"Crookedly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sheltered by a bank of gorse, stood a small white house with a roof of rusty iron where the thatch had been. The whitewash had fallen off in places, exposing a rough, granulated wall, for the house was a dabbin, built of puddled clay. A window was broken and the door hung crookedly. Except for a few rows of withered potatoes, the garden was occupied by weeds. Three or four shellducks, hatched from wild birds' ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... there where shades were drawn the grotesque shadow of a fir-tree stood against the window; silhouettes moved past. Picket fences marched crookedly along. At each intersection of streets a white arc-light dangled, hissing and spreading its radiance to the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... stockings; above it was a pinafore—a regular child's pinafore, of the cheap, strong, blue-speckled print which in those days was generally worn. A little shabby shawl, pinned at the throat, and pinned very carelessly and crookedly, with an old black bonnet, much too small for her large head and her quantities of ill kept hair, completed the costume. It did not impress favorably a lady who, being, or rather having been very handsome herself, was as much alive to appearances ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... with but one little window, low down below the slope of the ceiling. But this room was to some extent furnished. There was a bed in it, and a rocking chair, and one or two pictures hanging crookedly upon the wall. Also, and this was the really important thing, upon that bed ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... colony then, though Mr. Denham, he fancied, had a buggy. And Captain Whalley seemed to be swept out of the great avenue by the swirl of a mental backwash. He remembered muddy shores, a harbor without quays, the one solitary wooden pier (but that was a public work) jutting out crookedly, the first coal-sheds erected on Monkey Point, that caught fire mysteriously and smoldered for days, so that amazed ships came into a roadstead full of sulphurous smoke, and the sun hung blood-red at midday. He remembered ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Road; stretching over the Santa Monica Mountains from Beverly Glen to the Los Angeles River. Its fattest part was what had once been Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the socalled Wilshire district. The right arm of the semicircle, more slender than the left, curled crookedly eastward along Venice Boulevard, in places only a few blocks wide. It severed the downtown district from the manufacturing area, crossing the river near the Ninth Street bridge and swallowing the great Searsroebuck store like a capsule. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... asked Frank, laughing in spite of himself at the woe-begone figure of the professor, who, his bonds having been cut, now stood upright with his spectacles perched crookedly on his nose. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... I still continued feeling the wood, and suddenly I pricked my left thumb. That slight pain roused me from my growing numbness. I felt again and found a nail—a nail which the undertaker's men had driven in crookedly and which had not caught in the lower wood. It was long and very sharp; the head was secured to the lid, but it moved. Henceforth I had but one idea—to possess myself of that nail—and I slipped my right hand across my body and began to ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... St Paul's and went down, at a long angle, almost to the water's edge, through some of the crooked and descending streets which lie (and lay more crookedly and closely then) between the river and Cheapside. Passing, now the mouldy hall of some obsolete Worshipful Company, now the illuminated windows of a Congregationless Church that seemed to be waiting for some adventurous Belzoni to dig it out and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... table wore rough knickerbockers, high, rather muddy boots, a loose jacket, and a cap set crookedly on the head. When Northrup spoke, the young person turned and he saw that it was a woman. There was no surprise, at first, in the eyes which met Northrup's—the door of the little yellow house was constantly admitting visitors—but suddenly the expression changed to one of ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... new rules. Thou indeed, O Agni, reignest by thy own nature over the heavenly and over the terrestrial world as a shepherd takes care of his cattle. These two variegated, great goddesses striving for gloriousness, the golden ones who move crookedly, have approached thy sacrificial grass. Agni! Be gratified and accept graciously this prayer, O joy-giver, independent one, who art born in the Rita, good-willed one, whose face is turned towards us from all sides, conspicuous ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... but constant rubbing and the practice of gymnastics to do your shoulders good. You probably have some trick of standing crookedly that has helped to make it grow out, such as standing on one leg, or giving down ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... her brother, but it was Grizel who did most of the talking. She nodded her head and smiled crookedly at Tommy, but she was watching him all the time. She wore a dress in which brown and yellow mingled as in woods on an autumn day, and the jacket had a high collar of fur, over which she watched him. Let us say that she was watching to see whether ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... began to appear, singly and in twos and threes, and then go out again, and go on up the stairs which led crookedly to and from the corner the office was cramped into. Some of them went up stairs after merely glancing into the office, others found letters there, and staid chatting awhile. They looked at Cornelia with merely an identifying eye, at first, as if they perceived that she was a ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... in order that Mary might take a fancy to the place, and consent to come as a boarder. There were a good many pine branches pinned on to curtains and stuck into huge, ugly Japanese vases, a few wreaths hiding damp or dirty patches on the wall. Crookedly hung pictures had been straightened; some Christmas magazines were lying about, and bowls of chrysanthemums relieved the room of its wonted gloom. It really had almost a festive air; and after her rather lonely life at the hotel, the place and the people seemed pleasant to ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... suggest, exceeded the bounds of credibility. Some men were supposed to be so rarely endowed that "a thousand liveried angels" waited on them invisibly, to execute their behests for the benefit of those they favoured; while, much oftener, the perverse and crookedly disposed, who delighted in mischief, would bring on those to whom, for whatever capricious reason, they were hostile, calamities, which no sagacity could predict, and no merely human power could ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... path led crookedly among the pines that grew thickly in this sheltered hollow, until presently, after half an hour of rough going, they came upon a small natural clearing, rock-bound ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Hoag's front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the Flying-Fish Troupe, World's Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... He smiled crookedly. "You know, convicts' prayers don't seem to rise very high, miss—don't seem to reach anywhere. We haven't got the stand-in with the Boss that others seem to have," ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... an interval, during which Mrs. Pendomer smiled crookedly, and Patricia continued to sob, although at lengthening intervals. Then, Mrs. Pendomer lifted the packet of letters lying on the bed, and cleared ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... turning toward her, saw the fattest little Madigan nudge her red-haired neighbor savagely. She was evidently angry at something. "It's good of you to take me in like this. What I want to say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you know, so—drear—and desolate and—and flimsy, I got a bit home-sick—there! The thought ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... good long drive from Mrs. Derrick's. The road was first on the way to Mr. Simlins'; from there it turned off at right angles and went winding crookedly down a solitary piece of country; rising and falling over uneven ground, twisting out of the way of a rock here and there, and for some distance skirting the edge of a woodland. There was light enough to see by, but it was not just the piece of road one would ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... children were fetching water, and playing about, even straying almost beyond call. No guards were posted, on the look-out. The logs of the defences had sagged by weather—some appeared to have rotted. One of the double gates, swung inward, hung crookedly. It was a Boonesborough gone to seed in ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... flapping about her knees like a flag. But at the foot of the rickety outer steps that ran across the bare front of the shack crookedly, like a broken arm, I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the hammock, lighting a cigarette to aid her meditations. Truly matters had gone very crookedly. Maryon Rooke had been the first cause of all the trouble. Then she herself had intervened to distract Nan's thoughts by asking Peter to be a pal to her. And the net result of it all was that Peter, irrevocably bound to another woman, had fallen ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... undiscovered, the shelter of the glen. Here, under the overhanging hill, Burl could walk upright, and that for the first time since quitting the opposite rim of the valley, if we may except when chin-deep in water he was fording the river. Down the glen, with twisted current winding crookedly among the rocks, came bubbling a little brook, thus serving to muffle the sound of the black hunter's footsteps, as now with swift and powerful strides he ascended into the depths of the hills. When he came to where the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... attention when he had looked out of the little window of his room on the day of his arrival. The whole of its trunk was evergrown with dry moss, its bare, rugged branches, sparsely covered with reddish leaves, rose crookedly, like some old arms held up in supplication. Nejdanov stepped firmly on to the dark soil beneath the tree and pulled out the object he had taken from the table drawer. He looked up intently at the ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... crookedly, dodging the flames, and presently he came back, and there were so many moths with him that it was as if a live sheet of white wingedness were suddenly drawn between the children and ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... not suggesting that the murderer threw a box out of the window?" exclaimed Superintendent Galloway, staring at the detective. "Look how straight the line from the wall is! A box would have fallen crookedly." ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... like him, he may have them for his own, not in the bands of charity, but in the bonds of punishment: who purposed to set his throne in the north, that dark and chilled they might serve him, pervertedly and crookedly imitating Thee. But we, O Lord, behold we are Thy little flock; possess us as Thine, stretch Thy wings over us, and let us fly under them. Be Thou our glory; let us be loved for Thee, and Thy word feared in us. Who would ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... watched him were amazed To see unheralded beneath the lids Twin tears, new-gathered at the price of pain, Start and at once run crookedly athwart Cheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears. So desolate too the sigh next uttered They had wept also, but his great lips moved, And bending down one heard, 'A sprig of lime; Bring me a sprig of lime.' Whereat she stole With dumb signs ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... one woman has been rendered unhappy for the rest of her life, has been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased to love, because he took off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nails crookedly, put on a stocking wrong side out, and was clumsy ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... in disorder. Chairs were overturned, there were empty spaces on the wall where the finest pictures of the millionaire had been hung. The window facing the door was wide open. The shutters were broken; one of them was hanging crookedly from only its bottom hinge. The top of a ladder rose above the window-sill, and beside it, astraddle the sill, was an Empire card-table, half inside the room, half out. On the hearth-rug, before a large tapestry fire-screen, which masked the wide fireplace, built in imitation of the ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... together.... I didn't babble much—thank goodness—but I skirted.' He turned the pages backward for more Sortes Surteesianae, and read: 'When at length they rose to go to bed it struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs, that the man before him walked very crookedly.' He ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... heaves into sight and we round a corner into that famous salmon river, the Fraser. There are red houses peeping out between the trees, and boats begin to pop up here and there, but we don't seem to be getting on very fast, for we are zigzagging this way and that across the water, almost more crookedly than we did on the Nile or Irrawaddy ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... been working for two hours before she came, painting a small patch of the gorse. Old gnarled stems wound upward crookedly, and beneath them lay a dead carpet of gorse needles with a blade or two of grass shooting through. From the roots and bases of the main stems sprouted many a shoot of young gorse, their prickles tender as the claws of a new-born ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... a rocket flare-back, grasses burned away from the fins of a small scoutship. But even as Shann rose to one knee, his shout of welcome choked in his throat. One of those fins sank, canting the ship crookedly, preventing any new take-off. And over the crown of a low hill to the west swung the ominous black plate ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... overhead the light had leapt to full brilliancy. An uncertain hand pulled the shade down crookedly. As the young man turned for a last look at the house he perceived a shadow hurriedly passing and repassing the lighted window. Then all at once the shadow, curiously huddled, stooped and was gone. There was something sinister in the ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... back of his head, and the lower part of his face was covered by a ragged beard. This he was plucking with nervous jerks, talking to himself the while, and casting a disparaging eye upon the portrait of Remington Kara which hung above the marble fireplace. A pair of pince-nez sat crookedly on his nose and two fat volumes under his arm completed the picture. Fisher, who was an observer of some discernment, noticed under the overcoat a creased blue suit, large black boots and a ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow, Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, And the wind breathes low; Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all; Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, 30 Struck by an icy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... woolly dog built close to the earth like a carpet sweeper, with legs patterned crookedly—after the model of his master's. Toby has one settled prejudice: he dislikes Indians. You have only to whisper the word "Injun" and instantly Toby is off, scuttling away to the highest point that is handy. From there he peers all round looking for red invaders. Not finding any he comes slowly ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... sat under the bowlder alone, a small brown creature in picturesque-looking rags, a mere waif and stray of a child, with her feet trailing in the pool; every now and then small mottled crabs scrambled crookedly along, or dug graves for themselves in the dry waved sand. The girl watched them idly, as she flapped long ribbons of brown seaweed, or dribbled the water through her hollowed hands, while a tired sea-gull ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Latournelle. Above the atrocious green spectacles rose a bald crown, all the more crafty in expression because a wig, seemingly endowed with motion, let the white hairs show on all sides of it as it meandered crookedly across the forehead. An observer taking note of this excellent Norman, clothed in black and mounted on his two legs like a beetle on a couple of pins, and knowing him to be one of the most trustworthy of men, would have sought, ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... further; he tried to rise, but his legs would not carry him. He stretched out his long arms as if wishing to get an armful of sunshine, and his face assumed a vexed, anxious expression; then he fell back, became quite still, and collapsed, leaning a trifle crookedly over the arm of the bench in that weary movement which the first moment of death brings to man, before its chill severity comes. The sun was already low, bathing the mute figure in ruddy light, a gentle zephyr stirred a gray tuft of hair on the pale temple, and the big ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... opened and shut with a slam. Lynette had left the room. As Saxham sat alone, a heavy, brooding figure, mechanically sipping at his port, and staring at the empty place opposite, where the overset flower-glass, and the crookedly pushed-back chair, and the serviette that made a white streak on the dark crimson carpet, marked the haste and emotion of her departure, he said to himself that the West End upholsterer who had the contract for refurnishing Plas Bendigaid must be ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... hard is truth to be come at by proxy! Fifty accounts have I had of Rafona; none of which wholly agreed; and here, these two varlets, sent expressly to behold and report, these two lying knaves, speak crookedly both. How is it? Are the lenses in their eyes diverse-hued, that objects seem different to both; for undeniable is it, that the things they thus clashingly speak of are to be known for the same; though represented ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... green sky. He gave a momentary start, because seen thus the signpost had a human look; and when his heart beat normally it was roused again, this time by the sight of a human form indeed, the form of Esther, the wind blowing her skirts before her, hurrying along the road to which the signpost so crookedly pointed. Mark who had been climbing higher and higher now felt the power of that wind full on his cheeks. It was as if it had found what it wanted, for it no longer whispered and lisped among the boughs of the blackthorn, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Cowling smiled crookedly and shook his head at James. "You're a rash young man," he said. "What did you do to ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, or political prejudices, to do away with the need of having opinions, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... at the tea table. My practised eye instantly saw that the cloth was laid crookedly, and that the dishes were ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... upon was Sadie Kate, just fresh, I judge, from hugging the molasses barrel; and a shocking spectacle she was for any esthetically minded person. In addition to the stickiness, one stocking was coming down, her pinafore was buttoned crookedly, and she had lost a hair-ribbon. But—as always—completely at ease, she welcomed us with a cheery grin, and offered ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... furniture, seemed to have taken on a coating of dust. Timid eyes looked out at Joan from behind pince-nez set rather crookedly on a thin nose. One side of her face, from eye to chin, was disfigured by an unsightly bruise. Miss Bacon dabbed a handkerchief to it continually and started explaining its ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... violent jerk he brought her round toward him. Then it was that there met my eyes a quite distressing sight: this exquisite creature, blushing, glaring, exposed, with a pair of big black-rimmed eyeglasses, defacing her by their position, crookedly astride of her beautiful nose. She made a grab at them with her free hand while I turned ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... they had no beastly money. Not all Herbert's pious skill could make this out a blessing. It was bad enough being "so rich" at the Silts; here he was more ashamed of it than ever. In a few weeks he would come of age and his money be his own. What a pity things were so crookedly arranged. He did not want money, or at all events he ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the temptation. After quite a long time came one single goose. It was the thirteenth. This one was so old that she was gray all over, without a dark speck anywhere on her body. She didn't appear to use one wing very well, but flew so wretchedly and crookedly, that she almost touched the ground. Smirre not only made a high leap for her, but he pursued her, running and jumping all the way down to the lake. But not even this time did he ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... that he had spoken of a thing that had been mentioned by neither Ba'tiste nor Houston. His lips worked crookedly. He tried to smile, but it ended only in ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... pointed to the right where a narrow, little-used trail angled crookedly away through the greasewood. Casey gave a deciding twist to the steering wheel ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... like. Incident unto this is the inquiry how to raise and fortify the imagination; for if the imagination fortified have power, then it is material to know how to fortify and exalt it. And herein comes in crookedly and dangerously a palliation of a great part of ceremonial magic. For it may be pretended that ceremonies, characters, and charms do work, not by any tacit or sacramental contract with evil spirits, but serve only to strengthen the imagination ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... Charley stood. Natalie, not caring to run the gauntlet of another battery of stupid stares, had retired to the cabin. On the prow of the boat, which had a dingy, weather-beaten look, very different from the smart green and white craft of the "Company," was crookedly painted the name Loseis. Making her fast, the breeds, with furtive stares at Garth, threw themselves on the ground like tired dogs. It was not long, however, before a "stick-kettle," the invariable tom-tom, was produced, the ear-splitting ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... held by three soldiers, who apparently wished him to be a witness of the whole affair. Andre's body lay there, huddled up in a pool of drying blood, that glistened under the electric light. One of his legs was bent crookedly under him, and Lawrence had a strange mad impulse to thrust his way forward and put ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... kings and elders. But in later times, as the people made additions and omissions, and so altered the sense of the motions before them, the kings, Polydorus and Theopompus, added these words to the rhetra, "and if the people shall decide crookedly, the chiefs and elders shall set it right." That is, they made the people no longer supreme, but practically excluded them from any voice in public affairs, on the ground that they judged wrongly. However these kings persuaded the city that this also was ordained by the god. This is mentioned ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch |
