"Squinting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adventuring, ear-wigging M.P., whose hope of political existence, and whose very livelihood, depend upon getting or continuing in place. Then there is the legal M.P., with one eye fixed on the Queen's, the other squinting at the Treasury Bench. Then there is the lounging M.P., who is usually the scion of a noble family, and who comes now and then into the House, to stare vacantly about, and go out again. Then there is the military M.P., who finds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... again writhing under the vague and shapeless surmises which the singular events of the evening sent crowding to his imagination. His dreams on retiring to seek repose were frightful—several times in the night he saw graceful Phil squinting at him with a nondescript leer of vengeance and derision in his yellow goggle eyes, and bearing Mary off, like some misshapen ogre of old, mounted upon Handsome Harry, who appeared to be gifted with the speed of Hark-away or flying Childers, whilst he himself could ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... question. He tried to look at himself in the mirror but even by squinting up one eye could only see as far as the row ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... really dead, and the brutality they had shown in breaking the legs of the thieves made the holy women tremble as to what outrage they might next perpetrate on the body of our Lord. But Cassius, the subaltern officer, a young man of about five-and-twenty, whose weak squinting eyes and nervous manner had often excited the derision of his companions, was suddenly illuminated by grace, and being quite overcome at the sight of the cruel conduct of the soldiers, and the deep sorrow ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... composed his sublime poem under the influence of a delirium. The susceptibilities that we create or refine by the pursuit of one object, weaken our general reason; and I may compare with some justice the powers of the mind to the faculties of the body, in which squinting is occasioned by an inequality of strength in the eyes, and discordance of voice by the same ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the head of this guide! The devil knows where he is leading us, and where he will take us. Perhaps he is going to sell us to the Lezghins for a rich ransom. I never trust these squinting fellows!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... demise. If ever there was to be a Longliver, that Longliver would have to be me. This was determined by the Life Force in the middle of the XIX Century. That Life Force could not afford to rob a squinting world of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... ecstatic moments aiming at the ceiling. Sunday mornings Carol heard him trudging up to the attic and there, an hour later, she found him turning over boots, wooden duck-decoys, lunch-boxes, or reflectively squinting at old shells, rubbing their brass caps with his sleeve and shaking his head as ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... have shewn a different kind of complaisance, no sooner gave his consent, than Maimoune stamped with her foot. The earth opened, and out came a hideous, hump- backed, squinting, and lame genie, with six horns upon his head, and claws on his hands and feet. As soon as he was come out, and the earth had closed, perceiving Maimoune, he threw himself at her feet, and then rising on ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... keep moving about then," he said, "making faces and all that—sneering and squinting, while I ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... afterward. They got busy in the office and called me up again, and I located her again—only in a different place. Fellow on Claremont—that's it away over there; see that white speck? That's the station, just like this one. He's an old crab, Hank tells me. He said I must be bugs. Had him squinting around some, I bet! Then they got wise that I was reporting a through freight, and they kid me about it yet. But they fell for it at ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Bishop of Noyon, declaim particularly against this abuse. It appears also from the Homilies of St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Austin, and others, that the Christians of their days drew several kinds of presages from persons sneezing at critical times; from meeting a cat, a dog, or an ill-looking (squinting) woman, a maiden, one blind of an eye, or a cripple; on being caught by the cloak on stepping out of a door, or from a sudden catch ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... twisted the strings, And working his face as he worked the wings, And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round too, Till his nose seemed bent to catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheek and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look very droll in the face, And also very wise. And wise he must have been, to do more Than ever a genius did before, Excepting Daedalus of yore And his son Icarus, who wore Upon their backs those wings of wax He had read of in the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... bottle on the checks and rubbed his cheek, squinting at the ceiling in the manner of one who means to ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... course, to see James tighten up and set his jaws as he was wont to do before ugly news; but she put it down to astonishment and no more and handed the heart and the chain to James. She knew nought about his gift to Cora, and so when he dropped it, after squinting close at it, and said: "My God in heaven, 'tis the same!" then Mary Jane ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... Molly, and, in return, Mrs. Hamley seemed charmed with him to such a degree that Molly once or twice fancied that mother and son would have been happier in her absence. Yet, again, it struck on the shrewd, if simple girl, that Osborne was mentally squinting at her in the conversation which was directed to his mother. There were little turns and 'fioriture' of speech which Molly could not help feeling were graceful antics of language not common in the simple daily intercourse between mother and son. But it was flattering rather ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... my boy," he said now quite softly, "I knew that there was something up, or you would have been wolfing more than your share of those sandwiches. I saw you keep squinting at that hole over yonder. So you have ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... me and saved yourself trouble,' says she, climbing over the rail and squinting along for'ard and seeing the first shackle flip out and stop. 'There's fifteen fathom,' says she; 'you may as well turn your men to and ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... his aches at last left him, his watch started ticking of its own accord. His watch was so sympathetic that it couldn't bear to run when he couldn't walk! But when he felt good, it was so joyous it ran ahead to make up for lost time. Then he set it right by squinting ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... sailin' around in an airship, he's shore got the laugh on us fellers," Aleck observed, squinting his nose until his gums showed red above his teeth. "Look at 'im ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... his long legs and squinting up at the sun. "Let me see. Oh yes! Having put down a breakfast that must have added four pounds to our weight, we sauntered forth once more to meet our doom. By that time we were so nervous, we almost mistook a caf on the corner for the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... SQUINT-A-PIPES. A squinting man or woman; said to be born in the middle of the week, and looking both ways for Sunday; or born in a hackney coach, and looking out of both windows; fit for a cook, one eye in the pot, and the other up the chimney; looking nine ways ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... being drawn down, and the eye (from their desire that it should see 'all ways at once') having a horrid squint. This gave to the boat a lugubrious expression—if such a term may be allowed—ludicrous in the extreme; and with fifty or a hundred junks drawn up in squadrons, squinting and making faces at each other, nothing more thoroughly Chinese could ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... laughed Betty, squinting at the unbecoming neck for a moment. "It's too high behind, that's all. Rip off the collar and I'll cut it down. And I have an extra blue tie that you can have—it needs a tie. But I thought you'd manage to get an excuse from gym, when you hate ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... came thence, But that Montrose and Crawford's Royal Band Aton'd their Sin, and Christened half the Land. Nor is it all the Nation has these Spots, There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots, As in a Picture where the Squinting Paint Shews Fiend on this Side and on that Side Saint; He that Saw Hell in's Melancholy Dream, And in the Twilight of his Fancy's Theme, Scar'd from his Sins, repented in a Fright, Had he view'd Scotland had turn'd Proselyte. A Land where one may pray with curst Intent; ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... fumbling at his scarf and trying to look at it by pulling it out to its full length and squinting down his nose at its ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... said Haigh, squinting at the land that was rising and falling over our weather quarter. "If we hold on as we are going, we ought to pick up the other horn of it." So we stuck to the course for three hours, and then came to the conclusion that the point we ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... could feel my heart going in great thumps that hurt and seemed to shake the ground. My tongue was curled up and dry, and fever was simply burning me up. My mind was clear, and I wished that I hadn't drunk that rum. Finding I could raise my head a little, I cocked it up, squinting over my cheek bones—I was on my back—and could catch the far-off flicker of the silver-green flare lights. There was a rattle of musketry off in the direction where the Boche lines ought to be. From behind ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... live in quiet, Wishing there to dwell in honour, And a peaceful life to live there; But when first the room I entered, Over chips of wood I stumbled. On the door I knocked my forehead, And my head against the doorposts. At the door were eyes of strangers: Darksome eyes were at the entrance, 570 Squinting eyes in midst of chamber, In the background eyes most evil. From the mouths the fire was flashing, From beneath the tongues shot firebrands, From the old man's mouth malicious, From beneath ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... allowed to go nearer to this goddess than past a triangular ornament covered with big bells; but they lit it for us and let us peep in, and it disclosed a woman's face and figure so horribly ugly as to give one a nightmare—a large, round, red face, with squinting eyes, open mouth, hideous teeth, and a gash on her cheek and forehead. She is the Goddess of Destruction, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... of a studio near his unfinished group of the "Fates." He leaned back on the sofa, twirling a sculptor's chisel and squinting at ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... moment had arrived would have been patent from the eyes alone. Riveted upon the trigger-finger, squinting until the pupils were almost lost to view, they were the orbs of a fiend. Even as the Judge gazed, the light of Insanity took flaming possession. Hell, grown impatient, had sent a sheriff ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... yellowish light; the shadows were deep; only the faces of those nearest the flame could be clearly distinguished. One table was surrounded by a boisterous group in the centre of which was a fat man in a frowsy wig. He had a malicious glint in his squinting eyes and was evidently of some importance. When he spoke the ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... glanced surreptitiously at his watch at least a dozen times during the reading of the story. An anxious frown settled on his brow and an observer might have remarked the strange, listening attitude that he affected at times, such as the alert cocking of his head and an intense squinting of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... held for two days. On the third morning Jeremy, on his knees by the hearth fire, was squinting down the bright barrel of a flintlock. He had been quiet for a long time. Bob felt the tenseness of the situation himself, but he could not understand the other's absolute silence. He scowled as he sat on the floor, and savagely drove a long-bladed hunting-knife ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... of this argument must certainly be in the habit of very random shooting with a smoothbore. How can he possibly get a correct aim with "ball" out of a smoothbore, without squinting along the barrel and taking the muzzle-sight accurately? The fact is, that many persons fire so hastily at game that they take no sight at all, as though they were snipe-shooting with many hundred grains of shot in the charge. This will never do for ball-practice, and when the rifle ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... and as he paused there a moment, a group of Leaguers, among whom were Garnett and Gethings, came slowly from the door carrying old Broderson in their arms. The doctor, bareheaded and in his shirt sleeves, squinting in the sunlight, attended them, repeating ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... Hottentot a little while later, squinting at me with his bead-like eyes, "after all you did well to listen to my prayer and bring me with you. Old Hans is a drunkard, yes, or at least he used to be, and old Hans gambles, yes, and perhaps old Hans will go to hell. But meanwhile ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... just before dawn, incinerating a good li of bottom land in the process. Their machines were already busily digging up the topsoil. The Old One watched, squinting into the morning sun. He sighed, hitched up his saffron robes and started ...
— Blessed Are the Meek • G.C. Edmondson
... her fingers she flashed on the hall light. Her gaze searched the brown, shiny face of the little chap. She read there an affidavit of the truth of his mother's tale. The boy had his father's trick of squinting a slant look at anything he found interesting. It was impossible to see him and ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... Richard III. Let him pass and make way for one of a different description, Victor,[69] a fine, open, gentlemanly countenance, tho' not like a military hero. Marmont, a dark haired, sharp-looking man of military stature. Duc de Dantzig,[70] very ugly and squinting. Berthier,[71] remarkably quiet and intelligent. Murat,[72] an effeminate coxcomb with no characteristic but that of self-satisfaction. Moncey, a respectable veteran. Massena,[73] the most military of all, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... quietly as I could and trying to avoid observation from the squinting eye of Mr Bitpin, our fourth lieutenant, who was the oldest in seniority although he occupied such a subordinate position, I made my way to the side of Ned Anstruther, the midshipman of the watch, who stood on the weather side of the quarter-deck on a coil of rope so as to keep his ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of the Stadtholder, was Isaac Boxtel, who saw, carried on his right before him, the black tulip, his pretended daughter; and on his left, in a large purse, the hundred thousand guilders in glittering gold pieces, towards which he was constantly squinting, fearful of losing sight ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... had it folded so that I found myself confronting a picture of Lady Alicia Newland, Lady Alicia in the "Teddy-Bear" suit of an aviator, with a fur-lined leather jacket and helmet and heavy gauntlets and leggings and the same old audacious look out of the quietly smiling eyes, which were squinting a little because ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... worked the wings, Arid with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round, too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheeks and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look very droll in the face, And also ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... peasants! to the petty shopkeepers of Soulanges!" exclaimed Sibilet, squinting horribly, by reason of the irony which flamed brighter in one eye than in the other. "Monsieur le comte doesn't know what he undertakes. Our Lord Jesus Christ would die again upon the cross in this ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... you were, the moment you came in, sir," said he, with a very knowing leer out of his half-squinting eyes. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... wrathfulness: "Come out of my nest, you blinking cuckoo, you, or I'll cut your silly insides out! Come out of it—you pock-marked rat! Stealing another man's 'ome away from 'im! Come out and look me in the face, you squinting son of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... They all stood there squinting up at the Brewster's Centre sign, and all of a sudden I had a thought and I whispered to the fellows, "Don't spoil the plot, it's growing thicker. Let ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... spent the night with Baahaabaa and Hitoia-Upa, who supported him on either side, and balanced him precariously on his sketching-stool where he promptly fell asleep. In the meantime Whinney was dodging about with his camera, squinting in the finder, without finding anything—one never does—peering at the brightening sky, holding his thumb at arm's length, [Footnote: In Southern Peru the same gesture used to signify contempt and derision.] in a word going through all the artistic motions which should have been Swank's. The latter ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... was the name of that priestylooking chap was always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in Citron's saint Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen ...? Of course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well, if he couldn't remember ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... down to the edge of the water quiet-like. He lays his big scoop-net an' his sack—we can see it half full already—down behind a boulder, and takes a good squinting look all round, and listens maybe twenty minutes, he's that cute, same's a coyote stealing sheep. We lies low an' says nothing, fear he might see ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... I'm running a Polar consumptives' sanatorium boat. I was squinting through a colloid before you were out ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... man riding on the left, with a red face and red-lidded, squinting eyes, was in stature something between the two Morgans, and about the age of the elder cousin. His shoulders slouched, and he showed none of the blood of his companions. But this man, David Sassoon, the Calabasas ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... had halted, Geraldine came back, and then Miller returned to where he stood, squinting through the falling flakes ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the other; "it seems to me as if I had always been engaged to her. Born that way. Sort of an ailment you get used to, like squinting. When I was a youngster, Calthea was a mighty pretty girl, a good deal my senior, of course, or I wouldn't have cared for her. As she grew older she grew prettier, and I was more and more in love with her. We used to have quarrels, but they didn't make much difference, for after every one ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... of you folks tell me if a man named Hardin' hangs out 'round this here place?" he said, squinting at a card which I ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... from him. When we assign many attributes to God we do not mean that there is any multiplicity in his nature. This cannot be. It is like the case of a man whose eyes are not properly co-ordinated. He sees double when there is only one. So we too suffer from intellectual squinting, when we seem to see many attributes in the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... beach erect on two legs, in search of small crabs and other stray marine animals left behind by the receding waters. If you try to catch him, he hops away briskly much like a frog, and stares back at you grimly over his left shoulder, with his squinting optics. So completely adapted is he for this amphibious long-shore existence, that his big eyes, unlike those of most other fish, are formed for seeing in the air as well as in the water. Nothing can be more ludicrous ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... soldiers on you," Eubank continued, squinting out of the corner of one eye to mark the effect of his words, "and ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... rage and indignation may be imagined; a wife robbed from him, his honor put in question by an odious, lanky, squinting lawyer! He fell ill of a fever incontinently; and the surgeon was obliged to take a quantity of blood from him, ten times the amount of which he swore he would have out of the veins of ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... mean to open it till she gets ready. She was by no means satisfied as yet that this grandfather Munoz was a proper person to be intrusted with the destinies of a young lady. In refusing to let his daughter select her own husband, he had shown a very squinting and incomplete perception ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... "Well," replied Billie, squinting up one eye, "I was thinking that Adrian and I might take out about ten to-night. Then about the same time to-morrow night Don could take another ten. We would probably meet somewhere in the mountains and watch the ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... now," he observed, squinting over his shoulder. "It'd be a mistake to leave evidence like that around." He tore down the sign and worked it into firewood with an axe. "Now they can't do nothing to us for drifting in here by error," he remarked to his companions. "It ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... after an oblique valley had cleft the range, an elm-hedge ran along the crest, till there looked down a grey church with a squinting spire and grey-black yews set about it, and something white like a monument standing up on a mound beside it. Woods appeared and receded, leaving the hilltop bare, and returned; there was a broken hedge of hawthorn; a downward line ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... all the passions in town, and she will tell you, that the whole is a game of cross purposes. The lover is generally pursuing one who is in pursuit of another, and running from one that desires to meet him. Nay, the figure of this passion is so justly represented in a squinting little thief (who is always in a double action) that do but observe Clarissa next time you see her, and you'll find, when her eyes have made their tour round the company, she makes no stay on him they say she is to marry, but rests two seconds of a minute on Wildair, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... responded Creede, squinting his eyes down judicially. "Them Herefords are awful solid when they git big. I reckon he'll run nigh onto seventeen hundred, Bill." He paused and winked furtively at Hardy. "I kin git fifty dollars fer that old boy, jest the way he stands," he said, "and bein' ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... "Well," answered Mr. Brimberly, squinting at an empty bottle, "I used to know a very good song once, called 'Let's drownd all our sorrers and cares.' But good 'eavens! we can't drownd 'em ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... said Dr. Gregory, when they were on their way to Mrs. Thorn's,—"they've got your uncle at home now and we've got you; and I mean to keep you till I'm satisfied. So you may bring home that eye that has been squinting at Queechy ever since you have been here and make up your mind to enjoy yourself; I sha'n't let you ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... put one of the bulky helmets on him, he looked up at them, squinting a little in the bright light. "This ... this isn't going to ... well, do me any damage, ...
— The Next Logical Step • Benjamin William Bova
... a storm rolled in off the barren hills to the south. "She's a-wettin' up that red lake a-plenty," observed Casey, squinting through the dirty windshield. "No trail around, either, on account of the lava beds. But I guess I can pull acrost, all right." Doubt was in his voice, however, and he was half minded to turn back and take the straight road to Vegas, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Examination he had got time fiercely by the forelock. He rose and strolled over to the Basilica di San Marco, and opened one or two of those formidable and enchanting volumes. Then he produced a cigarette, and struck a match, and he was about to light the cigarette, when squinting down at it he suddenly wondered: "Now how the deuce did that cigarette come into my mouth?" He replaced the cigarette in his case, and in a moment he had ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... himself squinting, the orange sun full in his eyes. He raised a hand to push his hat forward, then lowered it to the controls to alter the pulse rate of the contragravity-field generators and lift the manipulator another hundred feet. For a moment he sat, puffing ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... intolerable silence and loneliness on the bosom of a river which had caused the death of so many men who had endeavoured to wrest from it its secret." Two days later a large village appeared, and suddenly a cry rang through the air: "Holloa, you Englishmen! You come here!" It came from a "little squinting fellow" dressed in an English soldier's jacket, a messenger from the Chief of Bonney on the coast, buying slaves for his master. He had picked up a smattering of English from the Liverpool trading ships which came to Bonney for palm-oil from the river. There was no longer any doubt that the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... squinting eyes, which have lost their lashes and are bordered with red, you should wear spectacles. If the defect be great, your glasses should be coloured. In such cases emulate the sky rather than the sea: green spectacles are an abomination, fitted only for students in ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... blew that thing into your cabin?" asked the General, squinting up his snow-blinded eyes at the dim ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... poor old fellow's sallies are liable to be welcomed—or unwelcomed. She knows that the edge of a broken teacup may be sharper, very possibly, than that of a philosopher's jackknife. A mind a little off its balance, one which has a slightly squinting brain as its organ; will often prove fertile in suggestions. Vulgar, cynical, contemptuous listeners fly at all its weaknesses, and please themselves with making light of its often futile ingenuities, when a wiser audience would gladly accept a ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... roared. He stopped, held the bicycle upright with one foot on the pavement. A tall, lanky, slightly bowlegged man with squinting luminous green eyes stood on the sidewalk. Gary looked at the man. The newspapers fluttered to the parkway. The bicycle clattered ...
— Stopover Planet • Robert E. Gilbert
... announced laconically, and returned to his squinting and fussing. "Maybe you can make 'em hear with the megaphone," he hinted, looking again at Luck. "They're riding straight up the canon, in the middle distance. They'll register in the scene, if ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... cigar into a glow and leaned back, clasping one knee with two brown hands and squinting up at the low, discoloured ceiling. And Amber, looking him over, was amazed by the absolute fidelity of his make-up; the brownish stain on face and hands, the high-cut patent-leather boots, the open-work socks through ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... off, a monstrous sea-spider, about thirty-eight inches high, was watching me with squinting eyes, ready to spring upon me. Though my diver's dress was thick enough to defend me from the bite of this animal, I could not help shuddering with horror. Conseil and the sailor of the Nautilus awoke at this moment. Captain Nemo pointed out the hideous crustacean, which a blow from ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... like Lowndes Street. I'm not going to tell the number, nor at which end of the street we live; for it's very disagreeable to have people riding by and stopping to alter their stirrup-leathers, and squinting up at one's drawing-room windows where one sits working in peace, and then cantering off and trotting by again, as if something had been forgotten. No; if curiosity is so very anxious to know where I live, let it look in the Court Guide; for my part, I say nothing, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... not answer at once. He lay squinting off at the beech trees, without moving. "You always avoid that subject with me, don't you?" ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... two blocks, three blocks, four blocks, squinting with his right eye slanting at the blue rat on his right shoulder and squinting with his left eye slanting at the blue ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... single moment he really suspected premature caudation had been inflicted on him for his crimes. But such delusions are short-lived. He slewed himself round after this tail in his efforts to see it, and squinting over his shoulder he did see it; and a warm liquid which he now felt stealing down his legs and turning cold as it went, opened his eyes still farther. It was a red spear sticking in his person—sticking tight. Jacky, who had never got so near him as he fancied, saw him about to get into a tent, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... my skin grows loose and long; behind, By bending it becomes more taut and strait; Backward I strain me like a Syrian bow: Whence false and quaint, I know, Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye; For ill can aim the gun that bends awry. Come then, Giovanni, try To succour my dead pictures and my fame; Since foul I fare and painting ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... photographing everybody he could induce to sit or stand to him, producing some excellent pictures among many failures; for he had a pretty taste in grouping, and endless patience. He might be said to view the world through the lens of his camera, and seemed to enjoy himself very much squinting at his fellow beings from under a bit of black cambric. Dan was a treasure to him; for he took well, and willingly posed in his Mexican costume, with horse and hound, and all wanted copies of these effective ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... rejoined Allen, squinting diabolically at him; "what is my occupation in life? Why, in my younger days I studied divinity, but at present I am ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... terror even of the Jesuits, and was so violent to them that they scarcely dared approach him. His exterior kept faith with his interior. He would have been terrible to meet in a dark lane. His physiognomy was cloudy, false, terrible; his eyes were burning, evil, extremely squinting; his aspect struck all with dismay. The whole aim of his life was to advance the interests of his Society; that was his god; his life had been absorbed in that study: surprisingly ignorant, insolent, impudent, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... was—Toby with his little black nose and bright eyes gleaming from behind the overhanging shaggy hair, that no one but a Toby could have seen through without squinting—Toby, rather subdued and meekly inquiring at first, as if not quite sure of his welcome, till—a glance round the room satisfying him that there was no one to dread, no one but his two dearly-beloved friends—his courage returned, and he rushed towards them ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... are going about with a bit of lens and a measure of acid, explaining the hidden things of this world, I should be very glad if they would explain why it is that the evening of an autumn day always recalls the lost Kingdom of the Little. The sun squinting behind the mountains, the blue haze deepening in the hollows of the hills, the cool air laden with faint odours from the nooks and corners of the world,—what have these to do with the land ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... squint at it," said Mr. Spriggs, reaching across the table; but all his squinting made the bill no less, and he laid it down with a sigh. "It is coming it rayther strong, to be sure," continued he; "but I dare say it's all our happearance has as done it. He takes us for people o' ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... greeting, squinting around the horseman at the long column of marching men, "you look like you had a slather of folks yonder. I guess there'll be something in the wind around Old ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... grim Hewson, the silent Mervin, each quiet and watchful, as if storing up power for a tremendous effort. There was the large unwholesomeness of Madam Winklestein, all jewellery, smiles and coarse badinage, and near her, her perfumed husband, squinting and smirking abominably. There was the old man, with his face of a Hebrew Seer, his visionary eye now aglow with fanatical enthusiasm, his lips ever muttering: "Klondike, Klondike"; and lastly, by his side, with ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... trail toward the crossing without a parting word to Doubler, leaving him standing at the door squinting with amusement at her. But on the morrow she had returned, determined to discover something of Dakota, to learn something of his history since coming into the country, or at the least to see if she could not induce Doubler to ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... applause, and, we may almost say, seems too well pleased with it himself. It is like children in the game of hide and seek, they cannot stay quiet in their corner, but keep popping out their heads, if they are not immediately discovered; nay, sometimes, which is still worse, it is like the squinting over a fan held up from affected modesty. In Marivaux we always see his aim from the very beginning, and all our attention is directed to discovering the way by which he is to lead us to it. This would be a skilful mode of composing, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of her drunkard farming father. A sort of local mad-Edison whose inventions never worked or, if they did, were promptly stolen from him by more profit-minded promoters. Her brother Jim, sturdy, cowlicked, squinting into the sun, stood at his father's knee. He wondered what had happened to Jim but didn't dare ask. Presumably he should know since Jim shared the house with his sister and an ancient ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... like that, Mariar?" remarked an old Hoosier, stroking his yellow whiskers and squinting at his better half, a hawk-faced woman of determined countenance. "I tell yer what. Mariar, with all your good qualities yer never could hold a candle to that 'ere ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... working this whole mortal evening," went on Ella Morrissey, holding up a pencil sketch and squinting at it disapprovingly over her working spectacles, "and I'm so tired that one eye's shut and the other's running on first. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Gomez senseless. At this moment Paul Guidon returned, Horatio Keys, one of the rebels, had seized Captain Godfrey by the throat and was holding him tightly against the wall, Margaret clinched the rolling-pin and in an instant sent Keys staggering to the floor. The squinting monkey-faced rebel's name was Will, and Will by force pushed Margaret to the floor, and was dragging her by the hand toward the door, as Paul stepped in. Paul struck him with his fist, and like lightning placed ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... on the point of throwing some critical light on the details of this story when, fortunately, Squinting Aaron Hirschkuh from Homburg-on-the-Lahn came with a white napkin on his arm, and bitterly bewailed that the soup was already served, and that the boarders were seated at table, but that the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... be here in order to listen to the wise lessons which the goddess Victoria will teach the sons of Mars," replied Lehrbach, fixing his small, squinting eyes with an admiring air on Victoria's beautiful face. "You will need no other means but your smiles and your beauty in order to inspire those brave soldiers with the most dauntless heroism. Who would not be willing to shed a little French blood, if your ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... came to us yesterday, before inspection, and asked for guns to clean, David began to get his gun out of the rack. He looked a little uneasily at Knudsen, but the Swede wouldn't see it; he kept squinting through his own piece. The regular, to make matters sure, said, "Mr. Randall told me you'd give me your gun. I always clean his." With the funniest little set of his jaw, as if he didn't quite know how to do it, David reached for the cleaning rod. "Well," he said, "Mr. Randall is mistaken. I ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... slow is my policy. I'm not just certain that I have you sized up right, as yet. I'm of a suspicious nature. But I'm finding this sunshine softening." Mr. Wagg rambled on, squinting up at the sky. "Seven years is a long while to wait for a good time to come. Figuring that your time will be paid for at the rate of about ten thousand dollars a year, while you're in here, helps to smooth the feelings ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... interest in sight, talk between them was desultory. Jim Bailey thought they'd take on some men at Plymouth when they stopped there to victual up. The messenger, squinting at the swimming yellow distance, yawned and said it might be a good thing, nobody knew when Knapp and Garland would get busy again. They'd failed in the holdup of the Rockville stage last spring and it was about time to hear from ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... to obey, squinting back over a shoulder at the clergyman in some concern. But the package in hand, he puzzled over that instead as he came back. "It says on it 'Mr. Farvel,'" he ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... unity, and the thinker is impatient of squinting and side-glances while all eyes should be turned together to the same. Thought is growing agreement, and that in which the race cannot meet me is some whim or notion, a personal crotchet, not a cosmic and eternal truth. Genius is freedom from all oddity, is Catholicity,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... squat, and squinting, with a yellow "wipe" round his "squeeze," was put to the bar on violent ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... of satisfaction. "Now, look alive, lads; we shall be close on the nigger village in five minutes—it's just round the point of this small island close ahead. Come, Mr Scraggs, we've other business on hand just now than squinting at the scrimmages ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the fireplace, snapping and sizzling as the blaze caught and flamed on the resin. Deep in an easy chair, Greg Manning stretched his long legs out toward the fire and lifted his glass, squinting at the flames through the ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... that," said the owl; "the mouse is very clever, and his opinion worthy of attention; we cannot spare him." The truth was, the owl, squinting down, had seen what a plump mouse it was, and he reflected that if the weasel saw him he would never rest till he had tasted him, whereas he thought he should like to meet the mouse by moonlight shortly. "Upon the whole, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... answered Tom, thinking the remark addressed to him, inasmuch as Edith's head protruded from the window. "Dreams is mighty onsartin. Git 'long, you Bill, none o'yer lazy carlicues, case don't yer mind thar's Mars'r Arthur on the v'randy, squinting to see if I's fotched 'em," and removing his old straw hat, Tom swung it three times around his head, that being the signal he was to give if Edith were in ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... first at the pale, anemic little man with big eyes, who shifted his feet and looked uncomfortable; then her gaze went to Sanderson who, resting his left elbow on the pommel of the saddle, was watching her with squinting, quizzical eyes. ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... up," the boy said, squinting down the barrel of the rifle he was lovingly cleaning. "It's going to be a perfect day! I'm going to the game myself. If it rains, you and I'll go to the Orpheum mat., what ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... listening to the great clock in the hall. He was intimate with all the paperhanging in the house; saw things that no one else saw in the patterns; found out miniature tigers and lions running up the bedroom walls, and squinting faces leering in the squares and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... "Well!" replied Marmaduke, squinting his eye thoughtfully, "I see a big wall and towers on it—a whole lot of towers. There's about fifty, ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... squatting dogs, were squarely within the circle or illumination. And outside, in the penumbra of shifting half light, now showing clearly, now fading into darkness, were the sheep, indeterminate in bulk, melting away by mysterious thousands into the mass of night. We passed them. They looked up, squinting their eyes against the dazzle of the fire. The night closed about ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... into that school there came Ninned the Squinting, from the lochs of Erne, to read with Findian; and he had no book. "Seek a book," said Findian. Ninned went a-searching round the school, and did not obtain a book from any of them. "Hast thou gone to the gentle youth on the north side of the lawn?" said Findian. "I ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... the dining-room was a one-sided couch standing by the window, which did not seem to please the master of Gad's Hill Place. He said to Mr. Homan one day, "Whenever I see that couch, it makes me think the window is squinting." The result was that Mr. Homan had ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... making. The only thing that she could not correct to her perfect satisfaction was a something of a cast with her eyes; which especially when she imitated Enoch in making herself agreeable, was very like squinting. Not but that the thought squinting itself a pleasing kind of blemish. Nay there were instances in which she scarcely knew if it could be ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the middle-class world and its Yeas and Nays, what should prevent our being imprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length a RIGHT to "bad character," as the being who has hitherto been most befooled on earth—he is now under OBLIGATION to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.—Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; for I myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... patience with him in this. Painstakingly I have traced to him the evolution of his belief in the eternity of forms, showing him how it has arisen out of his early infatuation with logic and mathematics. Of course, from that warped, squinting, abstract view-point, it is very easy to believe ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... was happy with his bed-tester. He said be had never slept under a bed-tester in his life, and he was dying to know what it would be like—to lie there with hundreds of dear little, shy little chintz rosebuds squinting down at you. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... this load. Jack's fame as a stock-horse, as well as a pack-horse, stood high in the Malvern Hills, but his conduct in the shafts was eccentric, to say the least of it. He could not bear to be guided by his driver, and was always squinting over his blinkers in the most ridiculous manner. If he perceived a mob of cattle or horses on a distant flat, he would set off to have a look at them and determine whether they were strangers or friends, dragging the gig after him "over bank, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... he had been suddenly flung back into antiquity and that Nero sat yonder, squinting through his polished emerald. The great, tawny African brutes blinked and turned their shaggy heads this way and that, uneasily. Kathlyn stood very still. How, how could they save her? At length the lions espied her, attracted by the white of her robe. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... him for his big comrade. He would have liked to slip his little fist in the great brown hand and say something appropriate, only he could think of nothing appropriate. Then he remembered that among men there should be no letting down, no sentimentality. So he lounged along, squinting up at the Butcher and trying ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... mortal, that Satan himself would have run from him. And besides all this, it was quite plain, that he was by nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... be awfully strong, to have raised that board," Katherine continued, squinting at the muscular brown arms, which seemed ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... wrong—what you so blue about?' I asks Johnnie when he'd got through squinting up the tree ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... work, squinting thoughtfully. "Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, I noticed that, too, come to think of it. Feedback effect of some sort, I suppose. Have to experiment with that, too, I expect." He turned back ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... trifling knickknacks which any mother would have secretly clung to, no matter to what depth her flesh and blood had fallen. Never had she seen among the usual amateur photographs one presenting two boys. Once she had come across a photograph of a smooth-faced youth who was in the act of squinting along the top of an engineer's tripod. Arthur had laughingly taken it away from her, saying that it represented him when he had had ambitions ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... France. The malady is not congenital, but its symptoms usually appear within a few months of birth. The characteristics of this form of idiocy are an enlarged thyroid gland constituting a goitre or bronchocele, a high-arched palate, dwarfed stature, squinting eyes, sallow complexion, small legs, conical head, large mouth, and ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... I have eyes," vowed the juror, squinting through his hands in the half light, "that closely wrapped man is ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... and if he has warts or frekles you will have warts two and frekles. father said once when he was a boy he knew a feller whitch was vaxinated with a scab of a cock-eyed man and bimeby the feller began to squint and he kep on squinting wirse and wirse and bimeby he was cock-eyed two. and father he said he knew another feller whitch had a wooden leg and he sent his scab to another feller to be vaxinated and that feller began to limp and he always walked stifleged. i gess father was fooling. ennyway i hope i shant be vaxinated ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... on Maimoune striking the floor with her foot it opened, and a hideous, hump-backed, lame, squinting genius, with six horns on his head, hands like claws, emerged. As soon as he beheld Maimoune he threw himself at her ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... his family would result in deliberate sarcasm and eye-squinting and barely hidden smiles. There would be pointed remarks and direct insults. And when it was over, George knew, he would be expected to see the error of his ways. He would then be expected to forget about this odd creature and find himself a nice ...
— George Loves Gistla • James McKimmey
... bolt upright, turned his bright eyes to Mariel, and looked down the passageway. And then they were crowding to the window as one of the men snapped off the lights in the room, and they were staring up at the pale bluish globe that hung in the sky, squinting, breathless— ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... went over and laid her fingers on his neck. "I can't tell whether it's grease or perspiration," she said, laughing a little. "What are you squinting up your nose for? Surely to goodness you don't mind that little, harmless raveling? If you wouldn't go on breathing, it wouldn't wiggle around so much!" Nevertheless, she plucked the tormenting thread and ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... or three dexterous feints, he went, and was seen no more that night, save once, when he brought up some tumblers and hot water, and much disturbed the two Miss Pecksniffs by squinting hideously behind the back of the unconscious Mrs Todgers. Having done this justice to his wounded feelings, he retired underground; where, in company with a swarm of black beetles and a kitchen candle, he employed ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... of time, Excess and Blasphemy and squinting Crime Beset me, but I kept my calm sublime: I hate ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... out, squinting against the hot glare off the concrete, and then, with a slight uneasiness, stepped into the dark shadow that pointed a thousand feet along the runway, away from the setting sun. He walked ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... seconds Buck thought his eyes were playing tricks. Amazed, incredulous, forgetting for an instant the field-glasses in his hand, he stared blankly from under squinting lids at the incredible object that crawled lurchingly through ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... the firm rode down in the elevator with me—he who used to move silently around the factory about four times a day, squinting out of his beady eyes, such light as shown there bespeaking 100 per-cent possession. He held his fat thumbs in the palms of his fat hands and benignly he was wont to survey his realm. Mine! Mine! Mine! his every inch of being ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Agnes, who were riding in at the gate, pillion fashion, supposed to be returning after the honey moon, which in one corner of the picture was represented in a most waning state, but the man in the moon squinting down at them with a peculiarly benignant expression ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... he said, squinting at it. "Some of those drugs ought to be dissolved first in hot water. There's a lump of lithia there that has ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... noticed of the foolish ones of this world? Which are you, sir, a young man of parts whose hand I can grasp fraternally, or an insulter of planets, sir, a Peeping Tom upon the glorious nudity of Venus, a Paul Pry squinting at the mysteries of Mercury for an unholy and, what is more, an idiotic purpose? What do you ask of the stars, sir? ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... narrow walled-in valleys.... The inhabitants are, clearly, of a Mongolian race,—the homeliest I have ever seen!... They cultivate but little patches of the land, sit around all day and gain their hollow cheeks and shrunken chests and wrinkled foreheads by squinting at the sun.... Even the women are tiny things with a perpetual smile that pushes up their high cheek bones into a horn-like prominence and apparently belies their apparent gaiety.... The belts of these men are perfect arsenals of curious-looking ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe |
