"Weird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the others saw only grazing ground for cattle; saw wonders in the rioting streams without a thought of miners' inches. His father had taught him the love of books, but there had been so few to love. He had taught him to think. Hiram was weird, queer, a "leetle cracked" to the others of Bear Valley. Uncle Sebastian alone had understood him—had sympathized with him and ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... there still remained its walls, once more than sixty miles in compass, and, after the ravages of three centuries and three conquerors, still more than eighty feet in height; there were still the ruins of the temple of cloud encompassed Bel, on its top was planted the observatory wherein the weird Chaldean astronomers had held nocturnal communion with the stars; still there were vestiges of the two palaces with their hanging gardens in which were great trees growing in mid-air, and the wreck of the hydraulic machinery that had supplied them with water from the river. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the weird fascination of Poe's strangely beautiful poem "The Raven"? Perhaps on some stormy evening you have read it until the "silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" has "thrilled you, filled you, with fantastic terrors never felt before." ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... thunderstorm. One moment she said her "mutch" was the only thing that gave her comfort, and the next she slackened the strings and let it back upon her neck, in a passion at it for making her too hot. Her talk was a wild, somewhat weird, farrago of utterly meaningless balderdash, mere inarticulate gabble, snatches of old Jacobite ballads and exaggerated phrases from the drama, to which she suited equally exaggerated action. She ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Poe has chosen to exhibit his power chiefly in that dim region which stretches from the very utmost limits of the probable into the weird confines of superstition and unreality. He combines in a very remarkable manner two faculties which are seldom found united; a power of influencing the mind of the reader by the impalpable shadows of mystery, and a minuteness of detail which does not leave a pin or ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... appearance. Don't fall over this plate basket—it's one of the 'properties'—the caldron for the witches' cave; and the three uncouth-looking figures, with broken clothes-props in their hands, who are drinking gin-and-water out of a pint pot, are the weird sisters. This miserable room, lighted by candles in sconces placed at lengthened intervals round the wall, is the dressing-room, common to the gentlemen performers, and the square hole in the ceiling is the trap-door of the stage ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of Mont St. Michel is strange and weird in the extreme. A vast ghostlike object of a very pale pinkish hue suddenly rises out of the bay, and one's first impression is that one has been reading the "Arabian Nights," and that here is one ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... Poetry, Riches and Poverty, Youth and Crabbed Age— Oh, sorrowful procession! All so wretched, when perhaps all might have been so happy if they had only paired differently! I halted a moment to let the weird shapes drift by. As the last of the train melted into the darkness, my vagabond fancy went wandering back to the theatre and the play I had seen—Romeo and Juliet. Taking a lighter tint, but still of the same sober ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... hit strange problems as routine: if they weren't weirdos, they weren't tough enough to merit Med Service attention. Now the essence of a weird problem is that it involves a factor nobody ever thought of before ... or the absence of one ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... a village in the Budweis neighborhood, 100 miles to south. There, for three centuries after him, stood "Zisca's Oak" (under shade of which, his mother, taken suddenly on the harvest-field, had borne Zisca): a weird object, gate of Heaven and of Orcus to the superstitious populations about. At midnight on the Hallow-Eve, dark smiths would repair thither, to cut a twig of the Zisca Oak: twig of it put, at the right moment, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... disturbed, the prince seemed so unlike Himself and filled with such unrestfulness. "I fear me much," then said a mantri there, "That some mishap hath overwhelmed the King. Perhaps by some bad spirit he's possessed, That he to this weird spot should fain return." One went and cried: "Come hither, O our King! The day declines; we've waited here since dawn." The King responded to the call, and came With smiling face, though pale, unto the gate: "Come here, my uncle; come and talk with me, Thy King. No evil ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... in a great deal of his fine imagery; but still in such characters as his, the sympathy between the moods of nature and those of the mind is most real and important; and Dame Nature's equinoctial night wrath is weird, gruesome, crushing, and can be faced (if it must be faced) in real comfort only when one is going on an errand of mercy, with a clear conscience, a light heart, a good cigar, and plenty ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... mystery, he was endowed with an imagination abnormally active even for a child. It is customary to give prominence to De Quincey's pernicious habit of opium-eating, in attempting to explain the grotesque fancies and weird flights of his marvellous mind in later years; yet it is only fair to emphasize the fact that the later achievements of that strange creative faculty were clearly foreshadowed in youth. For example, the earliest incident in his life that he could afterwards ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... the door, relieved and glad to see that the duststorm was blowing by. The great sky-high pall of yellow had moved on to the north. Puffs of dust were whipping along the road, but no longer in one continuous cloud. In the west, low down the sun was sinking, a dull magenta in hue, quite weird and remarkable. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... weird battle in the west, There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain kill'd In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown Along a wandering wind, and past his ear Went shrilling, "Hollow, hollow all delight! Hail King! tomorrow thou shalt pass away. Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee. And I am blown ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... melody of "Neale," by J.H. Cornell, comes as near to a vocal success as could be hoped. The music is of middle register and less than octave range, natural scale, minor, and the triple time lightens a little the dirge-like harmony while the weird sea-song effect is kept. A chorus of singing tars must create uncommon emotion, chanting ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... of the formal points on which, as we know, the advice of Lewis, no poet but a remarkably good metrist, had been of use to him. And he acquitted himself now in a manner which, if it never quite attains the weird charm of Christabel itself at its best, is more varied, better sustained, and, above all, better suited to the story-telling which was, of course, Scott's supremest gift. It is very curious to compare Coleridge's remarks on Scott's verse with those of Wordsworth, in reference to the White ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... fall from his shoulders. He went along more swiftly, inspired with new vague hopes. Down—down! The voice of the sea grew nearer; now he could hear the dull thud of the waves, then the weird whistling sounds that succeeded. Springing from a granite out-jutting to the sands, he looked eagerly, searchingly, this way and that. He saw no one. His gaze lowered and he walked from the dry to the wet strand. There he stopped, an exclamation ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... wandering, and to the farmer is prophetic of rain. Amid the general joy and the sweet assurance of things, I love to listen to the strange clairvoyant call. Heard a quarter of a mile away, from out the depths of the forest, there is something peculiarly weird and monkish about it. Wordsworth's lines upon the European species apply equally well to ours:—"O blithe new-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice: O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird? ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... starvation on her own part, been able to buy a wondrous gold-and-crimson worsted bird suspended from an elastic string, a bird which bobbed up and down to command in the most lively and artistic manner? And had not her hired baby actually laughed at the clumsy toy—laughed an elfish and weird laugh, the first it had ever indulged in? And Liz had laughed too, for pure gladness in the child's mirth, and the worsted bird became a sort of uncouth charm to make ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... had occupied him but little in comparison with the fact of its arrival. He suddenly wondered if anything more might be found in the envelope than what he had withdrawn. He jumped out of bed in the weird light, took the letter, pulled out the flimsy sheet, shook the envelope—searched it. Nothing more was there. Boldwood looked, as he had a hundred times the preceding day, at the insistent red seal: "Marry ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... side, sometimes whirling around, but with feet always flat on the floor, often turning on her heels. All the time her arms were extended and her fingers snapping, and snapping also were the black eyes. She was the personification of grace, but the dance was weird—made the more so by the setting of bright evening dresses and glittering uniforms. One never sees a dance of this sort these days, even in the South, any more than one sees the bright-colored turban. Both have ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... trust himself to think much about it, for fear he would do his friend an injustice. The fact that he could not see Cairns differently in the latter's first fame-flush, and observing past doubt, that he was lifted for the world's eyes, helped Bedient to realize that he was a bit weird in judgment. At all events, something was gone from the friendship. He was sore at heart, more than ever alone.... The two separated a second time in Peking after the relief of the Legations. Bedient went to Japan, where he made the acquaintance of an old Buddhist priest—a ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... with plenty of open spaces between, many of which were occupied by native villages, the inhabitants of which turned out en masse to gaze in awe at the wonderful sight of the huge ship rushing through the air overhead, and to greet her appearance with weird, blood-curdling cries and the beating of their great war drums. Then they crossed the Aruwimi River—an important tributary of the great Congo, shortly afterward sighting the snow-crowned summit of Ruwenzori, glistening in the sun. And here the villages abruptly ceased, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... be an ordinary small hut. Outside the hut was what he took for a curiously shaped log of wood. The inside of the hut was in shadow, but as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he saw something in one corner. It was a weird-looking head, also of wood. ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... summer—and its rays had so far scattered the mists that all the low-lying land was clear, though the mountain-range inland was only visible a short distance above its base. The effect of this was to enhance the weird grandeur of the view, for when the eye had traced the steep glens, overhanging cliffs, rugged water-courses, and sombre corries upward to the point where all was lost in cloud, the imagination was set free to continue ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... prevented me from telling my mother about the object of my love. Thence all my sufferings. For many days that doll, incessantly present in fancy, danced before my eyes, stared at me fixedly, opened her arms to me, assuming in my imagination a sort of life which made her appear at once mysterious and weird, and thereby all the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... their impromptu meal, but were still at the table, thoroughly enjoying themselves, half forgetful of the awesome figure in the next room, when out of the weird stillness came a sudden cry, and a dull thud, as of some body falling ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... broad stream wound through the neighbouring medows giving a rich green shade to the grass on its banks; the high green hills stood out clear and tall against the blue sky, and the ruins of an old castle on the top of one of the heights gave a strange weird appearance. To add to the strangeness of this little scene, at the bottom of the very hill on which the ruins stood was a villa of the modern kind nestling amidst a woody dell of beach trees. This was no other than the residence of Mr. John Winston and his daughter ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... over the hill and through the woods was before me. The thought of the moonlit, silent woods, with their weird shadows, was too much for me; I looked about for a place ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... prospect quite novel to us. Glancing to our left, on Michigan's sylvan shore, we saw the bickering flames of a ravaging forest fire; dyeing all the surrounding air and landscape crimson, while dense clouds of smoke hung over the burning land like a pall upon which the sun-rays were reflected with weird effect. It was, indeed, an unusual sight, ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... listening, tense and still, Are sailing on a midget ball of dust We call our planet; will have sailed through space Ten thousand leagues before this music ends. What does it mean? Oh, God, what can it mean?— This weird hushed ant-hill with a thousand eyes; These midget periwigs; all those little blurs, Tier over tier, of faces, masks of flesh, Corruptible, hiding each its hopes and dreams, Its tragi-comic dreams. And all this throng Will be forgotten, mixed with dust, crushed out, Before this book of music is ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... was a loyal and faithful adherent to the cause she had espoused, and her report, written in the weird caligraphy of Russia, greatly interested the butler of the Grand Duke Yaroslav. From that report he learned of the visit which the Grand Duchess Irene had paid; learned, too, that she had been escorted to her car by an Englishman, whose name the woman did not know; and was to discover later ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... As the weird strains died away, the host pressed the English lord to bide long as a guest, promising rest for horse, and refreshment and pleasure for man, with many a joust, or feat at arms, for those who wished ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... look after her," remarked Lady Vayne. "There is something weird in the idea of her living there all alone; though, of course, her maid, Jessie, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... its feeble light to the room, only half subduing the shadows that went creeping into corners and recesses. Something of a weird aspect was on every thing; and I could not but gaze at the two strangers in that strange place to them, under such peculiar circumstances, and wonder to see them so calm, dignified, and self-possessed. We sat down by the table on which the lamp ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... our search for the next step in the progress of art. Here we find the artists making melodramatic efforts to attract the attention and fascinate the mind with weird and incongruous shapes of mongrel ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... of London is almost as unknown as that of Rome itself, and all its earliest history is lost in the misty traditions of the Middle Ages, and to this may be due the fact that the arms it blazons on its shield, and the weird supporters it claims to use, have but little to warrant them but custom and age. Other cities, less ancient and much less important, can give the full authority for the armorials which they have assumed, and even the great guilds ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... sometimes took it into his head to entertain weird beings from other houses whose brothers or cousins he had met in the holidays. On such occasions he liked to have some trusty friend by him to help the conversation along. It struck Kennedy that this might be one of those occasions. If ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... low hiss warned him he was trespassing, and clutching Terry's collar, he stood rigid, while the whip-like shadow of death writhed across a strip of moonlight—and disappeared. There was life,—of a sort, in Chitor. So Roy trod warily as he passed from room to room; dread of dark forgotten in the weird fascination of foreknowledge verified ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of squaws and children wading about in Yaquina Bay taking crabs in this manner, and the reflection by the water of the light from the many torches, with the movements of the Indians while at work, formed a weird and diverting picture of which we were ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... terror impressed itself on my brain, though all the while there was nothing overt, nothing visibly wrong. The strange landscape, bounded by fog, was not actually abnormal, considering its location, high in the Andes. The blue moss, the weird trees; they were strange, but possible. Even the seven native girls were a normal part of the scene. It was the sense of an alien presence that caused my ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... reaching the mossy mill- head she found that he had fixed in the keen damp draught which always prevailed over the wheel an AEolian harp of large size. At present the strings were partly covered with a cloth. He lifted it, and the wires began to emit a weird harmony which mingled curiously with the plashing of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... bag and running at top speed, he himself could easily win clear of the Place before anyone of the household should appear. And his car would be a mile away before the neighborhood could be aroused. Fury at the weird beast and the wrenching strain on his own nerves lent eagerness to his acceptance of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... six miles from my starting-place, but four thousand feet above it. Rising in bold grandeur above me was the summit of Long's Peak, and this, with the great hills of drifted snow, out of which here and there a dwarfed and distorted tree thrust its top, made timber-line seem weird and lonely. ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... savage veteran filled his pipe, lighted it, then taking a whiff after saluting the sky, the earth, and the cardinal points of the compass, passed it around, Indian-fashion, and began his weird story; which is here given, divested of the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... of Roaring Camp" appeared, and a line of successors, more or less worthy, have been following along the trail blazed by Bret Harte. They have given us matter of many kinds, realistic, romantic, tragic, humorous, weird. In this mass of material much that was good has been lost. The columns of newspapers swallowed some; weeklies, that lived for a brief day, carried others to the grave with them. Now and then chance or design interposed, and some fragment of value was not allowed to perish. It ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... the other end was attached to a support at the top of the cliff. It hung limp and heavy, lifeless. A sharp tug from above caused it to tremble violently in her hands; she dropped it as if it were a serpent. There was something weird, uncanny in its presence, losing itself as it did in the darkness but a few feet above her head. Again she heard the shout, and this time ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... lifted, disclosed a swarm of scorpions that had to be exterminated before a man dared move his possessions in. The once white calico ceilings moved suggestively where rats and snakes chased one another, or else hunted some third species of vermin; and there was a smell and a many-voiced weird whispering that hinted at corruption and war to the death behind skirting boards and underneath ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... particular months of the year, we have seen them flashing and quivering through the few hours of the short nights following the hottest days in July or August, as well as in the long cold nights of the winter months. They would sometimes linger on all night in their weird beauty, until lost in the splendour of the coming day. A description of them has often been attempted by writers of northern scenes, and I have to confess, that I have been rash enough to try it elsewhere; ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... time nobody spoke—they were too busy listening to the weird meanings of the fog horns and wondering how they could have escaped a collision so long. For a while Paul had kept the engine running in the hope that he might be able to keep to his course and eventually get to Lighthouse Island. But ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... reappeared behind a spring of flame. Her black hair was scattered over her shoulders and fell half across her brows. She moved slowly, and came up to him, fastening weird eyes on him, pointing a finger at the region of witches. Sepulchral cadences accompanied the representation. He did not listen, for he was thinking what a deadly charming and exquisitely horrid witch ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not dreaming, that's one sure thing," she murmured, approaching the little opening with extreme caution, while chills of alternate fear and excitement coursed all over her. "It seems so weird and ghostly to see that thing open all by itself, with nothing to help it along! Ghosts or not, I'm going to see what's there," and, strengthened by this resolve, she started to place her hand in the opening, but drew it back ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... friend. And there could be few more interesting psychological studies than to trace how, from the sentiments of love and admiration he once entertained for Douglas, he was wrought to such indignation and wrath as to yield to the weird fascination of that precedent which must have been so burnt in upon his childish memory, and to repeat the tragedy which within the recollection of all men had marked the Castle of Edinburgh with ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... out through the great gate, the solemn coachman whips up the spanking Arabs, and the syces bawl louder than ever, and Kalidas Ramaya Mullick turns away his eyes. But for all that, the durhna woman heaps dust upon her head, which he sees, and mutters a weird warning, which he hears; and though the lawn is wide, and the banian topes are leafy, and a gilded temple, the family shrine, stands between, and the marble veranda is spacious, and the state apartments are remote, they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... little to win him from that self-analysis which later enabled him to mystify a world that rarely pauses to take heed of the ancient exhortation, "Know thyself." In the depths of his own being he found the story of "William Wilson," with its atmosphere of weird romance and its heart of ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... track wound in and out among the passes, now approaching the mountain-sides, now suspended over precipices, avoiding abrupt angles by bold curves, plunging into narrow defiles, which seemed to have no outlet. The locomotive, its great funnel emitting a weird light, with its sharp bell, and its cow-catcher extended like a spur, mingled its shrieks and bellowings with the noise of torrents and cascades, and twined its smoke among the ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... a great quantity of red fire he could not more effectively have drawn all eyes upon him. The weird, shrill yell cut the ringmaster short, and a pleased murmur ran through the crowd. Of course, this must be part of the show, but it ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... one scalp-dance by the Sioux. They had a fresh scalp, said to be off a Chippewa chief. It was stretched on a sort of hoop, formed by a green twig, or limb. It was all very weird. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... hurried up. Jim recognized him as the stranger who had been with her in Joe Ewing's car that afternoon. He saw her set her arms akimbo and say something in a low voice, and laugh. The man laughed too and Jim experienced the quick pang of a weird new kind of pain. Some ray had passed between the pair, a shaft of beauty from that sun that had warmed him a moment since. The Jelly-bean felt suddenly like a ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... contrast still farther one should read Hugo's "Notre Dame" on the spot. It will give a wonderful and whimsical conception of those weird gargoyles and devils, which have only to be seen to awaken a new interest in what this great writer has put forth. For another sensation, pleasant or otherwise, one might look up a copy of Meyron's wonderful ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... "What was that weird stuff the Secretary Bird spouted when you showed Phillis to him, Kit? About her being forward, or coy, or something. It ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... Schoenen Rhein" they were playing at the moment, with its sweet, weird, luring, mournful, warning Lorelei motif dominating in the waltz measure, and, with parted lips and clinging to her father's side, Lilian stood close to the window and looked and listened, saying not one word. There were ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... The trail threaded its way between great Ceiba trees, looming weird and gigantic with their buttressed trunks, all knotted and entwined with hanging lianas and curiously hung with air plants dropping from the branches. Gay-colored birds flashed in the patches of sunlight that ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Officer was coming with them, and that the janitress was coming likewise, and that divers lower-floor tenants were joining in the march, and that as they came the janitress was explaining to all and sundry how the weird miscreant had sought to inveigle her into admitting him to Mr. Slack's rooms, and how she had refused, and how with maniacal craft—or words to that effect—he had, nevertheless, managed to secure admittance ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Cloud! How invigorating and healthful! So vast were the proportions of the globe that there was no swaying, shaking, nor trembling ever perceptible. It was as if the splendid structure were a rock, and all the world a swift flying panorama far beneath them. Very strange and weird was the sight of the sun, traveling in one continuous circuit but a few degrees above the horizon, never rising nor setting during six months of the year. The atmosphere was particularly clear and frosty, so that as they promenaded the balcony, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... darlint,' I answered, takin' her baby from her arms, an' leadin' the way to the kitchen, where we would be alone, with a great, cracklin' fire in the stove to sit by. I gave her food and comforted her, an' tended the baby, while she told me about hersilf, with an occasional spell o' cryin' an' a wild, weird expression on her face that gave me bad dreams fer ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... mists had a certain weird quality and Robert's imaginative mind heightened its effect. It was almost like the blind shooting at the blind. A pink dot would appear in the fog, expand a little, and then go out. There would be a sharp report, the whistling of a bullet, perhaps, and that was all. The white men fought in silence, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... isn't it? White people aren't so plentiful here. At least I knew there were white men at those tents—that funny red-haired man and yourself. You see it was the only place about here where I knew I could find anybody who—what shall I say? Why, who doesn't belong in this weird atmosphere——It was uncanny over at our place this evening. At sunset the water in the swimming pool didn't seem to be water at all; it seemed molten gold; and the mosaic round it seemed to be made up of whitened bones, and back of that was ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be a person. What makes me myself, among ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... his daughter, she singing hymns, he accompanying her on some instrument. We stood listening. She sang Faber's 'Pilgrims of the Night.' The words were trivial, but the air, though simple, had something weird and unearthly about it. 'Take me away,' he said, after a few minutes, 'I shall cry ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Weird laid he on her, sore sickness he wrought, Fowl are a-singing. That self-same hour to death was she ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... the glass, and occasionally the howl of the wind, which penetrated the chimney and scattered the ashes. A single candle placed behind the curtains lighted this dismal scene, and the irregular flicker of its flame cast weird reflections and dancing shadows an the walls of the alcove. There came a lull in the wind, the rain ceased, and during this instant of calm someone knocked, at first gently, and then sharply, at the outer door. Derues dropped the dying woman's hand and bent forward to listen. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sight of Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock, magnificently sculptored, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird, lonely. When the sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the monuments silhouetted black against that strange horizon the effect was marvelously beautiful. I watched ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... and the sky-line of the hill was marked by two or three gibbet-like poles from which, on a now invisible line between them, depended certain objects—mere black silhouettes against the sky—which bore weird likeness to human figures. Absorbed as she was in her book, she nevertheless occasionally cast an impatient glance in that direction, as the sunlight faded more quickly than her fire. For the fluttering objects ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... Part-songs and catches sounded delightful in the open air, and solos, sung to the accompaniment of Marjorie's guitar, were equally effective. The girls roared the choruses to popular national ditties, and special favourites were repeated again and again. Several step-dances were executed, and had a weird effect in the unsteady light of the waning fire. Mrs. Arnold, who was a splendid elocutionist, gave a recitation on an incident in the American War, and was enthusiastically encored. The moon had risen high in the sky, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... had a fine view of Boston harbor. Sitting there late one moonlight night, admiring the outlines of Bunker Hill Monument and the weird effect of the sails and masts of the vessels lying in the harbor, we naturally passed from the romance of our surroundings to those of our lives. I have often noticed that the most reserved people are apt to grow confidential at such an hour. It was under such circumstances ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the valley of the dead; Lit by a weird half light; No sound they made, no word they said; And they were pale with fright. Then suddenly from unseen places came Loud laughter, that was like ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... steel-making plant, in full operation, is an event in a man's life. Particularly remarkable is the weird spectacle presented at night, with the furnaces fiercely gleaming, the fresh ingots smoking hot, the Bessemer converter "blowing off," the great cranes moving about like things of life, bearing giant kettles of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... were not mere street corner ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks without noise or bloodshed; but whenever the citizen honored by their attentions refused to impoverish himself gracefully his objections came to be spread finally upon some police ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... "Hatty" had bestowed in her bag a volume of Mr. Browning's, and on the homeward journey from Albano to Rome he read aloud to them his "Saul." At the half-way house on the Campagna, the Torre di Mezza, they paused, to gaze at the "weird watcher of the Roman Campagna," the monument to Apuleia, whose ruins are said to have assumed ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... next few minutes it was the sight of Tricky. That ever gay animal was careering down the hill straight towards the feeding sheep. The pump-handle was still tied to its neck, and it clattered over the stones with a noise weird enough to drive the whole flock into the sea. The shepherd knew there must be a catastrophe, but he was powerless to avert it. He was too sore to follow, so he slowly limped towards the hut, to nurse his wrath and ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... woman come? Was it a woman, then—that figure—with its noiseless motion, its strange fragility, its flowing, floating, cloud-like draperies? Or was it some affection of his own disordered senses that had wrought out an apparition from his own fancy? It reminded him of those weird and grisly scenes in the old romances which he had read in his boyhood, such as the "Mysteries of Udolpho," the "Romance of the Forest," or the "Castle of Otranto." This castle might well be the scene of such a mystery. Perhaps the late incident was the revival ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... kept up the idleness; blew on the pipe to Belle's piano; then had a ride in the forest all by my nainsel; back and piped again, and now dinner nearing. Take up this sheet with nothing to say. The weird figure of Faauma is in the room washing my windows, in a black lavalava (kilt) with a red handkerchief hanging from round her neck between her breasts; not another stitch; her hair close cropped and oiled; when she first ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we humbly bow, But where, oh where, are Israel's prophets now? Where is the sibyl with her hoarded leaves? Where is the charm the weird enchantress weaves? No croaking raven turns the auspex pale, No reeking altars tell the morrow's tale; The measured footsteps of the Fates are dumb, Unseen, unheard, unheralded, they come, Prophet and priest and all their following ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mark in these matters. The marching Frenchmen were singing—but singing in a fashion quite novel to the British. Throughout their column there were anything up to a dozen songs in progress, some as choruses and some as solos, and the effect was certainly rather weird. The Tower Bridge officers, knowing their own men's fondness for swinging march songs, expected, and, to tell truth, half hoped that they would give a display of their harmonious powers. They did, but hardly in the expected fashion. One man demanded in a ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... frame of mind which might have won him a distinguished career, had she placed the period of his birth in the eleventh century. Volktman was essentially a man belonging to the past time: the character of his enthusiasm was weird and Gothic; with beings of the present day he had no sympathy; their loves, their hatreds, their politics, their literature, awoke no echo in his breast. He did not affect to herd with them; his life was solitude, and its occupation study—and study of that nature which every day unfitted ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... many degrees. There was the old and withered hag, on whom, in our later mediaeval ages the character was mainly bestowed; there was the terrific witch-wife, or wolf-witch, who seems wholly apart from human birth and attributes, like the weird sisters of Macbeth—creatures who entered the house at night and seized warriors to devour them, who might be seen gliding over the sea, with the carcase of the wolf dripping blood from their giant jaws; and there was the more ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... yourselves," called Dennis. "We're level with the gun," and, trying to squeeze themselves flatter, if such a performance had been humanly possible, they heard the rhythmical tac-tac abreast of them and the weird whistle of the deadly stream of bullets a few ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... hopping to a rock that would command a view of the open ground where the corroboree was being held. Of course Dot thought this would be great fun, so the Kangaroo took her to the rock, where they peeped through the trees and saw before them the weird scene and dance. ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... after that to Daisy; and so it was to Mrs. Sandford. Nora Dinwiddie was no longer with her; there was nobody to be a distraction or a pleasure to the grave little child who went about with such a weird stillness, or sat motionless with such unchildlike quiet. Mrs. Sandford did not know what to do; but indeed nothing could be done with Daisy. She could not be amused or happy; she did not wish Nora were there; ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... House; and he heard voices there pronouncing words, and the voices were nowise human, and but for his bitter need he had screamed and fled. Halfway between the voices and Maharrion, whom he now saw standing out from the world, covered in rainbow halos, he perceived the weird grey beast that is neither cat nor bird. As Pombo hesitated, chilly with fear, he heard those voices grow louder in Lonely House, and at that he stealthily moved a few steps lower, and then rushed past the beast. The beast intently watched Maharrion hurling up bubbles that are every one ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... costs, for the air from it permeates the whole house. Where this is damp, it leads not alone to disease among the inmates, but to the disintegration of the house itself, through what is called "dry rot," but is paradoxically the result of dampness. Edgar Allan Poe, in his weird story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," has given a mystical interpretation of the dissolution of an old homestead which really has a scientific explanation that might ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... narrower and narrower, until it ended in a yellow thread under the horizon. Either shore was overhung with heavy forest red with autumn's touch. Wild fowl occasionally flew over the current. It was inexpressibly weird and lonely to Paul, seemingly a silent river flowing on forever through ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hat or sword or empty hand for help, they cried for aid, they cried for water. Those who could not lift their voices moaned, moaned. Some had grown delirious, and upon that plain there was even laughter. All the various notes taken together blended into one long, dreary, weird, dull, and awful sound, steady as a wind in miles of frozen reeds. They were all blue soldiers, and they lay where ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... my son, M. le Marquis?" repeated the old man mechanically. "I have the right to know," he added with sudden, weird energy. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... all dead, and there was no chance of their returning to plague them, the people of Hamelin refused to pay the reward, and they bade the piper do his worst. He took them at their word, and a few moments later the weird strains of the magic flute again arose, and this time it was the children who swarmed out of the houses ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... in an attempt to identify the different colours of the flowers in the moonlight. It proved a fascinating occupation, for the pale, cold brightness imparted hues to the flowers that were strange and weird, so that it was a matter of real difficulty to say what the colours actually were. Then he wondered how it was he had never before discovered what an inspiring thing it was to wander all alone at night about a garden illuminated by a brilliant moon. The shadows ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... only a few wise old men held out. As for Cheschapah himself, ambition and success had brought him to the weird enthusiasm of a fanatic. He was still a charlatan, but a charlatan who believed utterly in his star. He moved among his people with growing mystery, and his hapless adjutant, Two Whistles, rode with him, slaved for him, abandoned the plans he had ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... a lovely moonlight evening; the avenue was white and glistening in the soft light; the trees cast weird shadows on the grass. Phillis was somewhat surprised to see in the distance Mr. Dancy's tall figure pacing to and fro before the lodge-gate. He was evidently waiting for her; for as she approached he threw away his cigar and joined her at once. Jeffreys, who thought he was some ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... peck at the food from the big wooden spoon; they had known her all the sixteen summers of her life, and were her playfellows, only they would never tell her anything of what they saw in winter over the seas. That was her only quarrel with them. Swallows do not tell their secrets They have the weird ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... weird impressiveness of the scene there could be no doubt. It even touched some unfamiliar chord in the soul of Nicol Brinn. The effect of such an interview upon an imaginative, highly strung temperament, could be well imagined. It was perhaps theatrical, but that by ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... all night. The girl herself is designated by a long and slim pole which she carries in her hand, and which towers above her head. By her side stands her mother. The leader of the dance begins a song, a simple, rhythmic, weird chant, the words of which are archaic and have no significance to the Indians of to-day, but merely give syllables to hang the tune upon. As the leader sings he slowly moves his legs in a kind of oblique walk. The young men take his hand and follow. The ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... cottages, then into the swamp lands, where the moisture painted the bark of tall trees, and lay in shiny green patches among them. The Southern moss dripping from the giant branches shrouded them in a weird drapery, soft as mist. There was something dreary and painful to a Northern eye in the scene; the tall and shrouded trees, the stagnant pools of water gleaming among them, the vivid green patches of moss, the barren stretches of sand. The very beauty in it all seemed the unnatural glory ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... beneath the tree wherein lay the waiting death. Sheeta slowly edged his hind paws along the branch still further beneath him, and then with a hideous shriek he launched himself toward the great ape. The barest fraction of a second before his spring another beast of prey above him leaped, its weird and savage cry ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Yggdrasil[6] is a tree worthy of the gods; it is a world-tree; its roots extend to all the worlds; its branches spread even over heaven. Under it is the fountain Mimir, spring of wisdom, from which Odin drinks daily. Near it is the dwelling of the Norns, fates or weird sisters, who establish laws and uphold them by their judgments, and allot to every man his span of life. They are named Urd the past, Verdandi the present, and Skuld the future. Daily do they water ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the South Devon coast near Dawlish, which are known as the Parson and Clerk. A wild, weird legend is told about these rocks—of a parson who desired the See of Exeter, and often rode with his clerk to Dawlish to hear the latest news of the bishop who was nigh unto death. The wanderers lost their way one dark night, and the parson exhibited most unclerical anger, telling ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... ago he was riding back, alone, in the afternoon, from an unsuccessful search after strayed horses, and suddenly, all in the lifting of a hoof, the weird prairie had gleamed into eerie life, had dropped the veil and spoken to him; while the breeze stopped, and the sun stood still for a flash in waiting for his answer. And he, his heart in a grip of ice, the ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... to a bivouac of negro soldiers, with the brilliant fire lighting up their red trousers and gleaming from their shining black faces,—eyes and teeth all white with tumultuous glee. Overhead, the mighty limbs of a great live-oak, with the weird moss swaying in the smoke, and the high ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... seem fit enough in the Paumotus, the more so as certain women there possess, by the gift of nature, singular and useful powers. They say they are honest, well-intentioned ladies, some of them embarrassed by their weird inheritance. And indeed the trouble caused by this endowment is so great, and the protection afforded so infinitesimally small, that I hesitate whether to call it a gift or a hereditary curse. You may rob this lady's coco-patch, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boards out under the elm trees had been removed to the main pavilion. The diving springboard was submerged by the swollen lake, the rowboats rocked logily, half full of water, and the woods across the lake looked weird and dim through the incessant stream of rain, ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and not unlike. I recall him, two months later, a little less uncouth, a little better dressed, but in singularity and in angularity much the same. All the world now takes an interest in every detail that concerned him, or that relates to the weird tragedy of his ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Emily, Charlotte and Anne. They, with their brother, lived in a kind of dream world. Charlotte was the natural story-teller, and she wove endless romances in which figured the great men of history who were her heroes. She also told over and over many weird Yorkshire legends. These children devoured every bit of printed matter that came to the parsonage, and they were as thoroughly informed on all political questions as the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... great sycamores, standing like giant sentinels on the river's marge, cast long unearthly shadows across the water, which grew blacker every minute. The deepening gloom gave all objects in the river valley a weird, distorted look. This oppressed August. The landscape seemed an enchanted one, a something seen in a dream or a delirium. It was as though the change had already come, and the real tangible world had passed away. He was the more susceptible from the depression ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... looked shadowy and mysterious as they passed through it, the pale moonlight casting weird shapes across its walls. Blanche caught Marjory's sleeve. "Look!" she whispered, pointing to a window where something like an arm and hand, with fingers outstretched, ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin." Again she read this sad comment on the vanity of earth and its ephemeral hosts, and her mind was filled with weird images, that looked out from her earnest eyes. Dr. Hartwell entered unperceived, and stood for some moments at the back of her chair, glancing over her shoulder at the last page. At length she closed the book, and, passing her hand wearily over her ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... darkness, thus made singularly visible, the white travellers sat dozing and nodding on their luggage, while the cries of metallic-toned horned frogs and other nocturnal sounds peculiar to that weird ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... bare head and feet some three or so feet into the clearing, he knelt down, and, touching the ground three times in succession with his forehead, looked up at a giant kulpa-tree opposite him, chanting as he did so some weird and monotonous refrain, the meaning of which was unintelligible to me. Up to then it had been light—the sky, like all Indian skies at that season, one blaze of moonbeams and stars; but now it gradually grew dark. An unnatural, awe-inspiring ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Weird wise and low, piercing and keen and glad, Or dim and sad As a forgotten strain Born when the broken legions of the rain Swept ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... She was shown through the house, paused at the place under the stairs where the imperial Shirley had her fierce encounter with that almost human dog, Keeper; she stood in the drawing-room where the sainted three sisters, arm-in-arm, paced up and down plotting their weird stories. She walked through the same old gate, on the same single stone pavement and over the same stile out into the same heather fields, gazing on the same dreary sky above and the same desolate earth ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... I go every little while just for fun. We all pretend that we don't believe in it, but we do. I'm scared blue every time I go to a new one—they're all such creepy creatures. The last one I went to was positively weird." ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... lamp would glare down upon her like the bloodshot eye of some demon who presided over this kingdom of iron and steam. Far behind a lurid trail of smoke marked the way that they had come. To Kate's mind it was all as weird and gloomy and cheerless even as ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about our birds and our animals as well as we do; and you go alone into the forest and are not afraid." Therefore every confession of ignorance on my part is thought to be a blind, a mere excuse to avoid telling them too much. My very writing materials and books are to them weird things; and were I to choose to mystify them by a few simple experiments with lens and magnet, miracles without end would in a few years cluster about me; and future travellers, penetrating to Wanumbai, world h hardly believe that a poor English naturalist, who had resided a few ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... eye was really there, or if, his imagination stirred by the weird scene and the fairy history of Japan which the sailor had repeated, he was seeing things not present ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... weird ye to be a Laidly Worm, And borrowed shall ye never be, Until Childe Wynd, the King's own son Come to the Heugh and thrice kiss thee; Until the world comes to an end, Borrowed shall ye ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... tumult of futile chase faded into silence behind the straining fugitive, there might have been seen whirling through the ancient streets of London a weird ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... with his Goettingen friends, and when the "Goettinger Bund" or "Hain" was formed, Buerger, though not himself a member, kept in close touch with it. In 1773 the ballad Lenore was published in the Musenalmanach. This poem, which in dramatic force and in its vivid realization of the weird and supernatural remains without a rival, made his name a household word in Germany. In 1774 Buerger married Dorette Leonhart, the [v.04 p.0813] daughter of a Hanoverian official; but his passion for his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hand, absorbed in a rough drawing that seemed to bear no relation to the skirt of the day. The margin of her morning paper was filled with queer little scrawls by the time she reached the office. She drew weird lines with her fork on the table-cloth at lunch. These hieroglyphics she covered with a quick hand, like a bashful schoolgirl, when ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... up the paper which had in it a fullpage photograph of a monster tank—those weird machines traveling on endless steel belts of caterpillar construction, armored, riveted and plated, with machine guns bristling ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... and O, be wise for twa! Think o' the risk she rins! I have seen ye, and what's to prevent ithers! I saw ye once in the Hags, in my ain howl, and I was wae to see ye there - in pairt for the omen, for I think there's a weird on the place - and in pairt for pure nakit envy and bitterness o' hairt. It's strange ye should forgather there tae! God! but yon puir, thrawn, auld Covenanter's seen a heap o' human natur since he lookit his last on the musket barrels, if he never saw nane afore," she added, with a kind of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson |
