"Queer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to me. An insane girl, locked in this empty house. I gripped Larry; said to him: "Take it easy; there's something queer about this. We ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... queer duck. But he has some idea of the art of acting, it seems. Director Jim Hooley is delighted with him. But they tell me the old fellow is scribbling all night in his hut. The scenario bug has certainly bit that old codger. He's out for my five hundred ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... Methuselah. He has no beard. He wears a large curly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrows are painted a deep olive- green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in these queer old chambers ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... in!" the Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... I!" agreed Priscilla, dolefully. "But she's got the fancifullest notions! All about that old stone knight in the garden—an' what wi' the things he's left carved all over the wall of the room where she read them queer old books, she's fair 'mazed with ideas that don't belong to the ways o' the world at all. I can't think what'll become o' the child. Won't there be any means of findin' out where ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... from a curious woman,' thought Calton, glancing at her as she sat at the writing-table in her black dress with the knots of violet ribbons upon it; 'what queer creatures ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... was small of stature and when he passed people in the street laughed a queer unmirthful laugh. When he laughed he scratched his left elbow with his right hand. The sleeve of his coat was almost worn through from the habit. As he walked along the street, looking nervously ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... "That's a queer place to build a house," said Sam, as he surveyed the scene; "no one can earn a living there, and it must make a long walk to reach the neighborhood where ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... you lead such a monotonous life," I asked Bielokurov, as we went home. "My life is tedious, dull, monotonous, because I am a painter, a queer fish, and have been worried all my life with envy, discontent, disbelief in my work: I am always poor, I am a vagabond, but you are a wealthy, normal man, a landowner, a gentleman—why do you live so tamely and take so little ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... all the masts of his vessels were carried away in a storm, and it was only by diligent pumping that he was able to keep his craft afloat and put back to Plymouth. Thence on the 24th of June he made another start in a vessel of sixty tons with thirty men. But ill-luck still attended him. He had a queer adventure with pirates. Lest the envious world should not believe his own story, Smith had Baker, his steward, and several of his crew examined before a magistrate at Plymouth, December 8, 1615, who support his story by their testimony up to a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wished to adopt. As the native women do not as a rule stay with their masters very long, the children are registered under the formula: "Child of N. N., mother unknown," an expression which sounds somewhat queer to those who do not know the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... over afterwards, the farmer and his wife agreed that she must be a gipsy who had been lost, and that she was queer with hunger and exposure. ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... nothing unusual. And he had almost made up his mind that something had fallen out of the sky, when a head showed itself from behind a limb and a queer, wrinkled face peered ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey
... at Maryport two years, during which time my eldest sister was born. Often would my mother carry me into the battery, and at the sight of the large guns, and the queer looking helmets hanging on the walls, my little smile would be converted into vehement crying. How little I dreamed then of my familiarity with them in after years! But ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... 1861, when a passenger in the "Highbury Bus" asks the conductor to "change him into a Hangel." Jack Harris has often appeared in Punch. He was a driver beside whom Mr. Edmund Yates often rode—"a wonderfully humorous fellow, whose queer views of the world and real native wit afforded me the greatest amusement. A dozen of the best omnibus sketches were founded on scenes which had occurred with this fellow, and which I described to John Leech, whose usually ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... you think about his shaving off the beard at that time in the morning?" Braceway urged, fingering the dollar bill. "Didn't you think it was queer?" ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... around a circular table, whence they glowered at me from time to time. They all wore their hair tied behind in a short, thick queue which looked quite dandified. "Here you are," I said to myself, as I ate my supper, "here you are in the country from which such queer people used to come to the Herr Pastor's with mouse-traps, and barometers, and pictures. How much a man learns who makes up his mind not to stick close to his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... for Mr. W.S. GILBERT (it was thoughtful and kind of the artist to put the names below), who is apparently explaining to a select few why he has been compelled to come out in this strange old coat and these queer collars. All the Dramatists look as cheerful as mutes at a funeral, their troubled expression of countenance probably arising from the knowledge that somewhere hidden away is a certain eminently unbiassed Ibsenitish ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... statement that there are about twenty-two match factories in the United States and Canada, and that the daily production—and consequent daily consumption—is about twenty-five thousand gross per day. It may seem a queer statement to make that one hundred thousand hours of each successive day are spent by the people of the two countries in striking a light, but such is undoubtedly the case. In each gross of matches manufactured there are ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... Her tall, graceful body was most expensively attired. Kisses were exchanged between her and Mrs. Jameson. She bowed to the rest of the assembly, and stole a half glance and a smile at Faull. The latter gave her a queer look, and Backhouse, who lost nothing, saw the concealed barbarian in the complacent gleam of his eye. She refused the refreshment that was offered her, and Faull proposed that, as everyone had now arrived, they should ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... merely an open space, larger than any he had met before, with a little grass mound in the centre. Mounting this, he could see a run of trees in the distance, and in between a sea of green leaves, giving back myriad points of light under the rays of the sun. Queer soft noises came out of the white rows of reeds all around, and from the vast expanse a continual murmur that was something like the moaning of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... loss of time. I persist in thinking it a very pleasant, but utterly lazy life. I sleep a great deal, but don't eat much, and my cough has been bad; but, considering the real hardship of the life—damp, cold, queer food, and bad drink—I think I am better. When we can get past Finisterre, I shall do very well, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... a queer child! Here's all the room looking for you to dance with you, and you go and sit in the garden with a politician of five-and-forty! What in the world ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... had once more taken up his knife and fork, though of a truth the last of his hunger had vanished. But these Dauphine peasants were suspicious and queer-tempered, and already the young man's surprise had matured into a plan which he would not be able to carry through without the help of Aristide Briot. Noisy cavaliers—he mused to himself—a wounded man! . . . wounded by the stray shot aimed at him by Crystal de Cambray! Indeed, St. Genis had much ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... normal school at Athens, and it has not altered his belief that the ikon in the neighbouring monastery was made by St. Luke and the Bulgar beyond the mountains by the Devil. On the other side of you sits the returned emigrant, chattering irrepressibly in his queer version of the 'American language', and showing you the newspapers which are mailed to him every fortnight from the States. His clean linen collar and his well-made American boots are conspicuous upon him, and he will deprecate ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... huntsman. "Let us run to the river and see what these queer gods are doing. We'll present the skin of Siva to our master!" ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... attempt to tell my young friends all the queer fancies concerning the squadron in which they indulged. They were essentially air castles, very beautiful structures, it is true, but as yet they rested only on the clouds. But the means of realizing this magnificent ideal was within their grasp. They had the money to buy the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... her hands a model of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and blood approaching to soil and fire her fair robe; beside her stands John Bull, in a queer mixed costume, half sailor, with the smalls and gaiters of a coalheaver. He bears the Habeas Corpus Act under his arm, but stands aghast and paralysed, it never seeming to have occurred to the artist that this "Monsieur John ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the observatory at the time of his appointment was such that Lord Auckland, the first lord of the Admiralty, considered that "it ought to be cleared out,'' while Airy admitted that "it was in a queer state.'' With his usual energy he set to work at once to reorganize the whole management. He remodelled the volumes of observations, put the library on a proper footing, mounted the new (Sheepshanks) equatorial and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Bermuda be a queer sort of place, and water very scarce; all they get there is a Godsend, as it comes from Heaven; and they look sharp for the rain, which is collected in large tanks, and an inch or two more of water in the tank is ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... remarking on Susan's observation that he was a "queer boy," for he esteemed that a compliment "the Count is the only man among 'em who hasn't falled in love with nothink or nobody. But tell me, Susan, is your fair buzzum free from ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... all day from nine till four, and which the neighborhood calls 'Mrs. Griffing's signs.' It reminded me of another crowd of impotent folk, lame, halt, and blind, which filled the loveliest space in Jerusalem, and was a sign of joy and charity in the place. Queer, tender, wistful faces, so earnest one forgets their grotesque character and ragged, faded forms, cluster in the porch; such a set as one might once have seen put up at auction as a 'refuse lot' of plantation negroes. The men wear old army cloaks, while the women, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... feeling suddenly old. Things like Jubilees do date you—no doubt about it. Nearly fifty. Three- quarters of life behind her and what had she to show for it? An unlucky marriage, much physical health and fun, some friends—but, at the last, lonely—lonely as perhaps every human being in this queer world was. That old woman now preparing to ride in fantastic procession before her worshipping subjects, she was lonely too. Poor, little, lonely, old woman! Well, then, Charity to all and sundry—Charity, kindliness, the one and only thing. Aggie Combermere was not a sentimental ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... which the walls were subsequently hung as a screen. They might, theoretically, be of paper; though as a matter of fact the material used was generally terra-cotta or some fire-proof brick. The American said that it was queer to see a house being built at the eighth storey in midair, as it were, with nothing but the thin steel supports ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass. Even Jarl's glance seemed so queer, that I begged him to ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... your tricks," said the squire; "yours is not bad music; you speak your words articulately, and even eloquently. Your accompaniment is a little queer, especially in the bass; but you find out your mistakes, and slip out of them Heaven knows how. Zoe, you are tame, but accurate. Correct his accompaniments some day—when I'm out of hearing. Practice drives me mad. Give ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Morgan had learned that a criminal case was something like a dusty roadway. Many tracks crossed and re-crossed one another, becoming just a bewildering mass to the untrained eye. In the present instance, the situation in the Atwood apartment had queer aspects which seemed to connect it with the incident of the night before. The suspicious points were not so glaringly apparent, perhaps, as the circumstances which connected the man Marsh, but they were there just the ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... on his hat, of course, but never asked any questions, for his face was strange. I didn't know. The name, when you just spoke it, struck me rather queer. I—I used to know a Brant in the Seventh, but he was much older; ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... out automatically and in accordance with plans worked out in advance. Indeed almost the first time that such a question arose in at all aggravated form was when the Antwerp affair got going. That was a queer business altogether, and it seems necessary briefly to deal with what most military men ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... his gray eyes were bright and wild, so wild at times that they frightened those upon whom they were turned. He wore his own hair, which was coarse and straight, and in an age when every man wore a wig this made him look absurd. He had a trick of making queer gestures with hands and feet. He would shake his head and roll himself about, and would mutter to himself until strangers though that he was ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... stranger to be treated with feminine reserve than the doctor. Now it was different. She was about to take up her own life again, with new responsibilities, and the dearly loved creature whom she had bullied and laughed at and leaned on would go away to take up his own queer way of life, and the relations between them could not possibly be the same again. The diligence was taking her on the last stage of her journey towards the new conditions, and it jolted and bumped and smelled and ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... It was certainly a queer house. Even through the blinding storm they could distinguish its eccentric outlines as they alighted from the stage. Dorothy laughed happily, heedless of the fact that her husband's umbrella was dripping down her neck. "It's a dear old ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... then I had a few oats, then a little leading about; and this he did every day till I began to look for the oats and the saddle. At length, one morning, my master got on my back and rode me around the meadow on the soft grass. It certainly did feel queer; but I must say I felt rather proud to carry my master, and as he continued to ride me a little every day, I soon became accustomed ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... of the older people present felt scandalized by the singing and by the dancing of the "town girls," who could not for the life of them take the thing seriously. The room was so little, and hot, and smoky, and the men looked so queer in their ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... want to know; and I can't think of any reason why he shouldn't want us to go there. It seems so queer." ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... immediate answer, turning his head, however, and studying her with a queer, impersonal deliberation. She was wearing a smoke-coloured muslin gown and a black hat with gracefully arranged feathers. For a moment the weariness had passed from her face and she was a very beautiful woman. Her features were delicately shaped, ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Bordighera, I strolled up the hills behind the town to Sasso. It is a queer little cluster of gleaming white-washed houses that top the crest of a steep ridge; and, like many other Italian villages, it makes a brave show from a distance, though within it is full of evil smells and all uncleanness. But I found it had a church—a picturesquely ugly and dilapidated church; ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... to see her. That was where we were when you arrived. And now,' Chetney added, 'I will say good-by to her, and you had better return home. No, you can trust me, I shall follow you at once. She has no influence over me now, but I believe, in spite of the way she has used me, that she is, after her queer fashion, still fond of me, and when she learns that this good-by is final there may be a scene, and it is not fair to her that you should be here. So, go home at once, and tell the governor that I am following you in ten minutes.' "'That,' said Arthur, 'is the way we parted. I never ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... it, Patty; I'll write them all down most explicitly. And then I want a scarf, a very long one, cream-coloured ground, with a Persian border in blues and greys. But not a palm-leaf border—I mean that queer stencilled sort of a design; I'll draw a pattern of it ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... queer fellow, that it is impossible. To marry without love is as base and unworthy of a man as to perform mass without believing ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... "You can't fool me. I knew there was something queer about this whole arrangement." Then her voice changed. "It's very, very kind of you, Mr. Kelley, and I deeply appreciate it, and if you don't want me to do it—I will not let mother into ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... came the impresario with his large locket and the rest. And now, quaintly enough, I was fulfilling somebody else's dream of life—Cousin Elizabeth's! Perhaps I was fulfilling my own; but my dream of life was a queer vision. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... land of plenty we could afford to keep going. Later in the afternoon the smokers found that a match would not strike, and the primus went out. Then the man reading said that he felt unwell and could not see the words. Soon several others commented on feeling "queer," and two in the sleeping-bags had fallen into a drowsy slumber. On this evidence even the famous Watson would have "dropped to it," but it was some time before it dawned on us that the oxygen had given out. Then ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... somewhat startling eccentricities, his dirty linen, his face and hands to match, his shapeless garments hanging loosely over the flabby corpulence of his uncomely old body, his beery breath. To her, old Reinhardt was but the queer external symbol of a never-failing enchantment. Through the pleasant harmonious give-and-take of the other instruments, the voice of his violin vibrated with the throbbing passion of a living thing. His dirty old hand ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... had received and the fact that, by the testimony of all who saw him under fire, the young lieutenant gave evidence of very great courage and of indomitable energy. That he was, by what he calls a queer coincidence, the youngest officer of his regiment and its only member of the Legion of Honour, afforded him ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... "Mighty queer what has become of Hank," one of them said. "But I don't reckon there's any use looking any farther. You don't figure he's aiming to throw us down—do ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... changing its appearance very quickly. Its head is growing rather "lopsided." The eye next the sand is, little by little, brought round to the upper side, until it looks up instead of down. Its mouth gets a queer one-sided look, owing to the twisting of the ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... without sleep." "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst, sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of luck,—nigger luck—he don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... ax, I looks round fer Daddy. No Daddy thar! I goes out and asks some o' the boys. 'Daddy WAS there a minnit ago,' they say; 'must hev gone home.' Bein' kinder responsible for the old man, I hangs around, and goes out in the hall and sees a passage leadin' behind the scenes. Now the queer thing about this, boys, ez that suthin in my bones tells me the old man is THAR. I pushes in, and, sure as a gun, I hears his voice. Kinder ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... while Bunny kept on brushing the tiny whittlings from his jacket and short trousers. And there was a queer look on the face ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... through when I go out. I'll stand here while your sister reads that letter. He said the answer would be just 'yes' or 'no,' and I shouldn't have to wait long. 'She ain't one to teeter long on a decision,' says he; 'she finds her footin' one side or the other.' He talks queer, queerer'n ever sence he was hurt. I pity anybody that ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... make of it," Walter confessed. "Every few hundred feet there are branches partly broken off and left hanging. Queer, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... instead of simply resuming where he had left off, from force of habit he first gave the leader's usual three sharp taps upon his music desk, and then—so queer a thing is an audience—those people, brought to their feet in an agony of terror, of fire, panic, and sudden death by a woman's cry, now at that familiar tap, tap, tap, broke here and there into laughter. By sixes and sevens, then by tens and twenties, they sheepishly seated themselves, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... one—to the companion of these walks in particular not a bit more than he could help; but he was none the less haunted, under its shadow, with a dire apprehension of publicity. It was as if he had invoked that ugliness in some stupid good faith; and it was queer enough that on his emergent rock, clinging to it and to Susan Shepherd, he should figure himself as hidden from view. That represented no doubt his belief in her power, or in her delicate disposition to protect him. Only Kate at all ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... often, you know. Once I was in love with a grande dame, bestially in love, dog-like. Well, she gave me a rendezvous, and I didn't, couldn't, keep it, because suddenly I thought of her husband, and it made me feel sick. And you know, it's queer, that now, when I look back, instead of being glad that I was decent, I am as sorry as if I had sinned. But with Masha it's so different; I'm filled with joy that I've never soiled the brightness of my feeling for her. (He points his finger at the floor.) I ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... went respectably home, convoyed by a husband, and decorously holding up her skirts, Carol rejoiced, "Everything has changed! I have two friends, Fern and——But who's the other? That's queer; I thought ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... troubling her in a queer way, determined to ask Helen about her family, although it seemed that was one of the things that were not very nice to do. But perhaps Helen had a family. In that case ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... queer combination. That we were fond of him and he of us there is no doubt, but he was a man of moods. Intellectual, a good talker, and an unusually fine vocalist, his society as a rule was very enjoyable, ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... go off suddenly Alfred saw no reason why he should not ask Mildred to marry him. He liked her as well as any other girl; he thought he would make her a good husband, he would be able to manage her better than any other man, he was sure of that, because he understood her. She was a queer one: but he thought they'd get along all right. But all this was in the future, so long as Harold lived he'd keep on just as he was; if she met a man she liked better she could have him. He had got on very well without her for the last five years; there was no hurry, he could afford ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... work. The work was Aristotle's Ethics, and she was going through it for the second time, amplifying her notes. But this second time the Greek seemed more difficult, the philosophic argument more intricate than ever. She had had very little sleep for weeks, and her head ached in a queer way as though something inside it were strained very tight. It was plain that she had come to the end of her powers of work for the present—and she had calculated that only by not wasting a day, except for a week's ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... know," replied the little man, speaking slowly. "Whatever her secret may be, she keeps it, even when speaking in sleep. This I can tell you. I suspect that there is some other being, or person, in that queer old house of hers whom she consults on grave occasions. At a loss for an answer to a difficult scientific question, I have known her to leave the room and to come back in the course of a few minutes with a reply ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... of the valley; and the extraordinary height of the upper parapet, which is about 130 feet above the bed of the river, offers a prospect to the passing traveller the like of which is perhaps nowhere else to be seen. Far below are the queer chares and closes, the wynds and lanes of old Newcastle; the water is crowded with pudgy, black, coal keels; and, when there is a partial dispersion of the great smoke clouds which usually obscure the sky, the funnels of steamers and the masts of shipping may be seen far ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... and said it should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him 'Gravey.' Anne's was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him 'Waiting-boy.' Branwell chose ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... bade us a sad farewell, but many friends accompanied us to the station, and the rotund major and his rounder wife did us the like honour. Our major was a queer mixture: he was jolly because he was fat, and he was stern because he had a beaky nose, and in any interview one had first to ascertain whether the stomach or the nose held the upper hand, so to speak. With the wife one was always sure—she ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... made all kinds of queer mistakes, so that the end of all that was, that the vampyre did come; but he ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... He has never been known to buy drugs, and he's careful where he does his trick. He's still a little afraid of his father. All Indians are. It's queer where he was going with ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... citizen. If he wishes to serve her he must stand for the language; if he prefers English civilisation he should go back to England. There only can he develop on English lines. An Irishman in Ireland with an English mind is a queer contradiction, who can serve neither Ireland nor England in any good sense, and both Ireland and England disown him. So the Irishman of other than Gaelic ancestors should stand in with us, not accepting ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... Sally May; "well, of all the queer schools! Ask a teacher if we may have a midnight supper? Well, I ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... me with its tongue." Happily a sharp gun report close at hand frightened the reptile away. Before leaving the neighbourhood the viper-catcher presented his child friend with a specimen which he had tamed and rendered harmless by removing the fangs. This creature the queer boy fed with milk and often carried with ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... stopping to ask why or to wonder if we were right. Of course we Swallows never stop to eat, for we catch our food as we fly, but we did sometimes stop to rest. Just after we had crossed this great lake we alighted. It was then that a very queer thing happened, and this is really the story that I ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... perceived, too, that he had on a singular pair of shoes; but, as it was now growing dusk, and as the old man's eyesight was none the sharpest, he could not precisely tell in what the strangeness consisted. One thing, certainly, seemed queer. The traveler was so wonderfully light and active, that it appeared as if his feet sometimes rose from the ground of their own accord, or could only be ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... and presently he took the queer little Roman bellows, and set to work to blow upon the smouldering spots where the logs touched each other. In a few seconds a small flame appeared, and soon the fire was ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... The queer letters and crankish proposals which come in every day are amazing. I have just added to my collection of diplomatic curiosities a letter from the editor of a Democratic paper in southern Illinois, addressed to me as ambassador at Mayence, which he evidently takes to ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... to return to the sportsman, or the mountain, or to seek and find a new master to cozen, we never heard, as this was our last visit to Lucca. The lesson inculcated by Frate's misconduct has not been lost upon us; so whenever any queer canine scarecrow now meets us on the Pincian, and by his dejected looks seeks to enlist our sympathy, we cut short the appeal, stare him in the face, and then utter the word "never" with sufficient emphasis to send him off shaking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... but in spite of my jesting she would assure me just the same: 'You are in love with this man; this Don Jose interests you. Be careful, Carmen!' And the queer thing was that she did not take amiss my infatuation, especially when you consider that she was the enemy of every passion that could not be made directly subservient to our work.... She told the truth; I was in ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... queer, gaunt man came and glanced from the doorway at her. He had one eye in unnatural fixity, and the other set at that abnormal slant which is said to qualify the owner for looking round a corner before he gets to it. A droll twist of his mouth seemed partly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... beside a tree for one to come. Often he thought he saw the small old man with the beard and the little creature with trailing legs. And then he began to see other shadows—men with the heads of rooks and men with queer heavy swords upon their shoulders. He followed them on and on through the wood and he heard their whispering becoming louder and louder, and then he thought that as he went on the shadows, instead ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... But the Congdons are all queer. His pap used to have a house here and he was the worst ole crank on the shore. Young Putney's a pretty decent fellow. Mighty fine woman, ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... queer story," said Dick, who had just arrived from the office, "but it may be true. People do queer things sometimes, especially when they are under the influence of liquor. He probably had a grudge against Miss Harrow, and thought the disappearance of the ring would ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... bring peace to my soul; songs more sweet than morning, I hear again! My tears spring forth, the earth has won me back." He dropped his head upon his breast and wept. As he sat thus, in tender mood, a strange happening took place. A queer, explosive sound, and a jet of flame, and—there stood the devil, all in red, forked tail, horns, and cloven hoof! He stood smiling wickedly at the softened old man, while Faust stared ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... you, Purrer of the spotless hue, Plumy tail, and wistful gaze While you humoured our queer ways, Or outshrilled your morning call Up the stairs and through the hall - Foot suspended in its fall - While, expectant, you would stand Arched, to meet the stroking hand; Till your way you chose to wend Yonder, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... voice slid down on the word wick-ud made a queer thrilly feeling run down the boy's back, and all of a sudden the day grew wonderfully interesting, and this old seaport town one of the nicest places he had ever been in. The singer stopped at the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... like Halstead, Joe Dawson and that queer genius, Hank Butts, who are needed to build up the American merchant marine once ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... sounded so queer and hollow, shut up as it was in the can, and the nutmeg rattled around so, like thunder, that Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel, was frightened, and ran away, without helping Brighteyes. Then she felt like crying, but, in a little while she heard some one else coming along through ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... characteristic vigour. He was qualified for it not merely by a solid knowledge of the law, and by great natural abilities, but by his thorough kindness of heart; and, perhaps, it may also be added, by his long years of queer experience on (as Mr Carlyle would have said) the "burning marl" of the London Bohemia. Very shortly afterwards he was chosen Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and established himself in Bow Street. The Bow Street magistrate of that time ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... "Very queer things goes on in that 'ouse," said Ephraim. "I don't 'ardly like to say. But they think 'e raises the devil, sir. Awful noises goes on there. I seen some things myself there, as I don't like to talk of. ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... you this," he said, "if you made connections. If you'd been later than five minutes past seven, I was to keep dark. You've got seven minutes and a half to spare. Queer orders, but the big railroad boss, Woodbridge, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... said Big Swinton, in a subdued voice, to a knot of friends around him. "Blowin' hard as it has bin ever since we left England, it stands to reason that we must have pretty nigh got across the western sea to that noo land discovered by that man wi' the queer ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... said Dick. "There's something queer. It's too late to send a wire. I'll go up by the eleven o'clock train and find out all about it. Better go in now." He laid the telegram carelessly on ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... evening meal Henley saw his wife regarding him stealthily as she served the food to him and the others. Her look had a queer, shifting, probing quality, which at any other time would have inspired investigation, but she failed to rivet his attention to-night. There were other things to think of—things as new and startling as the dawn of day must have appeared to the opening eyes of the first man. And all ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... but he understood me not, and continued playing with the cats which we were transporting to Tours to protect the Commissary stores from the ravages of the rats that the Prussians had despatched to eat up the provisions of the garrison. Towards night I began to have a queer sensation in the stomach. It wasn't like sea-sickness, nor like the feeling produced by swinging. If a man just recovering from the effects of his first cigar were offered a bowl of hot goose-grease for supper, I suppose he would have felt as I felt. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... man's arm was carefully placed about a girl; no feminine waist lacked an arm save that of the proud chaperon, who sat in the middle smiling upon all. Seeing that the photograph somewhat surprised us, the chaperon stoutly explained, "This may look queer to you, but there wasn't one thing about that picnic that wasn't nice," and her statement was a ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of their views. Even the Independents of the Assembly disowned these views. Mr. Nye had said of the book that "there was in that book gross Brownism which he nor his brethren no way agreed with him in;" and Edwards had heard stories of queer goings-on in Mr. Burton's church, and his quarrel with "a butcher and some others of his church" about prophesying. Among the Brownists, besides Burton, Edwards names prominently "Katherine Chidley, an old Brownist, and her son, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... There are queer things that only come to sailormen; They're true, but they're never understood; And I know one thing about the Admiral, That I can't tell rightly as I should. I've been with him when hope sank under us— He hardly seemed a mortal like the rest, I could swear ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... is nearest those who feel its need most. You may think I am a queer Christian, and I sometimes think so myself—hating some people as near as I dare, and calling old Houghton a wretch. Don't I know about his heartache? Who better than I? God knows I would give his son back to him if I could. God knows I can almost swear ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... way to look at it. Who ever heard of a tree being lonely? You have a great many queer fancies, but they won't flourish here. Glasgow is given up to business; it has no time for ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance of those near her, for of course she led the singing. Her clear and earnest voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did not glance toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming more superiority than ever, and that she was icily scornful of him and Milla. The old resentment rose—he'd "show" that girl yet, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... with her thin wrinkled fingers on the arm of her chair, and waited with a queer anticipatory little smile for her ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... and the tension slackened rapidly. He had never been abroad himself but had always dreamed of going there. With maps and books of travel Judith and he had planned it out. In imagination they had lived in London and Paris, Munich and Rome, always in queer old lodgings looking on quaint crooked streets. He had dreamed of long delicious rambles, glimpses into queer old shops, vast, silent, dark cathedrals. For Laura how different it would be. This boy of hers knew Europe as a group ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... 'am no sayin' but he weel deserves it; but, Lord haud a care o' us, he's a queer ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... jangling, jarring little machette to a queer tune, and sang something in Portuguese about "Nina, innocente!" ending with a full-handed sweep that brought the song up with a jerk. Then Disko obliged with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... of the room. I knew she had gone to bed, for I heard her go up and shut the door. I stood there a few minutes with my hands in my pockets, whistling Yankee Doodle. Your mother used to say men were queer folks, Johnny; they always whistled up the gayest when they felt the wust. Then I went to the closet and got another pipe, and I didn't go up stairs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... we have just related, a queer carriage, the same which we saw arrive at Paris at the commencement of this history, went out at the same barrier by which it had entered, and proceeded along the road from Paris to Nantes. A young woman, pale and ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the bleaching rafters. It took me a good half hour to muster courage enough to go within ten rods of the ruin, but I finally did, and at last, scared half to death, and trembling, found myself peeping in at one window. It was dark in there and smelt queer, and I, a nine-year-old boy, fully expected to see some new and horrible spook appear at any moment. How long I stood there I never knew, for I forgot all else except the belief that if I waited long enough I should see something queer. I did, too, for ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... 'ins.' There has been no change in the 'Palace,' except that the quaint portraits of one-eyed Zargo, who has left many descendants in the island, and of the earlier Captains-General, dignitaries who were at once civil and military, have been sent to the Lisbon Exhibition. The queer old views of Machim's landing and of Funchal Bay still amuse visitors. Daily observations for meteorology are here taken at 9 A.M. and 3 and 9 P.M.; the observatory standing eighty ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios. Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to live; his ideal of grandeur was a splendid facade diffusing its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality. The house to which he had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal, which swung open in answer ...
— The American • Henry James
... He stopped. A queer look came over his face, and somehow the alert girl beside him knew what he was thinking of. 'Rill Scattergood was in his mind. He must have thought a great deal of the little school-mistress at one time—before ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... echoed Sikes. 'It'll be no sham frightening, mind you. If there's anything queer about him when we once get into the work; in for a penny, in for a pound. You won't see him alive again, Fagin. Think of that, before you send him. Mark my words!' said the robber, poising a crowbar, which he had ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... adventure of the cork soles,—has been in London too, and seeing all the lions under my escort. Good heavens! I wish you could have seen certain other mahogany-faced men (also captains) who used to call here for him in the morning, and bear him off to docks and rivers and all sorts of queer places, whence he always returned late at night, with rum-and-water tear-drops in his eyes, and a complication of punchy smells in his mouth! He was better than a comedy to us, having marvellous ways of tying his pocket-handkerchief round his neck at dinner-time in a kind of jolly embarrassment, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... come to his rooms, and asked me about the bandsman whom the fellows said saved three people, and what your name might be. Then he asked if it was you who pulled him out, and I said it was, feeling quite queer the while; for it seemed so strange that you should have saved his life after all as took place. Then he set down at his table, looking not a bit the worse, asked how you spell your name, and I told him Richard Smithson, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Robert thoughtfully ran his hands through his side-whiskers, while, with an apologetic "One moment, I beg," or "Very odd, very; that must go down verbatim," he entered the gist of Mr. Ketchum's queer remarks in his note-book. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various |
