"Knack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how the most trivial actions have a strange knack of all at once leading on to large results, beyond what could have been expected. A man shifts his seat in a railway carriage, from some passing whim, and five minutes afterwards there comes a collision, and the bench ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... so thickly right down to the water's edge that close inshore we were completely becalmed; and, thus sheltered, our sense of hearing helped us somewhat despite the deep roar of the gale overhead, while we quickly caught the knack of steering along the outer edge of the narrow belt of calm, in this way avoiding to a great extent the difficulties and petty mishaps that had at first so seriously ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... Let us ever remember that the imagination also has its products and the themes of a symphony may certainly be considered its children. The public often seems to have slight idea of the sanctity and mystery of a musical idea. Composers are considered people with a kind of "knack" in writing down notes. In reality, a musical idea is as wonderful a thing as we can conceive—a miracle of life and yet intangible, ethereal. The composer apparently creates something out of nothing, pure fancy being wrought into ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... well, but in Mr. Crawford's reading there was a variety of excellence beyond what she had ever met with. The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of jumping and guessing, he could always alight at will on the best scene, or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity, or pride, or tenderness, or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, he could do it with equal beauty. It ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... found that he could gather up almost as many coins as Benny had in his best day. Joe had acquired the knack of opening his mouth under water without swallowing any of the liquid. Then came an ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... Indian blood in her veins ran wild, And a Saxon father called her child; Women feared her, and men soon found When they trod on forbidden ground. Ride! there's never a cayuse knew Saddle slip of her; pistols, too, Seemed to learn in her hands a knack How to travel a dead-sure track. Something in both alike maybe, Something kindred in ancestry, Some warm touch of an ancient pride Drew my feet to her willing side. My comrade, she, in the Touchwood Camp, To ride, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... afloat that your adversary has an ugly knack of pulling the trigger half a second too soon," whispered Jack's second, "so I am going ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... major being wheeled down in an easy-chair and superintending his riding. As these horses had little to do and were full of spirit, Vincent's powers were often taxed to the utmost, and he had many falls; but the soil was light, and he had learned the knack of falling easily, and from constant practice was able at the age of fourteen to stick on firmly even without a saddle, and was absolutely fearless as ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so: until I was heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such pleasant language—if indeed it ever were mine—is passing ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... "You have a knack for hard questions," he said with a smile. Then he paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. At length, he continued, "The Canitaurs have a profound respect for all that has gone before us, we honor the traditions of our ancestors and revere their ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... dressmaker. She is going to teach me to sew. She says I have quite a knack. I'm through with the farm. There ain't any end to the work on a farm, and always so much trouble happens. I'm going to ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... special problem before it was worked out. His large, tolerant intelligence was often as unorderly as his papers and accounts. He was a wonderful colonial Jack-of-all-trades; with a range of suggestion, a resourcefulness, a knack of assimilation, a cosmopolitan many-sidedness, which has left us perpetually his debtors. Under different surroundings, and disciplined by a more severe and orderly training, Franklin might easily have developed the very highest order of professional scientific achievement. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... good books, but by inducing certain people to say that her books were good. She did work hard at what she wrote,—hard enough at any rate to cover her pages quickly; and was, by nature, a clever woman. She could write after a glib, commonplace, sprightly fashion, and had already acquired the knack of spreading all she knew very thin, so that it might cover a vast surface. She had no ambition to write a good book, but was painfully anxious to write a book that the critics should say was good. Had Mr Broune, in his closet, told her that her ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... winning a better living than the stubborn soil alone would yield. Children growing up knew that if a boy could ride or fight or do any sort of work especially well, his lord would have use for him; if a girl could spin, weave, sew or had a knack with poultry, her lady would have a place for her. The country folk hereabouts had grown proud of belonging to ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Old Man's knack with the youthful-enthusiasm approach was contagious. For the moment Ben caught it and he felt pretty good about the coming night's work. He and Betty together would put the deal over. That would ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... cannot help you to draw, remember that it differs from common drawing only by the difficulties it has to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless habit of thinking that engraving is a mere business, easy enough when one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so much as it is more difficult to cut steel than to move the pencil over paper. It is true that there are certain mechanical aids and methods which reduce it at ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... told such stories as we could remember, either of fiction or truth. Had poor Dick Tillard been alive and with us, his fund of yarns would have been invaluable. We frequently spoke of him, and mourned his loss. Mudge had seen a good deal of service, but he had not the happy knack of describing what had happened to him in the graphic, racy way poor Dick had of spinning a yarn. Mudge had been with Lord Cochrane during the war, and had taken part in some of his most gallant adventures. He was with him on board the Pallas when her ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... for horseback riding. Nell could not contain herself for joy, while Stas, although he thought that whoever owned a genuine short rifle ought to possess a corresponding dignity, could not restrain himself, and selecting the time when no one was about, walked around the tent on his hands. This knack, taught to him at the Port Said school, he possessed to a surprising degree and with it often amused Nell, who, besides, sincerely ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... distressed. Feng Tzu-ying then explained that he knew a young doctor who had made a study of his profession, Chang by surname, and Yu-shih by name, whose learning was profound to a degree; who was besides most proficient in the principles of medicine, and had the knack of discriminating whether a patient would live or die; that this year he had come to the capital to purchase an official rank for his son, and that he was now living with him in his house. In view of these circumstances, not knowing but that if, perchance, the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers —everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likely to advertise—no, I mean a knight that had influence; and he also had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to have the knack of getting their wishes granted. Jack is one of that ilk. Just as he made the remark, Davenport sauntered in and, finding out what was going on, volunteered to tell a ghost story himself—something that had happened to his grandmother, or maybe it was his great-aunt; ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... when the Ten Hundred arouse within themselves by their own exertions a shy, deep pride of their Regiment. It is a characteristic happy knack of the boys to give their very best during parades before the G.O.C., and that was undoubtedly a strong factor in building up the Battalion's fame at ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... evinces, in our opinion, no comic talent. The poet, accustomed to stilts, moves awkwardly in a species of the drama the first requisites of which are ease and sweetness. Scarron, who only understood burlesque, has displayed this talent or knack in several comedies taken from the Spanish, of which two, Jodelle, or the Servant turned Master, and Don Japhet of Armenia, have till within these few years been occasionally acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... said Doane. "He can ketch more fish than any other two men in the place—allers seemed to kind o' hev a knack o' whistlin' 'em right into the boat. And then Nelson Briggs, that settled up his mother's estate, allows he 's got over a hundred and ten dollars for him, after payin' debts and all probate expenses. That and the place is all he needs to ...
— The Village Convict - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... yourself, Mr. Stewart," said Robin; and taking up the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her best white apron, stiff with starch, her lace collar, and her hair in her best imitation of the way Margaret had fixed it, although it must be confessed she hadn't quite caught the knack of arrangement yet. But the one great difference Margaret noticed in the old woman was the illuminating smile on her face. Mom Wallis had learned how to let the glory gleam through all the hard sordidness ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... discovered, I have most certainly lost from my pocket the new cambric kerchief which I deposited therein a little before dinner, scarcely a week has passed without some part of my goods and chattels being returned missing. Gloves, muffs, parasols, reticules, have each of them a provoking knack of falling from my hands; boas glide from my neck, rings slip from my fingers, the bow has vanished from my cap, the veil from my bonnet, the sandal from my foot, the brooch from my collar, and the collar from my brooch. The trinket which I liked best, a jewelled ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... that I have laid the foundation for a study of Oriental languages, if I have time and opportunity that may be fairly given to them. Think what one hour a day is, and the pleasure to me is very great, and I feel that I have a knack rather (if I may say so) of laying hold of these things. Don't mention ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stroll together on Blackheath; and while my uncle was enjoying a nap on a grassy knoll, my father made a sketch of him, which I still preserve. Being of a most cheerful disposition, and having a great knack of detailing the incidents of his adventurous life, he became a great favourite with the resident officers of the Hospital; and was always regarded by them as real good company. He ended his days there in peace and comfort, in 1819, at ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... believe that the departing of that first Summer was a sad matter to him. He had done his best, you see, and a whole new world of trying had been thrown open to him. And really he was beginning to get the knack of that kind of weaving. And she was a fine big apple-cheeked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... end of a leg wire in the bottom of the foot and pass it up along the back of the bone between it and the skin. A considerable knack is necessary to do this successfully and some force must be used. Passing the heel joint is difficult but having done this and emerged inside the skin continue to pass it until it is a little longer than the ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... kind to him; and if Mrs. Shaw's secrets must be told, it was because Phoebe was so unchangeably and increasingly kind to him, that she sent the pretty maid (who had a knack of knowing her own mind about ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... it excellent in its way, but assuredly not of the first order. The one name will always be associated with admirably humorous performances, while the other will continue to shine resplendent on the roll of writers of sea-songs. But work of that sort is a matter of knack rather than of inspiration, and 'poetry' is a word hardly to be mentioned in remote connection with it. Very different are the circumstances when we come to the children of Samuel Taylor Coleridge—to Hartley and to Sara, and to Hartley in particular. Sara ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... died a year ago." "The same." He searches all the shop in vain. "Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane, I sent them with a load of books Last Monday to the pastrycook's. To fancy they could live a year! I find you're but a stranger here. The Dean was famous in his time, And had a kind of knack at rhyme. His way of writing now is past, The town has got ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... a little knack and a few odd tools, can rig up various contrivances which will be a source of pleasure to himself and oftentimes can be sold, to less ingenious boys, for a snug little sum. Any tool a boy can obtain is apt to be of use to him, chisel, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... I have no more knack for wearing costumes and masks, and I could not ask human beings to accept me as I am, either inside or out. Any reality is like a row of knives and each minute drags me ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... amusing; they put on grave, philosophic faces, and mimic the savans to the life; if the noble president, thinking he is doing the polite thing, points out to them a poet, for example, or a professor, they have a knack of elevating the shoulders, looking at the man with a pitying air, and whispering the words "poor beast," with a tone and manner quite inimitable. Indeed this is one of the few clever things they do, and on or off the stage we have never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... unconsciously to themselves, tools in the hands of their servants, the latter being permitted a freedom of speech that would never have been tolerated in equals. Such servants have always had the knack of making themselves indispensable, while preserving an outward appearance of the deepest humility; and thus it has often come to pass that a lord has been made to discharge a shaft aimed by his ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... character is made, as coral reefs are built up, by a multitude of tiny creatures whose united labours are strong enough to breast the ocean; looking to the mysterious way in which the greatest events in our lives have the knack of growing out of the smallest; looking to the power of habit to make any action of the mind almost instinctive: it is of far more importance that we should become accustomed to apply this precept of seeking guidance from God to the million trifles than to the two or ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was faithful to the article Paris. In his close relation to the caprices of humanity, the varied paths of commerce had enabled him to observe the windings of the heart of man. He had learned the secret of persuasive eloquence, the knack of loosening the tightest purse-strings, the art of rousing desire in the souls of husbands, wives, children, and servants; and what is more, he knew how to satisfy it. No one had greater faculty than he ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... off to town—I mean, London, my dear—and the Continent, with a tutor. Joseph—well, I believe I have never fully understood what became of Joseph during the four years I was away, but I suppose he amused himself. He has a knack of doing that I never had, except when I am in the country. Well, this tutor wasn't a bad sort of a fellow and at first we got on splendidly, living in town in chambers, going to the plays and the opera, and dining all over, just wherever ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... will pass them and proceed. You have heard of the sins of his youth, of his apprenticeship, and how he set up, and married, and what a life he hath led his wife; and now I will tell you some more of his pranks. He had the very knack for knavery; had he, as I said before, been bound to serve an apprenticeship to all these things, he could not have been more cunning, he could not have been ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... couple of sich chaps to you? You could knack their 'eads together like you ded by Micah ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... good knack of catching his rainbows, anyhow," answered Hallam; "and you'd better not let the idea get away with you that he isn't a force to be reckoned with. He's young yet, and very new to business, but you remember it was he who first suggested the Through ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... mentions other beauties of his favorite verse,—the opportunities for variation by double rhyme and by occasionally dropping a syllable, and the correspondence between the length of line and our natural intervals between punctuation,—but gives as his final excuse for using it his "better knack at this 'false gallop' of verse." The argument is ingenious enough, but his analysis of heroic verse has only a limited application, and his last reason probably was, as he was candid enough to admit, the most weighty. George Ellis replied to his defence thus: "I don't think, after all the eloquence ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... luxe of the views of everybody else. But his wife had made that discovery long ago. He smiled at the views of everybody else: his own were put forth as something choice and superior. He had the happy knack of being bourgeois with the air of an artist. If one could picture one's grocer weighing out sugar in a Spanish cloak and brigand's hat, it would afford an excellent symbol of his spiritual estate. To be perfectly commonplace in a brilliantly ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... cajole, and persuade. He should 'prentice himself at fourteen And practise from morning to e'en; And when he's of age, If he will, I'll engage, He may capture the heart of a queen! It is purely a matter of skill, Which all may attain if they will: But every Jack He must study the knack If he wants to make ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... act was that of Alexander Weyer, who, either by superior strength or by a peculiar knack, could hold a nail between the middle fingers of his right hand with the head against the palm, and drive it through a one-inch board. But since this act did not get him very far either on the road to fame, or toward the big money—he turned to magic and finally became one of the ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... Voyages, "for the story" and enjoy them hugely. This means that Swift had either learnt from Defoe or—and considering those earlier productions of his own much more probably—had independently developed the knack of absorbing the reader—the knack of telling a story. But of course there is in one sense much more, and in another much less, than a story in Gulliver: and the finest things in it are independent of story, though (and ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... for boys and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of storytelling, a great educational value for all ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... knack in doing things. If all those who plough in State and Church had known how to hold the handles, and turn a straight furrow, and stop the team at the end of the tiled, the world would long ago have been ploughed into an Eden. What many people want is gumption—a word as yet undefined; ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... hand in humorous deprecation. "Easy. It's the simplest thing I do. It isn't difficult if you have a knack for it." ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... had none to give; the knack of putting guineas together had never belonged to him; but how willingly, with what a foolish easiness, with what happy alacrity, would he have abandoned the half of his income for all time to come, could he by so doing have quietly dispelled the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... what an advertising campaign can do with a product's actual specifications. Compare {GIGO}; see also {SNAFU principle}. 2. James Parry , a Usenetter infamous for various surrealist net.pranks and an uncanny, machine-assisted knack for joining any thread in which his nom ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... standing by the stove, turning the bacon in its sizzling grease, with a knack which told of much experience in camp cookery. The face which the lean and grizzled plainsman turned toward his friend was seamed by a thousand tiny wrinkles in the leathery skin, the result of years of exposure to all kinds ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... only, and, which is of something a lower form, obstinacy, are the faults which are to be severely whipped out of them, both in their infancy and in their progress, otherwise they grow up and increase with them; and after a tongue has once got the knack of lying, 'tis not to be imagined how impossible it is to reclaim it whence it comes to pass that we see some, who are otherwise very honest men, so subject and enslaved to this vice. I have an honest lad to my ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... conclusion they were more numerous than was suspected—became in his presence topics outside the radius of cultivated consideration: one felt ashamed of having introduced them. His own subjects—they were few but exclusive—he had the knack of elevating into intellectual tests: one felt ashamed, reflecting how little one knew about them. Whether he really did possess a charm of manner, or whether the sense of his superiority with which he had imbued me it was that made any condescension he paid me a thing ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... have mentioned, that I dressed myself in a rich white satin night-gown, that had been my good lady's, and my best head-clothes, etc. I have got such a knack of writing, that when I am by myself, I cannot sit without a pen in my hand.—But I am now called to breakfast. I suppose the gentlemen are come.—Now, courage, Pamela! Remember thou art upon thy good behaviour!—Fie upon it! my heart begins to flutter ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... ridicule of his brother at the spiritual-mindedness of Don Luis having thus come to naught, and recognizing also that he would not play a very dignified role in the village, where every one would say he had a poor knack at turning out saints—declined to be present, giving his occupations as an excuse; although he sent his blessing, and a magnificent pair of ear-rings as a present ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... he drew closer. Beasley always had a knack of so blending truth with his personal venom that it stung far more than downright insult. He wondered what the Padre's generosity had been, and wherein lay its connection with their present purpose. The explanation was not ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... was accompanied. We cannot here avoid remarking, that this conjecture would have been better founded had Sophia lived ten years in the air of Grosvenor Square, where young ladies do learn a wonderful knack of rallying and playing with that passion, which is a mighty serious thing in woods and groves an ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... breaking hemp. He soon had the knack of that: his muscles were toughened already. He learned what it was sometimes to eat his dinner in the fields, warming it, maybe, on the coals of a stump set on fire near his brake; to bale his hemp at nightfall ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... taken Ben for my valet. He looks quite a gentleman when dressed in his Sunday clothes, and his Scotch shrewdness serves us many a good turn. He has the knack of arresting any little advantages floating on the stream of travel, and securing them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... gay that old, dull tasks Were furbished up to seem like rituals. She baked and brewed as one who only asks The right to serve. Her daily manuals Of prayer were duties, and her festivals When Theodore praised some dish, or frankly said She had a knack in making ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... heart-strings. She made the house ring with her shouts and her healthy glee. She toddled over everything without restraint; tumbled over Chinese tea-poys and Japan idols; upset the alabaster Graces in the best parlor, and pulled every knick-knack out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... smile when I tell you I think myself the only woman in the world who could live with a brother's wife and make a real friend of her—partly from a knack I know I have of looking into people's real characters and never expecting them to act out of it. Never expecting another to do as I would in the same case. I do not expect you or want you to be otherwise than you are. I love you for ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... the lawyer was rather severe and austere. He was a good deal of an aristocrat. While he did not seek to repel people, he had little of the knack of drawing people to him in ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... never made a guinea by his work as a barrister, and was beginning to doubt of himself whether he ever would do so. Not, as he knew well, that guineas are generally made with ease by barristers of four years' standing, but because, as he said to his friends, he did not see his way to the knack of it. He did not know an attorney in the world, and could not conceive how any attorney should ever be induced to apply to him for legal aid. He had done his work of learning his trade about as well as other young men, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... amazing and disturbing to him because he could not remember the time or occasion when the knack of fluent speech ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... at the zenith of his political career. He was one of those men not infrequently observed in public life, who, without conspicuous ability, have a certain knack for the management of men, and are able to acquire influence and even a certain degree of fame by personal skill in manipulating patronage, smoothing away difficulties, and making things easy. Nature had not only endowed him with a genius ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a bad man, be Black Jarge when 'e's took, for 'e 'ave a knack, d'ye see, of takin' 'old o' the one nighest to un, and a-heavin' of un over ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... while he sat a great brown charger calmly in their midst and gave them not too many orders, but here and there a word of praise, and once or twice a trumpet shout of encouragement. He seemed to own the knack of being wherever the fight was fiercest. His mere presence seemed better than a hundred men when the phalanx ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... shall have to cut you up into parcels," said the doctor one day: "there is not enough of you to go round. You have a marvellous knack at making sick people like you. Did you really ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... an angle of about forty-five degrees, and it howled like a panic-stricken dragon—Joe was getting his metaphors mixed by this time—and it swung and wobbled and slowly gained altitude, and then suddenly it seemed to get the knack of what it was supposed to do. It started to circle around, and then it began abruptly to climb skyward. Until it began to climb it looked heavy and clumsy and wholly unimpressive. But when it climbed, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... is happy, there is no doubt of that; he is the happiest person in the family, by all odds; but then I think he has a natural knack at being happy; it is impossible for anything to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... his life. It wa'n't what you'd call thrillin'. All there was to it was that Hermy was a double orphan who'd been brought up in Bridgeport, Conn., by an uncle who was a dancin' professor. The only thing that saved Hermy from a bench in the brass works was his knack for poundin' out twosteps and waltzes on the piano; but at that it seems he was such a soft head he couldn't keep from watchin' the girls on the floor and striking wrong notes. Then there was trouble with uncle. Snick didn't get the full details ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... said Boone with a smile. "I never was able to get the knack. You will have to be the leader now. We can go down this stream five or six miles, perhaps more, before we strike ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... "I have a knack of saying what I don't mean," he remarked, rousing himself. "I beg your pardon for this and every other rude speech that I may make, Elizabeth; and ask you to understand that I am only translating my discontent with myself into words when ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... could not help admiring No. 1 for the confidence with which he disported himself among the Greek aorists, in the labyrinths of which I myself often went astray, and for the knack he had of solving mathematical problems. He was, moreover, very widely read in belles lettres, and had almost a grown-up man's taste with regard to books at a time when I still continued to admire P.P.'s [Footnote: P.P. was ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... with human beings,' 'the art of behaving in society,' 'the science of human happiness,' were various modes of expressing the final end of conduct.[5] Sokrates clearly indicated the difference between an unscientific and a scientific art; the one is an incommunicable knack or dexterity, the other is founded ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... acquired the knack, Bob remounted and was soon at the ranch, where he turned his pony into the corral and carried his ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... of his knack for surprises," muttered Danny. "And if we, who know his old tricks, can't fathom him at all, what are the other seven of us going ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... concert last night, songs, interspersed with the maddest, most whimsical patter, step-dances, ventriloquism, recitations. He kept us in roars for a long time. Blended with the simplicity of a baby, he has the wisdom of the serpent, and has the knack of getting hold of odd delicacies, with which he regales the ward. He is perfectly well, by the way, but when the doctor comes round he assumes a convincing air of semi-convalescence, and refers darkly to his old wound. The doctor is not in the least taken ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... here, Nan,' he said—the others were a long way ahead, and he could scold her as he liked. 'You may have some strong points—wisdom, perhaps—and a capacity for extracting money out of people for lifeboats—and a knack of boxing the ears of small boys whom you find shying stones at sparrows—I say you may have your strong points; but flippancy isn't one of them. And this is ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... be a doubt about it? No! "Schelim, King of the Hills, and his four sons," was one of Aunt Judy's very, very, very, best inventions. But they had the happy knack of always thinking so of the last ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle say, "It will do—it must do! I see it in the eyes of them!" This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon: for that duke has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in this, as usual: the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.' Spence's Anec. p. 159. See The Dundad, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... me that it ought to be far less pessimistic than it is, also, about what we can do in the way of schools and social life in civilisation and about civilisation's way of doing business. Is our little knack of Christianity (I find myself wondering) quite worthy of all this attention it is getting from The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions? Why should it approve of civilisation with a rush? Does any one really suppose that it is really time to pat it on the back—yet?—to spend ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... lamps of the piazza. Those marble countenances were placid with an eternal youth, beneath the same stars that had embellished irrevocable nights, that recalled some excursions into an enchanted world, some romantic gestures the knack for which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dear sir," said Hilderman cheerily. "You scientist fellows have a knack of making your difficulties a little greater than they really are, in order to get more credit for surmounting them. I know your little ways. I'm an American, you know, professor; you can't get ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... find already the adjective rum meaning good, fine,—a word that has crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious. Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch word flunky is a case in point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems. Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have transplanted it into the English of the day. As we believe its origin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... opinion that a miracle had enabled the writer of the famous Army and Navy and other series to resume his pen for the volume in hand. Mr. Stratemeyer has acquired in a wonderfully successful degree the knack of writing an interesting educational story which will appeal to the young people, and the plan of his trio of books as outlined cannot fail to prove both interesting and ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... "candy store." He had had a few years at the public school, and a few months at a business college, to which he went at night, after work hours. He had been "up against it good and plenty," he told them. He seemed, however, to have had a knack of making friends and of giving them "a boost along" when such a chance was possible. Both of his listeners realised that a good many people had liked him, and the reason was apparent enough ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they—it comes to to same thing—have the fiend's own knack of discovering a man's weak place. I confess I rather go out of my way to conciliate Number Five study. It may be soft, but so far, I believe, I am the only man here whom they haven't maddened ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... and in ill-health. A few years later his mother died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on his hands. His own health gave out, and he had to go away for six months, and work harder than ever when he came back. He had no knack for business, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of commerce. He wanted to travel and write—those were his inmost longings. And as the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without making any more money, or acquiring any firmer health, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... back to her seat, hard by a group to which Endymion was discoursing at large. Endymion's was a mellow voice, of rich compass, and he had a knack of compelling the attention of all persons within range. He preferred this to addressing anyone in particular, and his eye sought and found, and gathered by instinct, the last loiterer without the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... harangues, often prepared for them by outside hacks, their own colleagues soon taught them that such methods were no longer likely to pay even for purposes of advertisement. The majority quickly acquired a knack of suppressing wind-bags and bores quietly and effectively. The Act of 1919 reserved to Government the appointment of the President of the Assembly for the first four years, after which he will be chosen by the Assembly itself. Not even the House of Commons could treat the Chair with more unfailing ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... put the measure through myself? Yes, sir, I did that little thing. And moreover, I never paid a dollar for any man's vote and never promised one. There are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as others which other people don't happen to think about, or don't have the knack of succeeding in, if they do happen to think of them. My dear sir, I am obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head—for never a cent was paid a Congressman or Senator on the part ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... has the knack of hymn-writing, and the translations from the Greek which he has published in this book will be a welcome ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... you can possibly imagine. She manages the whole house; our servants would do anything for her, and the children love her so much that it is a pleasure to them to obey her. She has that wonderful and invaluable knack in a woman, she never teases or worries; she just contrives to turn people round her little finger, without their knowing anything about it themselves. But now don't let us talk any more about Effie and me. I want to hear your news. How is ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... worked all day, striving earnestly to catch the knack of the needle, and emulating the tireless industry of the Sister, who worked thus during daylight that she might pursue her mission of mercy and succour at night. Thus passed some days, and then Jessica's blood grew restless; the narrow room seemed to her stifling and unendurable, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... humoring their caprices. Their complaints were more potent than the suggestions of ministers, or the remonstrances of judges. In idle frivolities his time was passed, neglectful of the great interests which were intrusted to him to guard; and the only attainment of which he was proud was a knack of making tarts and bon-bons, with which he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... and two companions discovered a camp of some forty new-comers actually starving, though buffalo were plenty. Clark and his friends speedily relieved their necessities by killing fourteen of the great beasts; for when once the hunters had found out the knack, the buffalo were easier slaughtered ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... hardly know when to stop. The fit, indeed, seldom comes upon me; but when it does, though I sit down with a design to be short, yet my letter insensibly slides into length, and swells perhaps into an enormous size. I know not how it happens, but on such occasions I have a knack of throwing myself out on paper that I cannot readily get the better of. It is a sign, however, that I more than barely esteem the person I write to, as I have constantly experienced that my hand but illy performs ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... fine about people. His instinct was to be a scholar and a hermit. But she loved people, she simply couldn't be happy without them, and (wasn't it fun?) she had had her way, and now John liked people almost as much as she did. And he had a knack of putting life and ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... about her to console her, but she wept so that, for all my seventeen years and pride of manhood, it set me weeping also, and with such a hiccoughing noise, since I had not a woman's knack of quiet tears, that it finally turned her ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... has attracted world-wide notice from experts. Meanwhile his imagination enabled him to understand the exact extent of a novice's ignorance, the precise details which I did not know and must know, the essential apparatus I had to be shown the knack of, before he fled to ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... misunderstanding on the other. It is always hard enough to manage such elements, but let them get out of hand and a miracle is needed for salvation. Also you have to find the miracle, and I composed myself to search for it in the little things, the natural things of the situation. They have a knack of conducting you to the heart of a problem, if you will only have simple faith and follow them, and be not ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... at one another's houses on Sunday nights, was not of common things. One of my uncles was a merchant, another a doctor; my father was a portrait-painter by profession, and a sign-painter by practice. I suppose that's where I got my knack, such as it is. The merchant was an invalid, rather, though he kept about his business, and our people merely recognized him as being out of health. He was what we could call, for that day and region—the Middle West of the early fifties—a man of unusual refinement. I suppose this was ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... a brief moment call to your mind ROLAND PRETTYMAN. Upon my soul, I think ROLAND the most empty-headed fribble, the most affected coxcomb, and the most conceited noodle in the whole world. He was decently good-looking once, and he had a pretty knack of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... to him attentively; then said he supposed Mrs. Blyth must be fond of curiosities, and all sorts of "knick-knack things from foreign parts." Young Thorpe not only answered the question in the affirmative, but added, as a private expression of his own opinion, that he believed these said curiosities and "knick-knacks" had helped, in their way, to keep her alive by keeping her amused. From this, he digressed ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... a most worthy man, truthful, honest, temperate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no bad habits, —perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor did he lack the knack of the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or build a house, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this brief existence, worth while to do any of these things. He was an excellent angler, but he rarely fished; partly because of the shortness of days, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had a decided knack for this sort of work. He assailed it with vigor, making a heap of life preservers, and over these placing Miss Butler, head downward. Then Farley took vigorous charge of the work of "rolling" out the water that Miss Butler must ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... boisterous afternoon, chatting cosily, and waiting for tea to come up. Between Clara and Gladys there seemed to be a peculiar understanding, although Mr. Fordyce's elder daughter was not the favourite of the family. Her manner was too stiff, and she had a knack at times of saying rather sharp, disagreeable things. But not to Gladys Graham. In these few days they had become united in the bonds of a love which was to stand all tests. Clara was sitting on a low chair, Gladys kneeling by her side, with her arm on her knee. So sitting, they presented a contrast, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... he said. "I seemed to have had the knack to-night of constantly annoying you. So ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy |
