"Grotesque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were none greater than the denial of the Roman Catholic Faith, or the rejection of the Roman bishop's supremacy; and that he himself was chosen by Providence for the re-establishment of both. Mary was driven to madness by the disappointment {p.224} of the grotesque imaginations with which he had inflated her; and where two such persons were invested by the circumstances of the time with irresponsible power, there is no occasion to look further for the explanation of the dreadful events of ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... chambers, which Blanche had visited before. Emily was amused by observing the structure of these apartments, and the fashion of their old but still magnificent furniture, and by comparing them with those of the castle of Udolpho, which were yet more antique and grotesque. She was also interested by Dorothee the house-keeper, who attended them, whose appearance was almost as antique as the objects around her, and who seemed no less interested by Emily, on whom she frequently gazed with so much deep attention, as scarcely to hear ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... could go, and where in creation did you find that ridiculous old dress?" demanded Cherry, after an astonished survey of the grotesque figure in ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... remember the rest of the face—perhaps the white clothes wrapped it around. While the eyes struck him with awe, he had a curious idea that the thing had been interrupted in arranging its own winding sheet, and was waiting until he retired again to finish its toilet. This was merely a grotesque side-current of thought. He was held and awed by the surprise of the face, for those eyes seemed to him to belong to no earthly part of the old man who, he had been told, lay there dead. Drawn by death or exhaustion ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... seventy-two hours. It might naturally be supposed that silence, restraint, a sort of religious awe, would have pervaded the scene. On the contrary, everything bore the marks of gaiety, dissipation, and the most grotesque confusion. The farther end of the hall was converted into boxes, where ladies, in a studied deshabille, swallowed ices, oranges, liqueurs, and received the salutations of the members who went and came, as on ordinary occasions. Here the doorkeepers on the Mountain side opened and shut the boxes ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... religious revolutions, which, blind and fierce by nature, fell furiously upon it, rent its rich array of sculpture and carving, shivered its rose-windows, shattered its necklaces of arabesques and quaint figures, tore down its statues—sometimes because of their crown; lastly, changing fashion, even more grotesque and absurd, from the anarchic and splendid deviations of the Renaissance down to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... half-gloom, colliding or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead, following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless, their streaked, sweating ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It is perfectly childish to be in deep mourning for a man who is actually staying for a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque. ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... screeches of discordant laughter. Other strange and unearthly noises were heard, and amidst the din a blue phosphoric light issued from the yawning crevice in the tree, while a tall, gaunt figure, crested with an antlered helm, sprang from it. At the same moment a swarm of horribly grotesque, swart objects, looking like imps, appeared amid the branches of the tree, and grinned and gesticulated at Wyat, whose courage remained unshaken during the fearful ordeal. Not so his steed. After rearing and plunging violently, the affrighted ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... decided on a horse for this little girl, a golliwog for that, for the rector's wife a copper warming-tray. "We always give the servants money." "Yes, do you, yes, much easier," replied Margaret, but felt the grotesque impact of the unseen upon the seen, and saw issuing from a forgotten manger at Bethlehem this torrent of coins and toys. Vulgarity reigned. Public-houses, besides their usual exhortation against temperance reform, invited men to "Join our Christmas goose club"—one ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... to furnish you an ornamental style of finishing your house, I'm obliged to ask for particulars. You may have curious carvings in the woodwork about the doors and windows and on the base-boards; paint pictures, or set bright-colored tile, grotesque and classic, on the flat surfaces; cut a row of "scallops and points" around the edge of the casings in imitation of clam-shells, as I have sometimes seen; or you may build over your doors and windows enormous Grecian cornices supported by huge carved consoles,—regular shelves, too high for any ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... semi-foreign architecture from those across the Channel. The town of Dartmouth was a quaint old place and one of the oldest boroughs in England. It contained, both in its main street and the narrow passages leading out of it, many old houses with projecting wooden beams ornamented with grotesque gargoyles and many other exquisite carvings in a good state of preservation. Like Totnes, the town possessed a "Butter Walk," built early in the seventeenth century, where houses supported by granite pillars overhung the pavement. In one house there was a plaster ceiling ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... old acquaintance. When Voltaire was a young man, and (to Anglicise a favourite Gallic phrase) fancied he had profounded every thing deep and knowing, he thought nothing of Ariosto. Some years afterwards he took him for the first of grotesque writers, but nothing more. At last he pronounced him equally "entertaining and sublime, and humbly apologised for his error." Foscolo quotes this passage from the Dictionnaire Philosophique; and adds another from ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Dim, grotesque figures moved about him or swooped and hovered over him. He felt an unreasoning fear of them and tried to shut them out. They were holding him down, hurting him. One was pulling and twisting at his arm. He ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... impress, Is richly laid: and, near the chair, a glass, An oval mirror framed in ebony: And, dim and deep,—investing all the room With ghostly life of woven women and men, And strange fantastic gloom, where shadows live,— Dark tapestry,—which in the gusts—that twinge A grotesque cresset's slender star of light— Seems moved of cautious hands, assassin-like, That wait the hour. She alone, deep-haired As rosy dawn, and whiter than a rose, Divinely breasted as the Queen of Love, ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... reason, of what fantastic caprices are ye the originators 137—what caricatures of the various features of our waking life do ye not exhibit to us, ludicrous and distorted indeed, but still preserving through their most extravagant exaggerations a wayward and grotesque likeness to the realities they shadow forth! And stranger even than your most strange vagaries, is the cool matter-of-fact way in which our sleeping senses calmly accept and acquiesce in the medley of impossible ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... revelry below, mingled with shouts and the stamping of feet, together with the feverish condition of the lad, kept him awake another hour; but at last he fell into a light, uneasy sleep, haunted by all sorts of grotesque, awful visions. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... clouds. Scattered through the groves, which were free from underbrush, and whose surface was carpeted with the tufted grass, were seen the huts of the mountaineers in every variety of the picturesque, and even of the grotesque. Some were formed of the well tanned robes of the buffalo; some of boughs, twigs and bark; some of massive logs. Before all these huts, fires were burning at all times of the day, and food was being cooked and devoured by these ever-hungry men. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... all a grotesque farce. Why should wise men turn themselves into wild animals, if it is only in sport? I never enjoy ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... whirring of their wings mingles with the tinkling of bells, the beating of drums and gongs, the high-pitched drone of the priests, the low murmur of prayers, the rippling laughter of girls, the harsh voices of men, and the general buzz of a multitude. There is very much that is highly grotesque at first sight. Men squat on the floor selling amulets, rosaries, printed prayers, incense sticks, and other wares. Ex votos of all kinds hang on the wall and on the great round pillars. Many of these are rude Japanese pictures. The subject of one is the blowing-up of a ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... that is not worth minding, because it came to me in a dream, or was told me by a ghost? It is the quality of a thing, not how it arrived, that is the point. But true things are often mingled with things grotesque. For aught I know, at one and the same time, a spirit may be taking advantage of the door set ajar by sleep, to whisper a message of love or repentance, and the troubled brain or heart or stomach may be sending forth fumes that cloud the vision, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... returning consciousness. She slowly opened her eyes, and turned them wonderingly around; then came a look of wild alarm, as she saw herself surrounded by strange bearded faces, that appeared both savage and grotesque in the flickering ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Whimsies would be a great help to the Nomes in the conquest of Oz, for under his leadership they could be induced to fight as long so they could stand up. So he traveled to their country and asked to see the Chief, who lived in a house that had a picture of his grotesque false head ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... own anticipation of madness! The deepest tragic notes are often struck by a half sense of an impending blow. The Fool's conclusion of this act by a grotesque prattling seems to indicate the dislocation of feeling that has begun and is ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... smile watched the word as if it had taken on a small grotesque visibility. "You're wonderful on such subjects! I think I should leave you in no doubt," she pursued, "that if I were to sign my aunt's agreement I should carry it out, in honour, to ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... shoulder. "Steady, Randall," he muttered. "They're terrible enough, God knows—but remember we must seem just as grotesque to them." ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... ghost—flowers born of moonlight?) Pure Feeling lacks in REASON, needing values, And, lacking so, fills Eye of Soul with fantasies, With wild distortions of imagination's lust. (Who loves the fire—hued, smoke blooms of Hell's Land?) And always Fear feeds Feeling's grotesque growths Till Soul's Eye on its own creation looks As on eternal Truth. Then Truth and Nature, Deity and Man Evolve dread enmity and horrors multiple, And Soul flees ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... returning home, he fitted up an attic room, with a skylight, in his father's mill, for a studio, where he probably pursued his labors for several years, as he did not remove to Amsterdam till 1630. Here he studied the grotesque figure of the Dutch boor, or the rotund contour of the bar-maid of an ale house, with as much precision as the great artists of Italy have imitated the Apollo Belvidere, or the Medicean Venus. He was exceedingly ignorant, and it ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... night came a dark and grotesque shadow. It paused below the bridge, then it came on silently and passed almost without sound toward the captain's quarters. It was Blake. Dolores' heart was choking her. Her arms clutched Wapi, whispering for him to be quiet, to be quiet. Blake disappeared, and she rose to her feet. She had ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... hide some perfectly evident anxiety, over-shot the mark as usual, Corinna reflected. It was his way, she had observed, to cover a mental disturbance with pretended hilarity. There was, as always when he was unnatural and ill at ease, a touch of coarseness in his humour, a grotesque exaggeration of his rhetorical style. With his mind obviously distracted he told several anecdotes of dubious wit; and while he related them Miss Spencer sat primly silent with her gaze on her plate. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... music, however, the terms Classic and Romantic are often vague and misleading, and have had extreme interpretations put upon them.[174] Thus, to many, "romantic" implies ultra-sentimental, mawkish or grotesque, while everything "classic" is dry, uninspired and academic. How often we hear the expression, "I am not up to classic music; let me hear something modern and romantic." Many scholars show little respect for the terms ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Buren was a severe one. "An obscure painter of the Flemish school," wrote Clinton to his friend and confidant, Henry Post, "has made a very ludicrous and grotesque representation of Jonah immediately after he was ejected from the whale's belly. He is represented as having a very bewildered and dismal physiognomy, not knowing from whence he came nor to what place bound. Just so looks ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... odd, erratic, eccentric, peculiar, singular, unusual, uncommon, unique, whimsical, bizarre, strange, grotesque, fantastic, unconventional, nondescript, freakish, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... hot-baths, cabinets for study, halls, and apartments of like nature. The curious discovering them in such places (since the level of the ground has gradually been raised while they have remained below, and since in Rome these vaulted rooms are commonly called grottoes), it has followed that the word grotesque is applied to the patterns I have mentioned. But this is not the right term for them, inasmuch as the ancients, who delighted in composing monsters out of goats, cows, and horses, called these chimerical hybrids by the name of monsters; and ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... perhaps, less responsive to the will of the people than that of almost any of the civilized nations. Our Constitution and our laws served us well for the first hundred years of our existence, but under the conditions of to-day they are not only obsolete, but even grotesque. It is nearly impossible for the desires of our people to find expression into law. In the latter part of the last century many will remember that an income tax was wanted. After many vicissitudes, a measure ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... that he carries this sentiment into classical subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the Uffizii, of Venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its strange draperies, powdered all over in the Gothic manner with a quaint conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless nude studies of Ingres. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... was without hat or coat, and with bits of hay clinging to a soiled shirt that was unbuttoned at the hairy throat, presented a remarkable figure. His heavy body was fitted with legs like posts; his wide shoulders and deep chest, with arms to match his legs, were so huge as to appear almost grotesque; his round head, with its tumbled thatch of sandy hair, was set on a thick bull-neck; while all over the big bones of him the hard muscles lay in visible knots and bunches. The unsteady poise, the red, unshaven, sweating face, and the angry, blood-shot eyes, revealed the reason ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... a rough, half unwilling tenderness in his voice, and his big bony hand rested gently on the fat lady's shoulder, as he spoke. She bent her head to one side, till her large red cheek touched the brown knuckles. It was, in a way, almost grotesque. But there was that something in it which could make youth and beauty and passion ridiculous—the outspoken truthful old rake and the ever-forgiving wife. Who shall say wherein pathos lies? And yet it ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... had wedded Pendean's widow; but that he should have slain her husband in order to do so appeared a grotesque assumption. Moreover, as a student of character, Mark could not honestly find in Jenny's husband any characteristics that argued a malevolent attitude to life. He was a pleasure-loving spirit and his outlook and ambitions, while frivolous, were certainly not criminal. He talked ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... supremacy, under the shade of a fine old medlar-tree; and all this too in the garden of a London parish workhouse! [Picture: Hercules fountain] Not less surprising was the aspect of the interior. The grotesque workshop of the pauper artisans, said to have been [Picture: Workshop] Lord Shaftesbury's dairy, and over which was his fire-proof library, was then an apartment appropriated ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... things. He has no idea of what is possible and what is impossible; these words in fact would have no meaning for him, since he is not aware of any laws by which events are governed. His imagination, accordingly, is not under any restraint; he hits upon all kinds of grotesque theories, and, having no critical faculty to test them, he repeats them and seriously believes them. The stories of the nursery, in which there are no impossibilities, in which a man may visit the sun and the winds in their homes and find them ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... to The Princess and the Goblin, tracing the history of the young miner and the princess after the return of the latter to her father's court, where more terrible foes have to be encountered than the grotesque earth-dwellers. ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... one[Footnote: See Frontispiece] a bonneted mechanic rests over his mallet on a tombstone—his one arm bared above his elbow; the other wrapped up in the well-indicated shirt folds, and resting on a piece of grotesque sculpture. There is a powerful sun; the somewhat rigid folds in the dress of coarse stuff are well marked; one half the face is in deep shade, the other in strong light; the churchyard wall throws a broad shadow ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Ratcliffe Highway, D'Arcy said, 'Here we are then,' and pointed to a shop, or rather two shops, on the opposite side of the street. One window was filled with caged birds; the other with specimens of beautiful Oriental pottery and grotesque curiosities in the shape of Chinese and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... life, without a friend. He dares not to seek acquaintances. Not a soul, not even a restaurant keeper, has ventured to be familiar. The man with a broken nose and missing teeth—the man with a grotesque voice—is scarcely desired as a customer at select places on the avenues and Broadway. Let him find better accommodations among the Frenchmen and Italians ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... reaction. Lusty cheers rose from all sides, helmets were tossed into the air, rifles were stacked, and impromptu cake walks and fox trots staged with grotesque abandon. ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... midsummer-like days that sometimes fall in early April to our yet bleak and desolate zone, our hearts sang of Africa and golden joys. A Libyan longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for some sable maid with crisp locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework forever, through the right of lawful purchase. But we knew that this ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... loomed, like grotesque shadows on the night, two other figures at the very end of the bridge that Minnie Webb sought to cross. They seemed to bar her way, and yet they were as much startled as she, for they drew ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... up an anxious finger, but Melrose advanced in spite of it. His old flowered dressing-gown and gray head came within the range of the night-light, and the nurse saw his shadow projected, grotesque and threatening, on the white traceries of the ceiling. But he made no sound, and never looked at the nurse. He stood surveying young Faversham for some time, as he lay hot and haggard with fever, yet sleeping under the power of morphia. And at ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may be a persuasive deceiver of another She was not his match—To speak would be to succumb Slap and pinch and starve our appetites Smallest of our gratifications in life could give a happy tone Smothered in its pudding-bed of the grotesque (obesity) Snuffle of hypocrisy in her prayer State of feverish patriotism Statistics are according to their conjurors Subterranean recess for Nature against the Institutions of Man Tale, which leaves the man's mind at home The effects of the infinitely little ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... morning Monsieur Pierre faithfully reported to his mistress the groom's extraordinary insolence and impudence of the night before. The girl struggled with and conquered her desire to laugh; for monsieur was somewhat grotesque in his rage. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... here was a curious little point. Madame Frabelle did not look young for her age, nor did she seem in the least inclined to wish to be admired, nor ever to have been a flirt. The word 'fast', for example, would have been quite grotesque as associated with her, though she was by no means prudish as to subjects of conversation, nor prim in the middle-class way. Yet somehow it would not have seemed incongruous or surprising if one had found out that there was even now some romance in her life. But, doubtless, the most ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... gentleman like Mirabell, but a young rake from Cambridge, all debts and high spirits. Scandal is a plain railer at things, especially women; Ben Legend a sea-dog who cannot speak without a nautical metaphor; Jeremy an idealised comic servant; and Foresight grotesque farce. Angelica is a shrewd but hearty 'English girl,' and Miss Prue a veritable country Miss; while Mrs. Frail and Mrs. Foresight are broadly skittish matrons. There is nothing in the play to strain the attention or to puzzle the intellect, and it is full of laughter: no wonder ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... at the age of twenty. Mine was unable to resist the grotesque spectacle in front of me, and in spite of the presence of no less than three generals, I was unable to stop myself from bursting into laughter, however much I tried. The inspecting general, not knowing the reason for ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... discredit upon anything I might say. Personally I had ample proof that the image was that of a Martian, but what instant proof could I give a jeering crowd? I had expected to find in a Martian a strange grotesque being in appearance, if not in mind, much after the weird and fierce character so many authors have portrayed him. Judge, then, my astonishment when I beheld one who, in every particular of form and feature, resembled the ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... her now. You have probably outlived this sort of thing, sir; but I, looking at the moon, as I floated there upturned to her yellow light, thought of the loved being whose tears I knew would flow when she heard of my singular fate, at once so grotesque, yet melancholy to awfulness. ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... glimpses which are seen in this book and in its landscape settings of the characters. But Russ as he is, he never lets his scenery hide his people: he only uses it to enhance them. He is too great an artist to lose a human trait, as we see even in a grotesque vignette like that of Fomishka and Fimishka, or a chance picture like that of the Irish girl once seen by Solomin ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... on their bones, some were clad in armour, and by all the men were swords, or spears, or knives, and here and there what she took to be primitive fire-arms. Certain of them also had turned into mummies in that dry air—grotesque and dreadful objects from which she gladly ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... kind, despite my ragged trousers and scarred, dusty bare feet. Now, with a pail between my knees, and my head in a cow's flank, I was very sure I had utterly failed to convey anything, except that I was an uncouth creature. My eyes smarted from mortification; and the grotesque thought crossed my mind that if only I had had a photograph of my father, and could have shown it to Mr. Rawlence, the position would have been quite different! I suppose I must have been a rather fatuous youth. Also, I was obsessed ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the weight of creeper and innumerable nesting sparrows in spring. After pointing heavenward for half a century, the steeple appeared to have swerved suddenly from its purpose, and to invite now the attention of the wayfarer to the bar beneath. This cheerful room which sprouted, like some grotesque wing, from the right side of the chapel, marked not only a utilitarian triumph in architecture, but served, on market days to attract a larger congregation of the righteous than had ever stood up to sing the doxology in the adjoining place of worship. Good and bad prospects ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... represents the furthest advance of this reform. She at least has spared no pains to acquaint herself with facts, to gather information, to verify statements. She is never guilty of the grotesque blunders that other high-class novelists fall into about Catholic beliefs, practices, and habits, simply because they are dealing with what is to their readers a terra incognita, and can, therefore, afford ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the absorbing, vital interest of everyday existence is the accomplishment of reflective training, and betokens the spiritualized nature. Yet it must be observed in passing that the crude interest of unschooled ignorance, and undeveloped taste in the grotesque, the monstrous, the unreal, is not the same as the intellectual man's appreciation of the unreal in imagination and fancy. The German novel had passed its time of service under the wild, extraordinary and grotesque. The crudities of such tales of adventure ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... the experiment they proposed was so grotesque that its acceptance by Gilles proves that he was either insane or a victim of the superstition of his time. His wretched accomplices told him that the Evil One alone was capable of revealing the secret of the transmutation of the baser metals into gold, and they offered to summon him to their master's ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... of fears, suppressions, monstrous imaginations, symbolic replacements. I don't remember much of that sort of thing in my own case. It may have faded out of my mind. There were probably some uneasy curiosities, a grotesque dream or so perhaps; I can't recall anything of that sort distinctly now. I had a very lively interest in women, even when I was still quite a little boy, and a certain—what shall I call it?—imaginative slavishness—not ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... intersections of which are shields charged with sculptured figures, foliage, arms, etc. These ribs spring from slender pillars between the windows and corbels heads on the other side: over the exterior of the windows are carved grotesque heads, of which we give some illustrations. The south walk of the cloisters is the more richly groined. At the south-east corner is a square turreted tower containing a small chamber, which has been carefully and completely restored. It has always been called the "Ladye ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... only remembered bitterly in the broken hearts of his people, but in history his name will stand out forever because of his strange and grotesque designs on posterity. ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... came out of the night, now towering over him in monstrous height against a tree trunk, now suddenly falling backward and darting swiftly down a forest aisle in panic fear, only to spring forth with gigantic leaps and grotesque waxings and wanings and inane caperings at his heels as the ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... poem which enjoyed so singular a fate, Lord Houghton has quietly remarked that it could not have been written by a man with a strong sense of humour. This is true of every part of it, of the stiff and self-sufficient preface, and of the grotesque prologue, both of which in all probability belong to 1819, no less than of the story itself, in its three cantos or parts, which bear the stamp of Alfoxden and 1798. The tale is not less improbable than uninteresting. In the first part, a very wicked potter or itinerant seller ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... spring up spontaneously in every quarter of the country, like the natural wild flowers of the soil. But the unaffected beauties of sentiment, which seem rather the result of accident than design, were dearly purchased, in the more extended pieces, at the expense of such a crude mass of grotesque and undigested verse, as shows an entire ignorance of the principles of ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... of the year 1845. The copper-plate engravings of lovely ladies, who had flourished in that day, were yellow and spotted with mildew; the costumes grotesque and outlandish; the simpering beauties faded and commonplace. Even the little clusters of verses (in which the poet's feeble candle shed its sickly light upon the obscurities of the artist's meaning) had an old-fashioned twang; like music ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... and intellectual commentary such as caused the disgust of the listener to be largely qualified with amusement and surprise. One good thing was, that nobody's name and fame could be really injured by any thing DeQuincey could say. There was such a grotesque air about the mode of his evil speaking, and it was so gratuitous and excessive, that the hearer could not help regarding it as a singular sort of intellectual exercise, or an effort in the speaker to observe, for once, something outside of himself, rather than as any token of actual ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of considerable character and attainments. Who would guess it who read all these trivial comments, these catalogues of what he had for dinner, these inane domestic confidences—all the more interesting for their inanity! The effect left upon the mind is of some grotesque character in a play, fussy, self-conscious, blustering with women, timid with men, dress-proud, purse-proud, trimming in politics and in religion, a garrulous gossip immersed always in trifles. And yet, though ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by his feelings. The pity of it was he could have made of it a most lasting, entertaining book had he brought to it the pleasantly light touch he was later to bring to his account of Dickens. But he took it all too solemnly. Landor's life was full of grotesque scenes, and Forster might have alleviated the harsh views taken of his friend by dealing with him as an impetuous, irresponsible being, amusing even in his delinquencies. Boz gave a far juster view of him in Boythorn. In almost the year of ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... recording the many odd or novel aspects of the new experience. Camp-life was a wonderfully strange sensation to almost all volunteer officers, and mine lay among eight hundred men suddenly transformed from slaves into soldiers, and representing a race affectionate, enthusiastic, grotesque, and dramatic beyond all others. Being such, they naturally gave material for description. There is nothing like a diary for freshness, at least so I think, and I shall keep to the diary through the days ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... lived much in England, as librarian to Howard, Earl of Arundel. He bequeathed to the Bodleian his Anglo-Saxon and Northern collections. Among these is a beautiful Latin Psalter (Jun. 27) of the tenth century, with grotesque initials and interlinear Saxon. This book has been called "Codex Vossianus," because Junius obtained it from his relative, Isaac Voss. Among these also is the unique Cdmon, a MS. of about A.D. 1000, which had been given to Junius by Archbishop Usher, and of which the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the existence of a deep prehistoric background, richer than is commonly supposed in the germs of civilization,—a remark which may in all likelihood be extended to the background of history in general. Nothing surely can be more grotesque than the idea of a set of wolves, like the Norse pirates before their conversion to Christianity, constructing in their den ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... as fantastic as frosting on a window. It was formed from the early, softer snow, frozen into place, while the present shifting frost poured over the comb into the sheltered cove, misty as bride's veiling, and softening the grotesque background to a tint equaled only in the fluffy whiteness ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... Here and there will flit little harlots. Many are clowns. But many are of the highest respectability. Some are assassins. There are pale stenches and gaunt superstitions and mere shadows and lively malices: whims and amiabilities. The naive and the pedantic and the bizarre and the grotesque and the sincere and the insincere, the ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... about on the various astral currents, occasionally recognizing other people in a similar condition, and meeting with experiences of all sorts, pleasant and unpleasant, the memory of which, hopelessly confused and often travestied into a grotesque caricature of what really happened, will cause the man to think next morning what a remarkable dream he has had. These extruded astral bodies are almost shapeless and very indefinite in outline in the ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... any better way than hers. She does not see that her child is mortified and harmed when she says to her, in the presence of strangers, "How do you suppose you look with your mouth open like that?" "Do you want me to show you how you are sitting?"—and then a grotesque imitation of her stooping shoulders. "Will you sit still for one minute?" "Do take your hands off my dress." "Was there ever such an awkward child?" When the child replies fretfully and disagreeably, she does not see that ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chicken, uttered each its own cry of dissatisfaction or dismay; the mate and wharf master cursed because it was the custom to curse; the roustabouts rushed ashore empty-handed, came filing back, stooping under their burdens. It was a scene of animation, of excitement, savage, grotesque, fascinating. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... parting of Jaffier with his dying friend, for instance, he would suddenly be surprised with a fit of violent horse-laughter. While the spectators were all sobbing before him with emotion, suddenly one of those grotesque faces would peep out upon him, and he could not resist the impulse. A timely excuse once or twice served his purpose; but no audiences could be expected to bear repeatedly this violation of the continuity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... thing which gives it its importance. The doctrine of race, and of sympathies springing from race, must have taken very firm hold indeed of men's minds before it could be carried out in a shape which we are tempted to call so grotesque as this. ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... their minds were dull and heavy, and yet here they responded to the divine spirit of the music. There is no more impressive sight than that of thousands of people held spellbound by a melody; it is by turns sublime, grotesque, and touching. ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... cloth. There is a contrivance for opening and shutting the jaws, and the figure pursues and bites every body it can lay hold of, and does not release them except on payment of a fine. It is generally accompanied by some men dressed up in a grotesque manner, who, on reaching a house, sing some extempore verses requesting admittance, and are in turn answered by those within, until one party or the other is at a loss for a reply. The Welsh are undoubtedly a poetical people, and these verses often display a good deal ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... roof was groined and concave, and still gay with tarnished gold. The mouldings and traceries sprang up from the four corners, and all terminated in the centre, in which grinned a Medusa's head, with her circling snakes, in high preservation, and of great and ghastly beauty. There were other grotesque visages, sprinkled here and there over that elaborate roof; but look at that Medusa from what point you might, the painted wooden eyes were cast with a stolid sternness upon you. When I had a bedfellow, it was always some castaway like myself—some poor wretch who could not ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the first verse, "I ac' monkey moshuns," the one in the middle would screw up his face and hump his shoulders in the most grotesque manner, to represent ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... Englishman. Mundy and Peters, obviously drunk, stood close to him. The little San-Franciscan was standing in the body of the wagon, trying to put his two short arms about the barrel. He had the grotesque look of a dwarf embracing ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... for grotesque pageant in the open air must have gradually died out before the general advance of refinement. The Mask by a process of evolution would have become the Opera. But it often happens that when a taste or fashion is at the point of death, it undergoes a forced and temporary revival. So it was with ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... imported from India. The participants are dressed in grotesque fancy costumes, and are obliged to race holding umbrellas, toy balloons, or some other absurdity. They are in great favor ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... sprang into existence—like Pallas from the forehead of Zeus—in the minds of European men. Yet people are perpetually using arguments which have neither force nor meaning save upon the tacit assumption that somehow or other some such sort of thing must have happened. This grotesque fallacy lies at the bottom of the tradition which has caused so many foolish things to be said about that gallant mariner, Americus Vespucius. In geographical discussions the tendency to overlook the fact that Columbus and his ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... led the way still further to the rear, to a compound quite behind all the other compounds and other houses of the gorgeous mandarin's palace. The last stand of the defenders. They were scattered about the courtyard in all attitudes, in grotesque and uncouth positions, all dead. She pointed to a figure lying face downward, a thin, elderly figure, in blood-soaked black brocade, with a magnificent queu lying at right ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... bring you here in a social capacity to discuss personal matters," said Eveley coldly. "I told you yesterday that my home is saddened by the grotesque figure of maladjustment stalking in our midst under his usual guise of Duty. As I have explained so many times, there is bound to be a happy adjustment. But this time I can not figure it out. Now ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... figures become unnatural, the heads being unduly large, the eyes staring, and the perspective entirely out of drawing. Until the fourteenth century this comes so gradually as to be scarcely noted; but after and through the fifteenth century this becomes so marked as to be almost grotesque, and only the genuine religious fervour with which these poor remnants have been worked prevents many of them being ridiculous. The faces gradually show less careful drawing and working, and the figures become squat ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... the point of view of history, Northern Buddhism, however old its elements, can be regarded only as an admixture of Buddhistic and Brahmanic ideas. For this reason we take a little more space, not to cite from the Lotus or the grotesque Lalita Vistara,[68] but to illustrate Buddhism at its best. Fausboell, who has translated the dialogue that follows, thinks that in the Suttas of the Sutta-nip[a]ta there is a reminiscence of a stage of Buddhism before the institution of ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... in and the irons were taken off. I was then undressed, my clothes were removed to another room, and I was redressed in the prison uniform. This was a grotesque uniform indeed. The suit was red and blue, half and half, like a harlequin's, and to crown all came a hat or cap, like a fool's cap, a foot and a half high and running up to a peak. Miserable as I was, I could scarcely help smiling at the utterly absurd appearance I knew I ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... was "a sorry scheme of things." It was grotesque with inequalities. He had no right to love her; it was wrong to give in to the impulses of the heart, the natural, human impulses. A man can beat down the stone walls of a fort, scale the impregnable heights of a citadel, master the earth and the seas, but ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... are clustered together in the northern part of the city. In going there we went some distance along the quay, which was filled with carriages and pedestrians, among whom were many masques and fancy dresses of the most grotesque kind. It is the season of Carnival, and all these fooleries are permitted at this time. We merely glanced at the exterior of the celebrated buildings, leaving till to-morrow ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... sport," and he very pertinently asks, "what other race ever equaled them in getting up corn-huskings, log-rollings and quiltings?—and what hosts of queer stories are connected with them!" Fond of fun, there was a grotesque humor about them, which in its way has, perhaps, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... cunning of her fingers was to be thus rudely destroyed. It is small wonder that the disaster almost crushed her and brought the bitterest tears to her eyes. The grimy signal man took in the situation at once and resorted to measures that were at once as effectual as they were grotesque and amusing. Kneeling down on the floor and taking off his cap he bid the gentlemen rub her hands in his tangled and matted hair. It was a most ludicrous remedy but it worked to a charm. The gentle heat brought the blood slowly ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... sinister and cold. Grotesque the Dreamer sprawled, and did not rise. For long and long there gazed upon some gold A GAUNT AND ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... impersonated by Mademoiselle Maillard, a well known figurante of the opera, took her seat upon a grassy throne in front of the temple; ... and the multitude bowed the knee before her in profound admiration.... At the close of this grotesque ceremony the whole cortege proceeded to the hall of the Convention, carrying with them their 'goddess,' who was borne aloft in a chair of state on the shoulders of four men. Having deposited her in front of ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to Sibou on the Rajah's promise to build a fort at Kenowit, are of the same tribe, and number about three hundred men. They speak the Milanow language, and have the same customs of burial. The men and some of the women are tattooed in the most grotesque patterns. When you look at them closely the invention displayed is truly remarkable; but at a distance they give a dingy, dusky appearance to the men, as if they were daubed with an inky sponge. Nature having denied ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... She was as eccentric as Isabel had always supposed; and hitherto, whenever the girl had heard people described as eccentric, she had thought of them as offensive or alarming. The term had always suggested to her something grotesque and even sinister. But her aunt made it a matter of high but easy irony, or comedy, and led her to ask herself if the common tone, which was all she had known, had ever been as interesting. No one certainly had on ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... without foundation. Why the man had uttered it was soon explained. The wild expressions that were pouring from his lips, with the grotesque gestures he was making with his arms ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... of fierce and bloodthirsty mien; there were jolly Jack Tars and natty ship officers; there were water babies, mermaids, fishermen, and many dainty yachting costumes. Then there were queer and grotesque figures, such as a frog, a lobster, and a ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... her, where she had tasted success and knew a happiness that never altogether failed, vanish into a snug cottage in Hampstead or Surbiton. She saw the rain of her independence, of her delicious solitariness, of the life that began and ended in her sense of the strange, and the beautiful and the grotesque in a world of curious slaveries, of which it suited her to be an alien spectator, amused and free. She foresaw long conflicts and discussions, pryings which she could, not resent, justifications which would be forced upon her, obligations which she must not refuse. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... which, she could not deny, was really a bald-headed cock-sparrow. She looked again at Mr. Clacton; yes, he was bald, and so are cock-sparrows. Never was a secretary tormented by so many unsuitable suggestions, and they all came, alas! with something ludicrously grotesque about them, which might, at any moment, provoke her to such flippancy as would shock her colleagues for ever. The thought of what she might say made her bite her lips, as if her ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... brushing past Dorothy and her captors, and still leading the bear, he charged the mob with surprising agility, scattering it right and left. It was evident that they stood in wholesome dread of Pepin and his methods. Then, coming back with the bear, he put one hand on his heart, and with a bow of grotesque gallantry, bade Dorothy enter the house. The Indian he promptly sent about his business with a sudden blow over the chest that would probably have injured a white man's bones. The red man looked for a moment as if he meditated reprisals, but Pepin ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... a grotesque compromise between gods and creatures," she said; "those of us who find this out get a little impatient with the false position. You are less sentimental than I am. You take what I call the hard view. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... of blue, had many strange kinds of trimming which seemed both needless and inexpressive, and what with the rouge and the chains and hangings around her neck, she reminded me of nothing so much as a grotesque ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... three grotesque figures in the blank arches of the gable which forms the eastern end of St. Hugh's Chapel," and of these, "one is popularly said to represent the 'Devil looking over Lincoln.'"—Handbook to the Cathedrals of England, by R.J. King, Eastern Division, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... are plain, there is an angel, projecting horizontally from the wall. The purlin, again, is molded, and where it intersects the central joist a subject is carved: an angel playing on a musical instrument—a bird—a rose—a grotesque figure—and the like. Below the wall-plate is a cornice, 12 in. deep, ornamented with a row of quatrefoils above a row of battlements. Beneath these there is a groove, which seems to indicate that the walls were once ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... deference to the respect he had for her and the place, began to unfold the story of his love. Lady Arabella was not usually a humorous person, but no man or woman of the white race could have checked the laughter which rose spontaneously to her lips. The circumstances were too grotesque, the contrast too violent, for subdued mirth. The man a debased specimen of one of the most primitive races of the earth, and of an ugliness which was simply devilish; the woman of high degree, beautiful, accomplished. She thought that her first moment's consideration of the outrage—it was nothing ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... a disciple—he was big enough not to ape the manners and eccentricities of his Master—he saw beneath the rough husk and beyond the grotesque outside the great controlling purpose in the life of Socrates. He would be himself—and himself at his best—and he would seek to satisfy the Voice within, rather than to try to please the populace. Plato still wore his purple cloak, and the elegance and grace of his manner ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... there was a curious change, as if one were suddenly to see hieroglyphics upon a star where before there had been only shining. But his calm and his magnificent way of authority did not desert him, as so grotesque a star would still stand lonely and high in the heavens. He spoke, and upon the multitude fell instant silence, not the less absolute that it ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... Miss Day's cocoa, the lanterns were all lit now, and the effect, on fans and pictures and on brilliant bits of color, were grotesque and almost bizarre. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... the sun began to peep through the angles of the wooden gable fronts, projecting nearly midway across the street, streaming athwart the frosty air, and giving a beautifully variegated and picturesque appearance to the grotesque vista bounded by ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... red-turbaned Punjabee policemen, who were provided, like their brother blue-bottles at home, with staves and rattles instead of the more usual insignia of sword and shield. The houses were almost all decorated, outside and in, with grotesque mythological and other paintings, such as Vishnu annihilating Rakshus, or demons of various kinds, or wonderful battle-pieces, wherein pale-faced, unhealthy-looking people, in tailed coats and cocked hats, might be seen performing prodigies of valour, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... Johnson's charms, she seems to have been a woman of good sense and some literary judgment. Johnson's grotesque appearance did not prevent her from saying to her daughter on their first introduction, "This is the most sensible man I ever met." Her praises were, we may believe, sweeter to him than those of the severest ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Night-blooming cereuses, have white flowers which remain open only one night. They are, however, though so transient, a marvelous sight. Prone to strange tasks indeed is the hand of Nature which has fashioned these grotesque, clumsy, lifeless looking plants to accumulate nourishment and moisture for months from the niggardly desert sands, and to mature for a few hours' existence only these marvelously fashioned flowers which collapse with the first rays of ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... relentless, you pursued it to perfection, you laid our motives bare and you beat them raw, each and every one. Oh, I grant you it was masterful! It was the Beardsley of old! You managed to keep us off balance every moment—" He wet his lips. "What was it, Beardsley? A compulsion, some grotesque need to squeeze us all down to microscopic size first? Oh, you enjoyed doing that! I watched you. You enjoyed it in a way that—" He shook his head, glanced sorrowfully at the equate-panel. "And this ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... rendered difficult by wives who wouldn't allow them the use of the living female model and who made scenes if they encountered on the staircase such sources of inspiration. These ladies struck him as vulgar and odious persons, with whom it seemed grotesque that Julia should have anything in common. Of course she was not his wife yet, and of course if she were he should have washed his hands of every form of activity requiring the services of the sitter; ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... as large as a walnut; also a large gold chain, and his vest buttons were amethysts. He had a dozen rings on his fingers, which were as knotty as those of a chimpanzee. Altogether he was the most pretentious and grotesque-looking man that it was possible to behold. This person entered the doctor's office as if he had been entering a railway station, without even bowing. He stopped to say, in a voice that resembled that of Punch, its tone was so ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... merits common property, while its practical discoverer, Archbishop Trench, has set those of the original forth with a judicious enthusiasm which cannot be bettered.[10] The point is, how these merits, these effects, are produced. The piece is a crucial one, because, grotesque as its arrangement would probably have seemed to an Augustan, its peculiarities are superadded to, not substituted for, the requirements of classical prosody. The writer does not avail himself of the new accentual quantification, and his other licences are but few. If we examine the poem, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... approach a spot where seemingly the waters from some violent blast or other had been in a state of foam and commotion, when a stern frost transformed them into a solid mass. Pillars and blocks of the shining and hardened element were seen modelled into a thousand quaint and grotesque patterns. Here a fountain, perfectly formed with Ionic and Doric columns, was reflecting a thousand prismatic hues from the diamond-like stalactites which had attached themselves to its crest. There a huge obelisk, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... was a prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft. This Church was a horrid thing. It heavily oppressed the people; it kept them always trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them in sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, it terrorized them, it made them slaves to its priests, and through the priests to the king. It was the best friend a king could have, and the most dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate so frightful and so devastating ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of the stirrup-cup. For even the most dehumanised modern fantasies depend on some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be mad, but the adventurer must be sane. The dragon without St. George would not even be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was only imaginative by the presence of a man really human. To Syme's exaggerative mind the bright, bleak houses and terraces by the Thames looked as empty as the mountains of the moon. But even the moon is only poetical because there is ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... this grotesque child of his hands, having in its system the combined thirst of the dry ages—man, animal, plant, bird and reptile—was sucking up the lake, absorbing it through his pores, then sweating it out only to repeat the process. Water was his element ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... that instinctively broke from Clarence's lips was so sincere and unaffected that the man was disconcerted, and at last joined in it, a little shamefacedly. The grotesque blunder of being taken as a fugitive from justice relieved Clarence's mind from its acute tension,—he was momentarily diverted,—and it was not until the boatman had departed, and he was again alone, that it seemed to have any collateral significance. Then an uneasy ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... the overleaning limbs of the trees; but still more plainly, as, hanging by the branches, they let themselves down till their feet dipped in the foam; and swinging there, appeared to go through a series of the most grotesque contortions! The sight made the head of the officer to swim, as if suddenly struck ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... class, belongs the Chinese language, in which we have nothing but naked primitives."—Fowler cor. [[Fist] "Nothing but naked roots" is faulty; because no word is a root, except some derivative spring from it."—G. B.] "There were several other grotesque figures that presented themselves."—Spect. cor. "In these consists that sovereign good which ancient sages so much extol."—Percival cor. "Here come those I have done good to against my will."—Shak. cor. "Where there are more than one auxiliary." ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... out of his waistcoat pocket, and waited till Lucilla had fairly exhausted herself with laughing. Then the examination—so cruelly grotesque in itself, so terribly serious in the issues which it involved—resumed its course: Herr Grosse glaring at his patient through his magnifying glass; Lucilla leaning back in the chair, holding the handkerchief over ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... the conclusion of Queen Elizabeth's portrait, which he has faithfully copied from Speed, in the passage where she humbled the Polish Ambassador, I admire. I can even allow that image of Rapture hovering like an ancient grotesque, though it strictly has little meaning: but there I take my leave—the last stanza has no beauties for me. I even think its obscurity fortunate, for the allusions to Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, are not only weak, but the two last returning again, after appearing so gloriously in the first ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various |
