"Eccentric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stormy and so continued for the rest of the voyage. They were treated to some marvelous lightning effects. Its forked tongues lapped the water in the most eccentric manner—fearful, though intensely beautiful. The poor darkey cowered in fright on the bottom of the boat with covered eyes, while Paul and the Doctor were so impressed with the grandeur of the manifestation, as to be unmindful of ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... essential to him that Jane should visit the Dodds. Surrounded by pitfalls, threatened with a new and mysterious assailant in the eccentric, but keen and resolute Sampson, this artful man, who had now become a very Machiavel—constant danger and deceit had so sharpened and deepened his great natural abilities—was preparing amongst other defences a shield; and that shield was a sieve; and that ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... arose and howled like a Siberian Wolf, which was Impolite of him. Before he went Home he did manage to get a little real Eating, but every one said he was very Eccentric to prefer such a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... twice Mariam had spoken of her power, and gave him to understand that she did not require money; the squalor of her room made this seem rather enigmatical to the sick man, but he knew such people were sometimes eccentric in their mode of living, and this might possibly account for his surroundings. However, it was no affair of his, she had been an angel of goodness to him, and he had no right to pry into ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... cattle and lapsing into silence, frequently, that bore the signs both of expectancy and reflection. Young men and young women sat together on one side of the house whispering and giggling. Alone among them was the big and eccentric granddaughter of Mrs Bisnette, who was always slapping some youngster for impertinence. Jed Feary and Squire Town sat together behind a pile of books, both looking very serious. The long hair and beard of the old poet were now white and his form bent with age. He ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... man's work fails to account for his leadership and influence, we examine his personality; and here everything is interesting. Because of a few oft-quoted passages from Boswell's biography, Johnson appears to us as an eccentric bear, who amuses us by his growlings and clumsy antics. But there is another Johnson, a brave, patient, kindly, religious soul, who, as Goldsmith said, had "nothing of the bear but his skin"; a man who battled like a hero against poverty and pain and melancholy and the awful ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... susceptible of innumerable modifications, according to the innumerable varieties of intellect and temper in which it may be found. Men of unquiet minds and violent ambition followed a fearfully eccentric course, darted wildly from one extreme to another, served and betrayed all parties in turn, showed their unblushing foreheads alternately in the van of the most corrupt administrations and of the most factious oppositions, were privy to the most guilty mysteries, first of the Cabal, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who would call "Johnny Appleseed" "queer;" others, "freakish;" again, "eccentric," etc. This peculiar, odd personage may be described by all these terms. But the ruling passion of his life was to plant apple-seeds, because he loved to see trees grow and because he loved his fellow-men. ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... "You are eccentric," said Molly, "or you wouldn't dream of marrying one of us. As to being happy, it isn't my nature to be miserable. I don't want to be a countess, but I do want to help my people. That in ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... pleasure to wear in society the coxcombical and eccentric costume of character I had first adopted, and to cultivate the arts which won from women the smile which cheered and encouraged me in my graver contest with men. It was only to Ellen Glanville, that I laid aside an affectation, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soil, I will quote from another and perfectly reliable observer a sample narrative of its startling mental traits. At Oak Lodge, east coast of Florida, we lived for a time in the home of a pair of pack rats whose eccentric work was described to me by Mrs. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... to do in order to clear up your suspicions. (To Don Silvio). In the meanwhile, if you persist in your resolution to please me, do not forget, Count, that I have need of your arm, and that whatever may be the outbreaks of temper of an eccentric man, you must do your utmost to punish our tyrants. In a word, do not listen to what he may say to you in his wrath, and in order to induce you so to act, remember that ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... doctor owned considerable property, and Miss Regina proved a capable manager; as a collector of rents she certainly had no equal—to that I can cheerfully testify. She was not popular in A——, nor was her eccentric brother. Unpleasant tales were told about Matthai. I never knew all the particulars, but they had something to do with the murder of a slave in antebellum days. The townsfolk were extremely reticent on the subject, and very mercifully ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... disliked all eccentric departures from custom and routine; and he felt especially suspicious of the change proposed in the life of Agnes. With new interests to occupy her mind, she might be less favourably disposed to listen to him, on the next occasion when he urged his suit. The influence ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... "I have shoes on that are not mates," she exclaimed—"cloth and leather: that looks rather queer, doesn't it? Do you think it will be noticed? I could not decide which pair to wear, and put on one of each to see the effect: afterward I forgot them. Now, I suppose that would be thought eccentric, though any one might make the same mistake. It shows I have two pairs of shoes," she added more cheerfully, "and they are both black. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... "He's certainly eccentric. We had a long talk in the train, and he told me a lot about his baby, which had been keeping him awake at night. I was out yachting one day ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... pumpkin into two hemispheres, with the utmost accuracy, and it is excavated by pouring boiling water inside, to soften the pulp. The inside is cleaned with great neatness, and they execute upon the outside various designs and paintings, both fanciful and eccentric, such as birds, beasts, ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... necessarily, his style was cosmopolitan and eccentric. It comprised Americanisms and Cockneyisms and Parisian argot, with constant reminiscences of the authorised version of the Old Testament, and with chips off Molie're, and with shreds and tags of what-not snatched from a hundred-and-one queer corners. It was, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... startling when I knew how vehement his love had been and when I saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix. In the country, where ideas are scarce, a man overflowing with original thought and devoted to a system, as Louis was, might well be regarded as eccentric, to say the least. His language would, no doubt, seem the stranger because he so rarely spoke. He would say, "That man does not dwell in heaven," where any one else would have said, "We are not made on the same pattern." Every clever man has his own quirks of speech. The broader his genius, the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... company was greatly promoted by the humours of an eccentric personage whom Mr. Bracebridge always addressed with the quaint appellation of Master Simon. He was a tight, brisk little man, with the air of an arrant old bachelor. His nose was shaped like the bill of a parrot; his face slightly pitted with the small-pox, with a dry perpetual ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... and diagonally, in the direction of the moves of different chess pieces—king, queen, rook and bishop. Nothing came of that, whatever I did; the thing was as unreadable as ever. But there remained one chess-move to try—the eccentric move of the knight; the move of one square forward, backward or sideways, and then one square diagonally, or, as it has sometimes been more concisely expressed, the move to the next square but one of a different colour from that on which it rests. I tried the ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... treads on the heels of the pathetic for it is not probable that Miss Stisted valued very much the photograph of what in her "True Life," she thought fit to call "an eccentric tomb" in a "shabby sectarian cemetery." [679] The removal into 67, Baker Street, took place in September 1891, and a little later Lady Burton hired a cottage at Wople End, near Mortlake, where she spent her summer months. During the last decade of her husband's life she had become, to use her own ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... point of Brianchoil is a very small island with a few trees upon it, of which the boatman related a story that was new to me. He said an eccentric individual, many years ago, built his house upon it—but it was soon beaten down by the winds and waves. Having built it up with like fortune several times, he at last desisted, saying, "bought wisdom was the best;" since when ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... a nice boy in some ways," Mrs. Lindley Grant had said on the occasion of the warning; "but, like all drinking men, he is a broken reed, eccentric and irresponsible. No daughter of mine could marry him. I'd rather bury her. And if you want facts Lindley will give ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 'Hollo,' said that eccentric functionary, 'furniter's cheap where you come from, Sir. Self-acting ink, that 'ere; it's wrote your mark upon the wall, old gen'l'm'n. Hold still, Sir; wot's the use o' runnin' arter a man as has made ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... savory viands the larders presented; Such wondrous confections the bakers invented: Such pasties and cates of eccentric design; Such sparkling decanters of rarest old wine; And ready at hand was the great wassail-bowl, And the jolly old boar's head, with lemon, so droll. The nook for musicians was carefully planned, And carols and glees would be played ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... and Mr. GLADSTONE. The character of the evil genius of the plot, Lord Rufus Doldrum, is partly modelled on ALCIBIADES, but in its main lines is reminiscent of Mrs. EDDY and Major WINSTON CHURCHILL. On the other hand the eccentric Lord Wymondham, who creates a sensation by appearing at a Cabinet meeting in accordion-pleated pyjamas, is understood to be an entirely imaginary personage. The novel, which has been running in Wanamaker's Weekly, will shortly be published ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... you are going with the Prince of Wales, Mrs. H. Ward, and a Mr. Arthur Roberts to shoot kangaroos in Australia is at least exaggerated. These marsupials, though their appearance is sufficiently eccentric to suggest the conscientious objector, will—I am credibly informed—fight desperately in defence of their young. If I may venture to ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... little pale, a little silent; her eyes were sometimes swollen, and her nose red; but she was at an age when such appearances are generally attributed to a bad cold in the head, rather than to any more sentimental reason. They felt towards her as towards an old friend, a kindly, useful, eccentric old maid. She did not expect more, or wish them to remember that she might once have had other hopes, and more youthful feelings. Doctor Trevor thanked her very warmly for staying with his wife, when he returned ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... for show. No doubt, Ecelino used such things, and many worse, of which even the ingenuity of Signor P—— cannot conceive. But he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of history, and what he can do to realize them he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... that all religion in the army is of this kind. But the broadly indisputable result of the preaching to which our men have been subjected is this: They have come to regard religion as an obscure and difficult subject in which a few people with eccentric tastes are interested, but which simple men had better leave alone. And the tragedy lies in the fact that the very men who think and speak thus about religion have in them something very ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... where I chance to be lord of the manor I have, by means of my own, set lads drilling and training. It is supposed to be a form of amusement and an eccentric whim of mine and it is a change from eternal cricket. I have given prizes and made an occasional speech on the ground that English brawn is so enviable a possession that it ought to develop itself to the utmost. When I once went to the length of adding that each Englishman should ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to ladies by steps.' Castle Square itself was occupied 'by a fantastic edifice, too large for the space in which it stood, though too small to accord well with its castellated style, erected by the second Marquis of Lansdowne.' The whole of this building disappeared after the death of its eccentric owner in November 1809. His half-brother and successor in the peerage—the well-known statesman—became in after life an ardent admirer of Jane Austen's novels, and told a friend[170] that 'one of the circumstances of his life which he looked back ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... him to dance with you," he said imperiously. "He is too eccentric. He doesn't know how to behave; and ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... says the same authority, "an eccentric is made to revolve on an axis in the manner of a piston, and two doors, forming part of the side of the cylinder, press upon the eccentric. The points of these doors are armed with swivelling brasses, which apply themselves to the eccentric and ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... position, drenched with the rain and shivering with the cold, he remained some minutes, attempting in vain, with straining eyes, to pierce through the gloom of the night, when a flash of lightning, which darted from the zenith and continued its eccentric career until it was lost behind the horizon, discovered to him the object of his research. But a few moments did he behold it, and then, from the sudden contrast, a film appeared to swim over his aching eyes, and all was more intensely, more horribly dark than ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the quick surface of her mind glimpsing a parallel. "There have been eccentric inventors, starving their families while they sought such chimeras as perpetual motion. Doubtless their wives loved them, and suffered with them and for them, not because of but in spite of their ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... It was a human figure, but hardly recognizable as such, on account of the fact that it now hung head downward, with one leg firmly gripped by the tenacious slip-noose, and the other, together with a pair of wildly flung arms, cutting all sorts of eccentric circles ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... an odd sort," he remarked. "I suppose it is one of the penalties of genius to be compelled to do eccentric things. I ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to have Mr. Damon here to bless the submarine and his liver and collar buttons a few times," put in Mr. Sharp, who brought in another bundle. He referred to an eccentric individual Who had recently made an airship voyage with himself and Tom, Mr. Damon's peculiarity being to use continually such expressions as: "Bless ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... aided and abetted the riots in Scotland. Of all men in the world Lord George Gordon was the most unfit to preside over a Protestant Association. He was a member of parliament it is true, but he was chiefly remarkable there for his eccentric habits, slovenly dress, and by a progressive insanity, which on some occasions partook of the nature of oratorical inspiration. He was, however, known to be firm in his hatred towards the Papists, and adverse to any relief being afforded to them. Thus, in May, 1779, when Burke ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... monuments is one of the most singular; it resembles a greyhound, but has long pointed ears and a short curled tail: a closely allied variety still exists in Northern Africa; for Mr. E. Vernon Harcourt (1/6. 'Sporting in Algeria' page 51.) states that the Arab boar-hound is "an eccentric hieroglyphic animal, such as Cheops once hunted with, somewhat resembling the rough Scotch deer-hound; their tails are curled tight round on their backs, and their ears stick out at right angles." With this most ancient variety a ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... half-brother of that Prince Albert of Prussia, who is now Regent of the Grand Duchy of Brunswick. Old Prince Albert of Prussia, his father, was married to the eccentric and half-crazy Princess Marianne of the Netherlands. Not long after the birth of the present Prince Albert, she lost her heart to such an extent to a chamberlain in her household that her husband was compelled to divorce her, whereupon she contracted a morganatic ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Thuringia, Saxony. Coming to New York in 1746, Berkenmeyer had him subscribe to the Loonenburg Church constitution. His parish included the congregations at Rheinbeck, Camp, Staatsburg, Ancrum, and Tar Bush. The capriciousness with which Hartwick, who remained an eccentric bachelor all his life, performed his pastoral duties soon gave rise to dissatisfaction. Complaints were lodged against him with Berkenmeyer, who finally wrote against him publicly. In 1750 Muhlenberg conducted a visitation in Hartwick's congregations, and reports as follows: "He went to Pennsylvania ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... been in office only two months, and in that short time had not had many cases to try, of course. He had no knowledge of laws and courts except what he had picked up since he came into office. He was a sore trouble to the lawyers, for his rulings were pretty eccentric sometimes, and he stood by them with Roman simplicity and fortitude; but the people were well satisfied with him, for they saw that his intentions were always right, that he was entirely impartial, and that he usually made up in good sense what he lacked in technique, so to speak. He now perceived ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the novel, though not necessary to it alone, which Defoe, Addison, and Swift, each in his several way, worked mightily to supply: and that was a flexible business-like "workaday" prose style. Not merely so long as men aimed at the eccentric and contorted styles of Euphues and the Arcadia, but so long as the old splendid and gorgeous, but cumbrous and complicated pre-Restoration style lasted, romances were possible, but novels were not. You might indeed pick out of Shakespeare—especially from such parts ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... dignity in the disused dusty galleries of the chateau, which now, turned into a citadelle, stood upon a high point of the cliffs commanding the town. The term rambling might well be applied to this house, for in its eccentric construction it seemed to have wandered at will half-way up the hill-side on which it was built. It had wings and abutments, and flights of stone steps leading from one part to another. There was "la grande maison de Madame," "la maison du jardin," and "la maison de Monsieur." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to an end in the autumn when he was sent to study with the Reverend Caleb Bradley, a somewhat eccentric graduate of Harvard, who resided at Stroudwater, Maine, and with whom he remained during the winter. [Footnote: S. T. Pickard's "Hawthorne's First Diary."]He refers to this period of tuition in the short story of "The Vision ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... essays in a wrong direction. That may not be at all our own opinion. We may think that, when a work contains many unforgettable phrases, it cannot be altogether devoid of literary merit. We may even see passages of a high poetry here and there among its eccentric contents. But when all is said, Walt Whitman is neither a Milton nor a Shakespeare; to appreciate his works is not a condition necessary to salvation; and I would not disinherit a son upon the question, nor even think much the worse of a critic, for I should always have an idea what ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His manners, too, from the native point of view, are as bad as his habits are unclean. He is respected for his wisdom, hated for his airs of superiority, pitied for his ignorance of many things, feared for what he represents, laughed at for his eccentric habits and customs, despised for his infidelity to the Faith, abhorred for his want of beauty, according to native standards of taste, and loved not at all. The men disguise their feelings, skilfully as only ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... horizontal cross section of the cylinder; steam chest and the valves; cam wrist plate and cut-off mechanism; shaft for the cam plate; cross head; side view and section through the centre of the eccentric ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... his projects, closed his house to the world, and lived in his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one of those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they arrive, and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly, like the wheels mentioned in Holy Writ. Perhaps he felt the need of flying from himself. Without ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... then, could better suit him than to compose a novel in which he might give full play to his simious humour, startle more hideously than ever his straighter-laced neighbours, defiantly defend his own character, and caricature whatever eccentric figure in the society around him might offer the most tempting ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... people who, as the saying goes, are born with a gold spoon in the mouth. Unlike most inheritors of great wealth, he not only spent freely but added even more freely to the ancestral holdings. He was moneyed enough to do as he pleased without being considered eccentric; he could even afford to be esthetic, and to prefer Epicurus to St. Paul. He had a highly important collection of modern paintings, and an even more valuable one of Tanagra figurines, old Greek coins, and medieval ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... containing specimens of birds, all of which I examined at my leisure. On a large easel before me stood an unfinished portrait, other pictures hung about, and in the room were two young pupils; and at a glance I discovered that the eccentric stranger was, like myself, a naturalist and an artist. The artist, as modest as he was odd, showed me how he laid on the paint on his pictures, asked after my own pursuits, and showed a friendly spirit which ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... across a gate at a crop, or view the state of a thatch, but his mind worked sympathetically with some neighbour's economies. He gave away little in hard money; but his charities in time and personal service were endless. And the countryside respected him thoroughly: for he was eccentric in the fashion of a true Englishman, and, with all his benevolence, you had to get up early to ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... already had of wilder men and more mysterious forces than could be found in Egyptian courts or even Egyptian camps. It was the combination, of which we have already spoken, of detailed experience and almost eccentric sympathy. In practice it was his knowledge of Arabic, and still more his ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... sweet chime of delighted laughter when the judge seized the airy bit of lace as if it had been the heaviest and hottest of crowbars. She laughed again when she looked at his face. He had an odd trick of lifting one of his eyebrows very high and at an acute angle when perplexed or ill at ease. This eccentric left eyebrow—now quite wedge-shaped—had gone up almost to the edge of his tousled gray hair. Ruth patted his great clumsy hands with her little ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... L'Oiseau, "you must cure yourself of these hoydenish tricks of yours before you expose them to your uncle—remember how whimsical and eccentric ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... so many are living witnesses, I should certainly fear to attempt anything like a description of this very remarkable man; so liable would any sketch, however faint and imperfect, be to the accusation of caricature, when all was so singular and so eccentric. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... this epistle over several times—at first with a feeling of satisfaction, and then with one of disappointment. I had come on some curious information, and yet hardly what I wanted. He was an eccentric man, a devil-worshipper, and rumoured to have the power of the evil eye. I could believe the young lady's eyes, when endowed with that cold, grey shimmer which I had noticed in them once or twice, to be capable of any evil which human eye ever wrought; but still ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it was plain that his madness took a somewhat eccentric turn; that, in fact, he was not fool ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... led up to the cool-looking old house, and my host, lingering in his progress at this rose-tree and that, forgot all about me at least twice, waking up and apologising humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I put two and two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor, eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend was already beginning to form; to myself an object of special awe, in that he was alleged to have written a real book. "Heaps o' books," Martha, my informant, said; but I knew the exact rate ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... sank again on the grand Australian bush—the nurse and tutor of eccentric minds, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... but eccentric relative of my wife. He had made us no wedding gift beyond his best wishes, but he had then informed us that at the birth of each of our prospective sons he should place in the bank to Silvia's account the sum of five thousand dollars. We had never invited ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... shop-keeper did not ask her very much more than its genuine value and next day all Paris knew of the transaction and flocked to the Opera to see her in the ornaments which had cost the Russian Duke his friendship for the bearer. But though eccentric, impulsive and domineering, no whisper had ever attached itself to her name. On her return to her native New York, was she not welcomed, feted, honored, besieged with invitations everywhere? People felt she was different from the girl who went away. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... with a huge head and a remarkable shock of coal-black hair. Having hastily risen from bed, he had retained his pyjamas, but a long frock-coat hung nearly to his slippers, and in one hand he carried a pair of gloves, and in the other a huge eccentric silk hat of the true chimney-pot type. These were details, and one might have passed them over. But the man's face was sadly against him. He had the slyest eyes I have ever seen; that peculiar shifty glance which invariably sets one against an individual. ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... came farthest from the sun that part of the year would have the temperature mitigated by its removal to a greater distance from the source of heat. A corresponding effect would be produced in the winter season. As long as the orbit remained eccentric the tendency would be to give alternately intense seasons to each hemisphere through periods of about twelve thousand years, the other hemisphere having at the same time a relatively slight variation in ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... physical effort. It had been the truth when she told him that she understood; but it had touched her strangely all the same: for it had let her see into an unsuspected corner of his nature. He, too, then, had a cranny in his brain, where such fancies lodged—such an eccentric, artist fancy, or whim, or superstition—as that, out of several hundred people, a single individual could distract and disturb. He ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... "No. I thought Mike the Angel was about sixty years old, a crotchety old genius behind a desk, as eccentric as a comet's orbit, and wealthier than Croesus. You're just not what I pictured, ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... it is a shop," said she. "It's just an eccentric little house, that belongs to somebody who's away—a dear old maiden lady, perhaps, a collector of antiques, for her own ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... compositions of any master for the instrument. Another characteristic set of pieces at this time was the "Fantasy Pieces," opus 12, each of which had its own title; also the "Kreisleriana," a series of queer sayings after the manner of one Kreisler, an eccentric old musician in a novel popular at that time. There are also what he called "Novelettes," a series of ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... life-size, so fearfully truthful to nature that when exposed to the public in the street, it immediately attracted a crowd of shuddering gazers. The place of exhibition being within view of the royal palace, the eccentric Viceroy, Don Pedro de Giron, Duke of Ossuna, who chanced to be taking the air on his balcony, inquired the cause of the unusual concourse, and ordered the picture and the artist to be brought into his presence. Being well pleased with both, he purchased ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... society, a well-frequented watering-place generally exhibits for the amusement of the company, and the perplexity and amazement of the more inexperienced, a sprinkling of persons called by the newspapers eccentric characters—individuals, namely, who, either from some real derangement of their understanding, or, much more frequently, from an excess of vanity, are ambitious of distinguishing themselves by some striking peculiarity in dress or address, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... "In you, mademoiselle," he added in a tone yet lower, "I find the woman and the artist divorced. That is a vast advantage—an immense source of power. I am growing more certain of you; you are not merely cleverly eccentric as I thought. You have a great deal that no one can teach you. You have finished that—I wish to take it downstairs to show the men. It will not be ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... stimulant when and where procurable. From the standpoint of one intent upon cutting a few running feet off the waistline measurements this distinctly is wrong, as full well I know. But what would you? I do not wish to pose as an eccentric. I have no desire to be pointed out as a person aiming to make himself conspicuously erratic by behaving differently from the run of his fellows. Since the advent of Prohibition nearly everybody I meet is drinking with an unbridled enthusiasm; and when not engaged in the ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... found him to be a first-rate Greek and Latin scholar, and also a proficient in the poetical literature of his own country. In the course of discourse he repeated some noble lines of Evan Evans, the unfortunate and eccentric Prydydd Hir, or tall poet, the friend and correspondent of Gray, for whom he made literal translations from the Welsh, which the great English genius afterwards wrought ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... quackery (for it is no less) seems to be taken by the rich as a salve for their consciences, and with a belief that famine and fever may be kept at bay by M. Soyer and his kettles, it is right to look at the constitution of this soup of pretence, and the estimate formed of it by the talented but eccentric ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... was metrical. The public was sick of the couplet—had indeed been sickened twice over, if the abortive revolt of Gray and Collins be counted. It did not take, and was quite right in not taking, to the rhymeless, shortened Pindaric of Sayers and Southey, as to anything but an eccentric 'sport' of poetry. What Scott had to offer was practically new, or at least novel. It is universally known—and Scott, who was only too careless of his own claims, and the very last of men to steal or conceal those of others, made no secret of it—that ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... this remarkable woman is one that holds a lesson for all. Eccentric, careless, and fearless; handsome, witty, and learned; ambitious, shrewd, and visionary,—she was one of the strangest compounds of "unlikes" to be met with ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... in.; length, 11/4 in.; width of valve face working over supply port, 3/32 in.; width of space under valve, 3/8 in.; length of the same, 1 in.; distance from center of valve spindle to center of eccentric rod ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... we knew of Meryon's personality and art was to be found in the monograph by Philippe Burty and Beraldi's Les Graveurs du XIX Siecle. Hamerton had written of the French etcher in 1875 (Etching and Etchers), and various anecdotes about his eccentric behaviour were public property. Frederick Wedmore, in his Etching in England, did not hesitate to group Meryon's name with Rembrandt's and Jacquemart's (one feels like employing the Whistlerian formula and asking: Why drag in Jacquemart?); and to-day, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the next half-hour and I'll confess to a keen curiosity about Cyril Jernyngham. He was an amusing and eccentric scapegrace when I last saw him, though that is a very ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... Fortescue, a man of medium fame, but of real genius, whose delightful home was always open to him. Mrs. Fortescue probably knew all about Paul's eccentric menage, but she had been an opera-singer in her day, had known a good many open secrets of the kind, and was a woman of the world. It was not her business to pry into that kind of secret, and she liked the young fellow for many ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... whom it was not given to be the founder of a dynasty was the somewhat eccentric Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav, [1] a great-grandson of Besht. After his death, the Bratzlav Hasidim, who followed the lead of his disciple Rabbi Nathan, suffered cruel persecutions at the hands of the other hasidic factions. The "Bratzlavers" adopted the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... beg you to excuse me for leaving you, my uncle; it is most annoying, but I am compelled to go out. The fact is, I have consented to collaborate with Capus, and he is so eccentric, this dear Alfred—we shall be ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Sassi, whose card was there to prove his coming, had asked for Donna Sabina, and that she had gone out with him in a cab, dressed for walking. Signor Sassi was a highly respectable person, and though it might be a little eccentric, according to the Baroness's view, for Sabina to go out with him in a cab, especially in the afternoon, there could really be no great harm in it. The Baroness would be angry because she had stayed out so late. The Baroness would be much angrier by and by, when she knew what had really happened, ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... although, as a reputation for sanity is quite a valuable asset, nowadays, I should suggest that you keep your mouth closed. Still, if you do speak of it, no one will be in the least surprised. My friends—I haven't many—call me the most eccentric man in Christendom. My enemies wonder how it is that I keep out of the asylum. Personally, I consider myself a perfectly reasonable mortal. I have whims, and I am not afraid to indulge them. I give you this money on one—or perhaps we had better say two conditions. The first is ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... are, Tanya, a fanatic Marxist; her brother, Tokarev, whose soul is a field for spiritual battles; and Varenka, a village school-mistress. There are several eccentric characters around them, such as Serge, a young apostle of a somewhat Nietzschean egoism, Antsov and others. Tanya is none other than Natasha of "Astray," with this great difference, however, that Tanya has found truth already formulated for her, and does not have to grope about for it. Nevertheless, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... myself up tete-a-tete with the Colonel, and took care that even old Getchen, my housekeeper, now deceased, should not trouble me during my work. I had substituted for the wearisome lever of the old fashioned air-pumps, a wheel arranged with an eccentric which transformed the circular movement of the axis into the rectilinear movement required by the pistons: the wheel, the eccentric, the connecting rod, and the joints of the apparatus all worked admirably, and enabled me to do everything by myself. The cold ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... of lawlessness which rendered Rome under Innocent VIII. almost uninhabitable. Venice, praised for its piety by De Comines,[2] was the resort of all the debauchees of Europe who could afford the time and money to visit this modern Corinth. Tom Coryat, the eccentric English traveler, gives a curious account of the splendor and refinement displayed by the demi-monde of the lagoons, and Marston describes Venice as a school of luxury in which the monstrous Aretine played professor.[3] Of the state of morals in Florence Savonarola's sermons ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... before the backward movement began, and he had caught sight of him once, but not since. On the other hand, all the pulses of his village pride had been stirred by one or two visions of Master Jackanapes whirling about on his wonderful horse. He had been easy to distinguish, since an eccentric blow had bared his head without hurting it, for his close golden mop of hair gleamed in the hot sunshine as brightly as the steel of ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... other people? Yes, I dare say she is, but all the Wildes are that, you know. She comes of an eccentric stock. Did you ever happen to ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... (b. 1817, d. 1862). This eccentric American author and naturalist was born at Concord, Mass. He graduated at Harvard University in 1837. He was a good English and classical scholar, and was well acquainted with the literature of the East. His father was a maker of lead pencils, and he followed ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... But Eugene never was friendly with your father from that time. I think he was jealous of old Grandfather's affection; thought the old man loved your father best. And then, as I have said, he was very eccentric and stubborn. Well, your father went away to college and graduated, and then—we were married. Grandfather Page was very angry with him for marrying me. He wanted him to marry somebody else. He told him he would disinherit him if he married me. I ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... began to flush pink and then scarlet. She looked as pretty as a rose, but a little angry, I thought. She put up her head rather haughtily. "Mrs. Chataway is very eccentric," she said. "A genius, quite a genius in her own line. Ada, I won't come down to luncheon. This has been sufficient. Let me have some tea in my own room at four, please." She got up, and her letter and ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... of her feet from indulging in a fancy for a couch of snow on one of the coldest nights of the preceding winter, when, to use a charitable phrase, 'she was not quite herself.' I believe that, even after this melancholy warning, that eccentric person was frequently somebody else. 'However,' as Mrs. Bull said, 'she didn't disturb any one'—and although I could not exactly see the force of this reasoning, I treated it with respectful silence for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... have felt if she had read the secrets of the Diary? If Stella and Vanessa had met—Ah, that is a tenderness and terror almost beyond all thinking! How would my Lady Mary's smarting pride have blistered herself and others if the Fleet marriage of her eccentric son— whose wife she never saw—had actually come between the wind and her nobility? Was there no finer, more ethereal touch in Elizabeth Gunning's stolen marriage with her Duke than is recorded in Horace Walpole's malicious gossip? Could such beauty have been utterly ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... neighbor offered assistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory, but not unprofitable study. On the first day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... advantageous stands about the entrance. A quarter of an hour later the spectators were on the way. The cars, filled in and out with shouting humanity, crept slowly along, a bare half block separating them. Roystering students swung arm in arm in eccentric dance from side to side across the street. Ladies with their escorts hurried along the sidewalks. Carriages, bright with fluttering flags, rolled by. Bicycles darted in and out, their riders throwing words ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was an eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like a poodle's coat, and cut so low across ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as it was his primary duty to give to the people of St Ewold's the best clergyman he could select for them he could not give the preference to Mr Crawley, because Mr Crawley, in spite of all his zeal and piety, was a man so quaint in his manners and so eccentric in his mode of speech as not to be the best clergyman whom he could select. "What is my old friend Thorne to do with a man in his parish who won't drink a glass of wine with him?". For Ullathorne, the seat of that Mr Wilfred Thorne who had been so ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope |
