"Whimsically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foot was still painful. There were also a good many other scars and bruises upon his body, for the cost of building a western railroad is usually heavy. Still, he had an excellent constitution, and was, while not particularly brilliant as a rule, at least whimsically contented in mind. His comrades called him the Kid, or the English Kid, perhaps on account of a certain delicacy of manner and expression which he had somehow contrived to retain, though he had spent several years in logging camps, and his age was ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... attributes of a conqueror. When with him Madge whimsically feared that he would snatch her up in his arms and carry her bodily off, as the warriors of old did with the women they wanted. But she began to believe that the fascination he exercised upon her was merely physical. That gave her pause. Not only was Burns Carroll on ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... make a habit of loving me, you know,' he went on half whimsically. 'No one would know anything about it. It would be our secret, our little experiment. If only you'd try it. Dearest, I ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... about it. You stick with them, Loney, and find out. I'm taking Al's trail with Yack. You fix it." And he added whimsically, "Not so much tobacco, Lone. I don't eat it or smoke it ever in ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the desk in the corner of the cheap little room tingled out sharply. Barbara rose and went across to the desk. Mr. Mackwayte thought how singularly graceful she looked as she stood, very slim, looking at him whimsically across the dinner-table, the receiver ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... of brilliant sunshine, which found its way through a gap in the drawn curtains, showed that it was long past the usual hour for rising. She smiled whimsically and closed her eyes once more. She remembered now that she was not in her own little room in the other wing of the house. The curtains proved that. How often in the ten years she had been with Miss Wickham had she begged that the staring white window blind, which decorated ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... do 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 lake, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... philosophy is his about the delights of beggary! It has all the humor of 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... go back again now, will you?" he asked whimsically, after learning whence I came. "I must," said I, sadly. "Oh don't," said he; "tell them you can't, and just wander about the East." He transshipped shortly and disappeared, one of many passing travellers with whom one is for a few moments on common ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... I'd be mighty proud of both of you," the scientist said whimsically. "You for the job you did with Gee-Gee last night, and Scotty for pulling that ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... 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 something ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... whimsically at him, but speaking with perfect gravity). What say you to Mithridates of Pergamos, my reliever and rescuer, the ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... enterprise."—H.C.] This bifurcation of the roads is a notable point in Polo's book. For after following the western road through Cathay, i.e. the northern provinces of China, to the borders of Tibet and the Indo-Chinese regions, our traveller will return, whimsically enough, not to the capital to take a fresh departure, but to this bifurcation outside of Chochau, and thence carry us south with him to Manzi, or China ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... pressure to which they are subject; the merchant, with a careless air, gives a slight push with his fist to the bottom of the crown, to raise it up, smooths the front upon his knee, and presents to your eyes an object at once whimsically fantastical, which recalls confusedly to your memory those fabulous head-dresses favored by box-keepers, aunts of opera dancers, or duennas of provincial theaters. Further on, at the sign of the Gout du jour, under the arcades of the Rotunda, elevated at the end of ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... he went on, but true, that the vast majority of people of voting age in the United States to-day who thought they had been educated were under the obligation to reeducate themselves. He suggested, whimsically, a vacation school for Congress and all legislative bodies as a starter. Until the fact of the utter inadequacy of the old education were faced, there was little or no hope of solving the problems that harassed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Baudet's excellence in his art?), favour would not be wanting for the greatest ballade-maker of all time. Great as would seem the incongruity, it may have pleased Charles to own a sort of kinship with ragged singers, and whimsically regard himself as one of the confraternity of poets. And he would have other grounds of intimacy with Villon. A room looking upon Windsor gardens is a different matter from Villon's dungeon at Meun; yet each in his own degree had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... whimsically and assented. He could keep quiet when he had to; but the day following found him again restlessly investigating anything that seemed worth the trouble and the afternoon saw him standing looking upward toward the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... in this case, your bag of peanuts happened to be airy country rooms, and cow's milk, and real eggs from a real hen's nest," returned Jamie whimsically; "but it amounts to the same thing. And maybe I'd better warn you—you remember how greedy Sir Lancelot was;—well—" He ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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 racing car, or tramp, for at least eight months ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... know," he said, smiling at her whimsically. "You see, being what I am handicaps me rather. I haven't much time for working out ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... departure she was staying with friends. At night they went into her room and found her weeping quietly in bed. They tried to comfort her, and she said half-whimsically that she had been overcome by the feeling that she was homeless and without kith and kin la her own country. "I'm a poor solitary with only memories." "But you have troops of friends—you have us all—we all love you." "Yes, I ken, and I am grateful," she ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... shot at," replied Robert, whimsically, "though I don't believe the marksman could come so close to me again without finishing me. I think it was Peter's spy because I saw him come out of the house, and cried to him to halt, but he fired first. My own bullet, I'm sure, touched him, and Tayoga is in pursuit, ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... besought me, but I could not help him, and again he was forced to meet the kindly, almost whimsically accusing gaze of the censor, who was by ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... didn't intend you to fall off," he said whimsically, when his knife released the strain. But his lips tightened at the outrage; and his eyes, bent upon Jack's left ankle, wore the look of one who could kill ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... 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 Twain's ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... any rate," she said, whimsically smiling, "that the moral of my little exhibition has not been lost ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... "you gave us a dreadful fright! I thank God's mercy." With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an unconscious challenge. Laird looked up whimsically. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Asserter" which is here put for Verb, is both ignorantly misspelled, and whimsically misapplied. But, according to Critical Note 14th, "Any use of words that implies ignorance of their meaning, or of their proper orthography, is particularly unscholarlike; and, in proportion to the author's pretensions to learning, disgraceful." ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... "Only," said Jack, whimsically, "I do hope if they've got their German appetites along, they don't clean out that pantry before I get my look-in, that's all. Twenty-four hours without a single bite would be the limit for me. I don't think I'd survive the ordeal. Now ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... glanced at me, said "Ah! Well," irresolutely. I got up from my chair and offered to come again later. He looked whimsically alarmed. "No, no. It's bad enough to lose my money but I don't want to waste any more of my time over your friend. We must be done with this to-day. Just go and have a look at that garniture de cheminee yonder. There's another, something like it, in the castle of Laeken, but mine's ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Judkins and the other servants treated him as the member of the family which they had been informed he was; the lively Dick, with his puppy-like friendliness, asked never an uncomfortable question, and placed Larry almost on the footing of a chum; and the whimsically smiling Miss Sherwood treated Larry exactly as she might have treated any well-bred gentleman and in every detail made good on her promise to give him a chance. In fact, in all his life Larry had never lived ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... whimsically. "But surely you will leave the baby," and she moved toward them again. "I will hold it," with a half grimace at her own condescension. "It seems so very good and cheerful—I thought they cried. Will ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... a moment, his face rigidly set, inscrutable to my glance. Then he relaxed into one of those whimsically appealing smiles that somehow are acutely eloquent of pathos. 'Serious parts—with this low-comedy face of mine!' he responded. And my query had been answered. Yet he went on, 'No, I shall never play Hamlet. I can give a good imitation of a bad actor but, doubtless, I should give a very bad ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... that that individual was reading and giving no heed. He wondered why he should be so completely thrown out of his usual self-possession by this girl, so that when he talked to her, and was most anxious to appear at his best, he was most surely at his worst. There came whimsically into his head a thought of the wisdom of training the clergy to the social gifts and graces, and he remembered the flippant speech of Mrs. Wilson about the need of their being able ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... you would. Up to a very short time ago I thought you one of the most whimsically entertaining men I ever met, but as I said just now, a spiritual disparagement has arisen between us, a thick fog, and I wish you ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... unconsciousness of any suffering he might inflict that left mere cruelty far behind. If I were making an automaton king, I would model my machine on the lines of Hammerfeldt. He had no belief in a future life, but would sometimes trifle whimsically with the theory of a transmigration of souls; he traced all beliefs in immortality to the longing of those who were unfortunate here (and who did not think himself so?) for a recompense (a revenge he called it) hereafter, and declared transmigration to be at once the most ingenious and ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... what I am, isn't it? (Whimsically) I've never been a stepmother before. (Persuasively) Couldn't you let me be proud of ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... 