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Whimsically   Listen
adverb
Whimsically  adv.  In a whimsical manner; freakishly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Whimsically" Quotes from Famous Books



... as other women she knew of, who gave up their lives of ease and pleasure and spent their days in the crowded courts and alleys of great cities, waging war against the giants of dirt and ignorance and disease. Or, she thought whimsically, she could join the ranks of Women with a capital W, and hurl herself into a vortex of meetings and banner-wavings, like other unemployed. No, anything ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... the way, have you noticed any limpers around this morning—among the spectators, I mean?" he remarked, whimsically. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... Agnes sprang to her feet with a nervous shriek. Ethelwynne dived for her skates and felt them carefully. "I tried to pick out the softest spot on the rug," she complained whimsically, "but there wasn't any other way to wake her up. And I simply had to have some ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... I should. But will you?"—whimsically. She glanced at the sophisticated simplicity of Magda's white gown, at the narrow suede shoes and filmy stockings—every detail of her dress and person breathing the expensiveness and luxury and highly specialised civilisation of the city. "Somehow I can't imagine ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... the news he seemed to think less of the distinction conferred upon him than of the unhappiness of being once more banished from his home. "It is hard—very hard," he murmured, half to himself; "yet," he added, whimsically enough (says his nephew), being struck with the seeming absurdity of such a view, "I must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." Later, however, Irving speaks of this as the "crowning ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... walked away, leaving Dick to ponder on the joyous prospects they contained. His sinister prediction Richard Crowninshield soon found to be true. Thorough was no name for Bob King. Before a week had passed Dick whimsically remarked to his father that it must be a task to Bob to swim on the top of the sea without diving down with a spy glass and examining every particle that was on the ocean's bottom. The fact that the new tutor never dipped into any subject but instead ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... He smiled whimsically at Ruth. "My left hand is rather in need of attention, Miss Clinton. I suppose I am so deeply in your bad graces that I may not ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... halted beside Shirley and stood gazing down at her. He was smiling at her whimsically. She met his glance for a few seconds; then her lids were lowered and she ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... was Henry VI. of England, the baby king, doomed already to expiate sins that were not his, by the saddest life and reign. The French historians whimsically but perhaps not unnaturally, have the air of putting down this baseness on Philip's part, and on that of his contemporaries in general, to the score of the English, which is hard measure, seeing that the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... out as it were in jest, whimsically, fired my fancy instantly. 'How glorious!' I said. 'But can we, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... I'll add you two lambs to my flock," he replied, whimsically, glancing at Tom who was down the ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... a last line. If ever in all the years to come you should have need of me, I am at your service. I shall count nothing too hard that you may ask. I am whimsically aware that in the midst of all this darkness and tragedy my offer is that of the Mouse to the Lion. But there came a day when the Mouse paid its debt. Ask me to pay mine, and I will come—from the ends of ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... hand, a grave inquiry in her slumbrous eyes. With equal gravity he clasped the hand, but held back the impulse to kiss it. He was not quite sure of himself just then. He sat down opposite her and, smiling, whimsically inquired: ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... quiet, though steadily, from a distant upper room, came the sound of a violin. For more than an hour, Allison had worked continuously at one difficult phrase. Colonel Kent smiled whimsically as he sat in the library, thinking that, by this time, he could almost ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... Buck didn't believe there was anything crooked about their playing; at least he could detect no sign of it, though he kept a sharp lookout as he always did when sitting in with strangers. But he was rather uncomfortably in a hole and was just beginning to realize rather whimsically that for a while at least he had only a cow-man's pay to depend on for spending-money, when the door was suddenly jerked open and a tall, broad-shouldered figure loomed in ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... the technical points of law and oratory. So many of the brilliant young politicians of this period had been brought into close relations with Cicero in this way, that when he found himself forced out of politics by the Caesarians, he whimsically writes to his friend Paetus that he is inclined to give up public life and open a school, and not more than a year before his death he pathetically complains that he has not leisure even to take the waters at the spa, because of the demands which are made upon him ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... with the Shirleys of Wiston). The house can never have been so fine as Slaugham Place, but it is evident that abundance also reigned here, as there. Over the main door was the motto "Non minor est virtus quam querere parta tueri," which Horsfield whimsically translates "Catch is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better." In the Shurley chapel, one of the sweetest spots in Sussex, are brasses and monuments to the family, notably the canopied altar tomb to Sir John ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... whimsically over at me. "Gin ye hae your appetite wi' you we'll eat, Mr. Montagu, for I'm a wee thingie hungry my nainsell (myself). 'Deed, to mak plain, I'm toom (empty) as a drum, and I'm thinkin' that a drappie o' the usquebaugh wad no' come ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... and learn," said his father whimsically. "Our blunders are often very expensive. The only redeeming thing about them is that we pass our experience on to others and save them from tumbling into the same pit. Thus it was with the early railroad builders. When the Boston and Providence Road was constructed this mistake was not repeated ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... dimple appeared on the right cheek, giving the whole face an air of mischievous geniality. It was an enterprising, swashbuckling sort of mouth, the mouth of one who would lead forlorn hopes with a jest or plot whimsically lawless conspiracies against convention. In its corners and in the firm line of the chin beneath it there lurked, too, more than a hint of imperiousness. A physiognomist would have gathered, correctly, that Ann Chester liked having her own way and ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... the thought that flashed whimsically through his mind as he withdrew his hand. He glanced almost jealously at the faces of Von Schroeder and Jones, and wondered if they had not divined the remarkableness and deliciousness of this ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... He produced two florins, a sixpence, and a halfpenny. He looked at them lying in the palm of his hand. Then he looked whimsically at the Doctor. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... subjects were often used: for instance, for a set of hangings for a banquet hall, what could be more whimsically appropriate than the representation of "Dinner," giving a feast to "Good Company," while "Banquet" and "Maladies" attack the guests! This scene is followed by the arrest of "Souper" and "Banquet" by "Experience," who condemns them both ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... to the old homestead. He slung his civilian clothes into his tin box, cast his eye rather sorrowfully over his agricultural books as he stowed them away in a kerosene case, and regarded his bare walls whimsically as he removed from them his few precious photos and one or two quaint sketches. He wondered vaguely while he donned his khaki breeches and puttees what strange lands he might wander in, what queer beds might be his, and what great adventures he might have ere he would again ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... The garden had become a grave, yet not unfriendly, place; the white straining Nereids were taking on a tinge of violet, the verdure was of a deeper hue, that was all; and the fountain plashed unhurriedly, as though measuring a reasonable interval (he whimsically imagined) between the asking of a riddle and its solution given gratis ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... will have to be a process of swelling, I guess," Norris said whimsically. "Small and narrow as is the berth I have at the Star office, I shall have to be bigger than I ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... worked a good many years without expressing them; they are all in my head, and when I want them I've only got to take them out. I am eighty-three years old, and if I couldn't express myself by this time"—the old gentleman lifted his eyebrows, smiled whimsically, and, with a quick movement of shoulders and hands, concluded—"it would be ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... designed affront on the part of another man, it therefore remained to the end of his days. The manner in which, as time went on, he permeated the unfortunate lord's ancestry with this offence, was whimsically characteristic of Landor. The writer remembers very well when only the individual himself was held responsible in the story for the breach of good breeding; but in another ten years or so, it began to appear that his ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... in the life-boats, and they seem to have been in real peril. Next the ship struck on a mud-bank. But dangers and discomforts must have been forgotten, at any rate to begin with, in the glories of the reception that awaited the "inimitable,"—as Dickens whimsically called himself in those days,—when he landed in the New World. If he had been received with princely honours in Edinburgh, he was treated now as an emperor in some triumphant progress. Halifax sounded the first note of welcome, gave, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... later in the day is of course contemporary history. If the interruption I had whimsically sanctioned was almost a scandal, what is to be said of that general scatter of the company which, under the Doctor's rule, began to take place in the evening? His rule was soothing to behold, small comfort as I was to have at the end. He decreed in the interest ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... partly from conviction and partly from affectation, seems to have been pretty consistent in performing the office of a wet blanket. Testing his intellect on other people's enthusiasms, falling sedately and whimsically in love with various ladies, amongst them his future wife, but keeping such feelings as he had for the most part to himself, Peacock slipped through all the critical stages of youth till in 1816 he published "Headlong Hall." ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... to come—than as a pledge, a token of his love, which made even the Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same time, of himself—which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of which he still knew no more than this one passage. "Why do you want the rest?" she had asked him. "Our little ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... responded the hunter, whimsically, "that the longest way round is sometimes the shortest way through, and those that are in too great a hurry often fall over their own feet. If you are careful about your health and don't get shot you ought to live sixty or seventy ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... to Bruce, who would have liked to prolong the conversation, but the disheveled customer in the chair was growing restless, so he took the address, thanked him, and went out wondering whimsically if through any cataclysm of nature he should turn up a hair-dresser, sweet-scented, redolent of tonique, smelling of pomade, how it would seem to be curling ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... he whimsically told her when his day's work was done. Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... are twenty-one, for it is more than adequate provision for such children. If other people think fit to throw away their money, let them." I have not read the will myself, but I heard there was something queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the province, turned out, however, to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor Pavlovitch, and discerning at once that he could extract ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... a sudden gust of wind brings clearly a last snatch of the air that Francois is playing in the distance. Lincoln raises his bead and listens, smiles whimsically to himself, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... I've just had to be, whether I wanted or not. It's my misfortune, not my fault. Lots of people are unselfish because they're too weak to stand up for their own rights." She paused—and then looked up at him, smiling whimsically, and added: "Well, well, Jonathan; see here now—I'll think it over, and perhaps some day before—go 'way, you horrid thing! Let go my hand, I tell you. There! You've made me drop a whole row of stitches. If you don't run over home right now, before ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... evidently confessed that the Slave Trade was inhuman and unjust, and then he had insinuated, that it was neither inhuman nor unjust to continue it. A more paradoxical or whimsical opinion, he believed, was never entertained, or more whimsically expressed in that house. The noble viscount had talked of the interests of the planters; but this was but a part of the subject; for surely the people of Africa were not to be forgotten. He did not understand the practice of complimenting the planters with the lives ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... is," he eagerly affirmed. "Only," he added, with a vaguely rueful modulation, and always with that amiable abruptness, as a man very much at his ease, while his blue eyes whimsically brightened, "only the blessed public never comes—we're so off the beaten path. And I suppose one mustn't expect a Scioccone"—his voice swelled on the word, and he cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner—"to cope with unprecedented ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... by your face," said Crockett whimsically, "that it is Urrea. But remember, Ned, that you can still ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... affection, but trust and understanding. He had never before seen a household that really enjoyed little jokes shared in common, whose members were full of kind consideration the one for the other. The Roubideaus had more than a touch of the French temperament. They took life gayly and whimsically, and though they poked all kinds of fun at each other there was never any sting to ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... asked whimsically, rubbing the sweaty mane, while the animal drew a long whistling breath and in turn rubbed the sticky brow band on its ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... stood modestly rubbing his squab nose with a handkerchief so exceedingly oily, that he might have been in the act of mistaking himself for one of his charges. He was a spare man of about the Barbox Brothers' time of life, with his features whimsically drawn upward as if they were attracted by the roots of his hair. He had a peculiarly shining transparent complexion, probably occasioned by constant oleaginous application; and his attractive hair, being cut short, and being grizzled, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... years in the library of All Souls' College, Oxford, but in 1857 it was printed in six volumes by the Delegates of the University Press under the title of A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714. He also left a personal diary in English, but whimsically written in Greek characters, consisting principally of entries recording the hours of his rising and going to bed, the manner in which he spent his time, what friends called to see him, the sermons he heard, where and how he dined, and the occasions, which ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... pretty face; and when I had opportunity to observe more closely, I was greatly attracted by the sensibility and refinement expressed through a countenance which otherwise would have been plain. As I seemed to be whimsically cast in the part of host, and as I perceived the lady was too well-bred to make my position at all awkward, I proposed the piazza as a pleasanter place of waiting than that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... it, though," he meditated whimsically. "It would be a mean, low trick to make it think so. This yere job rightly belongs to a water-tank. Oh, gosh! And ten miles yet, across that darned dry ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... way, except some of the happier efforts of the late Mr. Charles Bennett, to which, nevertheless, it is greatly superior in execution. To this clever artist's invention everything seems to present itself with a train of fantastic accessory so whimsically inexhaustible that it almost overpowers one with its prodigality. Each fresh examination of his designs discloses something overlooked or unexpected. Let the reader study for a moment the famous "Birds of a Feather" of 1875, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... engagement was contracted," he says, "in all the simplicity but also in all the truth of nature, in the presence of two men of worth and honour.... During the short and simple act, I saw the honest pair melted in tears."[148] He had at this time whimsically assumed the name of Renou, and he wrote to a friend that of course he had married in this name, for he adds, with the characteristic insertion of an irrelevant bit of magniloquence, "it is not names that are ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... to give. This give-and-take of friendly conversation develops mentality, and fluency in expression. Longfellow said: "A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' study of books," and Holmes whimsically yet none the less truthfully declared that half the time he talked to find out what he thought. But that method must not be applied ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... cried, throwing herself into an easy chair, and covering her face with her hands. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!" She opened her fingers and looked whimsically at her cousin, who, despising this stage ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... her, she's like a whirlwind," he said whimsically. "She raced me off here before I ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... get back to Chicago," George went on, whimsically, "we're going to write up a story of our capture by two bold, bad men who gave their names as Red Mike of the Gulch and Daring Dan of the Devil's Dip or ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... We have a doctor handy," answered Dave, whimsically. "Just the same, I guess we had better remain where we are," he added, with a ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... care the scarf-pin bestowed upon him by old Benson, the little watchmaker on the corner below. Through the buttonhole in the lapel of his coat he drew a spicy-smelling sprig of ground-pine, chanting whimsically as he did so a ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... colonel said whimsically, "I am afraid we are rather like the shepherdess and the chimney-sweep of the fable I read you very long ago. We climbed up so far that we could see the stars, once, very long ago, Patricia, and we have come back to live upon the parlor table. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... saw that the Mahdists were in far greater force than Lord Wolseley or General Gordon had expected. Not until January 24 could the commander steam away southwards with 20 men of the Sussex regiment and the 190 Sudanese soldiers on the two largest of Gordon's boats—his "penny steamers" as he whimsically termed them. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... a history of herself, given by the Nymph of the Seine to the author—a history of which more presently. But this is introduced at considerable length, and interrupted more than once, by scenes and dialogues, between the nymph and her distinctly unwilling auditor, which are of the most whimsically humorous character to be found even in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... thought, and eager to be just, she held Edith practically blameless, yet, none the less, earnestly wished that she would go home. She smiled whimsically, wishing that there were a social formula in which, without offence, one might request an invited guest to depart. She wondered that one's home must be continually open, when other places are permitted to close. The graceful social lie, "Not at home," had never appealed to Madame. Why ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... he had won in a community where he had experienced the unique sensation of being a pioneer in at the rebirth of a great city, as well as the outdoor sports that kept him fit, that had endeared California to Ruyler, and in time caused him whimsically to visualize New York as a sternly accusing instead of a beckoning finger. Long before he found time to play polo at Burlingame he had conceived a deep respect for a climate where a man might ride horseback, shoot, drive a ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... half unconsciously and quite in spite of herself, the ghost of a sigh escaped her. She could not help wishing things were a trifle more real sometimes, bright and whimsically unworldly as ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Certainly—of course—my horse—how stupid of me!" The tone of the man's answer was one of half apology, and he was smiling whimsically now as if at his own predicament, as he continued. "I have no horse. Really, you know, I wouldn't know what to do with one if I ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... her left hand a green cord, which was tied to the collar of an English terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man in knee-breeches and silk stockings, whose hat had its brim whimsically turned up, while snow-white tufts of hair like pigeon plumes rose at its sides. A slender queue, thin as a quill, tossed about on the back of his sallow neck, which was thick, as far as it could be seen above the turned down collar of a threadbare coat. This couple ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... husband, with a hasty caress and a nervous glance at the clock—he was due at the bank in ten minutes." Don't fret about what can't be helped; besides"-and he laughed whimsically—"you must look out or you'll be getting as bad as mother over her hair wreath!" And with another hasty pat on her ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... acknowledged that, while Byron wrote for the many, his poems were intended for the understanding few. Yet the sunetoi, as he called them, gave him but scanty encouragement. The cold phrases of kindly Horace Smith show that he had not comprehended "Prometheus Unbound"; and Shelley whimsically complains that even intelligent and sympathetic critics confounded the ideal passion described in "Epipsychidion" with the love affairs of "a servant-girl and her sweetheart." This almost incomprehensible obtuseness on the part of men who ought to have known better, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... by his genius, misfortunes, and misconduct, published this year a poem, called The Race, by 'Mercurius Spur, Esq.[88],' in which he whimsically made the living poets of England contend for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... complexion was the colour of pale dust, and of that same colour was all that pertained to him, hat and clothes. His boots were dusty of course, for it was midsummer, and his very horse was of a dusty dun. His features were whimsically ugly, most of his teeth were gone, and as to his age, he might be thirty or sixty. He was somewhat lame and halt, but an unequalled rider when once upon his steed, which he was naturally not very solicitous to quit. I subsequently discovered that ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, then seventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a rambler rose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed little gazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runaway stream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she wore a crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-cent silk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine nails with points ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... you something, I don't care! I used to think I'd be pickey and choosey. But I know my own heart. I don't care! I'm the kind of fellow, I guess, who just gets it bad and comes down all broken out with it." He turned his glowing smile into Tom Van Dorn's face, and finding no quick response smiled whimsically back at the moon. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... unfitting resting-place by strong action on the part of an International Committee of Artists; but Middletown, though startled by its own good fortune, clung with Yankee tenacity to its rights. Raphael Collin, of Paris, commenting on this in the Revue des Deux Mondes, cried out whimsically upon the woes of an art-critic's life, "as if there were not already enough wearisome pilgrimages necessary to remote and uncomfortable places with jaw-breaking names, which must nevertheless be ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... eyes and looked at her whimsically. Nature, in fact, had put forth a supreme effort; from that ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... would mind?" He smiled whimsically. "Flavia, I've had a lot of nonsense knocked out of me. It took a bad shock to cure me of Isabel, but I'm well. There's nothing left of that. In fact, I feel all full of holes where ideas have been jolted out ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... Greg, but, upon my word—-" She puckered her lips and raised her eyebrows whimsically, and gave her head a little shake. Doctor Gregory gave her a shrewdly appraising look, sighed, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... tell—their day," retorted Genevieve, whimsically. "You know what most of them are. Alma Lane would be all right, and would give a true description of everything; only she would go into particulars so, that she would tell everything she saw from the windows, and just what she had to ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... up close to him as he commenced to puff at his pipe, using a match for the first time in many moons and smiling whimsically when he struck the same, as memory played ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... said Patty whimsically; "it's a chromo- lithograph. I've often seen them in the offices of steamship companies. This one isn't framed, as they usually are, but it's only a chromo all the same. There's no mistaking its bright colouring and that ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... trigger on the old fellow. He preferred to look upon him as a friend whom he had met once in worthy combat, but with whom he was now at peace. When the bull charged him he dodged him easily among the bushes and called out whimsically: ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Tom," she had said to him whimsically, not long before Tom had gone back to France. "I do not feel as though I could return to college, or write another scenario, or do another single solitary thing until ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... for your father will make a handsome thing out of his sugar this year. I wouldn't wonder but you're being educated on maple-sugar money. You better make your bow of thanks to the trees as you go through the orchard," he added whimsically. ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett

... take us out on the water, for one thing," Captain Jack continued, "and we've been growing stale on shore, of late." Then he added, whimsically: "Besides, if the agents of any more foreign governments show up, they ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... drinking whisky and the other devouring "Blackstone," it was not surprising that the business "winked out," as Lincoln whimsically expressed it, leaving the conscientious junior partner saddled with the obligations of the former owners of two country stores, and owing an amount so large that Lincoln often referred to it as "the national debt." ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... seemed whimsically indifferent for most of the time, but once now and then the Princess, who watched things as the god in the car, experienced a sense of uneasiness. And yet she could not suggest any other line of conduct for Tamara to pursue. But on the whole the day ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: "A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it." Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he wrote, whimsically, "Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself..... I would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de luxe editions of my books. But Mrs. Clemens and the children object to this, I do not know why." And, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... CHARLES] I request you both to be in my cabinet tomorrow morning as early as you can manage to rouse yourselves after this rather full evening, and we shall see what it is fair to do in love [she glances softly and rather whimsically at the PRINCE] and war. ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange

... suddenly and laughed. "Glad you agree with me, old sport," he addressed the bird whimsically, with a reaction to his normally cheerful outlook. "Sheepherders are all those things I named over, birdie, and some that I can't think ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... Mrs. Ripwinkley?" said Mrs. Scherman, reaching over for the laurel picture. "Aren't these almost too exquisite? They would like a big scarlet poppy just as well,—perhaps better. Or a clump of cat-o'-nine-tails," she added, whimsically. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... couple of moated hedges, whimsically barbed in odd spots, and emerge into a park or open space leading into an unhealthy-looking road. It seems all plain sailing to the road—unless you know the R.E., in which case you will not be surprised to find your neck ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various

... make it rather difficult for any one woman to discover just which woman you would like to have?" smiled Berenice, whimsically. Cowperwood ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... thousand dollars that I had already made up my mind was as good as in my pocket. I was on my way to get it—the newspaper will already have given you the details—when I found that I had been forestalled by the young lady, who, the papers say, is known as the White Moll." He smiled whimsically. "Even though one might be a slick crook as you suggest, it is no reason why he should fail in his duty to himself—as a gentleman. What other course was open to me? I discovered a very charming young lady in the grip of a hulking police ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... half whimsically, "do you smile? Even so I think God should smile that He had let such a thing be made. And if, as I believe, you know the truth at last, that is why you also smile. But shut your eyes, my brother," he added, stooping to ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... have short stumps like fins instead of wings, which are of no use to them except when in the water. Their bills are narrow, like that of the albatross, and they stand and walk quite erect, from which circumstance, and their white bellies, Sir John Narborough has whimsically likened them to little children standing up ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... haven't anything else to do," went on Tom, rather whimsically, "you might be thinking up some plan to take up the recoil of those guns on my aerial warship. I confess I'm clean ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... for cross-country passenger travel. Following the Civil War, the brother of Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) was appointed Territorial Secretary of Nevada. Samuel accompanied his brother as private secretary. The journey was made largely in a stagecoach, the inconveniences of which are whimsically set forth in the following extract from ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... by the men whom, out of all the world, she would have chosen to have praise him. She looked at Miss Morrison, who had come trailing down in a cerise evening gown as if she were a bright creature of another species, somewhat, Kate could not help whimsically thinking, as a philosophic beaver might have looked at a bird of paradise. Then ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... not asking you to marry me if we should leave the island. You must give me credit for that," he argued whimsically. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... Rabelais with no touch of the Touraine grossness. It has something of the wisdom of Aurelius, only clad in homespun instead of the purple. The philosophy of contentment was never more merrily nor more whimsically expressed. A synod of sages could not formulate a scheme in praise of poverty more impressive than the contagious humor of his light-hearted merriment. The strolling player has the best of the argument, but he has it because he is speaking with ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... many words such as daemonic sensuality, a network of the most delicate nerves, simoom, crystal, and so on, he began at last telling the story of the novel. He did not tell the story so whimsically, but told it in minute detail, quoting from memory whole descriptions and conversations; the characters of the novel fascinated him, and to describe them he threw himself into attitudes, changed the expression of his face and voice like a real ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... doing up on deck?" he said, whimsically. "I thought we'd sent the passengers below and ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... predecessors, belongs emphatically to the practical school. With him philosophy is simply common sense on that large scale which renders it one of the least common things in the world. And never, perhaps, was there a more thoroughly honest seeker after truth. Burns somewhat whimsically describes him, in a recently recovered letter given to the world by Robert Chambers, as 'that plain, honest, worthy man, the Professor. I think,' adds the poet, 'his character, divided into ten parts, stands thus: Four parts Socrates, four ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... fellow he is anyway, and how thoroughly he knows his job. I thought how well he was equipped with unilluminated knowledge, and it came to me whimsically, that here was a fine bit of road-mending for ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... Whimsically, and almost mechanically, he set himself, in his mind, to count the men. There were twenty mercenaries all told, excluding Fortunio and himself. On Arsenio he might rely not to attack him, perhaps even to come to his assistance at the finish. That ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... you are going to give up the whole evening to those old fellows. Miss Buck, Judith! Yes, I have a perfect right to call you Judith. You are my cousin. I—I—just found it out the other day. In fact, I am your nearest male relative," Jeff said whimsically, "and as such I forbid you to spend the whole evening wasting your sweetness on the old men. They may be ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... it, if you had seen us first," Theodora responded half whimsically, half discontentedly. "Hope and Hubert are all right; but the rest of us are enough to turn your hair white. I was bad enough; and now Phebe is forsaking the world and taking to skeletons, and Allyn is at war with the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray



Words linked to "Whimsically" :   fancifully



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