"Oddness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... get it in somehow or other, though it may have nothing to do with the matter, you are inconsolable; do you remember the mobled queen you let off the other day? It was quite off the point, and you did not know what it meant yourself; however, its oddness tickled the ears of the ignorant many; as for the cultivated, they were equally amused at you and ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... door. "Mr. Constantine!" almost unconsciously escaped her lips. He started, and discovered by the humidity on his eyelashes why he had withdrawn. Her ladyship's tears were gliding down her cheeks. Miss Egerton, greatly amazed at the oddness of this closet scene, turned to Miss Beaufort, who a moment before having caught a glimpse of the distressed countenance of the count, could only bow her ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... sauntring thereabouts; because I will assert nothing here but what I dare attest, and plain matter of fact. My wife at this fell into a violent disorder; and I must own I was a little discomposed at the oddness of the accident. In the mean time one knocks at my door, Betty runs down, and opening, finds a sober grave person, who modestly enquires if this was Dr. Partridge's? She taking him for some cautious city-patient, that came at that time for ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... end of the table told her that he was to go into join-hand on Thursday. "Thursday!" says she. "No, child; if it please God, you shall not begin upon Childermas-day; tell your writing-master that Friday will be soon enough." I was reflecting with myself on the oddness of her fancy, and wondering that anybody would establish it as a rule, to lose a day in every week. In the midst of these my musings, she desired me to reach her a little salt upon the point of my knife, which I did in such a trepidation and ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Japanese without hesitation and without servility. And his eyes slowly searched Rainey's face with appraising pertinacity for a second or two. His English, save for the oddness of his idioms and a burr that made r's of most his l's, and sometimes reversed the process, was almost perfect. His vocabulary showed study. "You are not hating me because you are Californian and I Japanese," he said. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... that this slovenly narrative is the very perfection of bad story-telling. But the story itself is striking, and, by the very oddness of the incidents, not likely to have been invented. The effect, from the position of the two parties—on the one side, a simple child from Devonshire, dreaming in the Strand that he was swimming over from Sestos to Abydos, and, on the other, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... so much astonished, that the oddness of introducing a madman in an asylum did not strike me at the moment, and besides, there was a certain dignity in the man's manner, so much of the habit of equality, that I at once made the introduction, "Lord Godalming, Professor Van Helsing, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... sat on a barrel-head watching the effects of the mingling of daylight and candlelight, and amused in his quiet way at the scene and the intense interest of the chief actors in it, which, like other things he did not comprehend, had for him the charm of oddness. I went over and stood by him while the porter dropped the tester-glass into the cool depths of cask after cask, and solemn counsel was held and grave decisions reached. I was enchanted with one meagre, little old gentleman of frail and refined figure, who bent over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... brother of the flag anything; anyhow, not you." I inferred that Jean Lafitte, also, was going to grow up into one of those men like myself, cursed with a reticence and shyness in some matters, and so winning a reputation of oddness or coldness, against all the real and passionate protest ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... that, "when a man of wit makes us laugh, it is by betraying some oddness or infirmity in his own character," and at the present day, not only do those who indulge much in humour often say things approaching nonsense, and make themselves in other ways ridiculous, but their object, being entirely idle diversion and pleasantry, appears ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... their own distinctive cries, and for oddness they quite equal those of the men. And now the high schools, and even the separate classes and school societies are indulging in original cries. But so long as these things keep up the class spirit and make for ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... three officers on leave were pacing up and down, and with them another young man, but, whether he were civil or military, Bluebell could not decide. He was not exactly like either; there was a slight oddness about his dress, which, though well cut, was carelessly put on, and rather incongruous in different parts. The neck-tie was a little awry, and not the right colour for the coat; still he seemed gentlemanly—rather ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... one over another. When the dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were so blinded and hoodwinked that they could not proceed, but were obliged to lie down and scrape the incumbrances from their faces with their fore-feet, so that, finding my sport interrupted, I returned home musing in my mind on the oddness ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... from the ancient full-bottom, and he is now to be seen in all the amplitude of the olden fleece. In like manner he observes the strict regime, so fantastical to a stranger, of causing counsel to be shouted for from without, although they are actually present; and he adds to the oddness of this custom by receiving them with a most imposing mien, and putting on his chapeau as they advance. This is a form, for which the model is not to be found in the practice of his immediate predecessors. It is possible, however, that his extensive ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... other, I cannot say. My lady was of the old nobility,—grand, compose, gentle, and stately in her ways. Miss Galindo must always have been hurried in her manner, and her energy must have shown itself in inquisitiveness and oddness even in her youth. But I don't pretend to account for things: I only narrate them. And the fact was this:—that the elegant, fastidious countess was attracted to the country girl, who on her part almost worshipped my lady. My lady's notice of their daughter made her ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... instance of Madame de Sevenie, and grew quite cheerful under the combined influence of warmth and wine and biscuits; Duchemin standing by with a half-rejected doubt to preoccupy him, vaguely disturbed by the oddness of this rencontre considered in relation to that injudicious stop for dinner at Nant in the face of the impending storm, and with Mr. Phinuit's declaration that he didn't give a tupenny damn if they did all get ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Perusal of this Challenge, began to reflect on the Strangeness of that Evening's Adventure, which had engag'd him in a Passion for two Mistresses, and involv'd him in two Duels; and whether the Extravagance of his Passion, or the Oddness of his Fighting-Appointments, were most remarkable, he found hard to Determine; his Love was divided between the Beauty of one Lady, and Wit of another, either of which he loved passionately, yet ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... his advantage; for it gave him the appearance of age, which never fails of attracting respect. I applauded his sagacity, and waited with impatience for the effects of it. At length he was called in; but whether the oddness of his appearance excited a curiosity more than small in the board, or his behaviour was not suitable to his figure, I know not, he was discovered to be an imposter, and put into the hands of the beadle in order to be sent ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... at his tools, etc., lying on the table, he would have been struck by an air of simpleness, make-shift, and oddness. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... silence by the oddness of the idea. There were phrases in Eugenia's language which were literally non-translatable into hers, representing as they did ideas that did not exist there. "Oh, we never have to consider that," she answered, not finding a more ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... good.' (The following is the passage as it stands in the first edition. Urquhart seems to have rendered Rabelais' indifferent English into worse Scotch, and this, with probably the use of contractions in his MS., or 'the oddness' of handwriting which he owns to in his Logopandecteision (p.419, Mait. Club. Edit.), has led to a chaotic jumble, which it is nearly impossible to reduce to order.—Instead of any attempt to do so, it is here given verbatim: 'Lard gestholb besua virtuisbe intelligence: ass yi body scalbisbe natural ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... smile and walked down the hall toward the open door. A quite tiny old woman it was, with a head either shaved or naturally bald, dressed in a kind of dark-green pajamas. Long glassy earrings of the same color pulled down the lobes of her small ears. The oddness of the face was due mainly to the fact that she wore a great deal of make-up, and that the make-up was a ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... whose contents she was considerably better acquainted than was the divinity student, and sat down to read, marveling at the oddness of the situation; while he lay apparently absorbed in the cracks on the ceiling. By degrees—for having carried her point she could not help being more gracious—she began to allow a little embroidery of conversation to weave itself about the sacred text She ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... not get an immediate answer; the conversation diverged, and it was lost. Daisy's spoon made the round of the company. It was greatly admired, both from its oddness and from ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in smooth silence, and the puffing engine-house and all the trucks and gear of a large ironstone mine. On their right was the astonishing farm, with barns and ricks and cornfields complete, seemingly quite unaware of its forlorn oddness in that foul arena of manufacture. In front, on a little hill in the vast valley, was spread out the Indian-red architecture of Bursley—tall chimneys and rounded ovens, schools, the new scarlet market, the grey tower of the old church, the high spire of the evangelical church, the low ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... he cannot stir now without a mob, patrician as well as plebeian, at his heels. All the Park congregated round the gate to see him drive into town the day before yesterday. But in the midst of all this success and good conduct certain indications of strangeness and oddness peep out which are not a little alarming, and he promises to realise the fears of his Ministers that he will do and say too much, though they flatter themselves that they have muzzled him in his approaching progress by reminding him that his words ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... if she could have been pretty, let alone beautiful; and yet—and yet she managed that little head of hers and that little odd face so as to give an impression of beauty or of prettiness. It was partly the oddness of the face and head, coming on the top of all that symmetry, that perfection, that made the total effect of her so bewildering. I can't find words for the total effect (I don't know that you ever got it all at once, and I certainly didn't get it then), ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... seeks a new native word, the pedagogue does not deal fairly. In this irradiation into the mother tongue, sometimes experience with the sentiment or feeling, act, fact, or object precedes, and then a name for it is demanded, or conversely the sound, size, oddness or jingle of the word is first attractive and the meaning comes later. The latter needs the recognition and utilization which the former already has. Lists of favorite words should be wrought out for spelling ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... for this greater prevalence of duels, was the composition of armies, more often brought together upon mercenary principles from a large variety of different nations, whose peculiar usages, points of traditional honour, and even the oddness of their several languages to the ear, formed a perpetual occasion of insult and quarrel. Fluellen's affair with Pistol, we may be sure, was no rare but a ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... risen yesterday some what late in the day with the oddness and uncomfortableness—I do not mean discomfort—which comes from too much boots, too much disturbance of one's ordinary routine, too much listening to people airing their opinions and recounting rumours, and, last of all, very wearied by the uncustomary task of transporting a terrible battery ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the girl's attention had been wandering, engaged by the oddness of her surroundings, but now she tried to conceal her growing discomfort. Lady Dorian was appearing more mysterious than ever! If she desired to renew their acquaintance because they had formerly liked each other, that was a sufficient reason for her summons. ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... you three!—One of ye asleep, and the other two saying nothing, to keep one awake. Colambre, have you no Dublin news? Grace, have you no Buxton scandal? What was it Lady Clonbrony told us you'd tell us, about the oddness of Miss Broadhurst's settling her marriage? Tell me that, for I love ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... absurdity's so strong, He cannot bear a rival in the wrong; Tho' wrong the mode, comply; more sense is shown In wearing others' follies, than your own. If what is out of fashion most you prize, Methinks you should endeavour to be wise. But what in oddness can be more sublime Than Sloane, the foremost toyman of his time? His nice ambition lies in curious fancies, His daughter's portion a rich shell inhances, And Ashmole's baby-house is, in his view, Britannia's ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young |
