"Quirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have seen the fry, when frightened by something thrown into the water, leap out by dozens, together with the dace, and wreck themselves upon a floating plank. It is the little light-infant of the river, with body armor of gold or silver spangles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is almost dissolved by the summer heats. A slighter and lighter colored shiner is found in one ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... not his intention to profit by so bald and barefaced a quirk, he only laughed; and exclaimed—'How much the young gentleman is his own master! But I will not pick your pocket. If at any time I should want twenty pounds, I shall have a fair claim to ask it ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... speculated briefly upon the note of calm authority in his voice. He did not know, evidently, that she was more accustomed to giving commands than to obeying them; her lips gave a little quirk of amusement at ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... stop to quirk your little finger and simper over your plate, Amy," cried Jo, choking on her tea and dropping her bread, butter side down, on the carpet in her haste to get at ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... He had been forced into a fight not of his own choosing; an effort, which had failed, had been made to take him unfairly from behind; he had fired in self-defense after having first been fired upon; save for a quirk of fate operating in his favor, he should have faced odds of two deadly antagonists instead of facing one. What else then than his prompt and honorable discharge? And to top all, the popular verdict was that the killing off of Jess Tatum ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... thought of this Tree, and made me see that we could do it," persisted Polly, giving a little quirk to a rebellious pendant. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... what kind of a creature this was which he had bought, flesh and soul. In what part of the unsightly baby-carcass had been stowed away these old airs, forgotten by every one else, and some of them never heard by the child but once, but which he now reproduced, every note intact, and with whatever quirk or quiddity of style belonged to the person who originally had sung or played them? Stranger still the harmonies which he had never heard, had learned from no man. The sluggish breath of the old house, being enchanted, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... answered instantly. "Now!—Now!—Oh, don't look surprised. I've thought of this possibility. My God!" she said with a bitterness that startled him. "I've thought of every possibility, every possible crook and quirk ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... strike out fecal flashes to illuminate them. His correggiosity was at times overpowering. His vocabulary overcame him often, bore him away from his thought and landed him in some swamp out of which he was wont to extricate himself, to the great delight of the semi-educated reader by some quip or quirk equally meretricious and mephitic. Thus would he, metaphorically, throw filth at himself. He felt all the time that he was pursuing the best course, bending things he despised and loathed to better purposes. Mr. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Stream Camp, Major A. R. Dugmore Along the Mohawk Trail, Percy Keese Fitzhugh Animal Heroes, Ernest Thompson Seton Baby Elton, Quarter-Back, Leslie W. Quirk Bartley, Freshman Pitcher, William Heyliger Billy Topsail with Doctor Luke of the Labrador, Norman Duncan The Biography of a Grizzly, Ernest Thompson Seton The Boy Scoots of Black Eagle Patrol, Leslie W. Quirk The Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill, ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... volume, tome, Book, writing, compilation, work Attend the while I pen a pome, A jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... car was loaded to the running boards. Bud was a good driver, and he had a friendly pair of eyes—dark blue and with a humorous little twinkle deep down in them somewhere—and a human little smiley quirk at the corners of his lips. He did not know it, but these things helped ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... acquired—Inevitably must be—My passions must be masked: I must pretend to have conquered them. In their naked and genuine form they are indecent, immoral, impure, I know not what! But catch a metaphysical quirk, and let vanity and dogmatic assertion stand sponsors and baptize it a truth, and then raptures, extravagance, and bigotry itself are deities! Be then as loud, as violent, as intolerant as the most rancorous of zealots, and it is all the sublime ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft |