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 on ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... up fast, Tayoga," he said whimsically. "Suppose we go forth now and hunt the enemy. We might finish up what Rogers, Willet and Daganoweda have left of ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... keep pace with her, she's like a whirlwind," he said whimsically. "She raced me off here before I could say ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... is decidedly odd," he said. "But after all, why should we be so surprised? Nature can't be eternally original; she must dry up sometimes, and when she gets a good model why shouldn't she use it twice?" He drew back, surveying Chilcote whimsically. "But, pardon me, you are still waiting for ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... dressed in a jacket of reddish brown merino, holding in 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 ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... his pipe—said whimsically, "Some day, Mr. King, I shall write a true story. It shall be a novel of to-day, with characters drawn from life; and these characters, in my story, shall bear the names of the forces that have made them what they are and which they, in turn, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... said Byrne whimsically. 'We're all penned out on a wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else is, it would ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the familiar avenues and the cool, trim lawn, and the great trees. Marjorie's tongue all at once loosened; she chattered whimsically, like an excited child. ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... 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, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... indeed consists in good manual rubbing, or the application of a little elbow-grease, as it is whimsically termed; but our finest cabinet work requires something more, where brilliancy ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... a doctor then. If he tries to tell the truth for once he'll strangle," suggested Selwyn whimsically ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... that it be so portioned out as to last till they 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
... to palm off a counterfeit bill in settlement of the debt. This may have led to a blow, or more likely only to an argument during which a bomb was dropped and exploded, followed quickly by the other explosion. Dead hand, counterfeit bill and ring were flung whimsically to the surface of the earth together, and the leaning rocks had been astonishingly broken from beneath through this trivial quarrel. Had it not been for this squabble the Jasper B. and all on board ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... stray pebbles, loosened by the ungentle tread of pitching hoofs, skidded twice as far as in calm weather. The gray sky bent threateningly above them, wind-torn into flying scud but never showing a hint of blue. Later there might be rain, sleet, snow—or sunshine, as nature might whimsically direct; but for the present she seemed content with only the chill wind that blew the very heart out ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... to prevent, and she would forgive him more than that. He had always had a strong curiosity in regard to those papers, but his curiosity so far had been an inactive one; he had never before been alone at the Hall since his grandmother's death. He wheeled about on his chair and looked whimsically at the divan. "Have I your permission, O most fascinating of grandmothers?" he demanded aloud. "No answer. That means I ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the point!—upon a precious victim? The lady of the feathers thus deliberately abandoned by Julian would suffer perhaps almost to the limit of her capability of pain, but Valentine would have lost sight of her in the dark, and though he would have conquered that spectral opposition which she had whimsically offered to him—he laughed to himself now, thinking of his fear of it—he would not see that greatest vision, the flight of his enemy. These thoughts flashed through his mind, moving him to an answer that ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... some faint idea," Luck drawled whimsically. "Look over there, Andy over toward Albuquerque. Is that a mirage again, or do you ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... "Well," laughed Schoverling whimsically, "I might as well show under true colors, since you have led the way," and he called in all the men. At sight of their real numbers, Selim gave a ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... lounging intimately in the single rocker the room boasted; yet once again the bald fact remained that though it was not yet nine by the clock, he was present, his legs comfortably crossed, his eyes, beneath drooping lids, whimsically observing the girl as she went about the perfunctory labour of putting the place ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... appreciation spoken to David 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
... 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 visited for the sake of a single picture!" And a burlesque resolution to carry off the picture ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... on the opposite bank, resided the witty but profligate Sir Richard Steele, in a house which he whimsically denominated "the hovel;" and "from the Hovel at Hampton Wick, April 7, 1711," he dedicated the fourth volume of the Tatler to Charles, Lord Halifax. This was probably about the time he became surveyor of the royal stables ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... man," said a senator, "who once applied to Lincoln for the post of doorkeeper to the House. This man had no right to ask Lincoln for anything. It was necessary to repulse him. But Lincoln repulsed him gently and whimsically without hurting his feelings, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... odd to you, Sarge, to see me in this rig?" he asked whimsically. "It beats punching cows, though—that is, when a fellow discovers that ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... so bare, fairly sagged and steamed with offerings of Thanksgiving. Somehow the steam got into Eph's eyes and made them wet, till all he could do was to say whimsically: ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... door of the apartment, when Miss Vernon, whose movements were sometimes so rapid as to seem almost instinctive, overtook me, and, catching hold of my arm, stopped me with that air of authority which she could so whimsically assume, and which, from the naivete and simplicity of her manner, had an effect so ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... as he spoke them, lame enough and trivial in the face of Michel's passionate lament. But they had an astonishing effect upon the guide. The flow of words stopped at once, he looked at his young patron almost whimsically and a little smile played ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... to reduce the art of literature to its component sense- elements is therefore vain. Memory, "the warder of the brain," is a fickle trustee, whimsically lavish to strangers, giving up to the appeal of a spoken word or unspoken symbol, an odour or a touch, all that has been garnered by the sensitive capacities of man. It is the part of the writer to play upon memory, confusing what belongs to one sense with what belongs ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... fine drifting mists of aeons, the downright plunge of precipices, all the savageness of harsh rock, unsoftened by other vegetation than rusty moss and the dull green splashes of lichen, all this was hidden, except when the mist, white and delicate where we stood, but thick and black above, opened whimsically and delusively, as mountain mists will do, and gave us vistas into the upper desolation. After such momentary rifts the mist thickened again, and swooped forward as if to involve our station, but noon sunshine, reverberated from the plains and valleys ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... blame you for not believing me. It is against your whole theory of life. Not to believe in yourself were a great calamity. My grandfather was so unfortunately accurate that with advancing years he came whimsically to consider himself infallible. And when, urged by the clamoring of his equally accurate family, he sometimes consented to consult the dictionary, and he found that he differed from it, it never disturbed his ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... too. You have a perfect right to do as you please with your money, and I have an equally perfect right to accept your gifts. We are all afraid of the world, aren't we? That's probably at the bottom of my doddering. Cutty, what is love?" she broke off, whimsically. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... injury, to inflict a great affront. A deliberately 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 father had always been remarkable for ill ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... when he read that a great German steamship company had some thoughts of putting on a train of Pullman cars from the port of arrival to the mercantile metropolis which was the real end of their ships' voyages. He thought, whimsically, perversely, how little difference it would make to that pair, how little to those measureless most whose journeys shall end in heaven, where Pullman passengers, or even passengers by the ordinary ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... another with all the energy of amateurs when it occurred to me that Mrs. Croly might be tired and ready to go to her room for the night. Bending over I whispered, "Come, dear, you must be weary of all this." She turned slowly in her chair, and looking up into my face, smiling whimsically, said: "Oh, no, not yet! I am enjoying the music just as ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... whimsically, that the two young people might have stepped out of the door of Bernstein's studio straight into this garden, judging from their ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... it aside, but carefully gathered up the fragments of the crystalline stone. "Don't tell of me!" he said, looking at me whimsically. "This is the sort of nonsense which our sensible friends won't understand. But now that I know that you care about stones, we will have a rare hunt together one of these days. But mind—no stuff about geology! It's beauty that we are in ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 you—on a farm in the depths of ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... gullies had fled before the first rays, he was again riding up the hill 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 take that ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... was whimsically struck by a kind of family likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he looked like a clever pupil's drawing from a plaster-cast—while ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... conduct of life as well as upon 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 ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... always see plenty of game when you haven't got a gun; and so I guess we'll run across all sorts of things, from bobcats to alligators!" Paul went on to remark, whimsically, but there was one scout who chose to take his words seriously, and ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... greatest accomplishments consisted of some skill in bakery and the handling of half-broken teams; but she had once or twice given him what he recognised as excellent advice. There was something incongruous in the situation, but, as usual, he preferred to regard it whimsically. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... bustled about his shop, in pettish displeasure at being summoned hither so hastily, to the interruption of his more abstract studies; and, unwilling to renounce the train of calculation which he had put in progress, he mingled whimsically with the fragments of the arithmetical operation, his oratory to the passengers, and angry reflections on his idle apprentices. "What d'ye lack, sir? Madam, what d'ye lack—clocks for hall or table—night- watches—day watches?—Locking wheel ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... eye of the old man struck du Tillet, whose attention had first been attracted by a watch-chain from which hung a pound of jingling gew-gaws, and by a green coat with a collar whimsically cocked up, which gave the old man the semblance of a rattlesnake. The banker approached the usurer to find out how and why he had ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... mood to-night to be unconventional"—the corners of his serious mouth lifted humorously—"to be what I really am," he illuminated, "and to meet you in the same spirit." He paused with a little shrug. "It is a disappointing reversion to the primitive, I must admit." He glanced up whimsically. "May I ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... 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
... combination in art of heterogeneous parts, suggested by some whimsically designed paintings in the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... man, is it to be natural in one's loves and hates! How many quite authoritative Philistines never really let the world know how Bohemian at heart they are! And how much of our modern "artistic feeling" is a pure affectation! Now, whatever Elia was not, he was wantonly, wickedly, whimsically natural. ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... another, with lace dresses in it?" Justine's slight shrug might have seemed theatrical, had it not been a part of the ceaseless dramatic play of her flexible person. "There might be, perhaps...only I'm not sure—" She broke off whimsically. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... and turned it over, gazing at the two little round holes curiously. "Pete, old scout," he said, smiling whimsically, "here's hopin' they never come closer to gettin' you than they did to gettin' me. Keep a-ridin'—for you sure got to be that 'Ridin' Kid from Powder River' this journey—and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the word an instant, glancing whimsically at Peter, a trace of a smile on her lips, then she made her way down a slant declivity and presently returned with an entire flower plant, new to ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... her, whimsically, that she had seen that look when some shabby devil called with a subscription-book. Perhaps he thought she wanted him to put his name down for so much in sympathy—or even in money... The thought made her laugh again. She saw his look change slowly ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... you much—matrimony," he observed whimsically, as he dropped the hand. "You look just like you always did—with your hat on." In the West, not to say in every other locality, there is a time-honored joke about matrimony, for certain strenuous reasons, producing ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... whimsically good in the conduct of the ladies in these particulars, as at first made me smile; but when I considered it more thoroughly, I perceived herein a refinement of charity which, though extremely uncommon, was entirely rational. I found that not contented with merely bestowing on the indigent ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... from his wading-boots to the patent leathers of some of the Angel's friends, and smiled whimsically, but there was no danger of his ever misjudging ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... a frank simplicity, looking at him very honestly and very gravely, and Gilbert felt tacitly rebuked. He was struck by the fact that this country girl, in the coarse dress and sunbonnet, whom he had whimsically likened to a rustic lass, to be helped across a brook for a kiss, had instantly, by a mere glance, clothed the situation in an impregnable mantle of conventionality. He took her basket and held out his hand, feeling as though he were about to assist a princess from her carriage. With a touch ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... 