"Shiftiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desire a fulfillment of her pledge. It was consoling to feel that he could exact the keeping of her promise. His face grew coarser as he assured himself of his claim, but he had never realized the shiftiness and instability of his own character. It was his misfortune that the impulses which swayed him one day had generally changed ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... kicked the beam, is a curious study. One hardly knows which to admire most, the loyalty with which he stuck to the falling house till the moment of its collapse, or the adroitness with which he escaped from the ruins. Censure of his shiftiness is partly disarmed by the fact that there were so many in that troubled and uncertain time who would have acted like him if they had had the skill. Besides, he acted so steadily and with such sleepless ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the clamor on himself, and to do the feat; being at his wits'-end for money. He draws out his Full-Power, which, as first Spiritual Kurfurst, he has the privilege to do; nominates (1516) one Tetzel for Chief Salesman, a Priest whose hardness of face, and shiftiness of head and hand, were known to him; and—here is one Hohenzollern that has a place in History! Poor man, it was by accident, and from extreme tightness for money. He was by no means a violent Churchman; he had himself inclinations towards Luther, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... members of the company, he found "the indifferent rider," known as Signor Antonio Martinelli, an undoubted Irishman of about thirty years of age, extremely handsome, but with a certain "shiftiness" of the eye which was far from inspiring confidence, and with a trick of the tongue which suggested that his baptismal certificate probably bore the name of Anthony Martin. He found, too, that all he had heard regarding the youth and beauty of the chevalier's second wife was quite ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... naturally jealous of one another, suspicious of underhand dealing and tacit changes of terms, prompt to resent and take offence, and not easy to pacify when they thought advantage had been taken; and Salisbury, either by his own fault, or by yielding to the King's canny shiftiness, gave the business a more haggling and huckstering look than it need have had. Bacon, a subordinate of the Government, but a very important person in the Commons, did his part, loyally, as it seems, and skilfully in smoothing differences and keeping awkward questions from ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... that he had made his money through a series of commercial speculations distinguished both by shiftiness and daring, and that the man himself had been until the War a wholly negligible "poor white" person,—an overseer, indeed, for "Wild Will" Musgrave, Colonel Musgrave's father, who was of course the same Lieutenant-Colonel ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... shyness or shiftiness about Berks's fighting. He was always a gallant ruffian, who disdained to go down before an antagonist as long as his legs would sustain him. He propped Jim off with his long arm, and though the lad sprang lightly round him looking ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... played this card and failed, he had no other; and his natural pusillanimity and shiftiness induced him to withdraw ever more into the depths of his palace, and there use his intelligence in exploiting this shameful dependence of his country on foreign powers. Unable or unwilling to encourage national resistance, he consoled himself, as a weak malcontent ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... loud, dictatorial, dangerous tones, all shiftiness gone. "That I was a gentleman, eh? Well, gentle is as gentle does, I suppose, and I've never scored anywhere, so here I am, here I am, Ringfield (bringing his hand down on the table) that's your name, I believe—and ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... vegetable, and gravy. It sounded so extraordinarily luxurious and appetising as to provoke incredulity and caustic comment. Those who, like myself, had suffered internment in other camps and who had become thoroughly grounded in Teuton shiftiness and trickery divined that something unusually crafty and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney |
