"Prying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... og soger Upon the pages I gamle Boger, Of the olden ages, I oplukte Hoie, And in hills where are lying Med speidende Oie, The dead, they are prying; Paa Svaerd og Skjolde, On armour rusty, I mulne Volde, In ruins musty, Paa Runestene, On Rune-stones jumbled, Blandt smuldnede Bene. With bones ...
— The Gold Horns • Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager
... morning, before he descended, he plainly saw the form of the witch, coming to wash in the stream just below him. The water was clear reflecting her visage, fearsome in its hideous detail. Up in the tree brave Eut-le-ten saw her, he thought himself safe from her fierce prying eyes; he forgot that he too was mirrored below in the still water which lay at her feet. When she had finished her morning ablutions, she filled her vessel with water and turned to depart, when she saw just below her, the features of Eut-le-ten ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... birken bower, on yon burn side, Sae sweetly wove wi' woodbine flower, on yon burn side; There the busy prying eye, Ne'er disturbs the lover's joy, While in ither's arms they lie, down by yon ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... rusty keys and pink order-forms in hand, wandering still, in search of the ideal home. To them it is anything but an amusement. Most of these poor pilgrims look simply tired, some are argumentative in addition, but all are disappointed, anxious, and unhappy, their hands dirty with prying among cisterns, and their garments soiled from cellar walls. All, in the exaltation of the wooing days, saw at least the indistinct reflection of the perfect house, but now the Quest is irrevocably in hand they seek and do not find. And such a momentous question ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... were hungry, and struck fiercely at the bait. She soon had plenty for supper and breakfast. Wherefore she abandoned that diversion, and took to prying tentatively in the lee of certain bowlders on the edge of the creek—prospecting on her own initiative, as it were. She had no pan, and only one hand to work with, but she knew gold when she saw it—and, after all, it was but an idle method ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Ballister's arrival, the family sat long at breakfast. The mother's gaze fastened untiringly on the features of her son—still her boy—prying into them with a vain effort to reconcile the face of the man with the cherished picture of the child with sunny locks, and noting little else than the work of inward change upon the countenance and expression. The brother, with the predominant feeling ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... native of Devonshire. They bore the character of a plodding, taciturn, morose-mannered couple: seldom leaving the farm except to attend market, and rarely seen at church or chapel, they naturally enough became objects of suspicion and dislike to the prying, gossiping villagers, to whom mystery or reserve of any kind was of ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the weapons of Oak beside him. He took from his belt his own knife, because it was better than that of Oak, and laid it close to the dead man's hand, and then, first covering the body with beech leaves, he worked frantically upon the overhanging soil, prying it down with a sharp-pointed fragment of limb, and tossing in upon all as heavy stones as he could lift, until a great cairn rose above the hunter who would ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Pity? Am I prying into the old fellow's pockets? Am I forcing him to take off his stockings and turn his shoes inside out? I meant to start out with doing that—for I hate him like poison, ever since that time in the tavern when he—you know what ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... father, I detest this man; indeed, I want to have nothing to do with any man; for me all that is over and done with," and she gave a dry little sob which appeared to come from her very heart. "And yet, he seems to be getting some kind of power over me. He follows me about with his eyes, prying into my mind, and I feel that he is beginning to be able to read it. I can bear no more. Father, father, for God's sake, take me away from this hateful hill and its gold and its dead, and let us get out into the ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... the sleepy town. The morning shout of one good rooster was the only evidence of life and health in all the place. Everything seemed kindly and familiar—the glassy water; evergreen islands; the Indians with their canoes and baskets and blankets and berries; the jet ravens, prying and flying about the streets and spruce trees; and the bland, hushed atmosphere brooding ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... Jupp round to the front of the house, while the little girls came out on to the lawn; and Molly the cook, as well as Joe the gardener, attracted by the commotion, had also been assisting in the quest for the missing Teddy, prying ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... The wedding-journey, which was formerly the cause of so much discomfort to both husband and wife, has fortunately gone out of vogue; and in its place has come the retirement to a quiet country or seaside spot, away from the prying eyes of friends. Thus the nervous strain incident to sight-seeing and ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... the causes of divorce to physical defects or delinquencies; making the proceedings public; prying into all the personal affairs of unhappy men and women; regarding the step as quasi criminal; punishing the guilty party in the suit; all this will not strengthen frail human nature, will not insure happy homes, will not banish scandals ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... which served a good purpose later. The sunlight fell across it in great golden bars, making light and shadow to play in; all around was the great marsh, giving protection from enemies; dense underbrush screened them from prying eyes—and this ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... and sent the mortar spraying; another blow and another loosened a hole in which the black inserted a short iron and began nervously grinding and prying. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... several flooded ditches, came to an overgrown marsh. A few yards from terra firma was a large sallow bush, growing on a tiny island. After getting thoroughly wet, I succeeded in crawling on to this and screening my headquarters from prying eyes with green rushes. As it became lighter, I heard occasional voices and peculiar creakings, the cause of which I could not interpret, and might well render my position unsafe. The anxiety was increased when a large, dark shadow loomed out of the fog ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... great deal more sound sense in it than you suppose, Terpsion. Besides, what right have you young fellows got to be prying after other men's goods, and thrusting yourselves upon your childless elders? You look rather foolish, when you get buried first; it tickles people immensely; the more fervent your prayers for the death of your aged friend, the greater is the general exultation when you precede ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... fashion, for the berries she gave him, the flowers she wove in his hair, and the brooks that drove his mimic mills. He chased the butterfly, he climbed the trees, he would stand in the rain, paint his cheeks with berry juice, dabble in the mud, and nothing was secure from his prying fingers and curious eyes. He must touch and taste of everything, and know every secret. But it eluded him; and he lay down from his giddy chase, tired and unsatisfied, yet still anticipating that the morning would reveal all. Later he approaches men and things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you would ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... bedstead, and wardrobe, and in a minor degree of even the chairs and tables, provoked sleep; they were plainly apoplectic and disposed to snore. There were no staring portraits to remonstrate with you for being lazy; no round-eyed birds upon the curtains, disgustingly wide awake, and insufferably prying. The thick neutral hangings, and the dark blinds, and the heavy heap of bed-clothes, were all designed to hold in sleep, and act as nonconductors to the day and getting up. Even the old stuffed fox upon the top of the wardrobe was devoid of any spark of vigilance, for his glass eye had fallen ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... fit. Eventually she was subjected to the supervision of Wilson. No crime was imputed to her. The object of the lawless outrage was the interception of admissions in the letters husband and wife were encouraged to write. All were submitted to the King's prying though lazy eyes. Naunton remarked on one occasion to Wilson: 'I forbear to send your long letter to the King, who would not read over the Lady's, being glutted and cloyed with business.' The correspondence told little any of the conspirators cared to learn. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... dabbling in literature furnishes harmless topics of conversation; for the not having such subjects at hand, though they are often insupportably fatiguing, renders the inhabitants of little towns prying and censorious. Idleness, rather than ill-nature, gives birth to scandal, and to the observation of little incidents which narrows the mind. It is frequently only the fear of being talked of which produces that ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... which the Romans had hidden. The Caesars became to them magical man-gods. The poet Virgil became the prince of necromancers. If the secrets of Nature were to be known, they were to be known by unlawful means, by prying into the mysteries of the old heathen magicians, or of the Mohammedan doctors of Cordova and Seville; and those who dared to do so were respected and feared, and often came to evil ends. It needed moral courage, then, to face and interpret fact. Such brave men as Pope Gerbert, Roger Bacon, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... to be prying—only I wish you big boys would hang some for the little girls—it would please them to death. If you don't mind my having a part in this. I'd like to put in a little money, too. Let me put in another quarter and I'll do the trimming and you ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... accompany him into the king's presence, he would, after all, have most satisfactorily accomplished his mission; and he forthwith proceeded, with all the craft and subtlety of which he was master, to urge upon them the desirability of an immediate visit to king M'Bongwele, who, averse as he was to the prying visits of strange men, would, he assured them, be highly gratified at the honour of having as his guests the four ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Wilcox accepted this gift of privacy. London belonged to her, there were no prying eyes. Slowly she walked along the pavement peering into shop windows. It was difficult to see anything. At last she distinguished a blur of gold and jewels. She walked on and then back again. She stood still. Her heart was in her mouth. Resolutely ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... grandfather were prying off the boards that covered in the chimney on the right side and supported the mantel-shelf. As it fell back into their hands two more gold coins tumbled to ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... a monstrous pit To hold his wealth, and buried it By night, alone; then smoothed the ground So that the spot could not be found. But he gained nothing by his labor: A curious, prying, envious neighbor, Who marked the hiding, went and told The Sultan where to find the gold. A troop of soldiers came next day, And bore the hoarded ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her role of ingÂnue by this time was prying about outside the bungalow, on the porch of which she ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Bourrienne, apparently about this very time. "After a stormy interview with Napoleon," says Lucien, "I at once went into the cabinet where Bourrienne was working, and found that unbearable busybody of a secretary, whose star had already paled more than once, which made him more prying than ever, quite upset by the time the First Consul had taken to come out of his bath. He must, or at least might, have heard some noise, for enough had been made. Seeing that he wanted to know the cause from me, I took up a newspaper ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... for all around her. A long talk with this lady was the introduction to Esther's school experience. It was a very varied talk; it roved over a great many fields and took looks into others; it was not inquisitive or prying, and yet Esther felt as if her interlocutor were probing her through and through, and finding out all she knew and all she did not know. In the latter category, it seemed to Esther, lay almost everything she ought to have known. Perhaps ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... with Dude, and warned him against coming to the Pine Street place. You see, they had another rendezvous out in the country, a haunted house, the reputation of which would keep prying country boys ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... a shower to take shelter under a tree, we may improve that opportunity for a more minute inspection of some of Nature's works. I have stood under a tree in the woods half a day at a time, during a heavy rain in the summer, and yet employed myself happily and profitably there prying with microscopic eye into the crevices of the bark or the leaves or the fungi at my feet. "Riches are the attendants of the miser; and the heavens rain plenteously upon the mountains." I can fancy that it would be ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... of course, in the early Church and throughout the Middle Ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mould. Without some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual edification they were considered futile too much prying into the secrets of Nature was very generally held to be dangerous both to body and soul; only for showing forth God's glory and his purposes in the creation were such studies praiseworthy. The great ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... graciously received. He saw at the opera General Clinton, who had come home on a winter leave of absence, and who was next to meet him on a field of battle in America. But, mindful of his own hostile designs, he deemed it proper to forbear from prying into the military forces of the kingdom, and declined an invitation to visit the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... his eyelids as if he suspected me of mocking him, but personal privacy is the most rigid convention of the Dry-towns and such mockery showed a sensible disregard for prying questions if I did not choose to answer them. He questioned ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... world, when she had every reason to expect, that, by concealing it for a season, it might be veiled for ever? Was it not, on the contrary, pardonable, that, in such an emergency, a young woman, in such a situation, should be found far from disposed to make a confidant of every prying gossip, who, with sharp eyes, and eager ears, pressed upon her for an explanation of suspicious circumstances, which females in the lower—he might say which females of all ranks, are so alert in noticing, that they sometimes discover ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... stole questioning glances at him. He could see that the boy was not his usual self, but he did not guess the cause of his changed manner. With his usual prying way he began: ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... or not he should confide in someone, Captain Carrington or Major Borden. He would doubtless need another man to help him, even if the location should be easily determined, which, however, was most unlikely. For him, alone, to go prying about on Greenberry Point, would surely occasion comment and arouse suspicion—which would not be so likely if there were two of them, and especially if one were a well-known resident ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... hypocrisy of those tones, and they sounded in his ear like the suppressed hiss of a deadly serpent. He had always suspected that this man hated him to the death; and he felt now that he was come with his stealthy-tread and his almost supernatural power of prying observation, to read the very inmost secrets of his heart. He knew that he longed for nothing so much as the power to hurl him from his place and to reign in his stead; and the instinct of self-defence roused him. He started ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... victualler in the district, knew it well. But John Skelton, the satirical poet of the fifteenth century, undoubtedly enjoyed its hospitality, for he has left record in the following lines that he was acquainted with it: Intent on. signs, the prying eye, The George & Vulture will descry. Let none the outward Vulture fear, No Vulture host inhabits here. If too well used you deem ye then Take ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... effective picturing of the great catering business which was the other side of her husband and which she had taken on trust so long, she had in her heart a quite unreasonable feeling of shame that she should listen at all, a shyness, as though she was prying, as though this really did not concern her. She knew she had to listen and still she felt beyond her proper jurisdiction. It is against instinct, it is with an enormous reluctance that women are bringing their quick emotions, their flashing unstable intelligences, their essential romanticism, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the other books belonging to the same case with that which I looked into, I have no idea, having never dared to touch one of them; I believe, however, that Jane Ray was well acquainted with them, knowing, as I do, her intelligence and prying disposition. If she could be brought to give her testimony, she would doubtless unfold many curious ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... He was prying around in one of the bunks while saying this, as though he had suspicions; which Lub, who was anxiously watching him, hoped in his heart might turn out ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... to think that anything should be going on that he didn't know about first. You know he is very fond of prying into the affairs of other people, and he loves dearly to boast that there is nothing going on in the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows that he doesn't know about. So now his pride was hurt, ...
— The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver • Thornton W. Burgess
... Chaloner, who, in his turn, transferred it to Tompkins, a brother-in-law of Waller the poet, who was also implicated in the design which on that account came to be known as "Waller's Plot." Tompkins endeavoured to conceal it in a cellar, but it did not escape the prying eyes of parliamentary searchers. Early in the morning of the 31st May Tompkins was arrested, and in the course of time both he and Chaloner paid the penalty of their rashness by being hanged in front of their own houses, the one in Cornhill and the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humor, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... therefore, insisted on the army's retreating, so as to keep the communication open with Stade, where, in case of emergency, the English troops might be embarked. By adhering tenaciously to this opinion, and exhibiting other instances of a prying disposition, he had rendered himself so disagreeable to the commander-in-chief, that, in all appearance, nothing was so eagerly desired as an opportunity of removing him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... deliver unto us x. crowns, having great store in his coffers. Then (as the novelty of a thing doth accustom to stir mens minds to behold the same) many persons came on every side to see this bear: but Thrasileon, lest they should by curious viewing and prying perceive the truth, ran upon them to put them in feare that they durst not come nigh. The people said, Verily Demochares is right happy, in that after the death of so many beasts, hee hath gotten maugre fortunes head, so goodly a bear. Then Demochares ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... obliged to appear a few years since have done good in a few instances; but they have often played the most ridiculous pranks, and they have roused grave fears in minds unused to know fear of any kind. The peculiar prying questions, the successful attempts made to interfere with concerns which should not on any account be public property, the disposition to treat the people, whose mature wisdom is proclaimed from all political platforms, as little children, all ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... there are others who fear for you, and that has happened which you must hear. Not here! Come away from this, where we will be secure from prying eyes." ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... is still on the watch at that casement. If we stand here for a minute or two, perchance he may come out to see what delays you in this dark corner, in which case I may well give him a clout with my ax which will settle his prying." ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... long before Thule the wondrous ice-land of the North yielded her first secrets, and longer ere the Terra Australis of Finne was laid bare to the prying ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... only one recourse for me. I will have to leave Earth to complete the installation of my generator. The prying fools and mockers will not leave me alone, and nowhere on Earth can I have the needed solitude. I shall go to Venus—uninhabited, uninhabitable. Perhaps they will leave me alone for the month or two more I need to make my vessel suitable for interstellar drive. ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... simultaneously. He was beset by the problem that exercised even Scott's brain: "The devil of a difficulty is that one puzzles the skein in order to excite curiosity, and then cannot disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying fiend they have raised." ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... only remarking that he himself was going out, and should not return until after compline, and asking Dalaber to take care of the book and keep it safe till he should come and claim it, for it was dangerous to leave such volumes where any prying ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ascendancy, so that the power and the will to be reasonable may not be undermined. Reason is an operation in nature, and has its root there. Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... black trunk he sniffed and wrinkled up his nose indignantly. The black trunk was filled with the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies had looked such indignant, heart-broken ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... we are free of the city. It may conceal you from some prying eyes. I warrant you are ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... ever beast was yet. He seems to me, (your grace the word will pardon,) Like a long-legg'd grasshopper in the garden, Forever on the wing, and hops and sings The same old song, as in the grass he springs; Would he but stay there! no; he needs must muddle His prying nose ...
— Faust • Goethe
... nor two things nor twenty things!" answered Amy, looking sullen with the feeling of heaped-up wrong. "What would my mother say to see me served so! She used to trust me everywhere and always! I don't understand how those two prying suspicious old maids can be my ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... infernal Angel of Plague be at hand, and he, more mighty than armies, more terrible than Suleyman in his glory, can restore such pomp and majesty to the weakness of the Imperial city, that if, when HE is there, you must still go prying amongst the shades of this dead empire, at least you will tread the path with ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Mooney aboard, the other two clambered in and they started for the shore. Mooney was as purple as a grape and his arms were so stiff that two men, one on each side, could barely move them. Nearly a quart of water was got out of him, and they had an awful job prying open his jaws. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... were not present, the Count would employ a thousand ruses to reach his side; but it always seemed as if he found difficulty in inducing him to listen, and he treated him like a spoiled child, whose mother gratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny. Some prying persons having ventured to question the Comte de Lanty indiscreetly, that cold and reserved individual seemed not to understand their questions. And so, after many attempts, which the circumspection of all the members of the family rendered fruitless, no one sought to discover a ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... pheasants from all dangers save the small shot of those who have them fed. Tom Cobb waged war, a war of varying fortunes against the sacred bird. Sometimes for a whole season he would sell the victims of the carnage of the war with never a check to his ardor. In another season some prying gamekeeper would surprise him glutting his thirst for blood and gold, and an infuriated bench of magistrates would fine him. The fine was always paid. Tom Cobb was one of those thrifty souls who lay up money against ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... abandoned. Such places as these afford a secure harbor for the stranded wrecks of humanity, and many a fleeing criminal has passed years of his life in quiet localities, where he was removed from the toil and bustle, and the prying eyes of the officers of the law in the more ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... to make no size-up at all than to strain in observing the other man and make him aware of your close scrutiny. Such an inartistic size-up impresses a prospect disagreeably. He feels that you are prying into his personal characteristics. Therefore teach yourself to observe without seeming to look closely at the object of your size-up. Learn to observe unobserved; especially to perceive details without looking sharply. Your eyes and ears can take in specific points about your prospect ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... not get itself written. He had not the hardihood to inform her that he had amused himself with her sorrows, and that he had injured her by the exhibition of his love. And then that horrid Franco-Pole, whose prying eyes Julia had dared to disregard, because she had been proud of his love! If she had not been there, the case might have been easier. Harry, as he thought of this, forgot to remind himself that if Sophie had not interrupted him he would have floundered on from one danger ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... was in solitude, her sharp ears caught the noise of romping children in the playroom, and the frequent dropping of the sliding-doors upon the narrow individual cupboards, indicating an excessive rummaging of shelves. Cordelia knew full well the prying habits of the ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... I laughed at myself for allowing a prying old man like Meeker to upset my temper, and, as I rode back to the hotel, put the both of them out of my mind; but promised myself that I would take my revenge on the old pest in some way ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... was Roy!" exclaimed Lionel. "He would have had about time to get into the road, from the time we saw him under the tree. That the fellow is prying into my affairs and movements, I was made aware of to-day; but why he should watch my house I cannot imagine. We shall have an account to settle, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... o'er his, and the small mouth Seemed almost prying into his for breath; And, chafing him, the soft, warm hand of youth Recalled his answering spirits back from death; And, bathing his chill temples, tried to soothe Each pulse to animation, till beneath Its gentle touch and trembling ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... to follow his fellow down the mysterious river that defines the boundary between the known and the unknown, and charge him professionally till his soul has fled, and then charge a per diem to the county for prying into his internal economy and holding an inquest over the debris of mortality. I therefore hail this movement with joy and wish to encourage it in every way. It points toward a degree of enlightenment which will be in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... ordered Gibson. "This beam is so tight and scrambled that no prying jackass could even tell that it is communication. Have you ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... a prying mind; A heart that stirs, is hard to bind; A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind; Ye could ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... having intercepted a letter written by their enemy, Philip of Macedon, to his wife Olympia, so far from being moved by a curiosity of prying into the secrets of that relation, immediately sent the letter to the queen unopened. Philip was not their sovereign; nor were they inflamed with that violent animosity against him which attends ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... demonstrations. There was a prodigious number of stragglers from the Federal lines, as these were the bane of the country people. They sauntered along by twos and threes, rambling into all the fields and green-apple orchards, intruding their noses into old cabins, prying into smoke-houses, and cellars, looking at the stock in the stables, and peeping on tiptoe into the windows of dwellings. These stragglers were true exponents of Yankee character,—always wanting to know,—averse to discipline, eccentric in their orbits, entertaining profound contempt ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... you drop from? Glad to see you. Glad to see you. How came you prying into my new houses? Answer me that! Did you see my spouse as you came ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... hard knocks than profit. Such adventures may do for petty knaves, but they are not suited to me. The way to get wealthy is to strike at the rich. My idea is to establish some place in an out of the way quarter where there is no fear of prying neighbours, and to carry off and hide there the sons and daughters of wealthy men and put them to ransom. In the first instance I am going to undertake a private affair of my own; and as you will really run no risk in the matter, for I shall separate ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... do some thinking. He believed, in spite of a good deal of evidence to the contrary, that his best ideas came to him while walking. At any rate, it was a way of getting away from four walls and from the prying eyes and anxious looks of superiors. He sighed gently, crammed his hat onto his head and ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Hall and St. Mark's. His acquaintance with Willis; the questions he had asked at the Article-lecture; stray remarks at wine-parties—were treasured up, and strengthened the case against him. One time, on coming into his rooms, he found Freeborn, who had entered to pay him a call, prying into his books. A volume of sermons, of the school of the day, borrowed of a friend for the sake of illustrating Aristotle, lay on his table; and in his bookshelves one of the more philosophical of the "Tracts ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... was another disturbance in the household of Tonet, who, without waiting to take his costume off, thrashed his wife within an inch of her life for making a fool of him in public. And the Rector also brought the subject up while Dolores was prying him out of his uniform, and his flesh was gradually resuming its normal rotundity. He was sorry to say so, but that poor Rosario was crazy. Tonet might be all he might be—and it was true that brandy didn't do him any good! Just the same, it was a pity to see him tied to a woman about as ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... meannesses and weaknesses and sillinesses, all the things of which the subject himself was no doubt heartily ashamed and discarded as eagerly as possible. Such biographies give one the sense of a man diving in sewers, grubbing in middens, prying into cupboards, peeping round corners. To try as far as possible to surprise your hero, and to catch him off his guard, is a very different thing from being frank and candid. I remember once coming upon the track of one of these ghouls. He was writing a Life of a somewhat eccentric politician, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... you that three thousand. And you don't have to strain any point, either, to give me a job. When I want to work for you I'll sure tell you so. In the meantime, I don't know as it's very businesslike for you to go prying into my plans. You've accepted my note, and you've got your security, and what the hell ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... gray gloom of dawn he took a shovel; prying up a piece of sod, he laid it aside and began to dig. And while he dug he listened for another war-screech and gazed often and intently into the gloom. But there was no sound and nothing to see. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... were, and destitute of the appliances of the resident court. Richard hurrying hither and thither, and waiting upon every one, had little of the diversion of the affair; but he would willingly have taken treble the care and toil in the relief it was to be free from the prying mistrustful eyes of Hamlyn de Valence. Looking after little John of Dunster was, however, no small part of his trouble; the urchin was so certain to get into some mischief if left to himself— now treading on a lady's train, now upsetting a flagon of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hut he tossed the letter down on to his table. "Confound it!..." he said under his breath. "Fancy women down here, staring and chattering, and prying! I suppose they will expect the entire police force in the neighbourhood to be at their disposal, and nothing else will matter at all." His face grew more and more gloomy. "If I had only started to M'rekwas yesterday, I could have been absent a fortnight, and by ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... on her knees beside him, with her arms around him. She had a little leisure now to observe that Wallis, the ever-resourceful, had tied the tramp neatly with the outdoor man's suspenders, which were nearer the surface than his own, and succeeded in prying off the still unappeased Foxy, who evidently was wronged at not having the tramp to finish. They carried him off, into the back kitchen garden. Allan, now that he was certain of Phyllis's safety, paid them not the ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... Other prying ingenious Men make other conjectures, as to this mazing Controversy thus Vossius delivers himself; The Antients cannot be reconcil'd, but I rather incline to their opinion who think Bucolicks were invented either by the ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... who at once resumed his prying and gazing. This did not suit the other's temper at all, for he was above all things a sociable soul. So after a minute he cut in again on ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... surmises ventured upon as to the identity between the person whom I had seen enter the house with the young girl. As for my own name, it was blazoned forth in anything but a gratifying manner. I was spoken of in one paper—a kind friend told me this—as the prying Miss Amelia. As if my prying had not given the police their only clue to the identification of ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... of ghostly draughts and blasts creeping through chambers cleft by yawning courts and open corridors and topped by that skeleton dome. And as St. George turned from the window he saw that the door leading into the hall, urged by some nimble gust, imaginative or prying, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... bird policeman which patrols the beach. Vigilant and obnoxiously interfering, the policeman has a long and curiously curved beak, designed for probing into the affairs of crabs, and unless the "hatter" has hastily stopped the mouth of its shaft with a bundle of loose sand—which to the prying bird signifies "Out! Please return after lunch!"—will be disposed of with scant ceremony and no grace, for the manners of the policeman ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... strong log pen floored with rough-hewn slabs and fitted with a ponderous movable lid made of other slabs pinned on stout cross pieces. But, satisfied with his handiwork, the captain now arose, and, prying up one end of the lid with a lever, set the trigger and baited it with a huge piece of bacon. He then piled a great quantity of rock upon the already heavy lid to further guard against the escape of any bear so unfortunate as to enter, and shouldering his axe and rifle ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... flowed all stray news about the country. He was an abstract and chronicle of the time; and could tell you where the Earl of Lancaster mustered his forces, the day of their march, and the very purposes and projects of that turbulent noble. Even the secrets of my lady's bower did not elude the prying of this indefatigable artist; at any rate, he had the credit of knowing all that he assumed, which amounted very much to the same thing as though his knowledge were unlimited: a nod and a wink supplying the place of intelligence, when his wondering neophytes ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... very old—old in years and old in ways. The neighbours thought he must have money hidden away somewhere. But no one knew anything definitely, for Brandur had always been reserved and uncommunicative, and permitted no prying in his house or on his possessions. There was, however, one thing every settler in those parts knew: Brandur had accumulated large stores of various kinds. Anyone passing along the highway ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old men and women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies. I observed them principally early in the morning, when they issued from their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then, the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the birds and flowers and shrubs and insects in poetry, and it makes us very happy to know they are all round us, innocent little things like mice and centipedes and goldenrods (until hay fever time), but as for prying into their affairs ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... strange names all glanced toward the door, and all flaming, curious, prying eyes were fixed with astonishment and admiration upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... a bankrupt, and cast away the robe of a Town Councillor. He had submitted to the inquisitiveness of the Official Receiver, and to the harsh prying of those rampant baying beasts, his creditors. He had laid bare his books, his correspondence, his lack of method, his domestic extravagance, and the distressing fact that he had continued to trade long after he knew himself to be insolvent. He had for several months, in the interests ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... question Rosendo suddenly became less loquacious. Jose then felt that he was suspected of prying into matters which Rosendo did not wish to discuss with him, and so he pressed the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... as though interested in the surroundings, while all the time he was eyeing the mountaineer furtively—as it were, prying to the inner man, or measuring the strength of the outer man. He lighted a fresh pipe and seated himself on a rough bench beside the table in the middle of the room, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much gold above, in Quebec. You know that. So very simple to take it out of our atom, grow large with it, to what we call up there the size of a hundred feet. I haf a place, a room, secluded from prying eyes under a dome-roof. I become very tall, holding a piece of gold. It is large when I am a hundred feet tall. So I haf collected much gold. They think I own a mine. I haf a smelter and my gold quartz I make ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various |