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 ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Body, because every Man thinks he is so to him. He does not seem to contribute any thing to the Mirth of the Company; and yet upon Reflection you find it all happened by his being there. I thought it was whimsically said of a Gentleman, That if Varilas had Wit, it would be the best Wit in the World. It is certain, when a well-corrected lively Imagination and good Breeding are added to a sweet Disposition, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this world, and most men, alas! more valuable than aught in any other world,—LIFE itself,—is at stake; it is subjected to a science, or rather an art, proverbially difficult in theory and uncertain in practice, about which there have been ten thousand varieties of opinion, —whimsically corresponding to the diversity of sect, creed, and priesthood, on which sceptics like you lay so much stress; in which even the wisest and most cautious practitioners confess that their art is at best ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... 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
... like this. Having nothing else to do I've tried whittling—with this result. Tie it up, Lu, and explain yourself—if you can," he answered, whimsically holding out a finger he had cut ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... to tell you the wrong done to the sex by the rigour of modern law. You have stamped the foot at it often enough. I mean, not so much the separation in the whimsically-called union houses, for, as husbands go, they may have little to complain of on that score; but that dire injustice which throws upon woman the whole penalty of a mutual crime, of which the instigator is always man. Then, is she not injured by the legislative removal of the sanctity of marriage, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... 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 were not infrequent, when ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Ceremoniale Aulae Byzant. tom. ii. c. 15, p. 343-345: the style of Olga, or Elga. For the chief of Barbarians the Greeks whimsically borrowed the title of an Athenian magistrate, with a female termination, which would have astonished ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... fire!" said Mr. Morris, sinking down luxuriously in a chair before the blazing logs. "I had almost forgot what the sight of one was like, and I was beginning to wish that this"—he looked down and tapped his sound leg, laughing a little whimsically, "were wood, too. I would have suffered ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... to the bath-house, though, Ted laughed at himself rather whimsically. That extraordinary day-dream of the slave and the Elinor Princess! It helped sometimes, to make pictures of the very impossible—even of things as impossible as that. If Elinor had only been older before the war came along and changed ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... 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 hope ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... headquarters as there. Ever after she stayed. She took possession of the alley and of headquarters, where the reporters had their daily walk, as if they were hers by right of conquest, which in fact they were. With her whimsically grave countenance, in which all the cares of the vast domain she made it her daily duty to oversee were visibly reflected, she made herself a favorite with every one except the "beanery-man" on the corner, who denounced her angrily, when ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... us a coldness not of the weather crept into Mary Virginia's eyes. She did not speak, but bowed formally. Mr. Hunter, holding her gaze for a moment, lifted his brows whimsically and smiled; then, bowing, he passed on. She stood looking after him, her lips closed firmly upon ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... member, but it brought neither strength nor popularity to the administration. At the end of it the king dismissed them, and the Chatham Government was formed—that strange combination which has been made famous by Burke's description of it as a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed, such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tessellated pavement without cement, that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand upon. There was no obvious reason why Burke should not have joined the new ministry. The change ...
— Burke • John Morley
... grotesque was first applied as a generic appellation in the latter part of the fifteenth century, when the "grottoes," or baths of ancient Rome, and the lowermost apartments of houses then exhumed, exhibited whimsically designed wall-decorations, which attracted the attention of Raffaelle and other artists, who resuscitated and modified the style; adopting it for the famous Loggie of the Vatican and for garden ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... Christmas alone, and the shadowy hope for April lent a new tone even to their gayety, and deepened the exquisite happiness of the dark, snowbound day. The tiny house was full of laughter, for Bert had given his wife all the little things she had from time to time whimsically desired. The fancy cheeses, and the perfumes and soaps, made her laugh and laugh as she unwrapped them. There were fuzzy wash-cloths—a particular fancy of hers—and new library paste and new hair-pins, and a can-opener that made her exclaim: "Bert, that was cute of you!" and ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... you 