"Quaint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old house had really turned out a number of interesting articles. There were tables, stands, settees, chairs, and a quaint old desk, set on a square pedestal with a base of carved lions' feet. This last interested Josie as soon as it was carried into the shop. The top part was somewhat dilapidated, the cover of the desk ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... was old and quaint and rambling, part of the old wattle and dab walls yet remaining in some of the outhouses, as well as the grey shingle roof. There was a more modern part, for the house had been added to from time to time by different owners, though no additions had been made since Norah's father ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... when, tired and dusty, the outfit pulled up at La Luz, a quaint hamlet nestling in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains. The place they found to be largely Mexican, and it was almost as if the visitors had slipped over the border to find themselves in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... quaint bit of humor, many a strong, sound lesson in manliness and womanliness which must appeal to us in the telling. The story was probably written for children, but it will interest older people as ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... discussion was going on, the cloud of limestone dust had disappeared and from it had emerged a quaint old coach, lumbering and shabby, drawn by a pair of sleek sorrel horses, whose teeth would have given evidence of advanced age had a possible purchaser submitted them to the indignity of examining them. Their progress ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... ring-tailed caterpillar," exclaimed Frank, employing a quaint expression current the last term at Harrington Hall, "where did that caravel of Columbus come from? Why, she's so old you might expect the Ancient Mariner to peer over her rail. ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... bills, and the gorgeously framed advertisements of Brooks' Machine Cottons, and other products, which are hung on the line in the picture gallery! The pictures by Persian art students—who paint in European style—are rather quaint on account of the subjects chosen when they attempt to be ideal. They run a good deal to the fantastic, as in the case of the several square yards of canvas entitled the "Result of a dream." It contains quite a menagerie of most suggestive wild animals, and dozens ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... gone five when Narkom walked into the little bar parlour and found him standing there, looking out on the quaint, old-fashioned bowling green that lay all steeped in sunshine and zoned with the froth of pear and apple blossoms thick piled above the time-stained bricks of an ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... The peoples who reared the great earth-mounds of the Middle West, those who carved the curious sculptures of Central America, those who built the cave-dwellings of Arizona, those who piled stone upon stone in the quaint pueblos of New Mexico, those who drove Ponce de Leon away from the shores of Florida, and those who greeted the Pilgrims with, "Welcome, Englishmen!"—all these, beyond a doubt, were ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... and left many towns—Malmoe, Skanoer, Falsterboe, Trelleborg,—these last three were quaint, and the most southern towns in Sweden. How charming, clean, and neat are those little Swedish towns! I wished I could have tarried in some of them. Then I made a sweep eastward, following the ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... from Chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic admonition; you will be flung half-frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or jostled into shivers by your iceberg councillors, and will never get round Cape Horn at all.' Now there is much meaning couched in this quaint figure, and meaning which the Free Church would do well to ponder. There are many questions on which she could perhaps secure a majority, which yet that majority would utterly fail to carry. On the question of College Extension, for instance, she might be able ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... been lessened by the flight of time, but rather augmented. But to comprehend it fully, some preliminary explanation might be advisable. Before the war there lived a few miles from our home, near the Jersey Landing settlement, a quaint and most interesting character, of the name of Benjamin F. Slaten. He owned and lived on a farm, but had been admitted to the bar, and practiced law to some extent, as a sort of a side-line. But I think that until after the ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... recorded voyage he makes a comparison between the maize of Canada and that of South America; and in those days this would scarcely have occurred to a writer who had not seen both plants of which he spoke. 'There groweth likewise,' so runs the quaint translation that appears in Hakluyt's 'Voyages,' 'a kind of Millet as big as peason [i.e. peas] like unto that which groweth in Bresil.' And later on, in the account of his second voyage, he repeats the reference to Brazil; then 'goodly and large fields' ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... the waves great, we were happy that we have a Saviour who would never show us malice; especially were we full of joy that we had a witness in our hearts that it was for a pure purpose we sailed to Georgia,"—so runs the quaint record ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth avenue, and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... ever. Thy rustic Biglow's rugged line A grateful world neglecteth never! It smote hypocrisy and cant With flail-like force; sleek bards that ripple Like shallow pools—who pose and pant, And vaguely smudge or softly stipple,— These have not brain or heart to sing As Biglow sang, our quaint Hosea, Whose "Sunthin in the Pastoral line," Full primed with picture and idea, Lives, with "The Courtin'," unforgot, And worth whole volumes of sham-Shen-stone. Yes, you could catch, as prigs may ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... feeling ever passed that simple stanza unmoved. It is for all time not to be forgotten. Not a word could be changed any more than in "The Bugle Song." Its pathos is all the more surprising in connection with the quaint humor in the description of the old man who is the subject of the poem. There is a delicious Irish character in this, as in many other pieces of Holmes, reminding us of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... accommodation fairly raised to the romantic, that he soon read into the scene. The ingenuous compatriots showed a candour, he thought, surpassing even the candour of Woollett; they were red-haired and long-legged, they were quaint and queer and dear and droll; they made the place resound with the vernacular, which he had never known so marked as when figuring for the chosen language, he must suppose, of contemporary art. They twanged with a vengeance the aesthetic lyre—they drew from it wonderful airs. This aspect ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... under steps that offered him the right concealment, a man was loitering. In the last hour he had seen a number of people enter Tottie's, and five had left—the child and Mrs. Colter, a fat man and a slim, and a quaint-looking girl with her hair in pig-tails. He had stayed on till Clare came out; then as she fled, but without a single look back, ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... four o'clock he called in Manchester Square, where his secret wish was gratified by his finding Miss Fancourt alone. She was in a large bright friendly occupied room, which was painted red all over, draped with the quaint cheap florid stuffs that are represented as coming from southern and eastern countries, where they are fabled to serve as the counterpanes of the peasantry, and bedecked with pottery of vivid hues, ranged on casual shelves, and with many water-colour drawings from the ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... Toombs in New York just after the event, he said to me: "Seen the story about old Cassius Clay? Been an abolitionist all his days, and ends by shooting a nigger. I knew he would." A droll fellow is Robert Toombs. Full of talent and well instructed, he affects quaint and provincial forms of speech. His influence in Georgia is great, and he ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... poorest subject," he said, "to have a fowl for his pot on Sundays." He was a Bearnais from sole to crown,—in bravery and craft, tact and recklessness, in virtues, and—which pleased them as much—in vices. "He was plain of speech, rough in manner,—with a quaint jest alike for friend or foe; his hand upon his sword, his foot in the stirrup, his gun slung across his shoulder, the first in assault, the last in retreat. Irregular in his habits, eating at no stated times, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... what suited me from a number of sources, which shows how wide-spread this quaint droll is in England: (i) In Mayhew, London Poor, iii. 391, told by a lad in a workhouse; (ii) several versions in 7 Notes and Queries, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Stockton are excellent representatives of the man himself. How closely allied writer and writings are is very well stated by Hamilton W. Mabie in the Book-Buyer for June, 1902, "His talk had much of the quality of his writing; it was full of quaint conceits, whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live up to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His attitude ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... talking to the fishermen, picking my way over the masses of slippery seaweed, and breathing the fresh briny air. And all the morning I have been saying to myself, 'What can have made me dream of Runswick Bay? What can have brought the events of my short stay in that quaint little place so vividly before me?' Yes, I am convinced of it; it was that bunch of yellow ragwort on the mantelpiece in my bedroom. My little Ella gathered it in the lane behind the house yesterday morning, and brought it in triumphantly, ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... work of the veteran Salzmann, translated and published in Philadelphia, in 1802, and sometimes to be met with in libraries,—an odd, desultory book, with many good reasonings and suggestions, and quaint pictures of youths exercising in the old German costume. Like Dr. Follen's gymnasium, at Cambridge, it was probably transplanted too early, and produced no effect. Next came, in 1836, the book which is still, after twenty years, the standard, so far as it goes,—Walker's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... to us and, picking up his old-fashioned bell-crowned silk hat and his quaint, heavy cane of ebony, withdrew. Dr. Goodwin ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... first complaint that came to Anwoth from Kilmacolm was expressed in the quaint and graphic language natural to that day. 'Security, strong and sib to nature, is stealing in upon us.' The holy law of God, they mean, was never preached in their parish; at any rate, it was never carried home to any man's conscience. Nobody was ever disturbed. Nobody's feelings were ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... letters upon the "Social Aspects of Revolution in Italy," were collected and published in book-form, they met with the cordial approbation of the critics. These letters are marked by purity of style, quaint picturesqueness, and an admirable couleur locale. As a translator, Mrs. Trollope possesses very rare ability. Her natural aptitude for language is great. A residence in Italy of seventeen years has made her almost as familiar with the mother-tongue of Dante ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her whom ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... villages like Montcour-tois; but it was the first of its genus Paul had known, and he found a quiet charm in it The Hotel of the Three Friends stood in the Place Publique, dominated by a brand-new town-hall; but all the rest of the place was quaint and old-fashioned. All the houses were distempered in various colours, and all their architects had worked after the decrees of the destinies, so that the street-line itself was full of gable-ends, and the edifices faced ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... had sustained her in those terrible hours, when the shrieks of the mangled and the cries of the dying had pierced her heart, and when torture and death stared her full in the face. Ethan, in his own quaint terms, had confessed that her prayers and her unwavering trust in God had awed him and solemnized his mind, thus raising him to a level with the momentous issues he was to meet. She felt that her prayers for herself and the brave prairie boy had been answered, not only ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... amused Carley, and later she took advantage of an opportunity to notice her neighbors. They appeared a rather quaint old couple, reminding her of the natives of country towns in the Adirondacks. She was not amused, however, when another of her woman neighbors, speaking low, referred to her as a "lunger." Carley appreciated ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... refer rather to the Supplement to D'ISRAELI'S 'Curiosities of Literature,' edited by Rev. RUFUS W. GRISWOLD, than to the well-known work to which it adds its attractions. It is an excellent collection of the many odd and quaint and foolish and good things which our forefathers 'did and performed.' Mr. GRISWOLD has spiced his work with a variety, though he has done it more judiciously than a splenetic author whom he introduces in his work, who, in a vexatious mood at some severe criticisms on a former book, puts ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the new bell was placed in the steeple, instead of the priestly unctions and quaint ceremonies of a past age, there was too often a heathenish scene of drunkenness and revelry. A common custom, alluded to by White of Selborne, was to fix it bottom upwards, and fill it with strong liquor. At Checkendon, in Oxfordshire, this was attended with fatal results. There is a tradition ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... and gives me nice things to put in the drawers, and tells me how to shut up the naughties. Hadn't you better try that way? It's a very good one;" and Demi looked so earnest and full of faith, that Dan did not laugh at his quaint fancy, ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... widower. As Katharine came down the stairway, clad in all the finery her father had brought back for her from Paris, her hair rolled high and powdered, the old family diamonds with their quaint setting of silver sparkling upon her snowy neck, her fan languidly waving in her hand, she looked strikingly like a pictured woman smiling down at them from over the mantel; but to the sweetness and archness of her mother's laughing face were added some of ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... admiration and astonishment, and thought her even more beautiful than I had looked to find her. Nor could I think enough of one who, acting with so much boldness, yet preserved a maidenly air that was both quaint and engaging; for my wife kept an old-fashioned precision of manner through all her admirable life—an excellent thing in woman, since it sets another value ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... a minor revolution of Indians occurred, which resulted in a quaint species of naval engagement on Lake Titicaca, with the native balsas, or rafts, posing as diminutive battleships. In 1661 there was another outbreak. This was organized by Antonio Gallado, who succeeded ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Mr. Kirke has at our invitation prepared a paper to be read at our Annual Meeting, in connection with the Report on our Mountain Work. We have been permitted to read it. It is replete with racy incidents and delineations of quaint yet noble characters. If the tears and smiles which the reading of the paper drew from us are any test, then we can promise a treat to those who may hear it at ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... time building their nests, and resuming once more the quaint routine of their rookery life. In the hurricanes they usually ceased work and crouched behind rocks until the worst was over. A great number of birds were observed to have small wounds on the body which had bled and discoloured ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... it!" said the beautiful lady. "I mean every word of it. There's nothing else to care for, except you, you dear little old-fashioned thing. I like you, because you are quaint and truthful. Have you seen my pink pearl? You are not half observant, that's the trouble with ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... the pretty village of St. Pipoy, with its red roofs and quaint church, and over the railway tracks which unites the towns wherein Vulfran Paindavoine has his factories, and which joins the main ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... to be our last run among the trees in the West Indies, and we made the most of it. "Such a port for mariners I'll never see again!" The port officials, kind and polite, extended all becoming courtesies to the quaint "barco piquina." ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... valuable little book called The Accidence. It passed through seventeen editions before the Revolution. A copy of the eighteenth edition, printed in Boston in 1785, is now in the Boston Athenaeum. It is a quaint little book of seventy-two pages, with one cover gone, and is surely an object of interest to all loving students of Latin. A copy of the tenth edition is found in Harvard College, while it has been said that ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Knight forthwith Desisted, and the quarry and the mound Are monuments of his unfinish'd task.— The block on which these lines are trac'd, perhaps, Was once selected as the corner-stone Of the intended pile, which would have been Some quaint odd play-thing of elaborate skill, So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush, And other little builders who dwell here, Had wonder'd at the work. But blame him not, For old Sir William was a gentle Knight Bred in this vale to which he appertain'd With ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... soft-voiced, "for this I might hang thee to a tree, or drag thee at a horse's tail, or hew thee in sunder with this great sword o' thine which shall be mine henceforth—but these be deaths unworthy of such as thou—my lord Duke! Now within Garthlaxton be divers ways and means, quaint fashions and devices strange and rare, messire. And when I'm done, Black Roger shall hang what's left of thee, ere he go to feed my hounds. That big body o' thine shall rot above my gate, and for that golden head—ha! I'll send it to Duke Ivo in quittance for his gallows! Yet ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... a quaint little house uptown, a great bronzed-faced man sat at a piano, a dead pipe between his teeth, and absently played the most difficult of Beethoven's sonatas. Though he played it divinely, the three men who sat smoking and talking in a near-by corner paid not the least attention to him. The player, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... children of their own; Their mother-hearts beset with fears, Their lives bound up in tender lives; Laura would call the little ones And tell them of her early prime, Those pleasant days long gone Of not-returning time: Would talk about the haunted glen, The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men, Their fruits like honey to the throat, But poison in the blood; (Men sell not such in any town;) Would tell them how her sister stood In deadly peril to do her good, And win the fiery antidote: Then joining hands to little hands Would ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Persian palaces, without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems almost providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at any previous period would have been, in the eyes of either classical or oriental scholars, nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails, wedges, or arrows, should have been rescued from the dust of centuries at the very moment when the discovery and study of Sanskrit and Zend had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the stocks and whipping-post, the latter arranged with three sets of iron loops fixed at different heights and of varying diameters to accommodate the wrists of man, woman, and child, may still be found in the middle of the Priests' Green. These stand, it will be remembered, under a quaint old roof supported on rough, oaken pillars, and surmounted by a weathercock which the monkish fancy has fashioned to the shape of the archangel blowing the last trump. His clarion or coach-horn, or whatever instrument of music ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... mountainous, gashed with many deep gorges which extend in from the sea. The streets in the city are paved, but the roads in the country are impassable for wagons. Merchandise is carried on pack mules or in ox-drags. Horses are rarely seen and carriages are few. Quaint vehicles are used in their stead for the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... vote of censure by the House, he defended himself in a letter to his constituents, of which the pith is in the final sentences: '"But," I think I hear some one say, "after all, friend Howe, was not the supposititious case, which you anticipated might occur, somewhat quaint and eccentric and startling?" It was, because I wanted to startle, to rouse, to flash the light of truth over every hideous feature of the system. {86} The fire-bell startles at night; but if it rings not the town may be burned; and wise men seldom ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... thieves, successful thieving being the result of mental training. It is not necessary to follow him to his most famous doctrine, namely, that of doing nothing, by which means, he declared, everything could be done, the solution of which puzzle of left everybody to find out for himself. Among his quaint sayings will be found several maxims of a very different class, as witness his injunction, "Requite evil with kindness," and "Mighty is he who conquers himself." Of the latter, the following illustration is given by a commentator. Two men meeting ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms, And to my wily trains: I shall ere long Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl My dazzling spells into the spongy air, Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, And give it false presentments, lest the place And my quaint habits breed astonishment, And put the damsel to suspicious flight; Which must not be, for that's against my course. I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, And well-placed words of glozing courtesy, Baited with reasons ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... she could pick up, also stealing or begging for strips of cotton, or bits of wool and thread from the work-basket. Now it happened that her friend was one of those cats with huge tufts of soft hair on the two sides of her face; a cat of that type, which is not uncommon, has a quaint resemblance to a Mid-Victorian gentleman with a pair of magnificent side-whiskers of a silky softness covering both cheeks and flowing down like a double beard. The rat suddenly discovered that this ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... fashion is no longer observed, as the most tastefully arranged parlor has now no two pieces of furniture alike; but two easy-chairs placed opposite each other are never out of place. Here may stand an embroidered ottoman, there a quaint little chair, a divan can take some central position; a cottage piano, covered with some embroidered drapery, may stand at one end of the room, while an ebony or mahogany cabinet, with its panel mirrors and quaint brasses, may be placed at the other end, its racks and shelves affording an elegant ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... letter he uses the phrase classick ground, which has since become so common, but never had been employed before: it was ridiculed by some of his contemporary writers (I forget which) as very quaint and affected. M.] ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers so blue and golden Stars that in earth's firmament ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... Corse." Harrisse, tom. i. p. 217. In Cogoleto, about sixteen miles west of Genoa on the Corniche road, the visitor is shown a house where Columbus is said first to have seen the light. Upon its front is a quaint inscription in which the discoverer is compared to the dove (Colomba) which, when sent by Noah from the ark, discovered dry ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... early part of the seventeenth century it still survived, as we shall see from a quaint and curious picture that is of especial interest to all Americans, because it portrays what took place in that community of pious souls who furnished us the men we delight to honor as the Pilgrim Fathers. A ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... heard mention made of any; yet here was one, and one which was evidently occupied, for a slender spiral of smoke was curling upward from it on the chilly spring air. It could not be a fisherman's dwelling, for it was large and built after a quaint tasteful design. The longer Alan looked at it the more his wonder grew. The people living here were in the bounds of his congregation. How then was it that he had never seen or heard ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to the procession were arriving in the Cathedral. The town dignitaries in black robes, professors from the academy in full dress with all their decorations, officers of the Civil Guard, whose quaint uniform reminded one of that of the soldiers of the early part of the century. Through the naves with affectedly skipping steps came the children, dressed as angels—angels a la Pompadour, with brocaded coat, red-heeled shoes, blonde lace frills, tin wings fastened to their shoulders, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... All day long drizzling rain and spitting snow had blown in our faces like lance points, driven down the wind straight from the icy Alps. We were chilled to the bone; in all my life I have never beheld a sight so comforting as the home lights of the quaint ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... formed to ingratiate himself with her than Melbourne. He treats her with unbounded consideration and respect, he consults her tastes and her wishes, and he puts her at her ease by his frank and natural manners, while he amuses her by the quaint, queer, epigrammatic turn of his mind, and his varied knowledge upon all subjects. It is not therefore surprising that she should be well content with her present Government, and that during the progress of the elections she should have testified great interest in the success of the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... haunted his brain as soon as his eyes were closed prevented him from sleeping. As on the day before, sounds reached him from the adjoining rooms through the walls, voices, the jingle of glasses and teaspoons. . . . Marya Timofyevna was gaily telling Father Sisoy some story with quaint turns of speech, while the latter answered in a grumpy, ill-humoured voice: "Bother them! Not likely! What next!" And the bishop again felt vexed and then hurt that with other people his old mother behaved in a simple, ordinary way, while with him, her son, she was ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... minutes he sat there, drinking an occasional tiny cup of boiled coffee and to all appearance placidly enjoying the quaint atmosphere which Mr. Mehmed had contrived to transplant from the shores of ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... crystal Sorgia. Advancing farther, the landscape assumed a more sombre and sterile aspect. The valley seemed enclosed or shut in by fantastic rocks of a thousand shapes, down which dashed and glittered a thousand rivulets. And, in the very wildest of the scene, the ground suddenly opened into a quaint and cultivated garden, through which, amidst a profusion of foliage, was seen a small and lonely mansion,—the hermitage of the place. The horseman was in the valley of the Vaucluse; and before his eye lay the garden and the house of PETRARCH! Carelessly, however, his eye scanned the consecrated ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the fine varieties of stone furnished by the quarries of that State, together with some crumbling red sandstone which ought, in our opinion, to have been left at home. All have two floors, save the Massachusetts cottage, a quaint affair modeled after the homes of the past. Virginia ought to have placed by its side one of her own old country-houses, long and low, with attic windows, the roof spreading with unbroken line over a portico the full length of the front, and a broad-bottomed chimney on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... was decided. They would be married in the quaint, old town of Bradleyburg, in the shadow of ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... five, I seven—two quaint little people we must have looked, as we trotted out through the lengthening shadows from the old Manor Farmhouse, where we had been sojourning with our grandmother and Uncle John, all the summer-time. Now August was fast glowing itself away towards September, and all was rich, ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... her dancing, and Dick enlarged her vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing her a song sometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar they had found with the ghostly things in the garret,—a quaint old instrument, marked E. M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to a certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with a work of art,—a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and sung and faded away, unwedded, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his mind is essentially receptive and not creative. He is altogether wanting in independence of thought. On the other hand, the Ignatian letters are remarkable for their individuality. Of all early Christian writings they are pre-eminent in this respect. They are full of idiomatic expressions, quaint images, unexpected turns of thought and language. They exhibit their characteristic ideas, which obviously have a high value for the writer, for he recurs to them again and again, but which the reader often finds it extremely difficult to grasp, owing to their singularity. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... you need not trouble yourself to go to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as those outlines represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order, in any modern academician's atelier. But if you like the strange, rude, quaint, Gothic realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain point, a vision of the reality) best; then, don't study mediaeval art under the direction of modern illustrators. Look at it—for however ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... gnarled, knotted trunks Eucalyptian, Seemed carved like weird columns Egyptian; With curious device, quaint inscription, And hieroglyph strange." ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... singing, watched with a smile her boy drop off by degrees to sleep under the gentle motion and the lulling song. They sang and rocked till the lids came creeping down, and hid the great blue eyes; but still they sang and rocked, lulling the boy, and gladdening their own hearts; for the quaint old Breton ditty was tunable as the lark that carols over the green wheat in April; and the words so simple and motherly, that a nation had taken them to heart. Such songs bind ages together and make the lofty and the low akin by the great ties of music and the heart. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... That lady, quaint and small, came out and made them welcome. "I've three beds, in two rooms," said she, "and you'll have to double up, but I can feed ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... that they contained. Carvings in ebony and ivory, in the most beautiful designs, inlaid work of all descriptions, shawls that a queen might envy, together with embroidered articles of rare beauty, delicate tapestry and quaint and curious figures of all kinds, were for sale there and at prices that were not more than one-third or one-fourth what the same articles could be purchased for at home, though the price that was at first asked for them by these shopkeepers would be at ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... eminently that quality of literature which may be called recreation. It may be that he is not extraordinarily instructive, though there is a good deal of quaint and not despicable erudition wrapped up in his apparently careless pages. It may be that he does not prove much; that he has, in fact, very little concern to prove anything. But in one of the only two modes of refreshment and distraction possible ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... her father's knee, when she was little if any more than three years old. Before she was four years old she could repeat Anacreon's Ode to a Grasshopper, which her father had learned from a quaint old volume of heathen mythology, and taught his little daughter to repeat, by reciting it aloud to her, as she sat upon his knee. Subsequently, and before she had learned to read, he taught her in the same manner "Byron's Apostrophe to the Ocean," ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... sisters all night, and school keeping all day, were too much for him. The first hint of an examination of his school completed the mischief and he died insane, drowning himself in the canal. It is a sad story, but many of us will remember with affectionate regard the good, kind, quaint, and most excellent ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... wonderful set of paper boxes from Dicky, a long necklace of carved beads from Arthur, a beautiful blank-book, with all her candy recipes, beautifully written out, from Rosie, a warm little pair of knitted bed-shoes from Granny, a quaint, little, old-fashioned locket from Dr. Pierce—he said it had once belonged to another little sick ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... had allowed no time for preliminary threats and profanity, rather baffled these hoodlums. He had a quaint way of cutting out all the customary boasts and menaces preceding an encounter, and going straight to the heart ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... free from souls so quarrelsome and contentious. Again these tracts give a picture of how they should live that are truly Buddha's disciples. Buddha finds three disciples living in perfect harmony, and asks them how they live together so peaceably and lovingly. In quaint and yet dignified language they reply, and tell him that they serve each other. He that rises first prepares the meal, he that returns last at night puts the room in order, etc. (ib. 4). Occasionally in the account of unruly brothers it is evident that tradition must be ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... early spring, our home was in Wurtsboro, Sullivan County, New York, a quaint old village in the beautiful Mamakating valley. Here he hunted and fished and worked, February found him on a snowshoe trip in Northern Quebec with the Montagnais Indian trappers, the outcome of which was his "Children ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... joy to be with! First it was that hunt in ancient Mycenae when you let the lion escape the hunters' quaint spears and we were partly eaten by the lion in the bargain, although you dazzled the hunters, deflecting their spears. And then your zest for drink when we were with Octavian in Alexandria that led to everybody's amusement but ours when we were ambushed by Anthony's men. And ...
— The Ultroom Error • Gerald Allan Sohl
... considered her daughter's unregenerate condition, but Mr. Farnshaw was quite willing that the child should herd the cattle if she preferred it to spending an hour at "meetin'." Luther, who also until this year had herded his father's cattle and who usually spent the long days with the girl, had quaint ways of looking at religious questions which was a never-ending source of delight and interest to her. Their problems at home as well as at school were subjects of common discussion. He had been the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... and preoccupations, he had, the Baconians will allow, GENIUS. By the miracle of genius he MAY have found time and developed inclination, to begin by furbishing up older plays for a company of actors: he did it extremely well, but what a quaint taste for a courtier and scholar! The eccentricities of genius MAY account for his choice of a "nom de plume," which, if he desired concealment, was the last that was likely to serve his turn. He may also have divined all the Doll Tearsheets and Mrs. Quicklys and Pistols, whom, conceivably, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... a pretty little French town in the dep. of Puy-de-Dome, noted for its many quaint old houses of the Renaissance period; does a good trade in tobacco, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Lucy was very happy in her new life, and Jock was a perfectly natural boy, given to no sentimentalities, not jealous, and enjoying his existence too completely to sigh for the time when he was a quaint old-fashioned child, and knew no ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... going on for about so long, Rose would yawn and stretch and sit down on the arm of her mother's chair, begin stroking her hair and offering her all manner of quaint unexpected caresses. And then, pretty soon, Rodney's attention to the subject would begin to wander and at last flag altogether and leave him stranded, gazing and unable to do anything but gaze, at the lovely creature—the still ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... looking at him with a quaint smile. "From here you can see everything that amounts to anything in this section—which ain't a heap. Of course over there are some mountains—where we was a few days ago lookin' up the boys"—he pointed to some ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... waited within a foot or two of the man, who now proceeded to lift himself up by the window ledge preparatory to opening the barn window. With the aid of a claspknife he could very easily push back the quaint and imperfect fastening; then it was but to push in the glass, and he could enter the barn. He sat on the window ledge with his back to Nora. His huge, gaunt form looked larger than ever, intensified now by the light of the moon. He breathed ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... the village, even to the quaint, tawdry chapel, with its impossible blues and rusted gilt, and noon found them eager to investigate the contents of their lunch-basket. Taking a random path up the hill, they came at last to a spring of cool water, and here they spread their meal under ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... parsonage Down by the sea, There came in the twilight A message to me; Its quaint Saxon legend Deeply engraven, Hath as it seems to me Teaching for heaven; And on through the hours The quiet words ring, Like a low inspiration, "Doe the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... miles distant, and there connecting with a small steamer plying between the Maine coast islands and a shore port. He also, in common with other of the islanders, tilled a little land and kept a few traps set for lobsters. He was an honest, kind-hearted, and fairly well-read man, whose odd sayings and quaint phrases were proverbial. With his wife, whom everybody called Aunt Lissy, and adopted daughter Telly, he lived in a neat white house close to the Cape light and, as he put it, ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... A large, quaint, low-ceiled chamber on the second floor, with a superfluity of tiny greenish window-panes, was assigned to the stranger, and his African servant, Jake, was installed in a smaller adjoining apartment. The day after his arrival ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "Divisional reserve" we generally spent the time in St Jan's Cappel (already described) or Bailleul. The latter town, with its rather quaint old brick fourteenth-century church, porched a la Louis Quinze, was tolerable rather than admirable. Nothing of civil interest, and hardly anything to buy except magnificent grapes from the "Grapperies," even in November. We housed a ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... as soon as he entered the room, in a very short time the strangers of a moment ago were his life-long friends. Full of anecdotes and quaint remarks, he was the life of the little party. Miss Archer, however, was a very able backer—Cyn, as they all found themselves calling her soon after Jo Norton's ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... knack for fashioning pretty and quaint little wooden charms and pendants, which he polished to satin smoothness and painted and stained in bright colors. Norma Guerin had worn one at boarding school, and it was through her and her father that Bob had secured a large number of orders which ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... on Venice after the departure of the hostile aeroplanes, a day among days, and all the Venetians were abroad. The attack which brought home the actual dangers to them did not seem to dull their lively spirits. They were busy in the quaint aquatic manner of Venice. The little shops were full of people, the boatmen reviled one another in the narrow canals as they squeezed past, the vaporetti and the motor-boats snorted up and down the ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores. It was the hour of study; they were engaged in conning over their to-morrow's task, and the hum I had heard was the combined result ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful, but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it could play the piano, I am sure it would really play." And when she gazed on it, when her eyes followed the gentle tension, the fervent inclination of its stony slopes which drew together as they rose, like hands joined in prayer, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth the spirit of revolt in England took a wholly literary form. In France it was what people did that was wild and elemental; in England it was what people wrote. It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... full of quaint and curious notes, local biographies, &c., issued by Mr. Eliezer Edwards, the well-known "S.D.R." First sent out ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... privilege, and giving directions to particular classes. It had lessons for ministers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, magistrates, teachers, mechanics, husbands, wives, gentlemen, deacons, sea-captains, and others. The style was quaint, earnest, and direct, exactly suited to appeal to such a boy as Benjamin; and withal it was so practical that it ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... grotesque heads of men and animals, and surmounted by a small square case in which was a beautifully-mounted specimen of the little spotted brown owl of Greece, the species so common among the ruins of the Acropolis. On the mantelpiece were a small bronze clock, a quaint Chinese teapot and a pair of delicately-flowered Sevres vases. On the table the engraved tooth of a sperm whale did duty as a paper-weight, a miniature gondola held an inkstand and pens, and a sprig of red coral with a sabre-shaped ivory blade ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... kindergarten, and fresh-air work developed rapidly. There are now twelve industrial schools, where six thousand children are taught. The report of the first semi-annual meeting, held in Utica, N. Y., is in quaint contrast to the reports of the first Suffrage meetings. They say: "The utmost harmony and union of feeling have characterized all the proceedings, and as we looked around and saw the intelligence ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... time then; and I said, "You cannot help laughing at the quaint story, which is strictly true. But are you sure you would not have done as they did, and been as unbelieving as they? Their unbelief cost them only a hungry stomach a little longer; but what may your unbelief ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... could reach Was of monastic rule the breach; And her ambition's highest aim To emulate Saint Hilda's fame. For this she gave her ample dower, To raise the convent's eastern tower; For this, with carving rare and quaint, She decked the chapel of the saint, And gave the relic-shrine of cost, With ivory and gems embossed. The poor her convent's bounty blest, The pilgrim in its ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... throng which fills the Bristol streets wholly prosaic in its aspect, for the quaint garb of ancient charities holds its own against the modern tailor. Such troops of charity-children taking their solemn walks! Such long lines of boys in corduroy, such streams of girls in pug bonnets, stuff gowns and white aprons, as pour forth from the schools and almshouses to be found in every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... love those quaint 'El Grecos'?" she went on. "He's quite a discovery, don't you think? My daughter Muriel, who hopes to get into the Slade School soon now, says she doesn't see how anybody can see people differently from the way 'El Greco' saw people. And yet I don't know that I quite like the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... only to delude, as was proved by the torrents of rain brought by the succeeding days of March. On the trip the President was not very cheerful. In fact, he was dejected, giving no indication of his usual means of diversion, by which (his quaint stories) I had often heard he could find relief from his cares. He spoke to me of the impending operations and asked many questions, laying stress upon the one, "What would be the result when the army moved out to the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... captain's quarters. His spacious combination living and bedroom with private bath was a miracle to those of us who had to have the room boy move the luggage in order to have space enough to open the quaint little bureau drawers. On his center table was one of those strange dwarf Japanese trees, that are not permitted to be imported. These odd plants seem to thrive in spite of their diet of whiskey and the binding of their branches with tiny wires ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... mother's at Cairo just now, and she wrote to me at Dresden to try and get you something quaint and pretty in the old silver line, and I pitched on this ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... famously about a decree and a covenant, and puffs and parades, and shouts out amain, "O the sweetness of God's electing love!" Having by this time acquired a pretty good stock of assurance, he looks out for a shop, that is, in the quaint phrase, "he waits for a call;" by and by the desired object appears, the bargain is struck, and the stipend is settled, and now we have our pert youngster a Reverend Sir!—"Well, but what is he to do?" Why, we should think, call sinners to repentance, and comfort ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... them for tea-tables and coffee-houses. This they usually call "polite conversation; knowing the world; and reading men instead of books." These accomplishments, when applied to the pulpit, appear by a quaint; terse, florid style, rounded into periods and cadences, commonly without either propriety or meaning. I have listen'd with my utmost attention for half an hour to an orator of this species, without being able to understand, much less to carry away ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... us in the evening, playing several quaint tunes on a species of one stringed fiddle, accompanied by wild, but not unmusical songs. He told the Makololo that he intended to play all night to induce us to give him a present. The nights being cold, the thermometer falling to 47 degrees, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... of a world visible to every one but himself. He must know how everything looked—even the wind, which could certainly be felt, and the rain, and the heat of the fire. From the descriptions he had amassed through his unwearied questioning, he had pieced out for himself a quaint little world of color and light,—how like or unlike the actuality no ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... monster that guarded the deserted room and challenged him. "You haven't stopped," he answered in his beard. "Why not?" And as he said it, a new expression stole upon its hardened countenance, the challenge melted, the obdurate stare relaxed. The quaint, grandfatherly aspect of benevolence shone over it like a smile; it looked not only kind, but contrite. He saw it as it used to be, ages and ages ago, when he was a boy, sliding down the banisters towards it, or towards its counterpart in ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Draco Linn., Palma canariensis Tourn.), which an Irish traveller called a 'dragon-palm,' owed its vulgar name to the fancy that the fruit contained the perfect figure of a standing dragon with gaping mouth and long neck, spiny back and crocodile's tail. It is a quaint tree of which any ingenious carpenter could make a model. The young trunk is somewhat like that of the Oreodoxa regia, or an asparagus immensely magnified; but it frequently grows larger above than below. At first it bears only bristly, ensiform ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... by myself this afternoon. Aunt Celia and I had taken a long drive, and she had dropped me in a quaint old part of the town that I might have a brisk walk home for exercise. Suddenly it began to rain, which it is apt to do in England, between the showers, and at the same moment I espied a sign, 'Martha Huggins, Licensed Victualler.' It was a nice, tidy little ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the court a Gothic fountain played, Symmetrical, but decked with carvings quaint— Strange faces, like to men in masquerade, And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gushed through grim mouths of granite made, And sparkled into basins, where it spent Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... by dealers, now long gone to stampless climes, have power still to raise the ghost of the vanished glamour. I prefer those of foreign dealers because their English has the quaint, other-world atmosphere of what they dealt in. The other day I found in an old scrapbook a circular from Vienna, which annihilated a score of years with ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... has left of his investigations begin at the earliest stage, and possess the charm of an obvious and somewhat quaint reality. They commence with certain crude calculations which would seem to place no limit to the capabilities of a balloon. Thus, he points out that one of "the very moderate size of 400 feet diameter" would convey 13,000 men. "No wonder, then," he continues, "the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... resolved; but to do what I had resolved was difficult. For I wanted to go to the hop that evening very much. Visions of it floated before me; snatches of music and gleams of light; figures moving in harmony; words and looks; and—my own white little person. All these made a kind of quaint mosaic with flashes of light on the river, and broad warm bands of sunshine on the hills, and the foliage of trees and bushes, and the grey lichened rocks at my foot. It was confusing; but I turned over the leaves of my Bible to see if I could find some undoubted direction as to what I ought ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the brink of fate, read leisurely on, smiling at some quaint fancy of the author, who had gained his attention for ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... words. When he did speak, his words had a flavor in them beyond any that I have heard elsewhere. His conversation dwelt upon persons or things within his own recollection, or it opened (with a startling doubt, or a question, or a piece of quaint humor) the ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... A quaint character named Mullane was at one time steward, and decidedly astonished a member, who was a total abstainer, by charging him in his bill for three tumblers ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... gave of Berangere, whose beauty he entirely failed to represent: none but an accomplished artist, indeed, could do so, and the indefatigable antiquarian, who lost his life in his zeal for his pursuit, was more accustomed to the quaint forms exhibited on windows and brasses. The inscription formerly to be read beneath the effigy of Geoffrey, on ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Father meanes she shall be all in white; And in that habit, when Slender sees his time To take her by the hand, and bid her goe, She shall goe with him: her Mother hath intended (The better to deuote her to the Doctor; For they must all be mask'd, and vizarded) That quaint in greene, she shall be loose en-roab'd, With Ribonds-pendant, flaring 'bout her head; And when the Doctor spies his vantage ripe, To pinch her by the hand, and on that token, The maid hath giuen consent ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the occasion of his first visit we children regarded him with mingled awe and curiosity. His quaint appearance and his formal, deliberate manner of speech made him seem to us like a being from another world. We were at once fascinated and repelled, and I think he became at first the object of our constant, though furtive, observation. But his unvarying gentle kindness ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... that midst their sportive pennons waved Thousands of angels, in resplendence each Distinct and quaint adornment. At their glee And carol smiled the Lovely One of heaven That joy was in the eyes ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... blue skies Where on a hillside creamy rise The mission towers whose patron saint Is Barbara—with legend quaint. ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... two summits are wider apart, more fully relieved from each other, than when seen from other points; and the highest ascends into a perfect pyramid, the lower one being obtusely rounded. There seem to be iron-works, or some kind of manufactory, on the farther side of the bridge; and I noticed a quaint, chateau-like mansion, with hanging turrets standing apart from the street, probably built by some ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and the little ring-tailed raccoon. In his excitement the old woodsman dropped one of his crutches. Therefore, instead of going to meet his visitors, he plumped down on the bench outside his door and just waited. A moment later the quaint procession arrived. MacPhairrson found Black Angus shaking him hugely by the hand, Ebenezer, much grown up, rooting at his knees with a happy little squeal, and Ananias-and-Sapphira, as of old, clambering excitedly ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... judgment, followed by his victims as they gathered from the depths of the sea, in a strain that reminded me of Clarence's dream in Shakespeare, and equalled it. The anecdotes of her ready wit and quick striking replies are numberless. But the whole together give little idea of the rich, quaint, poetic and often profound speech of a most remarkable person, who used to say to us: 'You read books; ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire upon the quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the reflection of glass vessels that held liquids), trembling at heart like things that knew his power to uncombine them, and to give back their component parts to fire and vapour;—who that ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... murder was perpetrated; but a low, dark, and wooden-walled tenement, such as our forefathers were wont to construct in times anterior to the Tudor ages. The present building, with its little porch, quaint and grotesque, its balustrade and balcony above, and the points and pediments on the four sides, are evidently the coinage of some more modern brain—peradventure in King James's days. Not unlike the character of that learned monarch and of his times, half-classical, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the stranger in surprise, "I have seen you act many times, sir, and the recollection of Mrs. Florence's 'Yankee Girl,' with her quaint songs, is still ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to the young people on the staff of a newspaper—and it is one of the prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... me, jerked herself up, and flirted her wings and tail, as if to say, "I know you. You needn't try to hide." When I went too near, as on the occasion spoken of, while she was much more wary she was not afraid, and I had no compunctions about studying her quaint ways. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the emeutes which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the picture-gallery of modern French artists, whom government thinks ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comedy, and packed with sentiment. Maude Adams played the part of Dorothy Cruikshank, a character of quaint and appealing sweetness. It touched the hidden springs of whimsical humor and thrilling tenderness, qualities which soon proved to be among her ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... people and the country had become fitted to each other, were afterward often needed for other uses. So long as London tears down historic churches, even in the present days of fashionable devotion to the old and the quaint, and so long as the Rome of 1880 is still in danger from vandal hands, we need only be surprised that the list of existing American churches of former days is so long and so honorable as it is. If ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... closet and took from it a white robe, which the soldier threw over Ojo. It covered him from head to foot, but had two holes just in front of his eyes, so he could see where to go. In this attire the boy presented a very quaint appearance. ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... It has no real love for books, libraries, or librarians. In its hidden heart it deems them all superfluous. Anger it, and it may in a fit of temper sweep you all away. The loss of our free librarians would indeed be grievous. Never again could they meet in conference and read papers full of quaint things and odd memories. What, for example, can be more amusing than Mr. Cowell's reminiscences of forty years' library work in Liverpool, of the primitive days when a youthful Dicky Sam (for so do the inhabitants of that city call themselves) mistook the Flora of Liverpool ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... all wood and a cross piece to rest the platform on. This platform had stakes standing way up at the sides. They were piled high with goods, furs and skins going down and supplies coming back. I can shut my eyes and see that quaint cavalcade now. Where ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... It sounds quaint, indeed, to hear Grindhusen, half his teeth gone with age, talking of the young engineer as a father. I felt pretty sure I could find out a good deal about my new employer from this quarter, but I ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... incomparable scenery of an old, new land with its snow-clad peaks, its magnificent mountain heights, its awe-inspiring canyons, its vast plains, its picturesque villages, its ancient ruins, its historic towns, and quaint corners. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Assistants of his Chief, "Miss BRADDON's Christmas Annual? It is entitled, The Misletoe Bough, and contains some of the best short stories I have read lately. One of them, 'In Mr. CARTWRIGHT's Library,' is a remarkable combination of quaint, dry humour, and literary skill. Who is the clever author? But here are other stories, too, that interest and please, and, not least among them, a charming sketch, by the ever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... quaint and curious lot, but drilled remarkably well for Indians, and obeyed orders. They were devoted to their white chief, Major North, who spoke Pawnee like a native, and they were very proud of their position in the United States army. Good soldiers they made, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... 'The great, th' important business of their life, is love;' but men know that they are born for something better than to sing mournful ditties to a mistress's eyebrow. As to marriage, what a serious, terrible thing! Some quaint old author says, that man is of too smooth and oily a nature to climb up to heaven, if, to make him less slippery, there be not added to his composition the vinegar of marriage. This may be; but I will keep as long as possible from ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... of rowing brought us to St. Ours, where we rested for the night, after wandering through its shaded and quaint streets. The village boys and girls came down to see us off the next morning, waving their kerchiefs, and shouting "Bon voyage!" Two miles above the town we encountered a dam three feet high, which deepened the water on a shoal above it. We passed ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... chirping of the Sparrow, The scream of Jays, the creaking of Wheelbarrow, And hoot of Owls,—all join the soul to harrow, And grate the ear. We listen to thy quaint soliloquizing, As if all creatures thou wert catechizing, Tuning their voices, and their notes revising, From ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... followed the speaker to the end, not discerning a single grammatical inaccuracy of speech, or the slightest violation of good taste in manner or matter. At times the current of thoughts flowed in eloquent and poetic expression, and often her quaint humor would expose the ivory in half a thousand mouths. We confess that we began to wonder, and we asked a fine-looking man before us, "What is her color? Is she dark or light?" He answered, "She is mulatto; what they call a red mulatto." ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... round, as she said to her companion; it was not the first time she had taken an admiring visitor to see the local monuments. Basil Ransom, walking with her from point to point, admired them all, and thought several of them exceedingly quaint and venerable. The rectangular structures of old red brick especially gratified his eye; the afternoon sun was yellow on their homely faces; their windows showed a peep of flower-pots and bright-coloured curtains; they wore an expression of scholastic quietude, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... the prose authors of the period who hold an assured secondary position in the history of English literature three or four may be mentioned: Robert Burton, Oxford scholar, minister, and recluse, whose 'Anatomy of Melancholy' (1621), a vast and quaint compendium of information both scientific and literary, has largely influenced numerous later writers; Jeremy Taylor, royalist clergyman and bishop, one of the most eloquent and spiritual of English preachers, author of 'Holy Living' (1650) and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted. He sat mournfully down. Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chimneys. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Mallory that he stood it well, a heavy swell like him givin' the glad hand in public to a quaint old freak like that. But Aunt Elvira don't waste ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... was thankful for such help as his companion's impressively brief intimation contributed to the discovery of it. There were large, majestic men, and small demonstrative men; there were ugly ladies in yellow lace and quaint jewels, and pretty ladies with white shoulders from which jewels and every thing else were absent. Every one gave Newman extreme attention, every one smiled, every one was charmed to make his acquaintance, every one looked at him with that soft hardness of good society which puts out its ...
— The American • Henry James
... and heard the words, which attracted her both by their subject and by their accent—a strange one for those parts. It was quaint and northerly. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... a miscellaneous collection of books, numbering 3,500, and I am fond of the quaint and curious in every line. I am very fond of dogs, birds, and all small pets—a passion not approved ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... day, or, as I have suggested, suddenly late one night, there came to the young artist bending over tonsorial books that quaint, mad, odd, preposterous inspiration. Ah, what pleasure there is in the madness of youth; it is not like the madness of age, clinging to outworn formul; it is the madness of breaking away, of galloping among ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... Susy's quaint and effective spelling falls quite opportunely into to-day's atmosphere, which is heavy with the rumblings and grumblings and mutterings of the Simplified Spelling Reform. Andrew Carnegie started this storm, a couple ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain |
