"Cannily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alive, if you had tried to put reason into some of their heads, you would despair of human nature. Let them get a hint of our preparations, and there will be petitions to Council and a howling about treason, and in a week you will be in gaol, Mr. Garvald. So we must move cannily, as you ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... and Horace was despatched to Jake with the proffer of a magnificent opportunity. Horace cannily tried to extract from Jake the promise of a commission before he told him. Jake promised. Then ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... first card to concede that these gentlemen had had a rather wider experience with card-playing, none the less he realized the superiority of his mentality, his greater intellectual training, and fully expected something more than just an 'even break.' He concealed the faces of his cards cannily and gave his scholarly brain entirely to a pleasant task ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the look of one struck ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... under the very noses of northern detectives and, possibly, with their connivance—found ever-ready sale. The runners became men of mark—many of them men of money; for, while this branch never demoralized like its big rival on the coast, the service of Government was cannily mixed with the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... two of the most powerful impulses of human nature. The two conflicting streams of consciousness called ambivalence by the psychologist may be observed in the attitude of the savage toward many of his taboos. As the Austrian alienist cannily remarks, unless the thing were desired there would be no necessity to impose ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in its chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it. Fechner, Royce, and Hegel seem on the truer path. Fechner has never heard of logic's veto, Royce hears the voice but cannily ignores the utterances, Hegel hears them but to spurn them—and all go on their way rejoicing. Shall ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... there was no rush. The Highlanders, cannily commending their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he has been shot in a Border scuffle or at Waterloo), opened out and fired according to their custom, that is to say without heat and without intervals, ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... or of him. She had given herself to him; and now all the world might know it, if all the world cared for such knowledge. Why should she be ashamed of that which, to her thinking, was so great an honour to her? She had heard of girls who would not speak of their love, arguing to themselves cannily that there may be many a slip between the cup and the lip. There could be no need of any such caution with her. There could surely be no such slip! Should there be such a fall,—should any such fate, either by falseness or misfortune, come upon her,—no such caution could be of service to save ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Shanks of Craigellachie is, perhaps, the father of the water. He himself is reticent as to his age and there are legends on the subject which lack authentication. It is, however, a matter of tradition that Jamie was out in the '45; and that, cannily returning home when Charles Edward turned back at Derby, he earned the price of a croft by showing the Duke of Cumberland the ford across Spey near the present bridge of Fochabers, by which the "butcher ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... remaining just as it had been when last she went carefully over the plat in the land office. Florence Grace Hallman had been busy arranging the details of the coming of the colony, and she had neglected to visit the land office lately. Since she cannily represented the excursion as being merely a sight-seeing trip—or some such innocuous project—she failed also to receive ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... other? It's just to do away with anything of that sort that I make my suggestion. If she has an easy income she'll never have to marry for a support. That's what I want cannily to prevent. She wishes to be free, and your ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... people as slaves. Their rule was brutal and arrogant in the extreme. The Earth people revolted, under the leadership of Amos Peabody. Weaponless, except for small hidden stores of rifles and revolvers—the Mercutians had cannily disarmed their slaves—they fought desperately with axes, knives, clubs, anything, against ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... aware that the bridegroom was in request, and wanting to cleik the cunzie (that is, hook the siller), he cannily carried off Gilliewhackit ae night when he was riding dovering hame (wi' the maut rather abune the meal), and with the help of his gillies he gat him into the hills with the speed of light, and the first place he wakened in was the Cove ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... slowly and cannily—and that was why the Leichardt's Land Government believed in him. He had the reputation of never spending a penny on his private or public ambitions where a halfpenny would serve his purpose, and he was known to be a man of deep ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... so slow and apparently purposeless a manner as in crossing the arid deserts of Arizona—unless, indeed, it was in travelling by the Manchester and Milford line in Wales. The train on the branch between Raymond (a starting-point for the Yosemite) and the main line went so cannily that the engine-driver (an excellent marksman) shot rabbits from the engine, while the fireman jumped down, picked them up, and clambered on again at the end of the train. The only time the train had to be stopped for him was when the engineer had a successful ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... one brindled ear cannily and rapped sharply with his tail on the piazza floor, but there was no other answer to the call. "Caroline!" The insistent voice rang louder; it was a very determined voice. A sleepy Angora cat scowled ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... up long syne," said he, and the tear was at his cheek. "Let me go into it cannily at night-fall from the Cromalt end, when the boys and girls were dancing on the green to the pipes at the end of a harvest-day. Them in a reel, with none of the abulziements of war about me, but a plain civil lad like the rest, I would join ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... I move out of this it won't be to sit in the air, and I'm afraid that any that may be stirring around me won't be particularly sweet! It will be a very dark shade indeed. But that won't be just yet," Miss Bordereau continued cannily, as if to correct any hopes that this courageous allusion to the last receptacle of her mortality might lead me to entertain. "I have sat here many a day and I have had enough of arbors in my time. But I'm not afraid to wait ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... Hielanman was easy to beat?" here cannily put in Glasgow: "not that I altogether allow Cyrus, or Wallace, or Bruce to ha' bin Hielanders; though I won't say that they didna' speak Gaelic: but fac's are ill to argue down, and the real fac' o' this matter is, M'Nab, that here Lowlander and Hielander ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... minister acquired the independence he so longed and fought for, it was not all his fancy painted it. He found himself poor indeed,—practically penniless. He complained sadly that he was paid his salary in the worthless continental paper money, and he refused to take it. Often he cannily took merchandise of all kinds instead of the low-valued paper money, and he became a good and sharp trader, exchanging his various goods for whatever he needed—and could get. Merchandise was, indeed, far ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... archway revealed him), much the picture for framing in a club window of a Sunday morning; a seasoned, hard-surfaced, knowing creature for whom many a head waiter must have swept previous claimants from desired tables. He looked forty years so cannily that I guessed him to be ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... is a flat face—forward! And then a tug that jerks you on to your back again: you forgot you had a horse to lead, and he does not like the look of this bit. Climb back again and take him by the head; still he will not budge. Try again to the right. Bang! goes your knee into a boulder. Circle cannily round the horse to the left; here at last is something like a slope. Forward horse—so, gently! Hurrah! Two minutes gone—a ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... long study window and got him cannily off, for the air and motion, after a dash of cold water, brought him around, and he was glad to be safely landed at home. His rooms are below, you know, so no one was disturbed, and I left ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... an illustrative, and indeed an illustrious, instance of such cannily gainful consumption of man-power carried out systematically and with consistently profitable effect in one of the staple industries of the country. In this typical, though exceptionally thoroughgoing and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... offered proofs. But Alfred declined the subject as too puerile. "A man must exist before he can be insane," said the Oxonian philosopher, severe in youthful gravity. But when he found that Dr. Wycherley, had he lived in Denmark at the time, would have conferred cannily with Hamlet's uncle, removed that worthy relative's disbelief in Hamlet's insanity, and signed the young gentleman away behind his back into a lunatic asylum, Alfred began to sympathise with this posthumous victim of Psychological Science. "I believe the bloke was ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... pace the floor thoughtfully. If he could have waited for daylight it would have been simple enough, but he did not know how much time he had. He did not underestimate young Cameron's intelligence, and it had occurred to him that that young Scot might cannily have provided against his failure to return. Then, too, the state constabulary had an uncomfortable habit of riding lonely back roads at night, and shots could be heard a ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ye hae to dae?" observed the first luff, when concluding his instructions to me. "Oor business is tae tak' yon wee bit battery, and to spike the guns. But we're to dae't wi'oot loss o' life on oor ain part, if possible; ye'll therefore approach the place cannily and get as close up to it as maybe wi'oot bein' discovert; and, that done, ye'll be pleased tae keek roun' and ascertain if there's ony way o' gettin' intil it wi'oot haein' to stor-r-m it. If we can creep up and tak' the gairrison by surprise, sae muckle the better. Noo, gang awa' ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... may be; gin I bena mista'en, there's a byous [extraordinary] heap o' things has happened since then. Gang yer ways, but gin ye hae message or word for Jock, juist come cannily oot, an' he'll be here ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett |