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 stumped on ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... Darrow smiled whimsically. "Indeed I do, Helen," he said quietly; "that is why I don't want to touch his life. Science would ruin him quicker than an office—in the long run. What he wants is a job of action—something out West—or in the construction of our great and good city. Now, if I had a political pull, instead of ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... wanted, we learned to inquire which was the worst road to such and such a place. That we knew would be the road for us. From their point of view, the road we were on was as bad as could be; but, as I said, the undertaker evidently understood us, and had sent us into a region of whimsically sudden hills and rock and wooded wilderness, a swart country of lonely, rugged uplands, with but a solitary house here and there for miles. It was resting at the top of one of these hard-won acclivities that we came upon—and remember ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... is an ambiguous gift, Madam," says I, whimsically; "and may mean much or little. Give me leave to ask whether 't is Pursuit or Attainment as your la'ship ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... if the interview had been specially trying, she might have been seen afterwards to glance whimsically across to the picture, recently enlarged from an old photograph, of a fine-looking man in full hunting-rig standing beside a ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... of one of those sharply-defined masses of cloud already mentioned, was seen slowly to emerge into an open area of blue space, a queer, heterogeneous, but apparently solid substance, so oddly shaped, so whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be sufficiently admired, by the host of sturdy burghers who stood open-mouthed below. What could it be? In the name of all the vrows and devils in Rotterdam, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... with all her might. Then she sang it. She laughed in very scorn of the booby soldiers she had seen. A million of these, with all the firearms in the world, could not prevail against the flower of the South. Then she had begun whimsically to sing a verse of a song she had heard the week before, and suddenly her exaltation was fled, and her fingers left the keys. Gaining the window, trembling, half-expectant, she flung open a blind. The troops, the people, were gone, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... velvet. About eight of the morning the three men, each brain teeming with its own ambitions and its peculiar appreciation of the mysterious Mother, started off for one of their habitual rambles. Ivan was in a mood whimsically frank, but changeful; and he blew the conversation this way and that out of sheer wantonness, till presently it touched a point on which Balakirev suddenly laid a detaining hand. Gregoriev had been analyzing the character of Ophelia—the delicate, fantastic disorder of her pathetic ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... exquisite compliment a man has ever paid to him is worded something like this: "Well, dear, you certainly know how to make love;" and this compliment is always the reward, not of passion however sustained, or sentiment however refined, but of humour whimsically fantasticating and balancing both. It is the gentle laugh, not violating, but just humanising, that very solemn kiss; the quip that just saves passion from toppling over the brink into bathos, that ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... very hard,' he half murmured to himself, half to me; yet he added whimsically enough, being struck with the seeming absurdity of such a view, 'I must try to bear it. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb'" ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... a sister—Minnie Hescott. I should like to ask them both." She looks at him. "They are quite presentable," says she whimsically. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... I hope you didn't hurt your fingers, putting the fire out. Are you a very awkward person?" she asked, looking up at him whimsically. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... Katherine smiled whimsically as she looked after him. "My first 'romance,'" she thought. "With a baby elephant! Slim is a dear boy and I hate myself now because I used to make such fun of him." And where the passionate laments of the girls had failed to move her, the thought of Slim's offered sacrifice brought ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... somewhere on its wings. When I came to the edge of the sand basin where perhaps Khufu saw it lying nearly four thousand years before the birth of Christ, the Sphinx and the bird were quite alone. The bird flew near the Sphinx, whimsically turning this way and that, flying now low, now high, but ever returning to the magnet which drew it, which held it, from which it surely longed to extract some sign of recognition. It twittered, it posed itself in ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... by contradicting the action. She gave him the sidelong glance which he was least prepared to withstand—though in justice to Billy Louise, she was absolutely unconscious of its general effectiveness—and twisted her lips whimsically. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... dormitory. They'll call the girls 'Susans,' I dare say; but I sha'n't mind, and I don't suppose they will either. Besides, boys would be sure to be called 'Grangers,' so what's the difference?" She smiled whimsically, and made a ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... of the mounting sun, tempered by the cool river draught, the yellow sandstone bluffs, whimsically decorated with sparse patches of greenery, seemed to waver as though seen through shimmering silken gauze. And over it all was the hush of a dream, except when, in a spasmodic freshening of the breeze, the rude mast creaked and a sleepy ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... Peter witnessed with delight. He longed to tell his father so, but unfortunately was granted no opportunity. Once, and once only, did Mr. Coddington refer to the project and that was to inquire whimsically of Peter if his friend Strong was satisfied with the preparations, and whether he had any suggestions to make. Young Strong had no suggestions, Peter declared. He thought the park perfect. And indeed it was! Neither thought nor money had been spared ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... my Frankfort story," said M'Iver, whimsically. "I only hope we may win out of Dalness as snugly as we won out of the castle of the cousin ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... nothing brave about that. I wanted to get in badly enough, but there wasn't, room. Jove! It was cold, wasn't it?" His ready smile played whimsically about his lips, and the girl felt herself curiously drawn to him. Since he chose to make light of himself, she determined to ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... after a pause of reproach which I enjoyed—"your Uncle Lan's toned down a lot since then ... married ... has four children ... one every year." And Alice laughed whimsically. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... who was counsel for the defendant, told him, that several parts of his accusation were absolutely spitatical. [Footnote: In the original sputatilica, worthy to be spit upon. It appears, from the connection, to have been a very unclassical word, whimsically derived by the author of it from sputa, spittle.] My Lords, cried Rufius to the judges, I shall be cruelly over-reached, unless you give me your assistance. His charge overpowers my comprehension; and I am afraid he has some unfair design ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... meditation had completed it, but with a cumulative effect for her husband's general sense of her method that caused him to overflow, whimsically enough, in his corner, into an ejaculation now frequent on his lips for the relief that, especially in communion like the present, it gave him, and that Fanny had critically traced to the quaint example, the aboriginal homeliness, still so delightful, of ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... answered whimsically. "My only client refuses to speak to me! Perhaps you could get something out of him ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... sensitive imagination, every concrete embodiment of a past order of things testifies to real convictions once suffered for. Durham, at any rate, always alive in practical issues to the view of the other side, had enough sympathy left over to spend it sometimes, whimsically, on such perceptions of difference. Today, especially, the assurance of success—the sense of entering like a victorious beleaguerer receiving the keys of the stronghold—disposed him to a sentimental perception of what the other side might have to say for itself, in the language of old ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... lean forward and to grin downward, even when speaking to a big man like Macandrew. He turned to his chief now, and both hands went up to his spectacles. In the way the corners of his mouth turned up before he spoke, whimsically wrinkling his nose, and in his intent and amused regard, there was a suggestion of the mockery of a low immortal for beings who are fated earnestly to frustrate themselves. His grin gave you the uncomfortable ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... to know it, they'd think it was so funny, but—" She paused uncertainly, and looked questioningly into his face. "Maybe you won't understand what I mean, but sometimes I'd like to be good myself. Awfully good, I mean." She smiled whimsically. "Wouldn't Connie scream if she could hear that? Now you won't give me away, will you? But I mean it. I don't think of it very often, but sometimes, why, Professor, honestly, I wouldn't care if I were as good as Prudence!" She paused dramatically, ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... circumstances to aid him with anything more than a temporary home, and the aspect of every one seemed somewhat changed. In fact, his career at college had disappointed his friends, and they began to doubt his being the great genius they had fancied him. He whimsically alludes to this circumstance in that piece of autobiography, "The Man in Black," in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... parents, and their ancestors, and their forthcoming progeny, and—that, seemed to fix things. They got civil then. Sort of raised their hats, and—got busy. You'd be astonished if you saw the way they hatched out—after that. You see," he added whimsically, "there's just about only one way of makin' life act the way you need it. Set your back teeth into the seat of ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... thought whimsically that it was lucky no one else had heard that question. "So hard that my success at ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... Daylight's tone was whimsically plaintive, but secretly he was delighted with her confession of loneliness. It was almost worth the loss of the mare to get that out of her. At any rate, he meant something to her. He was ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London |
