"Squinting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who is of a noble person as ever I saw, but her face worse than it was considerably by the smallpox: her sister' is also very handsome. Coming into the Park, and the door kept strictly, I had opportunity of handing in the little, pretty, squinting girl of the Duke of York's house, but did not make acquaintance with her; but let her go, and a little girl that was with her, to walk by themselves. So to White Hall in the evening, to the Queen's side, and there met the Duke of York; and he did tell me and W. Coventry, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... When both parents are myopic Mr. Bowman has observed the hereditary tendency in this direction to be heightened, and some of the children to be myopic at an earlier age or in a higher degree than their parents. Thirdly, squinting is a familiar example of hereditary transmission: it is frequently a result of such optical defects as have been above mentioned; but the more primary and uncomplicated forms of it are also sometimes in a marked degree transmitted in a family. Fourthly, Cataract, or opacity of the crystalline lens, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... much mind that loss, replied the Alferez, since I may apply to myself the old saw, "My father-in-law thought to cheat me by putting off his squinting daughter upon me; and I myself am blind of ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... fates in her hand, and doesn't mean to open it till she gets ready. She was by no means satisfied as yet that this grandfather Munoz was a proper person to be intrusted with the destinies of a young lady. In refusing to let his daughter select her own husband, he had shown a very squinting and incomplete perception of the ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... fill the gaps between the figures we have sketched, Turks of every variety! Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled with that exotic element, a whole multicolored Parisian Bohemia of decayed gentlemen, squinting tradesmen, penniless journalists, inventors of strange objects, men from the South landed in Paris without a sou—all the tempest-tossed vessels to be revictualled, all the flocks of birds whirling about in the darkness, that were attracted by that great fortune as by the light ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Gaffer?' said a man with a squinting leer, who sculled her and who was alone, 'I know'd you was in luck again, by your wake as you ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... her grief and the injured sense of her impotence, she cried long, gently, and monotonously, pouring out all the pain of her wounded heart in her sobs. And before her, like an irremovable stain, hung that yellow face with the scant mustache, and the squinting eyes staring at her with malicious pleasure. Resentment and bitterness were winding themselves about her breast like black threads on a spool; resentment and bitterness toward those who tear a son away from his mother because he ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... ventured out. A woman can hear the lightest step of a lover when she is fast asleep, and when the thunder of the western hills would not awake her. And so it was with the Squaw-Snake, who, though very drowsy with watching the stars, and squinting at the moonas folks always do when they are in love—had no sooner heard the step of her beloved on the green sod than she advanced to meet him. Now comes the perilous moment! Bomelmeek, beware! She ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... necessary, Mr. Jordan. Eight hundred thousand, give or take a few paltry thousand, is close enough. Eight hundred thousand endless, lonely revolutions about an unthinking, uncaring, ungrateful world is quite enough. Quite enough, Mr. Jordan. Now sir; (squinting over his glasses) what do you think is the proper action to be taken in the matter of retrieving this historic satellite from its orbit so that it may be preserved as a living memorial to the gallant efforts of those early pioneers ... those brave and intrepid men of Cape Canaveral ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... strings of big pearls round her neck, long earrings, and a ring on every finger. The portrait was recognisable though the artist had painted her excessively stout and rosy—and had made her eyes not grey but black and even slightly squinting.... Akim's was a complete failure, the portrait had come out dark—a la Rembrandt—so that sometimes a visitor would go up to it, look at it and merely give an inarticulate murmur. Avdotya had taken to being rather careless in her dress; ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... cast a squinting eye: What! can your 'prentice raise your jealousy? Fresh are his ruddy cheeks, his forehead fair, 120 And like the burnish'd gold his curling hair. But clear thy wrinkled brow, and quit thy sorrow, I'd scorn your 'prentice should ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... from. If you are slippery, and faith you are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it." "Get rid of your kinks before you marry," said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye on me, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a parlour two streets off. You've got to settle down and quit tricks. A wife has no one else to deceive but her husband, that's all she can want tricks for, and there's not going to be any in my house. It's all right for a pretty girl to ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... of us get glued to our own narrow slits in the wall, most of us are chained to them by our jobs and we get to squinting, if we don't get blinded. I'm not saying that we don't each have a slit and should know it; but your job requires moving about and peering through other fellows' slits, and lately, ever since that last book of yours, you've kept to your hole; the fever caught you at the wrong ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... the most even of that. I declare to you, sir, when he's between the shafts, I sit on the box as miserable as if I'd stolen him. He looks all the time as if he was a bottling up of complaints to make of me the minute he set eyes on you again. There! look at him now, squinting round at me with one eye! I declare to you, on my word, I haven't laid the whip on him more than ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... twins; the grim Hewson, the silent Mervin, each quiet and watchful, as if storing up power for a tremendous effort. There was the large unwholesomeness of Madam Winklestein, all jewellery, smiles and coarse badinage, and near her, her perfumed husband, squinting and smirking abominably. There was the old man, with his face of a Hebrew Seer, his visionary eye now aglow with fanatical enthusiasm, his lips ever muttering: "Klondike, Klondike"; and lastly, by his side, with a little wry smile on her lips, there ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... not, then; but there I was, digging and digging, and "You squinting idiot," says he, "let you walk down now and tell the priest you'll wed the Widow Casey in a score ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... say, seems too well pleased with it himself. It is like children in the game of hide and seek, they cannot stay quiet in their corner, but keep popping out their heads, if they are not immediately discovered; nay, sometimes, which is still worse, it is like the squinting over a fan held up from affected modesty. In Marivaux we always see his aim from the very beginning, and all our attention is directed to discovering the way by which he is to lead us to it. This would be a skilful mode of composing, if ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... his cigar into a glow and leaned back, clasping one knee with two brown hands and squinting up at the low, discoloured ceiling. And Amber, looking him over, was amazed by the absolute fidelity of his make-up; the brownish stain on face and hands, the high-cut patent-leather boots, the open-work socks through which his ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... They all stood there squinting up at the Brewster's Centre sign, and all of a sudden I had a thought and I whispered to the fellows, "Don't spoil the plot, it's growing thicker. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a good pastor, and asked whether peradventure he believed that she stood in evil communication with Satan, and could bewitch folks? But he said nothing, and shrugged his shoulders. So I sent for old Lizzie to come to me, who was a tall, meagre woman of about sixty, with squinting eyes, so that she could not look any one in the face; likewise with quite red hair, and indeed her goodman had the same. But though I diligently admonished her out of God's Word, she made no answer, until at last I said, 'Wilt thou unbewitch ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... did not hold Kirby. Directly behind the priests were emerging now from the jungle a new company of ape-men. Squinting his eyes, Kirby saw that two of them were lugging on a pole across their shoulders a curious burden—a sort of monstrous bird cage of barked withes. Crouched on the floor of the cage in a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the Chalky Flats to represent his mother and watch his uncle Jonah, also felt it his duty to stay and to sit chiefly in the kitchen to give his uncle company. Young Cranch was not exactly the balancing point between the wit and the idiot,—verging slightly towards the latter type, and squinting so as to leave everything in doubt about his sentiments except that they were not of a forcible character. When Mary Garth entered the kitchen and Mr. Jonah Featherstone began to follow her with his cold detective eyes, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... strong, to have raised that board," Katherine continued, squinting at the muscular brown arms, ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... burning, with a pungent odor in my nostrils when the wind blew the smoke my way. The far-off hooting of an owl, perched somewhere on a juniper branch watching for mice; and Casey Ryan sitting cross-legged in the sand, squinting humorously at me across the fire ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... folks tell me if a man named Hardin' hangs out 'round this here place?" he said, squinting at a ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... answer; his gun steadied; the barrel began to incline down; his left eye was squinting. She dropped to her ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Mariar?" remarked an old Hoosier, stroking his yellow whiskers and squinting at his better half, a hawk-faced woman of determined countenance. "I tell yer what. Mariar, with all your good qualities yer never could hold a candle to that 'ere girl, ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... arrived would have been patent from the eyes alone. Riveted upon the trigger-finger, squinting until the pupils were almost lost to view, they were the orbs of a fiend. Even as the Judge gazed, the light of Insanity took flaming possession. Hell, grown impatient, had sent a sheriff for ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Captain Blackbeard, his rage and indignation may be imagined; a wife robbed from him, his honor put in question by an odious, lanky, squinting lawyer! He fell ill of a fever incontinently; and the surgeon was obliged to take a quantity of blood from him, ten times the amount of which he swore he would have out of the veins of the ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... He stopped, held the bicycle upright with one foot on the pavement. A tall, lanky, slightly bowlegged man with squinting luminous green eyes stood on the sidewalk. Gary looked at the man. The newspapers fluttered to the parkway. The bicycle clattered ...
— Stopover Planet • Robert E. Gilbert
... a squint at it," said Mr. Spriggs, reaching across the table; but all his squinting made the bill no less, and he laid it down with a sigh. "It is coming it rayther strong, to be sure," continued he; "but I dare say it's all our happearance has as done it. He takes us ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... miserable might reduce me to despair. And this raw-boned, loathsome Eleazar! If I am to give a name to this folly of my nature, I hate him; he is quite nauseous to me, whenever he stands before my eye or before my imagination: the bile which has tainted his eyes and face, his squinting glances, the twitches of his nose when he is speaking, while his long teeth stare out as if he were grinning, his shrugging up his shoulders at every word, whereby his odious snuff-coloured coat is every moment dragged upward and ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... them up in their places. Aided by this beginning, the young man began to dub and cut away, until he got each piece into something very near the shape his eye told him it ought to be. Even after he had got as far as this, our boat-builder passed a week in shaving, and planing, and squinting, and in otherwise reducing his lines to fair proportions. Satisfied, at length, with the bottom he had thus fashioned, Mark took out just one half of his pieces, leaving the other half standing. After these moulds did he saw and cut his boat's ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... half rising and extending his hand, which we all kissed. His dress was white silk, and very dirty, a white silk skullcap, red silk shoes with an embroidered cross, which the faithful kiss. He is a very nice, squinting old twaddle, and we liked him. He asked us if we spoke Italian, and when we modestly answered, a little, he began in the most desperately unintelligible French I ever heard; so that, though no doubt he said many excellent things, it was nearly impossible to comprehend ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... about the struggle he had in his first year of business. He had no money of his own, but he married a woman who had saved forty-five pounds out of a cat's-meat business. You should see that woman! A big, coarse, squinting creature; at the time of the marriage she was a widow and forty-two years old. Now I'm going to tell the true story of Mr Bailey's marriage and of his progress as a grocer. It'll be a great book—a ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... hit it, sure enough! (To her.) In awe of her, child? Ha! ha! ha! A mere awkward squinting thing; no, no. I find you don't know me. I laughed and rallied her a little; but I was unwilling to be too severe. No, I could not be too ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... Una," said Dr. Gregory, when they were on their way to Mrs. Thorn's,—"they've got your uncle at home now and we've got you; and I mean to keep you till I'm satisfied. So you may bring home that eye that has been squinting at Queechy ever since you have been here and make up your mind to enjoy yourself; I sha'n't let you ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... valleys.... The inhabitants are, clearly, of a Mongolian race,—the homeliest I have ever seen!... They cultivate but little patches of the land, sit around all day and gain their hollow cheeks and shrunken chests and wrinkled foreheads by squinting at the sun.... Even the women are tiny things with a perpetual smile that pushes up their high cheek bones into a horn-like prominence and apparently belies their apparent gaiety.... The belts of these men are perfect arsenals of curious-looking things.... ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... boy, was pushed forward by a squinting mother. Quaking fearfully, he sat down on the cask at ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the fun. Almost immediately afterwards we heard the shrill notes of the bo'sun's whistle, followed by the hoarse bellowing sound in which that functionary is wont to transmit the commanding officer's orders to the ship's company. And occasionally we were gratified with the sight of Mr Bob Summers squinting curiously at us through his telescope, out of one of ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... a yellow-and-red sarong, and as I was looking out, the ugly, black-looking beggar was squinting in. I wasn't sure at first, but it's like this 'ere: when they thought we was too bad they didn't trouble about us, but somebody must have been watching, and seen you beginning to pick a bit, and that's made them think that it's time ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... have bad, squinting eyes, which have lost their lashes and are bordered with red, you should wear spectacles. If the defect be great, your glasses should be coloured. In such cases emulate the sky rather than the sea: green spectacles are an abomination, fitted only for students ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... answered Tom, thinking the remark addressed to him, inasmuch as Edith's head protruded from the window. "Dreams is mighty onsartin. Git 'long, you Bill, none o'yer lazy carlicues, case don't yer mind thar's Mars'r Arthur on the v'randy, squinting to see if I's fotched 'em," and removing his old straw hat, Tom swung it three times around his head, that being the signal he was to give if ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... waiting here all day while you are squinting through that hole!" he cried with a ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... beady, squinting eyes, as he addressed this word to the Russian, there came a look of malignant cunning which Johnny had not seen there before. It sent chills racing up and down his spine. It almost seemed to him that ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... resolution entered in the minutes; and next day the photographer set to work. Some of the prisoners resisted and "made faces" in front of the camera, squinting and pulling the most horrible mouths. A female shoplifter sat under protest, because she was not allowed to send home for an evening gown. But the most consented obediently, and Jim Tresize even asked for a copy to take home ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reason to rebuke their children when they counterfeit having but one eye, squinting, lameness, or any other personal defect; for, besides that their bodies being then so tender, may be subject to take an ill bent, fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to delight in taking us at our word; and I have heard several examples related ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... it was—Toby with his little black nose and bright eyes gleaming from behind the overhanging shaggy hair, that no one but a Toby could have seen through without squinting—Toby, rather subdued and meekly inquiring at first, as if not quite sure of his welcome, till—a glance round the room satisfying him that there was no one to dread, no one but his two dearly-beloved friends—his courage returned, and he rushed towards them with short yelps of delight, twisting ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... accomplished by holding the concave surface near a small heap of hot embers and when warm he either pressed his great toe on the opposite side, or he bent the wood backward on the base of the thumb. Squinting down its axis he lined up the uneven contours one after the other and laid the shaft aside until a series of five was completed. He made up arrows in lots of five or ten, according to the requirements, his fingers being ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... certainly nothing specially attractive about the uncle: he belonged to a type which children instinctively dislike, false, crafty, with squinting eyes which continually appeared to contradict his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... monstrous sea-spider, about thirty-eight inches high, was watching me with squinting eyes, ready to spring upon me. Though my diver's dress was thick enough to defend me from the bite of this animal, I could not help shuddering with horror. Conseil and the sailor of the Nautilus awoke at this moment. Captain Nemo pointed out the hideous crustacean, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... you see, Mrs Quilp,' said the dwarf, squinting in a hideous manner to imply that his wife was to follow his lead. 'It's a long way from her home to the wharf, and then she was alarmed to see a couple of young scoundrels fighting, and was timorous on the water besides. All this together has been ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... "Well," answered Mr. Brimberly, squinting at an empty bottle, "I used to know a very good song once, called 'Let's drownd all our sorrers and cares.' But good 'eavens! we can't drownd 'em in empty bottles, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... SQUINT-A-PIPES. A squinting man or woman; said to be born in the middle of the week, and looking both ways for Sunday; or born in a hackney coach, and looking out of both windows; fit for a cook, one eye in the pot, and the other up the chimney; looking nine ways ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... this year to please the old man. Manderson said it was ridiculous for a man to be without a pistol in the twentieth century. So he went out and bought what they offered him, I guess—never consulted me. Not but what it's a good gun,' Mr Bunner conceded, squinting along the sights. 'Marlowe was poor with it at first, but I've coached him some in the last month or so, and he's practised until he is pretty good. But he never could get the habit of carrying it around. Why, it's as natural to me as wearing my pants. I have carried one for ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... and look round," said Uncle Dick coolly; and he did not even glance at the squinting man, who had tried to get up, but sank down again and sat grinning with pain and holding his ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... again—only in a different place. Fellow on Claremont—that's it away over there; see that white speck? That's the station, just like this one. He's an old crab, Hank tells me. He said I must be bugs. Had him squinting around some, I bet! Then they got wise that I was reporting a through freight, and they kid me about it yet. But they fell for ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Polly, in a most contemptuous voice. "Will a duck swim? I led you into mischief—of course you followed. Well, Fly, it rests with yourself. Don't obey our dear, good, gentle Nelly, and you'll have Miss Jenkins here. Won't it be fun to see her squinting at you over her spectacles when she returns your spelling-lessons. Bread and water will be your principal diet most of the week. Well, good-by now; I'm ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... seconds Buck thought his eyes were playing tricks. Amazed, incredulous, forgetting for an instant the field-glasses in his hand, he stared blankly from under squinting lids at the incredible object that crawled lurchingly through the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Switzerland, Savoy, and France. The malady is not congenital, but its symptoms usually appear within a few months of birth. The characteristics of this form of idiocy are an enlarged thyroid gland constituting a goitre or bronchocele, a high-arched palate, dwarfed stature, squinting eyes, sallow complexion, small legs, conical head, large ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... found Firio, with the help of some of the ranchers, taking the pictures out of their cases. Firio surveyed the buccaneer for some time, squinting his eyes and finally ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... went over and laid her fingers on his neck. "I can't tell whether it's grease or perspiration," she said, laughing a little. "What are you squinting up your nose for? Surely to goodness you don't mind that little, harmless raveling? If you wouldn't go on breathing, it wouldn't wiggle around so much!" Nevertheless, she plucked the tormenting thread and threw it on ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... under the oak tree, where the vaqueros kept their riding gear in front of the cabin, Manuel himself came to the door and stood squinting into the fog, while he flapped a tortilla ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... stole it ere the morn; 640 Whitefield, that greatest of all saints, Who always prays and never faints, (Whom she to her own brothers bore, Rapine and Lust, on Severn's shore) Received it from the squinting dame; From him to Plausible it came, Who, with unusual care oppress'd, Now, trembling, pull'd it from his breast; Doubts in his boding heart arise, And fancied spectres blast his eyes, 650 Devotion springs from abject fear, And stamps his prayers for once sincere. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... sleepily fixed on the wall, regardless alike of the sturdy smocked men and slender boys in full blue-paint jackets, as of the equally silent and clayey girls and women that scrutinized him with earnestly squinting eyelids. The only creature in the room that seemed to evoke the slightest responsive flicker of intelligence was the black-robed, gray-aproned, redundant ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... elements of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, but with a fourth added element, Confederacy. The constitution of the United States when adopted was so far from being considered as a democracy, that Patrick Henry charged it, in the Virginia Convention, with an awful squinting towards monarchy. The tenth number of the Federalist, written by James Madison, is an elaborate and unanswerable essay upon the vital and radical difference between a democracy and a republic. But it is impossible to disconnect the relation between names and things. When the anti-federal ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... you keep moving about then," he said, "making faces and all that—sneering and squinting, while I ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... said Tom confidently. "You may depend upon it they've been squinting at us through them bamboozling reeds, and took all my lesson in right up to the heft. I begin to think, sir, that when Mr Huggins shows his ugly yellow phiz to us again he'll find that we've been making a few friends among ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... a disagreeable expression. He had deep squinting eyes, a large mouth, a broad nose, and long, ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... deal of it is pretty certain to be pleasing." So she had let her fancy run amuck, so to speak, and behind the merciful screen of trees there was now what Lew Hervey profanely termed: "A whole damn rainbow gone plumb crazy." Even Marianne at times had her doubts, but from a distance and by dint of squinting, she was usually able to reduce the conglomerate to a tolerably harmonious whole. "It's a promise of changes to come," she told herself. "It's a milestone pointing towards new goals." But the milestone set Perris ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... and showed, standing in the opening, a Capuchin, who, bowing, with his arms crossed over his breast, seemed waiting for alms or for an order to retire. He had a dark complexion, and was deeply pitted with smallpox; his eyes, mild, but somewhat squinting, were almost hidden by his thick eyebrows, which met in the middle of his forehead; on his mouth played a crafty, mischievous, and sinister smile; his beard was straight and red, and his costume was that of the order of St. Francis in all ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... to accept his silent peculiarities with nothing more than casual wonder, though they disliked him for his unsociability, for the cold contempt that twisted his lips, and for the stifled volcano that smouldered within his squinting eyes. They hated him more than ever now, with a hatred that could be liquidated only in blood. Their own criminal schemes that had taken the lives of two of their companions they did not consider, but the man who had exposed the cause of ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... corner groceries to see what other kinds of crackers are sold there besides the brands furnished by his house. He starts in talking about the price of green-groceries, drifts along for five or ten minutes, and keeps squinting over the cracker boxes. To stave off suspicion he buys an apple, peels it carefully and eats it slowly, while he incidentally craves a cracker and proceeds to pump the innocent grocer on his cracker business. He writes out his notes in full afterward and that grocer ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... at a feast before. They were making merry in kitchen and parlour, when a poor old woman came to the back door, begging for scraps of food and a night's lodging. Her clothes were coarse and ragged; her hair was scanty and grey; her back was bent; her teeth were gone. She had a squinting eye, a clubbed foot, and crooked fingers. In short, she was the poorest and ugliest old woman ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... violent to them that they scarcely dared approach him. His exterior kept faith with his interior. He would have been terrible to meet in a dark lane. His physiognomy was cloudy, false, terrible; his eyes were burning, evil, extremely squinting; his aspect struck all with dismay. The whole aim of his life was to advance the interests of his Society; that was his god; his life had been absorbed in that study: surprisingly ignorant, insolent, impudent, impetuous, without measure and without discretion, all means ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... firm of Jenkins and Jones announce a novel from the pen of Mr. Caradoc Blodwen, who had to fly from his native village last year owing to the realistic picture he gave of local life in The Home of the Squinting Widows. It is to be called Taffy was a Thief; and those who have had the privilege of seeing early copies of the book, which Mr. Blodwen wrote during his seclusion amongst the Hairy Ainus, describe it as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... his scarf and trying to look at it by pulling it out to its full length and squinting down his nose ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... he observed, squinting over his shoulder. "It'd be a mistake to leave evidence like that around." He tore down the sign and worked it into firewood with an axe. "Now they can't do nothing to us for drifting in here by error," he remarked to his companions. ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in Citron's saint Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen ...? Of course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well, if he couldn't remember ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... his back, to earn his few shillings; but when on Friday evening he comes home, he finds the candlestick with seven candles lighted, and the table covered with a fair white cloth, and he puts away from him his pack and his cares, and he sits down to table with his squinting wife and yet more squinting daughter, and eats fish with them, fish which has been dressed in beautiful white garlic sauce, sings therewith the grandest psalms of King David, rejoices with his whole heart over the deliverance of the children of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... divisions clear in your heads, and then I'll ask you to follow me—" And all the company sitting round with their mouths open. I came away: I couldn't stand it. It put me in mind how my poor mother used to warn me against squinting for fun. "One of these days," she'd say, "the wind'll take and change sudden while you're doing it; and there you'll be fixed and looking fifty ways for Sunday until we meet in the ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... summit of which lay the bridal chaplet. She smiled and seemed glad at heart, but was shamefaced and downcast. Next came the aged parents; the father too was only a servant about the farm, and the hovel, the furniture, and the clothing, all bore witness that their poverty was extreme. A dirty, squinting musician followed the train, who kept grinning and screaming, and scratching his fiddle, which was patched together of wood and pasteboard, and instead of strings had three bits of pack-thread. The procession halted ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... beautifully combined with the daily exercise of charity, had begun; for waiting for them in Priscilla's parlour, established indeed in her easy-chair by the fire and warming her miserable toes on the very hob, sat grey Ill Luck horribly squinting. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... us-he was far from intending an insult. He meant it for a bit of a good turn-nothing more. "Always fractious at first-these sort of people are," pursues Keepum, relighting his cigar as he sits on the sofa, squinting his right eye. "Take bravely to gentlemen after a little display of modesty-always! Try her again, Squire." Mr. Snivel dashes the candle from her hand, and in the darkness grasps her wrists. The enraged girl shrieks, and calls aloud for ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... proper arrangement and subdivision of life in a large city and in these seething, modern times is perplexing to all of us. There are so many things we would like to do which we cannot; so many things which we do against our wills. We are perpetually squinting at happiness, but just as we get a delightful vision before our eyes we are whisked off by duty or ambition or the force of social momentum to try a different view. Consequently our perennial regret is apt to be that we have seen our real interests and our real friends as in a panorama, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... in haste, that's clear enough," remarked Hood, balancing one of the pumps in his hand. "'Bonet, Paris,'" he read, squinting at the lining. "Most deplorable that we have both slippers; one would have been a clew, and we could have spent the rest of our lives measuring footprints. Very nice slippers, though; fastidious young person, I'll wager. The monogram on these trinkets is of no assistance—it might ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... gentleman of good understanding, made him carve a marble Bacchus, ten palms in height, in his house; this work in form and bearing in every part corresponds to the description of the ancient writers—his aspect, merry; the eyes, squinting and lascivious, like those of people excessively given to the love of wine. He holds a cup in his right hand, like one about to drink, and looks at it lovingly, taking pleasure in the liquor of which he was the inventor; ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... to say that Alice never did any wrong thing. She was, however, so sorry for a fault, she repented so soon, and then did all she could to repair it, that no one could help forgiving her. She had a trick of squinting now and then. Her mother thought that my curls perplexed the bright eyes under them; and, to prevent the evil, drew up all the pretty locks in a bunch, tied them together, and said, "Now, Alice, your hair is all out of the way, and ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... in return, Mrs. Hamley seemed charmed with him to such a degree that Molly once or twice fancied that mother and son would have been happier in her absence. Yet, again, it struck on the shrewd, if simple girl, that Osborne was mentally squinting at her in the conversation which was directed to his mother. There were little turns and 'fioriture' of speech which Molly could not help feeling were graceful antics of language not common in the simple daily intercourse between mother and son. But it was flattering rather than ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... held in the arms of her drunkard farming father. A sort of local mad-Edison whose inventions never worked or, if they did, were promptly stolen from him by more profit-minded promoters. Her brother Jim, sturdy, cowlicked, squinting into the sun, stood at his father's knee. He wondered what had happened to Jim but didn't dare ask. Presumably he should know since Jim shared the house with his sister and an ancient ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... vaxinated with the scab of a redheaded person your hair will turn red, and if he has warts or frekles you will have warts two and frekles. father said once when he was a boy he knew a feller whitch was vaxinated with a scab of a cock-eyed man and bimeby the feller began to squint and he kep on squinting wirse and wirse and bimeby he was cock-eyed two. and father he said he knew another feller whitch had a wooden leg and he sent his scab to another feller to be vaxinated and that feller began to limp and he always walked stifleged. ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... continued Bihan; "it is worth while limping and squinting for a time to win all the ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... with his feet crossed; but the Thunder Bird did not circle back and prepare to descend the invisible spiral it had climbed so ardently. Two cigarettes he smoked leisurely, now and then tilting back his head and squinting into the silent blue depth above. He drew out his book and looked at the slip saying that Johnny Jewel was being called by the Rolling R Ranch on long-distance telephone. He squinted again at the sky, cocked his ear like a spaniel and got no faint humming, replaced the slip in his ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... were deep; only the faces of those nearest the flame could be clearly distinguished. One table was surrounded by a boisterous group in the centre of which was a fat man in a frowsy wig. He had a malicious glint in his squinting eyes and was evidently of some importance. When he spoke the others listened ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... of what he has since written, I have not entirely read; because I am not fond of reading what is merely abstract, and unapplied immediately to some useful science. Bonaparte, with his repeated derisions of Ideologists (squinting at this author) has by this time felt that true wisdom does not lie in mere practice without principle. The next work Tracy wrote was the Commentary on Montesquieu, never published in the original, because not safe; but ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... his watch at least a dozen times during the reading of the story. An anxious frown settled on his brow and an observer might have remarked the strange, listening attitude that he affected at times, such as the alert cocking of his head and an intense squinting ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... had it folded so that I found myself confronting a picture of Lady Alicia Newland, Lady Alicia in the "Teddy-Bear" suit of an aviator, with a fur-lined leather jacket and helmet and heavy gauntlets and leggings and the same old audacious look out of the quietly smiling eyes, which were squinting a little ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... happy with his bed-tester. He said be had never slept under a bed-tester in his life, and he was dying to know what it would be like—to lie there with hundreds of dear little, shy little chintz rosebuds squinting down ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... at the sunlight beyond the window, half-squinting and half-frowning. "No, come to think of it, I don't believe I do. I feel better now ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... the Padre had come in to see me and was just concluding a prayer when there was a tap, and the door opened on the instant. A large bottle, the size of a magnum, was pushed in by an orderly, who, seeing the Padre, departed in haste. (I was squinting up through my eyelashes and saw it all and just pulled myself together in time to ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... gazing over the lake, crimson with the last rays of the sun, Jim was studying the rocks upon the farther side and squinting his eyes at something moving among them. It was with a startled return to his surroundings that ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... said Albert; "the age has many such as this fellow, whose views of the spiritual and temporal world are so different, that they resemble the eyes of a squinting man; one of which, oblique and distorted, sees nothing but the end of his nose, while the other, instead of partaking the same defect, views strongly, sharply, and acutely, whatever is ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... as I could and trying to avoid observation from the squinting eye of Mr Bitpin, our fourth lieutenant, who was the oldest in seniority although he occupied such a subordinate position, I made my way to the side of Ned Anstruther, the midshipman of the watch, who stood on the weather ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson |
