"Strange" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beyond the evidence. In reply, Mr. Webster referred to the Goodridge trial, in which he had appeared for the accused, and he said: "I remember that the learned head of the Suffolk Bar, Mr. Prescott, came down in aid of the officers of the government. This was regarded as neither strange nor improper. The counsel for the prisoners, in that case, contented themselves with answering his arguments, as far as they were able, instead of carping at his presence." This is, in substance, the demand that we make upon ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... were walking through the tunnel when they heard the strange booming roar. Behind them, Sinclair overheard Roger's whispered question and laughed. "That is the sound of the slaves being fed their lunch. They do not know yet that there has been a battle and ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... me lots of history-stories about the strange rock-villages in the mountains. There's one called Eze, on top of a hill shaped almost like a horn; she showed me a picture of it. Children live up in the rock villages, and never come down to the towns. They've never even ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... touch with them from time to time during the day, to satisfy herself that they were safe. And at night she found that they were willing enough to mind what they were told to do, never seeming to bother their heads over the fact that every now and then she led them to a strange camp-ground. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... poor little beggar; and where was her ladyship going? When he heard she was going to join the Dowager, Sir Tom smilingly took her hand and drew it within his own. "Then come here with me for a minute first," he said. And strange to say, Lucy had no fear. She allowed him to have his way, thinking it was to show her something, perhaps to ask her advice on some small matter. He took her into a little room he had, full of trophies of his travels, a place more distinctively his own than ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Leonora's favourite churches, as well as frescoes in the duke's villas and portraits of the different members of the ducal family in turn. In 1472, before the Duke's marriage, he painted the portrait of Ercole—strange to say—together with his illegitimate daughter Lucrezia d'Este, to be sent as a present to his bride, Leonora of Aragon, at her father's court of Naples. Again, in the summer of 1485, he was called upon in his capacity ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... sea-sickness. When the sea was rough he was usually ill-humoured, and the merest trifle would make him irritable. And in Gusev's opinion there was absolutely nothing to be vexed about. What was there strange or wonderful, for instance, in the fish or in the wind's breaking loose from its chain? Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain and its back were as hard as a sturgeon: and in the same way, supposing that away yonder at the end of the world ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be asked how I came to know Jorsen. Well, in a strange way. Nearly thirty years ago a dreadful thing happened to me. I was married and, although still young, a person of some mark in literature. Indeed even now one or two of the books which I wrote are read and remembered, although it ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... clean-shaven square face, and very fair hair and eyebrows. These looked curiously light on his red-brown skin, which was of an even tint all over, as though used to encounter wind and rough weather. He was so constantly on horseback, that it seemed strange to see him standing on his own legs, and more so to see him walk, which, indeed, he did with an odd movement of the knees, as though it were some difficult exercise. He wore riding-boots and breeches, and had a short pipe in his mouth. At his heels ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... have heard," remarked the Brabanter; "and yet it is a strange thing that these wondrous bowmen are never where I chance to be. Pace out the distances with a wand at every five score, and do you, Arnaud, stand at the fifth wand to carry back my ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... This fact was not discovered at such an early period as that in which Paris arose out of the river swamps. Possibly this was due to the westward tendency of migratory races during the first centuries of our era when Teutonic tribes and Celts passed over Bohemia under pressure from the east. It is strange that the Romans did not discover the geographical advantages of the site on which Prague was founded. Roman influence began to make itself felt early in the first century of the Christian era in ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... fertilisation, or the stigma is ready before the pollen of that flower is ready, so that these so-named dichogamous plants have in fact separated sexes, and must habitually be crossed. So it is with the reciprocally dimorphic and trimorphic plants previously alluded to. How strange are these facts! How strange that the pollen and stigmatic surface of the same flower, though placed so close together, as if for the very purpose of self-fertilisation, should be in so many cases mutually useless to each other! How simply are these facts explained on the view of an occasional cross ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... had some religious experiences that made him a new man. His vision at Bethel taught him that Jehovah his God was also caring for him though in a strange land. He may have thought that Jehovah dwelt only among the people of his nation and that on leaving home he was also going beyond the protection of God. As a result he erected here a sanctuary that became sacred to ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... long ceased to be spoken. The life mirrored throughout is that of the luxurious, corrupt Greek period. If not directly, at least indirectly, it reflects the doctrines of the Stoics and the Epicureans. It was a crooked, sordid, weary world upon which its author looked. It is not strange that a vein of materialism and pessimism runs through his observations and maxims. All is vanity is the dominant note, and yet light alternates with shadow. He loses faith in human nature; yet he ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... clamored as though Nero sat there and lions had been loosed in the arena. The strange medley of cries smote on the ears of Allis. How like wild beasts they were, how like wolves! She closed her eyes, for she was weary of the struggle, and listened. Yes, they were wolves leaping at the throat of her father, and joying ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the great turning point in our hero's life, to the point when first he began to respect the strange powers ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... public was shocked, and people who were particular as to their morals said very strange things. Lady de Courcy herself said very strange things indeed, shaking her head, and dropping mysterious words; whereas Lady Clandidlem spoke much more openly, declaring her opinion that Lady Dumbello would be off before May. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Sandford " Daisy answered, in a strangely tender and sober voice. It was strange to ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a little while, watching the sweat gather on his brow and the shadow of the church tower fall deeper and darker, like the shadow of doom, on his face. Not out of cruelty—God knows I have never erred in that direction!—but because, for the first time in my life, I felt a strange reluctance to strike the blow. The curls clung to his forehead; his breath came and went in gasps; I heard the men behind me and one or two of them drop an oath; and then I slipped—slipped, and was down in a moment on my right side, my elbow striking the pavement so ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... the heat increased until it was so intense that the hot air danced above the sand slopes like billions of midges, and this although the sun was not visible, being hidden by a sort of mist. A strange silence, unusual even in the desert, pervaded the earth and sky; we could hear the grains of sand trickling from the ridges. The Zeus, who accompanied us, grew uneasy, and pointed upward with their spears, then behind toward the oasis of which we had long lost ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... great politeness, would not allow me to travel without a couple of chosen guards to attend me in case of any accidents. I made them my companions, to relieve the tediousness of my journey. One of them called Ambrosio, was a strange iron-coloured fearless creature. He had been much in war; careless of wounds, he was cooly intent on destroying the enemy. He told me, as a good anecdote, that having been so lucky as to get a view of two Genoese exactly in a ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... was he scandalized when he found that his wife would never stay to assist in the Credo, but would always get up and walk out of church just as the choir struck up. All her husband's coaxing was of no use; threats and entreaties were alike powerless even to elicit an explanation of this strange conduct. At last the good man determined to use force; and so one Sunday, as the lady got up to go out, according to custom, he seized her by the arm and sternly commanded her to remain. Her whole frame was suddenly convulsed, and her dark eyes gleamed with weird, unearthly ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... but clear, and ever musical. The Professor started at the strange utterance, looked extremely confused, and, as the boisterous crowd cried "Hear, hear!" he motioned the subject to continue, with some gasping comment interjected, which, if audible, would have run thus: "My God! It's ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... valuable set of china. She next abandoned her dwelling, and took refuge with a neighbour, but, finding his movables were seized with the same sort of St. Vitus's dance, her landlord reluctantly refused to shelter any longer a woman who seemed to be persecuted by so strange a subject of vexation. Mrs. Golding's suspicions against Anne Robinson now gaining ground, she dismissed her maid, and the hubbub among her movables ceased ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Smithiana in the Himalayas. This species occurred at an elevation of 8,000 feet. The leaves become reduced in length one-half, curved, and sprinkled, sometimes in double rows, with the large sori of this species, which gives the tree a strange appearance, and at length proves fatal, from the immense diversion of nutriment requisite to support a parasite so large and multitudinous. The dried specimens have a sweet scent resembling violets. In Northern Europe Caeoma pinitorquum, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... well-educated Englishmen. Or he may have been tired of his wife, and have seen his way to a more advantageous alliance. Men are not always satisfied with one wife in these days, and a man who married in such a strange underhand manner would be likely to have some hidden motive ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... young friend who's at the bottom of the whole of this. Here, Sir! I'm going to teach you a lesson that will make you cautious about gossiping with strange old men. Pick up that leopard skin at ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Belgian soldier being made much of by a group of Tommies. He was a queer looking fellow, with a dazed expression and eyes that seemed to focus on some distant horror; his uniform was faded and torn—evidently it had seen active service. I wondered by what strange fortune he had been conveyed from the brutalities of invasion to this gilded, ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... said Amyas, who has overheard; but so great is the curiosity on all hands, that he has some trouble in getting the men to quarters again; indeed, they only go on condition of parting among themselves the new-comers, each to tell his sad and strange story. How after Captain Hawkins, constrained by famine, had put them ashore, they wandered in misery till the Spaniards took them; how, instead of hanging them (as they at first intended), the Dons fed and clothed them, and allotted them as servants ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... reasons to believe that even that passive sentiment was on the wane, that interests, not less illusory than selfish, were working to destroy even the impressions which sacred national remembrances, by twining together the memories of Washington and Kosciuszko, had created in the American heart. Strange to say, amid the roar of cannon thundering freedom to slaves, amid streams of blood shed in the name of nationality, on this side of the Atlantic, amid daily echoes reverberating the groans of butchered martyrs, of mothers and sisters scourged, hanged, or dragged ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... a strange fascination for him. Perhaps she typified the care-free days before his marriage; perhaps the attraction was deeper, fundamental. He met her in the street the day before Max Wilson was shot. The sight of her walking sedately ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gazed at the strange creature with fascination. And when the Indian's excitement abated and she ceased to mutter and chatter to herself and sunk her face into her palms again, gazing absently on the ground, Fanny pulled Benny's sleeve and whispered, "Ask her what ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... straight To the market-place, find there 150 A large crowd of people And goods in profusion. How strange!—notwithstanding There's no church procession The men have no hats on, Are standing bare-headed, As though in the presence Of some holy Image: Look, how they're being swallowed— The hoods ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... it; Carse too, wonderingly. He saw embroidered in yellow on the black a familiar insignia composed of an asteroid in the circle of ten planets. And then alarm lit his brain and he grimaced. There was a strange odor in his nostrils and it came from the ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... "Strange, strange! I'd forgotten," he said with a sigh, "How I longed when a child to have Christmas draw nigh I'll atone for my harshness," he inwardly said, "By answering their prayers ere I sleep in ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... was dim, a carefully manufactured twilight. It is strange how many things, and how slight, stir, control, influence in one direction or another, the emotions. Light and the absence of light can divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a button can give a warship to the sea. Twilight and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... for other places. We heard then, that he had started for Europe. At length we received his German pamphlet, which was published in Hamburgh, a seaport in Europe, and was entitled: "The sword of Revolution," in which this strange prophet Samuel Ludvigh, reports, that he took a sword of the American revolution and other insignia of war, and copies of his German periodical, entitled "The Torch," and stopped in Europe first in Paris, and three days after his departure from that city, revolution ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... joking——We have lost one passenger and are in danger of losing another. It will look very strange to lose the largest and the smallest on the same day," said ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... cry of a millionaire parvenu resuming the average opinion of the assembly, increased the general merriment; and he, flattered by his success, and tickled by the strange style of the painting, started laughing in his turn, so sonorously that he could be heard above all the others. This was the hallelujah, a final outburst of the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... is a strange compound of strength and weakness," the Doctor remarked. "Did you notice his face, just now? Nine men out of ten, suffering as he suffered, would have failed to control themselves. Such resolution as his may conquer the difficulties ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... Eiry Mynydd, are largely in lines of seven syllables, and some of them, such as the Song of the Death of Cynddylan, and the curious ninth-century poem in the Cambridge Juvencus, seem to have also the gair cyrch, that strange little tag to the first line of the triplet, outside of the rhyme but not outside of the assonance or alliteration, which is so marked a characteristic of the four-lined Englyn, while in most of them ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... La Ferriere withdrew to his companions, who upon hearing the decision of the French found this procedure and mode of justice very strange and difficult; since they have no established law among themselves, but only vengeance and restitution by presents. After considering the whole matter and deliberating with one another upon it, they summoned the two murderers and set forth ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... more her looks betrayed The simple heart of mountain maid, In speech and gesture, form and grace, Showed she was come of gentle race; 'T was strange, in birth so rude, to find Such face, such manners, and such mind. Each anxious hint the stranger gave, The mother heard ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and it made the strange young man stare and stare and stare at Tattercoats till he couldn't see her rags—till he couldn't, to tell the truth, see anything but her ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... Parks, our Palfreys, our Prescotts, our Emersons, have expounded this matter so clearly? Most assuredly not. They would have left us in the Cimmerian darkness of dreary conjecture regarding the causes of Nat's strange opinion, and the lessons to be drawn from it. Or if they had condescended to explanation, it would have been comprised in a curt phrase or two. No boundary-line between a virtue and its vice would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... just at that moment broken upon the sultry stillness of the night one of those crescendo thunder-bursts, beginning in a distant rumble, and swelling out louder and still louder, until it ended with a tremendous detonation. In the strange light of the setting moon, while everybody's attention was engrossed by the excitement, the swift oncoming of a thunder-cloud had not been observed by any but Andrew, and it had already climbed half-way ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... next morning; and while I was crossing the heath there I met this very woman. We talked a little, because we couldn't help it—you may imagine the kind of talk it was—and parted as coolly as we had met. Now this strange book comes to me; and I have a strong conviction that she is the writer of it, for that poem sketches a similar scene—or rather suggests it; and the tone generally seems the kind of thing she would write—not that she was a sad ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... in Colonel Kate soothingly, "you must seem very strange to him in that dress,—scarcely like his daughter. Put on your native costume and come ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... veil, an opening out of the back of their minds as it were, and have had such a vision of the world, that they have never afterwards forgotten it. They have seen into the heart of creation, and have perceived their union with the rest of mankind. They have had glimpses of a strange immortality belonging to them, a glimpse of their belonging to a far greater being than they have ever imagined. Just once—and a man has never forgotten it, and even if it has not recurred it has colored all the rest of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... A strange fallacy seems to have crept into the manner of thinking and reasoning upon this subject. The imagination has presented an incorporation as some great, independent, substantive thing—as a political end of peculiar ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... strange turn of fortune's wheel, the party of Hamilton, Washington, Adams, the party of the grand nation, became the party of provincialism and nullification. New England, finding its shipping interests crippled in the European ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the woman who had kidnapped me in this strange fashion seemingly with the object of enticing me to my doom. Her face was set and stern; with both hands she grasped a steering paddle, with which she guided the canoe into the rushing stream. The girls had ceased rowing, and were crouched together in the frail craft, which now, caught by the hand ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... Yet, strange as it may sound, it is nevertheless a fact, of which there is no lack of evidence, that this illustrious family during all this period, in common with two-thirds of the Arragonese nobility, secretly adhered to the ancient faith and ceremonies ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... reversing even his own adulatory articles, as they may be read in the earlier volumes of the "Causeries." It is at best an ungrateful task to dissect a reputation in the way in which we find it done in the present work. It must seem strange to many a reader that the very man who in early life could utter such sweet flattery, who long was the foremost to bear incense, should now consider it his duty "to seek the foot of clay beneath the splendid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... chuckle, which appeared very strange, for it did not seem to come from the man, who scowled at him in the same ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... chose to hide herself in one of the recesses formed by the windows in the chamber of the former lady, who, not thinking she was heard, conversed very freely with the Marquise d'Allure, respecting the libertine life of Grancey; in the course of which she said several strange things respecting the treatment which her lovers had experienced from her. Grancey at length rushed out, and fell to abusing Madame de Bouillon like a Billingsgate. The latter was not silent, and some exceedingly elegant discourse passed between ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... grew, And honey-suckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round surveyed; And still I thought that shattered tower The mightiest work of human power, And marvelled as the aged hind, With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, Of forayers who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue, And home returning, fill'd the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... so pleasurable, and so conducive to health, and a knowledge of the art of such evident utility, that it is strange that in sea-girt England we should possess no treatise on the subject at all commensurate with its importance. There is a large work on the subject by Bernardi, a Neapolitan, too voluminous and discursive for general use; and by being in the Italian language, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... my arms and legs in time to the music. The concert of these ladies awoke the sleeper, who stared wildly at me, frightened at my gestures, then sprang up and ran with all his might, followed by my brother, who crept on all fours, representing a dog, I think, which belonged to this strange person. As I was then a mere child, I have only a confused idea of all this; but the society of Madame Bonaparte seemed to be ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... was looked upon as something more than human and was adored by all the tribe. The Sheik himself, who had never looked twice at a woman before in his life, became passionately attached to her. My father says that he has never seen a man so madly in love as Ahmed Ben Hassan was with the strange white girl who had come so oddly into his life. He repeatedly implored her to marry him, and even my father, who has a horror of mixed marriages, was impelled to admit that any woman might have been happy with Ahmed Ben Hassan. She would not consent, though she would give no reason for her refusal, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... office and plunder. When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word reform.... Some of these new-found party overseers who are at this moment laying down new and strange tenets for Republicans, have deemed it their duty heretofore, upon no provocation, to make conventions and all else the vehicle of disparaging Republican administrations. Some of them sat but yesterday in Democratic conventions, some have sought ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a passion so confus'd, So strange, outrageous, and so variable, As the dog Jew did utter in the streets; "My daughter!—O, my ducats!—O, my daughter! Fled with a Christian!—O, my Christian ducats!— Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter.!" Let good Antonio look he keep his day, Or he shall ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... delicate and uncertain health to make his dwelling-place far from the grey skies and the biting east winds of his boyhood's home, these grey Scotch skies, these bitter winds, still haunt him and appear in his books with the strange charm they have for the sons and daughters of the north who, even while they revile them, love them, and in far lands long for them with a heart-hunger that no cloudless sky, no gentle zephyr, no unshadowed sunshine of ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... John." Inside, the lecturer's voice faltered, as well it might. The audience shifted uneasily, and so did Lucy. She was sure that she ought not to be with these men; but they had cast a spell over her. They were so serious and so strange that she could not remember how ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Mrs. Stevens, you astound me. I hadn't the remotest idea of such a thing. It is very strange my children ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... entire ignorance of divine things, so that all these exact impressions on his memory have been made in his riper years. I thought it would not be disagreeable to the colonel to introduce to him this odd phenomenon, which many hundreds of people have had a curiosity to examine; and, among all the strange things I have seen in him, I never remember any that equalled what passed on this occasion. On hearing the colonel's profession, and receiving some hints of his religious character, he ran through a vast variety of scriptures, beginning at the Pentateuch and going ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... It was a strange thing for the homeless fiddler to find himself the object of affectionate care and solicitude—to feel, when he woke up in the morning, no anxiety about the day's success. He could not have found a better home. ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... fancy that he supposed me ignorant of the matter, or thought that if I had heard of it, I should never connect the respectable Dr. Black of Harlesden with a poor garreteer in the backwoods of London. He was a strange man, and as we sat together smoking, I often wondered whether he were mad or sane, for I think the wildest dreams of Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians would appear plain and sober fact compared with the theories I have heard him earnestly advance in that grimy den of his. I once ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... that are unrelated; which, were they sustained for long by an organ, would be intolerably harsh. But the tone of the pianoforte is so fleeting that such a mixture ensures great brilliance and warmth without undue jargon, and is thus akin to the blending of strange colors by modern painters. Many people, in fact, play the pianoforte with too little, rather than too much, pedal; or with too much pedal used the wrong way! A definite attempt should be made to cultivate a feeling for color and warmth of tone; a hard, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... bodies shivered in the chill that struck in from the storm-wrapped world; they drew closer their coverings of fur and hides. The light of their flickering fires played strange tricks with their savage faces to make them still uglier and to show the dull ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... name of any other American man of letters. The real home of Poe at this time was the range of hills known as the Ragged Mountains, for it was among their peaks and glens and caverns and wooded paths and rippling streams that he roamed in search of strange tales and mystic poems that would dazzle his readers in after days. His rambles among the hills of the University town soon came to a close. Mr. Allan, being confronted by a gaming debt which he regarded as too large to fit the sporting necessities of a boy of seventeen, took him from college ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... the same strange eagerness which had marked his manner from the first, a manner which confounded me by its absurd resemblance to that of a boy who had not mixed with other boys and had never been teased. And yet his expression was intelligent and alert; nor was there anything ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... when we have sufficiently admired the unique beauty and marvellous velocity of humming-birds, there is little more to be said about them. They are lovely to the eye—indescribably so; and it is not strange that Gould wrote rapturously of the time when he was at length "permitted to revel in the delight of seeing the humming-bird in a state of nature." The feeling, he wrote, which animated him with regard to these most wonderful works of creation it was impossible to describe, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Senor Perkins. He was a slightly built man of about thirty, fair-haired and hollow-cheeked. His short upper lip was lifted over his teeth, as if from hurried or labored breathing; but his features were regular and determined, and his large blue eyes shone with a strange abstraction of ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... and importance of this rule appear to be so obvious, as to render it not a little surprising, that any writer, possessing the least degree of rhetorical taste, should reject it. I am bold to affirm, that it is observed by every correct reader and speaker; and yet, strange as it may seem, it is generally violated by those printers who punctuate by the ear, and all others who are influenced by their pernicious example; thus, "The head, the heart and the hands, should be constantly and actively employed ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... was writing of J.S. Mill's Essay on Liberty with an argument for immortality, based on the yearning of the affections to regain communion with the beloved dead,—on the impossibility of standing up and living, if we believed the separation were final. The argument is a strange one to have been used by a man who had maintained so strongly that "we have the testimony of all history to prove the extreme fallibility of consciousness." The review appeared in Fraser's Magazine, May 1859, and is to be found also in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... mysterious: we can no more assign a why for the more extensive laws than for the partial ones. The explanation may substitute a mystery which has become familiar, and has grown to seem not mysterious, for one which is still strange. And this is the meaning of explanation, in common parlance. But the process with which we are here concerned often does the very contrary: it resolves a phenomenon with which we are familiar into one of which we previously knew little or nothing; as when the common fact of the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... themselves were not more Dutch than Keene was English, and the result is often hardly less surprising. To look at some of these drawings and not think of the Dutchmen is impossible, for when we are most English we are most Dutch—our art came from Holland. These drawings are Dutch in the strange simplicity and directness of intention; they are Dutch in their oblivion to all interests except those of good drawing; they are Dutch in the beautiful quality of the workmanship. Examine the rich, simple drawing of that long coat or the side of that cab, and say if there is ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... under! The matter developed from the "too proud to fight" attitude—when Wilson really believed there was a danger of war, and so drew back—to the tone of February, 1916—when he no longer believed in the possibility of war, but felt sure that he could subdue us with hard words. They thought it strange, moreover, to hear Wilson speaking of the gradual breakdown of the delicate structure of international law. That had resulted from England's attitude, and in 1812 America had declared war on the English ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... freak had formed the mineral. Venus was a strange planet anyway. But that didn't matter. The important thing now was to get to know this process. He went off into a happy mist of quantum mechanics, oscillation theory, and periodic functions of ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... is highly appropriate that your progressive movement should unfurl its banners in this, the most progressive State in the South. Our people are not swift in their pursuit of strange doctrines, but they are as a rule open to conviction and tolerant of differences of opinion. Whatever may be our views of the necessity and efficacy of woman suffrage most of us have sense enough to know that ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... physical sensation supplied a large part of the material for his poetry, and among the senses it was especially the one that has the remotest association with ideas that he drew upon most constantly—the sense of smell. In his desperate search for new and strange sensations he went the round of violent and exhausting dissipations, and as his senses flagged he spurred them with all sorts of stimulants. Meanwhile he observed himself curiously ; the result in his poems is an impression of peculiarly wilful depravity. They reflect his physical ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... touched with morning freshness. The party was not yet complete, and he felt a movement of annoyance when he recognized, in the last person to join it, a Russian lady of cosmopolitan notoriety whom he had run across in his unmarried days, and as to whom he had already warned Undine. Knowing what strange specimens from the depths slip through the wide meshes of the watering-place world, he had foreseen that a meeting with the Baroness Adelschein was inevitable; but he had not expected her to become one of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... The extent to which this governess was worshipped by the whole household was wonderful—almost idolatrous. Need I say that I joined in the worship, and that Dumps and Robin followed suit? I think not. And yet—there was something strange, something peculiar, something unaccountable, about Miss Blythe's manner which I could ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Strange how the Langdons treat him as a friend—intimate one, too," he thought. "What if they should learn of Norton's questionable operations at the Capitol; of his connection with two unsavory 'deals,' one of which resulted in an amendment to ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... liberation! This is another of the extraordinary features of American aristocracy, which almost deprives the noble of the every-day use and benefit of the law. It would be worth our while to lose a moment in inquiring into the process by which such strange results are brought about, but it is fortunately rendered unnecessary by the circumstance that the principle will be amply developed in ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... what the people in the village say. This kind of strange, lonely, beautiful old house is sure to be said to be haunted. What I want to know is what you think you saw, Pegler—" The speaker looked ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... naturally, indeed, right out of my heart. The idea suddenly came to me that all this,—truth or seeming, it doesn't matter which,—may be some strange form of lesson. I have had lessons—painful ones. I shall have many more. If you ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... vain bookworms have sat in The halls of dull pedants who teach Strange tongues, the dead lore of the Latin, The scroll that is god-like and Greek: Have wasted life's springtide in learning Things long ago learnt all in vain; They are slow, very slow, in discerning That book lore and wisdom ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... [Footnote 3: Strange accidents have more than once occurred in Ceylon arising from the habit of the native anglers; who, having neither baskets nor pockets in which to place what they catch, will seize a fish in their teeth whilst putting fresh bait on their ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... but she did not take the hint, and Alison obtained only the satisfaction of hearing that she had at least not been in Mackarel Lane. The wheels sounded on the gravel, out rushed the boys; Alison and Rachel sat in strange, absolute silence, each forgetful of the other, neither guarding her own looks, nor remarking her companion's. Alison's lips were parted by intense listening; Rachel's teeth were set to receive her enemy. There was a chorus of voices in the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Don't you long for the fight, for your finger at somebody's neck? That's what I felt when I was your age, and I did it, and I'm doing it, but I can't do it as I used to. My veins are leaking somewhere." A strange, sad, faded look came into his eyes. "I don't want my business to be broken by Belloc," he added. "Come and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... informant saieth, that the before-named W^m Beard being very sicke and in a strange distemper, and {465} haveing heard that Margaret, the wife of the before-named Thomas Burgis, had threatened him, did suspect the s^d W^m Beard might be bewitched or ill dealt w^{th}, did cut off some of his haire off from his head, and did wind it up together and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... right. There is an order, certainly;" and these words were pronounced by Aramis in so strange a tone that Fouquet could not ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... live safely with wilder animals and men seeking their blood and hunting them; but that men and women, endued with the power of thought, capable of seeing the why and wherefore of things, should worry, is one of the strange and peculiar evidences that our so-called civilization is not all that it ought to be. The wild Indian of the desert, forest, or canyon seldom, if ever, worries. He is too great a natural philosopher to be engaged in so foolish and unnecessary a business. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... of a nation's folly, written in letters of blood. But I look at the brighter side of this distorted photograph. With the eye of faith at least I can discern the hand of Providence shifting the scenes. This may seem strange, that a partition wall should be erected in the Temple of Liberty, once an asylum for an oppressed world. That the "Stars and Stripes"—the (once) badge of freedom, gracing the bosom of every sea—should be riddled from its staff and another substituted ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... "It's strange," said the young man. He unconsciously took off his hat, baring the curly hair over the tanned face. He was very wholesome and honest and strong, and the girl's eyes lighted into a smile of pride ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... fourth of October, the Half Moon left the island which the Indians called Manahatta, passed through the Narrows and sailed for Europe. Looking back at those green shores with their bronze feather-crowned people watching to see the flight of their strange guest, John Hudson felt that when he was a man, he would like nothing better than to have an estate on the shores of the noble river, which no white boy had ever before set eyes on. Where a great terrace rose, some fifty miles above Manahatta, walled ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... day's work done, they went down into the courtyard, Filippo and Niccolosa being there, and there they tarried a while to advance Calandrino's suit. Calandrino's gaze was soon riveted on Niccolosa, and such and so strange and startling were the gestures that he made that they would have given sight to the blind. She on her part used all her arts to inflame his passion, primed as she had been by Bruno, and diverted beyond measure as she was by Calandrino's antics, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that strange things happen!" said Robert Robin, as he lifted a feather and oiled it on the ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... on the occasion and sent to the Post Office. It should not therefore be stated to the public his stopping the Norfolk and Suffolk service by his assertion of the enormous expenses of the new beyond the old system, and his strange declaration that the number of letters sent by the Bath and Bristol post had decreased and in consequence of its improvement are so ill-supported by the statements sent to the Treasury, and the ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... replied, glancing out over the tumbling waves with a look which proved they were strange to him. Hugh dashed away and soon returned with a glass of brandy, which the stranger swallowed meekly and not very gracefully. Then he sat very still while Grace applied the court-plaster to the little gash at the apex of ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... camp around Paris, which means, to put his throne, his person, and his family at the mercy of 20,000 madmen, chosen by the clubs and other assemblages expressly to do him harm;[2516] in short, to discard at once his conscience and his common sense.—Strange enough, the royal will this time remains staunch; not only does the King refuse, but he dismisses his ministers. So much the worse for him, for sign he must, cost what it will; if he insists on remaining athwart their path, they will ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the first glimpse of that mischievous youngster, Arlo Weeks, Junior, with the cats, Janice raised her window softly as far as the lower sash would go, to peer out at the strange procession. The boy and the cats entered the Day's side gate and disappeared around the ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... again there. Nor can Aeschines say that he did not know it well. He was your under-clerk and servant to the Council, and used himself to read this law over[n] to the herald. {71} Surely, then, you will have done a strange and monstrous thing, men of Athens, if to-day, when you have it in your power, you should fail to do for yourselves the thing which you enjoin upon the gods, or rather claim from them as your due; and should acquit a man whom ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... "There are strange things which happen here," she whispered, "things which neither Gerald nor I understand. Yet they terrify us. I think that very soon the end will come. Neither of us can stand it very much longer. We have no friends. Somehow ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the Corporation Act in particular was professedly made against dissenters, and not against Papists, though it eventually included both. The preservation of the Corporation and Test Acts, they further argued, was essential to the preservation of the constitution. Yet, by a strange anomaly of sentiment, Pitt declared, in flattering and explicit terms, the esteem and regard which he felt for the Protestant dissenters, who had ever approved themselves genuine and zealous friends of constitutional liberty, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... differences as though they were disasters, their constant failure to recognize the value of certain weaknesses, their stupidity in not painting great men who happen to be blind, in profile, and their harping upon the flaws, and their neglect of the fine texture of human qualities that are strange to them, that these critics are not muzzled, or, if ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... heart of me, what this importeth; What distresseth thee so sore? New and strange all life and living; Thee I recognise no more. Gone is everything thou loved'st; All for which thyself thou troubled'st; Gone thy toil, and gone thy peace; Ah! how cam'st thou in ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... Mrs. Driscoll, while Alma sat with her dove in her hands, watching the bright face that looked happy and at home in these unusual surroundings. It seemed so very strange to be close to Miss Joslyn, like this, where the teacher had no bell to touch and no directions ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... and beheaded John in prison." Had the Baptist heard aught of the unseemly revelry? Had any strain of music been waited down to him? Perhaps so. Those old castles are full of strange echoes. His cell was perfectly dark. He might be lying bound on the bare ground, or some poor bed of straw. Was his mind glancing back on those never-to-be-forgotten days, when the heaven was opened above him, and he saw ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer |
