"Tricksy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I sat in that open boat, midst of the Sunderbunds, at my domestic antipodes, happened to me the most wondrous transformation which the tricksy stage-carpenters and scene-shifters of the brain have ever devised. For this same far-stretching horizon, which had just been alluring my soul into the depths of the creative period, suddenly contracted itself four-square into the somewhat yellowed walls of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... operation of this first law of economics. Production exists solely for the sake of consumption, and must therefore—as ought long since to have been seen—depend, both in its amount and in the character of its means, upon the amount of consumption. And if some tricksy Puck were to carry off overnight to some European country all our wealth and all our machinery, without taking to that country our social institutions as well, it is as certain that that country would not be a farthing ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... is a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr. Moore's Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry, while over all love waves his purple light. His thoughts are as restless, as many, and as bright as the insects ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... have. I would have watched any child of mine upon whom was passing so strange a change; but thou knowest that Kate has ever been dear to me—I have liked to watch her in her tricksy moods. She has been more full of affection for me than her graver sisters, and even her little whims and faults that we have had to check have but endeared her to me the more. The whimsies of the child have often brought solace to my graver cares. I love Kate right well, and like not to see ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... rising-stars inlaid; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above—below—on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed In the tricksy pomp of ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... more of the spirit of trade than of that of the sea-goddess I serve," cried the other, causing his fingers to run lightly over the strings of the guitar. "Compromise and offers are sounds that become a burgher's lips. My tricksy spirit, commit these gentlemen to the care of bold Thomas Tiller, while I confer with the merchant. The character of Mr. Van Beverout, Captain Ludlow, will protect us both from the suspicion of any designs ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... old owl. "You'll see! They'll pull your tails, and tickle your feathers, and prick you with thorns. I know them, the tricksy, troublesome things! I've been here many a long year. You were only hatched ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... Arlecchino, the tricksy and shifty spirit, the contriver, the busybody, the trusty rogue, the wonder-worker, the man in disguise, the mercurial one, lives on buoyantly in France to the age of Moliere. He is officious and efficacious in the skin of Mascarille and Ergaste and Scapin; but he tends to be a lacquey, with ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... heavenly sweet, Has flown upon the tricksy air: Fate's hand is on thee; drop thy leaves, And go among ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... table seemed to be grasped and shaken as if by a man of giant strength—and yet the cone and the books did not shift position. Hands patted the pillows on a sofa at Miller's right, and one of these cushions was flung against his chair. The room seemed to swarm with tricksy Pucks. At last the cone took flight again, and moved about freely among the heap of books and over Miller's head, while a variety of voices came successively from it, some of them speaking to Mrs. Miller and some to me. Several ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... had one little revenge on her in the shape of her cat, a beautiful Maltese, with great yellow eyes, fur as soft as velvet, and silvery paws as lovely to look at as they were thistly to touch. Toby certainly pleaded hard for Miss Lucinda's theory of a soul; but his was no good one: some tricksy and malign little spirit had lent him his share of intellect, and he used it to the entire subjugation of Miss Lucinda. When he was hungry, he was as well-mannered and as amiable as a good child,—he would coax, and purr, and lick her fingers with his pretty red tongue, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... from our metropolis, we love to watch the ebbing of population, the dwindling from groves of chimneys and worlds of bricks and mortar to tricksy cottages marshalled with the plumb-line, or sprinkled over "farmy fields" facing Macadamized roads, and collecting more dust in one month than would have ransomed all the captive kings of history, sacred ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... rapier according to the received rules of fence, he firmly upheld the honour of his calling, and in the exercise of it was uniformly fearless, independent and incorrupt." The Brazen is partial, one-sided, tricksy, misleading, immoral; serving personal and interested purposes and contemptuously forgetful of every obligation which an honest and honourable pen owes to the public and to itself. Such critiques bring no profit to the reviewed. He feels that he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... tyrant goes through various changes of mood in his attitude toward his enemy. In lines 35-43 he feels a moment of contemptuous compunction at the man's suffering, and recognizes the absurdity of a contest between a great king and a person as insignificant as a tricksy elf, a toad, or a rat. But in line 44 his mood turns. He perceives that the burden (gravamen) of the whole matter lies in the incredibly petty nature of this unconquerable, baffling opposition to his will. He sees how the situation would awaken the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... talk as the acid cider was passed again and again! What crunching of the sturdy, dark-colored bread between the great knuckles! What huge helps of the famous sauces! What insatiable appetites! What nice appreciation of the right touch of the tricksy garlic! What nodding of heads, clinking of glasses, and warmth of friendship established over the wine-cups! At dessert everyone talked at once. On one occasion the subject of Gambetta's death was touched on; all the table, as one man, broke out ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd |
