"Busybody" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arranged reflectors. The reflector in the upper end catches the object which comes within the range of vision, and reflects the image down the tube to the mirror at the lower elbow, where the pilot sees it. The principle of the periscope is the same as that of the "busybody," familiar to householders, and which is placed on the sill of an upper window, so that a person inside the house may see who ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... were at least acquainted. But out of respect for their tremendous dignity, I decided to keep my plans secret from them, to approach under cover, to creep forward cautiously, soundlessly. To my dismay, as soon as I got within a quarter of a mile of them, some busybody of a sentinel would see me, and if I continued advancing, no matter how stealthily, the flock would move away. It seemed offish, not to say unfriendly; time and again I tried the same tactics, with the same result. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... on, still soothingly. "It is awful looked at from your standpoint, but that ain't the thing. We must consider the intentions of folks before we take offence. Why, Alfred, that old busybody hasn't yet got it through his head that any living man could object to a joke like that. Nothing under high heaven was ever sacred to him; you must have noticed that in the time you have known him. He'd make a jest out of the death of his closest kin. He told me ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... said the paying-teller, coldly. He had no particular respect or regard for Miss Sprague, being quite familiar with her general reputation as a gossip and busybody. ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... few children are placed so entirely apart from evil influences as they were in those days. They were quick and restless, and full of spirit, but, as I have said, they were affectionate and tractable; and though often, before the last little busybody was safely disposed of for the night, Christie believed her strength and patience to be quite exhausted, her love for them increased ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... give Deadrock Ogg his own question back. "Who are you, Mr. Ogg? Are you a busybody? Or do you have a ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... said old John Ellis in an ominous tone of voice, "I want to know if what that old busybody of a Mary Keane came here today gossiping about is true. If it is—well, I've something to say about the matter! Have you been courting that niece of Susan Oliver's all summer on ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the branches and trunk of the tree, the squirrel Ratatosk (branch-borer), the typical busybody and tale-bearer, passed its time repeating to the dragon below the remarks of the eagle above, and vice versa, in the hope of stirring up ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... passed; but a busybody carried this, with other tattle, to Mr Swift, who questioned me also. I looked to see him mighty angry; and first his brows frowned, and then he laughed, as if a ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... there entered a plump, pompous individual, every line of whose person and attire advertised him a local dandy, while every lineament and expression of his face, his every attitude and movement, equally proclaimed him a busybody. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... not either maid or mistress, or anybody the least like them, that could realise my dream. But all the same, I am caught, for the moment, in their noose: and what is to be done now? For she will go straight back and tell it all, to this over-bearing busybody of a queen, and if now I do not go, it will seem an incivility almost equal to an insult. For queens do not like to be refused, and even their request is a kind of order, very difficult to disobey. Out, out, upon this red intrusive jade, and her mistress, and above all on myself, for my ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... extremely difficult to correct. The white man, as well as the Negro, is bound and barred by the color-line, and many a scheme of friendliness and philanthropy, of broad-minded sympathy and generous fellowship between the two has dropped still-born because some busybody has forced the color-question to the front and brought the tremendous force of unwritten ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... far afield. To the north, to the west, and to the south stretches the unbroken forest, and in a few hours a man's legs may easily carry him out of hailing of the voice of his kind. The waterways form the only regular channels for social and commercial intercourse, and the busybody and gad-about are not regarded with favor ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... busybody I am," the guest laughed. "I don't know how to mind my own business, and the one luxury I enjoy most of all is regulating other people's affairs." He was still talking, still lecturing his hearers upon the obligations prosperity had put ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Frank Lester, late of Oxford University, afterwards barrister-at-law, author and journalist of the first rank, but at that time unknown to Punch, first appeared on January 5th, 1878, with a slashing satire on busybody amateur statesmen which greatly tickled Tom Taylor's fancy. But his first real hit was in September, 1880, with a form of contribution then comparatively new. It was a "Diary of the Premier at Sea," when Mr. Gladstone was on board the Grantully Castle, and, so far from "husbanding his energies," ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... to the horrors of uncertainty," the girl soliloquized. "How very, very stupid you are, Mrs. Daney, to warn me to protect him! As if I wouldn't lay down my life to uphold his honor! Nevertheless, you dear old bungling busybody, you are absolutely right, although I suspect no altruistic reason carried you ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... curiosity and mischievous gossip result from the direction of our thirst for knowledge toward trifling and unworthy objects. There is great virtue in minding one's own business. The tell-tale is abhorrent even to the least developed moral sensibility. The gossip, the busybody, the scandalmonger is the worst pest that infests the average town and village. These mischief-makers take a grain of circumstantial evidence, mix with it a bushel of fancies, suspicions, surmises, and inuendoes, and then go from house to house peddling the product ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... about that, did she, the meddling busybody!" he answered coolly. "I was afraid they would, some of them, damn them! and I knew you would go into hysterics. She didn't tell you the necessity for it, I suppose, nor the good it is doing; but I will; so just listen to me, then you'll see perhaps ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... and so tentative overspread the sky; more robins came, and after them bluebirds and redbirds and Peterbirds, and the impudent screaming robber jay that is so beautiful and so bold, and flute-voiced vireos, and nuthatches, and the darling busybody wren fussing about her house-building in the corners of our piazzas. The first red flowers of the Japanese quince opened flame-like on the bare brown bushes. When the bridal-wreath by the gate saw that, she set industriously to work upon her ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... anything I jolly well like," returned Talbot. "If I choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have to give my name to every meddling busybody that—" ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... who really trained Perikles for his political contests just as a trainer prepares an athlete for the games. However, Damon's use of music as a pretext did not impose upon the Athenians, who banished him by ostracism, as a busybody and lover of despotism. He was ridiculed by the comic poets; thus Plato represents some one as ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... for dynastic interests, and that she has the greatest horror of any step likely to bring about a civil war." Those high-souled expressions ought to have given definite pause to Regnier's importunity; but that busybody was indefatigable. A second letter to Madame Le Breton for the Empress simply elicited from the gentlemen of her suite the information that Her Majesty, having read his communications, had expressed the greatest horror of anything approaching a civil war. A final letter from ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... most dangerous instrument of the bishop and the Jesuits." [Footnote: Frontenac au Ministre, 14 Nov., 1674] He says, farther, that many people think him to be a Jesuit in disguise, and that he is an intriguing busybody, who makes trouble everywhere. He also denounces the attorney-general, Auteuil, as an ally of the Jesuits. Another of the reconstructed council, Tilly, meets his cordial approval; but he soon found reason to change ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... giving and taking of counsel and aid between man and man: of that I shall say something in the last chapter. The very sacredness of the relation in which two men stand to one another when one of them rescues the other from vice separates that relation from any connection with the work of the social busybody, the professional philanthropist, and ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus |
