"Quaintly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Harry, and I saw Lee standing beside a slender figure in unbecoming dress among a group of men in blue shirts and quaintly mended jackets; also that some planks had been laid across ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... before seen up-country. He immediately offered me a post on his run at L60 a year, with all expenses paid, which I could hold for as long or short time as I needed. This exactly suited me in my present circumstances. I accepted his offer and started the following day for Mesopotamia, as he had quaintly named his station; it lay ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... that had passed had made little if any change in Allan's character. He had simply developed (to use his tutor's own expression) from a boy of sixteen to a boy of twenty-one. He was just as easy and open in his disposition as ever; just as quaintly and inveterately good-humored; just as heedless in following his own impulses, lead him where they might. His bias toward the sea had strengthened with his advance to the years of manhood. From building a boat, he had now got on—with ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Fray Marcos's journey. He did not dare to approach nearer to that terrible people, and, as he quaintly says, "returned with more fear than victuals;" overtaking his escort, which, moved by still greater fear, had not waited for him. Back to Coronado he went with his story, a disappointing one, since he had seen nothing of either gold, silver, or precious ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... over the sill to rob some new-made grave. Certainly he would have a selection here. The very walks have been carried over forgotten resting-places; and the whole ground is uneven, because (as I was once quaintly told) "when the wood rots it stands to reason the soil should fall in," which, from the law of gravitation, is certainly beyond denial. But it is round the boundary that there are the finest tombs. The whole irregular space is, as it were, fringed with quaint old monuments, rich in death's-heads ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the many fares they had anticipated were not in store for them, and that all the luggage was to go upon one cart sent for the purpose, while the solitary landau and pair in waiting was our host's private carriage, intended to bear us some three hours' drive to his quaintly situated residence. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of the most well-known men of his day. Mrs. Wainewright died, in giving him birth, at the early age of twenty-one, and an obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine tells us of her 'amiable disposition and numerous accomplishments,' and adds somewhat quaintly that 'she is supposed to have understood the writings of Mr. Locke as well as perhaps any person of either sex now living.' His father did not long survive his young wife, and the little child seems to have been brought up by his ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... and smiled at Sylvia. "It will be," she said, quaintly, and in English, "my 'treat,' dear friend." And then, as Sylvia shook her head decidedly—there were often these little contests of generosity between the two ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... you my life, and therefore from this time forward my life is for yours, if need be. Nor shall my men be behind in that matter—that is if I ever see them again," he added, looking quaintly at me, ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... stage, or of Expectation, as the theorist quaintly terms it, is that which is acquired by pulpy fruits, which, though sufficiently ripe to drop off the tree, are even then hard and sour. This is the case with several kinds both of apples and pears, not to mention other fruits, which always improve after keeping in the confectionery,—but ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... was so cross and depressed that really his "style" did not count. She was now greatly pleased by the younger professor's public and cordial recognition of her, and, with her precocious instinct for social ease, managed to introduce him to her aunt, even adding quaintly a phrase which she had heard her mother use in speaking of him, "My father thinks Professor Saunders has a brilliant future ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the talk ended and all sought their hammocks, dog tired from the day's travel. No watch was kept, for, as Pedro quaintly phrased it, "We now are in the hands of God and the cannibals." Nor was any ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... too, that it seemed impossible that she could be the mother of that handsome, proud-looking man. We drove through the streets, away out of the town, to the place where the fair was held. It was an odd, picturesque sight, with the gaily decorated booths, the crowds of quaintly dressed men and women, the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... will you and your brother come over to lunch?" she asked, as she shook hands. "He promised—for you both—to come and help me with advice about arranging my rooms. You must go on as you've begun—being neighbourly, you know," she added quaintly. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... quaintly, and she grew sweeter every day. But they talked about the son they were to have, and other daughters. Little Phil wrote occasionally. He was studying in an English school, but he had spells of homesickness now and then, and his uncle said if he learned smartly ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... evening there was a great praise-meeting at John's cottage; for in St. Penfer all rejoicing and all sorrow ended in a religious meeting. And Denas and Tris sang out of the same hymn-book, and sat side by side as they listened to John's quaintly eloquent tribute to the God "who did always keep faith with His children." "I was like to lose sight of my God," he cried, "but my God never did lose sight of me. God's children be well off, He goes so neighbourly with them. He is their pilot and their home-bringer. I did weep to myself ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to enter on such a subject. It is impossible to speak or to think of the subject of slavery without feeling that there is a double degradation in the matter; for, in the first place, the slave is a man made in the image of God—God's image cut in ebony, as old Thomas Fuller quaintly but beautifully said; and what right have we to reduce him to the image of a brute, and make property of him? We esteem drunkenness as a sin. Why is it a sin? Because it reduces that which was made in the image ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... this singularly bold English traveller and whimsical writer, in all his crudities, as he has quaintly termed his own writings, it has seemed proper to give some abbreviated extracts of his observations, which may serve in some measure to illustrate those of Sir Tomas Roe and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... this hot and dusty age. If he was not greatly original, he was at least flawlessly consistent: there is scarce a trait in his character that is not reflected somewhere in his music, and hardly a characteristic of his music that one does not find quaintly echoed in some recorded saying or doing of the man. His placid and even vivacity, his sprightliness, his broad jocularity, his economy and shrewd business perception of what could be done with the material to hand, his fertility of device, even his commonplaceness, may all be seen in ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... and handed out a quaintly carved bear whose head opened, showing a capacious ink-stand. This he presented, with a scrape, to ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life" (Gen. iv. 24). The Cherubim are the symbols of the powers of majesty and goodness; the flaming sword is the Logos; "because," says our author quaintly, "all thought and speech are the most mobile and the most ardent (i.e., the most intensive) of things, and especially the thought and speech of ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... the kind of a marlinespike I am," replied the Captain quaintly. "I'd have got you out of Salem jail, unless it is a good deal stronger ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... least of which he could still feel the spirit of a debutante. In this matter of war he was not, too, unlike a young girl embarking upon her first season of opera. Walkely, the next morning, saw this mood sitting quaintly upon Coleman and cackled with astonishment and glee. Coleman's usual manner did not return until he detected Walkely's appreciation of his state and then he snubbed him according to the ritual of the Sunday editor of the New York Eclipse. Parenthetically, it might be said that if Coleman ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... said quaintly, "San Francisco is a very lonesome place for the godly. The hosts of sin are very strong, and the faithful are very few. Mortal flesh is weak; and mortal spirit is prone to black discouragement. When I bought those chickens I bought eighteen dollars' ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... stuck in one corner of the mouth, or twisted in the hatband, and would never be in the way. Thus ended this alarming insurrection, which was long known by the name of the Pipe Plot, and which, it has been somewhat quaintly observed, did end, like most plots and seditions, in ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... "Not yet. He is neffer about much till the night dime. Eh?" Chuckling quaintly, the head disappeared and Scanlon reached ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... This part of him was often the subject of talk with those of us who knew him well. But what charmed me most, more even than his brilliant mental gifts, were the sweetness of his disposition and his quaintly quizzical and happy humour. Ambition was not strong in him, was in fact all but absent, and he often rallied me on mine. He never in all his life asked for any improvement in salary or position; but, in spite of his inveterate modesty, rose high, became Chief ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... the most charming of correspondents; in a chirography almost feminine, he wrote, in the old cavalier style, such quaintly pleasant epistles, with graceful turns of expression, beautiful epithets, and appropriate adjectives, that, to one fond of the writer and cognizant of his native tongue, the most casual note was a prize to be treasured. "Truly," remarks one of his friends, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... here these three years," she persisted, "and none ever walked the mountain by the path you have come." She watched us as I held the bowl for the Princess to drink, and asked quaintly, "But is there truly no marrying in heaven? I have thought upon that many times, and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... fretful or violent spouses: we dwell lovingly on what is good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or inharmonious. We learn, also, to come to each place in the right spirit. The traveller, as Brantome quaintly tells us, 'fait des discours en soi ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that there was a secret compact between them, for he said, quaintly: "They all sing one song, and she hath set ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... noble peroration at the somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion, that the spirit of liberty, "the guide of homeless winds and playmate of the waves," is to be found only among the elements, and not in the institutions of man. And in the same quaintly ingenuous spirit which half touches and half amuses us in his earlier poems he lets us perceive a few weeks later, in his Fears in Solitude, that sympathy with a foreign nation threatened by the invader ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Nauvoo were indeed hard pressed, but inside the city they maintained themselves very well for two or three months longer. Strange to say, the chief part of this respite was devoted to completing the structure of their quaintly devised but beautiful temple. Since the dispersion of Jewry, probably, history affords us no parallel to the attachment of the Mormons for this edifice. Every architectural element, every most fantastic emblem it embodied, was associated, for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... furtively transferred his buttonhole to his coat-pocket. Among those who remained faithful were Lord LAMBOURNE (in the Peers' Gallery), who had for this occasion substituted a posy of primroses for his usual picotee, and, quaintly enough, Mr. HOGGE, who had not hitherto been suspected of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... surrounding the little homestead. Here the old men mend the nets, keeping a watchful eye on the babies, while the women clean and salt the fish, hanging them up in rows to dry in the sun. In these garden enclosures, also, many quaintly pretty miniature houses may be seen erected on tall poles. These are to encourage the starlings and other songsters to settle in them, as there are no trees. Hen-roosts and outhouses are adorned with the name-boards of wrecked boats washed up on the shore, while discarded boats ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing down his cheek,—resting his head, until he recovered himself, on the wall of the Mound."[47] It was the same strong feeling for old Scotch institutions which broke out so quaintly in the midst of his own worst troubles in 1826, on behalf of the Scotch banking-system, when he so eloquently defended, in the letters of Malachi Malagrowther, what would now be called Home-Rule for Scotland, and indeed really defeated the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... the full tide of Black sets in. It would be easier to talk to a new- made Duchess on the spur of the moment than to the Borderline folk without violating some of their conventions or hurting their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly in their ways. Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish pride—which is Pride of Race run crooked—and sometimes the Black in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sunflower, which is a coarse-coloured and dull plant, whereas the single one, though a late comer to our gardens, is by no means to be despised, since it will grow anywhere, and is both interesting and beautiful, with its sharply chiselled yellow florets relieved by the quaintly patterned sad-coloured centre clogged with honey and beset with bees ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... bay cob—a little bright-eyed girl, whose face was full of sweetness and love, and dressed in blue and white, riding behind him. His broad, kindly face, shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat, his flowing white hair, his quaintly cut coat, with the ample side pocket, and his long, white necktie, presented a picture so full of truth and simplicity as to be worthy of being preserved on canvas. He was, in truth, a figure belonging to an order of things that was fast passing way—at least along the ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... tamed as well as his rough nature would permit, his hand to the delicate graving so cherished by his master, Ellis Gamble; and when freed from his apprenticeship, he sought art through the stirring scenes of life, saying quaintly enough, that "copying other men's works resembled pouring wine out of one vessel into another; there was no increase of quantity, and the flavor of the vintage was liable to evaporate;"—whoever would study the great, as well as ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... for such imaginings," Francis replied, "but there is a quaintly artificial air about it all. We must go and look ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... quaintly puts it that smell and taste form only one sense, having the mouth as laboratory, with the nose for the fire-place or chimney; the one serving to taste solids, the other gases. George Dallas, too, the gifted author of THE BOOK OF THE TABLE, ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... this Braehead, preserved almost as it was two hundred years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie,—two quaintly cropped yew-trees,—still thrive; the burn runs as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune,—as much the same and as different as Now and Then. The house is full of old family relics and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep windows with their plate-glass; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Orthodoxy [1908], What's Wrong with the World? [1910], The Ball and the Cross [1909]), a pamphleteer, and a poet. His first volume of verse, The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900), a collection of quaintly-flavored and affirmative verses, was followed by The Ballad of the White Horse (1911), one long poem which, in spite of Chesterton's ever-present didactic sermonizing, is possibly the most stirring creation he has achieved. This poem has the swing, the vigor, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... libraries and chapter-houses to which they belong; for he thinks a black-letter volume reads best in one of those venerable chambers where the light struggles through dusty lancet windows and painted glass; and that it loses half its zest, if taken away from the neighbourhood of the quaintly-carved oaken book-case and Gothic reading-desk. At his suggestion, the Squire has had the library furnished in this antique taste, and several of the windows glazed with painted glass, that they may ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... better at tea-time," said Miss Barton hopefully. "Mrs. Marsden surely can't go very wrong there. We're going to walk to the woods this afternoon. I've bespoken Jenny, the fourth child, as a guide. She's the most quaintly fascinating person. I hope she won't be long; ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... rather quaintly, of more temporal and material benefits, the Infant D. Pedro, then Regent of the kingdom, gave to his brother Henry a charter, granting him the whole of the fifth of the profits which appertained to the King, and, considering that it was by him alone that the whole matter of ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... which she could so little imagine; however, she let the subject drop as to any more words about it. She was only what the doctor called "quaintly sober," all ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... nothing to Letty, she thanked the nurse, smiled at the other patients, and, trudging at Miss Towell's side with her quaintly sturdy grace, went forth to ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... quaintly said by a governor of Arkansas, that he believed that a public official should be "reasonably honest." Even should that limited standard of official integrity be invaded the people with an honest ballot need not be long in rectifying ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... beautiful morning when you come," returned he, with a touch of that picturesqueness that sounded so quaintly coming from him. All this time he had retained her hand, and now, looking her in the eyes, he drew it with painful effort toward his lips. Cornelia's heart beat so she could scarcely stand, and her mind was in a confusion, but she did not withdraw ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... as they stooped to taste thy stream. The sportsman, tired with wandering in the still September noon, has bathed his heated brow In thy cool current. Shouting boys, let loose For a wild holiday, have quaintly shaped Into a cup the folded linden leaf, And dipped thy sliding crystal. From the wars Returning, the plumed soldier by thy side Has sat, and mused how pleasant 'twere to dwell In such a spot, and be as free as thou, And move for no man's bidding more. At eve, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... things smile On her to Mitylene voyaging, And in fair harbour may she ride at last. I on that day, a chaplet woven of dill Or rose or simple violet on my brow, Will draw the wine of Pteleas from the cask Stretched by the ingle. They shall roast me beans, And elbow-deep in thyme and asphodel And quaintly-curling parsley shall be piled My bed of rushes, where in royal ease I sit and, thinking of my darling, drain With stedfast lip the liquor to the dregs. I'll have a pair of pipers, shepherds both, This from Acharnae, from Lycope ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... ugly old rooms in Rouen maman cherished me like some rare little flower in an old earthen pot," she added quaintly. "Now the pot has tinsel and tissue paper round it, but until to-night I have felt as if I might just as well be an ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... said. That little top-knot, white and red, That quaintly crowns your graceful head, No bigger than a flower, Is set with such a witching art, Is so provocatively smart, I'd like to wear it on my heart, An order for ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... changes that have taken place in Rivermouth during the past twenty years there is one which I regret. I lament the removal of all those varnished iron cannon which used to do duty as posts at the corners of streets leading from the river. They were quaintly ornamental, each set upon end with a solid shot soldered into its mouth, and gave to that part of the town a picturesqueness very poorly atoned for by the conventional wooden stakes ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to a break in the railroad, Keith had to change his train at a small town not far from New York. Among the passengers was an old lady, simply and quaintly dressed, who had taken the train somewhere near Philadelphia. She was travelling quite alone, and appeared to be much hampered by her bags and parcels. The sight of an old woman, like that of a little girl, always softened Keith's heart. Something always ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... a classical adjective "valueless," "contemptible." Cf. Merch. of Ven. ii., 4: "'tis vile, unless it may be quaintly ordered." The flocks and herds have no value, are contemptible, as adversaries; hence, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... he kept swaying his body to and fro, twisting his arms and legs, and making faces. Comical figures made of ginger-bread, with quaintly curved limbs and grinning features, were to be bought then in bakers' shops: he made me ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... in Bowness' street we stand— Nine swains enamoured of our wives, Each quaintly writing on his hand, In haste, as 'twere ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Let us go a walking into the fields, they went all.... There was neither he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical instruments, speak five or six several languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so dextrous and skilful both on foot and a horseback, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of weapons than were there. Never were seen ladies ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... MARCHBANKS (quaintly, without fear or resistance). Catch me by the shirt collar, Morell: she will arrange it for me afterwards as she did this morning. (With quiet rapture.) I shall feel ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... a story told by Martin Luther in his "Table Talk," in which the saying, "Give and it shall be given unto you," is quaintly personified by the Latin words equivalent in meaning: Date, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... impressions made upon her reads just a little quaintly, possibly because of the unfamiliar Quaker phraseology. "To-day I have felt that there is a God! I have been devotional, and my mind has been led away from the follies that it is mostly wrapped up in. We had much serious conversation; in short, what he said, and what I felt, was ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... folds of his robe.—Ver. 267. 'Rorant pennae sinusque,' is quaintly translated by Clarke, 'his wings and the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... and I don't know as Dr. K—— will." He adds that it is now four weeks since he has been to school, "and I don't know but it will be four weeks longer." This weighing of possibilities, and this sense of the uncertain future, already quaintly show the disposition of the man he is to grow into; though the writing is as characterless as extreme youth, exaggerated distinctness, and copy-books could make it. The little invalid has not yet quite succumbed, however, for the same letter details that he has hopped out into the street once ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... city wearied me, To Katsura I'd wend— A garden hid across green miles Of rice-lands quaintly penned. And, by the stork-bestridden lake, I'd walk or musing mend My soul with ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... Watts's of Keepsake fame. An occasional notice of the Howitts and their little household may be found in contemporary works by forgotten writers. For example, Sir Richard Phillips, in the section devoted to Nottingham of his quaintly-worded Personal Tour through the United Kingdom (1828), observes: 'Of Messrs. Howitt, husband and wife, conjugal in love and poetry, it would be vain for me to speak. Their tasteful productions belong to the nation as well as to Nottingham. As a man of taste Mr. Howitt married ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Hilton's case, it was already broken before his arrival. His only embarrassment, in fact, arose from the difficulty which he naturally experienced in adapting himself to the speech and address of the Mitchenor family. The greetings of old Eli, grave, yet kindly, of Abigail, quaintly familiar and tender, of Moses, cordial and slightly condescending, and finally of Asenath, simple and natural to a degree which impressed him like a new revelation in woman, at once indicated to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... shameless in their extravagance of green and crimson, red and white carnations, red, white, and yellow roses. The sunshine broke into colour, it laughed, it danced, it almost rioted, among the flowers; but in the prim alleys, and on the formal hedges of box, and the quaintly-clipped yews, and the old purple brick walls, where fruit trees were trellised, it lay fast, fast asleep. Without the walls, in the deep cool greenery of the park, there was a perpetual drip-drip of bird-notes. This was the web, upon which a chosen handful of more accomplished birds were ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... principles—will and nature—we have laid the aesthetic foundation for all that we call music.[12] The example of a loud tone with gradually ascending inflections has only been found in the most perverted types of humanity; for instance, an English writer quaintly alludes to the songs of the Polynesian cannibals as consisting of "gruesomely suggestive passages of rising quarter-tones sung gloatingly before their living captives who are soon to ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... and very strange, and was quite as much out of the perpendicular as Harris had represented it to be. The quiet air of Pisa too; the big guard-house at the gate, with only two little soldiers in it; the streets with scarcely any show of people in them; and the Arno, flowing quaintly through the centre of the town; were excellent. So, I bore no malice in my heart against Mr. Harris (remembering his good intentions), but forgave him before dinner, and went out, full of confidence, to ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... hall; the same sweet Christ who took the babes upon His knee; the same Divine Christ who, with hyssop and gall, and mingled blood and tears, passed death's dread portals on the dark brow of Calvary. The same grand figure, but quaintly dressed in words that savoured of the London slums and of the soldier's camp, and yet so hedged around with earnest love and childlike faith that all its grossest trappings fell away and left us nothing but the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... wheedling, something greedy, brutal, and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. His beard and moustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Saint, and the abbess joyfully put it on. The next morning she could stand on her feet and the third day she was restored to perfect health. Later, a nun was cured of a headache by the same girdle, but when next it was wanted, it could nowhere be found. Bede argues quaintly that its disappearance was also an act of Divine Providence, since some of the sick who flocked to it might be unworthy, and, not being cured, might doubt its efficacy, while in reality, their own unworthiness was to blame. "Thus," he concludes, "was all matter for detraction ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... progress of that revolution. But simple as the tale is there is hardly better historic training for a man than to set him frankly in the streets of a quiet little town like Bury St. Edmunds, and bid him work out the history of the men who lived and died there. In the quiet, quaintly-named streets, in the town-mead and the market-place, in the lord's mill beside the stream, in the ruffed and furred brasses of its burghers in the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, the life of their ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... country in Europe, may be compelled to dine in the shantee [Footnote: Shanty, or Shantee, is a word much used in the newer settlements. It strictly means a rude cabin of bark and brush, such as is often erected in the forest for temporary purposes. But the borderers often quaintly apply it to their own habitations. The only derivation which the writer has heard for this American word, is one that supposes it to be a corruption of Chiente, a term said to be used among the Canadians to express a dog-kennel.] of a hunter; the smooth and ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... is the aspect of these college quadrangles! so gnawed by time as they are, so crumbly, so blackened, and so gray where they are not black,—so quaintly shaped, too, with here a line of battlement and there a row of gables; and here a turret, with probably a winding stair inside; and lattice-windows, with stone mullions, and little panes of glass set in lead; and the cloisters, with a long arcade, looking upon the green or pebbled enclosure. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and historic attempts, that these rest on the gigantic struggles of the Punic wars. Much is only artificially transplanted, there are various faults in delineation and colouring, the form of art and the language are deficient in purity of treatment, Greek and national elements are quaintly conjoined; the whole performance betrays the stamp of its scholastic origin and lacks independence and completeness; yet there exists in the poets and authors of that age, if not the full power to reach their high aim, at any rate the courage to compete with and the hope of rivalling ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the dining-room, a quaintly attractive apartment where candle-light illumined the bare mahogany of the round table laid with a large square of linen at his place and set with delicate ancient china and silver. Ellen Lessing was already there in a high-backed chair opposite the one set for him, a figure to which his eyes were ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... withstood the enemies of Bohemia from without and within, taking no irreparable harm from the open attack of Frederick of Prussia in the eighteenth century or the covert attack of those hostile to the faith it has stood for down the ages. The quaintly shaped spires of St. Mary's Church with its three aisles, its glorious organ the largest in all Bohemia, stand out in bold relief amidst the terraced garden and orchards tended with fond care. The belfry is silent, its bells were sacrificed to the cause of the Habsburgs in the Great War; you may ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... said he, with his head on one side, quaintly, "wasn't that a blasphermous yarn old Dave was givin' us about the wind blowing that log chain away a link at a time? Old son ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... on the surface of our skin, our hair, and the tips of our nails are the only parts of us that live in air. In fact, over five-sixths of the weight and bulk of our bodies is made up of water. Some one has quaintly, but truthfully, described the human body as composed of a few pounds of charcoal, a bushel of air, half a peck of lime, and a couple of handfuls of salt dissolved in four buckets of water. The reason why nearly all our foods, as we ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... made amends for all that was revolutionary in his politics or economics, by reaction on two subjects—art and divorce. He had old-fashioned ideas on the family, and did not want to see divorce made easy. And he was quaintly Ruskinian in matters of art, believing that all art should appeal to ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... destroyed the church in 1648; and from an entry in the register of St. Sepulchre's Church, Northampton, for 1659, it would appear that there were collections made towards repairing the damage done by those worthies. This entry quaintly states that "seven shillings and sixpence" was received towards the repairs of the church of Edge Barston, in the county of Warwick, adding also that there was "never a ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... image of the world is of individual and varying compass. It may be likened to one of those curious Chinese balls of quaintly carved ivory, containing other balls, one within another, the proportions ever dwindling with each successive inclosure, yet each a more minute duplicate of the external sphere. This might seem ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... find him," the old Squire remarked with a kind of sad certainty; and he did not join the searchers himself or encourage us boys to do so. I think that both he and grandmother Ruth partly feared that, as the old lady quaintly expressed it, "Jonathan had been left to take his own life," in a ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... foamed at the mouth, and finally tore up the benches in order to attack the judges with the fragments. He was sent first to the castle of Edinburgh and afterward to the Bass (an island), "for a change of air," as the record quaintly says. Finally, he was despatched to Blackness Castle, where he remained close in hold ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... ah, not seen— Things proper to the age of Saturn— Shall greet you here; for we have been Wrought quaintly, on the Arcadian pattern. Your poet's lips will break in song For joy, to see at last appearing The bulls and bears, a peaceful throng, While a lamb ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... quickly by—and the silver ornaments. She uncloses the carved coffers, and passes through her long fingers the wedding garments of brides turned to dust centuries ago—the silver veils, bridal crowns, and quaintly-cut robes of taffetas and brocade, once white, now turned to dingy yellow. She assures herself that all is in ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... the vicar and his wife, a quaintly-costumed little couple, still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the unnecessary light of a ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... noble horses, stopped before the gate of Glen Morris Cottage. It contained Carrie Sherwood and her party, all but the Carltons and their visitors. Mr. Sherwood sat on the driver's seat. He went with the young folks to drive, and, as he quaintly said, "to see that the hawks did not pounce on his chickens;" by which figure of speech, I suppose, he meant that he went to keep the young ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... Auceps, and the style of their conversations by the wayside, I found by no means unlike those of the Pilgrim's Progress. The life-like descriptions of nature (none the less attractive at my age from being quaintly mixed with fable and symbolism, and pointed with pious morals) went straight to my heart; and though I skipped many of the fish chapters, I re-read many of the others, and 'The Complete Angler' did not ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... arrayed herself in the white gown; it was of linen quaintly woven, with a tiny star thrown up in the pattern, and shone like damask. The apron was of heavy black silk, trimmed all around with crimson lace, and crimson lace on the pockets. A crimson rose in ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... little affair in a bucket, with a bit of r-rubber hose for a worm. It makes enough for me. It is not a pleasant drink," he added, quaintly. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... was again haunting the vicinity of the white mansion. One night he leaned against the fence and watched a procession of guests alighting from their vehicles. Splendid motors dashed up, and loads of gaily-dressed ladies and gentlemen quaintly caparisoned were discharged at the great iron gates, and went trooping up the path to the flaring white residence, blazing like a crystal palace ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... some ill-timed measures of Nithard, there was open revolt, and Don Juan appeared at the head of a body of troops to demand in the name of outraged Spain the immediate dismissal of the queen's favorite. Mariana's confusion at this juncture of affairs has been quaintly pictured by Archdeacon Coxe, who wrote an interesting history of the Bourbon kings of Spain in the early part of the last century: "In the agony of indignation and despair, the queen threw herself upon the ground and bewailed her situation. 'Alas, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Swedenborgians believe, spirits seen at a distance appear like the things they most resemble in disposition, as doves, hawks, goats, lambs, swine, and so on, I'm sure that I shall see his true and kindly soul in the guise of a noble old Folio, quaintly lettered across his back in old ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... in some peril at sea, but got safe into Leith Roads at six in the morning. A clairvoyant dream was also vouchsafed to Dr. Pitcairn, though 'a Jacobite, and a person of considerable sense,' as Wodrow quaintly remarks about another individual. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... this remark:—'Omne meritum est voluntarium, aut voluntate originis, aut origine voluntatis'. Quaintly as this is expressed, it is well worth consideration, and gives the true meaning of Baxter's famous saying,—"Hell ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... old and feeble, had retired with a pension to the French Hospital which then stood in St. Luke's, and was called La Providence: a refuge founded to receive poor Protestant emigres, mostly aged men and women, who had their little rooms quaintly furnished with their own poor household goods; and who walked daily in the quadrangle, laid out in beds ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... almost immediately with the brandy in a quaintly cut liqueur glass. A glance at the clock as she passed seemed to have increased ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
