"Oddly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always and do still entirely disbelieve it; in such a wonderful case he ought to have hammered every inch of rock up to actual junction; he describes no details of junction, and if I were in your place I would absolutely dispute the fact of junction (or articulation as he oddly calls it) on such evidence. I go farther than you; I do not believe in the world there is or has been a junction between a dike and stream of lava of exact shape of either (1) or (2) ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... but the literal truth. It was a hideous avowal to hear from the dying lips of one whom from earliest childhood he had been taught to revere as the pattern of Spanish honour and nobility. And yet the thought now uppermost in young Ramerrez's mind was that oddly enough he had not been taken by surprise. Never by a single word had any one of his father's followers given him a hint of the truth. So absolute, so feudal was the old man's mastery over his men that not a whisper of his occupation had ever reached his son's ears. Nevertheless, ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... telephone bell interrupted Rosemary's recital. Doctor Hugh answered it. He came back to the dining-room frowning, yet oddly enough looking relieved. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Our acquaintance began oddly. One morning, at breakfast, I was musing over a hard-boiled egg, and wondering if I could perforate her affections with anything like the success which had followed my fork as it penetrated the shell before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... heathenish names and the words which she does not even want to understand? Hence literature, alas! is, so to speak, for the literate; and one has to have read a great, great deal in order to taste the special exquisiteness of books, their marvellous essence of long-stored up, oddly mixed, subtly selected and hundredfold ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... uncalled for. She felt happily sure of herself under any circumstances not partaking of the nature of collisions at sea. Yet she had not behaved absolutely ill at the time of the threatened catastrophe in the Meridiana. Her remembrance, an oddly sudden one, of the definite manner of the red-haired second-class passenger, assured her of that. He had certainly had all his senses about him, and he had spoken to her as a person to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the babies and nurses. By the side of the first carriage rides an elderly gentleman, who, were his seat firmer, might be mistaken for a picador. He wears a rich Mexican dress, all covered with gold embroidery; his hat with gold rolls is stuck jauntily on one side, contrasting oddly enough with his uneasy expression of countenance, probably caused by the inward trepidation of which he cannot wholly repress the outward sign while managing his high- bred steed, and with his feet pressing his silver stirrups, cautiously touching him ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was ever known on such occasions before or since. Well-dressed and refined ladies and gentlemen, men in their working clothes, women arrayed in costumes fanciful in cut and brilliant in color, mixed together in a way that suggested a convention of the human race. Just where the oddly dressed people came from, or what notion took them at this particular time to don an attire like that of a fancy-dress ball, no one ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... celebrated phrase of Newman, 'aged but not venerable,' of confounding the hero of the romance with the real man. It would be just as proper to identify the hero of the Pickwick Papers with a certain Mr. Pickwick, whom it was, oddly enough, the duty of one of Dickens' sons to call as a witness in an English law-suit not many years ago. Even Homer sometimes nods—at least according to the critics, of whose opinion Lucian credits him with so low an estimation—and the great Bollandists had their historical ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... you what I felt until daylight came—I knew, however, that I was at Joseph Chestermarke's—perhaps at Gabriel's—mercy. I had discovered their secret—Hollis was out of the way—but what were they going to do with me? Oddly enough, though I had always had a secret dislike of Gabriel, and even some sort of fear of him, believing him to be a cruel and implacable man, it was Joseph that I now feared. It was he who had drugged and trapped me without a doubt. Why? Then I remembered something else. ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... reason for not wanting to quarrel with Tyson. He liked a country house that he could run down to when he chose; he liked a good mount; he liked a faultless billiard-table; and oddly enough, with all his faults he liked Nevill Tyson. And he had a stronger motive now. Consciously or unconsciously he felt that his friendship for Tyson was a safeguard. A safeguard against—he hardly knew what. But the idea of Mrs. Nevill Tyson was like fire to his dry ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... Oddly enough that brought to the muntri's memory a little affair that had happened on the previous day. Two young officers of the ship had been ashore shooting birds, and they found a party of the country people behaving rather ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... behavior again struck Obed rather oddly, and he stared at him for a moment. But he at last thought that the landlord might not know much about the health or the happiness of his guest, and was ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... blood, her game would be ruined and she would be shamed. The imminence of his arrival reminded her of his dullness, his handsome, sullen face and, more tenderly, of those tears which had put her so oddly in his debt. But she had no difficulty in casting away the false image she had made. She was, she found, glad to be rid of it; she liked to feel ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Puttenham, whose red roofs and grey church tower are set delightfully among rich elms, with a splash of ploughed chalk blazing white through the trees beyond. Puttenham has added only a few new cottages to its outskirts; under the church it is still red and mossy and lichened. The cottages are oddly built to suit the sloping ground, for the road to the church rises on a hill, and necessitates different levels for foundations and stone pathways. One of the cottages has an outside staircase to its front door, for what reason there ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... me rather oddly for a moment. "I am very, very glad that you are such a steady, sensible, practical man. A vapid, impressionable youth, during this season of propinquity, might have been so foolish as to fall in love with me, and that would have ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... ordinance of Parliament made it treason to fight for the King; but this assertion sounded so oddly, that he hurried to the next count, which was, his dissuading Ralph Jobson from ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and along the passage. There was great risk of being met by some one, and it was the most anxious time I had had since the affair with the sergeant in the house-place at the Hanyards. Oddly enough, as I drove him along, the thought came to me of the bygone days when Jack and I had played horses just like this at the Hanyards, and when my prisoner stuck a trifle at the door of the guest-room, I growled at ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... that day of all men the most miserable, and I more dog-like than Narcisse in my sympathy with his moods, almost lifted up my nose and whined for woe. All my thrill died away. I felt guilty, oddly ashamed of myself. I took a pessimistic view of life. What, thought I, are Joannas sent into the world for, save to play havoc with men's happiness? Maitre Francois Villon was quite right. Samson, Sardanapalus, David, Maitre Francois himself, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... front, fitted closely to his head, from which depended what the wearer no doubt looked upon as a goodly aggregate of ornaments. These consisted of ear-tassels and rings of various dimensions, that jingled oddly as he twisted his head from side to side with a knowing and important grin. A pair of large leathern boots, slipped on for travelling purposes, with ample flaps turning down from the knee, formed the lower costume of this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Mauves cared very little about his opinions, and yet he had a sense of something grim in his own New York face which would have made him change colour if keener suspicion had helped it to be read there. M. de Mauves didn't change colour, but he looked at his wife's so oddly, so more than naturally (wouldn't it be?) detached friend with an intentness that betrayed at once an irritating memory of the episode in the Bois de Boulogne and such vigilant curiosity as was natural to a gentleman who had entrusted his "honour" to another gentleman's ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... to the youthful person later as "one who performed a little on the lead pencil." He said to me one day, "I've sometimes made new words. In 'Elsie Venner' I made the word 'chrysocracy,' thinking it would take its place; but it didn't: 'plutocracy,' meaning the same thing, was adopted instead. Oddly enough, I had a letter from a man to-day, asking if I did not make the word 'anaesthesia,' which ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... to be For twenty years or more; And you did go away to sea As youths have done before. Yes, oddly enough that red there Is the ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... experienced a sensation of creepy delight which was very novel, and curious, and mixed. The kangaroos were a curious people, resembling small donkeys with crocodile tails, sitting erect on their haunches, and moving about with a waltzing hop, which was both graceful and comical. One of them, oddly enough, had a window in the middle of its stomach out of which a baby kangaroo put its long-eared head and stared at them, then popped it in again and shut the window. The secretary-bird proved himself ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... him. "Can I help you?" he said. The man was a little oddly dressed, and with a beard! ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... High-Dutch bride, Such nastiness, and so much pride Are oddly join'd by fate: On her large squab you find her spread, Like a fat corpse upon a bed, That ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... a good deal of ice-pressure in different directions to-day. Oddly enough, a meridian altitude of the sun gave 79 deg. 45'. We have therefore drifted only 8' southward during the four days since March 4th. This slow drift is remarkable in spite of the high winds. If ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... big fellow of perhaps forty or more, had just jumped from the car, and now came toward her. She smiled into a clever, unfamiliar face that yet seemed oddly recognizable. He ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... am,' said she oddly and calmly; 'but all I have seen of life teaches me that every betrayal of a feeling or a sentiment is like what gamblers call showing your hand, and is sure to be taken advantage of by the other players. It's an ugly illustration, dear Kate, but in the same round game we call life there ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... And, oddly enough, as she and Frances were talking about it one morning, who should make her appearance but Mother Agnes herself, who spoke about Kate's return as if it had been all settled long ago; and then told Frances ...
— Daybreak - A Story for Girls • Florence A. Sitwell
... let alone till 1918. Such houses as Melk on the Danube, St. Florian, St. Paul in Carinthia, Admont in Styria, still owned their estates, their revenues, and their libraries. That of Melk is noticeable, and at St. Paul is, oddly enough, one of the very earliest Irish vernacular MSS. I believe it came thither in fairly recent times from St. Blasien in the Black Forest. But, on the whole, these places were too remote from the main stream to accumulate many treasures of the ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... for you," he said, "till I lost all patience, and went out for a walk. First, I thought of going to the beach, but the smell of the harbor drove me back into the town; and there, oddly enough, I met with a man, a certain Captain Peterkin, who had been a ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... unforgiving temper and great caution. His plan had seemed exceedingly good. Lord Redin and Griggs would have supped together, and the former would very naturally have gone home alone. Stefanone was oddly surprised that Griggs should not have acceded to the proposition at once, though in reality there was not the slightest of small reasons for his ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed and straightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusingly in her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father's desperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farther corner of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night—it seemed so long ago!—and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it, bright sunlight ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Oddly enough the most persistent decrier of the new spirit in Bidwell was the man who, if the machine turned out to be a success, would profit most from its use. Ezra French, the profane, refused to be convinced. ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... She told me that Becky was an invention, but that the idea of the character had been partly suggested by a governess who lived in the neighbourhood of Kensington Square, and was the companion of a very selfish and rich old woman. I inquired what became of the governess, and she replied that, oddly enough, some years after the appearance of Vanity Fair, she ran away with the nephew of the lady with whom she was living, and for a short time made a great splash in society, quite in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's style, and entirely by Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's methods. ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... themselves. A strange equipage, with two horses extravagantly bedizened with rosettes and bouquets, stood at the door; and as I looked, a pale, haggard-looking man, whose foppery in dress contrasted oddly with his care-worn expression, hurried from the shop, and sprung into the carriage. In doing so, a pocket-book fell from his pocket. I took it up, but as I did so, the carriage was already away, and far beyond my power to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... in whose service he first became acquainted with Leicester's nephew, Sir Philip Sidney. From Sidney's house at Penshurst came in 1579 his earliest work, the "Shepherd's Calendar"; in form, like Sidney's own "Arcadia," a pastoral where love and loyalty and Puritanism jostled oddly with the fancied shepherd life. The peculiar melody and profuse imagination which the pastoral disclosed at once placed its author in the forefront of living poets, but a far greater work was already in hand; ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... with any double letter, preserve it double before any additional termination, not beginning with the same letter;[115] as in the following derivatives: wooer, seeing, blissful, oddly, gruffly, equally, shelly, hilly, stiffness, illness, stillness, shrillness, fellness, smallness, drollness, freeness, grassless, passless, carelessness, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... it must be because you call them fishes and not fish," replied Vavasor. "If the fishes were a shoal of herrings or mackerel, I doubt if you would—at least for many times. If, on the other hand, the men and women in the concert-room were as oddly distinguished one from another as these different fishes, you would prefer ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... light, luminous color, and its subtle play of illumination. This charm of illumination is unfortunately lost in reproduction. Mr. Elliott has made symbolic use of Diana, the Moon Goddess. in a way obvious enough, but hitherto, oddly, untried by artists. It is a way singularly appropriate in a museum of scientific character—a combination of ancient myth and modern science. As the Moon Goddess, Diana controls the four tides, which, in the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... a shady channel between two high ranges of mountains, oddly symmetrical—like stage scenery, very pretty, though unlike nature. It seemed as if Japan were opened to our view through an enchanted fissure, allowing us to penetrate into ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... back and scanned the faces of his interviewers, faces that would have been oddly humanoid were it not for the elongated snouts and pointed, sharp-toothed jaws. The average Tepoktan was slightly under Kinton's height of five-feet-ten, with a long, supple trunk. Under the robes their scholars affected, the shortness of ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... author's name does not appear on the title page or on the cover, and in fact it is only given as T. Hughes at the end of his preface and nowhere else. Sydney Hall, 1842-1922, did portraits, newspaper and magazine illustrations, but oddly enough there are none to be found in the Lovell produced book, though the Porter & Coates edition ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... gentleman," replied Bailey, surveying her oddly. "I didn't know, you see. No; I don't know ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... plateaux or mountains new-comers must expect to suffer. The symptoms are described by many South American travellers; the attack of them is there, among other names, called the puna. The disorder is sometimes fatal to stout plethoric people; oddly enough, cats are unable to endure it: at villages 13,000 feet above the sea, Dr. Tschudi says that they cannot live. Numerous trials have been made with these unhappy feline barometers, and the creatures have been found to die in frightful convulsions. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... his return to the farmhouse, or incoherently trying to explain to his wife the scene he had witnessed. A stiff jolt of elderberry wine drove off the jitters and reasoning returned. His wife sat patiently, eyeing him oddly, as Zack muttered over and over again, "It's unbelievable! ...
— The Shining Cow • Alex James
... not; or whether he understood what the trouble was. Whatever he knew from the other men, he was evidently living under a hard strain. He was quiet enough, and too quiet; but his face was set, and sometimes it twitched oddly when he was at the wheel, and he would turn his head round sharp to look behind him. A man doesn't do that naturally, unless there's a vessel that he thinks is creeping up on the quarter. When that happens, if the man at the wheel takes a ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... no home in the vicinity beside the farmhouse, and the familiar mention of Miss Lacey made it doubly certain that this low-voiced stranger, this girl whose broad a's and lack of r's sounded oddly upon Sylvia's Western ears, was going fast as her trim feet could carry her to Thinkright's home. A strange feeling beset Sylvia. The newcomer's perfect costume, the assurance and refinement of her manner, even ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... had long since given place to more important things—given place so utterly that the subject of dress had been almost entirely passed over. Before this evening waned he was thoroughly conscious of his position. He discovered that his clothes were oddly fitted and oddly made; that his boots were rough and coarse; that his hands were gloveless; that even his hair was as curiously arranged as possible. He discovered more than this—to many of the gay company ...
— Three People • Pansy
... crave your pardon, mistress," said Editha, feeling oddly timid before the strange personality of the Quakeress. "I would of a truth desire to ask your help in ... in ... I would not intrude ... ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... gibing voice, with its oddly familiar ring, a desperate courage came to poor Dainty, and suddenly springing erect on her bed, she made a fierce onslaught on her foe, tearing away in one frantic clutch the ghastly mask, skull-cap, wig, and all, and ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... after a pause. "You see," with a gravity that sat oddly upon her, "I'm not so afraid as I was, and I have more sense. And I know things more evenly than I did. I can write now quite well, and I know most of the tables, though division does bother me. And I can spell all but the very difficult ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... who took my bag a shilling. Practically it was my last, but that lawyer's face and manner seemed to justify the expenditure which—so oddly are our minds constituted—I remember reflecting I might regret if I had drawn a false inference. The man touched his hat profusely, and, I hope, made up his mind to vote for me next time. Then I turned to the Head of the Firm ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... the microscope. I saw purple discs. Oddly, they did not attack the red blood cells. There was no fission, no mitosis. The leucocytes, strangely enough, ...
— Competition • James Causey
... burly, grizzled elder, in greasy, sea-stained garments, contrasting oddly with the huge gold chain about his neck, waddles up, as if he had been born, and had lived ever since, in a gale of wind at sea. The upper half of his sharp, dogged visage seems of a brick-red leather, the brow of badger's ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... an expression in a book recently written by a friend of mine who, oddly enough, had encountered some of these very Italians in Zurich. He talks of its "horrible dead ordinariness"—some such phrase. [33] It is apt. Zurich: fearsome town! Its ugliness is of the active kind; ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... threw in this interjected query simply because she did not know what to say. She thought he was talking very oddly, and wondered whether he was ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... happiness and glory were dependent on the prosperity of the throne which he had raised, consolidated, and aggrandized by them and for them, and that the love of France was their first duty. This must have sounded oddly in the ears of some of the members; for at this time Dutchmen from Holland, &c, Germans from the Hanse Towns, Swiss from the Valais, which was now incorporated with France, and Italians from the confiscated states of the church had taken their seats in the Corps Legislatif. With conscious pride ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... quite mistaken in thinking that she would fly to them for consolation. She would have shrunk sensitively from telling them any story to his discredit. Besides, she shrewdly suspected that they would not share her disappointment, her sense of disillusion; Sir John had more than once laughed in an oddly amused way when she dropped a word in praise of Sydney's high-mindedness and generous zeal for others. "Campion knows which side his bread's buttered," he had once made her angry by saying. She had not the slightest inclination to talk ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... truth, an element of charm in all he could discern. Even the thin limbs appealed to him oddly. Possibly the big hat helped to conceal or accentuate—at any rate, the effect was somewhat elfish. As for those great and luminously soft black eyes, he could not for the life of him have said what he saw in them to set his blood tingling with feeling of protecting tenderness. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... loss of faith was a heavy grief, supported, but painful to bear. His mind was by nature positive, or even pagan, and he had nothing of what the Germans call religiositaet in him. Still there is a passage in his Memoirs where he oddly enough laments not having selected the fat slumbers of the Church as an eligible profession. Did he reflect that perhaps the neglect of his religious education at Oxford had deprived him of a bishopric or a good deanery, and the learned leisure which ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... as best he could, and, "if madame had no objections, would take a seat near her, as he too was en route for Baden." He spoke in French, with a pure French accent, although it was evident he was not a Frenchman. He evinced a desire to continue an acquaintance so oddly begun, but I was obliged to doom him to disappointment. My mind was occupied with the grave question of finance, and about how long I should be obliged to remain in Baden before I should receive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... cosmopolitan Winnipeg with its wide streets and beautiful avenues, their progress was stopped in front of the City Hall by policemen, who held back a curious crowd, while they were unloading several patrol wagons filled with oddly dressed foreigners. Joe pushed himself close to one of the policemen and inquired the reason of their arrest, and the obliging guardian of the peace explained to him that they were "Doukhobors", a religious sect that on account of persecution ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... militia and in those warlike days, when almost all the regulars were on the Continent, fighting Napoleon, militia regiments used to be ordered about the country from one place to another, to watch the coast or mount guard over the French prisoners, in the most unaccountable fashion. So it happened, oddly enough, that Thomas Edward, a Scotchman of the Scotch, was born close under the ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... and there took up a fine old volume, bound in red morocco, and entitled 'The Dream of Vergier;' a book full of wisdom and logic, and written by some venerable clerk, during the reign of Charles V., king of France. I looked for the page that had struck my fancy, but—alas! how oddly one's memory changes with the lapse of years—instead of finding, in that grave old book, the just panegyric of woman's goodness, I discovered, to my great surprise, only a violent satire all spiced with texts borrowed from St. Augustine, the Roman laws and the ancient canons, with this sage conclusion, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... abstractions of language, and wide, suffused effects, she possessed yet the skill to present a picture, keenly etched and vividly colored, in the fewest words, when she chose. Not to mention Rose and Bernard, who, oddly enough, are a series of the most exquisite pictures in themselves, bathed in changing and ever-living light, let us take, for instance, Maria Cerinthia walking in the streets of Paris, having worn out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... generations had eaten fresh patterns of their own, and the squat, solemn little carved figures seemed to moulder under one's eyes. In the body of the church were high pews painted white, and four or five old tombs with life-size recumbent figures fitted in oddly with these, and a skimpy looking prayer-desk, pulpit, and font, which were squeezed together between the half-rotten screen and a stone knight ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Marcia is oddly told by Plutarch. It was not a mere case of lending the woman for the purpose of procreation, for the child of Hortensius could not be his legal child, unless Marcia became his legal wife. Cato must accordingly have divorced his wife, which was done at Rome without any ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... and surveyed the scene with an oddly calm and dispassionate curiosity, not that he expected to find his status changed in any way but because he had awakened with a queer sense of unreality about the whole business. He knew vaguely that he'd had a bad time in the last few hours but could remember little of the details save ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... as fast as she could speak, Lady Cecilia poured out her business about Helen Stanley. She told of the ill-bred manner in which Helen had been received last night; inquired why the words promessi sposi and belle fiancee were so oddly repeated, as if they had been watchwords, and asked what was meant by all those strange whisperings ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... when finishing the story her face would glow with pleasure. And yet she missed something in my thanks, or else saw, in the quiet manner with which I turned to my letters or paper, that which was unsatisfactory, and she would sigh as she left the room. Her gentle, patient efforts to please me, which oddly combined maidenly shyness and childlike simplicity, often touched the depths of my heart, and the thought came more than once, "If this is more than a girlish fancy, and time proves that I am essential to her happiness— which is extremely doubtful—perhaps ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... with three or four workmen, standing at his office door, he saluted the two apparitional figures, so oddly passing along ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... passages have disappeared from the revised edition, as well as some curious outbursts of that motiveless despair which Byron made fashionable not long after. Nor are there wanting touches of fleshliness which strike us oddly as coming ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... had ever read of, even in the wildest extravagances of sensational fiction. But the ruling passion was very strong, and one of the first things I did was to take my black friends down to the beach and show them my precious boat floating idly in the lagoon. Oddly enough, I had in the meantime always taken the greatest care of the boat, keeping her bottom clean and generally furbishing her up—having, however, no particular object in view in doing this, except perhaps that ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... fire glowed on the hearth and a little brass kettle sang merrily on the hob. The cocoa-table was drawn up in front of the fire and on a quaintly shaped tray stood the bright little cocoa-pot and the oddly ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... not wait for attack upon them, but went forth aggressively against the squadron of the British. Oddly enough, considering the condition of the poorly equipped navy, they were remarkably successful and captured more than two hundred and fifty prizes. The following year, however, the British gained the ascendency, and in 1814 came in with sea force and land force ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... after that first, swift embrace, their conduct became oddly unloverlike. The man released her of his own initiative, held her by the shoulders at arm's length. There was irritation in his manner. He seemed tempted ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... picture?" he said, grabbing up his hat from the ground and cramming it on his head. "It was an oddly shaped mountain—looked like a hawk's head. Well, there's where he is if he's still alive. First thing for us to do, is to get up on a high peak and look around the island for a mountain shaped like a hawks' head—just ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... interesting peculiarity. During the first two seasons of bearing it had but one nut to the bur, and this was of chinquapin character. In the third year its nuts were still borne singly, but they were lighter in color than before and oddly corrugated at the base. As the tree became older its chestnut parentage influence pre-dominated, and the tree began to bear two or three nuts to the bur, and more like chestnuts in character, becoming smooth again at ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... distinguished French orchestral conductor, is a noble work. Among smaller pieces which the pianolist readily will appreciate, are the "Song without Words," Op. 2, No. 2; an attractive "Valse a cinq Temps," with its oddly extended rhythm; the very characteristic "November, in the Troika," Op. 37, No. 11; an expressive "Barcarolle" and the selections from his ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... cyphers. The place is so dark that it is difficult to read the inscriptions on many of the mouldering monuments, fixed together without order or symmetry on the walls. Outside are some Saxon arches, oddly built of black slate-stone; and the window-mouldings are ornamented with rough carving, which at once proclaims its own antiquity. But it is in the tower that the interest attached to the church chiefly ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... however, were riveted on the child, and she commented upon her little mistress being so oddly dressed. To tell the truth, so great had been Jeanne's haste that she had not put on her shoes. She had drawn on a short flannel petticoat which allowed a glimpse of her chemise, and had left her morning jacket open, so that you could see her ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... road a detour of a few miles enabled us to visit Crowland Abbey shortly before reaching Peterborough. It is a remarkable ruin, rising out of the flat fen country, as someone has said, "like a light-house out of the sea." Its oddly shaped tower is visible for miles, and one wide arch of the nave still stands, so light and airy in its gracefulness that it seems hardly possible it is built of heavy blocks of stone. A portion of the church has been restored and is used for services, but a vast ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... story, made up of oddly assorted elements that include a man, a woman, a black cat, a treasure—and an invisible being that had to ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... too, it has been erroneously said that they valued purity; but Bandelier has collected facts from the old Spanish writers, in summing which up he says: "This almost establishes promiscuity among the ancient Mexicans, as a preliminary to formal marriage." Oddly enough, the crime of adultery with a married woman was considered one against a cluster of kindred, and not against the husband; for if he caught the culprits in flagrante delictu and killed the wife, he lost his ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... away and left the room, feeling oddly troubled. There was something queer about her, and he couldn't make it out. He didn't mind it when she spoke sharply and nastily to him. He was used to that. But now she was so up and down; so different from what she used to be! In old days she had always been the same, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Oddly enough the early experimenters in fiction never perceived that to seem real a passion must be felt by a real person. They attempted again and again to heighten the picture of envy, fear, ambition, rage, or love by all manner of extraordinary circumstances, but ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Mr. Tapster now recalled the one letter Flossy had written to him just before the actual hearing of the divorce suit. It had been a wild, oddly worded appeal to him to take her back, not—as Maud had at once perceived on reading the letter—because she was sorry for the terrible thing she had done, but simply because she was beginning to hanker after her children. Maud had described the letter ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... A moment before his face—lined, brooding, somber, oddly pale for that country of universal tan—looked almost old. At least one would have felt it the face of a man who had recently endured a great deal of mental or physical suffering. Now, as he turned with an unconscious straightening of broad shoulders and a ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... departed, and Miss Benham found herself confronted by the Spanish-looking man. Her first thought was that he was not as handsome as he had seemed at a distance, but something much better. For a young man she thought his face was rather oddly weather-beaten, as if he might have been very much at sea, and it was too dark to be entirely pleasing. But she liked his eyes, which were not brown or black, as she had expected, but a very unusual dark gray—a ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... short time, the hacienda and all that it contained were his. He captured not only the daughter but the old don himself, and to him the latter confided the source of the family's almost illimitable wealth, the source, but not its location; and this source was a hidden mine, called oddly enough 'The Veiled Mariposa.'" ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the matter." Cesarine had posted the letter herself at Fowlis, and brought back the receipt; so the only conclusion we could draw was this—Colonel Clay must be in league with somebody at the post-office. As for Lord Craig-Ellachie's reply, that was a simple forgery; though, oddly enough, it ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... Harbor office Phillips entered. Sears and Elizabeth were bending over the ledger and Egbert opened the door. Sears and the young lady were not in the least embarrassed—of course there was not the slightest reason why they should be—but, oddly enough, Phillips seemed to be. He stepped back, coughed, fidgeted with the latch, and ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... "Oddly put, but perhaps true. Still, is there any need of a struggle? Is not the world large enough for us all to ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... pot boiler," said the artist; "I really wish you'd look at my picture, unfinished as it is. I should like you to have it. Anybody'll take the pot boiler. I want a model for the picture too, and, oddly enough, a boy; but one you can't ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... phases, and as antagonistic, as there are individuals in the universe. All men are prophets; all are alike inspired; all alike worthy of trust and credence. Spontaneous reason has grasped a number of oddly conflicting doctrines, let me tell you, and the reconciliation of these would be an undertaking to which the dozen labors of Hercules seem ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the refectory and served her with a dainty breakfast, disposed on exquisite "individual" dishes, and oddly enough, bearing the initial "D." Dolly lifted a cup and stared at it, wondering while Anita glibly explained in her patois of Spanish-English, that yes, indeed, it was the ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... gone home hours before. There were crickets chirping all round the warm hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she had oddly associated within the idea of a mother and child talking together, one loud tick, and quick—a ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... about. She thinks she lost one on the way here, but may have dropped the other in the house, as she is almost certain she had one with her. It doesn't much matter, though; they were very full of holes, oddly enough," with a smile. ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... buried four husbands, and her experience of domestic life in their company was so satisfactory that she recently married a fifth, Mr. Banger. The name of her fourth was McFadden. The name of her first and third was Smyth, while that of her second, oddly enough, was Smith. Soon after her return from her last wedding-tour she was visited by Mr. Toombs, the undertaker, who called ostensibly to correct an error in his last bill. When Mrs. Banger entered the parlor, Mr. Toombs greeted her cordially ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... some news, Mr. Spencer," he said. He looked oddly vital and alive in the subdued and quiet room. "They've shown their hand at last. But maybe ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at a run, but there was nothing he or any man could do. One thing he noticed, with curiosity, was that the bandage had been torn away from the dead man's hand and that oddly enough there seemed to be on the hand no sign of any cut or wound. There was a large solitary drop of blood on the palm, at the root of the thumb; but, of course, that was no great wonder, for the wound the dead man had dealt himself had ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... strained desire to avoid the semblance of that anxiety which she had just admitted. It puzzled him quite as much as the curious sense of familiarity with his surroundings, a sense which the girl's unexpected appearance had by no means dispelled. And he was oddly conscious of a breaking away of the social barrier of whose existence she, at least, must have been convinced. The mere whispering together in this lonely part of the ship might account for it, to some extent, so he braced himself for the effort to ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... portraits of departed Vernons, the sloping park and the splendid oaks that stood about, singly or in groups, were all of them perfect in their way. It was one of the most lovely of English homes, and oddly enough its neglected gardens and the air of decay that pervaded it, added to rather than decreased ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... with which Rangely asked this question was one oddly mingled of regret and of hope. He had flirted too seriously with Miss Merrivale to wish to meet her at Mrs. Staggchase's, although he had never seriously cared for her; and he reflected with a humorous sense of relief that if the pretty New Yorker should really visit her cousin, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the rough ascent, only to slip, after a few paces, and to stagger. For as soon as she attempted to move, she felt herself not only weak, but oddly faint and giddy. She lurched forward, and to avoid falling instinctively clutched at her companion's outstretched hand. Exactly what passed between the young man and young girl in that hand-clasp—the first contact they had had of one another—it might seem far-reached and fantastic ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... mistress of the sea was Phoenicia. The Phoenicians, oddly enough, were a Semitic people, a nomadic race with no traditions of the sea whatever. When, however, they migrated to the coast and settled, they found themselves in a narrow strip of coast between a range of mountains and the sea. The city of Tyre itself was erected on an island. Consequently ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... brought to St. Botolph's Mission Hall the oddly-assorted crowd which generally finds its way to such functions. There were smart people, just a scattering of the cultured, dowdy and dull folk, who had "helped the good cause," and expected to get as much sober ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... and the solution appeared to Wesley Elliot as eminently satisfying; it was even amusing. What a transparent, womanly little creature she was, to be sure! He had not been altogether certain of himself as he walked out to the old Bolton place that morning. But oddly enough, this girlish jealousy of hers, this pretty spite—he ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... not give it up. The idea of danger brought a little laugh to her lips. How could anything in the desert hurt her? It had been calling to her always. There was nothing strange about the scene that lay all around her. Her surroundings seemed oddly familiar. The burning sun overhead in the cloudless sky, the shimmering haze rising from the hot, dry ground, the feathery outline of some clustering palm trees in a tiny distant oasis were like remembrances that she watched again with a feeling of gladness that was fuller ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... quantieme is most likely erroneous; you can now correct it—we had a visitor—Baker of Tonga. Heard you ever of him? He is a great man here: he is accused of theft, rape, judicial murder, private poisoning, abortion, misappropriation of public moneys—oddly enough, not forgery, nor arson; you would be amused if you knew how thick the accusations fly in this South Sea world. I make no doubt my own character is something illustrious; or if not yet, there is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feel at all withered, oddly enough," said the willow-tree. "I don't know either that I have done anything to be ashamed of. I was set up here and I did my best to fill the position. The squire praised me one day and cut me down another. We must take life as it comes. I shall never be a poplar, but I am one of the family ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... the presence of something clandestine, with which she could not interfere so far as to confess knowledge of it. It had rendered her uneasy; she had felt shy and uncomfortable. Once or twice she had been on the point of saying to Mrs. Brookes that she thought her cousin and Eppy very oddly familiar, but had failed of courage. It was no wonder therefore that she should ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... garments that clung so oddly to him, modesty, generosity, indifference to applause and all the nobler impulses, he could not strip himself of them, try as he would, and so he found, to his scornful amusement, that he still escaped the public fury. In the two months that preceded Elspeth's marriage ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... men among us whom we oddly enough call manufacturers, by which we mean capitalists who pay other men to organise manufacturers; these gentlemen, many of whom buy pictures and profess to care about art, burn a deal of coal: there is an Act in existence which was passed ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... slowly, "somethin' about—about that girl last night talkin' about a lady named Diana Manners—an English lady, sorta got me thinkin'!" He drew himself up and looked oddly at Clark, "I had a family once," ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... a poet or an artist's eye is the unevenly-built and picturesque square of Rouen in which the Cathedral stands,—lovely, and suggestive of historical romance in all its remote corners, its oddly-shaped houses, its by-ways and crooked little flights of steps leading to nowhere, its gables and slanting roofs, and its utter absence of all structural proportion. A shrine here, a broken statue there,—a half-obliterated coat-of-arms over an old gateway,—a rusty ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... carpentry of the roof, says Mr. Godwin, displays constructive knowledge. The exterior of the building, says the same authority, is of pleasing proportions, and shows great powers of invention. As an apology for adding a Gothic spire to a quasi-Grecian church, Wren has, oddly enough, crowned the spire with a small Composite capital, which looks like the top of a pencil-case. Above this is the vane. The steeple rises to the height of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "like in a vewy dark night." Now and then his r's troubled him a little, and conscious of his difficulty, he spoke at times with oddly serious deliberation. ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell |
