"Curious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Spain, it would have been madness in her to have undertaken the voyage; indeed, I think it highly probable that a young Prince will make his appearance ere we arrive at Barcelona. After having spent a longer time than I liked at Leghorn, which has nothing curious to recommend it, at length it was given out that on the 26th the K. would certainly arrive from Pisa and embark as soon as possible. Accordingly at 6 o'Clock on that day all the houses were ornamented in the Italian style by a display of different coloured Streamers, etc., from the ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... boxes of curious games, With all sorts of objects and all sorts of names,— Lotto and Ludo, the Fox and the Geese, Halma and Solitaire—all of a piece; Go-bang and Ringolette, Hook-it and Quoits, For junior endeavours and senior exploits; And Skittles and Spellicans, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... even seem to perceive me, though I was as near as I am to you; but its eyes seemed prying into the air. It passed by me quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanished on the other side of the mountain. I was curious and foolhardy, and resolved to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor had left; but though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot at which he had first appeared, I ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... library," said Granice, rising. He led the way back to the curtained confidential room. He was really curious to hear what Ascham had ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Corinthian order, and the upper of as many with entablament of the Composite order, besides twenty columns at the west and four at the east end, and those of the porticoes and spaces between the arches of the windows; and the architrave of the lower order, &c., are filled with great variety of curious enrichments, consisting of cherubims, festoons, volutas, fruit, leaves, car-touches, ensigns of fame, as swords and trumpets in saltier crosses, with chaplets of laurel, also books displayed, bishops' caps, the dean's arms, and, at the east end, the cypher of W.R. within ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... enough where we lay, and reminded both of us of far less strenuous days. The little animals that are always curious to the point of their undoing came out and investigated our tracks as soon as the noise of the stragglers had ceased. The Armenians took no notice of the wild life; persecuted people seldom do, having their own hard case too much in mind; but Fred knew the name of nearly every bird and animal ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the paper upon his unused plate. I rose and, leaning over him, stared down at the curious ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... It was curious to mark the change of expression on Lucia's face. With a peculiar wide, shining look, her great dark eyes travelled from mother to me, but she cleverly concealed that it was a painful surprise. She could not suppress a deep blush, however, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... deserve notice at the hands of such as are interested in the ways and manner of living of a curious race that has ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... in Blacky's mind. He couldn't think of anything else. He flew straight to a certain tall pine-tree in a lonely part of the Green Forest. Whenever Blacky wants to think or to plan mischief, he seeks that particular tree, and in the shelter of its broad branches he keeps out of sight of curious eyes, and there he sits as still as ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... fire me publicly!... Sit tight, Ericson; hold y' nerve; think of good old Turk." Carl was not a hero. He was frightened. In a moment now all the eyes in the room would be unwinkingly focused on him. He hated this place of crowding, curious young people and drab text-hung walls. In the last row he noted the pew in which Professor Frazer sat (infrequently). He could fancy Frazer there, pale and stern. "I'm glad I spied on 'em. Might have been able to put Frazer wise ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... triumph. With the little airs and graces peculiar to a stage artiste, Edith put on the dusty costume of Edith Conyngham, and limped feebly across the floor; then the decorous garments of the Brand, and whispered tenderly in McMeeter's ear; last, the brilliant habit of the escaped nun, the curious eyebrows, the pallid face; curtseying at the close of the performance with her bold eyes on her audience, as if beseeching the merited applause. In the dead silence afterwards, Arthur ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... cool hush of a June morning in the seventies, a curious vehicle left Farmer Councill's door, loaded with a merry group of young people. It was a huge omnibus, constructed out of a heavy farm wagon and a hay rack, and was drawn by six horses. The driver was Councill's hired man, Bradley Talcott. Councill himself held between his vast ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... of the Shaker and Shakeress (1874), Elder James S. Prescott, of the North Union Society, gave a curious account of the first appearance of this phenomenon at that place, from which I ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... there is a curious monument erected to the memory of Beadsman, the horse, belonging to Sir Joseph Hawley, which won the Derby in 1859, and which was bred in the place. The monument (an exceedingly practical one) consists of a useful pump ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... therefore, that there is such a place, and the curious may find it marked in larger type than it deserves on the map of Africa, on the West Coast of that country, and within an inch or so ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... shown, of winking slily at you without provocation, and chucking you in the ribs. You know at once that there is something in the wind, and suspect that the aforesaid laugh is to come in pretty soon. Instinctively connecting his conduct with that cellar which so much amused you, you are curious enough to follow up the thread he has unwittingly slipped into your fingers. Accordingly when he returns to his tent with provender in hand you watch him closely. He lifts the trap door and draws out a crock of butter, enough to last the mess a fortnight. ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... still lived, but in such retirement that it was impossible to discover his abode. He followed the snow-white bird till evening, without clearly knowing why: he was induced to think he could catch the curious creature, particularly as it flew at such a moderate height from the ground, and so slowly that he hoped quickly to reach it. The tardiness of its flight made him conjecture that it must have a defect in its wing: he often stretched out ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... "That's curious," said Rupert. "I thought things went for'ard, and not back, in the world. Why shouldn't they paint as well now ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... any interest to our boyish minds. Accompanied by Harry we visited all his favorite haunts—which included a fine stream of water, where there was an abundance of fish; also a ledge of rocks which contained a curious sort of cave, formed by a wide aperture in the rocks; and, last though "not least," a pond of water which, owing to its extreme beauty of appearance, Harry had named the "Enchanted Pond." He had said so much to us regarding the uncommon beauty of the spot ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... satin cushion holding a vellum MS., bound in blue velvet, whose uncial letters were written in purple ink, powdered with gold-dust, while the margins were stiff with gilded illuminations; and near the cushion, as if prepared to shed light on the curious cryptography, stood an exquisite white glass lamp, shaped like a vase, and richly ornamented with Arabic inscriptions in ultra-marine blue—a precious relic of some ruined Laura in the Nitrian desert, by the aid of whose rays the hoary hermits, whom St. Macarius ruled, broke ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... that roams our waste places lairs in the frozen north or the frozen south within a government reserve, where the curious may view him and feed him bread crusts from the hand with ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the lower classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was following, with an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious discussion which a variety of asides rendered still more curious. Suddenly, he stood up in the middle ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... my meal was over the forge. Bread and cheese and eggs were, as I expected, the utmost that such a hostelry could offer in the way of food for a wayfarer's entertainment. Before leaving the village I found the church—a curious old structure of the Transition period, with a large open porch covered with mossy tiles, held up by rough pillars. There were stone benches inside, on which generations of villagers had sat and gossiped in their turn. In the interior were columns engaged in the wall of the nave, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and sinister fashion, by Luiz Sebastian. The rustics looked at each other with slow grins of comprehension, and the blue-eyed youth uttered a long shrill whistle. The great letter upon the cheek of the Muggletonian turned a deeper red, and his eyes burned. The youth was curious. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... and is one of the most striking figures in Danish history. He was beloved by his people, and did much for his kingdom. The buildings planned and erected during this monarch's reign are worthy of our admiration. The beautiful Exchange, with its curious tower formed by four dragons standing on their heads, and entwining their tails into a dainty spire; Rosenborg Castle, with its delicate pinnacles; the famous "Runde Taarn" (Round Tower), up whose celebrated spiral causeway Peter the Great is said to have driven a carriage ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... island in the centre of the stream, and its floodgates and dam on either side of the island; while heavy wheels, all green with slimy growth, and looking grim and dangerous as they turned beneath the mill on either side, kept up a curious rumbling and splashing sound that was full of suggestions of what the consequences would be should anyone be swept over them by the sluggish current in the dam, and down into the dark ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... unable to account even to ourselves, which will not indeed be perceptible, except by its delicate influence on our judgment in cases of complicated beauty. Let the eye but rest on a rough piece of branch of curious form during a conversation with a friend, rest, however, unconsciously, and though the conversation be forgotten, though every circumstance connected with it be as utterly lost to the memory as though it had not been, yet the eye will, through the whole life after, take a certain ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... inescapable winter. This might, did, occur while his being was rebellious with vain hope. Today, in spite of the slight clogging of his breath, his body's loss of flexibility, his imagination was as vigorous, as curious, as ever ... take that nonsense about the doll, which, in a recalled classical allusion, he had privately named Cytherea. Peyton Morris would ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... spreads in time of rain over a wide extent of ground, partly rocky and partly sandy, where it produces good pasturage, and irrigates many acacia trees. The view up this Wady or inlet of the mountain is very curious: at its mouth it is nearly two miles wide, and it narrows gradually upwards with the most perfect regularity, so that the eye can trace it for five or six miles, when it becomes so narrow as to present ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... is no possibility of one's shutting up books entirely. Nay, more than ever, I feel myself burning with the feverish thirst for knowledge. I have had an access of it which I cannot describe to you. The most curious books literally run after me, and hurry voluntarily to place themselves in my hands. As soon as diplomacy gives me a moment of breathing-time I rush headlong to that favourite pasture, to that ambrosia of which the mind ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... curious in walking the streets, to observe the devices of the several classes of aristocracy; for it is not to be disguised, that since the hope from Dumouriez has vanished, though the disgust of the people may be increased, their terror is also greater than ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... her be satisfied with The Dancing Master, and his wife when she comes up. I'm rather curious to see Mrs. Bent and the Delville ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... curious information, and should be studied by those who have to do with children."—Sheffield ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... Sometimes curious scenes result in connection with these nets. On one occasion a magnificent gemsbock had managed to get past the King of Saxony, and finding a net in the way, charged it full tilt with a flying leap. Its horns got ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Milton, and read a book of that 'voice,' as Wordsworth says, 'whose sound is like the sea,' we take up fifty times a magazine with something about Milton, or about Milton's grandmother, or a book stuffed with curious facts about the houses in which he lived, and the juvenile ailments of ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... been led to take in this cause is an example of how, in Providence, a man's destiny,—his course of life, like that of a river, may be determined and affected by very trivial circumstances. It is rather curious,—at least it is interesting to me to remember,—that it was by a picture I was first led to take an interest in ragged schools,—by a picture in an old, obscure, decaying burgh that stands on the shores of the Firth of Forth, the birth-place of Thomas Chalmers. I went ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... if this begins to give any impression of great sufferings and privations. I am lying in my berth, writing, reading, and dreaming. It is always a curious feeling to write for the first time the number of a New Year. Not till then does one grasp the fact that the old year is a thing of the past; the new one is here, and one must prepare to wrestle with it. Who knows what it is bringing? Good ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Denny had pointed at was the curious, large mushroom growth supported jointly on the backs of the two worker termites. It had been across the chamber from them when they first saw it. Now it was moving toward them, steadily, borne by the team of workers. And now, clearly, for the first ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... other day, at an examination of the students at one of the Roman Catholic Colleges of Montreal. It is altogether under the direction of the priesthood, and it is curious to observe the course they steer. The young men declaimed for some hours on a theme proposed by the superior, being a contrast between ancient and modern civilisation. The greater part of it was a sonorous exposition of ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... saying, Leave off I pray thee and speak no more, for I cannot abide to heare thee tell such absurd and incredible lies; which when I heard, I desired to heare some newes, and said, I pray you masters make me partaker of your talk, that am not so curious as desirous to know all your communication: so shall we shorten our journey, and easily passe this high hill before us, by ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... time residing in New York City, and the missives were probably twenty-four hours in reaching Washington. This letter of the commander of the American armies written at such a crisis is full of serious faults, and is a curious illustration of the temper of the times, showing as it does that even in the mind of the first soldier of the republic the foundations of political faith were crumbling away. The superficial and speculative theories of Scott the politician stand out in unfavorable contrast ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... over—along his sleeves, over his waistcoat, and down to his shoes. He seemed to be thinking about something. He would start to speak to me and stop and look over his clothes again, testing the quality with his fingers. Finally he laid his hand on my arm, and, with a curious, beseeching ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... transformation in the man. He had come to the theatre tremulous with eagerness to look upon her face, to touch her hand, but when her brother entered the box, saying, "Mr. Douglass, this is the best time to see my sister," he rose slowly with a curious reluctance. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... for pleasure—the frequenters of the coffee-houses, the runners for gambling halls, adventurers, and social outcasts, the runaway children or forlorn hopefuls of literature, arts, and the bar, attorneys' clerks, students of the institutions of higher learning, the curious, loungers, strangers, and the occupants of furnished lodgings, these amounting, it is said, to forty thousand in Paris. They fill the garden and the galleries; "one would hardly find here one of what were called the "Six Bodies,"[1219] a bourgeois ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... became conscious he was back in the guard-house, and the other prisoners were throwing him curious glances. The eyes returned no more. It was many days before he realized that the voice must have been Dot's, that she had called out to him and made some sort of disturbance. He decided this just previous ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... children," said she, "they simply adore Frida. It's odd, but she's got the most curious power of making people adore her. I don't know what she does to them, but waiters, policemen, porters, customhouse officers, they're all the same. The people in the hotels we stayed in adored her. So did the Arabs up the Nile ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... the mind of the prince and of his companions, and recounts a variety of tales of apparitions which this event gave occasion to introduce. I shall omit giving them to the reader, on the supposition that he is as curious as myself to know the conclusion of the adventure, and its effect on the conduct of the prince. I shall only add that the prince got no sleep the remainder of the night, and that he waited with impatience for the moment which was to disclose this incomprehensible mystery, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... mediaeval conception, was latent in the minds of multitudes of religious persons before expression was given to it by Luther. The aversion to scholasticism, bred by the revived knowledge of the older Greek philosophies in the original, produced a curious amalgam; but scholastic habits of thought were still dominant through it all. The new theories of nature amounted to little more than old superstitions, systematized and reduced to rule, though here ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Indies, Africa, all the ports of the Mediterranean, and voyages to the Pacific, and to the Austral regions, are now of common occurrence. The museums in the Atlantic cities bear ample testimony to the enterprising character of the American merchants, which by their means are filled with all the curious and interesting productions of the East. This has encouraged a taste for scientific studies, and for travelling; which must ultimately tend to raise the nation to a degree of respectability little inferior to the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... in March, 1917, the military affairs of the new nation entered upon a curious phase. At first the Russian army made a feint to advance on Pinsk, to cover the actual operations resumed in the month of July against Lemberg. This latter front extended for eighteen and a half miles and was held by troops known as "Regiments July First." These troops, reinvigorated ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... at the time of this visit of Agrippa; but unfortunately he makes no allusion to it, neither in his life of Colet, nor in his later correspondence with Agrippa, nor, so far as I know, elsewhere in his works. If he had done so, it might have solved a problem which is very curious in the case of a public man of his fame and position, and of whom so much is otherwise known. From the autumn of 1509, when he returned from Italy and wrote the Praise of Folly in More's house in Bucklersbury, until April 1511, when he went to Paris to ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... curious little animal allied to the buffalo, of which we have, or have had, a specimen in the Zoological Gardens at Alipore—the Anoa depressicornis; it comes from the Island of Celebes, and seems to link the buffalo with the deer. It is ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... And think it triumph if they shake their chain. Little I ask of Fate; will she refuse Some days of reconcilement with the Muse? 220 I take my reed again and blow it free Of dusty silence, murmuring, 'Sing to me!' And, as its stops my curious touch retries, The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,— Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong, And happy in the toil that ends ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... he had walked the streets of Paris alone during the whole of one winter's night, while he and his little friend parted company for ever! Charles Young's son, the vicar of Ilminster, has, recently, in his own Diary appended to his memoir of his father, the tragedian, related a curious anecdote, illustrative, in a very striking way, of the grief—the profound and overwhelming grief—excited in a mind and heart like those of Lord Jeffrey, by the imaginary death of another of these dream-children of Charles Dickens. The editor of the Edinburgh ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... know as little of the Chinese language, as I do of the mechanism of Lippius's clock-work; so, why these should have jostled themselves into the two first articles of my list—I leave to the curious as a problem of Nature. I own it looks like one of her ladyship's obliquities; and they who court her, are interested in finding out her humour as much ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... children, very fond of them," laughed Svidrigailov. "I can tell you one curious instance of it. The first day I came here I visited various haunts, after seven years I simply rushed at them. You probably notice that I am not in a hurry to renew acquaintance with my old friends. I shall do without them as long as I can. Do you know, when I was with Marfa Petrovna in ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... trouble to read these reminiscences of the Santa Fe Trail may be curious to know how much of them ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... the sound brought her into view, a furious face, but a curious face as well. She carried a long rifle slung easily under her ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... sighed cheerfully and for the time was lost in retrospection. Saxon was curious to hear more about this woman who must have lived much as the Spanish-Californians had ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... account of the Deluge, accepted as true in the New Testament, less precise and specific than that of the call of Abraham, also accepted as true therein? By what mark does the story of the feeding with manna in the wilderness, which involves some very curious scientific problems, show that it is meant merely for edification, while the story of the inscription of the Law on stone by the hand of Jahveh is literally true? If the story of the Fall is not the true record or an historical occurrence, what becomes of Pauline ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... "curious excitement" which gripped Herzl on that occasion takes on a special significance. "Until that time most of us believed that the solution of the Jewish question was to be patiently waited for as part of the general ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... that the tortured aberrations of feeling to which we have just alluded, ever injure the harmonic tissue in the works of Chopin on the contrary, they only render it a more curious subject for analysis. Such eccentricities rarely occur in his more generally known and admired compositions. His Polonaises, which are less studied than they merit, on account of the difficulties presented by their perfect execution, are to be ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... diligent efficiency overcame his difficulties, combined his divisions, gained the lake, and, by commanding it, so cut off his enemy's supplies that he compelled him to come out, and fight, and be destroyed. To compare the force of the two may be a matter of curious interest; but for the purpose of making comparisons of desert between them it is a mere waste of ink, important only to those who conceive the chief end of war to be ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... bed at night, past countless sentries and thick-headed guards demanding an Ausweis, contrives never to cease looking as if he had stepped from the bandbox, and presently pops you into your hotel in Berlin with the curious feeling of never ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... heaped up over those who had been slain on the side of Lagash. Elsewhere we see the victorious prince beating down a vanquished enemy, and superintending the execution of other prisoners who are being sacrificed to the gods, while in one curious scene he is striking with his mace a sort of wicker-work cage filled with naked men. In his hand he holds the crest of Lagash and its god—a lion-headed eagle with outstretched wings, supported by two lions which are set heraldically ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... from one side, partly or all around the edge, and used it without more ado. This they did under the eyes of modern Europeans. Tylor showed, "from among flint instruments and flakes from the cave of le Moustier in Dordogne, specimens corresponding in make with such curious exactness to those of the Tasmanians that, were they not chipped from different stones, it would hardly be possible to distinguish those of recent savages from those of European cavemen. It is not strange that experienced archaeologists should have been ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... museum of obsolete musical instruments. De Gay collects venomous insects from all over the world; no harmless ones need apply. Terriberry has a mania for old railroad tickets. Some are really very curious. I've often wished I had the time to be a ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... manner between them. In the above-quoted passages, the occasion is stated, as well as the reflection. They seem, therefore, the most proper for the purpose of our argument. A large, however, and curious collection has been made by different writers, (Newton on Daniel, p. 148, note a. Jottin, Dis., p. 218. Bishop Law's Life of Christ.) of instances in which it is extremely probable that Christ spoke in allusion to some object, or some ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... grew firmer, but there was a curious look in his eyes as he turned towards her. 'I have work to ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Sanchi, and I interested my companion greatly in describing the mounds of the United States, with which I was familiar, and whose resemblance to these richly-sculptured and variously-ornamented ruins, though rude and far off, was quite enough to set his active fancy to evolving all manner of curious hypotheses going to explain such similarity. The whole way, by Sangor, Gharispore, Bhilsa, Sanchi, Sonori, presented us with the most interesting relics of the past, and the frequent recurrence of the works of the once prevalent Buddhistic faith continually incited us to new ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... how his face or his manners should have become peculiar; and after looking at a print for five minutes in a shop-window, or dipping into an English book, or in any manner throwing off the mental habit of the instant, the curious gaze of the passer-by, or the accent of a strange language, strikes one very singularly. Paris is full of foreigners of all nations, and of course physiognomies of all characters may be met everywhere; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... times of peace, were now disappearing under the blows of the official demolition. The trees on the outer avenues were being felled in order to enlarge the horizon. Barricades of sacks of earth and tree trunks were heaped at the doors of the old walls. The curious were skirting the suburbs in order to gaze at the recently dug trenches and the barbed wire fences. The Bois de Boulogne was filled with herds of cattle. Near heaps of dry alfalfa steers and sheep were grouped in the green meadows. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... see a man in Shaftesbury Avenue who had advertised for a secretary. He was a funny old bean," she added reminiscently, "all eyes and no waist, and more curious as to whether I lived alone, or with my people, than about my speeds. So I told him my brother ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... the hour for the repast being neither advanced nor delayed. Men went about their business, women occupied themselves with household affairs, young girls played the piano, all saw with indifference the cannonballs pass over their heads; and the curious, whom a desire to witness the combat had attracted to the cliffs, showed hardly any more emotion than is ordinarily the case on seeing a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a curious fact how much climate has to do with love-making. In our cold country the progress is lamentably slow. Fogs, east winds, sleet, storms, and cutting March weather nip many a budding flirtation; whereas warm, sunny days and bright moonlight nights, with genial air and balmy zephyrs, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... a curious production, this first book of Haeckel's, and representative not so much of Darwinian as of pre-Darwinian thought. It was a medley of dogmatic materialism, idealistic morphology, and evolution theory; its sources were, approximately, Buechner, Theodor Schwann, Virchow, H. G. Bronn, and, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... by Mary astride of the branch of a wayside tree, horsemen had been known to dismount hurriedly and examine it, returning with a mystified smile, and it was on record that Yuba Bill had once pulled up the Pioneer Coach at the request of curious and imploring passengers, and then grimly installed "Johnny Dear" beside him on the box seat, publicly delivering him to Mary at Big Bend, to her wide-eyed confusion and the first blush we had ever seen on her round, chubby, sunburnt cheeks. It may seem strange that with her great popularity ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... sat in his bench gazing calmly at the rector's shrewd harsh face, his mind wound itself in and out of the curious questions proposed to it. If a man had stolen a pound in his youth and had used that pound to amass a huge fortune how much was he obliged to give back, the pound he had stolen only or the pound together with the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... had a curious, instinctive longing for human companionship—companionship, that is, other than that of his ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... wonderfully. We had watched her, breathless, for a long time, while she went back and forth carrying in old leaves, softened, bleached, and turned to lace by long exposure, arranged each one carefully and moulded it to place by pressing her breast against it, and turning round and round in the nest. Curious enough she looked as she alighted at some distance, and walked—not hopped—to her little "oven," holding the almost skeletonized leaf before her like an apron, so busy that she did not ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... who had first alluded to the time "When I am married," "When you are married," etc. She said she was rather curious to see who would be married first, and even plain little Alma felt cheerful in looking forward to the time when she would be engaged. They simply took it for granted that in the great beautiful world into which they were going there were lovers—lovers in plenty; lovers ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... brought letters, many of them with large seals, and the arms of a prince upon them! Sometimes, too, after a steamer had called at the landing, parcels arrived containing books—scientific books they were—or curious instruments. Notwithstanding all this, there was nothing mysterious about the life of the hunter-naturalist. He was no misanthrope. He often visited the village, and would gossip with old hunters and ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... curious train of circumstances," writes George B. Dorr, "the titles by which these mountains to the eastward of Somes Sound are held go back to the early ownership of Mount Desert Island by the Crown of France. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... dreamy aspiration the occasion for a compliment,' exclaimed Lesbia, lightly. 'What I said was so silly that I don't wonder you thought it right to say something just a little sillier. But moonlight and running water have a curious effect upon me; and I, who am the most prosaic among ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to ship; holes cut through the ice into the sea, to secure a ready supply of water, in the event of fire; arrangements made to insure cleanliness of ships and crews, and a winter routine entered upon, which those curious in such matters may find fully detailed in Parry's "First Voyage," or Ross's "Four ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Adah, more curious than the first, and then Pamelia did as she was bidden, opening the door and saying, as she did so: "I know the room is in order. There's a fire, too; Miss Anna has forgot that Dr. John ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... woodman heard this, he was so astonished, it was quite curious to see how astonished he was. He went to his cupboard, and took out of a stocking a five-shilling piece of King Cavolfiore, and vowed it was exactly like the young woman. And then he produced the shoe and piece of velvet which he had kept ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the next morning, and now they were much fresher. Sap, not yet dead in some of the trees, had oozed but lately into the cuts, and his heart beat very hard. His comrades could not be far away. He might reach them the next day or the day after, and now he was actuated by a curious motive, and yet it was not curious, when his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rose and made him prisoner, and then proceeded in arms towards Mid-Lothian, where they were defeated at Pentland Hills, in 1666. Besides his treatise on the Military Art, Sir James Turner wrote several other works; the most curious of which is his Memoirs of his own Life and Times, which has just been printed, under the charge of the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... his eyes around in search of Sir Thomas Stanley, and curious to recognise as many as he could among the motley crowd which had come to see him tried. During the time the charge was being read, and just as he had discovered his companion in the throng straight before him, he was challenged by the Clerk of ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... The rather curious episode of a battle-ship fighting Indians occurred in 1856. The sloop-of-war "Decatur," Commander Gansevoort, anchored off Seattle, Washington, to protect the settlers from attacks from a large body of Indians. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... stability of these stones was taken as an omen for the king's reign. There are exceptional instances noted, as the serf-king Eormenric (cf. Guthred-Canute of Northumberland), whose noble birth washed out this blot of his captivity, and there is a curious tradition of a conqueror setting his hound as king over a ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... by the name of the sewing-room; of course, he used the table in the Clothing Store for cutting out, but, all the same, it is a mystery how he contrived to get hold of the right seams when he sat in his hole. I was prepared to see the most curious-looking tents when once they were brought out and set up in daylight; one might imagine that the floor of one would be sewed on to the side of another. But nothing of the sort happened. When the tents were brought out for the first time ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... curious travesty of his elder brother. He was shorter, but he wore enormously high boot-heels, which brought him to a fair stature. In figure he had none of that grace which marked the king, nor had he the elegant hand and foot which had been the delight ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... formulate a whole series of rigid artificial laws, which he evidently deemed adapted to promote the prosperity and preserve the happiness of his ideal Commonwealth: laws for the planting of the Earth, for Navigation, Trade, Marriage, etc. etc. The curious reader will find them almost in full in Appendix C. Many of them may seem to us unnecessary, but then we should remember that we have at our command a greater store of economic knowledge, and more accurate ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... not less gaily or less conspicuously coloured. In the Danaidae the same general rule prevails, but the cases in which the male exhibits greater intensity of colour than the female are perhaps more numerous than in the other two families. There is, however, a curious difference in this respect between the Oriental and the American groups of distasteful Papilios with warning colours, both of which are the subjects of mimicry. In the Eastern groups—of which P. hector and P. coon may ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... silently. This silence oppressed Woodward. He knew that but for his presence the mountaineers would be consulting together and cracking their dry jokes. In spite of the fact that he recognised in the curious impassiveness of these people the fundamental qualities of courage and endurance, he resented it as a barrier which he had never been able to break down. He would have preferred violence of some sort. He could meet rage with rage, and give blow for blow, but how was ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... followed by Cheenbuk, Oolalik, Anteek, and Aglootook—which last, being a cautious man, was careful to bring up the rear. Nootka and Cowlik remained on the ice to observe the end of it all—the former anxiously curious, the latter curiously easy. For some time these two stood in silent expectancy. Then Oolalik appeared at the top of the staircase, and, looking down with a face in which solemn wonder had reached its utmost limit of expression, beckoned ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... a field of great, wild, and houseless mountains, such as I was now condemned to wander in with my companion. Partly as we so sat, and partly afterwards, on the way to Aucharn, each of us narrated his adventures; and I shall here set down so much of Alan's as seems either curious or needful. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... going into the stables and breeding a confusion and a panic amongst the horses. She has several daughters, who occasionally accompany her in her expeditions and assist her in the commission of her pranks. A certain learned effendi, in a most curious Turkish book which he wrote about Constantinople, has a great deal to say concerning this goblin and her daughters, and amongst other things gives an account of a very bad night which he passed in a caravansary at some little distance from the city ...
— The Story of Yvashka with the Bear's Ear • Anonymous
... on his heel and walked out of the yard and down the street toward his own home. His attitude of mind was a curious one. He had a mind to wait until Raymond left and then go into the Kendall parlor and demand of Helen to know what she meant by letting that fellow make such a fool of himself. What right had he—Raymond—to call upon her, and turn her music and—and set the whole town talking? ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... appreciation of her book by Warren Hastings may be compared with a passage from Madame d'Arblay's diary, which forms a curious link ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... faces of the diners around them looked tired and old. When they left the dining-room they stood together for an instant in the vestibule opening into the street. No one was near them, and they were for the moment beyond the reach of curious eyes. She cast one quick look around to be sure of this, and then, going close to him, she put both her hands on his shoulders. As she stood thus he realized for the first time how tall she was. Her eyes were almost on a level ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... when Mrs. Harding began to unpack her boxes, Louisa and Emma caught sight of many pretty and curious things which she told them were intended as presents for themselves. "But before we proceed any further," said she, as the girls were beginning to express their thanks and pleasure, "I wish to inquire about the parting keepsake which I gave to you; and I ...
— Aunt Harding's Keepsakes - The Two Bibles • Anonymous
... reception, the awa drink passed about at the feast, the taboo signs, feather cloak, and wedding paraphernalia, the power over life and death, and the choice among virgins. Then, on the other hand, the wonder and delight of the common people, their curious spying into the chief's affairs, the treacherous paddlers, the different orders of landowners; in the temple, the human sacrifices, prayers, visions; the prophet's search for a patron, his wrestling with the god, his affection ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... women yawn when they are jealous and curious? My mother has noticed it a hundred times, and I, too, ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... the front of the carriage with the little postmaster from Philadelphia, Mr. Franklin, who, printer's boy as he had been, was a wonderful shrewd person, as his Excellency and the gentlemen of his family were fain to acknowledge, having a quantity of the most curious information respecting the colony, and regarding England too, where Mr. Franklin had been more than once. "'Twas extraordinary how a person of such humble origin should have acquired such a variety ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on thinking over its own history, which was curious enough; and the little bird poured forth its strains, and in the street below people walked and drove, every one thinking of himself, some scarcely thinking at all; but the neck ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... and accomplishment were no longer conducive only to amusement or vanity, though they still were exercised; and it was curious to see his masterly drawings hung round the schools and reading-room, and his ready pencil illustrating his instructions, and to hear him reading great authors to the rude audience whom he awakened into interest. There might be more done than sober judgments appreciated, and there were crotchets ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... every candid resident will testify that this is a libellous representation; that our free blacks are a quiet, orderly, well-dressed, and (as far as they can obtain employment) industrious class of citizens; and that their improvement is rapid and constant. Every curious observer who visits their houses of worship, will be surprised at the general neatness of attire and propriety of manners of the worshippers. 'A ragged set,' forsooth! The slander may be uttered in the city of Washington, at an anniversary of the American Colonization ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... was. We are not afraid of a round earth so we tell the truth about it. But we come near to teaching "spontaneous generation" with our endless evasions. We are afraid of a reproducing world, and so we fall back on curious mixtures of sex fables,—on storks and fairy godmothers and leave the mysteries of sex to be interpreted by Achilles and Siegfried and Guinevere! To emasculate these tales is to insult them,—to strip them of their significance ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... we rested, a long hill sloped gently upward for perhaps a hundred yards, its crest topped with a thick growth of young oak-trees, yet seemingly devoid of underbrush. No troops were camped in our immediate front, and feeling curious to ascertain something of our formation, as well as to examine the lay of the land between us and the position occupied by the enemy, I walked slowly forward, unhindered, until I attained the crest. Numberless birds were singing amid the branches overhead, ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish |
