"Irrelevantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gone," she said coldly, rather irrelevantly, the statement drawn from her by a vague ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... front of her; but her very quietness prompted me to something suggestive of sympathy and service. It was difficult indeed to strike the right note—some things seemed too wide of the mark and others too importunate. At last, unexpectedly, she appeared to give me my chance. Irrelevantly, abruptly she broke out: "Didn't you tell me you ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... panama, did not notice the pause. She did, however, add a final comment on the matter, some moments later, when she observed, "How any girl in her senses can go on studying, when she's engaged to a man who needs her as much as Arnold needs Judith!" To which Sylvia answered irrelevantly with a thought which had just struck her thrillingly, "But how perfectly fine of Arnold to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... she said irrelevantly, after a silence of several minutes, "I believe a man in whom animals show implicit faith is to ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... gone there was a long silence. Charity waited for Harney to speak; but he seemed at first not to find anything to say. At length he broke out irrelevantly: "I ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... life. What of the fishermen who have tasted something sharper than salt water—and what of the young third and fourth mates who have held independent commands for nine months past? One of them said to me quite irrelevantly: "I used to be the animal that got up the trunks for the women on baggage-days in the old Bodiam Castle," and he mimicked their requests for "the large brown box," or "the black dress basket," as a freed soul might scoff at his old life in ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... concerns. As for Milly's housekeeping, it was an admitted absurdity. Millicent had lived of late solely for the opera, and John resented any preoccupation which detached the girls' interest from their home. When Ethel recovered in the nick of time to attend the final rehearsals, he grew sarcastic, and irrelevantly made cutting remarks about the letter from Paris which Ethel had never translated and which she thought he had forgotten. Finally he said he probably could not go to the opera at all, and that at best he might look in at it ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... with alacrity. "Of course I could! I always learn things much quicker than Jacky. You see it's taking three of them to teach her—two to dance for her and one to dance with her—and I know the steps already. Professor Jim," she said irrelevantly, with a faint sigh, "do you think it ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... by his audacity, had felt weak and slightly silly, left with his heroism on his hands. He had armed himself for a struggle, but the Promiscuous didn't even protest, and there would have been nothing for him but to go away with the prospect of never coming again had he not chanced to say abruptly, irrelevantly, as he ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... made no objections, and so the red cap was brought and put on him. Accordingly when Jimmy had got to the gallows and was making his last speech for the edification of the spectators, he unexpectedly and somewhat irrelevantly exclaimed, "By yarrow and rue," etc., and was off like a rocket, shooting through the blue air en route for old ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Ballard had unpleasant associations with the brook. "I understand you are fond of horses," he added irrelevantly. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... the best of the poetry is always a sort of extra bonus or solace to the tale, and the tale not unfrequently seems as if it could get on better without the poetry. The one can only aspire somewhat irrelevantly; the other can never attain quite its full development. So it was no ill day when the prose nouvelle came ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... dead, but she cared less. Her head throbbed with a dozen possibilities. She was still undiscovered. As she sat resting on her couch ere resuming her work-a-day gown, her nerves stretched to snapping point, and old Irish songs crooning themselves irrelevantly in her brain, a telegram was ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... with displeasure, and thought of the sixty or seventy days since he had told the Judge he would return the horses at once. He looked across at Shorty seated in the shade, and through his uneasy thoughts his instinct irrelevantly noted what a good pony the youth rode. It was the same animal he had seen once or twice before. But something must be done. The Judge's horses were far out on the big range, and must be found and driven in, which ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... doesn't matter, anyway; only I would like to know the end. It's like starting to read an interesting serial story in a magazine, and just when you get to the most exciting part, you come up against a 'To be continued in our next.' Look!" she added, irrelevantly, clutching Jessie's wrist and pointing upward. "Now the cloud has changed shape again. It's the image ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... clever fellow he is after all!" said Jock to himself admiringly, "how he can manage people and say the right thing at the right moment! I dare say Lucy will tell me if I ask her," he said, quite irrelevantly, as the lady, well pleased to hear her daughters appreciated, sailed away. There was something in the complete sympathy of Mr. Derwentwater's mind, even though it irritated, which touched him. He put the question point blank to Lucy when he found an opportunity of speaking to her. "I say, Lucy, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... gown, Kate," said he, irrelevantly, not looking at it at all, but out at the window, where showed the gabbarts tossing in the bay, and the sides of the hill of Dunchuach all splashed with gold and ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Phillips, isn't it?" he said irrelevantly, "and you live with your mother, the Widow Phillips, down there at Carleton ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it doesn't matter so much whether things fit her or not. I've promised to take her to the theatre," he continued, irrelevantly, "because Aunt Francesca wants her guest to be amused. I'm also commissioned to find some youths about twenty and trot 'em round for Isabel's inspection. Do you know ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... about Cora, did you?" said Mimi irrelevantly, as they arrived at the school and she began anxiously ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... on irrelevantly, "when we brought that slip of vine from the mountain and planted it by the porch? ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... carry your book," he went on irrelevantly. The hand in which she held it was on the side of her on which he was walking, and he put out his own hand to take it. But for a couple of minutes she forbore to give it up, so that they held it together, swinging it a little. Before she surrendered ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... passed through a series of rather remarkable adventures since I came to Lutha," said Barney apparently quite irrelevantly, after the two had remained silent for a moment. "Shortly after my car fell upon you I was mistaken for the fugitive King Leopold by the young lady whose horse fell into the ravine with my car. She is a most loyal supporter of the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... square chin quivered at the note of sympathy in my voice. I wondered, irrelevantly, if the lads at West Point all slept with their faces confined in wooden frames to get ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... could you spare a poor, hungry man, out of luck, a little to eat? And to sleep in the corner of a shed? For"—the thing concluded, irrelevantly—"I can sleep now. There are no mountains to dance reels in the night; and the copper kettles are all scoured bright. The iron band is still around my ankle, and a link, if it is your desire I ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... pause, as if it was one long word. The speaker might have been the old maid as portrayed in the illustrated weekly. Nothing was lacking—corkscrew curls, prunella boots, cameo brooch and chain, a gown of the antiquated Redingote type, trimmed with many small ruffles and punctuated, irrelevantly, ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... said Allison irrelevantly. "She entered the sophomore class with credits she got for studying in the summer school and some night-work. Did you know that, kid? I was in the office when she came in for her card, and I heard the profs talking about her and saying she had some bean. Those chumps in the village ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... feeble gesture which beckoned him to come nearer—to sit down—and he came. All the time he was sharply, irrelevantly conscious of the little room, the bed with its white dimity furniture, the texts on the distempered walls, the head of the Leonardo Christ over the mantelpiece, the white muslin dressing-table, the strips of carpet on the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enters the situation instead of the dialogue, we have episodes such as the final scene of the Ps., where the name character is irrelevantly introduced (1246) in a state of intoxication which, with copious belching in Simo's face, culminates in a rebellion of the overloaded stomach (1294). We can scarcely doubt that such business was carried out in ultra-graphic detail ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... Blackapit, and then he sat down. Isbister had resumed his talk whenever the path had widened sufficiently for them to walk abreast. He was enlarging upon the complex difficulty of making Boscastle Harbour in bad weather, when suddenly and quite irrelevantly his companion ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... text continues somewhat irrelevantly: dico centum pedites, etsi me non lateat constare centuriam ex centum viginti octo militibus, ut decuriam ex quindecim. Licet tamen de gente nuda scribenti, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... see what they've found," said Imogene irrelevantly, to a remark of Mrs. Amsden's about the expensiveness of Madame ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... just as much as it is ours! And besides," she added more briskly, "it's four o'clock now, and with graduation at eight and the dance afterwards, if we don't get our stuff packed up now, when in thunder shall we get it done?" Quite irrelevantly she began to laugh. Her laugh was perceptibly shriller than her speaking voice. "Say, Rae!" she confided. "That minister I nursed through pneumonia last winter wants me to pose as 'Sanctity' for a stained-glass window in his new church! Isn't ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... cried irrelevantly. "I heard the other day that Sister Ann Frances had described me as the pride of the Baker Institution!" She laughed with delight at the humour of it, and he smiled too. When she laughed he seemed nearly always now to have ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... only looked off through the trees below, where specks of white could be seen here and there amid the foliage. "They're putting up the overflow tents," he said, irrelevantly; "there'll ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... put in irrelevantly to cover a blush. "It often falls. We're always having landslips here. And I think we'd better move away from it now," she added, rising. "People ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... IREELEVANT PEOPLE. They converse more tediously and irrelevantly than before. At last the carpenters, who have been out for beer, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... Anstice," she said, irrelevantly, it seemed, "I don't believe you ought to be a doctor. Oh, I don't mean you aren't very clever—and kind—but somehow I don't believe you were meant to spend your days going in and out of stuffy cottages and attending ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a new suit," said Betty irrelevantly. "You don't suppose Mr. Peabody will stay in Washington, ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... got to-day from Billy Thorpe," said Phil, quite irrelevantly. "It's from the North Bay paper and concerns our friend, ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... rose at first glance sobered at second. He did not know why an old gentleman in a plaid traveling cap, who looked up from a magazine, turned his gaze out of the window with an expression of grave thoughtfulness. To himself, the old gentleman was irrelevantly quoting a line or ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... wished to say. I want to tell you that you have greatly pleased the king with the new dance. Now teach him 'honor and ruff' and your fortune is made. He has had some Jews and Lombards in of late to teach him new games at cards, but yours is worth all of them." Then, somewhat hastily and irrelevantly, "I did not dance the new dance with any other gentleman—but I suppose you did not notice it," and she was gone before he ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... of Cardiff, an' thither bound. Maybe you've heard of him," added the skipper irrelevantly. "A well-known Temperance Reformer ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is kinder sorry for Johnnie," replied the schoolmistress; then she added irrelevantly, "There's no denyin' that Johnnie Kapus ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Tommy irrelevantly. "Jim, can't you put that fierce animal in the stable or the horse paddock, or somewhere, and come in for some tea? I simply must get back to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... marked drop into innocent friendly Bohemia. They then had put their elbows on the table, deploring the premature end of their two or three dishes; which they had tried to make up with another bottle while Chad joked a little spasmodically, perhaps even a little irrelevantly, with the hostess. What it all came to had been that fiction and fable WERE, inevitably, in the air, and not as a simple term of comparison, but as a result of things said; also that they were blinking it, all round, and that they yet needn't, so much as that, have blinked ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the parlor beside a window that looked out upon a vast range of snow-covered mountains, rising like the serrated teeth of a saw, and, although she heard his footsteps, she did not turn her face until Harley stood beside her. Then she said, irrelevantly: ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... appeared noiselessly at his shoulder, a dire Sphinx that propounded puzzles and conundrums demanding instantaneous solution. He was oppressed throughout the meal by the thought of finger-bowls. Irrelevantly, insistently, scores of times, he wondered when they would come on and what they looked like. He had heard of such things, and now, sooner or later, somewhere in the next few minutes, he would see them, sit at table with exalted beings who used them—ay, and he would use them himself. And most ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... to hear you talk," said Eveley irrelevantly. "You are just like a chapter out of a new and thrilling story—See, I have let my chocolate grow cold just looking at you, and listening. I am very glad you are nearly as old as I—we can not only be sisters, but twins ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... ought to know Robin," she burst out, irrelevantly, eager that her old teacher should believe that, even though she might be a selfish, thoughtless girl herself, she could recognize and respect ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... looked at the orderly group of boulders as the lightning intermittently revealed them. She saw where the road ran on, between two square-faced rocks. She would have to follow the road, for after all it must lead somewhere,—to her father's ranch, probably. She wondered irrelevantly why her mother had never mentioned these queer rocks, and she wondered vaguely if any of them had caves or ledges where she could ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... they hit the hill, he said. Again they neared the valley's rim, so that pine trees with every branch sagging under its load of snow, fringed the background. Like a pastel of a storm among hills that she had at home, thought Mrs. Singleton Corey irrelevantly. But was it Jack whom the man called Hank referred ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... was delirious, said irrelevantly: "I have to tell you that by five A.M. there will be 15,000 additional infantry in ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... speech. There are, however, some 'spelling-pronunciations' that are positively mischievous. Many people, though hardly among those who are commonly reckoned good speakers, pronounce forehead as it is written. To do so is irrelevantly to call attention to the etymology of a word that has no longer precisely its etymological sense. When the thing to be denoted is familiar, we require an identifying, not a descriptive word for it; and we obey a sound instinct in disguising by a contracted pronunciation the disturbing ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... he said to himself, that she was so pretty. Later, that evening—it was while he rolled along in a hansom on his way to dine out—he added that he hadn't taken in that she was so interesting. The next morning in the midst of his work he quite suddenly and irrelevantly reflected that his impression of her, beginning so far back, was like a winding river that had at last reached ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... with the country and green things," he answered irrelevantly. "Can you tell me, Miss Gray, how it is that I who have always seen you in London yet always think of you ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... dear," he said to his wife, a trifle irrelevantly, "don't you think it would be right for you and Vivian to drop in this afternoon and see Sara? just to let her know that ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... looked quite pretty when you was short-coated!" said the old lady, irrelevantly. "Have some wine? the cake is too rich for you, but you may have ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... to her, but without seeming to understand—his own mind working irrelevantly all the time. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... covered up the still sleeping girl and engaged the Boss in a wrangle about money. "You'll bloody well swing yet," said the Boss irrelevantly. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... have done without you! And there is another funny thing," says Laura irrelevantly. "Mrs. Floyd has taken up literature. She copies and translates and does no end of work for the professor; and he has hired her cottage, where they all do some Bohemianish ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... said Hill, quite irrelevantly, and perceived the want of dignity even as he said it. But the gleam of jealousy did not offend her. She conceived herself the fundamental source of it. He suffered bitterly from a sense of Wedderburn's unfairness, and a realisation of his own handicap. Here was this Wedderburn had picked ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... 'em herself," exclaimed Amanda, irrelevantly. It began to seem to her as if the invader might pack up her mother's treasures and walk ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... had stood watching him as a man might watch a thunderstorm. "You hurt yourself," he said irrelevantly. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... hour, thank you." She had recovered her professional crispness. In the wide door she stopped. "It's a pity," she said irrelevantly, "that she can't see how lovely this is." Then she started for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Max Kirschner added irrelevantly. "At least, I've recovered one since I've been eating Leah Green's ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... editorial 'we,'" said King, irrelevantly. "It annoys me. 'Where's your prose, Corkran?' 'Well, sir, we haven't quite done it yet.' 'We'll bring it in a minute,' and so on. And the same with ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... else that was worth having, we could wander about as we chose, for it was empty, and sit in the deep windows of rooms where there was no furniture, and the painted Venuses and cupids on the ceiling still smiled irrelevantly and stretched their futile wreaths above the emptiness beneath. And while we sat and rested, my father told me, as my grandmother had a hundred times told him, all that had happened in those rooms in the far-off days when people danced ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... irrelevantly:—"What was the tune he whistled, Dave? You tell Mrs. Prichard what tune it was he whistled!" To which Dave answered with reserve:—"A long tune." Probably the whistler's stock was limited, and he repeated the piece, whatever it was, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... like a colored illustration from the Graphic," she said irrelevantly. "You're just in time to assist discipline. Look!" she pointed ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... was right," said Mrs. Browne irrelevantly. She was peering at the stranger through the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... the West," said the girl irrelevantly. Her eyes were shining softly. She looked away out the car window. She began to speak truly and simply without the gloss of style and manner: "Mamma and I spent the summer in Denver. She went home a week ago because father was slightly ill. I could ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque; and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over." Lincoln paused, as if recalling the vivid picture, and added, somewhat irrelevantly, "I remember that one man had ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... Mrs. Eveleigh sobbed. "The French ships of war will be sure to gobble up you and your father, too. I know just how it will be. You are a crazy girl, and I don't know what is the matter with you," she had added irrelevantly; "and as to your father, you must have bewitched him; he used to have plenty of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... for her too the occasion was most agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, irrelevantly but sociably: "Yes, these French ideas! I don't see how you can stand them. Those they have about young ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James |
