"Freak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... restored, And my promotion, with the ink not dry! Those fairies which neglected me at birth Seemed now to lavish all good gifts on me— Gold roubles, office, sudden dearest friends. The whole world smiled; then, as I stooped to taste The sweetest cup, freak dashed it from my lip. This very night—just think, this very night— I planned to come and beg of you the alms I dared not ask for in my poverty. I thought me poor then. How stript am I now! There's not a ragged mendicant one meets Along ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... streak of light in the western sky, whether caused by the low-hanging, mist-hidden moon or a freak reflection of the coming dawn. Against that patch of brightness the northern headland of Lost Island loomed up high and barren save for its one tall tree. But it was neither headland nor tree that caught Jerry's attention and caused the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... the spruits ran red with it, if only they could win their way to where their half-starved comrades waited for them. But nothing happened. Hours passed and nothing happened. An occasional shell from the big gun plumped among them. One, through some freak of gunnery, lobbed slowly through a division, and the men whooped and threw their caps at it as it passed. The guns on Swartz Kop, at a range of nearly five miles, tossed shells at the monster on Doornkloof, and finally blew up his powder ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... right, Quatermain. I had that foolish fancy, a lover's freak, I suppose. When we married the curtain was removed although the brass rod on which it hung was left by some oversight. On my return to England after my loss, however, I found that I could not bear to look upon this ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... morning Robin came downstairs to find the house deserted except for the noiseless butlers who stared at her as though she were some strange freak. Apparently no one stirred before noon, for Tom, coming in from the garage, greeted her with a pleasant: "Say, you're an early bird, aren't you?" and then directed one of the butlers to bring her some ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... other papers the world can read if it choose to waste its time; at any rate, I am not going to lock them up and have the worry of a key preying on my mind. I should only lose it as I lost the other one. Now, by a freak of fortune, the key of Jaffery's flat remained in the suit-case wherein I had flung it at Havre, until it was fished out by Franklin on my ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... eighteen for a month," he gave prompt explanation. "Under the latest law freak turned out at Albany, I'm too young to drive a motor vehicle safely on the public roads unless I have a licensed chauffeur alongside of me. Oh, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: 'See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But having ended no better than I began they say: 'See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!' ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... but neither Herbert nor the housekeeper took much notice of it. The latter was somewhat surprised at this new freak on the part of Abner, as he had never tried to deprive any of Herbert's predecessors of tea or coffee. But the fact was, Mr. Holden disliked Herbert, and was disposed to act the petty tyrant over him. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven the boy's spirited defiance when they first met, nor his refusal ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... you promise me upon your honor, that when this freak of yours is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, as that of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... that sort of work? Is there one great man in history who gave to the future without getting anything from the past? The bare scientific fact is that no man escapes the tuition of society. The crank does not escape. The freak does not escape. They miss the highest traditions of society only to become victims of lower traditions. Whether such a man have genius or the illusion of genius, it is his tragic fate to have the best that he can do lie far below the best that ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... or less straight away across the 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
... Sah-luma to his companion,—"how yon aged fool wears upon his breast the Symbol of his own Prophecy? 'Tis the maddest freak to thus display his death-warrant!—Only a month ago the King issued a decree, warning all those whom it might concern, that any one of his born subjects presuming to carry the sign of Khosrul's newly invented Faith should surely die! And that ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... out, on which they had founded their orders for the first assorted cargo ever to be sent from America to Edomo. Bill of particulars there was, stretching down the long tissue-paper in exquisite chirography. But by some freak of the "total depravity of things," the translated order for the assorted cargo was not there. John Coram, in his care to fold up the Japanese writing nicely, had left on his own desk at Shanghae the more intelligible English. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... of manhood, Ted soothed his wounded soul by appearing in collars of an amazing height and stiffness, and ties which were the wonder of all female eyes. This freak was a sort of vengeance on his hard-hearted mother; for the collars drove the laundress to despair, never being just right, and the ties required such art in the tying that three women sometimes laboured long before—like Beau Brummel—he turned from a heap of 'failures' with the welcome ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the warrior king, testily, "I can never believe in that freak of Kama Deva." He spoke feelingly, for the thing had happened to himself more than once, and on no occasion ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the evening sky lighted up the vast rift for a while, and Bart forgot his hunger in the contemplation of this strange freak of nature, of a river running below in a channel whose walls were perfectly perpendicular and against which in places the rapid stream seemed to beat and eddy and swirl, while in other parts there were long stretches of pebbly and rocky shore. For as far as Bart could judge, ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... "Singular freak on the part of Grayson. Most eccentric man," he continued. "Danby tells me—now really what a coincidence! Sir James, by all that is singular! Ah, my dear Sir James, I was thinking about you. Ah, Edgar, ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... street. I now thought myself in the fair way, and I gave him a stroke with the whip, which I nearly repented, for he kicked up with his hind legs, and had not I seized the after part of the saddle I should have gone over his forecastle. I held on until he righted. After this freak, which was nearly knocking up my cruise, we jogged on steadily until we came to a narrow street, down which he turned in spite of all my endeavours to prevent him, and again hove to at the ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... Seated on a huge rock, he told the boys about the shaping and clothing of the earth, foundation stones, mountains and hills, lakes, ponds, and rivers, the beginning of vegetable life, the variation and place of the freak, the forest and its place in the world's progress, the alternation of the forest crop, man and his neighbors. Another afternoon the boys went into the woods and while they squatted on Nature's mattress of fragrant pine needles (see illustration, page 230), he told about leaves and their work, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... is, that this terrific object was a freak of fancy on the part of some old-world sculptor, and that its presence had suggested to the Kukuanas the idea of placing their royal dead under its awful presidency. Or perhaps it was set there to frighten away any marauders who might have designs upon the treasure chamber beyond. I cannot ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... make fun of anything that I have seen in this country!" replied the Hunter. "I now rejoice that a mad freak brought me here to these woods and fields, for otherwise I should probably never have learned to know the region; for it has very little reputation abroad, and there is, in fact, nothing here to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the Precepts. Such an one was despised as nei-shin, a cringeling, who makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as cho-shin, a favorite who steals his master's affections ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... could have been more utterly unforeseen, and yet, in reviewing all the steps which led to the ultimate catastrophe, Rickman said to himself that nothing would have been more consistent and inevitable. It came about first of all through a freak, a wanton freak of Fate in the form of a beardless poet, a discovery, not of Jewdwine's nor of Rickman's but of Miss Roots'. That Miss Roots could make a discovery clearly indicated the finger of fate. Miss ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... 'Prince Polozov's' drawing-room was a fact perfectly well known to its mistress; the whole point of her entry had been the display of her hair, which was certainly beautiful. Sanin was inwardly delighted indeed at this freak on the part of Madame Polozov; if, he thought, she is anxious to impress me, to dazzle me, perhaps, who knows, she will be accommodating about the price of the estate. His heart was so full of Gemma that all other women had absolutely ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... a wondrous freak of chance, so perfect, yet so rough, A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in granite tough; The thick spires yearned towards the sky in quaint harmonious lines, And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like a grove ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the rising bank he had climbed so laboriously before, Ross miscalculated and tumbled back, rolling down into the mud of the reed bed. Mechanically he wiped the slime from his face. The tree was still anchored there; by some freak the current had rammed its rooted end up on a ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... afraid, ma'am, that she's anything like me," he assured her quite good-temperedly; "nobody ever believes she's my daughter, except me and the old woman. She's a little lady, she is. Freak o' ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... price this fall." Well, we found that half of them could be saved and that the terrific hailstorm had extended over only two vineyards—the path of the storm not half a mile across in either direction, a curious freak, but one that in ten minutes took away ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Douglass has got you hypnotized. Honestly, there's something uncanny about the way he has queered you. Brace up. Send him whirling. He isn't worth a minute of your time, Nellie—now, that's the fact. He's a crazy freak. Say the word and I'll fire him and his misbegotten ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the little case over and over in his hands, again examining the clasps of it. His next freak was to snatch his pistol and look to the priming. I burst out laughing, for his antics seemed absurd. My laughter cooled him, and he made a great effort to regain his composure. But ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... by a mere freak, by something analogous to a sporting proposition. He was thinking of writing a historical romance of the times of Peter the Great, but the task seemed formidable, and he felt no well of inspiration. One evening, the 19 March 1873, he entered a room where his ten-year-old boy had been reading aloud ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... feeling that she was not carrying her audience with her, and longing for the time when she could take her letter away and have it all to herself. If she stopped now, Christine, in this sudden new freak of distrustfulness, would be ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... else could he get at me? Surely the very fiend himself, if he happened to be in a high arctic latitude, would not indulge his malice so far as to follow its trail into the tropic of Capricorn. And what was to be got by such a freak? There was no Golden Fleece in Gombroon. If the fiend or my brother fancied that, for once they were in the wrong box; and there was no variety of vegetable produce, for I never denied that the poor little ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was gay again. But all were not there—for the first time one was missing from the circle round the Christmas table. Jem, of the steady lips and fearless eyes, was far away, and Rilla felt that the sight of his vacant chair was more than she could endure. Susan had taken a stubborn freak and insisted on setting out Jem's place for him as usual, with the twisted little napkin ring he had always had since a boy, and the odd, high Green Gables goblet that Aunt Marilla had once given him and from which ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a mirage?" Tom asked. "Some freak air current reflecting from another island and superimposing over this one?" Then he answered himself. "No. I guess it isn't. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... something more than a freak, or a mere geographical adaptation, in taking together, and at the last, the contributions of the three peninsulas which form the extreme south of Europe. For in the present scheme they form, as it were, but an appendix to the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... collection that shall show future ages who it was that built up our finances, and furnished the sinews of war. Some may look upon this move as a mercenary one, but with me it is a passion. It is not simply a freak, it is a desire ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... waged against our country by a clever and powerful enemy. And I feel that our work in connection with the unraveling of the mystery and overcoming the enemy or enemies is but begun. It's a cinch that the thing is organized by human minds and is not any sort of a freak of the elements. Our work is cut out for us, all right, and I wish you would stick to George and me through the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... which is the house next door to the hotel itself, that we once had for three years running, and just as quiet and snug now as it was then. I don't think I shall return before the 20th or so, when the number is done; but I may, in some inconstant freak, run up to you before. Preliminary despatches and advices shall be forwarded in any case to the fragrant neighbourhood of Clare-market and the Portugal-street burying-ground." Such was his polite designation of my whereabouts: for which nevertheless he had secret ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... pounds and sometimes barely ten. The fox is known by its bright, sandy-red coat, black ears and paws, its white throat, and the white tip at the end of the tail. At a distance the fox's ears and tail look very large. The silver or black fox is a mere color freak with black coat and white tail tip. Red foxes are found throughout the heavily timbered parts of North America north of ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... at that old picture; got up, as you say, on a chair to do so. Wasn't that the freak of an idle man, wandering, he hardly knows why, from room to room in an old and ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... or so, she did not chance to meet the poet on the boulevard; and since she wished to conquer her tenderness for him, one cannot doubt that all would have been well but for the Editor of L'Echo de la Butte. By a freak of fate, the Editor of L'Echo de la Butte was moved to invite monsieur Tricotrin to an affair of ceremony two days previous to the wedding. What followed? Naturally Tricotrin must present himself in ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... steadily southward, by the strange freak of the antarctic current, came in view of the lookouts on the ships, who had been posted as soon as the boys were missed. The boats were at once despatched, and headed for the little ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... freak of nature, the tendency of the channel of the Mississippi is always toward one or the other of its banks, being influenced by the direction of its bends. The principle is one of nicely regulated refraction. If the river were perfectly straight, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of all his other sons and all his possessions put together. Clarence, whom I will not describe, as he will, I trust, show himself more effectually by his actions, was like his mother in disposition, or so, at least, she made herself happy by thinking; but by some freak of nature he was like his father in person, and carried his mouse's heart in a huge frame, somewhat hulking and heavy-shouldered, with the same roll which distinguished Mr. Copperhead, and which betrayed something ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... in her chamber and alone, that Henrietta Temple mused over this freak of destiny. It was in vain to conceal it, her thoughts recurred to Ferdinand. They might have been so happy! Why was he not true? And perhaps he had sacrificed himself to his family, perhaps even personal ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... illusions about herself, and had never attempted to curb the obstinate self-will and haughty pride that had characterized her. She thought of it curiously, her mind going back over the last few months that had changed her whole life. The last mad freak for which she had paid so dearly had been the outcome of an arrogant determination to have her own way in the face of all protests and advice. And with a greater arrogance and a determination stronger than ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... task, the Emperor heard, with some surprise but with no dismay, the news of Prussia's armaments and disaffection. At first he treats it as a passing freak which will vanish with firm treatment. "Remain at Berlin as long as you can," he writes to Eugene, March 5th. "Make examples for the sake of discipline. At the least insult, whether from a village or a town, were it from Berlin itself, burn it down." The chief ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... despair about his mistress, who has taken a freak of——. He began a letter to her, but was obliged to stop short—I finished it for him, and he copied and sent it. If he holds out, and keeps to my instructions of affected indifference, she will lower her colours. If she ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Chartists have fired this part of the country. One misty day, a week ago, I was on the hill; I thought I had it to myself, when suddenly I heard a voice cry sharply, 'Shoulder arms.' I could see no one, and after a moment I put it down to a freak of the wind. Then all at once the mist before me blackened, and a body of men seemed to grow out of it. They were not shadows; they were Thrums weavers drilling, with ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... staircase is, the Nude is; thou art painted by a freak. And I think that he has knocked thee to the middle of next week. He will paint thee (till this fashion shall expend its foolish force), Something like a rabid dog,—a little larger than a horse. Semblance? Likeness? Scorned of Cubists! This th' evangel that ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... Ferdinand was guilty of such monstrous perjuries and cruelties that the reader ought to be warned not to think of him as a saturnine and Machiavellian Italian. He was a son of the Bourbon Charles III. of Spain. His character was that of a jovial, rather stupid farmer, whom a freak of fortune had made a king from infancy. A sort of grotesque comic element runs through his life, and through every picture drawn by persons in actual intercourse with him. The following, from one of Bentinck's despatches of 1814 (when Ferdinand had just heard that Austria had promised ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... fancy, there came before me Vaness's well-dressed person, panting, pale, perplexed; and beside him, by a freak of vision, stood the old darky's father, bound to the live-oak, with the bullets whistling past, and his face transfigured. There they stood alongside the creed of pleasure, which depended for fulfilment on its waist measurement; ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... and arrived at Lambach, a small city built upon a hill. We left the next day at noon, and on ascending the hill after crossing the Traun, had an opportunity of seeing the portrait on the Traunstein, of which the old landlord told us. I saw it at the first glance—certainly it is a most remarkable freak of nature. The rough back of the mountain forms the exact profile of the human countenance, as if regularly hewn out of the rock. What is still more singular, it is said to be a correct portrait of the unfortunate Louis XVI. The landlord said it was immediately ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... "Yes, it's a whimsical freak of fortune which has sent men from a little island in the Atlantic to administer the land of the Pharaohs," remarked Cecil Brown. "We shall pass away again, and never leave a trace among these successive races who have held the country, for ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Adminius had ceded to him the kingship of the whole island, and sent home high-flown dispatches to that effect. He had no fleet, but drew up his army in line of battle on the Gallic shore, while all wondered what mad freak he was purposing; then suddenly bade every man fill his helmet with shells as "spoils of the Ocean" to be dedicated in the Capitol. Finally he commemorated this glorious victory by the erection of a lofty lighthouse,[126] probably at the entrance ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Big trucks and little ones; passenger cars in between them; a few motorcyclists catching up from the rear by riding on the road's shoulders. They were closely packed, as if by some freak the lead had been taken by great trucks incapable of the road speed of those behind them, yet with the frantic rearmost cars unable to pass. There was a humming and roaring of motors that filled the air. They plunged toward Lockley's ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... ice: An allusion, apparently, to the ice-palace built by the Empress of Russia, Catherine II, "most magnificent and mighty freak. The wonder of the North," Cowper called it. Compare Lowell's description of the frost work with Cowper's similar description in The Task, in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the neck, short and thick, the forelegs disproportionately small but very sturdy; and the whole animal was built on a slope towards the hind quarters which seemed to equal in massiveness all the rest of the body. One would have said that the horse was a freak meant by nature for the climbing of hills. And to glance at it no man could suppose that those ponderous limbs might be moved to a gallop. However, Haw-Haw Langley well knew the powers of the ugly ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... A freak of fancy set him wondering where and when in the future a beautiful girl with red hair might march along some splendid aisle. Never mind! He became aware of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... persuaded that the white wrist was a "promise of better things above and below," or he proposed marriage as a mere freak, intelligible enough when ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... wool and feathers instead of incense, put foul water into the holy-water basins; they sung ludicrous and indecent parodies to the tunes of church hymns; they violated whatever vestments belonging to the abbey they could lay their hands upon; and playing every freak which the whim of the moment could suggest to their wild caprice. At length they fell to more lasting deeds of demolition, pulled down and destroyed carved woodwork, dashed out the painted windows, and in ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... but he is not slovenly: you could not have taken any more decision from him just then; you have had as much as is good for you: he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, gives you a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of painting is the arrow point, laid sharp against the white side and among the flowing hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very little contrast ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the returned engagement-ring. The box she had concealed in her pocket; and when alone at night, she drew it out and looked at its precious contents. There were all sorts of poison in it. By some odd freak, Athalie had bought it in one of her Italian journeys, and while it was in her possession she thought she could defy the world. She imagined herself able to destroy her own life at any moment, and this ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... continues more feebly the style of poetry initiated a century before him by Ausonius. Boethius wrote his fine treatise On the Consolation of Philosophy half a century after the extinction of the Empire of the West. By a strange freak of history, it was at the Greek capital that Latin scholarship finally faded away. Priscian and Tribonian wrote at Constantinople; and the Western world received its most authoritative works on Latin grammar and Roman law, not from the Latin ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... frequenting Cupido's shop—the rendezvous of the city's gayest set, a hotbed of gossip and practical jokes, a school of guitar playing and love songs that kept the whole neighborhood astir. Besides, Cupido was the freak of the city, the sharp-tongued but irresponsible practical joker, who was forgiven everything in advance, and could enjoy his idiosyncrasies and speak his mind about people without starting a riot against him. He was, for instance, the one person ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... difficult for them to think of the despised grub-rider in the light of a rival, so they decided it was just a freak of coquettishness ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... hoped to see her ere I died; To kneel for pardon, and implore one kiss, Pledge to my soul that in the coming heaven We should not meet as strangers, but rejoin Our hearts and lives so madly sundered here, Through fault and freak of mine. But it is ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... that were glad to be aroused, the news that had come from Poteet's. Across the broad plateau of Pullium's Summit the wild tidings flew, until, reaching the western verge of the mountain, they dived down into Prather's Mill Road—a vast gorge which takes its name from the freak of a drunken mountaineer, who declared he would follow the stream that rushed through it until he found a mill, and was never heard ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... records his own sufferings. He says, in one of his books, "At this time I acquired this accursed habit of solitude." It has been said that the Hawthorne family were, in the earlier generation, afflicted with shyness almost as a disease—certainly a curious freak of nature in a family descended from robust sea-captains. It only goes to prove how far away are the influences which control ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... was hurling itself against Banks at Strasburg, swerved to the east about New Market, with a suddenness that made it dizzy. Straight across its path now ran the strange and bold wall of the Massanuttons, architectural freak of Nature's, planted midway of the smiling Valley. The army groaned. "Always climbing mountains! This time to-morrow, I reckon, we'll climb it back again. Nothing over on the other side but ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Nature's a dial whose shade no hand puts back, Trick as we may! My friend, you are forty-three This very year in the world— [JOSEPHINE breaks out sobbing again.] And in vain it is To think of waiting longer; pitiful To dream of coaxing shy fecundity To an unlikely freak by physicking With superstitious drugs and quackeries That work you harm, not good. The fact being so, I have looked it squarely down—against my heart! Solicitations voiced repeatedly At length have shown the soundness of their shape, And left me no denial. You, at times, My dear one, have ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... when we attain to years of responsibility. She had been a presence in his father's household when Mr. Britling was a boy. Then she had been called "Jane," or "Cousin Jane," or "Your cousin Wilshire." It had been a kindly freak of Mr. Britling's to ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... sudden came the barking of a dog in greeting, and the bray of a hungry mule, and he found himself close upon a cabin, and by a freak of fortune it proved to be his own, and he was ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... chambermaids, can't speak anything else! Where the very beggars beg, and the commonest people swear, in French! Oh! it's inexpressibly delightful. Why, the dogs understand it, and the horses—"everybody," as Kurz Pacha said to me, the morning after our arrival (for he insisted upon coming, "it was such a freak," he said,) "everybody rolls in a luxury of French, and, according to the boarding-school standard, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... whoever said there was? By the way, is not this freak of yours of going out into the roads to smoke, as you say, alone, rather a slight on your guest? Here is Mr. Wilde; how very amusing! we all seem to be drawn out towards the ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... seem, this freak struck Madam Conway favorably. Arthur Carrollton knew that Maggie was unlike any other person, and the joke, she thought, would increase, rather than diminish, the interest he already felt in her. So she made no objection, and in a few days it was on its way to England, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... impressions and feelings in the absence of facts, to believe that no other head than his ever concocted the crime. Still, from the manly sincerity with which his young client spoke, he felt inclined to impute the act to a freak of boyish malice and disappointment, rather than to a spirit of vindictive rancor. He entertained no expectation whatsoever of Connor's acquittal, and hinted to him that it was his habit in such cases to recommend his clients to be prepared for the worst, without, at the same ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... stopping all communication for several weeks, until it was his sovereign will and pleasure that people might receive their letters and travel across the country as before. Now what an unaccountable freak was this! It was like the madness of a reasonable being. If I recollect right, it was when Captain Owen was on the east coast of Africa, some of his party who landed were attacked by elephants, who threw them down ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... strength come, I wondered, in one who from his face appeared to be old? Was there perchance, after all, some truth in the legend of Samson and did it dwell in that gigantic beard and those long locks of his? It was impossible to say and probably the man was but a Herculean freak, for that he was as strong as Hercules all the stories that I heard afterwards of his feats, left little room ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... had some definite object in view," said Harley, "or it may have been merely a freak of his client. Is there anything characteristic about the topmost ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... every one. In a few moments he had won a sum variously estimated at from eighty to a hundred thousand dollars. A rumor went round the room that it was a concerted attempt to "break the bank" rather than the drunken freak of a Western miner, dazzled by some successful strike. To this theory the man's careless and indifferent bearing towards his extraordinary gains lent great credence. The attempt, if such it was, however, was unsuccessful. After winning ten times in succession ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... depth and breadth of the tracks, too, surprised him not a little. They were much deeper and broader than those caused by any species of cart he had yet seen or heard of in the country, and the width apart was so great, that he began to suspect he must have mistaken a curious freak of nature for the tracks of a gigantic vehicle. Following the track for some distance, he came to a muddy spot, where the footprints of men and horses became distinctly visible. A little further on he passed the mouth of what appeared to be a cavern, and, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... by other physical peculiarities—the snarling habit and that high-pitched animal voice, for instance—which made him a being different from others—one separate and far apart? Was he, so admirably formed, so complete and well-balanced, merely a freak of nature, to use an old-fashioned phrase—a sport, or spontaneous individual variation—an experiment for a new human type, imagined by Nature in some past period, inconceivably long ago, but which she had only now, too late, found time to carry out? Or ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Attractive for Show Purposes than those of Modern Make," and, singular to relate, the affirmative was placed in the hands of Mr. Barnum, while to Noah had fallen the task of upholding the virtues of the modern freak. It is with the party on mere pleasure bent that we have to do upon this occasion. The proceedings of the debating-party are as yet in the hands of the official stenographer, but will be made public as ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... a couple of years, but brought few returns, except in Russia. Wagner became despondent and almost convinced he ought to give up trying to be a composer. People called him a freak, a madman and ridiculed his efforts at music making. And yet, during all this troublesome time, he was at work on his one humorous opera, "Die Meistersinger." On this he ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... than that, which of them would herself have dared ridicule in order to save him from ridicule? And in what light should he regard this suddenly prompted action on her part, which seemed to him so bewildering at the time, but which she appeared to look on as only a sort of half-humorous freak of friendship? ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... cost money and were hard to get. She explained how she had searched the camp for new magic carpets, finding a "poetry-book" by Longfellow, and a book of American history, and a story called "David Copperfield," and last and strangest of all, another story called "Pride and Prejudice." A curious freak of fortune—the prim and sentimentally quivering Jane Austen in a coal-camp in a far Western wilderness! An adventure for Jane, as well as ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... force and nervous energy fascinated Lord Emsworth. As for Mr. Peters, nothing like the earl had ever happened to him before in a long and varied life. Each, in fact, was to the other a perpetual freak show, with no charge for admission. And if anything had been needed to cement the alliance it would have been supplied by the fact that they were ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... anomalousness &c adj.^; exception, peculiarity; infraction of law, breach, of law, violation of law, violation of custom, violation of usage, infringement of law, infringement of custom, infringement of usage; teratism^, eccentricity, bizarrerie^, oddity, je ne sais quoi [Fr.], monster, monstrosity, rarity; freak, freak of Nature, weirdo, mutant; rouser, snorter [U.S.]. individuality, idiosyncrasy, originality, mannerism. aberration; irregularity; variety; singularity; exemption; salvo &c (qualification) 469. nonconformist; nondescript, character, original, nonesuch, nonsuch^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... been sweeping the whole of the rest of the British coasts, and driving the steam-drifters into harbour. Hence the price of fish: quotations very high; business nil, or next door to it. Our bay however, by a fortunate freak of the weather, has been amply calm for our little undecked drifters, though squalls off land have made sailing tricky in the extreme. We have seen the snow on the distant hills but none has fallen here. We have had the ground-swell, rolling in from outside, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... eyes, the gloss from their hair; they get 'peculiar.' And people laugh at them—and I don't wonder!" Then passionately, "Look at me! Mature! Unmarried! Childless! Where in Nature do I belong? Nowhere! I'm a freak!" ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... Through a queer freak of fate, Thad Brewster and his comrades of the Silver Fox Patrol find themselves in somewhat the same predicament that confronted dear old Robinson Crusoe; only it is on the Great Lakes that they are wrecked instead of the salty sea. You will admit that those Cranford scouts are a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... they enable him to delay it grievously. We divided seventeen times, and between every division this vexatious Irishman made us a speech of apologies and self-condemnation. Of the two who had supported him at the beginning of his freak one soon sneaked away. The other, Sibthorpe, stayed to the last, not expressing remorse like Shaw, but glorying in the unaccommodating temper he showed and in the delay which he produced. At last the bill ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... other errands were done, and Meg and her mother busy at some necessary needlework, while Beth and Amy got tea, and Hannah finished her ironing with what she called a 'slap and a bang', but still Jo did not come. They began to get anxious, and Laurie went off to find her, for no one knew what freak Jo might take into her head. He missed her, however, and she came walking in with a very queer expression of countenance, for there was a mixture of fun and fear, satisfaction and regret in it, which puzzled the family as much as did the roll of bills she laid before her mother, saying ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... characters who tangled me at the start. But I did not budge until I had unraveled them every one. Mrs. Jones declared there was no reason for the disappearance of Tom; his aunt Quincy said her flightiness had driven him to it; and Cousin Jack, Mrs. Tom's adviser, thought it just a freak after much dissipation, for Tom had been acting queerly for months before he did the vanishing act. The three were talking either from spleen or the wish to hide the truth. When there was no trace of Tom after a month of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... freak, By a Narrabri beak, He was jawed with a deal of verbosity; For his only appeal Was 'professional zeal' — He ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... every, much, neither, no, or none, some, this, that, these, those. The pronominal adjectives which precede the article, are all, both, many, such, and what; as, "All the world,"—"Both the judges,"—"Many a[336] mile,"—"Such a chasm,"—"What a freak." In like manner, any adjective of quality, when its meaning is limited by the adverb too, so, as, or how, is put before the article; as, "Too great a study of strength, is found to betray writers into a harsh manner."—Blair's Rhet., p. 179. "Like many an other poor wretch, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... say, the odd little freak of substitution only endeared the twins to the people of Mount Mark ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... have heard that he gave sound advice, and was a good and profitable man to consult. Was it not a strange freak on the part of God, who plays sometimes jokes on us, to have granted so many perfections to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... dreaming, Captain Prescott. Some freak of the fancy has mastered you. I know nothing of the documents. How could I, a woman, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... is, Bess, I waited as long as I could for you to come over this side to look after me, that I might cease wandering and settle down. As you know, I've tried my hand at a good many occupations, often for the freak of the thing, but always with a reserve force for doing the right thing at last, and somehow I've mostly made bread and cheese and a little more. The gold fever was over long before I reached Australia, but I had ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... Dame Markham, in stomacher and farthingale and ruff, with quite a look of alarm on their countenances, which was reflected from that of another of the old Markhams—all appearing either angry or startled at such a freak being played ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the bush!" Robert heard him say. "There can't be! The place has no people and we know there are no big wild animals on the islands in these seas! It's some freak of the wind ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... freak will you take to next?" he asked. "And do you really expect to make a novelist out of that ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... In ten minutes I knew, that a sudden freak on the part of the girl he was engaged to had released him, without fault of his own, and that with this release new life had entered his veins, for the conflict was over and love and duty were now ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... Coleville, catching her by the waist, "what is this wild freak of yours? Have you ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... kept her indoors, she amused herself with a new freak. Making friends everywhere, as became The Queen of Hearts, she even ingratiated herself with the sour old housekeeper, who had predicted so obstinately that she was certain to run away. To the amazement of everybody in the house, she spent hours in the kitchen, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... freak in a regular tempest—a midsummer madness of weather upheaval. It is a thunderbolt of wind, a concentration of gale, a whirling dervish of disaster—wind compactly bunched into one almighty blast—wind enough to last a regular ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the qui vive for a genius of so riotous an order as this, and all the wealthy families of Newport vied with one another for the privilege of being first to welcome him to our shores, not because he was a freak, mind you, but "for art's sweet sake." Mrs. Gushington-Andrews offered twenty-five hundred dollars for him as a week-end guest, and Mrs. Gaster immediately went her bid a hundred per cent. better. Henriette, in order to outdo every one else, promptly put in a ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... the bookman's trivial adventures and discoveries. They would be worse than trivial indeed if they led him to forget or ignore that by which Goldsmith earned his immortality, or to regard Traherne merely as a freak in the history of literary reputations, and not primarily as the writer ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... confounded millionaire soap-boiler," commented Mr. Blunt through his clenched teeth. "A man absolutely without parentage. Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak." ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... I intend to outstay you," he said, in answer to her glance. "You were here first; it's your turn to go now. But about this latest freak of Mrs. Brenton: where do you ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by the 'Ornithorhynchus paradoxus' alone. This custom prevails throughout the country of the Maravi, and no one could see it without confessing that fashion had never led women to a freak more mad. We had rains now every day, and considerable cloudiness, but the sun often burst through with scorching intensity. All call out against it then, saying, "O the sun! that is rain again." It was worth noticing that my ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone |
