like a petrified snake. A ram's horn would be as convenient, and is yet more curiously twisted. He brings ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... elaboration attains the utmost perfection of simplicity. It excites our wonder to observe how in pathos Hood's genius divests itself of attributes which had seemed essential to its existence. All that is grotesque, whimsical, or odd disappears, and we have only the soul of pity in the sound of song,—in song "most musical, most melancholy." In pathos, Hood's is not what we should call a transformed genius so much as a genius becoming divested of its ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... money that wasn't his,—there's no excuse. It makes my blood boil to think of a clever rascal like that succeeding in his rascality." With that the intense manner had dropped from him as a garment, and he was smiling the gentlest, most whimsical smile at the older man. "You'll think, Mr. Litterny, that it's the loss of my new parish-house that's making me so ferocious, but, honestly, I'd forgotten all about it." And no one who heard him could doubt his sincerity. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... announcement that we had reached our destination. I looked around carefully, yet I saw nothing at all to indicate the entrance to a large, covert military establishment, much to my companions delight. Their whimsical sense of humor surfaced once again as they laughed with seemingly infinite pleasure, both at my wondering expression and with a sense of satisfaction at their own cleverness. After the outburst had been subdued and a certain level ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... James Lewis. No one ever saw him without laughter—and it is kindly laughter, with a warm heart behind it. The moment he comes upon the stage an eager gladness diffuses itself throughout the house. His refined quaintness and unconscious drollery capture all hearts. His whimsical individuality never varies; yet every character of the many that he has portrayed stands clearly forth among its companions, a distinct, unique embodiment. The graceful urbanity, the elaborate yet natural manner, the brisk vitality, the humorous sapience of Sir Patrick Lundy—how completely ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... treasure."—Chicago Daily News. "Bright, whimsical, and thoroughly entertaining."—Buffalo Express. "One of the best stories of life in a girl's college that has ever been written."—N. Y. Press. "To any woman who has enjoyed the pleasures of a college life this book cannot fail to bring back many sweet recollections; and to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... hinder those of a softer nature from returning with the same violence as ever; and for the gratification of them wrote that letter which Horatio received, and occasioned afterward the explanation of the whole affair, which explanation he then thought fortunate for him; but by a whimsical effect of chance it proved ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... friend? Is not your own shadow enough for you? This seems to me a whimsical sort of bargain indeed." He began again, "I have in my pocket many matters which might not be quite unacceptable to the gentleman; for this invaluable shadow I deem any price ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... for a briefened space cast up in a preliminary way the tally on behalf of the whimsical devils of circumstance and the part they are to play in the culminating and concluding periods of this narrative. On the noon train of the day following the night when that occurred which has been set forth in the foregoing pages, Judge Priest, in the company of Doctor Lake and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Shakespeare, in company with some of the roisterers of Stratford, committed his youthful offense of deer-stealing. The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding park still remain in the possession of the Lucy family, and are peculiarly interesting from being connected with this whimsical but eventful circumstance in the scanty history of the bard. As the house stood at little more than three miles' distance from Stratford, I resolved to pay it a pedestrian visit, that I might stroll leisurely through some of those scenes from ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... York by Diedrich Knickerbocker was published in 1809. Nearly forty years later Washington Irving, the real author, says it was his purpose in the history to embody the traditions of New York in an amusing form, to illustrate its local humors, customs and peculiarities in a whimsical narrative, which should help to bind the heart of the native inhabitant ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a seventh whimsical anecdote rises to the surface. When Prince Albert was made a fellow of Lincoln's Inn, and dined in the New Hall, I was present at the banquet. There was a roast joint and one bottle of port to each mess of four barristers: one would think a supply more than ample: however, some thirsty ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... square, Then to a circle as you were: Who can imagine whence the fund is, That you quadrata change rotundis? To Fame a temple you erect, A Flora does the dome protect; Mounts, walks, on high; and in a hollow You place the Muses and Apollo; There shining 'midst his train, to grace Your whimsical poetic place. These stories were of old design'd As fables: but you have refined The poets mythologic dreams, To real Muses, gods, and streams. Who would not swear, when you contrive thus, That you're Don Quixote redivivus? Beneath, a dry canal there lies, Which only ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... experiments in the realms of art. When Bridau is wholly himself he is admirable, and as praise is sweet to him, his disgust is great when one praises the failures in which he alone discovers all that is lacking in the eyes of the public. He is whimsical to the last degree. His friends have seen him destroy a finished picture because, in his eyes, it looked too smooth. "It is overdone," he would say; "it is ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... wishes were consulted with regard to the wedding, he had but one favor to ask; and that was, that the ceremony might take place at his house. It was a whimsical idea, he said, but he would like to see his old home gay once more, as it used to be years ago. "Besides," said he, "I am rheumatic, and might not be able to attend the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... too late! Is she the match for you? She is spoilt, whimsical, sleeps till two o'clock in the afternoon, while you are a deacon's son, a district ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... conform to the laws laid down by high authorities, but his theme is generally "Society" with a capital S. "Praed," says Locker in "My Confidences," "is the very best of his school: indeed, he has a unique position; for in his narrower vein of whimsical wit, vernacular banter, and antithetical rhetoric, which may correctly be called vers de societe in its most perfected form, and its exactest sense, he has never been equalled." These phrases hit off Praed very ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... Sheridan was then reading lectures upon Oratory at Bath, where Derrick was Master of the Ceremonies; or, as the phrase is, KING. BOSWELL. Dr. Parr, who knew Sheridan well, describes him 'as a wrong-headed, whimsical man.' 'I remember,' he continues, 'hearing one of his daughters, in the house where I lodged, triumphantly repeat Dryden's Ode upon St. Cecilia's Day, according to the instruction given to her by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... with Mrs. Quickly and haply with Doll Tearsheet. All the whimsical miscellany of the Bohemians must have been known to him. We need not doubt that he had sowed wild oats. Doubtless, if he lived the same life now, he would be looked upon askance by good people who knew nothing of his temptations. But he was no neurotic; ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Stelvio pass, southward to Sondrio and Lombardy. It is a little hamlet, known by the name of La Madonna di Tirano, having grown up round a pilgrimage church of great beauty, with tall Lombard bell-tower, pierced with many tiers of pilastered windows, ending in a whimsical spire, and dominating a fantastic cupola building of the earlier Renaissance. Taken altogether, this is a charming bit of architecture, picturesquely set beneath the granite snow-peaks of the Valtelline. The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... say, have a bad opinion of women. Now am I very whimsical in supposing that this disappointed candidate will be hurt at her rejection, and angry or cast down according to her nature? "Angry, indeed!" says Juno, gathering up her purple robes and royal raiment. "Sorry, indeed!" cries Minerva, lacing on her corselet again, and scowling under her ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... take one of her hands, but she put both behind her back. At this repulse the young gentleman winced, then smiled gravely, then pleasantly,—and then with a whimsical upward twist ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... encased themselves in them, and were laughing at the whimsical appearance they made in the clumsy garments, when the captain ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... pretended spiritual motions, And many fine whimsical notions, With blind zeal and large devotions, With broaching rebellion and raising commotions, And poisoning the people with Geneva potions; 'Tis a ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... finesse was too well planned for detection, and my snares too deeply laid for any one to escape who had the least warmth in her constitution, or affection in her heart. I shall, therefore, be the less whimsical about a future connection, and the more solicitous to make her reparation, should it ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... not have a well developed sense of humor will hardly see the force of the reference to Thurtell, the murderer. It is a whimsical way of indicating by a specific example how empty the writer's brain was, forcing him to reflect on such a subject ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... railing rhymer, a singular mixture of a true and original poet with a buffoon; coarse as Rabelais, whimsical, obscure, but always vivacious. He was the rector of Diss, in Norfolk, but his profane and scurrilous wit seems rather out of keeping with his clerical character. His Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng is a study ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... dawned upon him that she had been reading some silly nonsense that had temporarily distorted her young mind. Such foolishness, if allowed to take root, might have disastrous results. His daughter must learn to centre her mind on her work, and not be led away by whimsical notions that had no ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... impunity of the moment that suggested the idea to Dysart's whimsical drunken fancy. He never knew. He suddenly tried the mouth of the pouch. It was locked. Nothing daunted, a stroke of a keen knife slit the upper part of the side seam, the sleeping baby was slipped into the aperture, ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... writing once, how his heart had warmed and quickened at the sight of it, how eagerly he had read it—and now a viper coiled upon the white table-cloth would hardly have given him a greater shock. Contradictory, incalculable, whimsical life! A year ago how scornfully he would have laughed, what contemptuous unbelief would have filled his soul, if he had been told that any letter of hers could have struck him cold with the vague apprehension of coming misfortune. He tore off the envelope and threw it into the ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... the author defers in it, too little, to principle, too much, to authority;—another, that the work is written in a very desultory manner, with small attention to order, or classification;—a third, that his authorities are often feeble, and sometimes whimsical. "Grotius," says Condillac, "was able to think for himself; but he constantly labours to support his conclusions by the authority of others. Upon many occasions; even in support of the most obvious and indisputable propositions, he introduces a long string of quotations ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... desert place, with a bottle of water, gun, powder, and lead. Whoever shall maltreat or assault another, while the articles subsist, shall receive the Law of Moses: this was the infliction of forty consecutive strokes upon the back, a whimsical memento of the dispensation in the Wilderness. There were articles relative to the treatment and disposition of women, which sometimes depended upon the tossing of a coin,—jeter a croix pile,—but they need not be repeated: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... thing that ever amused him, he said, were his wife's letters, and as he was the most selfish as well as the most polite of men, he requested her to write to him every day. Great personages, who are selfish and whimsical, are generally surrounded by parasites and buffoons, but this would not suit Lord Montfort; he sincerely detested flattery, and he wearied in eight-and-forty hours of the most successful mountebank in society. What he seemed inclined ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... in a sane person, Pierre had twisted these hairs together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone. He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, he smirked and caressed this whimsical adornment. Cleggett, fascinated, stared at it as the fellow paused before him. Pierre, evidently gratified at the sensation he was creating, continued to smirk and twist, and then, seeing that he ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... same time left off drinking and swallowing any liquid that was warm. He is now strong and lusty, and even in winter has no other cover than a single sheet. His notions about the warm drink were a little whimsical: he imagined it relaxed the tone of the stomach; and this would undoubtedly be the case if it was drank in large quantities, warmer than the natural temperature of the blood. He alledged the example of the inhabitants of the Ladrone islands, who never taste any thing that is ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... like Heliogabalus, whose favourite dishes are said to have been the tongues of peacocks and nightingales, and the brains of parrots and pheasants [73]; or like Sept. Geta, who, according to Jul. Capitolinus [74], was so curious, so whimsical, as to order the dishes at his dinners to consist of things which all began with the same letters. Sardanapalus again as we have it in Athenus [75], gave a prmium to any one that invented and served him ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... to a whimsical scene, which will serve to give you an idea of the airs of importance these gentlemen give themselves. I was one day at Versailles and after having visited the palace and gardens I entered the Salon of a restaurateur and called for a veal cutlet and vin ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Paderewski is Paderewski—and Joseffy is perfection. Paderewski is the most eclectic of the four pianists I have taken for my text; Joseffy the most subtly poetic; D'Albert the most profound and intellectually significant, and Pachmann—well, Vladimir is the enfant terrible of the quartet, a whimsical, fantastic charmer, an apparition with rare talents, and an interpreter of the Lesser Chopin (always the great Chopin) without a peer. Let us be happy that we are vouchsafed the pleasure ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... called them "mashers" in those days), together with a humourist—he was kind enough to suggest myself—would produce something very choice. Queen Elizabeth, he fancied, was probably being reserved to go—let us hope in the long distant future—with Ouida. It sounds a whimsical theory, set down here in my words, not his; but the old fellow was so much in earnest that few of us ever thought to laugh as he talked. Indeed, there were moments on starry nights, as walking home from the office, we would pause on Waterloo Bridge to enjoy the witchery of the long line of ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... see La Masque, and try his fate once again; and see her he would, if he had to stay there as a sort of ornamental prop to the house for a week. He knew he might as well look for a needle in a haystack as his whimsical beloved through the streets of London—dismal and dark now as the streets of Luxor and Tadmor in Egypt; and he wisely resolved to spare himself and his Spanish leathers boots the trial of a one-handed game of "hide-and-go-to-seek." Wisdom, like Virtue, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... nameless and immortal goddess, whose home is in the moonbeams! I speak to you and praise you for perhaps the last time. O august and whimsical goddess, I am about to die for your sake—I, the last of your worshippers! When I have perished on your altar, the whole world will be sane. Your butterflies will no longer whirl on crimson wings within the minds of men; only the maggots of reason will ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... easily divine other men's lighter or subtler moods, and odd and sometimes even distressing mistakes were the consequence. His health was weak, and a chronic tenderness of throat and chest made him take precautions which sometimes seemed whimsical; and his well-known figure in a black cloak, with a black veil over his college cap, and a black comforter round his neck, which at one time in Oxford acquired his name, sometimes startled little boys and sleepy college porters when he came on them ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... as they were when you left, Jo," said the one addressed in whimsical tone. "You've only been gone ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... still morning she stood under the cedar, her hand thrown lightly above her head to catch at a bough, and as she remained motionless, he made a sketch of her. When it was finished he was seized with the whimsical impulse to go out and show it ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ceremony, he conducted his guest homeward by a pleasant and circuitous route, commanding an extensive prospect of different villages and houses, to each of which Mr. Bradwardine attached some anecdote of history or genealogy, told in language whimsical from prejudice and pedantry, but often respectable for the good sense and honourable feelings which his narrative displayed, and almost always curious, if not valuable, for the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... original and revised versions. Although the subjects they portray are the stiff-moving and grotesque figures of Marionettes, their general effect is often intensely human. The set as a whole may be viewed as a half serious, half whimsical study of characters in human life, issued under the disguise of jointed and painted dummies. Beneath the quaint, stiff movement of the music there is just that touch of seriousness, a sort of droll sadness, that makes of it something more than a ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
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