"Whimsical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... panes, gave it the air of a Washington's headquarters, which Mr. Stuffer could undoubtedly prove it had been, for his tales were the most convincing arguments that the hostelry had been named by a whimsical fate not too dignified to stoop to punning. There were times when the hungry boarders thought the name facetious, but they conceded it to be quite exact in a descriptive sense, if its brick and mortar were intended to honor monumentally ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... should be ignored, Mac kept his eyes on the horizon for the first quarter of a mile, and talked volubly of the prospects of the Wet and the resources of the Territory; but when Flash was released, and after a short tussle settled down into a free, swinging amble, he offered congratulations in his own whimsical way. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... but perhaps that is not an absolute inconsistency, for what I wish is never to remain long enough in a place to take root, or, having done so, never to be transplanted. I am writing a journal, and its pages, like our many pleasant hours of conversation, are a whimsical medley of the sad, the sober, the gay, the good, the bad, and the ridiculous; not at all the sort of serious, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... looked up with one of his most compelling, whimsical smiles, and said, "Barbara, grandpop's Mrs. was grandma, and she's in heaven, but where ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... unpleasant thing happens! For there is nothing I hate so much as the tears of a woman, And their passionate cries, set up with such heat and excitement, Which a little plain sense would show to be utterly needless. Truly, I find the sight of these whimsical doings a nuisance. Matters must shift for themselves; as for me, I think it is bed-time." So he quickly turn'd round, and hasten'd to go to the chamber Where the marriage-bed stood, in which he slept for the most part. But his son held him back, and spoke in words of entreaty "Father, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... of the heart. As I read the book, twelve years ago, its tendency puzzled me considerably, remembering, as I did, with the greatest vividness, the fastidious and elegant personality of the author. I found it difficult to believe that he was in earnest. The book seemed to me to betray the whimsical sans-culottism of a man of pleasure who, when the ball is at an end, sits down with his gloves on and philosophizes on the artificiality of civilization and the wholesomeness of honest toil. An indigestion makes him a ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... hobby which he rode to the death. To Ritzner, ever upon the lookout for the grotesque, his peculiarities had for a long time past afforded food for mystification. Of this, however, I was not aware; although, in the present instance, I saw clearly that something of a whimsical nature was upon the tapis with my friend, and that Hermann was its ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... joined the latter in deriding the neophytes. Spanish literature was not the loser by these combats, whose description belongs to general literary criticism. Lyric poetry, until then dry, serious, and solemn, was infused by the satirist with flashing wit and whimsical spirit, and throwing off its connection with the drama, developed into an ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... bettin', Boy," pleaded the old man in the whimsical whine which he adopted when addressing his daughter. "Don't go and tell your mother that now. It wouldn't be right. Reelly it wouldn't. I'm only makin' a note or two ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Americans have been the only ones in this field. The French and English selections in this volume are sufficient to prove the contrary. Gautier's The Mummy's Foot has a humor of a lightness and grace as delicate as the princess's little foot itself. There are various English stories of whimsical haunting, some of actual spooks and some of the hoax type. Hoax ghosts are fairly numerous in British as in American literature, one of the early specimens of the kind being The Specter of Tappington in the Ingoldsby Legends. The files of Blackwood's ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... being made to revolve on any one of its axes, constantly shows a different aspect, so that the child views it as a very extraordinary little block, full of fascinating surprises and whimsical apparitions. ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... however, entirely dead within her, for the jury had strongly recommended him to mercy; and ignorant as she was of forms and ceremonies—helpless as a lone woman in misfortune always is—she had determined on going to Dublin, to kneel at the feet of the Lord Lieutenant—then the proud and whimsical Duke of ———, and there to solicit his pardon. Having hesitated for some time as to the manner in which she should break it to him, and ask his advice, she ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Lovelace to Belford.— Pities Tomlinson. Finds that he is dead in prison. Happy that he lived not to be hanged. Why. No discomfort so great but some comfort may be drawn from it. Endeavours to defend himself by a whimsical case which he puts between A. a miser, and B. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Steele replied to Dennis in an Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet, called "The Character of Sir John Edgar". What Steele had to say against the cross-grained old Critic discovers ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... different, Madam," answered Mrs Jane. "Chinamen's beauties wouldn't go for much in England, I guess. He's a silly, whimsical, finnicking piece—that's what he is! Pink velvet coat, laced with silver. Buff breeches. White silk stockings with silver clocks. No cloak. And raining cats and dogs and pitchforks. Reckon Eleanor got all the ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... has ever got well again after sorrow will fail to recognise its truth. The little mystery and the slender love-story which hold the discursiveness together are just sufficient but so slight that they shall not even be hinted at here. For the rest the book is whimsical, thoughtful, sentimental by turns and, in spite of its tolerance, a shade superior; with now and then a phrase which left me wondering whether a blushing cheek would deserve the Garter motto's rebuke; in fact it resembles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... a man who is a dark horse: who is neither friendly nor antagonistic; who is witty; who is preoccupied; who is whimsical or erratic—funny qualities, ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... man of conservative habits of mind, without, however, deserving to be classed as a confirmed reactionary. His anti-democratic tendency of thought sprang plausibly enough from convictions and beliefs which owed their existence, in some part at least, to strained and whimsical analogies. His defense of a static order of society rested at bottom upon a sturdy hatred of Socialism, then in the earliest stage of its rise. This ingrained aversion to the new, suggested to him a rather curious sort of rational or providential sanction for the old. He discerned, by an ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... morning. This book! oh, yes, I forgot!—I am going to write a book. A book about what? Well, that must be as God wills. But listen! As I lay in bed this morning between sleeping and waking, an idea came riding on a sunbeam into my room,—a mad, whimsical idea, but one that suits my mood; and put briefly, it is this: how is it that I, a not unpresentable young man, a man not without accomplishments or experience, should have gone all these ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... time five years of age, and Martha ten. "My dear madam," said Dora, "fashion has robbed you of a great treasure. Your daughters, predisposed to consumption, cannot safely obey its whimsical demands." ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... delighted in experiments of all sorts. If they turned out well, it was good fun; if not, that was funnier still! Her husband, for all his serious manner, had a real boy's love of a lark, and he aided and abetted her in all sorts of whimsical devices. They owned a dog who was only less dear than the baby, a cat only less dear than the dog, a parrot whose education required constant supervision, and a hutch of ring-doves whose melancholy little "whuddering" coos were the delight of Rose the less. The house seemed astir with young ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... whimsical despotism that shortly afterwards he ordered the inhabitants of different districts to go and repeople Delhi, which they attempted to do, but with little success. Batuta relates that during the interval of desolation the king mounted on the roof of his palace, ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... story has been recently told over again in a little volume by Mr. C. J. Rowe, entitled Bonds of Disunion, or English Misrule in the Colonies (Longmans, 1883). The title is somewhat whimsical, but the book is a very forcible and suggestive contribution to the discussion raised ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... of the human mind, as emphatically exemplified in the invention of writing and printing; while Sir Felix, who was well experienced in the British poets, favoured his aunt with a quotation from Pope's Epistle of Heloisa to Abelard, subject, however, to such whimsical interpolation as he deemed suitable to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... with a whimsical gesture. "Oh, he'll find me here. I shall work my time out slowly." He pointed to the scattered sheets on the kitchen table which formed his ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Footnotes: 1. This whimsical account of the Slave-market is probably taken from the following passage in the "Captivity and escape of Adam Elliot, M.A."—"By sun-rising next morning, we were all of us, who came last to Sallee, driven to market, where, the Moors sitting taylor-wise ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... more rude. I now renewed a reflection, which I have often seen occasion to make, that there is nothing so incongruous in nature as any kind of power with lowness of mind and of ability, and that there is nothing more deplorable than the want of truth in the whimsical notion of Plato, who tells us that "Saturn, well knowing the state of human affairs, gave us kings and rulers, not of human but divine original; for, as we make not shepherds of sheep, nor oxherds of oxen, nor goatherds of goats, but ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... Ladyship's letters were the most whimsical rodomontades that ever blue-stocking penned. She was a woman who took up and threw off a greater number of dear friends than any one I ever knew. To some of these female darlings she began presently to write about my ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... especially as his head was tied up in a handkerchief to match, look, to my imagination, like the dying Voltaire) held for ten minutes a sadly shrunken little salon. I felt indeed each time as if I were attending the last coucher of some social sovereign. He was royally whimsical about his sufferings and not at all concerned—quite as if the Constitution provided for the case about his successor. He glided over OUR sufferings charmingly, and none of his jokes—it was a gallant abstention, ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... the Magian corpse is placed to be torn by birds of prey: it is kept up by the Parsi population of Bombay and is known to Europeans as the "Tower of Silence." Nais and Nawus also mean a Pyrethrum, a fire-temple and have a whimsical resemblance to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Candy Man, but he had no time for a word. Miss Bentley was off like a flash, across the grass, before he could collect his scattered wits. He looked after her, till, in company with the stout lady, she disappeared from view. Then with a whimsical expression on his countenance, he took a leather case from his breast pocket, and opening it glanced at one of the cards within. It was as if he doubted his own identity and wished ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... to a family which had enjoyed for several generations a considerable degree of distinction among the Roman nobility, though known by a somewhat whimsical name. The family name was Brazenbeard, or, to speak more exactly, it was Ahenobarbus, which is the Latin equivalent for that word. It is a question somewhat difficult to decide, whether in speaking of Nero's father at the present time, and in the English tongue, we should make use of ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... his steps without hesitation toward the magnificent red head of the whimsical poet, Paul Sillery, a handsome young fellow with a wide-awake face, who was nonchalantly stretched upon the red velvet cushion of the window-seat, before a table, around which were three other heads of thick hair ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... humanity which accompanies all the operations of war, the refinements of gallantry, and the point of honour, the three chief circumstances which distinguished modern from ancient manners, may be ascribed in a great measure to this institution, which has appeared whimsical to superficial observers, but by its effects has proved of great benefit to mankind. The sentiments which chivalry inspired had a wonderful influence on manners and conduct during the twelfth, thirteenth, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... quarrel with my bread and butter," was her reply, half mournful, half whimsical. "Not one man in ten thinks of taking off his hat or dropping his cigar when he enters our 'shop.' No, Mr. Forrest, we are wage-workers who can't afford to draw the line at ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... doctor had loaned her, inspected the titles and searched for pictures. And thus it was that she came upon a book of Stevenson's verse—her first adventure into poetry. The hymnal lyrics had never stirred her; she had memorized and sung them parrot-wise. But here was new music, tender and kindly and whimsical, that first roved to and fro in the mind and then cuddled up in the heart. Anything that had love ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... thinks is the right side for small appeals of a special character; and when he gets back again, for the purpose of either looking at his book or sending out a new idea, he makes a short oscillating waddle—a sharp, whimsical, wavy motion, as if he either wanted to get his feet out of something or stir forward about half an inch. He pitches his hands about with considerable activity, and often flings himself suddenly into a white-heat, tantrum of virtue, and the brethren like him when be does this. He is original ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... danced with its hundred absurdities, was as fashionable at Revonde as elsewhere. Counsellor, like a courtly bear, was induced to join in its whimsical vagaries. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... deposited the trunks in the baggage-room and there was nothing to keep him longer; so with another whimsical glance at Melvin, who had sauntered ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... coming; that no hostilities were contemplated against New York; and that he was, himself, merely on a visit to his friend Tryon. "If it be really so," added General Lee, in his letter containing this communication, "it is the most whimsical piece of civility I ever heard of." General Clinton did not affect to conceal that his real object was to proceed to North Carolina, where he expected that five regiments from Europe would join the small force he should ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... answer to prayer. Mrs. Gresley had been enabled to stifle her irritation against this delicate, whimsical, fine lady of a sister-in-law—laced in, too, we must not forget that—who, in Mrs. Gresley's ideas, knew none of the real difficulties of life, its butcher's bills, its monthly nurses, its constant watchfulness over delicate children, its long, long strain at two ends which won't meet. We must ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... both to our senses, with a start, and my princess drew away from me a little, and said, with a whimsical smile: ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Then the six daughters filed in, and the poet, slowly turning to survey the house, started slightly, as though surprised to find himself under public scrutiny, passed a large, plump hand over his forehead, and slowly subsided into the aisle-seat with a smile of whimsical acquiescence in the knowledge ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone. He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, he smirked and caressed this whimsical adornment. Cleggett, fascinated, stared at it as the fellow paused before him. Pierre, evidently gratified at the sensation he was creating, continued to smirk and twist, and then, seeing that he held his audience, he took from his waistcoat pocket ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... their horses, with their primitive plows reversed. Only such rich land could tolerate these Adam-like earth-scratchers. As we met the cows on their way home from pasture, we took observations, to verify the whimsical barometer of the peasants; and we found that if a light-hued cow headed the procession the next day really was pretty sure to be fair, while a dark cow brought foul weather. As the twilight deepened, the quail piped under the very hoofs of our horses; the moon rose over the forest, which would ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... a sailor? Do you remember the colting I gave you when you were a youngster in my charge? But I never could beat much seamanship into you. So you are to examine me, are you?" The two other commissioners, who knew the whimsical character of the person before them, called him to order, and requested he would answer some questions, as he could not obtain his certificate without doing so. "Begin," said Billy, turning his ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... to come to him slowly from out of night, approaching nearer and nearer until he knew that it was a girl's face, with great, dark, strangely shining eyes. In these first moments of his returning consciousness the whimsical thought came to him that he was dying and the face was a part of a pleasant dream. If that were not so, he had fallen at last among friends. His eyes opened wider, he moved, and the face drew back. Movement stimulated ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... A whimsical discovery is announced by M. Jules Allix, in the feuilleton of the Paris Presse. It seems too absurd to merit repetition, but it is reproduced in some of the London literary papers, and is there treated as if there might be something real in it. It is stated that a method has been discovered ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... at the expense of another man's reputation—of mine," suggested Jimmie Dale, with his whimsical smile. "You need only say that a man came to you this evening, told you that he stole these rubies from Mr. Maddon during the afternoon, and asked you, as Mr. Maddon's private secretary, to restore them with ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than private. He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... no help from either Angus or David. They did not appear to understand his new and peculiar mood. He had been in the habit of fusing their clashing arbitraments by a humor of his own which he knew was fantastic, yet helpful according to his whimsical custom, welding their judgments twain into one dominant counsel of determination, softened by the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... up "where moth and rust 241:6 doth corrupt." Mortality is their doom. Sin breaks in upon them, and carries off their fleeting joys. The sensualist's affections are as imaginary, 241:9 whimsical, and unreal as his pleasures. Falsehood, envy, hypocrisy, malice, hate, revenge, and so forth, steal away the treasures of Truth. Stripped of its coverings, what 241:12 a ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... of those mysterious people who travel free on all rail-roads and steamboats, and are continually crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, driven day and night about nobody knows what, and make a great deal of money by so doing. Probably, at last, he sometimes thought with a whimsical smile, he should end by being an insurance agent, and asking people to insure their ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... hand to the curtain, but he looked, instead, out across the coulee to the hills beyond, the blood surging unevenly through his veins. He felt when she drew the cloth aside; she stopped short off in the middle of telling him something Miss Satterly had said—some whimsical thing—and he could hear his heart pounding in the silence which followed. The little, nickel alarm clock tick-tick-ticked with such maddening precision and speed that Chip wanted to shy a book at it, but his eyes never left the rocky bluff opposite, ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... phrases and expressions now rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with the local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... understood when the watcher saw a light in the bedroom window overhead. Noble thought of the good, peculiar old man now disrobing there, and he smiled to himself at a whimsical thought: What form would Mr. Atwater's embarrassment take, what would be his feeling, and what would he do, if he knew that Noble was there now, beneath his window ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... evening when the sea tossed hither, and thither and roared dully under the load of fog, and the whimsical wind in mournful astonishment gently stirred the sails of the ships; when the citizens meeting on the streets asked, one another: "Is, he dead?" and their voices timidly betrayed the hope that he was not dead; when the first breath of awakened conscience, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... Artois felt something for Vere just then that he could hardly have explained, master though he was of explanation of the feelings of man. It seemed to him that all the purity, and the beauty, and the whimsical unselfconsciousness, and the touchingness of youth that is divine, appeared in that little, almost comic action of the girl. He loved her for the action, because she was able to perform it just like that. And something in him, suddenly adored youth in a way that ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... seated itself in a wicker chair and berated the idea that mortal man ever could be generous,—act without selfish motives. With the greatest reverence in his tone, sitting there in his whimsical costume of bright red silk, at high noon,—an immaculate French butler waiting at the door to announce lunch, Mark Twain concluded an analysis of modern religion with "—why the God I believe in is too busy spinning spheres to have time ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... with a whimsical twist of the lips. She thought that that prediction might apply to more than one member of the O'Shaughnessy family, and cherished a pleasant conviction that Jack's outburst of indignation had been more on her account than his own. He was not the type ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... old man. I am the last of the black Protestants." In this whimsical way Frank Nelson spoke of himself one day in conversation with a friend on some point of ritual. It is abundantly evident that he was in no way a bigoted churchman, and with all his fine, broad sympathies he stood forth as a Protestant. He represented that aspect of the Catholic-Protestant ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... reduced them to their natural Dimensions, than when they had extended their Persons and lengthened themselves out into formidable and gigantick Figures. I am not for adding to the beautiful Edifices of Nature, nor for raising any whimsical Superstructure upon her Plans: I must therefore repeat it, that I am highly pleased with the Coiffure now in Fashion, and think it shews the good Sense which at present very much reigns among the valuable Part of the Sex. One may observe that Women ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that this woman was Dame Melusine, whom he had loved to his own hurt (as you have heard) when Perion served King Helmas. She did not speak for a long while, but she lazily considered Perion's honest face in a sort of whimsical regret for the adoration she ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... left an hotel in a central and bustling part of Paris, without feeling the faculty of observation strained to the utmost, and experiencing a whirl and jumble of recollections as little in unison with each other as the well known signs of that whimsical city, the Boeuf a-la-mode, (with his cachemire shawl and his ostrich feathers) and the Mort d'Henri Quartre. The contrasts and varieties of the grave and gay, the affecting and the burlesque, the magnificent and the paltry, which exist and may be sought out ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... why it failed, but there was another and better one. If the judge had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his position. For some years Wilson had been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement—a calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful of them around ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... as he took a step toward the deeper shadows. He swallowed hard, as if to clear a knot out of his scrawny throat. But he had made up his mind. Something was compelling him, and he would go in. Slowly the gloom engulfed him, and once again the whimsical spirit of fatalism had chosen a trivial thing to work out its ends in the romance and tragedy ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... as a step sounded behind him, and his hand met that of Stephen Hollinger. The millionaire was dressed roughly in serge and yachting cap, for he was his own captain aboard the yacht. His strong, whimsical face lighted up in a smile ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... was too wary to give him an opportunity. There was something extremely provoking in this obstinately pacific system; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival. Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domains, smoked out his singing-school by stopping up the chimney, broke into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe and window stakes, and turned ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of those who believe that the world is growing cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug surpasses everything, it may be observed that these signs, of which the origin seems so whimsical to many Paris merchants, are the dead pictures of once living pictures by which our roguish ancestors contrived to tempt customers into their houses. Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey, and ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... no one could enjoy more than Corwin himself; for he was not only an impassioned orator, but a delightful humorist. He could put a principle or a reason in the form of a jest so that it would go farther than even eloquence could carry it with the whimsical Western people; and perhaps nothing more effective was said against the infamous Black Laws which forbade the testimony of negroes in the courts than Corwin put in the form of self-satire. He was of a very dark complexion, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... later life he was in appearance a short, stout, bald-headed man, with cordial manners and whimsical views of things that amused all who met him. He died at Natick, Mass., ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... learn. My friend and myself do not play for results of that antiquated kind. We seek in chess the wonderful, the whimsical, the weird. Did you ever see a position ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Gothia (Sweden) and Frise were prevented, by their fear of the Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring fishery on the coast of England; and as there was no exportation, forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling, (Matthew Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical enough, that the orders of a Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have lowered the price of herrings in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... almost savage onslaught upon the full-blown British matron with her 'awful ponderosity of frame ... massive with solid beef and streaky tallow,' and apparently composed 'of steaks and sirloins.' He laments that the English violet should develop into such an overblown peony, and speculates upon the whimsical problem, whether a middle-aged husband should be considered as legally married to all the accretions which have overgrown the slenderness of his bride. Should not the matrimonial bond be held to exclude the three-fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... up, looking down at her with whimsical tenderness. She was very beautiful, and when she took on that forlorn air she had the appearance of a helpless, small girl. He wondered if he ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... garden-wall, belonging to a house under repair:—the white house opposite the collar-maker's shop, with four lime-trees before it, and a waggon-load of bricks at the door. That house is the plaything of a wealthy, well-meaning, whimsical person who lives about a mile off. He has a passion for brick and mortar, and, being too wise to meddle with his own residence, diverts himself with altering and re-altering, improving and re-improving, doing and undoing here. It is a perfect Penelope's ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... and have no choice, one more meal of 'crow' won't kill me." He went on with a tinge of bitterness, thinking of Sprudell: "Since muscle is my only asset I'll have to realize on it." Then his dark face lighted with one of the slow, whimsical smiles that transformed it—"Unchain ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... purity. Severely reflects upon public freedoms between men and their wives. Advantage he once made upon such an occasion. Has been after a license. Difficulty in procuring one. Great faults and great virtues often in the same person. He is willing to believe that women have no souls. His whimsical reasons. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Rhoda's story, but it does not satisfy her completely. She says, in her whimsical way, that it needs another villain to account ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... many of their people. On this occasion, however, they, to their surprise, found it adopted by but a few. It seems they were either deceiv'd in themselves, or deceiv'd the Parliament; but common sense, aided by present danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsical opinions. ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... whimsical Queen Bess was fond of handsome, and especially of witty and eloquent young men. She grew more attached to Sir Walter Raleigh every day. He rapidly rose in power and influence, and, as a poet, became well known. His verses were read ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... ghaist,' muttered Davie; yet, coming nearer, he seemed to acknowledge his living acquaintance. The poor fool himself appeared the ghost of what he had been. The peculiar dress in which he had been attired in better days, showed only miserable rags of its whimsical finery, the lack of which was oddly supplied by the remnants of tapestried hangings, window-curtains, and shreds of pictures, with which he had bedizened his tatters. His face, too, had lost its vacant and careless air, and the poor creature looked hollow-eyed, meagre, half-starved, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... have considered the morning's performance the most amusing entertainment he had witnessed afloat or ashore. He managed not to laugh aloud, although he was obliged to turn his head away several times and to cough at intervals. Once or twice he and Elizabeth Berry exchanged glances and the whimsical look of resignation and humorous appreciation in her eyes showed that she, too, was keenly aware of ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... use. It is the custom in Scotland to eat it in the morning with bread.' Then he proposed to have a shooting-lodge in the Highlands, long before any other Englishman seems to have thought of what is now so common. 'You know what a whimsical sort of person I am. Nothing pleases me now but hunting, shooting, and fishing. I have distant notions of taking a very little house, remote upon the edge of ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... candle, or can you see?" asked Fred, the second brother, a couple of years younger than Hadria, whom he addressed. His features were irregular; his short nose and twinkling grey eyes suggesting a joyous and whimsical temperament. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... remark was true. Bob never hustled; his talk and movements were marked by a languid grace that sometimes pleased and sometimes irritated her. It was difficult to make him angry, and she was often silenced by his whimsical arguments when she knew she was right. But he was her husband, and she meant to baulk the man who hoped to ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... day to a whimsical scene, which will serve to give you an idea of the airs of importance these gentlemen give themselves. I was one day at Versailles and after having visited the palace and gardens I entered the Salon of a restaurateur and called for a veal cutlet and vin ordinaire. There was ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... standard the world within us would be as insignificant as the firmament was when the earth was the center of the universe and all the stars were little candles and Jehovah sat above them, a God who changed his mind and repented, a whimsical, fanciful God who ordered the waters to rise so that his creatures might be overwhelmed in the flood, all except one family (I need not repeat here the story of Noah's Ark and the doctrine of the Atonement) if there ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... yellow butterfly she was indeed, with the sleazy, clinging, white draperies wound around her slender form, then the wings of golden maline pinioned on either softly rounded shoulder. Sally was a perfect little beauty, and also possessed that whimsical manner so attractive in this ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... characteristic of the mass was the means of forcing into notice, by strangeness of contrast, the single mournful poem that the book contained. It was placed at the very end, and under the title of 'Cancelled Words,' formed a whimsical and rather affecting love-lament, somewhat in the tone of many of Sir Thomas Wyatt's poems. This was the piece which had arrested Christopher's attention, and had been pointed out by him ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... circles under his eyes. That wan face touched Rhoda much more than the healthy face of former days. The lines of weariness and pain that never could be fully erased were all for her, she thought with a little catch of her breath. Then with a pitying, affectionate look at the sleeping man came a whimsical smile. Once she had thought no one could equal John in physical vigor. Now she pictured Kut-le's panther strength ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... rush-bottomed chair and walked with his slow stiff stride to the mantelpiece. From behind a china vase he took a saucer holding a lemon which had been cut in two, then, standing very rigidly before the fire, he slowly and meditatively sucked the lemon. Cleave, beside the table, had a whimsical thought. The general, about to open slightly the door of reticence and impart information, was stimulating himself to the effort. He put the lemon down and returned to the table. "Captain Cleave, while I am waiting for General ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... particularly to MY stairs?" she asked with her whimsical woe. But meanwhile she had taken it in. "Then whom were you ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... finished. There had been something slightly whimsical about his final words, about his manner and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... must be allied to Beauty. "The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover." These last expressions are quoted from Poe's whimsical analysis of this very poem, but they indicate precisely the general range of his verse. The climax of "The Bells" is the muffled monotone of ghouls, who glory in weighing down the human heart. "Lenore," The Raven, "The Sleeper," "To One in Paradise," and "Ulalume" form a tenebrose symphony,—and ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... American government: but the establishment had not been carried out in corresponding style. It might be palace without, but it was wigwam within; so that, between the stateliness of his mansion and the squalidness of his furniture, the gallant White Plume presented some such whimsical incongruity as we see in the gala equipments of an Indian chief on a treaty-making embassy at Washington, who has been generously decked out in cocked hat and military coat, in contrast to his breech-clout ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... a man three times her age because he could take care of her. There being so many in the family Pappy and Mammy were glad to be rid of one of their flock. Though both pictures were often as overdrawn as that evoked by a daughter of the Blue Ridge—a whimsical picture of a pretty maid in full-skirted crinoline with a soft southern accent—moonlight and honeysuckle, a gallant, goateed colonel paying court to her charm and beauty while he sips a mint julep. This picture and that of the snaggle-toothed mountain woman in ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... continually shooting through her head. But are we to suppose that suddenly, after a long widowhood, Agrippina put forth so strange a proposal without any arriere-pensee whatever? Furthermore, if this proposal had been merely the momentary caprice of a whimsical woman, would it have been so seriously debated in the imperial household, and would the daughter of Agrippina have recounted the episode in her memoirs? It is more probable that this marriage, too, had a political aim. By giving a husband to Agrippina, they were also seeking to give ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... proved that, though he had no solid culture, he was fascinated by the expectation of discovering some great secret. It was the vice of the age to confound science with sorcery, and Bruno had lent himself to this delusion by his whimsical style. Perhaps the booksellers, who then played a part scarcely less prominent than that of the barbers in diffusing gossip, inflamed Mocenigo's curiosity by painting the author of the puzzling volume in seductive colors. Any how ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... opinions from leading doctors—collected by him in case of accidents, I suppose—each of which declares him perfectly sound from the collar upward. But a man can be pretty far gone, you know, without being legally insane, and old Nutcombe—well, suppose we call him whimsical. He seems to have zigzagged between the normal ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... we might revive from our recollections of Coleridge, had we a sufficient motive. But in compensation, and by way of redressing the balance, he had many strange likings—equally monomaniac—and, unaccountably, he chose to exhibit his whimsical partialities by dressing up, as it were, in his own clothes, such a set of scarecrows as eye has not beheld. Heavens! what an ark of unclean beasts would have been Coleridge's private menagerie of departed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the republic in effective force and in preparations. It attacked it by the three great openings of Italy, Switzerland, and Holland. A strong Austrian army debouched in the duchy of Mantua; it defeated Scherer twice on the Adige, and was soon joined by the whimsical and hitherto victorious Suvorov. Moreau replaced Scherer, and, like him, was beaten; he retreated towards Genoa, in order to keep the barrier of the Apennines and to join the army of Naples, commanded by Macdonald, which was overpowered at the Trebia. The Austro-Russians then directed ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... was not laughing, now. Something, that lay deep hidden beneath the rude exterior of the man, made itself felt in his deep voice. Some powerful force, underlying his whimsical words, gripped the artist's mind—compelling him to search for hidden meanings in ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... solemn about a tale which has here been told for the whimsical fancy of its unseemliness and because it is probably the worst that there is to tell, we may here look forward and face the well-known fact that the unseemliness in talk of rough, rustic boys flavoured the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... principal blame, as in like cases I do the sex in general. My finesse was too well planned for detection, and my snares too deeply laid for any one to escape who had the least warmth in her constitution, or affection in her heart. I shall, therefore, be the less whimsical about a future connection, and the more solicitous to make her reparation, should it ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... seen a pantomime?" she asked of my father one morning, looking at me the while with a whimsical screwing of ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... thing to say. The green eyes glowed brighter as she cast me a whimsical glance. "But I am," she said. "Dick, I'm going to—see my ideal man!" ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... hobbies. In her youth she was about the court. Then she married a canon of Warham, one of the popular preachers, I believe, of the day. There is a bright little cousin of hers, a certain Lady Helen Varley, who lives near here, and tells me stories of her. She must be the most whimsical little aristocrat imaginable. She liked her husband apparently, but she never got over leaving London and the fashionable world, and is as hungry now, after her long fast, for titles and big-wigs, as though she were ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sat smiling at her; then shade by shade the whimsical expression vanished, and the normal proprietary look he had grown to assume in her ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... 13. The author's whimsical notion that a development of commercial and manufacturing organization in India would cause converts to flock from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community, has not been verified by experience. Much capital is now concentrated in the great cities, and the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... we knew, that Mrs. Bentley would relent, and abandon what was more like a whimsical caprice than a settled wish. But as time wore on, and she gave no sign of changing, I have wondered whether some change did not come upon them, which affected them towards each other without affecting their constancy. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Ned's nonsense," said Marian. "Most novels are such rubbish! I am sure you will be able to live by writing just as well as Mrs. Fairfax can." Conolly shewed Miss McQuinch his opinion of this unhappy remark by a whimsical glance, which she repudiated by turning sharply away from him, and speaking as affectionately as ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... long time—long enough for an utterly perverse and whimsical humor to take complete possession ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... the guidance of their intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their lives are little haunted by regrets. Others are oppositely constituted; and are so in degrees which may vary from something so slight as to result in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a discordancy of which the consequences may be inconvenient in the extreme. Of the more innocent kinds of heterogeneity I find a good example ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... own Death, place him in the first rank of agreeable moralists in verse. There is not only a dry humour, an exquisite tone of irony, in these productions of his pen; but there is a touching, unpretending pathos, mixed up with the most whimsical and eccentric strokes of pleasantry and satire. His Description of the Morning in London, and of a City Shower, which were first published in the Tatler, are among the most delightful of the contents of that very delightful work. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... be very whimsical, would it not, if all my plots and contrivances should end in wedlock? What a punishment should this come out to be, upon myself too, that all this while I have been ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... different. I had money then. I hadn't announced my decision to be independent of my father and he—he hadn't taken me too literally at my word;" and with a whimsical expression the lad emptied his pockets of the small sums they contained and spread the amount on the table. "There it is, all of it, Lady of the Manor, at your service! Getting up entertainments is a costly thing, but—as far as it goes, I'll try my ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... cup down sharply while Noreen with one of those whimsical turns of hers drawled in ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Eliza's declining to share in that was well-nigh inevitable, but Miss Josephine was another matter. Perhaps she had considered her sister's going there to be enough; at any rate, she had not been party to the surrender, and this gave me whimsical satisfaction. Moreover, it had evidently occasioned no ruffle in the affectionate relations between ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... rhymer, a singular mixture of a true and original poet with a buffoon; coarse as Rabelais, whimsical, obscure, but always vivacious. He was the rector of Diss, in Norfolk, but his profane and scurrilous wit seems rather out of keeping with his clerical character. His Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng is a ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... method of checking the spread of malaria, at first sight almost a whimsical one,—no less than screening the patient. The mosquito, of course, criminal as she is, does not hatch the parasites de novo in her own body, but simply sucks them up in a meal of blood from some previous ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... once belonged to Sulla, and was about twelve miles from Rome. In that beloved building and its arrangements he indulged, as an ample purse allowed him, not only a highly-cultivated taste, but in some respects almost a whimsical fancy. "A mere cottage", he himself terms it in one place; but this was when he was deprecating accusations of extravagance which were brought against him, and we all understand something of the pride which in ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... simple soldier's boy from Ireland To Prague—and with a master, whom I buried. 55 From lowest stable-duty I climbed up, Such was the fate of war, to this high rank, The plaything of a whimsical good fortune. And Wallenstein too is a child of luck, I love a fortune that is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not assume an air of pathos when he read my review in Scribner's Monthly—before it became the Century—of the novel "Democracy." Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, the editor, was away at the time, and I recall his whimsical horror when on his return he read the things I had said about a novel, which I, in the heat of youth, held to ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... sentences here and there on the heavily scrawled page. They were such as these: "You had led me to hope,"..."for years I have been your faithful admirer,"... "Nor have I wavered for an instant despite your whimsical attitude,"... "therefore I felt justified in believing that you were sincere in your determination to defy your father." And others of an even more caustic nature: "You are going to marry this prince ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... talked mainly to the General. They had plenty to talk about. The General found it necessary to apologise to Nelly for "talking shop," an apology which was tendered in a whimsical spirit and received in the same. Pat, waiting at table, quite forgot that he was Sir Denis Drummond's manservant, listening to the stirring tale; and was once again Corporal Murphy, back in "th' ould rig'mint." In fact, he once almost ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... commission? but about which you must promise me not to go a Step Out of your way. Mr. Bateman has got a cloister at Old Windsor, furnished with ancient wooden chairs, most of them triangular, but all of various patterns, and carved and turned in the most uncouth and whimsical forms. He picked them up one by one, for two, three, five, or six shillings apiece from different farmhouses in Herefordshire. I have long envied and coveted them. There may be such in poor cottages, in so neighbouring a county as Cheshire. I should not grudge any expense for purchase or ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... laughter, If Thou hadst not all merriment unlearned. Of suns and worlds I've nothing to be quoted; How men torment themselves, is all I've noted. The little god o' the world sticks to the same old way, And is as whimsical as on Creation's day. Life somewhat better might content him, But for the gleam of heavenly light which Thou hast lent him: He calls it Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier than any beast. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... remote regions, they never show their curiosity after disagreeable fashion. They are delighted to discover that interest in France—artistic, economic, or industrial— has led you thither, and will afford any assistance or information in their power. They seem to regard the wayfaring Britisher as whimsical, that is all. ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... snow-storm which covered the ground several inches deep for a number of days. They struck work and left us for a while, no doubt in search of food. Birds frequently perish from sudden changes in our whimsical spring weather of which they had no foreboding. More than thirty years ago, a cherry-tree, then in full bloom, near my window, was covered with humming-birds benumbed by a fall of mingled rain and snow, which probably killed many of them. It should seem that their coming was ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... neither had Peter. And so he took Denise into his life, just as he had once taken a lost kitten out of the dusk on the Riverton Road: there really was nothing else for him to do! He had for her something of the same whimsical and compassionate affection that had made him share his glass of milk with the little cat. She belonged to him; ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... easy to see from the letters that Keats was a difficult lover. Hard to please at the best, his two sicknesses, one of body and one of heart, made him whimsical. Nothing less than a woman of genius could possibly have managed him. He was jealous, perhaps quite unreasonably so. Fanny Brawne was young, a bit coquettish, buoyant, and he misinterpreted her vivacity. She liked what is commonly called 'the world,' and so did he when he was well; but looking ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... does not seem conclusive; for the only reference to the subject in the preface is as follows: 'What could my sterile and uncultivated genius produce but the history of a child, meagre, adust, and whimsical, full of various wild imaginations never thought of before; like one you may suppose born in a prison, where every inconvenience keeps its residence, and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the Spanish language. On the other hand, the monks are as yet almost totally ignorant of the language of the Chaymas; and the resemblance of sounds confuses the poor Indians and suggests to them the most whimsical ideas. Of this I may cite an example. I saw a missionary labouring earnestly to prove that infierno, hell, and invierno, winter, were not one and the same thing; but as different as heat and cold. The Chaymas are acquainted with no other winter than the season of rains; and consequently they ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... a whimsical little laugh. "But I wasn't crying for myself," she said, as she dried her eyes. "I ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... always retained the whimsical sense of humor which made him quickly famous. Shortly before his death he called on the cashier of a New York publishing house, after vainly writing several times for a check which had been promised as an ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... enough for the Vicar's whimsical fancy to busy itself with Betty Nasroth's prophecy, half-believing, half-mocking, never forgetting nor disregarding; but I, who am, after all, the most concerned, doubt whether such a dark utterance be a wholesome thing to hang round ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... it was not much—taken by itself, entirely unworthy of notice; even taken in conjunction with the temple, of no real significance, that he could see. Still, it was a whimsical thing that, as had just struck him, Charlie's spectre should be named Agatha. But it came; to nothing: how could the name of Charlie's spectre have anything to do with that ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... desirable things are grown into my temper, which I should not have arrived at by better motives than the thought of being one day hers. I am pretty well satisfied such a passion as I have had is never well cured; and, between you and me, I am often apt to imagine it has had some whimsical effect upon my brain: For I frequently find, that in my most serious discourse I let fall some comical familiarity of speech, or odd phrase, that makes the company laugh; however, I cannot but allow she is a most excellent woman. When she ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... said the minister reflecting, 'more or less, —two hours' work before shop,—three hours or so after shop; that's what you may call driving it hard. You couldn't do it, Richard Ancrum,' and he shook his head with a whimsical melancholy. 'But you were always a poor starveling. Youth that is youth's tough. Don't tell me, sir,' and he looked up sharply, 'that you don't amuse yourself. I wouldn't believe it. There never was a man built like you yet that didn't ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... if you require it. But you ought to believe my word, sir. I am square as a die in all matters not connected—well, not connected with my profession," he smiled in a burst of that whimsical humour, which not even the seriousness of the ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... spending the greater part of even a winter's day in the open air. Her garden, too, which daily occupied more and more of her attention, as it increased in beauty, had the same tendency; and her anxiety to profit by the experience of others on one occasion inflicted a whimsical disappointment of the free-thinkers of the court. The profligate and sentimental infidel Rousseau had died a couple of years before, and had been buried at Ermenonville, in the park of the Count de Girardin. In the course of the summer the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... hours later, when I came into the kitchen to talk to old Pat, another woman performed the same kindly office, this time a person with a curiously whimsical expression. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... here, and I'll bring along a hammock and a couple of 'boys' to tote him over to the camp. I shall be better able to see what I am doing there than here. You stay and keep the poor chap company. I believe he knows that we sympathise with him." With which whimsical remark Earle started back hot foot for the camp, now in process of being pitched, leaving Dick to keep ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... his heart had warmed and quickened at the sight of it, how eagerly he had read it—and now a viper coiled upon the white table-cloth would hardly have given him a greater shock. Contradictory, incalculable, whimsical life! A year ago how scornfully he would have laughed, what contemptuous unbelief would have filled his soul, if he had been told that any letter of hers could have struck him cold with the vague ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... choice anecdotes of scandal, for in those primitive times the simple folk were either too stupid or too good-natured to pull each other's characters to pieces; 20 nor can I furnish any whimsical anecdotes of brag—how one lady cheated or another bounced into a passion; for as yet there was no junto of dulcet old dowagers who met to win each other's money and lose their own ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... society, he would have been inclined to shun, or at all events to pass over lightly. Here we have him at one moment presenting the results of speculations the loftiest that can engage the mind of man; at another making note of whimsical or surprising points in the man or woman he has met with, or in the books he has read; at another, amusing himself with the most recent anecdote, or bon-mot, or reflecting on the latest accident or murder, or good-naturedly noting odd lapses in style in magazine ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... forest—you will perhaps fall in with one of the braconniers—must I call them poachers?—of which there are many; all alike, in one sense, yet each having the most whimsical characteristics. The reader knows my friend Navarre, but I must now introduce him to another of the cronies of my youth, the Pere Seguin, the thoughts of whom revive all the sweet recollections of my home when my family lived in ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... distracted my attention, that, despite of the grave subjects on which I was meditating, I could not resist lending an attentive ear to all that passed around me. There was something of originality in the countenance of the Master of the Library which struck me forcibly; and the whimsical answers which he made to his numerous subscribers, and the yet more whimsical tone in which they were pronounced, more than once provoked a smile. The first person who attracted my notice was a fine showy ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... closely: probably this was only another of her whimsical tricks, with which he was very familiar; if he showed too much interest she would laugh at him for being taken in. But she had hinted before to-day's annoyances; she was hinting again. He had yawned at her hints till he became Harry Tristram's rival; he was ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... a boat by expelling water from the stern. When it was announced that the great Chancellor also had a scheme, it is not surprising, perhaps, that the wags of the Assembly ridiculed the project as idle and whimsical. "Imagine a boat," said one, "trying to propel itself by squirting water through its stern." Another spoke of it as "an application of the skunk principle." Ezra L'Hommedieu, then a state senator, declared that Livingston's "steamboat ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... one myself—one who has stolen a cake out of the pantry and is in danger of a thrashing," was Jarvis's whimsical admission. "See here. I'll give you leave to take it out of me all you like. I'll agree to meet you at midnight in the timber tract, and take whatever you see fit to administer—provided you'll keep in before the rest. What do ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... "I will feign myself to be Rosalind, and you shall feign to court me in the same manner as you would do if I was Rosalind, and then I will imitate the fantastic ways of whimsical ladies to their lovers, till I make you ashamed of your love; and this is the way I propose to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... after the fashion of children who are primitive and therefore fond of childish play; and upon such occasions I had associated with them as if they were my equals. But I was arrogant in my behavior to the boys at school, and they had good reason to consider me whimsical and priggish. It took me many years to conquer that arrogance, to act simply and like other people in the world; and especially it was difficult for me to realize that one is not necessarily superior to his fellows because he is (to his own misfortune often) prince and conjurer in ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... autocrat in the home, impatient, intolerant, full of bracing intellectual scorn, not always just, but always just in intention, a disdainful recluse, judging all human and divine affairs from a standpoint of imperturbable omniscience, Coventry Patmore charmed one by his whimsical energy, his intense sincerity, and, indeed, by the childlike egoism of an absolutely self-centred intelligence. Speaking of Patmore as he was in 1879, Mr. Gosse says, in ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... desired, has seldom been matched." It is difficult for those who knew him before he had, by pure hard work, won his way to fame, to realise how one physically so fragile, of so light-somely versatile and whimsical a nature, apparently so ready to be diverted from the main high-road by a desire to explore any brambly lane, had in him the deliberate goal-winning gait of the tortoise. His stubborn tenacity of purpose he owed to his antecedents. The Scot's inalienable prerogative of pedigree ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... new dispensation, to indulge in exhortations to a keener chase, of this world, and "the things of this world." I found afterwards similar thoughts were passing through Harrington's mind, rendered more whimsical by the recollection that, during college life, his friend (though very far from vicious) had certainly never seemed to take any deficient interest in the affairs of this world, nor to exhibit any predilection for an ascetic life. Indeed, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... there is a certain advantage even in the difference of the new town from the old. It is not the historical Edinburgh, the fierce, tumultuous, mediaeval city, the stern but not more quiet capital of the Reformers, the noisy, dirty, whimsical, mirth-loving town, full of broad jest and witty epigram, of the eighteenth century. The new town has a character of its own. It is the modern, not supplanting or effacing, but standing by the old. Those who built it considered it an extraordinary improvement upon all that ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Marshal Victor's out-posts at Talavera on the 22nd of July, and drove them in. Oh the 23rd, the British again formed for the attack of the French position; but Cuesta "contrived to lose the whole of the day, owing to the whimsical perverseness of his disposition." Sir Arthur wished to defeat Victor before he could be joined by Sebastiani, and his disappointment was great when, on the 24th, he discovered that the enemy had retreated towards Torrijos, in order to form a junction with that general. After Victor's departure, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... when it will be recognised that Carlyle, as a critic, is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the press, and not by splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical extravagances ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... information fell from him carelessly. His "they," Dan assumed, referred to his mother and sisters somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic; and young Thatcher spoke of them in a curiously impersonal and detached fashion. The whimsical humor that twinkled in his eyes occasionally was interesting and pleasing; and Dan imagined that he was enjoying the situation. Silk socks and overalls were probably a part of some whim; they certainly added picturesqueness to the scene. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... agitation was completely worn out, and that even the way to the throne no longer lay through demagogism. It was nothing more than a historical makeshift, if now, in the interregnum between republic and monarchy, some whimsical fellow dressed himself out with the prophet's mantle and staff which Caesar had himself laid aside, and the great ideals of Gaius Gracchus came once more upon the stage distorted into a parody; the so-called party from which this democratic agitation proceeded was so little such ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen |
