Strange

“ Was it possible that the mere sight of a human face, never beheld before, could disturb the whole tenor of my life,—a stranger of whose mind and character I knew nothing, whose very voice I had never heard? ”

“ In life, running like a dark mysterious stream, among the simpler sensations, the more elemental passions of humanity, there had been strange terrors, haunting curiosities, insatiable longings for the unattainable, the unknowable, the unrealized—the desire of the moth for the star. ”

“ Has us in keeping, heart to heart;
In his great book our names are writ—
The Book of Those that Never Part."
"How strange it is!" I heard him say;
"How strange!" and yet again, "How strange!
To meet at last, and know this love
Of ours can never fade or change."
"How strange to think that you are mine,
Each little hair of your dear head,
And no one else's in the world—
How strange it is!" the woman said.
* * * * *
I stand aside to let them pass,
My Autumn face they never see;
Their eyes are on the rising sun,
But 'tis the setting sun for me. ”

“ Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is there nothing greater or more? Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul? Strange and hard that paradox true I give, Objects gross and the unseen soul are one. ”

“ Thus it is whenever the mind begins, unconsciously, to admit the shadow of the Supernatural; the Obvious is lost to the eye that plunges its gaze into the Obscure. Almost immediately afterwards you become acquainted with a young stranger, whose traits of character interest and perplex, attract yet revolt you. All this time you are engaged in a physiological work which severely tasks the brain, and in which you examine the intricate question of soul distinct from mind. ”

“ Yet what marvel—the strangest my senses have witnessed or feigned in the fraud they have palmed on me—is greater than that by which a simple affection, that all men profess to have known, has changed the courses of life prearranged by my hopes and confirmed by my judgment? ”

“ One has strayed so far from the heart of things, that it comes as something strange and wonderful! Indeed, I noticed that the beasts and birds gazed at me as if I simply could not be there, at this hour that so belonged to them. And to me, too, they seemed strange and new—with that in them 'that passed show,' and as of a world where man did not exist, or existed only as just another form of life, another sort of beast. ”

“ I am perfectly convinced that there is something especially exceptional in its inner construction, and that, if I took it to pieces, a secret would be revealed to me which I have long been seeking to discover, but—laugh at me if you like—this senseless thing which only gives signs of life and sound as I make it, often speaks to me in a strange way of itself. ”

“ Other and younger men had followed his lead into the box, and they saw him forced upon the good graces of the fascinating but inconsequent Miss Strange whose rapid fire of talk he was hardly of a temperament to appreciate. ”

“ Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told. ”

“ I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me! ”

“ Miss Strange became suddenly demure.
“I suppose I must,” she grudgingly conceded. “However obtained, a summons from the police cannot be ignored even by Peter Strange’s daughter.”
Another man might have displayed his triumph by smile or gesture ”

“ I think we felt a trifle ashamed of having observed the ridiculous side of the garrulous man before reading his depth of feeling. We gave way to a slow, dumb wonder, as those who walk in sleep to the borders of strange lands. ”

“ Now, as Philosophy and Romance both take their origin in the Principle of Wonder, so in the “Strange Story” submitted to the Public it will be seen that Romance, through the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries, conducts its bewildered hero towards the same goal to which Philosophy leads its luminous Student, through far grander portents of Nature, far higher visions of Supernatural Power, than Fable can yield to Fancy. ”

“ Strange and mysterious is my life, What opposites I feel within! A stable peace, a constant strife, The rule of grace, the pow'r of sin: Too often I am captive led, Yet daily triumph in my Head. I prize the privilege of prayer, But o! ”

“ He turned and looked up at it himself. "It's nothing to look at outside." He was evidently quite unaware of its peculiar outward appearance, and this odd fact, communicated to me thus in the twilight, and under the very brow of the sinister dwelling, seemed to make his vision of the strange things within more real. ”

“ Strange people of no identity spoke in senseless vaporings that passed for side-splitting wit, and friends whom he had not seen since childhood appeared in ludicrously altered forms and announced impossible events. ”

“ Prime emphasis should be given to subtle suggestion—imperceptible hints and touches of selective associative detail which express shadings of moods and build up a vague illusion of the strange reality of the unreal. Avoid bald catalogues of incredible happenings which can have no substance or meaning apart from a sustaining cloud of colour and symbolism. ”

“ I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve, momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis. ”

“ It soon became evident, from their nervous, uneasy movements and postures, that the twain were rapidly crossing the mystic boundaries that divide our own from Dream-land—that they were just entering the misty mid-region—the Shadow, the Thing, the monstrous It, ruling the hour, and guiding them through the strange realm—
"'That lieth sublime, out of Space and out of Time.'
"The man who says that dreams are figments is a fool. ”

“ Your sudden love, conceived in the very grounds of the house so associated with recollections in themselves strange and romantic; the peculiar temperament and nature of the girl to whom your love was attracted; her own visionary beliefs, and the keen anxiety which infused into your love a deeper poetry of sentiment,—all insensibly tended to induce the imagination to dwell on the Wonderful; and, in overstriving to reconcile each rarer phenomenon to the most positive laws of Nature, your very intellect could discover no solution but in the Preternatural. ”

“ Stranger, perhaps stronger than all else, is the bewildering feeling of contrast between the impressive actualities of one’s surroundings, and the spectral appearance of whatever the eye takes in. Peril may be imminent at every step, and yet all things seem unreal in that weird atmosphere in which they are seen. ”

“ When, on the other hand, the thing, or the person, falls within the world of supernormal experience, when they strike the imagination as wonderful and wonder-working, then there is much more reason why he should seek to account to himself for the mystery in, or behind, the strange appearance. ”

“ I know, indeed, that all around me is wonderful—but I cannot answer it with wonder:—a dark veil, with the foolish words, NATURE OF THINGS, upon it, casts its deadening folds between me and their dazzling strangeness. ”

“ The touch of your lips chills, burns me with forgetfulness. The touch of your lips is like a tide hushing, sucking my wakefulness down into depths of terrible oblivion. O, listen, you are grotesque—your [Pg 91] limbs are like the coils of nightmare. I love you because you are so grotesque—because upon your face is stamped the contorted beauty of your mind—your mind that is surely as amazing as your face. O, Gwymplane, tell me of what you have thought, tell me of what you are thinking.
Gwymplane
[Who is led into rapture by her words, kneels and suddenly kisses her feet.] ”

“ That first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and strange. Nothing can give any idea of the dangerous charm of that unexpected gleam, which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from adorable shadows, and which is composed of all the innocence of the present, and of all the passion of the future. ”

“ Such an identity fitted his at no point, made its alternative monstrous. A thousand times yes, as it came upon him nearer now-—the face was the face of a stranger. It came upon him nearer now, quite as one of those expanding fantastic images projected by the magic lantern of childhood; for the stranger, whoever he might be, evil, odious, blatant, vulgar, had advanced as for aggression, and he knew himself give ground. ”

“ CHAPTER LIII. There is an instance of the absorbing tyranny of every-day life which must have struck all such of my readers as have ever experienced one of those portents which are so at variance with every-day life, that the ordinary epithet bestowed on them is "supernatural."
And be my readers few or many, there will be no small proportion of them to whom once, at least, in the course of their existence, a something strange and eerie has occurred,—a something which perplexed and baffled rational conjecture, and struck on those chords which vibrate to superstition. ”

“ Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected, so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or “outsideness” without laying stress on the emotion of fear. ”

“ Nothing could be stranger, in that sombre and uncertain gleam, than that livid, motionless, astonished face, with its bristling hair, its eyes fixed and staring, and its yawning mouth, bent over the street in an attitude of curiosity. ”

“ To the category of the wonderful and uncanny we may also add that strange feeling we perceive in certain moments and situations when it seems as if we had already had exactly the same experience, or had previously found ourselves in the same situation. ”

“ Into a quiet happy group of friends, just when supernatural matters were forming the subject of conversation, there suddenly came a stranger, who struck every one as being uncanny and terrifying, notwithstanding his apparent everydayness, and seeming belonging to the common level. ”

“ He recognises with delight the realisation of his wildest fancies, his strangest imaginings, and in presence of this vision of mystery, his spirit floats continually between the dream and the reality. ”

“ "Many strange things happen in this world," Mrs. ”

“ Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. ”

“ The enigmas which had foiled my intelligence in the unravelled Sibyl Book of Nature were mysteries strange to every man’s normal practice of thought, even if reducible to the fraudulent impressions of outward sense; for illusions in a brain otherwise healthy suggest problems in our human organization which the colleges that record them rather guess at than solve. ”

“ All simple, all easy of accomplishment, if only that streak of light were all she was likely to see or think of. If the horror which was gripping her throat should not take shape! If things would remain shrouded in impenetrable darkness, and not force themselves in shadowy suggestion upon her excited fancy! ”

“ And will the gross creature rise and confound us with greater wonders, and fight with her claws to the end? At least for our lessening romance shall be left man's wayward soul and his wicked imaginings. ”

“ Yes, for he stops as he reaches it and gazes first along the dim shadowy vista made by those clustered trunks and upright boughs, and then up the side and across the front of the silent house itself, while an expression of strange wistfulness softens the eager brightness of his face, and his smile becomes one of mingled pride and tenderness, for which the peaceful scene, with all its picturesque features, can scarcely account. ”

“ Phedro
[A person of shifty, wizened visage enters. In a jocular tone.]
What is "O how true?" [He glances about him.] You are all looking very en rapport with the Almighty. In fact as if He had been telling you secrets. Did they concern me? I am always a prey to the desire of hearing what is said—just before and just after I am in a room.
1st Courtier ”

“ Ye shall bear a wish to the sunburnt band,
To the stalwart men who are stoutly fighting
With the heat and drought and the dust-storm smiting,
Yet whose life somehow has a strange inviting,
When once to the work they have put their hand. ”

“ And the gay young voice as in hours of yore.
It still seems strange to be here alone,
With the rising sob of the wind without;
The sound takes a deep, insisting tone,
Where the trees are swinging their arms about.
Its moaning reaches the sheltered room,
And thrills my heart with a sense of pain;
I walk to the window, and pierce the gloom,
With a yearning look that is all in vain.
You are out in a night of depths that hold
No promise of dawning for you and me,
And only a ghost from the life of old
Has come from the world of memory!
You are out evermore! God wills it so! ”

“ And now, by whatever authority this wand bestows on me, I so abjure and command you!”
I thought there was a sneer of disdain on the lip through which the answer seemed to come,—
“Vain and ignorant, it is but a shadow you command. My body you have cast into a sleep, and it knows not that the shadow is here; nor, when it wakes, will the brain be aware of one reminiscence of the words that you utter or the words that you hear.”
“What, then, is this shadow that simulates the body? Is it that which in popular language is called the soul?”
“It is not: soul is no shadow.” ”