"Whimsically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took a holt on me first," Zeke protested wrathfully, forgetful of his reconciliation with the dog. Then, a plaintive whine recalled him. He smiled whimsically, as he patted the bull-terrier's head, which was lifted toward him fondly. The anger died out of his face, and he smiled. "I've hearn these-hyar dumb critters git things 'bout right by instinct, somehow. Yer dawg's done fergive me. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... shy stage, Betty and Sylvia stopped catechizing her and concerned themselves with their own affairs. The new-comer went on quietly with her unpacking, taking no notice of her room-mates, but when the gong sounded for tea she allowed Betty and Sylvia to pass, then looked half-appealingly, half-whimsically at Marjorie. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... later in the day is of course contemporary history. If the interruption I had whimsically sanctioned was almost a scandal, what is to be said of that general scatter of the company which, under the Doctor's rule, began to take place in the evening? His rule was soothing to behold, small comfort as I was to have at the end. He decreed in the interest of his patient an absolutely soundless ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... provided even for that, Comrade. Fifty thousand Common Europe francs have been deposited to your account in Switzerland. At any time you feel your revelations might endanger yourself, you are free to leave the country and achieve sanctuary abroad." He chuckled whimsically again. "Given the position you will occupy, a man above all law, with the whole of the nation's resources at his disposal, I cannot imagine you wishing to leave. The Swiss deposit is merely to give you ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... for were he able to revisit this earth no one would touch more whimsically than he upon the fads and the foibles of contemporary life; but it's a great pity that in the popular craze about the new writers, all redolent with the varnish of novelty, we should consign to the dust of unused shelves the works of Charles Lamb. All that he wrote ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... these, and the bright whiteness of house and householder, the trim array of flower-beds and kitchen-garden, struck her as strange and artificial. She felt as if Don Annunzio ought to be wound up from behind, and was whimsically surprised to see him rise and come forward ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... passing out of existence. Several contemporary feminine writers have at least sufficient sense of humor to produce characters as deliciously humorous as delightful. Of such order is the Countess Claverley, made whimsically real and lovable in the recent book by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler and A.L. Felkin, 'Kate of Kate ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... very nice, I think,' said Gladys whimsically. 'Did I tell you that Mrs. Macintyre, who used to live in the Wynd, is at the lodge at Bourhill? But perhaps you did not know ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... this;" and reluctantly the secret agent outlined his plan. "Now, go to bed and sleep, for you and I shall need some to draw upon during the next three or four days. Hunting for buried treasures was never a junketing. The admiral will tell you that. At dawn!" Then he added whimsically: "I trust we haven't disturbed the royal ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... well as upon the technical points of law and oratory. So many of the brilliant young politicians of this period had been brought into close relations with Cicero in this way, that when he found himself forced out of politics by the Caesarians, he whimsically writes to his friend Paetus that he is inclined to give up public life and open a school, and not more than a year before his death he pathetically complains that he has not leisure even to take the waters at the spa, because of ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... sat at the control panel of Triplanetary's newly reconstructed space-ship, his hands grasping the gleaming, ebonite handles of two double-throw switches. Facing the unknown though the physicist was, yet he grinned whimsically at ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... the dreaming of this ballad of mine that led me to think of Monna Vittoria, whom you will remember if you bear in mind the beginning of this, my history, the lady that Messer Simone of the Bardi was whimsically pledged to wed if he failed to win a certain wager that I trust you have not forgotten. And thinking of Monna Vittoria led, in due time, to a meeting with Monna Vittoria ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... at," replied Robert, whimsically, "though I don't believe the marksman could come so close to me again without finishing me. I think it was Peter's spy because I saw him come out of the house, and cried to him to halt, but he fired first. My own bullet, I'm sure, touched him, ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... struck Joe that it was a beautiful day. He opened his eyes and looked about him whimsically. Then he shook his head again. A lady had just emerged from the bridge and ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... answered whimsically. "My only client refuses to speak to me! Perhaps you could get something out ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... observed, that the principle applies only to regular versification, which is the common form, if not the distinguishing mark, of poetical composition. And, in this, the practice of beginning every line with a capital is almost universal; but I have seen some books in which it was whimsically disregarded. Such poetry as that of Macpherson's Ossian, or such as the common translation of the Psalms, is subjected neither to this rule, nor to the common ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... mischievous to himself; and for that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country; measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable. He made an administration, so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers, king's ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... minister at Versailles with their pettiest squabbles, while Marlborough and Eugene were threatening his throne with destruction.[108] The same system prevailed in Canada; but as there the field was broader and the men often larger, the effects are less whimsically vivid than they appear under the Acadian microscope. The two provinces, however, were ruled alike; and about this time the Canadian Intendant Raudot was writing to Ponchartrain in a strain worthy of De Goutin, Subercase, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... the news he seemed to think less of the distinction conferred upon him than of the unhappiness of being once more banished from his home. "It is hard—very hard," he murmured, half to himself; "yet," he added, whimsically enough (says his nephew), being struck with the seeming absurdity of such a view, "I must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." Later, however, Irving speaks of this as the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... He thought whimsically that it was lucky no one else had heard that question. "So hard that my success at ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... ... then, after a pause of reproach which I enjoyed—"your Uncle Lan's toned down a lot since then ... married ... has four children ... one every year." And Alice laughed whimsically. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... with the contents of two chests from Rome, the lower half of the windows darkened with baize, and the blonde Hans in his weird youth as the presiding genius of the littered place—his hair longer than of old, his face more whimsically creased, and his high voice as usual getting higher under the excitement of rapid talk. The friendship of the two had been kept up warmly since the memorable Cambridge time, not only by correspondence ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... representations of his enemies by ridiculing his own unfitness for the office. During the interval between his appointment and his first appearance as judge in the Court of Chancery, he made a jocose pretence of 'reading up' for his new duties: and whimsically exaggerating his deficiencies, he represented himself as studying books with which raw students have some degree of familiarity. Caught with 'Cruise's Digest' of the laws relating to real property, open in his hand, he observed ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... horseback, looked more like a phantom than anything human. His complexion was the colour of pale dust, and of that same colour was all that pertained to him, hat and clothes. His boots were dusty of course, for it was midsummer, and his very horse was of a dusty dun. His features were whimsically ugly, most of his teeth were gone, and as to his age, he might be thirty or sixty. He was somewhat lame and halt, but an unequalled rider when once upon his steed, which he was naturally not very solicitous to quit. I subsequently discovered that he was considered the wizard ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... please with your money, and I have an equally perfect right to accept your gifts. We are all afraid of the world, aren't we? That's probably at the bottom of my doddering. Cutty, what is love?" she broke off, whimsically. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... very diligent in his court to Miss Grandison. His father and aunt are to visit her this afternoon. She behaves whimsically to my lord: yet I cannot think that she greatly ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... smallness of the amount in some degree account for the betting?" she asked whimsically. "You know, I bet a little—just a little. If I have but a small sum, I already regard it as a stake; I am ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... purpose of procuring a supply of beef. As the hunters were stealing cautiously to get within shot of the game, two small white bears suddenly presented themselves in their path, and, rising upon their hind legs, contemplated them for some time with a whimsically solemn gaze. The hunters remained motionless; whereupon the bears, having apparently satisfied their curiosity, lowered themselves upon all fours, and began to withdraw. The hunters now advanced, upon which the bears turned, rose ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... position he had won in a community where he had experienced the unique sensation of being a pioneer in at the rebirth of a great city, as well as the outdoor sports that kept him fit, that had endeared California to Ruyler, and in time caused him whimsically to visualize New York as a sternly accusing instead of a beckoning finger. Long before he found time to play polo at Burlingame he had conceived a deep respect for a climate where a man might ride horseback, shoot, drive a racing car, or tramp, ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... whimsically. "I met a tourist with spectacles walking along Duke of Gloucester Street. 'Sir,' he said courteously, 'I am looking for Kingsborough. I am told that it is a city.' 'Sir,' I responded, with a bow that did honour to my grandfather's ghost, 'it was once a chartered ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... he runs between past and present is false—whimsically false. At one time we hear it uttered as an impeachment against our age, that every thing is done by committees and companies, shares and joint effort, and that no one man, or hero, can any longer move the world as in the blessed days ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "Only," said Jack, whimsically, "I do hope if they've got their German appetites along, they don't clean out that pantry before I get my look-in, that's all. Twenty-four hours without a single bite would be the limit for me. I don't think I'd survive ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... time! Oh, Biddy! When I have lingered in the prison-house so long!" Slowly Isabel rose to her feet. She looked at Biddy almost whimsically. "I think He will take that into the reckoning," she said. "Do you know, Biddy, this is the second summons that has come to me? And I think—I think," her face was glorified again as the face of one who sees a vision—"I think the third will be ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... but, upon my word—-" She puckered her lips and raised her eyebrows whimsically, and gave her head a little shake. Doctor Gregory gave her a shrewdly appraising look, sighed, and ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: "A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it." Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he wrote, whimsically, "Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself..... I would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de luxe editions of my books. But Mrs. Clemens and the children object to this, I do not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she herself had been sociable to the last degree with her neighbors, they openly preferred her taciturn companion. "It is well that virtue is its own reward, for it certainly does not get any other, in my experience," she remarked whimsically. ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... to see the lying in state, as lying stark and dead is called whimsically, of the Duke of Sussex. It was a fine sight, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... introduction, containing many words such as daemonic sensuality, a network of the most delicate nerves, simoom, crystal, and so on, he began at last telling the story of the novel. He did not tell the story so whimsically, but told it in minute detail, quoting from memory whole descriptions and conversations; the characters of the novel fascinated him, and to describe them he threw himself into attitudes, changed the expression of his face and voice like a real actor. He laughed with delight at one moment in a deep ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... face rigidly set, inscrutable to my glance. Then he relaxed into one of those whimsically appealing smiles that somehow are acutely eloquent of pathos. 'Serious parts—with this low-comedy face of mine!' he responded. And my query had been answered. Yet he went on, 'No, I shall never play Hamlet. I can give a good imitation of a bad actor but, doubtless, I should give a very ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... a prophet. But this I can say. Tell our friends in America—and also those who do not love us—that I am looking forward with unshakable confidence to the final victory—and a well-earned vacation," he added whimsically. "I should like nothing better than to visit your Panama Exposition and meet your wonderful General Goethals, the master builder, for I imagine our jobs are spiritually much akin; that his slogan, too, has been 'durchhalten' ('hold out') until endurance and organization win ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... mad, eloquent lie of love and she would have softened. Women are all like that. Tell me," Carl stared whimsically into his glass as if it were a magic crystal of revelation, "why is it that when I am scrupulously honest no one understands? . . . Why that mad stir of love-hunger to-night as Diane stood in the doorway? Why ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... to know it, they'd think it was so funny, but—" She paused uncertainly, and looked questioningly into his face. "Maybe you won't understand what I mean, but sometimes I'd like to be good myself. Awfully good, I mean." She smiled whimsically. "Wouldn't Connie scream if she could hear that? Now you won't give me away, will you? But I mean it. I don't think of it very often, but sometimes, why, Professor, honestly, I wouldn't care if I were as good as Prudence!" She paused dramatically, and the professor pressed ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... a grave, yet not unfriendly, place; the white straining Nereids were taking on a tinge of violet, the verdure was of a deeper hue, that was all; and the fountain plashed unhurriedly, as though measuring a reasonable interval (he whimsically imagined) between the asking of a riddle and its solution given gratis by ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Alice, she used to hurl herself into his arms and insist on staying there. Her aunt, Miss Anne Hamilton, who had brought her up from babyhood, was always detaching her from Raven; but Nan clung as persistently. Raven would look at Miss Anne, over the girl's rumpled silk poll, with whimsically imploring eyes. Why couldn't Nan be allowed to break upon him like a salty, fragrant wave of the sea, he seemed to ask Miss Anne, bringing all sorts of floating richness, the outcrop of her fancies and affections? Aunt Anne would return the glance with ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... sat down in a window of the south room to nurse her doll. She nodded and laughed dutifully when her father, going forth at last to the still pools and the brook courses, with his tackle in hand, looked back and nodded whimsically at her. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mistakes Felix for one), to borrow a suit of the Mayor's clothes—into which he gets in time to interview that worthy when he returns with his grim lady. "You'll get a month," says she with damnable iteration; and the resourceful Felix, with an eye to the whimsical will, whimsically suggests that justice would be better fulfilled by his putting in the month at the Mayor's house as odd-job man than by his being conveyed to the county jail. And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... at his wife was because she crossed the field of his vision; his second glance was because of her beauty; his third because her name was SHELLEY. It is marvellous how whimsically sentimental commonplace people can be where their own interesting personality is concerned: her name he instantly associated with SCALLOP-SHELL, and began to make inquiry about her. Learning that her other name was Miriam, one also of ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... at intervals. It was a kind of rhymed diary or waste-book, in which he deposited his every-day thoughts and feelings, without any order or plan,—reminding us of "Tristram Shandy" or of "Don Juan," although not so whimsically delightful as the former, nor so brilliant and ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... sting of some vast injury, to inflict a great affront. A deliberately designed affront on the part of another man, it therefore remained to the end of his days. The manner in which, as time went on, he permeated the unfortunate lord's ancestry with this offence, was whimsically characteristic of Landor. The writer remembers very well when only the individual himself was held responsible in the story for the breach of good breeding; but in another ten years or so, it began to appear that his father had always been remarkable ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... brotherly appreciations His Highness walked away, leaving Dick to ponder on the joyous prospects they contained. His sinister prediction Richard Crowninshield soon found to be true. Thorough was no name for Bob King. Before a week had passed Dick whimsically remarked to his father that it must be a task to Bob to swim on the top of the sea without diving down with a spy glass and examining every particle that was on the ocean's bottom. The fact that the new tutor never dipped into any ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... certain rollicking good-humor about Lund. This morning he was grim, his face, with its beak of a nose and aggressive chin beneath the flaming whiskers, and his whole magnificent body gave the impression of resolve and repressed action. Rainey fancied whimsically that he could hear a dynamo purring inside of the giant's massiveness. He had seen him in open rage when he had first denounced Honest Simms, but the serious mood was ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... care much where you go, do you, Dot?" asked her father whimsically. "The main idea with you seems to be to keep moving. How about it, Mother—want to take a little drive?" Mrs. Blossom glanced ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... business—particularly sorry about Gray, for that is my fault. For the good of our State I wish you both were going to sit side by side at Frankfort, in Congress, and the Senate, and fight it out"—he smiled whimsically—"some day for the nomination for the Presidency. The poor old commonwealth is in a bad way, and it needs just such boys as you two are. The war started us downhill, but we might have done better—I know I might. The earth was too rich—it made life too easy. The ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... Annapolis is whimsically laid out, the streets verging from each other, like rays from a centre. It is still the seat of government; and it's state-house is by much the best building I have seen in America. This little city is now the retreat of some of the best families in the state. The inhabitants in general are ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... snip!" he said whimsically, as he pulled her toward him determinedly. "I've a notion to chastise you! Talking like that with the whole of life before you! Such ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... in a dingy green dress, whom Constance had introduced with a wave of her hand as Miss Miniver. Miss Miniver looked out on the world through large emotional blue eyes that were further magnified by the glasses she wore, and her nose was pinched and pink, and her mouth was whimsically petulant. Her glasses moved quickly as her glance travelled from face to face. She seemed bursting with the desire to talk, and watching for her opportunity. On her lapel was an ivory button, bearing the words "Votes for ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... whimsically quoted the count. "Come, Colonel; do not waste time in useless retrospection. He stumbles who looks back. I have been thinking of your daughter. I love ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... meditation had completed it, but with a cumulative effect for her husband's general sense of her method that caused him to overflow, whimsically enough, in his corner, into an ejaculation now frequent on his lips for the relief that, especially in communion like the present, it gave him, and that Fanny had critically traced to the quaint example, the aboriginal homeliness, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... garments for every imaginable occasion were brought forth. There were stout English tweeds for the heaviest weather, two dress suits, and Norfolk jackets in corduroy. The owner's taste ran to grays and browns, it seemed, and he whimsically ordered his raiment grouped by colors as he lounged about with ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... Mrs. Jordan had to let. It was the atelier of the Rue Porte Royale transported. Elfrida had brought all her possessions with her, and took a nameless comfort in arranging them as she liked them best. "Try to feel at home," she said whimsically to her Indian zither as she hung it up. "We shall miss Paris, you and I, but one day we shall go back together." A Japanese screen wandered across the room and made a bedroom of the end. Elfrida had ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... many other new matters tossing in her brain for her to dwell long upon this dread. At times she could but smile whimsically at the perversity of love. The little god was doubtless laughing in impish glee at what he had brought about. She had always thought in a vague way that she would sometime marry, but she had always regarded it as a matter of course that ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... of the disadvantages of the practice of romance in America, which Hawthorne more or less whimsically lamented, that there were so few shadows and inequalities in our broad level of prosperity; and it is one of the reflections suggested by Dostoievsky's novel, 'The Crime and the Punishment,' that whoever struck a note so profoundly tragic in American fiction would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... cross-country passenger travel. Following the Civil War, the brother of Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) was appointed Territorial Secretary of Nevada. Samuel accompanied his brother as private secretary. The journey was made largely in a stagecoach, the inconveniences of which are whimsically set forth in the following ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... by your face," said Crockett whimsically, "that it is Urrea. But remember, Ned, that you can still be ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Uncle John, whimsically, "you remind me of Wampus. You should strut around and say: 'Behold me! I ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... Up to a very short time ago I thought you one of the most whimsically entertaining men I ever met, but as I said just now, a spiritual disparagement has arisen between us, a thick fog, and I wish ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... gentlemen," he began whimsically, "I will bore you with a brief account of the extraordinary facts concerning the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... Here comes emotion—in the shape of my aunt Ellen. Isn't Mr. Linden a careful man?" he asked whimsically in a low voice, returning to his place by Faith. The question touched Faith's feeling of the ludicrous, and she only laughed at the doctor. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... have done it, if you had seen us first," Theodora responded half whimsically, half discontentedly. "Hope and Hubert are all right; but the rest of us are enough to turn your hair white. I was bad enough; and now Phebe is forsaking the world and taking to skeletons, and Allyn is at war ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... out the light and crept into bed with a sigh. "Such a wonderful time," she breathed, "and he is good looking. Jack——" Then she smiled whimsically into the dark. "It must run in the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... thus deliberately abandoned by Julian would suffer perhaps almost to the limit of her capability of pain, but Valentine would have lost sight of her in the dark, and though he would have conquered that spectral opposition which she had whimsically offered to him—he laughed to himself now, thinking of his fear of it—he would not see that greatest vision, the flight of his enemy. These thoughts flashed through his mind, moving him to an answer ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... morning, have rendered me nervous for the whole day. I feel almost appalled by such success, and fearful that it cannot be real, or that it is not fully merited, or that I shall not act up to the expectations that may be formed. We are whimsically constituted beings. I had got out of conceit of all that I had written, and considered it very questionable stuff; and now that it is so extravagantly bepraised, I begin to feel afraid that I shall not do as well ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... He smiled whimsically as he kissed her. "You wouldn't want to leave George, would you? Never see him again? I'm not asking you ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, then seventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a rambler rose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed little gazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runaway stream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she wore a crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-cent silk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine nails with ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... if you were a tailor," said Miss Bordereau whimsically; and then she added quickly, in a different manner, "This house is very fine; the proportions are magnificent. Today I wanted to look at this place again. I made them bring me out here. When your man ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... Whimsically, and almost mechanically, he set himself, in his mind, to count the men. There were twenty mercenaries all told, excluding Fortunio and himself. On Arsenio he might rely not to attack him, perhaps even to come to his ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... seeing him for a moment somewhat whimsically as Viceroy of conquered great India of the elephants and the temples filled with bells. His face lighted. He looked at me, and I knew again that he liked me. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... with anything in its way, except some of the happier efforts of the late Mr. Charles Bennett, to which, nevertheless, it is greatly superior in execution. To this clever artist's invention everything seems to present itself with a train of fantastic accessory so whimsically inexhaustible that it almost overpowers one with its prodigality. Each fresh examination of his designs discloses something overlooked or unexpected. Let the reader study for a moment the famous "Birds of a Feather" of 1875, or that ingenious skit of 1877 upon the rival Grosvenor Gallery ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... sour, for I saw you squeezing it when you ought to have been singing your morning hymn,—I thought you would get into trouble with it then. Now is it all right, Mike?—that's good! And Joe, don't go poking into other people's lunch baskets. If you hadn't done that, you silly boy," I philosophized whimsically for my own edification, "you would have been a victim; but you descended to the level of your adversary, and you are now simply ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... like a colt in the pasture—fit for anything. But the doctor won't have it that way. He says I'm an invalid," returned the young man whimsically. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... see plenty of game when you haven't got a gun; and so I guess we'll run across all sorts of things, from bobcats to alligators!" Paul went on to remark, whimsically, but there was one scout who chose to take his words seriously, and ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... five hundred feet high, rough with furze-clad projections at the top, and falling abruptly to a bay; then, perhaps, masses of a low, dark rock, girding a basin of turf, as at Watermouth; again, a recess and beach, with the mouth of a stream; a headland next in order, and so the dark coast runs whimsically eastward, passing from one shape to another like a Proteus, until it unites with the massive sea-front of Exmoor.' At the eastern ridge of the county, the hill on which Oldbarrow Camp stands rises more than eleven hundred feet straight out ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once have I said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: "Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered-up within the largest imaginable Glass-bell,—what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... this case, your bag of peanuts happened to be airy country rooms, and cow's milk, and real eggs from a real hen's nest," returned Jamie whimsically; "but it amounts to the same thing. And maybe I'd better warn you—you remember how greedy Sir ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... music. I shall send her," Isabelle said quickly, reflecting whimsically how she had loathed her own music lessons. Alice flushed, and after a moment's ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... his heart when I didn't go home," he thought whimsically, "now, I mustn't break ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... half unconsciously and quite in spite of herself, the ghost of a sigh escaped her. She could not help wishing things were a trifle more real sometimes, bright and whimsically unworldly as ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Uncle Jack, whimsically. "I haven't the advantage of being a girl with a brother and a baker's dozen of beaux in bell buttons and gray. I'm only an old fossil of a 'cit,' with a scamp of a nephew and that limited conception of the delights of West Point which one can derive from running up there every time that ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... and vindictive eye of the old man struck du Tillet, whose attention had first been attracted by a watch-chain from which hung a pound of jingling gew-gaws, and by a green coat with a collar whimsically cocked up, which gave the old man the semblance of a rattlesnake. The banker approached the usurer to find out how and why he had thus ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... along the street in silence, which the good man was not likely first to break, when Johnson suddenly stopped, and turning round to him, exclaimed, "Sir! don't you think that 'Me miserable' is miserable stuff?" On another occasion he thus whimsically described the different manner in which he felt himself disposed towards a Whig and a Tory. "If," said he, "I saw a Whig and a Tory drowning, I would first save the Tory; and when I saw that he was safe, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... in her slender fingers. Every instance of weak compliance with the whims, of devoted subjection to the power, of destructive attention to the caprices of women by men, since Eve ruined her lord with the fatal apple, was whimsically represented by the rapid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... him, smiling rather whimsically). You're a much finer person than I am, Victor. Of course that's not saying much. I'm not very much good, am I? (Laughing gently.) But that's exactly why I'm not going to do what you want me to. It's not the only reason, though. The ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... I'm good," he remarked whimsically, "but I sometimes wish the Lord had made me only half as good and put the rest of it into looks. But I reckon He knew what He was about, as a good Captain should. Some of us have to be homely or the purty ones—like Miss Mary there—wouldn't show up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as he ended—himself with a whinny of laughter. For, odd as such discourse may sound in the reading, it was uttered so whimsically, and in so spirited and humorous a style that I assure you it ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... very plain cravat, and to fasten in it with care the scarf-pin bestowed upon him by old Benson, the little watchmaker on the corner below. Through the buttonhole in the lapel of his coat he drew a spicy-smelling sprig of ground-pine, chanting whimsically as he did so a couplet from ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... would as soon have thought of following her into police headquarters as there. Ever after she stayed. She took possession of the alley and of headquarters, where the reporters had their daily walk, as if they were hers by right of conquest, which in fact they were. With her whimsically grave countenance, in which all the cares of the vast domain she made it her daily duty to oversee were visibly reflected, she made herself a favorite with every one except the "beanery-man" on the corner, who denounced her angrily, when ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... he goes on, whimsically, "and I saw that repair really seemed out of the question. Nothing but a new church would do! So I took the ax that I had brought with me and began chopping the place down. In a little while a man, not one of the church members, ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... Darrow smiled whimsically. "Indeed I do, Helen," he said quietly; "that is why I don't want to touch his life. Science would ruin him quicker than an office—in the long run. What he wants is a job of action—something out West—or in the construction ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... quietly. "That is an unfair question," he equivocated, narrowing his eyes whimsically. "If I were heir to the property and felt that I did not care to assume the danger of managing it I should sell, without doubt. If, on the other hand, I had decided to continue my father's fight against an unscrupulous company, ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Elly Precious was over that stoopy little figure. Miss Theodosia looked with softened eyes. Then a smile grew in them, wrinkling their corners whimsically. She was noticing something else besides the little old-lady back. Evangeline's braids toed in! Tight and flaxen, they stood out in rounded curves, converging suddenly to the bit of faded ribbon that tied them together. There was something suspicious looking about that ribbon—"Stefana starched ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... The surveyor answered whimsically: "Don't you think I might take my hands down now? I'm unarmed you know and you could still shoot me if you thought I ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... Paredes smiled whimsically. He took two faded photographs from his pocket. They were of young men, after the fashion of Blackburns, remarkably alike even without the gray, obliterating marks ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... I should. But will you?"—whimsically. She glanced at the sophisticated simplicity of Magda's white gown, at the narrow suede shoes and filmy stockings—every detail of her dress and person breathing the expensiveness and luxury and highly ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... We have a doctor handy," answered Dave, whimsically. "Just the same, I guess we had better remain where we are," he added, ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... quickly, Tom," she had said to him whimsically, not long before Tom had gone back to France. "I do not feel as though I could return to college, or write another scenario, or do another single solitary thing until peace ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... fifty, dressed in a jacket of reddish brown merino, holding in her left hand a green cord, which was tied to the collar of an English terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man in knee-breeches and silk stockings, whose hat had its brim whimsically turned up, while snow-white tufts of hair like pigeon plumes rose at its sides. A slender queue, thin as a quill, tossed about on the back of his sallow neck, which was thick, as far as it could be seen above the turned ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... something orderly in its origin, and not to be deprecated on other grounds, since probably it deceived nobody. They lived a very tranquil life, and Clara had no grief of her own unless it was that there seemed to be no great things she could do for him. One day when she whimsically complained of this, he said: "I'm very glad of that. Let's try to be equal to the little sacrifices we must make for each other; they will be quite enough. Many a woman who would be ready to die for her husband makes him wretched because ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... his right to his left foot and pressed his lips together. Von Koenitz fingered the waxed ends of his moustache and regarded the operator whimsically. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... Gray's brows lifted whimsically. "Of course. How should you know? There was a clumsy attempt to do me bodily harm, to—assassinate me. Funny, isn't it? So ill considered and so impracticable.—But about this Avenger matter, if you find it inconvenient ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... mountainous waste lay Lund, halfway up a canyon that led to higher reaches in the hills, rich in silver, lead, copper, gold. Silver it was that Casey had found and sold to the men from Tonopah, and it was a freak of luck, he thought whimsically, that had led him and his Ford away over to Starvation Mountains to find their stake when they had probably been driving over millions every day that they made the stage trip ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... up and down the hill, and then, fixing his quiet grey eyes on me, said whimsically, "I am a man of peace, and unarmed; the road is of a truth very lonely, and I have considerable sums of money ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... the poem is matter which disturbs a reader's satisfaction, till he gets accustomed to the poet's way, and resigns himself to it. It is a heroic poem, in which the heroine, who gives her name to it, never appears: a story, of which the basis and starting-point is whimsically withheld for disclosure in the last book, which was never written. If Ariosto's jumps and transitions are more audacious, Spenser's intricacy is more puzzling. Adventures begin which have no finish. Actors in them drop from the clouds, claim an interest, and we ask in vain what has become ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... of the board of directors that night," Will went on, whimsically, "this man Stephen Carson went directly to a safety deposit vault where three or four hundred thousand dollars' in the way of cash and jewelry, were hidden. He took the whole bundle and disappeared. Is that ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... go back again now, will you?" he asked whimsically, after learning whence I came. "I must," said I, sadly. "Oh don't," said he; "tell them you can't, and just wander about the East." He transshipped shortly and disappeared, one of many passing travellers with whom one is for a few moments on common ground. Our voyage ended at Cattaro ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... style was a little florid for the organist of St. Mark's," said the choirmaster whimsically. "My boy, if you will sing it for us at the recital as well as you did just now, you ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... he began to praise Robin Drummond, not too suddenly nor too effusively at first, but by degrees, so as not to awaken Nelly's suspicions. He amazed Robin Drummond by his cordiality in those days, and the young fellow commented on it whimsically to ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... say that this is what you get for bringing a woman along," she said. She smiled at me whimsically, gloriously, and I knew there was no need ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... in delight at the prospect of a ride. David lifted her up, and Joe settled her comfortably in the saddle, encircling her with his arm. Then he looked down whimsically into ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... have hurt you much—matrimony," he observed whimsically, as he dropped the hand. "You look just like you always did—with your hat on." In the West, not to say in every other locality, there is a time-honored joke about matrimony, for certain strenuous reasons, producing ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... hands, or drank a certain beverage held in much estimation by them; if he washed a corpse in warm water, or when dying turned his face to the wall; or, finally, if he gave Hebrew names to his children; a provision most whimsically cruel, since, by a law of Henry the Second, he was prohibited under severe penalties from giving them Christian names. He must have found it difficult to extricate himself from the horns of this dilemma. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... He smiled whimsically at Ruth. "My left hand is rather in need of attention, Miss Clinton. I suppose I am so deeply in your bad graces that I may not hope for—er—the same ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... at any rate," she said, whimsically smiling, "that the moral of my little exhibition has ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... more if they didn't," answered Tommy honestly, puckering her face into frowns and squinting up at Harriet so whimsically that the older girl burst into ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... his mouth as if to say something and Cuthbert expected that he meant to include Owen in his invitation, but he simply nodded his head, smiled whimsically, and bent over to ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... into begging, and in assuring her of the love and loyalty she longed for, all forgot their words of thanks till Larry said whimsically, "I'm afraid things are getting a little mixed here, and I'm not quite certain, now, whether we're to be grateful to Joyce for a beautiful home, or she to us for deigning ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... the ungentle tread of pitching hoofs, skidded twice as far as in calm weather. The gray sky bent threateningly above them, wind-torn into flying scud but never showing a hint of blue. Later there might be rain, sleet, snow—or sunshine, as nature might whimsically direct; but for the present she seemed content with only the chill wind that blew the very ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... crashing rattlety-bang Agnes sprang to her feet with a nervous shriek. Ethelwynne dived for her skates and felt them carefully. "I tried to pick out the softest spot on the rug," she complained whimsically, "but there wasn't any other way to wake her up. And I simply had to have some sympathy. Oo-oo-ooh, ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... are invariably broken. I know a big man who is nothing but a big drum; and I know another whose whole existence has been a jig on a fiddle; and I know a shrill little fellow who is a fife; and I know a brassy girl who is a pair of cymbals; and once—once," repeated the parson whimsically, "I knew an old maid who was a real living spinet. I even know another old maid now who is nothing but an old music book—long ago sung through, learned by heart, and laid aside: in a faded, wrinkled binding—yellowed ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... poem, but how immeasurably sad, an invocation to the memory and to the spirit of Robert Browning, not speaking of him in an elegiac strain as of a great poet who had lived his life to the full and struck his clear-toned harp, solemnly, sweetly, and whimsically too, year after year; but as of something great and noble wholly lost and separated from the ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stir of all her slender body, Lydia roused herself. "Well, I can speak—can you?" she asked whimsically. "Don't you ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of Henry's sincere admirers in the old Lyceum days, and now if you want to hear any one talk of those days brilliantly, delightfully, and whimsically, if you want to live first nights and Beefsteak Room suppers over again—if you want to have Henry Irving at the Garrick Club recreated before your eyes, it is only Alfred Gilbert who can ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... door of the apartment, when Miss Vernon, whose movements were sometimes so rapid as to seem almost instinctive, overtook me, and, catching hold of my arm, stopped me with that air of authority which she could so whimsically assume, and which, from the naivete and simplicity of her manner, had an effect so ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in the successful musical comedy, The Girl of Forty-Seven, there is a scene in which Miss Verbena Vaine, as Clementina, the horse-dealer's beautiful daughter, denounces the disreputable old veterinary surgeon, Binnett, so whimsically played by that ripe comedian, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... after years his Administration will be described in words like those of Burke, who, speaking of the Gladstone of his day, said, "He made an Administration so checked and speckled, he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tesselated pavement without cement, that it was indeed a curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand upon. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... said. And I would have pressed the matter further but the old black cat had come out of the cottage and was looking at me whimsically and saying nothing so that I knew I was asking silly questions. And I asked instead why some of the poets were idle and were watching butterflies without being beaten. And she said: "The butterflies know where the pearls are hidden and they are waiting for one to alight above the buried treasure. ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... sorry for and ashamed of the experiment before the dinner was half over, and many times since the accident which interrupted the evening I had wondered, half-whimsically, whether my dress catching fire was not a "judgment on me." I had deeply dreaded seeing Mr. Underwood again, but as I looked into his eyes I saw nothing ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... seemed very quiet, though steadily, from a distant upper room, came the sound of a violin. For more than an hour, Allison had worked continuously at one difficult phrase. Colonel Kent smiled whimsically as he sat in the library, thinking that, by this time, he could almost play ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... have him say good-night and go home or stay and confess to me, just as he chose. I knew he needed me; a good many men need their mothers once in a while as much as they ever did when boys. There was something whimsically boyish about Charlie as he leaned over the back of a tall chair and debated secretly whether or not he should confide ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... casually at the bruised faces of Yorke and Redmond. "You men must have had quite a tussle with that fellow, Moran!" he remarked whimsically. "You seem to have come off the best, Sergeant. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall |
