"Queer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got to face Mary," he said, "and I reckon I might as well do it. Whiskey is a queer thing. I must have been a lot drunker than I thought I was, because if the Court had n't ruled it, I would have sworn I slept in that there ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... a way of calling all strangers "furiners." A pale-faced girl who was boarding at the seashore for her health was delighted to be sent by her hostess, or any of the family, on an errand to the queer, quaint, old store, kept by "the funny old man." "You're a furiner, I guess," he said to her one day. "No, indeed, sir," she answered quickly, with an indignant blush, "I am not a foreigner. I came from Rochester, New York." "Why! such a long piece off, poor child, poor ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... of the houses and shops are rarely, if ever, regular, nor are the houses themselves arranged in a direct line, This queer effect results from queer causes. Every Chinese house is built on the principles of geomancy, which do not admit of straight lines, and were these to be disregarded the astrologers and soothsayers under whose auspices all houses are erected, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... him pretty well," Charley went on, carefully, "and he's been very kind to me. But he's never mentioned you. He's quick and queer, he's been alone so much, and very quick ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... man in the head with an axe, or sticking a knife into him, goes against the grain. Slowly poisoning a hundred so that the pockets of one be made to bulge may not even banish a man from respectable society. We are a queer lot in some things. However, that is hardly quite fair to society. It is a fact that that part of it which would deserve the respect of its fellow-citizens has got rid of its tenement-house property in recent years. It speculates in railway ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... if it were spelt with a long line of "e's," and so it was concluded that she was French and was begging for her poorer sisters. At stated intervals during the day, the mechanical toy was rolled into a corner, and the lady in grey stood up on a platform and sang queer little songs, the words of ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... who came from Winnipeg diagnosed her case as chronic anaemia and prescribed port wine, which she refused with a queer little wavering cry and a sudden rush of tears. But she put up a good fight nevertheless. She wanted to live so much, for the sake of Mary, ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... expecting something to happen. A barrel-organ played like an obscene nightingale beneath wet leaves. Children ran across the road. Here and there one could see brown panelling inside the hall door.... The march that the mind keeps beneath the windows of others is queer enough. Now distracted by brown panelling; now by a fern in a pot; here improvising a few phrases to dance with the barrel-organ; again snatching a detached gaiety from a drunken man; then altogether ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... want—the kids," he said at last, and a curious metallic quality was in his voice. "Say," he added thoughtfully, "you women are queer ones." ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... obstinate head would have adorned the lance of some Cossack or other. And what did you come for but to assure me that the well-to-do citizens of Berlin would prefer staying at home, and did not wish to run away? Yes, truly you are a queer diplomatist, and rush headlong into danger and trouble only to assure your king that his citizens will ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... neither. Christmas was approaching, and all the shops had put on their holiday dresses; the confectioners' windows were glittering with sparkling pyramids of candy, with frosted cake, and unfading fruits and flowers of the very best of sugar. There, too, was Santa Claus, large as life, with queer, wrinkled visage, and back bowed with the weight of all desirable knickknacks, going down chimney, in sight of all the children of Cincinnati, who gathered around the shop with constantly-renewed acclamations. On all sides might be seen the little people, thronging, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you, I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion, And yet the same old human race, the same within, without, Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearnings the same, The same old love, beauty and use ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... church. Come, hear what his reverence Rises to say, In his low painted pulpit This calm Sabbath-day. Fair is the canopy Over him seen, Penciled by Nature's hand, Black, brown, and green. Green is his surplice, Green are his bands; In his queer little pulpit ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... I said, "Yes, any part of the body of man or animal is called an organ." "Well," he said, "I never knew that dogs carried horgins about with them before." I said, "Well, they do, and don't you go biting any of them again." Jimmy of course, my reader can see, was a queer young fellow. On one occasion further back, a good many crows were about, and they became the subject of discussion. I remarked, "I've travelled about in the bush as much as most people, and I never yet saw a little crow ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... shooting-galleries. One of the stalls stood a little away from the rest, and instead of a huge naphtha flare, was only lighted by a couple of candles set in battered old stable-lanterns. The owner of the stall was a queer little bent old man wearing an immensely tall top-hat and a very threadbare suit of black. The collar of his coat was turned up and tied round his neck with a red handkerchief, and the ends of the handkerchief ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... people said. "If he doesn't mean matrimony, it would be decent to exercise more discretion. There used to be some talk of Terry Beddow; that's completely ended. Queer the women men fall for, even the quietest of them! No one's sane any longer. Had three husbands already, hasn't she? Quite a crowd! One would scarcely have supposed that an exclusive chap like Taborley would have joined in the queue to make a fourth. And he could have had almost ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... queer things in connection with this is, the public have looked chiefly, if not wholly, to the astronomers for an explanation of this phenomenon, when it is not their special province to explain matters in this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... Burleigh's little boy. They board at our house," Dennie explained. "Pigeon Place is a little cottage all covered with vines and with flowers everywhere. It's hidden away from the road just outside of town. Mrs. Marian isn't crazy nor queer, only she seldom leaves home, never goes to church, nor visits anywhere. She doesn't care for anybody, nor take any interest in Lagonda Ledge, and she keeps a Great Dane dog, as big as a calf, that is friendly to women and ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Morning or Evening Walk. It broke from him to several Boats that passed by us upon the Water; but to the Knight's great Surprize, as he gave the Good-night to two or three young Fellows a little before our Landing, one of them, instead of returning the Civility, asked us what queer old Put we had in the Boat, and whether he was not ashamed to go a Wenching at his Years? with a great deal of the like Thames-Ribaldry. Sir ROGER seemd a little shocked at first, but at length assuming a Face of Magistracy, told us, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the boy with a queer look. "Well, she's my sister, then. Give her my compliments when you see her, cavaliere. Oh, we're a large family, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... silent for a time; he was in some doubt what he should say to this. Lisbeth was so queer and cold, almost uncanny; but on the other hand she did not seem ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... ago in Petersburg, in that obscure, if one may so express it, epoch in the life of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, before he had dreamed of rejoicing our hearts by coming here. Our prince, one must conclude, surrounded himself with rather a queer selection of acquaintances. It was at that time, it seems, that he made acquaintance with ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... expedition. All his movements were inexpressibly graceful. They reminded one somehow of Flaxman's drawings of the Greek gods. His face, too, was good-natured and likeable. A certain half feminine, wild grace, combined with the queer effect of his headgear, caused us to name him Daphne. At home he was called Kingangui. At first he carried his burden after the fashion of savages—on the back; and kept to the rear of the procession; and at evening consorted ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... in the mornin'.—About his ways, he was spry and quick and impatient, and, except in a good company,—he used to say,—where he could get away at any minute, he didn't like to set still very long to once, but wanted to be off walkin', or rowin' round in one of them queer boats of his, and he was the solitariest creetur in his goin's about (except when he could get that schoolmistress to trail round with him) that ever you see in your life. He used to say that usin' two eyes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... speech without delay with our sublime fellow-Shade—with him who, in his transient existence as a poet, commented upon the smell of the rose. He will comfort you. You came to me stripped of all prestige by men's queer smiles and the disrespectful chatter of every vagrant trader in the Islands. Your name was the common property of the winds; it, as it were, floated naked over the waters about the equator. I wrapped round its unhonoured form the royal ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... three-hundred-mile line from Switzerland to the sea. We knew neither the source of them nor the truth of them. They came quickly, and they went quickly. Yet somehow I remember the very hour when George Casey turned to me with a queer look in his blue eyes, and asked if I had seen ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... very old book, and very queer. It has a brown leather back—not russia—and stiff little gold flowers and ornaments all the way down, where Miller's Dictionary has gold swans in crowns, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... strange company. No sooner had this queer fiddler learned that search had been made at "The Jolly Farmers" than he refused to give any information, or listen to any explanation, until they had put some distance between themselves and the inn. He hurried ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... transformation scene of a pantomime, or the silvered globes hung up in a gin-palace'; Blake is 'nearly all utter rubbish, with here and there not so much a gleam as a trick of genius.' All this, when he said it, had a queer kind of delightfulness, and, to those able to understand him, never seemed, as it might have seemed in any one else, mere arrogant bad taste, but a necessary part of a very narrow and very intense nature. Although Patmore was quite ready to give his opinion on any subject, whether on ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... splint manufacturer, of Horseshoe Bay, Buckingham township, is authority for the statement that there are about twenty-two match factories in the United States and Canada, and that the daily production—and consequent daily consumption—is about twenty-five thousand gross per day. It may seem a queer statement to make that one hundred thousand hours of each successive day are spent by the people of the two countries in striking a light, but such is undoubtedly the case. In each gross of matches manufactured there are 144 boxes, so that the 25,000 gross ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... a sigh, surged like the sea whipped by a gale, and, sinking at each step into the mud, the entire regiment rolled forward, over the expanse of the shoreless fields which now suddenly looked strange and dreadful. The soldiers, their faces haggard and queer, were crossing themselves as they ran. They marched in disorder, and when they were stopped on the hill-crest, they turned the regiment into a confused mob of breathless and perplexed men. Some even forgot ...
— The Shield • Various
... lying on his back asleep with his hat over his eyes, when a piece of shrapnel from one of the "Archies" hit him in the stomach—result: one blasphemous, indignant casualty. From the road I can see one of the observation balloons, a queer sausage-shaped airship. We may be moved up into the thick of it at any ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... sallow man—all cobblers are; and had a strong bristly beard—all cobblers have. His face was a queer, good-tempered, crooked-featured piece of workmanship, ornamented with a couple of eyes that must have worn a very joyous expression at one time, for they sparkled yet. The man was sixty, by years, and Heaven knows how old ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... generous and their officers merciful? Well then, it kinder puzzles me to see the way they're getting to work. It's no wonder the Belgian is set agin them. They're a little lot, them Belgians are, and it's a queer thing, ain't it, that they should make all this trouble? But I dunno. Maybe, there's something to be said for 'em if we only knew. Then there's the English. They say they're fighting for freedom this time, and maybe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... had received and the fact that, by the testimony of all who saw him under fire, the young lieutenant gave evidence of very great courage and of indomitable energy. That he was, by what he calls a queer coincidence, the youngest officer of his regiment and its only member of the Legion of Honour, afforded ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... fair-haired crowd of men and women and many children, eating all manner of strange food while they rest, and speaking all manner of strange tongues, carrying the most uncouth shapeless boxes that trunk-maker of Bergen or Upsal can devise—such queer oval red-and-green painted wooden cases, more like boxes to hold musical instruments than for the Sunday kit of Hans or Christian—clothing much soiled and worn by lower-deck lodgment and spray of mid-Atlantic ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... special significance. But the girl showed no sign of enlightenment. "You remember the Carey boys?" he urged. "They left Harvard the year I entered. They HAD to leave. They were quite mad. All the Careys have been mad. The boys were queer even then, and awfully rich. Henry ran away with a girl from a shoe factory in Brockton and lives in Paris, and ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... we must have," Bob answered. "I don't remember it, though. Everything looks queer and different in the storm. It's a regular squall. ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... they looked a Jittle singler. Oh no! don't you have no fear; Heaven was made for such as you is— Joe, what makes you look so queer? Here—wake up! Oh, don't look that way! Joe, my boy, hold up your head! Here's your flowers you dropped 'em, Joey. Oh, my Joe! ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... I shall see M'Clintock next time I'm in town, Duggy. I've had some queer pains across ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that!" she retorted, mischievously. "I will give you leave to lecture us collectively, but not individually: that must not be thought about for a moment." She had not a notion what the queer expression on Mr. Drummond's face meant, and he did not know himself; but he had the strongest desire to laugh ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... I'd lose. Probably we'd have an accident on our wedding journey, which would reduce my nerves to such a state that I'd be irritable for the rest of my life and lose my good looks and power to make you happy. It's a queer world." ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... "It's a queer thing, but he is. I never knew a man who was in love before without knowing it,—they say women are that way,—but then I never ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... pell mell around the edge of the cooking shack, his spindle legs as thin as sticks. Bert Winton (that was the new fellow) watched him, kind of laughing, and then he said, "Queer little codger, ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... air, and would take up his quarters there, he would find it a remarkably healthy spot—as it need be, for it's amazingly dull. If my friend Dombey suffers from bodily weakness, and would allow me to recommend what has frequently done myself good, as a man who has been extremely queer at times, and who lived pretty freely in the days when men lived very freely, I should say, let it be in point of fact the yolk of an egg, beat up with sugar and nutmeg, in a glass of sherry, and taken in the morning with a slice of dry toast. Jackson, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... dark, and a queer little tumble-down phaeton took us to the inn chosen because of its German-speaking landlord. Here I spent two days waiting for the Moscow Express. After I had started my invaluable Wang off on his journey back to Peking by way of Harbin and Mukden, I ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... concerned this dance was a bold and violent expression of excitement on the part of some, and for the rest a drunken, mad fling. Sight of the women gave Joan's curiosity a blunt check. She felt queer. She had not seen women like these, and their dancing, their actions, their looks, were beyond her understanding. Nevertheless, they shocked her, disgusted her, sickened her. And suddenly when it dawned upon her in unbelievable vivid suggestion that they ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... "I'd sure like t' know that! An' wouldn't you, mum? Ecod! but I would like t' know that! 'Twould be worth while, I'm thinkin'. I'm wishin' I could find out. But, hut!" he cried, with a laugh which yet rang strangely sad in my ears, "'tis none o' my business. 'Twould be a queer thing, indeed, if men went pryin' into the Lard's secrets. He'd fix un, I 'low—He'd snarl un all up—He'd let un think theirselves wise an' guess theirselves mad! That's what He'd do. But, now," falling again into a wistful, dreaming whisper, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... kind word, and a kind deed, too, for the matter of that. There was not a house in all the parish of St. George's (in which we lived before we came down here) where the servants had more holidays or a better table kept; but, for all that, he had his queer ways and his fancies, as I may call them, and this was one of them. And the point he made of it, sir," the old man went on; "the extent to which that regulation was enforced, whenever a new servant was engaged; ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... "How queer you questions, Miss Anna! Of course she was sick; she drooped in the August heat; they didn't think she was very sick; the master gave her some medicine one night, and left her sleeping, quiet as a lamb, and before morning came she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... I am not far out of the way, returned Elnathan, endeavoring to imitate the expression of the others countenance, by looking jocular. Latin is a queer language, gentlemen; now I rather guess there is no one in the room, except Squire Lippet, who can believe that Far. Av. means ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... inhabited it for a century at least; it is half in ruins, signor. A queer place to hire; I hope the rent ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is a nom de plume) appeared in print on the cover of a book, I may be suspected of professional humour when I say I really do not know which was my first book. Yet such is the fact. My literary career has been so queer that I find it not easy to write ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... attracted often, you know. Once I was in love with a grande dame, bestially in love, dog-like. Well, she gave me a rendezvous, and I didn't, couldn't, keep it, because suddenly I thought of her husband, and it made me feel sick. And you know, it's queer, that now, when I look back, instead of being glad that I was decent, I am as sorry as if I had sinned. But with Masha it's so different; I'm filled with joy that I've never soiled the brightness of my feeling for her. (He points his finger at the ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... would notice and with a smile she would put down my hand, but a few moments later up it would come and would continue its stroking. For I felt both abused and puzzled. What was there in the talk of the large white-haired old man in the pulpit to make my mother's eyes so queer, to make her sit so stiff and still? What good would it do me when I grew up to say that ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... he whispered. "Isn't it queer we didn't think of it before? From what Andy and Randy tell of how that fellow treated Brassy I wouldn't put it past him to be a bad one. But if he had anything to do with the robbery at the school, do you think Brassy ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... shamed to death! I must accept the Perritons' invitation. I already have accepted it. They will think you a very queer ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... David Dudley Field, and many more well known men of the day. It is doubtful if there were any persons present, even his best friends, who expected that Lincoln would do more than interest his hearers by his sound arguments. Many have confessed since that they feared his queer manner and quaint speeches would amuse people so much that they would fail to catch the weight of his logic. But to the surprise of everybody Lincoln impressed his audience from the start by his dignity ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... "Excuse me, Jack, old fellow, I didn't mean to be disrespectful. We are all in the same fix as far as clothes go. Even Evelyn looks a little queer. 'All the world is a little queer,' he quoted, 'and thee ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... early in the morning, and the gypsy folk, tired from their march on the preceding day, slept. There stood the conical, queer-shaped tents, four in number; at a little distance off grazed the donkeys and a couple of rough mules; at the door of the tents lay stretched out in profound repose two or ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... coming, O Raja Vikram!—a queer time coming (said the Vampire), a queer time coming. Elderly people like you talk abundantly about the good old days that were, and about the degeneracy of the days that are. I wonder what you would say if you could but look ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Dorothea at all, instead she was to have her all to herself at Katoomba for the holidays, and her queer little yellow face wore a superior smile as she saw the other girls' sorrow at ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... Ethel; but, by Jove, it's queer The way a fellow's stubborn mind will turn To something that he should forget. That face - I saw once on a San Francisco street, How well I do recall the time and place. 'A girl from Honolulu,' some one said. I wonder where she ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Dick, rather grudgingly. "When you bowl, you've got some queer way of making the ball seem ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... Queer days indeed! And the threads of some men's lives were sadly tangled. Such desperadoes as Curly Bill were easy enough to read; just rough-and-tumble cow-boys who had taken to whisky and bad company. But behind the somber mask of John Ringo's face there lurked a hidden history; ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... said Mrs. Houghton, with elaborate cheerfulness. She kissed her, and went downstairs, feeling very queer in her knees. She paused at the parlor door to say to Mrs. Newbolt and Edith that she was going out to do an errand for Eleanor; "I hope Maurice will get back soon," she said. "I don't like Eleanor's looks." Then she went to get that letter which Maurice "must not see." As she walked along the ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... approach to modern novel-ways in this production, which reappeared at "Grub Street near the Upper Pump" in the year 1650. Ornatus sees his mistress asleep and in a kind of deshabille, employs a noble go-between, Adellena (a queer spelling of "Adelina" which may be intentional), is rejected with apparent indignation, of course; writes elaborate letters in vain, but overhears Artesia soliloquising confession of her love for ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... plan there seems A something not quite right: 'Tis queer to cherish learning's beams ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... "Isn't it queer that we are running into so many Germans?" remarked Spouter. "First that Herman Crouse on the train, and ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... for cash in full, He sold out for $30,000. And then, what do you think he did? He asked for greenbacks, and took them, saying the man in Mexico was a New-Englander, with a head full of crotchets, and preferred greenbacks to gold or drafts. People thought it queer, since a draft on New York could produce greenbacks quite conveniently. There was talk of this odd thing, but only for a day; that is as long as any topic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... solid brickwork and stone-paved; palpably a storage vault. But it had been altered to suit the Chinaman's purpose, and one end—that in which the passage came out—was timbered. It contained a long counter and many shelves; also a large oil-stove and a number of pots, pans, and queer-looking jars. On the counter stood a ship's lantern. The shelves were laden with packages and bottles. Behind the counter sat a venerable and perfectly bald Chinaman. The only trace of hair upon his countenance grew on the shrunken upper lip—mere wisps of white down. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... end with," said Ethel Blue, as she bade her aunt "Good-bye." "We've been talking about gardens and plants and flowers all the afternoon, and it would have seemed queer to put on a heavy coat to go home in if you hadn't said 'Winter is ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... could not read the German language, he had to rely for his information on the English editions of the works of Rimius and Frey; and all he did was to collect in one volume the nastiest passages in their indictments, compare the Brethren with certain queer sects of the Middle Ages, and thus hold them up before the public as filthy dreamers and debauchees ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... old, wretched, tumble-down houses, just as if I were at Roeskilde or Ringstedt. Oh, I really must be ill! It is no use to stand upon ceremony. But where in the world is the agent's house. There is a house, but it is not his; and people still up in it, I can hear. Oh dear! I certainly am very queer." As he reached the half-open door, he saw a light and went in. It was a tavern of the olden times, and seemed a kind of beershop. The room had the appearance of a Dutch interior. A number of people, consisting of seamen, Copenhagen citizens, and a few scholars, sat in deep conversation over their ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the slow minor slide of sixteenth tones, the stark rests—he felt the hypnotic pulse of the old music tampering with the pulse of his blood. It gave him a queer creeping fright. He shut his eyes, as if that would keep it out. And in the glow of his lids he saw the tents on the naked desert; he saw the forms of veiled women; he saw the horses of warriors coming like a breaker over ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... melancholy smile. "This is a very frightful situation. My poor wife will be quite distracted. She is such a patriot. Many thanks, Don George. You relieve me greatly. The fellow is rather stupid and rather bad-tempered. Queer creature, but very honest! Oh, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... queer green hat and strode away, too much of a gentleman to embarrass her by looking back. If he had done so he would have seen her grubbing stealthily in the grass, not with her brown little hands, but with the wriggling toes of a ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... deserves special mention, as the basis for quite a number of queer emotional states. Shame, sulkiness, sullenness, peevishness, stubbornness, defiance, all go with wounded self-assertion under different conditions. Envy and jealousy belong here, too. Shyness and embarrassment go with self-assertion that is doubtful of winning recognition. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... "There has been some queer work here," muttered Hal in Eph's ear. "Don't torment him with questions. Just help me to get him ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... sight," said he, glancing back over his shoulder, "except that queer old cove that was sitting in the stern. He's just over there," jerking his head in the direction meant, "sitting on his haunches like an Egyptian idol, and about as motionless, and about ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... kitchen and began setting everything she had to eat on the table. As she worked Polly came flying in the door crying: "Mother, who has come?" so Kate stepped toward the living room to show the child to her grandmother and as she advanced she saw a queer thing. Adam was sitting on his grandmother's lap. Her arms were tight around him, her face buried in his crisp hair, and he was patting her shoulder and telling her he would take care of her, while her voice said distinctly: "Of course you will, birdie!" Then the lad and the ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Queen said, "he always did queer things, and so, I shall always wonder what sort of lady he picked out to love, but it is ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... three-cornered spot of light. At first she wondered what it was, since she lived in a tenement, not under the sky. Then it resolved itself into a ball, white and luminous, that floated remote in that high place and seemed to draw her, and was somehow akin to the queer, gnawing pain that developed about that time beneath her breastbone. It was all inarticulate, queer and confused. She did not think, she did not know how. She only felt that queer gnawing beneath her breastbone, distinct ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... "That's a queer place to build a house," said Sam, as he surveyed the scene; "no one can earn a living there, and it must make a long walk to reach the neighborhood where work is to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... wouldn't make much headway against mere pleasantness. He counted on being able to be merely pleasant to the end, and if only from incapacity moreover to formulate anything different. He couldn't even formulate to himself his being changed and queer; it had taken place, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught glimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for Mrs. Pocock? This was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with the easier throb in it much indebted ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... just called to Mr. Leverett to remind him of the islands. "The islands—the islands? Ah, my dear young lady, I have seen Capri, I have seen Ischia!" Well, so have I, but that doesn't prevent . . . (A little later.)—I have seen the islands; they are rather queer. ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... here reprinted include nearly all of those which I have written for children in a vein that entitles them to rank as "Queer Stories," that is, stories not entirely realistic in their setting but appealing to the fancy, which is so marked a trait of the minds of boys and girls. "Bobby and the Key-hole" appeared eight or nine years ago ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... eye upon him,—a cool, gray eye, overhung by an eyebrow that seemed under perfect muscular control; for the gray wisp of hair grew pointed like a paint-brush, and had a queer motion of intelligence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... you thought it was rather queer, finding that sort of thing in a girl's stocking," she asked, but the maid was busily opening the drawers of the dressing-table in ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... feeling of jealousy.—"Well, well," he said, "I see that your mind is set on Bastien. It's a queer ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... and of patient quiet work. In the evenings McGregor worked at the law cases in the bare room in Van Buren Street. That queer bird Henry Hunt still stayed with him, collecting tithes for the gang and going to his respectable home at night—a strange triumph of the small that had escaped the tongue of McGregor on that day in court when ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... sir. Many a queer gale I've come through in time past, but this blow beats 'em all to sticks ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... dear. No, no! The light 'ull come quite fast enough. Cecile, ain't it a queer thing to be going to die, and not to be a bit ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... kind of parliament below, Men stare at those above, and want to know 110 What they're transacting: Reason takes her stand Just in the midst, a balance in her hand, Which o'er and o'er she tries, and finds it true: From either side, conducted full in view, A man comes forth, of figure strange and queer; We now and then see something like them here. The first[313] was meagre, flimsy, void of strength, But Nature kindly had made up in length What she in breadth denied; erect and proud, A head and shoulders taller than the crowd, 120 He deem'd them pigmies all; loose hung his skin O'er his bare ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... children had become acquainted with the queer, old man who was so peculiar and yet ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... we heard the quick light tread of the horse pacing in his two-feet-on-one-side way over the sandy, thin-grassed soil, every moment coming nearer and nearer, and this queer dismal-voiced bird hooting its hoarse deep notes out of the dark tree that swished and sighed-like in front of the sandhill, a queer feeling came over both of us that something unlucky was on the boards for us. We felt ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Faith, holding her handkerchief to her dainty little nose, "but what are those queer—why!" She jumped and caught at her father, for some one had seemed to ask in a gruff voice, right at her ear, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... faithfully lived up to its reputation, even through the driest of seasons. Once, however, it made real trouble. Over it stood a picturesque latticed well house. On one of the beams a pair of robins nested annually. In the middle of the third summer the water developed a queer flavor. It steadily grew stronger until one night the steam arising from a hot bath caused the pajama-clad head of the house to seize a flashlight and move hastily to the well house. One beam of light disclosed the horrid truth. Floating in ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... stone. 'Here he is,' says the man that was leadin' of him,—'here's John Chidlaw, what there is left on him!' Then he give me a push toward him, and nodded to my mother like, a-drawin' his mouth into such queer shapes that I couldn't tell whether he was a-laughin' or cryin', and I didn't know which I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... asked me to play for it." He stopped to chuckle, but still a little regretfully. "My playing certainly made a hit. Sunday morning a preacher lambasted the dance, and called me the special messenger of the devil. My job was with a pillar of his church. I didn't go to work Monday morning. It's a queer world; that preacher was the father of Noah Ezekiel Foster, who is now working ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... A queer little sound from Miss Fluette—between a gasp and a sob—checked him. She got abruptly to her feet, and fixed such a look of aversion upon me, that I hope I may never again be the object of its like. It is decidedly unpleasant not to be in the good graces ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... stages of development are illustrated in Figs. 64—67. The buttons are queer looking objects, the bulb being the most prominent part. It tapers abruptly below, and on the upper side is the small rounded young cap seated in the center. The volva is present as a rough floccose layer, covering the upper part of the bulb and the young cap. As the stem elongates ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... feasts not only did wrestling matches take place, but also queer kinds of combats with sticks or birch boughs. Two men, blindfolded, each armed with a stick, and holding in his hand a rope fastened to a stake, entered the arena, and went round and round trying to strike at a fat goose or a pig which was also let loose with them. It can easily be imagined ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... in the neighborhood, and at last looking around, I saw through the window, which opened to the floor, my new acquaintance perched on the porch roof, which was at the same level, turning his head from side to side, and eyeing me through the glass with divers queer contortions and gesticulations, reminding me of some odd, old, dried-up French dancing-master, and with a varied succession of croakings, now high, now low, evidently bent upon attracting my attention. When he had succeeded, he flew off with loud, joyous caws to the top of the house, where I heard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... sleighs all over Norway. As a matter of fact, it is only in the extreme North, among the Lapps, that reindeer are employed for this kind of work; and very few Europeans ever have the opportunity of enjoying a drive in a reindeer "pulk," as the queer sleigh is called. That the experience is most exhilarating and exciting is certain. In the first place, there is only one trace, connecting a kind of shoulder harness with the forepart of the sleigh; again, there is only one rein coming from a collar round the deer's neck, and consequently driving ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... the spur of the moment, and for queer reasons," sighed Doris, for the intricacies of the workings of Ruth's mind were too complicated for her simple, straightforward nature to comprehend. She and Ruth were exceptionally good friends; but then Doris Sands was the sort of girl who could get along with anybody. She never ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... fit for your dolly's dress. Only think how queer that beautiful doll would look in a dress made of that. Why, you 'ain't thought anything but silk and satin was ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... made their swift way along the south shore of the great lake, did they talk of Paymaster Bullen and wonder what had become of him. Donald was inclined to believe that he had either returned to New York, or still remained where they had left him; but Christie only smiled, and said Bullen was such a queer fish that there was no predicting what he ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... queer thrill. There was something uncanny in the thought that they were spinning along, sixty feet below the sea-level, cut off from all ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... tell my young friends all the queer fancies concerning the squadron in which they indulged. They were essentially air castles, very beautiful structures, it is true, but as yet they rested only on the clouds. But the means of realizing this magnificent ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... London streets," Said Momus to the son of Saturn, "Each day new edifices meets, Of queer proportion, queerer pattern: If thou, O cloud-compelling god, Wilt aid me with thy special grace, I, too, will wield my motley hod, And build ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... may be calculated by the rings round his eyes, this man may be as old as Methuselah. He has no beard. He wears a large curly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrows are painted a deep olive- green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in these queer old chambers in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of 2,000,000 People Without a Vehicle A Dead Chinaman More Important and Respected Than a Live One Queer Features of Chinese Funerals Cruelty of Chinese Punishments A Sample of Chinese Humor: The Story of the Magic Jar Amusing Trials of a Land Buyer "Pidgin English" Everything Is Saved The Influence That Is ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... Gray's decision had been quickly made. Opportunity had knocked—he was not one to deny her admission, no matter how queer her garb. A hundred thousand dollars' worth of gems! The very figures intrigued him and—diamonds are readily negotiable. There would be a natural risk attached to the handling of so large an amount. A thousand things might happen to a treasure chest ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... butterflies would think me a flower too, and alight on my hair, dress, and my hands, even. God never made anything more beautiful than those butterflies, with their wings of brightly painted velvet down, their bright eyes, their curious antennae, and their queer, tickly feet. Laddie had promised me a book telling all about every kind there was, the first time he went to a city, so I was wishing I had it, and was among my pet beauties with it, when I ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... he is; but he is a very queer fellow. You said I had better not ask those who would be likely to ...
— The Birthday Party - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic |
