"Eccentric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fears they consider foolish; nor did his solution seem to account satisfactorily for the evident terror of the cattle, which had lived in those woods all their lives, and had no reason to fear the "bark" of a fox. I preferred, therefore, not to encounter any such eccentric "fox" alone; hence I refused to listen to my friend's entreaties, but simply followed on, over fallen tree-trunks, under drooping branches, and through unyielding brush; now sinking ankle-deep in a pile of dead leaves, now catching my hair in a broken branch, and now nearly falling over a concealed ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... habitual to the hunter Woodley at once tightened rein, coming to a stop under the shadow of the roadside trees. Sitting in his saddle he watched the midnight wanderer, whose eccentric movements continued to cause him surprise. He saw the latter walk on to the little woodland cemetery, take stand by the side of a grave, bending forward as if to read the epitaph on its painted slab. Soon after ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to one of the deceased wearing a watch by a chain attached to his ears appears strange, but I give the statement as he made it. The chain may in some way have become attached to the ears, or, ridiculous as the story sounds, there may have been some eccentric person in the party who wore his watch in that way, and if such should prove to be the case, this would certainly identify him beyond doubt. While the old woman sat in our igloo giving her statement, or trying to recollect the circumstances, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... she had read the secrets of the Diary? If Stella and Vanessa had met—Ah, that is a tenderness and terror almost beyond all thinking! How would my Lady Mary's smarting pride have blistered herself and others if the Fleet marriage of her eccentric son— whose wife she never saw—had actually come between the wind and her nobility? Was there no finer, more ethereal touch in Elizabeth Gunning's stolen marriage with her Duke than is recorded in Horace Walpole's malicious gossip? Could such beauty have been utterly sordid? What were the ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... open-handed liberality which Allison had half led them to expect; the tenant-farmers opposed any change that would touch their pockets; and people of his own class, few and far between in that thinly populated neighbourhood, called once, but found little to interest them in a man of such avowedly eccentric views on things social and religious, and tacitly let the ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... more consideration. Madame de Chateaubriand was a pretty, delicate woman, of quick natural intelligence. M. Danielo, Chateaubriand's secretary, has written an interesting sketch of her, which is affixed to her husband's memoirs. She was a person of eccentric habits, but of a warm heart and lively sensibilities, and was devoted to her religious duties and the Infirmary of Maria Theresa. She professed a great contempt for literature, and asserted that she had never read a line of her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from systematic objectivity to my unsystematic reminiscences of many years. Of course, they abound with eccentric abnormities and startling phenomena. As I have devoted myself to psychotherapeutics, always and only from scientific interest, as a part of my laboratory studies and therefore have refused to spend ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... Edinburgh. His powers failed fast. The last time he conducted in public, The Seven Words—now with the words—was the piece. This was in 1807. He was now without a rival in Vienna. Gluck had been dead twenty years, and Mozart had died in 1791; Beethoven was regarded as a great eccentric genius who would not rightly apply his undoubted talents. The last time Haydn was seen in public at all was on November 27, 1808. He was far too weak to dream of conducting. He was carried to the hall, and great ladies disputed as ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... very shrewd observer and eccentric writer, and his narrative of his own life, and sketches of society in Ireland during his times, are exceedingly humorous and ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... were ploughing, dragged the plough behind them as they went, leaving a well-marked furrow, that remains to this day "to witness if I lie." The remaining version, with some differences of detail, represents the same eccentric pessimism on the lady's part (presumably attributable to the greater spiritual insight of her supernatural character), as the cause of the husband's not unwarranted annoyance and of his breach of the agreement. She had borne him three fair sons; and although ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... if any suspicious craft had been seen lately, and, on hearing that a barque, flying British colours, had put in there only a day or two before, said that he had been sent out in chase of that barque, as she was commanded by a celebrated and rather eccentric pirate, ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... you are going with Marion," continued Quarrier. "As long as Marion has chosen to make herself conspicuous there is nothing to be said. But do you think it very good taste for you to figure publicly on the sawdust with an eccentric girl like Marion?" ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... wind to-day was right ahead, owing to the curious fact that the river here makes an eccentric bend to the left, toward the north-east, and presents itself as coming from that quarter instead of from the south or south-west, as usual hitherto.[18] The Rais attempted to advance by cordelling the boat; but the force of the wind and current prevented the boatmen from gaining more ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... was designed primarily with a view to saving labour—the cells being fed, stoked and clinkered automatically. There is no drying hearth, and the refuse carts tip direct into a shoot or hopper at the back which conducts the material directly on to movable eccentric grate bars. These automatically traverse the material forward into the furnace, and finally push it against a flap-door which opens and allows it to fall out. This apparatus is adapted for dealing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... coat, covered with the dust and the splashings of a long journey, but he himself was attired in clothes that suggested the most fastidious taste, and the most perfect of tailors; he wore with apparent ease the eccentric fashion of the time, the short-waisted coat of many lapels, the double waistcoat and billows of delicate lace. Unlike Droulde he was of great height, with fair hair and a somewhat lazy expression in his good-natured blue eyes, and as he spoke, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... day do your eccentric hay-makers prefer for the rest of their meals, if they lunch at three o'clock? I never heard anything so ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... act, the joint production of Dickens and Mark Lemon), and Dickens played six characters in the piece. Never have I seen such wonderful changes of face and form as he gave us that night. He was alternately a rattling lawyer of the Middle Temple, a boots, an eccentric pedestrian and cold-water drinker, a deaf sexton, an invalid captain, and an old woman. What fun it was, to be sure, and how we roared over the performance! Here is the playbill which I held in my hand nineteen years ago, while the great writer was proving himself to be as pre-eminent an actor ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... think we have heard that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter this. It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us not repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a very good one if I had time to think about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dazzling teeth. Planting his peakless white cloth cap with its yellow band firmly on his head, he stepped forward, grasping in each hand a serried pyramid of brass bells, which chimed merrily as he squatted, leaped, and executed eccentric steps with his feet, while his arms beat time and his fine voice rolled out the solo of a rollicking ballad, to which the rest of the company furnished the chorus as well as their laughter and delighted applause of his efforts permitted. His tightly fitting dark green ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... to prophesy the hid eclipse, The coming of eccentric orbs; To mete the dust the sky absorbs, To weigh the sun, and fix the ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... driving restlessly athwart the sky; and when the vivid lightning gleamed forth with rapid and eccentric glare, it seemed as if the dark jaws of some hideous monster, floating high above, opened to ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... me for my beautiful images?" asked the Italian, in some trepidation for his money, it being difficult to say which of all these eccentric young savages was ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... rose-tree and that, forgot all about me at least twice, waking up and apologising humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I put two and two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor, eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend was already beginning to form; to myself an object of special awe, in that he was alleged to have written a real book. "Heaps o' books," Martha, my ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... my true meaning, and of course in her heart she agreed with it. She was town-bred and therefore was intended for the town. Yet so strangely stubborn and eccentric is a woman's reasoning that she can feel resentment toward a man because he has brains enough to comprehend the same simple truth ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... written in rather an illegible hand, and the spelling was rather eccentric, for Mr. Sloan was not a scholar. As ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... fashionable life—her husband would have been all well enough. She would have been adjoined to him in a way altogether satisfactory to her tastes, and they would have circled their orbit of life without an eccentric motion. But the deeper capacities and higher needs of Mrs. Dexter, made this union quite another thing. Her husband had no power to fill her soul—to quicken her life-pulses—to stir the silent chords of her heart ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... He was particular about the wine. The waiter, who had been doubtful about him, was won over, and went off to execute the order, reflecting that it was never safe to judge a man by his clothes, and that Rutherford was probably one of these eccentric young millionaires who didn't care ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... then under the headship of one Moises, fellow of Peterhouse. His predecessor had been Dawes, the well-known author of the "Miscellanea Critica"—an able scholar, but only an additional example of the frequent insufficiency of scholars to teach. Dawes was eccentric, and injured the reputation of the school. His predominant propensity while in Newcastle was bell-ringing. On his leaving that place he adopted a new taste, that of rowing. If Moises had any peculiar taste, it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... erratic. About his aquiline face was a shrewd and distrustful expression, while his keen, dark eyes, too narrowly set, were curiously shifty and searching. When absent, as he often was, a young fellow named Shipley acted as locum tenens, but so eccentric was he that even Shipley knew nothing of the engagements which took ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... departure of the Colonel on the previous evening, he had looked up Cray's Folly and had found it to be one of a series of houses erected by the eccentric and wealthy man whose name it bore. He had had a mania for building houses with towers, in which his rival—and contemporary—had been William Beckford, the author of "Vathek," a work which for some obscure reason has survived as well as two of ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... phrases might fall. At every step, we meet in Paris people babbling to themselves, and unconsciously confiding to the four winds of heaven their dearest secrets, like cracked vases that allow their contents to steal away. Often the passers-by mistake these eccentric monologuists for lunatics. Sometimes the curious follow them, and amuse themselves by receiving these strange confidences. It was an indiscretion of this kind which told the ruin of Riscara the rich banker. Lambreth, the assassin ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... melancholy news of Glengarry's death, and was greatly shocked. The eccentric parts of his character, the pretensions which he supported with violence and assumption of rank and authority, were obvious subjects of censure and ridicule, which in some points were not undeserved. He ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... rendezvous; but yet it would be interesting to know who wrote it! Hm. . . . It is certainly a woman's writing. . . . The letter is written with genuine feeling, and so it can hardly be a joke. . . . Most likely it's some neurotic girl, or perhaps a widow . . . widows are frivolous and eccentric as a rule. Hm. . . ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... striking illustrations of this neglected truth is Thomas Carlyle. How often has it been said that Carlyle's matter is marred by the harshness and the eccentricities of his style? But Carlyle's matter is harsh and eccentric to precisely the same degree as his style is harsh and eccentric. Carlyle was harsh and eccentric. His behaviour was frequently ridiculous, if it were not abominable. His judgments were often extremely ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... fault with this use of our flag, for in order not to seem eccentric I have swung around now and joined the nation in the conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts lest it suffer pollution; and so when it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... picturesque villages with indifference, and it was only when they reached some great city, or came upon some exceptionally fine temple or eccentric deity, that their curiosity was aroused. Mendes worshipped its patron god in the form of a live ram,* and bestowed on all members of the same species some share of the veneration it lavished on the divine animal. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... unsympathetic personality, but still her tone of voice was without that touch of ironical superiority that I thought I detected in Prince Albert's. She continued to be amiable and courteous like one unwilling to treat an eccentric fellow ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... An old man, an eccentric, who talked aloud to himself. He was a Roman Catholic, and always carried a little prayer-book, with red and black letters, about with him ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... Honourable Arthur that, however mistaken my speech and manner, I was trying to be agreeable. This conception acted on the honest and amiable soul like magic. I gradually became comprehensible, and finally he gave himself up to the theory that, though eccentric, I was harmless and amusing, so we got on famously,—so famously that Willie Beresford grew ridiculously gloomy, and I decided that it could not ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eccentric powers first awakened by the advertisement of the singular annual subject which the Academy of Dijon proposed for that year, in which he wrote his celebrated declamation against the arts and sciences. A circumstance which decided ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... summer came farthest from the sun that part of the year would have the temperature mitigated by its removal to a greater distance from the source of heat. A corresponding effect would be produced in the winter season. As long as the orbit remained eccentric the tendency would be to give alternately intense seasons to each hemisphere through periods of about twelve thousand years, the other hemisphere having at the same time a relatively slight variation in ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... It has been said that the happiest individuals, like nations during their happiest periods, have no history. In the case of my aunt, it was not only that her course of life was unvaried, but that her own disposition was remarkably calm and even. There was in her nothing eccentric or angular; no ruggedness of temper; no singularity of manner; none of the morbid sensibility or exaggeration of feeling, which not unfrequently accompanies great talents, to be worked up into a picture. Hers was a mind well balanced ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... by the eccentric veteran seemed to have a magical effect on the rest of the company present. With one accord they all rose to depart. Probably they had expected to profit by my intoxication; but finding that my new friend was benevolently bent on preventing me from getting dead drunk, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... to restore warmth I muse upon my eccentric friend, and cannot help asking myself this question: Did he really replace the gilded image of the god Mercurius with the rest of the treasures? He seemed to do so; and yet I could not testify to the fact. Probably, however, he was as ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... that is extraordinary, still less that is heroic in his character. He had no magnanimity about him ... he was full of littleness and weakness, of shallow dogmatism and of blustering conceit." The Quarterly, after alluding to Carlyle's style "as the eccentric expression of eccentricity," denounces his choice of "heroes" as reckless of morality. According to the same authority, he "was not a deep thinker, but he was a great word-painter ... he has the inspiration as well ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... I shone—second girl on the right in the chorus, and I was in the eccentric dance ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... his ever behold. He is said to have the finest collection of pictures in the south of England, though nobody ever sees them to judge; pictures, fiddles and furniture are his hobby, and he is undoubtedly very eccentric. Nor can one deny that there has been considerable eccentricity in his treatment of his son. For years Sir Bernard paid his debts, and the other day, without the slightest warning, not only refused to do so any more, but ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... had tried to make up the loss to Dulcie by getting his only and elderly sister Hannah—"Aunt Hannah" as she was inevitably called by all who stayed at Holt Manor, and in fact by everybody who had seen her more than twice—to come and live with him. And there at Holt she had, in her eccentric way, ever since superintended domestic arrangements and mothered his beautiful little girl and her only brother, by this time an obstreperous boy of fourteen, at Eton and on ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... the Salvation Army as a teacher of questionable ethics and of eccentric economics, as the legal adviser who recommends and practices the extraction of money by intimidation, as the fairy godmother who proposes to "mother" society, in a fashion which is not to my taste, however much it may commend itself to some of Mr. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Robertson, an eccentric person whose indiscreet speeches must often have made his statesman brother feel very hot, continues the paternal business at Liverpool. The third, John Neilson, was, socially speaking, the flower of the flock. He was a captain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... a sanctuary such as was formerly called a "chapel," but is now, more frequently designated a "church." His name was Durnford; and he was a man of strongly-marked individuality—a godly, earnest, shrewd, and somewhat eccentric, minister of the Gospel. He was always accessible to his people in their trouble or perplexity, and they came to him without reserve. But surely his advice had never been sought concerning difficulties so peculiar as those which were about to be laid before ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... changed so swiftly from the typical woman of her race to an houri, almost a bacchante,—only an extraordinary refinement of nature kept her this side of the line,—that an American would be tempted to call her eccentric." ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... parents to apprentice him to learn the rudiments of printing in the office of the "Skowhegan Clarion," published some miles to the north of his native village. Here he passed through the dreadful ordeal to which a printer's "devil" is generally subjected. He always kept his temper; and his eccentric boy jokes are even now told by the ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... ankles," she continued, when Hien had modestly replied that six days with good omens should be sufficient, "but retiring to your innermost chamber bar the door and digest this scroll as though it contained the last expression of an eccentric and vastly rich relation," and with a laugh more musical than the vibrating of a lute of the purest Yun-nan jade in the Grotto of ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... history is more eccentric than the long sermons upon abstruse points of divinity and ecclesiastical history which the English ambassador delivered from time to time before the States-General in accordance with elaborate instructions drawn up by his sovereign with his own hand. Rarely has a king ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Every lady in the room had long since declared herself "in love" with the elder brother; the fact was now repeated for the thousandth time, together with one or two remarks about the younger Harper, who they agreed was rather nice-looking, but so eccentric! ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... had gone to man the fleet that won at Trafalgar. The obscure feeling of distrust that always stirs in the lower classes of remote districts at anything alien did not, of course, extend to the educated people, but Mr. Eliot, being poor and very eccentric, refused such championship from his equals ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... was not lost; and the amount—eighteen dollars—was right. The error was in making change. It was my own mistake. An eccentric old fellow, a farmer up in Martintown, had the money—the very same twenty dollar bill. He said he gave me a five dollar bill and I handed back the twenty dollar bill ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... are brought to a position not very far from that taken by my eccentric friend. General or regular correspondence is useless, baneful, and in most cases impossible; but special correspondence, born of the necessities of man as a social being, and circumscribed by them, may be from time to time possible. There can be no harm in an occasional ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the best and truest friend you ever had. Some of the rest were not friends at all; and I have heard many a sneer and unkind word, and stories of your monstrous speeches and habits. Some said you were mad; others that you liked to be eccentric; that you couldn't bear to live with your equals; that you sought the society of your inferiors to be flattered. I listened, and thought it all over, and, being willful and eccentric myself, you know, liked more and more to hear about you, and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... 'My mother tells me that she ran away from Glanyravon, and report says with somebody we know of. But report was false as usual; and she turns up again as Miss Gwynne's lady's maid. Miss Gwynne is about as eccentric as the rest of the clique, and I wish her joy of her bargain. The girl is a ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... up being astonished a good many years ago,' said he, 'but I confess the conduct of that eccentric young ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... now the whole story seems wildly incredible. Wilson and I were singled out to bear the whole burden of sin, though there were abundance of other criminals in the concern; and by and by, Wilson passing for being a very eccentric fellow, and I for a cool one, even he was allowed to get off comparatively scot-free, while I, by far the youngest and least experienced of the set, and who alone had no personal grudges against any of Blackwood's victims, remained under such an accumulation ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... He also is firm, though his manner is mild, so the situation would have been even more "amusing" for the family on the side lines, had he been present. Owing to the placing of the house, we are doomed to have a lopsided garden whatever we do, but we want it to look wayward rather than eccentric. After a battle fought over nearly every inch of the ground the lady was victorious, for Will said to me as he watched her motor disappear: "I might as well do what she says or she'll make me do ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... be likely to follow on the way to the lake. It was not the shortest way to the world outside the Park. It was considerably longer than a footpath would have been. But Lockley expected tanks, at least, against which eccentric unearthly weapons would be useless. So they headed down the main highway. Lockley was unarmed. They had no food. He hadn't ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... by Ballard, Paisley—and Jones—the Second Missouri Compromise, at Boise City, Idaho, 1867—an eccentric moment in the eccentric years of our development westward, and historic also. That it has gone unrecorded until now is because of Ballard's modesty, Paisley's preference for the sword, and Jones's hatred of the pen. He was never known to write except, later, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... professional spirit, but as between man and man—I should warn you against wasting your time and fortune upon a useless pursuit. If Mrs. Holbrook has vanished from the world of her own free will—a thing that often happens, eccentric as it may be—she will reappear in good time of her own free will. If she has been the victim of a crime, that crime will no doubt come to light in due course, without any efforts ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... curbing France, lest those means should be used to destroy the liberties of England. The conflict between these apprehensions, both of which were perfectly legitimate, made the policy of the Opposition seem as eccentric and fickle as that of the Court. The Commons called for a war with France, till the King, pressed by Danby to comply with their wish, seemed disposed to yield, and began to raise an army. But, as soon as they saw that the recruiting had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the first cab we found. We tossed for it, and he won, for which I thank the gods. Then, acting on the impulse of the moment, I came back to say something to you. A very unusual—very eccentric thing to do, no doubt. But when something involving great issues has to be done or said, I think the best plan is not to wait for a favourable opportunity. Don't you ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... eccentric Marquis de Valentin was the talk of Paris. He lived in monastic silence and seclusion, and Jonathan never permitted any of his friends to enter the mansion. But one morning his old tutor, Porriquet, called, and Jonathan thought ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... about the revelations made in this work; but as the eccentric anomalies took no part in it, there is nothing for my purpose. The following valentine from Mrs. Flamsteed,[672] which I found among Baily's papers, illustrates some of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... they are rather common, but still I have a great affection for these, because they were given to me by a dear old friend of our family named Murphy. He was a very charming man, but very eccentric. We always supposed he was an Irishman, but after he got rich he went abroad for a year or two, and when he came back you would have been amused to see how interested he was in a potato. He asked what it was! Now you know that when Providence shapes a mouth especially for the accommodation ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... stanza), has distinguished himself by a very admirable theory respecting the earth. He conjectures that it was originally a chaotic comet, which, being selected for the abode of man, was removed from its eccentric orbit; and whirled round the sun in its present regular motion; by which change of direction, order succeeded to confusion in the arrangement of its component parts. The philosopher adds that the deluge was produced by an uncourteous salute from the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Queen Victoria, was a girl of thirteen; Cobden a young calico printer; Bright a younger cotton spinner; Palmerston was regarded as a man-about-town, and Disraeli as a brilliant and eccentric novelist with parliamentary ambition. The future Marquis of Salisbury and Prime Minister of Great Britain was an infant scarcely out of arms; Lord Rosebery, (Mr. Gladstone's successor in the Liberal Premiership), Lord Spencer, Lord Herschell, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... lord (1669-1736), gentleman of the bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark, himself living a quiet life, became, by his third wife, Frances, daughter of Lord Berkeley, the progenitor of a strange group of eccentric, adventurous, and passionate spirits. The eldest son, the fifth lord, and immediate predecessor in the peerage of the poet, was born in 1722, entered the naval service, left his ship, the "Victory," just before she was lost on the rocks of Alderney, and subsequently ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... uncle who lived with him, a very eccentric, single-minded man, who was greatly distressed about the affair, and who became a messenger bent on making peace. He begged me to desist for Lowrie's sake, that I might not drive him to cover himself with shame, and bring lasting regret. He insisted that I knew nothing of the dangers ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... so seemingly eccentric to people lapped In the civilised order of things, grown naturally out of the circumstances into which she had been forced In pursuit of the task she had set herself. She had deliberately given up everything ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... he could, entertained the thought of furnishing me with materials for an extended sketch of his life, and I still have several envelopes on which the inscription "For My Memoirs" bears witness to that purpose. But after serving as a source of eccentric and roguish humor for several months, the idea was suffered to lapse, only to be revived in suggestive references as he consigned some bit of manuscript to my care or criticism. Any study of Field's life and character based on such materials as he thus furnished would have been absolutely misleading. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the Ruler can be formed that does not shrink by the side of the reality. And so has he impressed himself upon the minds of men, that no man can justly aspire to be the chief of a great free people who does not adopt his principles and emulate his example. We look with amazement on such eccentric characters as Alexander, Caesar, Cromwell, Frederick, and Napoleon; but when the serene face of Washington rises before us mankind instinctively exclaims, "This is the Man for the nations to trust and reverence and for heroes ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... much in that capacity, but as Sir Henry Thompson, certainly not the least distinguished surgeon of our day. In Lord Beaconsfield's last novel, 'Endymion,' we have a passing reference to one Wrentham lad, Sir Charles Wetherell, as 'the eccentric and too uncompromising Wetherell.' Assuredly the fame of another lad, Sir Henry Thompson, connected with ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... table in the midst of the students. "In you, mademoiselle," he added in a tone yet lower, "I find the woman and the artist divorced. That is a vast advantage—an immense source of power. I am growing more certain of you; you are not merely cleverly eccentric as I thought. You have a great deal that no one can teach you. You have finished that—I wish to take it downstairs to show the men. It will not be jeered ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... understand the heart of a philanthropist—of a man who could work for mere humanity. Up till a few years ago it was the fashion for even historians, being unable to understand his motive and disposition, to speak of him as a "kind hearted, but eccentric ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... stranger than fiction,' says a very old proverb, which is certainly illustrated by the following tale of an eccentric nobleman's life. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... he never came to Shelby—the rupture between the two, if rupture it were, seeming to be complete—there were many who had visited him in his own place of business and put such questions concerning the judge and his eccentric manner of living as must have provoked response had the young man had any response to give. But he appeared to have none. Either he was as ignorant as themselves of the causes which had led to his father's habit of extreme isolation, or he showed powers ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... rather good." Rosamond's interest was plainly forced. "Constance is getting on with them, is she? I must see them in the morning. How do you like her? I suppose you have heard that she is very eccentric. She refused to live in a perfect palace with an aunt of hers, merely because the aunt objected to her going to life class. Fancy her giving up such a life ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... August and September, persons resident in Simla drawing their income from Her Majesty, bought from the eccentric young artist from nowhere, living on Summer Hill, canvases and little wooden panels to the extent of two hundred and fifty rupees. Lady Pilkey had asked him to lunch—she might well! and he had appeared at three garden-parties and a ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... said Fred carelessly, "too distant to make it worth while our becoming acquainted. He's rich and eccentric, I'm told. Assuredly, he must be the latter if he lives in such a hole as this. What are you ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... immediately under his nose. Thackeray was a great man; but in that matter he was a very small man, and indeed an invisible one. The cases of Wallace and Washington and many others are here only mentioned, however, to suggest an eccentric magnanimity which surely balances some of our prejudices. We have done many foolish things, but we have at least done one fine thing; we have whitewashed our worst enemies. If we have done this for a bold Scottish ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... dealings with him that he seemed stiff and "donnish"; to his more intimate acquaintances, who really understood him, each little eccentricity of manner or of habits was a delightful addition to his charming and interesting personality. That he was, in some respects, eccentric cannot be denied; for instance he hardly ever wore an overcoat, and always wore a tall hat, whatever might be the climatic conditions. At dinner in his rooms small pieces of cardboard took the place of table-mats; they answered the purpose perfectly well, he said, and to buy ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... smitten with the desire of being thought superior in every thing, and of being the most admired person in all companies. He had been early flattered with the idea that he was a man of genius; and he imagined that, as such, he was entitled to be imprudent, wild, and eccentric. He affected singularity, in order to establish his claims to genius. He had considerable literary talents, by which he was distinguished at Oxford; but he was so dreadfully afraid of passing for a pedant, that when he came into the company of the idle and the ignorant, he pretended to disdain ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... very amusing in his book for Christmastide, entitled Told After Supper. What he wants, that is, what he ought to have whether he wants it or not, is judicious editing. Had this process been applied to this eccentric haphazardy book, scarcely more than a third of it would have been published. "His style, in this book at least, and, for my part," says the Baron, "I say the same of his Three Men in a Tub, suggests the idea of his writing being the work of a young man ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... to be trusted the eccentric "Guide" to which this short sketch is intended to serve as Introduction—and, so far as may be, elucidation—is not a fair specimen of Portuguese or Brazilian educational literature; if such be the case the schoolmaster is indeed "abroad," and one may ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... certain intellectual and moral weaknesses. But the great romance men, like Edmund Spenser, for example, may not possess these weaknesses at all. Robert Louis Stevenson was passionately in love with the romantic in life and with romanticism in literature; but it did not make him eccentric, weak, or empty. His instinct for enduring romance was so admirably fine that it brought strength to the sinews of his mind, light and air and fire to his soul. Among the writers of our own day, it is Mr. Kipling who has written some of the keenest ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... of events, the workers in biology have not only accepted all these, but have added more startling theses of their own. For, as the astronomers discover in the earth no centre of the universe, but an eccentric speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of the living world, but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as the astronomer observes the mark of practically endless time set upon ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... this eccentric kind always accompany periods of intellectual change. Most men live and think by habit; and when habit fails them, they are like unskilful sailors who have lost the landmarks of their course, and have no compass and no celestial charts by which to steer. In the years which preceded ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... and more convinced that a style of instruction which is illogical, intermittent, superficial, and without method, can lead to no good result, or at least to nothing satisfactory, even with extraordinary talents; and that the unsound and eccentric manifestations and caricatures of art, which cause the present false and deplorable condition of piano-playing, are the consequence of such a prevalent ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer, at that time M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had married the daughter of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent (or, which is the same thing, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... and every nook in the garden too, we are accommodated with a rustic table in the "Grand Salon," part of which is screened off as a kind of bar. The "Grand Salon" is also full of quaint pictures and eccentric curiosities; it is cool and airy, bright flowers are in the windows, and the floor is sanded. We had stopped here to refresh the horses, intending to breakfast at Etretat. But so delighted were we, a party of "deux ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... ordinary, innocent love-making that other peoples can have only on the worst conditions; and yet the story-writers won't avail themselves of the beauty that lies next to their hands. They go abroad for impossible circumstances, or they want to bewitch ours with the chemistry of all sorts of eccentric characters, exaggerated incentives, morbid propensities, pathological conditions, or diseased psychology. As I said before, I know I'm only a creature of the storyteller's fancy, and a creature out of work at that; but I believe I was imagined ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... that suburb, where he has carried on his business as a builder for many years. Mr. Oldacre is a bachelor, fifty-two years of age, and lives in Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that name. He has had the reputation of being a man of eccentric habits, secretive and retiring. For some years he has practically withdrawn from the business, in which he is said to have amassed considerable wealth. A small timber-yard still exists, however, at the back of the house, and last night, about twelve o'clock, an ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... end to end of the Empire, he would, perhaps on the following day, exhibit something very like stupidity in debate. He would rise to address the House and take his seat again without having uttered a word. He was eccentric, said his admirers, but there were others who looked deeper for an explanation, yet failed to find one, and were thrown back ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... at the machine works, Goerck Street. I started for the oil-room, when, about entering, I saw a small funnel lying on the floor. It had been stepped on and flattened. I took it up, and it had solved the engine-oiling problem—and my walk to Lawrence like a tramp actor's was off! The eccentric strap had a round glass oil-cup with a brass base that screwed into the strap. I took it off, and making a sketch, went to Dave Cunningham, having the funnel in my hand to illustrate what I wanted made. I requested him to make a sheet-brass oil-cup and solder it to the base I had. He ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of authorized words. The same super-refined taste impoverishes the initiatory act as well as the initiatory expression, people acting as they write, according to acquired formulas and within a circumscribed circle. Under no consideration can the eccentric, the unforeseen, the spontaneous, vivid inspiration be accepted. Among twenty instances I select the least striking since it merely relates to a simple gesture, and is a measure of other things. Mademoiselle de—obtains, through family influence, a pension for Marcel, a famous dancing-master, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Juliette. Les deux freres ("Brothers of Corse"), JEAN and EDOUARD, excellent respectively as Romeo and Friar Laurent. EDWARD looked the reverend, kind-hearted, but eccentric herbalist to the life, singing splendidly. But Brother JOHN, in black wig, black moustache, and with pallid face, look so unhealthy a Romeo that his appearance must have first excited Juliet's pity, which we all know is akin to love. My advice to JOHNNIE DE RESZKE is to "lighten the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... snug meeting. I mounted my gig the next day (the 5th), and drove as far as Deptford Inn. I had heard of a Mr. Gourley, who lived at Deptford, upon an estate of the Duke of Somerset's; and, as he had acquired the character of being at least an eccentric, if not an independent man, I called at his house with the intent to have some conversation with him upon the proposed meeting. Fortunately, however, he was from home, or I might have been hampered with a very troublesome and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... not ask her very much more than its genuine value and next day all Paris knew of the transaction and flocked to the Opera to see her in the ornaments which had cost the Russian Duke his friendship for the bearer. But though eccentric, impulsive and domineering, no whisper had ever attached itself to her name. On her return to her native New York, was she not welcomed, feted, honored, besieged with invitations everywhere? People felt she was different from the girl who went away. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... Papists are the persecuted party, and that they only practise their religion with fear and trembling. Notwithstanding the well-known doctrine of the Roman Church, which preserves heaven exclusively for those within its own pale, these eccentric politicians aver that under a Roman Catholic Parliament, elected by the clergy alone, the isolated Protestants of Catholic Ireland, known in the Papist vernacular as Black-faces, Black-mouths, Heretics, Soupers, and Jumpers, would ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the peculiarities of her countenance. Notice that in the place she occupies, one of the dark corners of the canvas, rather low in the middle distance, between a man in deep red and the captain dressed in black, this eccentric light has much greater force than the most sudden contrast with a neighbouring tint, and without extreme care this explosion of accidental light would have sufficed to disorganize ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... himself, and that he was a well-made, handsome, agreeable officer—not so young as to make the thing absurd, yet young enough to inspire the right sort of feeling. To be sure, there were a few things to be weighed. She was, perhaps—well, she was eccentric. She had troublesome pets and pastimes—he knew them all—was well stricken in years, and had a will of her own—that was all. But, then, on the other side was the money—a great and agreeable arithmetical fact ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... at him for a second, and then looked down. Much as she admired Mr. Denis Oglethorpe, she never quite comprehended him. He had such an eccentric fashion of being almost curt sometimes. She had seen him actually give a faint start when he entered, and she had not understood that, and now he had paid her a compliment, but with so much of something puzzling hidden in his quiet-sounding voice, that she did not understand that either—and ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... she was under their roof; others, again, had been attached to her during the time she had formerly spent among them; and there were not lacking those who, disapproving of her presence, held their peace, in the anticipation that the rich and eccentric lady would on departing present a gift of ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Paris, Michel Ardan by name, eccentric, but keen and shrewd as well as daring, demanded, by the Atlantic telegraph, permission to be enclosed in the bullet so that he might be carried to the Moon, where he was curious to make certain investigations. Received in America with ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... then 'a detached and eccentric personality who had arisen on the outskirts; the world began to be conscious of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... closed his house to the world, and lived in his home. But here he found another reef. The poor soldier had one of those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion. Diard was one of the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they arrive, and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly, like the wheels mentioned in Holy ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... says she, solemn and stiff-like; "my dear nephew is an eccentric, but we must take our bread as we find it on this earth, Mister Begg, and thankful for it too. Poor Ruth, now, she is dreadfully distressed and unhappy; but I tell her it will all come right in the end. Let her be patient a little while and she will have her own way. She wants for nothing here—she ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... provided the period during which it was to accumulate did not exceed that forbidden by the law against perpetuities, viz. the period of a life or lives in being, and twenty-one years afterwards. In 1800, however, the law was amended in consequence of the eccentric will of Peter Thellusson (1737—1797), an English merchant, who directed the income of his property, consisting of real estate of the annual value of about L. 5000 and personal estate amounting to over L. 600,000, to be accumulated during the lives of his children, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... best-known pseudonym (for there were others) of the refined, somewhat eccentric, and still distinguished French author whose real name was C. Marie Henri Beyle. Born at Grenoble on January 23, 1783, he found his way as a youth to Milan, and fought with Bonaparte at Marengo. Afterwards he followed various occupations at Paris and Marseilles; went through ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... John, gravely, "before I offer you another egg, let me warn you against carrying remarkableness too far. You may be regarded as eccentric if you go on like that. Some people, I am told, don't want a view ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Phinuit is a peculiar type of man. He goes about continually, and is thrown in with everybody. He is eccentric and quaint, but good-hearted. I wouldn't do the things he does for anything. He lowers himself sometimes—it's a great pity. He has very curious ideas about things and people; he receives a great deal about people ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... strait an accident in the way of a "wind fall" (or I might more appropriately say, "bread fall") came to our regiment's relief. Jim George, a rather eccentric and "short-witted fellow," of Company C, while plundering around in some old out-buildings in our rear, conceived the idea to investigate a straw stack, or an old house filled with straw. After burrowing for some time away down in the tightly packed straw, his comrades heard his voice ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... having intrusted his interests to the care of Phillips; and now feeling, with the others, apprehensive for the result of the new expedition, he was anxiously awaiting the return of the absent trappers. Tomah, the eccentric young Indian, likewise had surprised the settlers by his sudden reappearance among them, in a suit of superfine broadcloth, hat and boots to match, gold watch, showy seals, and all the gewgaw etceteras that go to make ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... "Very eccentric. He must be rich," whispered the wife of a dry-goods merchant from Keokuk, as her husband pushed her ahead of him past the door ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... desire to introduce honesty and purity into our dealings with one another. Never was the need of religion more keenly felt by the world than it is to-day; and that is why mankind are willing to accept any religious belief, however eccentric, that comes in the guise of truth and bearing the promise of surcease from sin, sickness, and sorrow here this side of the grave. The world was never so hungry for religious truth; and this fact is a perpetual ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... quite enclosed by mountains. The present attorney has been in the island nine years, and is attorney for several other properties. In England he was a religious man, and intimately acquainted with the eccentric Irving. For a while after he came out he preached to the slaves, but having taken a black concubine, and treating those under his charge oppressively, he soon obtained a bad character among the blacks, and his meetings were deserted. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of the board, a man of exemplary rectitude, was vehement even in refusing to act upon it, and his opinion prevailed. Some years afterwards the individual came under my command, and proved to be of so eccentric worthlessness that I thought him on the border-line of insanity. He afterwards disappeared, I do not ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... a weekly paper remember it differs from a daily one. Weeklies want what will not alone interest the man on the street, but the woman at the fireside; they want out-of-the-way facts, curious scraps of lore, personal notes of famous or eccentric people, reminiscences of exciting experiences, interesting gleanings in life's numberless by-ways, in short, anything that will entertain, amuse, instruct the home circle. There is always something occurring in your immediate surroundings, some curious event or thrilling episode that will ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... that because Sally Carter crosses her knees and cultivates a brutal frankness of expression you must do the same now that you have dropped all your friends of your own age and become intimate with her. I suppose she is old enough to do as she chooses, and she always was eccentric." ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Magnus, though quite unlooked for at so critical a moment, was too much in keeping with his eccentric and unsocial ways to arouse much comment. Everybody looked about with mild ejaculations of surprise, and ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... something silly," snapped Lavinia. "My mamma says that way of hers of pretending things is silly. She says she will grow up eccentric." ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Probably that is the reason why the spectacle of the Twelve Temptations is so dear to the aged eyes of the gray-haired old gentlemen who occupy the front seats at the Grand Opera House. It is certainly a brilliant spectacle, though, like the ideal scene to which Mrs. NICKLEBY's eccentric and vegetarian lover once referred, it consists principally of "gas and gaiters." Not that it is exclusively an Old Folks' entertainment; for, as the critics say of portentously dull juvenile books, "it will be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... and, by the death of his father, had been left utterly destitute. He had found a home with Scythia Woods, an eccentric woman, who lived in a hut on the mountain side, half way between North End and Rockhold, and he supported himself in a poor way by running errands and doing ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... her only child, a daughter. She thought she had met in him a hero, a demi-god, a being of deep passion and original and creative mind; but he was only a voluptuary, full of violence instead of feeling, and eccentric, because he had great means with which he could gratify extravagant whims. Stella found she had made the great and irretrievable mistake. She had exchanged devotion for a passionate and evanescent fancy, prompted at first by vanity, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... set the example, and ever since serpents have been in the front rank of woman's eccentric loves. Cleopatra was fond of tigers and ferocious beasts, but she turned at last to a snake as the most fitting creature ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... least that is not frequent. What is its nature? Is it awful? Is it sad? Is it eccentric? Is it mad or sane, ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Worley, Archdeacon of Wells. Lord Algernon wore a domino. His uncle (I need scarcely say) had made no innovation upon the laced hat and gaiters proper to his archidiaconal rank—though it is likely enough that the Venetians found this costume as eccentric as any in the throng. He had arrived in the city a bare week before; and walked with an arm paternally thrust in his nephew's, while he made acquaintance with the luxurious frivolities ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... For it is a notable instance of the coming and, indeed, actual invasion, by fiction, of regions which had hitherto been the province of more serious kinds; and it is a link, not unimportant if not particularly meritorious, in the chain of the eccentric novel. Lucian of course had started it long ago, and Rabelais had in a fashion taken it up but a century before. But the fashioners of new commonwealths and societies, More, Campanella, Bacon, had been as a rule very serious. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... that the lad ran away. He came North, and was unheard-of for some time, living under an assumed name. Later some slight correspondence ensued between father and son, and the boy was granted a regular allowance. The father was a very eccentric man, harsh and unforgiving, and, while giving the boy money, never extended an invitation to return home. Consequently Philip remained in the North, and led his own life. He became dissipated, and a rounder, and drifted into evil ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... harm in an act, opinion had no greater effect on her than summer flies to one with a fan. The country people, sorely tried by the spectacle at first, remembered the gentle deeds and homely chat of an eccentric lady, and pardoned her, who was often to be seen discoursing familiarly with the tramp on the road, incapable of denying her house-door to the lost dog attached by some instinct to her heels. In the circles named 'upper' there was mention of women unsexing themselves. She preferred the society ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... their use in another respect. So indirect and underhand is the Italian's mode of dealing in these matters, and so eccentric his notions as to value, that a foreigner is apt to be speedily disgusted or driven away by the magnitude of demands which in reality the seller never expects to realize. Hence the negotiation is best done through an agent, the buyer having fixed his price, leaving the sensale to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... christened Ampersand, and then gave its name to its parent and grand-parent. It is such a crooked stream, so bent and curved and twisted upon itself, so fond of turning around unexpected corners and sweeping away in great circles from its direct course, that its first explorers christened it after the eccentric supernumerary of the alphabet which appears in the old spelling-books as &— ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... about forty years of age, near seven feet high, deaf as a post, stammering and making convulsive efforts to express a sentence of five words, which, after all, his gibberish made unintelligible. His dress was as eccentric as his person was singular, and his manners corresponded with both. He called himself Baron von Bulow, and I saw him afterwards, in the autumn of 1797, at Paris, with the same accoutrements and the same jargon, assuming an air of diplomatic mystery, even while displaying before me, in a coffee-house, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... too, in great plenty—miniature porcupines with fretful quills on end, and some naked even as they came into the world. This one, called the earth-measurer, has drunk himself green with chlorophyll so as to escape detection. Vain precaution! since eccentric motion betrays him to keen avian eyes, when, like the traveller's snake, he erects himself on the tip of his tail and sways about in empty space, vaguely feeling for something, he knows not what. And the mechanical ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... sad? They are not going; they are to stay there, practically owners of all they possess; for, although the property is really your father's, he will only exercise sufficient control to prevent that poor, wild, eccentric uncle of yours from throwing good money after bad. To all intents and purposes the O'Shanaghgans still hold possession; only now, my dear Linda, they will have a beautiful house, magnificently furnished. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... at least), and many, many phases of applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving, jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was always room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarre and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts of his extreme humor was ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... had the opportunity, of obtaining a decisive answer from her lips. On this day, their conversation was earnest and active, but inconsequent. It is often thus in that game of love which is conducted not in concentric circles, but in eccentric orbits. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... town which lay shut in behind a tow-head (i.e., new island) a couple of miles below this landing. I couldn't remember that town; I couldn't place it, couldn't call its name. So I lost part of my temper. I suspected that it might be St. Genevieve—and so it proved to be. Observe what this eccentric river had been about: it had built up this huge useless tow-head directly in front of this town, cut off its river communications, fenced it away completely, and made a 'country' town of it. It is a fine old place, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the eccentric youth they had seen for the first time a few hours previous. He occupied a seat at a desk in a remote corner of the room. Propped up before him was a big volume full of cuts of machinery, and he was taking notes from it. A dozen or more ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was an eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like a poodle's coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green glasses which covered ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... set and things properly attended to. I asked myself whether it was wise ever to interfere with the established routine of duties even from the kindest of motives. My action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness only knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would "account" for my conduct, and what the whole ship thought of that informality of their new captain. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... on, and we all knew the fact. Rossetti had actually taken to poetical composition afresh, and had written a facetious ballad (conceived years before) of the length of The White Ship, called Jan Van Hunks, embodying an eccentric story of a Dutchman's wager to smoke against the devil. This was to appear in a miscellany of stories and poems by himself and Mr. Watts, a project which had been a favourite one of his for some years, and in which he now, in his ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine |
