Sentence Examples:
Damon remained for a few minutes looking about the place whence had come the calls for help, and then the eccentric man remarked: "Well, as long as we can't do anything here, Tom, we might as well travel on; what do you say?"
For it is a notable instance of the coming and, indeed, actual invasion, by fiction, of regions which had hitherto been the province of more serious kinds; and it is a link, not unimportant if not particularly meritorious, in the chain of the eccentric novel.
Everybody saw and danced with almost everybody else every night, and some of them supped afterwards and gambled till midday, and were surprised to find that their nerves were shaky, and their livers slightly eccentric, and their eyes anything but limpid.
They would begin and end with the talented but eccentric and thirsty Roger Payne, whose bindings are often original and elegant, and who might, had he been able to keep himself respectable, have attained an excellence worthy of the palmy days of France.
Everyone was waiting about for a considerable time in the supper-room, desirous of drinking your health, while you, it transpires, were hiding in a corner with this very questionable foreigner whom Trevor has been eccentric enough to befriend, but of whom I can discover practically nothing.
It is pleasant to turn from the eccentric energy of so many of the advocates of women's causes to-day, all engaged in crying up their own particular nostrum, to the genial many-sided wisdom of Mary Wollstonecraft, touching all subjects with equal frankness and delicacy.
His bane was a morbid temperament, which he could no more help than his sallow face and weedy person; even his vanity was directly traceable to the early influence of an eccentric and feckless father with experimental ideas on the upbringing of a child.
Both came very nearly at the same time; each one on arriving, administered a significant "poke" behind the leaf, then indulged in several eccentric movements in their jerky style, dashed after a fly, stood a full minute staring at me, and at last flew.
Randolph of Roanoke, the privileged eccentric of the Senate, in one of those long harangues in which he touched upon everybody and everything, except possibly the point at issue, made a rabid onslaught upon the Clay-Adams coalition as an alliance of "the blackleg and the Puritan."
She revealed them only to a small circle of intimates; most of the people who frequented her house had no startling theories to maintain, and regarded their hostess as a good-natured, rather eccentric woman, who loved society and understood how to amuse her guests.
They were extremely susceptible, and could not bear with their enemies, or their rivals, or even their friends, when they dared to admire any other musician than themselves, or when they admired too coldly, or too fervently, or in too commonplace or too eccentric a manner.
Overtop remembered him as an eccentric individual, who always carried, without the slightest reference to existing weather, an umbrella under his arm, with the point rearward, and held at just the angle to pierce the eye of a person walking incautiously after him.
The specific marks are the extreme plainness of form, the lack of accommodations for the thumb and fingers, excepting the eccentric index-finger hole, the poor groove for the harpoon-shaft, and the absence of a hook or spur at the bottom of this groove.
And Esther, watching him too closely to be conscious of her own heart's eccentric behavior, saw in his eyes the hurt which disappointment had left, and philosophy, even a very sound philosophy as formulated by a lame duckling, had not yet fully healed.
Its excessive dimensions (in my case at any rate), and the smallness and remoteness of the provocation, stamp it as simply eccentric, and to show sensitiveness only gives it importance in the eyes of readers who otherwise would only smile at its extravagance.
Amongst other plans Sir John resorted to, to scare away his patients and patronesses, he had a death's-head painted on his carriage-panels; but the result of this eccentric measure on his practice and on his sufferings was the reverse of what he desired.
One cannot but recollect that when another gallant officer in later years assumed this disguise on the Persian frontier, he was regarded as a harmless but eccentric European, who injured nobody by the assumption of an expert knowledge which he did not possess.
That to different parts of this organ are allotted different functions cannot be doubted, when we look at its varied structure, its intricate divisions, its eccentric yet uniform cavities, its delicate and almost invisible membranes; and, indeed, physiological experiments are proof of it.
What they consist of we should have to diverge here a little to say, and should even then probably but lose ourselves in the dim question of why so special, eccentric and desperate a course, so deliberate a plunge into threatened frustration, should alone have seemed open.
And his little book may be read, perhaps not quite without advantage, as a slight contribution to the literature of this subject, as presenting the consummation in a different light, and as an expression of what some will doubtless regard as eccentric and extreme views.
Both these compositions were eccentric and at odds with the old canons of song, fancied with a grace, warmth, and variety of color hitherto characteristic only of the more pretentious forms of music, which had already been brought to a great degree of perfection.
He had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them.
Whole troops of pretentious non-geniuses are to be met there, but also here and there among these eccentric jack fools, a really great, although long ruined artist nature making its last attempt to live and writing its name with trembling hand in the dust.
It may, therefore, very naturally be thought impracticable to refer suicide to general principles, or to detect anything like regularity in an offense which is so eccentric, so solitary, so impossible to control by legislation, and which the most vigilant police can do nothing to diminish.
He agreed with me, however, when I traced the interest in exotic suggestion in the creative arts, as for everything eccentric and bizarre, back to the tendency towards an entirely external naturalism, which would completely rule out from art the personality of the artist.
Shakespeare has not told us, so far as I know, that Macbeth had any such eccentric habit as turning head-over-heels in private life: but Bruno evidently considered it quite an essential part of the character, and left the stage in a series of somersaults.
The truth is, however, that Love often dispenses his favors in a very eccentric way, and each favor is sometimes paid for with a more than proportionate amount of suffering; so that the lover must be often tempted to exclaim with Addison: Mysterious love!
And there is an extremely dangerous craze for children which leads certain people to establish orphanages and baby farms and schools, seizing any pretext for filling their houses with children exactly as some eccentric old ladies and gentlemen fill theirs with cats.
She joined eagerly in every excursion on foot and horseback, but even moderate feats of mountaineering, such as are now expected of the quietest English lady-tourists by their husbands and brothers, were then deemed startlingly eccentric, and got her into fresh trouble on this head.
It was, of course, a point of honor with us green hands to overlook these little drawbacks, and even to affect an eccentric taste for the ancient viands; but our hosts were not at all backward in expressing their dissatisfaction with this state of things.
The telegraph operator, who is the only one I've spoken with in the town, represents the attitude of everybody there, probably, and he thinks, evidently, that an eccentric recluse lives here, and that his housekeeper is pretty close-mouthed and 'unsociable,' as he put it.
He fears and flouts the dominance of the many, and his heroes, who are nothing but slightly varied images of himself, are invariably marked by an originality of speech and action that brings them close to, if not across, the borderline of the eccentric.
Or rather, to speak more strictly, Browning is a man whose excitement for the glory of the obvious is so great that his speech becomes disjointed and precipitate: he becomes eccentric through his advocacy of the ordinary, and goes mad for the love of sanity.
These were regarded as the vagaries of an eccentric man, and not hallucinations of the mind arising from the effects of stimulating drinks; but some were wiser, and placed him in confinement, "to give his constitution a chance of recovering from the effects of intemperance."
The remaining version, with some differences of detail, represents the same eccentric pessimism on the lady's part (presumably attributable to the greater spiritual insight of her supernatural character), as the cause of the husband's not unwarranted annoyance and of his breach of the agreement.
On lifting the mold from the press, the workman quickly cut away the superfluous clay that stood up beyond the bowl, opened the mold, and disclosed, to the undisguised admiration even of my eccentric friend, the graceful flow of his usual "yard of clay."
I had lived on the most intimate terms with that fine-hearted and most eccentric creature; indeed, my acquaintance with him commenced at Bath, and very soon after I entered the profession: I was consequently inducted into all the peculiar bearings of his oddly-constructed mind.
The most amusing part of the entertainment, however, was enacted in the house itself with its throng of cranks, faddists, and eccentric characters, each of whom had supplied me with a kind of model, and who, as everywhere, applauded like mad without recognizing themselves.
Tucker was slightly eccentric, a feature for which there was always toleration and room at Ross; he entered largely into the schoolroom theatricals that sprang up as soon as Robert was old enough to whip up a company from the ranks of his brothers and sisters.
If my eccentric California bachelor friend did not have as strong and cool a head, he had as brave and true a heart as the incisive and chivalrous Louisiana preacher, upon whose head the miter was placed by the suffrage of his brethren at Memphis in 1870.
Although, as time went on and John had come to a better insight of the character of the eccentric person whom Dick had failed to fathom, his half-formed prejudices had fallen away, it must be admitted that he ofttimes found him a good deal of a puzzle.
I knew one trapper who was a student of numismatics, another who devoted his spare time to astronomy, and several traders and trappers who were men of considerable culture, though they are generally men who are a little morbid or eccentric in their mental structure.
He entered the room quietly, and after walking to his desk was on the point of reprimanding Mumford, whose head was buried in his locker, for being out of his seat, when his words were arrested by the somewhat eccentric behavior of that remarkable youth.
The impulse to imitate is, however, not confined to children: there is among the majority of adults a tendency to assimilate themselves either to their society or to those whom they especially admire or respect: this tendency to shun the eccentric is rooted deeply in human psychology.
In his eagerness to weaken the cause I support, by destroying confidence in me, he made an indiscriminate attack on my intellectual faculties, which he characterized as metaphysical, eccentric, too much of genius, and too little common sense; and of course wanting a sound and practical judgment.
From even the most charitable point of view, that person who was so eccentric as to refuse to take advantage of any favorable opportunity of purchasing cheaply such good stuff as might be offered to him, and had not paid toll to the Revenue, was a prig.
Midas, accustomed to measure values by incomes, and to identify intelligence with the cleverness of the money-maker, not unnaturally regards a habit of appealing to ideas as an eccentric superfluity; and so laughter may come consolingly to him who is utterly beaten in the encounter of wits.
In the treatment of involuntary seminal emissions a thorough examination should be made of the genital and associated organs, with the view of detecting and getting rid of any reflex or eccentric lesions or causes which predispose to, or even excite and maintain, them in impressible subjects.
Aptness in the story or anecdote, facility in graphic illustration, readiness in expressing emotion, happiness in the imitative faculty, for touching off the eccentric in character or incident, are talents that come into play, and in the exercise of these, gesture of course has an important place.
The reporter entered, nodded to the detectives, gave a short glance at the body, a longer one at Darcy, poked Mulligan in the ribs, lighted a cigarette, which he let hang from one lip where it gyrated in eccentric circles as he mumbled: "What's the dope?"
He did not indeed appear to be vicious, any further than a most vehement desire to please himself and that in all manner of eccentric ways, totally irrelevant to the purpose of getting ahead on the road or serving the will of his rider, might be called vice.
Duquesne, but the latter has the advantage in manner, and realizes the Emperor's traditional eccentric habits in a way which at once appeals to all conversant with the story of the eccentricities of the Great Emperor when he chanced to be in a very good humor.
His father, Frederic William, was a man of a violent and brutal disposition, eccentric and intemperate, whose principal, and almost sole pleasure and pursuit, was the training and daily superintendence of an army disproportionately greater than the extent of his dominions seemed to warrant.
A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column, served as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being kept chained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paris than in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation.
Smollett was a physician, of eccentric manners and ferocious instincts, who developed his unnatural peculiarities by going as a surgeon on a battleship, where he seems to have picked up all the evils of the navy and of the medical profession to use later in his novels.
I do not mean that you and I cannot and do not practically see and personally remark on this or that eccentric or intermediate type, for which the word "feeble-minded" might be a very convenient word, and might correspond to a genuine though indefinable fact of experience.
It is no longer a single heresy or an eccentric fanaticism, the denial of some revealed truth, or the excesses of some extravagant error, but a comprehensive, all-pervading, well-digested system of unbelief, suited to every capacity and reaching every intellect, that corrupts and desolates the moral world.
The principal theaters are liberally open to fresh dramatic talent of every kind, and the great fondness of the Danes for this form of entertainment gives unusual scope for experiments in halls or private theaters; nothing is too eccentric to hope to obtain somewhere a fair hearing.
Then, turning about the picture at which he was painting, he seized his charcoal and in a few free bold strokes sketched on the back side of the canvas the eccentric old gentleman whom he had seen behaving like a crazed man in front of Antonio's picture.
The training which results in this taste for good reading, however unsystematic or eccentric it may have been, has achieved one principal aim of education; and any school or home training which does not result in implanting this permanent taste has failed in a very important respect.
Nothing in diplomatic history is more eccentric than the long sermons upon abstruse points of divinity and ecclesiastical history which the English ambassador delivered from time to time before the States-General in accordance with elaborate instructions drawn up by his sovereign with his own hand.
The preaching of Rowland Hill is allowed to have been excellent; but his great popularity was won by his eccentric manner, and the many piquant anecdotes and witticisms, and sallies of humor unorthodox, with which, during his long ministry, he interlarded his sermons.
The intense spiritual striving which was so foreign to Macaulay's practical nature first appears among the Victorians in the Scotsman Thomas Carlyle, a social and religious prophet, lay-preacher, and prose-poet, one of the most eccentric but one of the most stimulating of all English writers.
As by the cultivation of various sciences a language is amplified, it will be more furnished with words deflected from their original sense; the geometrician will talk of a courtier's zenith or the eccentric virtue of a wild hero, and the physician, of sanguine expectations and phlegmatic delays.
No doubt, it was a serious objection; for, however likely it might be that a mass of the earth on being detached would be eccentric in its movements, there was no probable reason to be alleged why the material of its substance should undergo so complete a change.
And Hayden-Bond, the millionaire, referred to by a good many people as eccentric, had further proved his claims to eccentricity in the eyes of a good many people by giving a prison bird a chance to make an honest living, and had engaged the Sparrow as his chauffeur.
This is, of course, an awkward team, but not infrequent; and the Egyptian farmer who first attempted this application of force must have been as eccentric as he was ingenious when he coupled on either side of such a rough pole a patient camel and a native bull.
Charles Cartwright, and were it not for the things he does and says, he might at any moment be taken for a comedian neither light nor eccentric, but a fairly all-round and superior sort of "Charles his friend," whose lines fall in pleasant places as feeders.
Why bother to read all the newest novels, see all the newest plays, hear all the newest musicians, remember all the newest "Reminiscences," and believe all the newest religions, when by pleading ignorance you will pass not only as an eccentric but a connoisseur?
It is not strange that so erratic, so eccentric a genius bewildered the public and the critics of his day, for in the painting of light he was a generation ahead of his time, and in the attempt to paint pure color harmonies he was two generations ahead.
He was soon to obtain that of Maximilian, but this genial and eccentric emperor proved a fussy patron, as quick to change his mind and to interfere with impossible demands and criticisms, as he was slow to pay and deficient in means for being truly generous.
If the asteroids should combine to form one planet the orbit of this planet should be much less eccentric than the average of all the present asteroid eccentricities, and the deviation of its orbit plane should be less than the average deviation of the present planes.
Then he became aware of a pair of eccentric comedians whose scene he had interrupted, and who had not sufficient presence of mind to work him into it, so that the audience which had laughed at his headlong entrance now laughed the louder over its own mistake.
With regard, then, to the comparison of the two sexes and their mental differences, I would venture to observe, that on the one side it seems to me that a certain harmonious fullness of the consciousness is the preponderating character; and, on the other, its eccentric evolution.
Under the overhanging edge of the limestone crag hang a row of eccentric objects constantly under the dripping water that trickles down the face of the rock, which is itself formed entirely by the petrifying action of the spring some yards away from the river.
For one thing, he always spoke the truth, and that in itself was sufficient to stamp him as an eccentric individual, who had no motive for existence in a society where the friendship of its members depends in a great measure on their dexterity in evading it.
These cases, however, if they actually occurred, were of a very extraordinary character, and could only happen under such circumstances as generally attend on the secluded, contemplative and eccentric life of a convent, which nature never intended to be the life of a rational, active, social being.
The Quarter was like a tight gravitational system, with many small bodies swinging around each other in eccentric orbits, and the whole shrinking in upon itself as time went on, so that it grew more and more certain that one collision would engender half a dozen more.
On the other hand, the character of the wealthy old gentleman who adopts deserving orphan boys and starts them in life, takes necessitous heroes into partnership, and bestows timely fortunes on penniless heroines, suited the vein of rather eccentric benevolence which was noticeable in him.
The free use of white paint all over the sloping tiers of pews has prevented the interior from being as dark as it would have otherwise been, but the result of all this painted deal has been to give the building the most eccentric and indecorous appearance.
The proprietor, an eccentric English bachelor, never inhabits this fantastic mansion, but lives in a second-rate hotel, spending thousands annually in adding embellishments to his astonishing castle, where, notwithstanding its magnificent suites of apartments, no human being has ever slept a night or eaten a meal.
The King and Queen gave a dialogue, every other line of which was "Off with her head," and the Mad Hatter performed an eccentric dance consisting of marvelous leaps and bounds that took him from one side of the ring to the other with amazing rapidity.
He had rung for his steward to clear away, to avoid that operation being performed by the eccentric movements of the billows, and was going towards the door of the cabin, when the ship received a tremendous blow, which made her quiver from stem to stern.
It might be a woman with a big bundle or basket on her head, possibly a slouching young man or "boy" with an air of interest in my eccentric proceedings, or a group of youngsters with nothing particular to do, but one and all perfectly silent in movement.
An eccentric Englishman, who had been near the stage, they added, had instantly fallen in love with her, and there was no doubt at all but that this Englishman, of whom no one had afterwards seen or heard anything more, had eloped with the gypsy girl.
The engine went on its way unharmed; but it is said that the eccentric gymnastics performed by the Indians, as they were pulled at twenty-five miles an hour over the rocks and boulders at the side of the track, were more amusing to the passengers than to themselves.
Grimaldi was very much caressed by the townspeople, and received several invitations to dinner next day from gentlemen residing in the neighborhood; all of which he declined, however, being already engaged to the eccentric manageress, who would hardly allow him out of her sight.
These letters used to cover me with confusion and mortification before the grown-up people, as I kept it a secret that I ever played with dolls, knowing it to be thought rather eccentric, and liable to be misunderstood, especially when there were other boys about, which there were.
Inlaid with mosaics, depicting landscapes and animals; graceless in form and fashion, but still picturesque, and winning admiration, when more closely observed, from the patient defiance of all rules of taste which had formed its cumbrous parts into one profusely ornamented and eccentric whole.
The two little girls he adored, and they knew he was their uncle, though with the unquestioning faith of childhood they accepted that he lived alone in a little cottage like a working man because he was eccentric and mustn't be worried to live as father did.
Strangers had already begun to come down to the place in the hope of getting a glimpse of the eccentric nobleman, and foolish stories were told of his thundering out his lies with apoplectic visage, his eyes starting out of his head, and perspiration beading his forehead.
If Rousseau, however, be objected to as an eccentric being, from whose pursuits no fair inference can be drawn, we give the illustrious example of Charles James Fox, and may add the names of our distinguished poets, Goldsmith, Thomson, Gray, and Darwin, who were all enthusiastic naturalists.
The recognition of the art of the metal-worker, as worthy and capable in itself of providing beautiful ornaments, without their serving any such ulterior purpose as sporting trophies or eccentric badges of buffoonery; and also without the adventitious attraction of costly gems, is a decided point gained.
At first, before starting your fire, see that the oblique diaphragm and eccentric shaft are in their true position; then step to the rear of the stove and reverse the guide plate, say three quarters of an inch, force the stretcher bar forward and loosen the gang-plank.
The directors and actors and cameramen of those days, who would no sooner have thought of taking a character's picture from the bust up than of taking the picture upside down, were nevertheless interested in this eccentric chap, and even asked his advice from time to time.
It is pleasant to find in some extreme, uncompromising, eccentric work, written for the complete renovation of man, a new establishment of truth, little else, after all its tempest of thought has swept over the mind, than another confirmation of old, and long-settled, and temperate views.
Why, then, should his brain twice have acted as if he had sown it with eccentric weeds all his life, instead of planting it with the choicest seeds he could obtain, and watering and cultivating them with a patience and an interest which had been untiring?
He worked himself, or rather was worked, into a frenzy that lasted some time, and the crowd of devotees drew nearer and nearer to him, praying fervently and emitting deep sighs and cries of astonishment and almost terror at some of the more eccentric movements of his limbs.
This eccentric duke, who practically denied himself to the world, and for years devoted his time to carrying on these remarkable works at an enormous cost, employed over two thousand persons in burrowing out the bowels of the earth and making these grand yet strange apartments.
The tip and posterior parts of the wing are more active than the root and anterior parts, from the fact that the tip and posterior parts (the wing is an eccentric) always travel through greater spaces, in a given time, than the root and anterior parts.