"Prying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been deactivated nearly a year. I had to bring you out here piece by piece, don't you remember? They'll never think to look for you in space, we can be together every trip while the ship refuels. Just think, darling, no prying human eyes, no commands, no rules—only us for an hour or two. I know it isn't very long—" He stared at the floor a minute. "There's only one trouble. Elizabeth, you'll have to stay dismantled when I'm not here, it'll mean weeks ...
— The Love of Frank Nineteen • David Carpenter Knight
... too—had got to change their notions—notions stuck as fast in their belief as his mountains were stuck in the ground—before that map could suit him. To think harder, he covered his face with his hands. The gale rattled his window. He failed to hear Enos just outside his door, alone and very drunk, prying off the tin sign of John March, Gentleman. He did not hear even the soft click of the latch or the yet softer footsteps that brought the drunkard close before his desk; but at the first word he glanced up and found himself covered ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... the chest was fastened by a lengthy thong of oxhide, which now lay in a coil on the floor. Bound round and round, twisted and intertangled, and finally tied with a special and secret knot (the ends being concealed), the thong of leather secured the contents of the chest from prying eyes or thievish hands. With axe or knife, of course, the knot might easily have been severed, but no one could obtain access to the room except the retainers of the house, and which of them, even if unfaithful, would dare to ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... returned Eve, assuming a solemnity suited to a matter of interest, "that our secret is discovered. While we were indulging our curiosity about this unfortunate ship, Mr. Dodge was gratifying the laudable industry of the Active Inquirer, by prying into our state-rooms." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Maitland's new quarters so often, and stayed there so long, was because I was always permitted to relieve him of his watch. With a telephone receiver strapped to my right ear, and my eyes fastened upon the screen of the camera obscura, I would sit by the hour prying into the affairs of the two people in the next room. I tried for a number of days to ease my conscience by telling myself that I was labouring in the cause of justice, and was not a common eavesdropper. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... entrance of which Squanto placed several strong boughs, and spread a cloak of deer-skin over them. This was done ostensibly for the purpose of keeping out the cold night wind, but really to serve as a screen from the prying eyes of Coubitant, whose intentions he much mistrusted, and also as an obstacle to any attempt he might possibly make to violate the laws of honor and hospitality, by a secret attack on the person of the ambassador. Whether the savage actually meditated any such ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... their evidence to the legal authorities; and once, with as few details as possible, when he had an interview with the widow of the murderer, the beloved of the victim. The particulars of this interview he never divulged, for he considered Emily's grief too sacred to be exposed to the prying eyes of the curious and the unfeeling. She left the neighborhood immediately, leaving her worldly affairs in Wensleben's hands, who soon disposed of the property for her. She returned to her native country, with the resolution of spending ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... certainly it is our duty to examine; it is our interest, too: but it must be with discretion, with an attention to all the circumstances and to all the motives; like sound judges, and not like cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders, prying into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, to the whole tenor of your member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty,—or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... got to a state where simply to be entrusted with great financial responsibility is enough to constitute a man a criminal; to warrant a newspaper in prying into the intimate details of his life, and in presenting him in ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... through the hilly, muddy country were not as firm as those previously traversed, a contingency the boys had not taken into consideration. At times the mules were unable to move the wagon, even though all the minstrels were pushing or prying to the extent of their muscular power. Instead of dust, as on the first day out, the minstrels were covered with mud, from shoes ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... A prying rat, believing that She needed change of diet, In search of such disturbed this much- To-be-desired quiet. To say the least, this tactless beast Was apt to rudely roister: She tapped his shell, and called him—well, A name ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... it is, but some god's silent purpose is beneath this. Circe loves not Polyaenos without some reason; a great torch is always flaming when these names meet! Take me in your arms then, if you will; there's no prying stranger to fear, and your 'brother' is far away from this spot!" So saying, Circe clasped me in arms that were softer than down and drew me to the ground which was ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... "and you may have been mistaken, for the light is waning fast. It were ill for anyone I caught prying about here. But come in, sir knight; my hovel is not what your lordship is accustomed to, but we may as well talk there as ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... father,' said I, meaning the Father of Lies. 'Never you mind,' said he, and gave me a cunning wink, and hiccuped, and leaning up against the door, with his other eye against the door-post, began to babble of how he had been prying in my room, and how he had gone to the police that morning, and how they had taken down everything he had to say—''siffiwas a ge'm,' said he. Then I suddenly realised I was in a hole. Either I should have to tell these police my little secret, and get ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... I know," replied the irritated Cockney, who swiftly resented this prying into his affairs. Remembering himself instantly, he turned with a fine red in his face to the girl on the dais. "I beg your pardon, Your Grace, for forgetting myself. It was none of 'is business," he said, defending ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... When he had but fourpence left, he came to a public-house, and thought that the money must go. So he called for three pennyworth of wine and a pennyworth of bread. As he ate and drank, the flavour of roasting geese tickled his nose, and, peeping and prying about, he saw that the landlord had placed two geese in the oven. Then it occurred to him what his companion had told him about his knapsack, so he determined to put it to the test. Going out, he stood before ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... occasion of the emeute. The principal entrance of the house was in the Place Baudoyer; it was tolerably large, surrounded by gardens, inclosed in the Rue Saint-Jean by the shops of toolmakers, which protected it from prying looks, and was walled in by a triple rampart of stone, noise, and verdure, like an embalmed mummy in its triple coffin. The man we have just alluded to walked along with a firm step, although he was no longer in his early prime. His dark cloak ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "cute." A very striking, and, all things considered, a remarkable characteristic was that I hated, as I still do, with all my soul, gossip about other people and their affairs; never read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested curiosity, prying, and inquisitiveness as I did the devil. I owe a great development of this to a curious incident. It must have been about the time when I first went to college, that I met at Cape May a naval officer, who roomed with me in a cottage, a farm-house near a hotel, and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sir. I saw them make lots of niggers stand up, and then they shot them down like hogs. The next morning I was lying around there waiting for the boat to come up. The secesh would be prying around there, and would come to a nigger, and say: "You ain't dead, are you?" They would not say any thing; and then the secesh would get down off their horses, prick them in their sides, and say: "Damn you, you ain't dead; get up." ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... have his mind diverted. He fished out a letter from his pocket, rolled himself, with his heavy pipe tobacco, a cigarette as thick as his finger, and fell to puffing such huge clouds as would discourage other bees from prying into the thicket. Then he remarked irrelevantly ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... At the dead of night, a soldier of the watch was going his rounds on the outside of the breastwork, listening, if perchance he might catch, as was not unusual, a portion of the conversation among the beleaguered burghers within. Prying about on every side, he at last discovered a chink in the wall, the result, doubtless, of the last cannonade, and hitherto overlooked. He enlarged the gap with his fingers, and finally made an opening ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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. When he had dug a hole several feet deep he carried an armful of heavy leather ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... sparkling in tepid sunshine. Then up again, by a steep incline, to a signal station perched high above the sea. Attilio wished to salute a soldier-relative working here. I remained discreetly in the background; it would never do for a foreigner to be seen prying into Marconi establishments in this confounded "zone of defense." Another hour by meandering woodland paths brought us to where, from the summit of a hill, we looked down upon Levanto, smiling merrily in ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... form, came stealing along the walls, moving whatever he thought could seclude a man from his observation. Its extended legs and arms were protruded forward with great strides, and its sharp eyes, on the watch to discover the object of its search, kept prying, with the assistance of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the subtlest agents of his power,—one on whom he relied more than the clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of his armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,—the searching, prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam through chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of the deeds, but the hearts ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... spirit, which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... able to proceed. While we were sitting on the ground, I perceived a movement in the boughs, and saw that the monkeys were coming back to have a further look at us; and presently the boughs above our heads were filled with curious prying black, grey, and yellow faces. I pointed them out to ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Guido, he is best kept conformable to modern tastes, I suspect, by nobody's prying too closely into the earlier relations between the Duke and his handsome minion. The insistently curious may resort to history to learn at what price the favors of Duke Alessandro were secured and retained: it is ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... fell into so deep discussion that never had he been such a negligent host. And when Mrs. Gunning left the withdrawing-room, it was with an imperial head held high, and a flush in her cheek which became her so well that the most prying female eye would not give her ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... descent with modification in 1809 meant, to all intents and purposes, and was understood to mean, what it means now, or ought to mean, to most people.) "The universal stir," says Mr. Allen on the following page, "and deep prying into evolutionary questions which everywhere existed among scientific men in his early days was naturally communicated to a lad born of a scientific family and inheriting directly in blood and bone the biological tastes and tendencies of ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... the end of the board with the mallet, and then he got the wedge under and pried. Ruth pulled. Stephen kept hammering and prying, and Ruth held on to all he gained, until they slipped the wedge along gradually, to where the board was nailed again, to the middle joist or stringer. Then a few more vigorous strokes, and a little ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Derwentwater, "if there is any mystery, all right; I don't want to be prying;" but, as was natural, this only increased his curiosity. After an interval, he broke forth again. "A little mystery," he said, "suits them; a woman ought to be mysterious, with her long robes falling round her, and ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... in a dry tone. He was giddy, flurried, exasperated, by the prying and irritating mode of the examination, which scarcely gave him time to breathe. The magistrate's questions fell upon him more thickly than the blows of the blacksmith's hammer upon the red-hot iron which he is anxious to beat into shape before ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... should unfortunately break a man's legs in his rash driving, will be able to pension him handsomely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman's existence for her, will make it up to her with expensive bon-bons, packed up and directed by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be prying and analytic in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the character of a confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentlemanly epithets about a young man of birth and fortune; and ladies, with that fine intuition ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... heard, but scarce might speak; His trembling tones were faint and weak: "O Giant King, in vain we try The purpose of the foe to spy. Their strength and number none may tell, And Rama guards his legions well. He leaves no hope to prying eyes, And parley with the chiefs denies: Each road and path a Vanar guard, Of mountain size, has closed and barred. Soon as my feet an entrance found By giants was I seized and bound, And wounded sore I fell beneath ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... thunder, Or the low rumblings earth's regions under; And sometimes like a gentle whispering Of all the secrets of some wond'rous thing That breathes about us in the vacant air; So that we look around with prying stare, Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial lymning, And catch soft floatings from a faint-heard hymning; To see the laurel wreath, on high suspended, That is to crown our name when life is ended. Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice, And from the ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... up a little, Mr. Duff," said the captain to the second officer, who was once more at his post. "She is a man of war, I think, and though I have no love for their prying ways, we must not seem to want to avoid her, now that she evidently intends ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... countenance. What's the matter with you, young man? Get the axe! For God's sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry it open! Look here, said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-cruet, so as to have one hand free; look here; are you talking about prying open any of my doors? —and with that she seized my arm. What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you, shipmate? In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand the whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet .. to one side of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... seeker after truth. V. be curious &c adj.; take an interest in, stare, gape; prick up the ears, see sights, lionize; pry; nose; rubberneck [U.S.]. Adj. curious, inquisitive, burning with curiosity, overcurious; inquiring &c 461; prying, snoopy, nosy, peering; prurient; inquisitorial, inquisitory^; curious as a cat; agape &c (expectant) 507. Phr. what's the matter? what next? consumed with curiosity; curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought it back. curiouser and curiouser ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have taught me to see; why should I not help you to see more when I can do it so easily? My thought was that you would lend me the glass occasionally, so that I might try to keep pace with you. I've been using the microscope too much—prying into nature, as Burt would say, with the spirit of ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... embargo's off at last; Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvass o'er the mast. From aloft the signal's streaming, Hark! the farewell gun is fired, Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here's a rascal Come to task all, Prying from the Custom-house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket, Ere we sail on ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... 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
... blinding effect of custom, indeed, could ever have shut good women's eyes to the shameful indecorousness of wedding ceremonial. We drag a young girl before the prying gaze of all the world at the very crisis in her life, when natural modesty would most lead her to conceal herself from her dearest acquaintance. And our women themselves have grown so blunted by use to the hatefulness of the ordeal that many of them face it now with inhuman ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... gross and material 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 in a different mood. Experience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... with their crowbars, and the big stone started from its place and rolled down from the pile. And the men got it over to the trench, sometimes prying it with their crowbars and sometimes rolling it with their hands, and they set it in its place on top ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... It was Henrietta Hen. Being a prying sort of person she had followed Turkey Proudfoot around the house to see what happened when he and ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... donned these things for the first time as parts of a manifold and complicated wedding garment, why should so much fine needle-work and delicate trimming be prepared to be stowed away out of sight of prying mortals, for whose vision women are presumed to dress themselves? Are they got up to show to friends and excite envy, and to fill the minds of other young people with a sense of ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... always been taken for granted. Then you could have drunk your half a pint, your quart, or your measurable fraction of a hogshead, in peace and quiet at the bar of the microscopic pub called The Pigeons, without fear of one of those enemies of Society—your Society—coming spying and prying round after you or any chance acquaintance you might pick up, to help you towards making that fraction a respectable one. If it was summer-time, and you sat in the little back-garden that had a ladder down to the river, you might feel ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... hands. The fingernail itself was like a chip of chilled steel. I could flex the nail neither with my other hand nor by biting it; between my teeth it had the uncomfortable solidity of a sheet of metal that conveyed to my brain that the old teeth should not try to bite too hard. I tried prying on a bit of metal with the fingernail; inserting the nail in the crack where a metal cylinder had been formed to make a table leg. I might have been able to pry the crack wider, but the rest of my body did not have the power nor the rigidity necessary to drive the tiny lever ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... his card. In fact, he is delicate to the point of sensitiveness about allowing any publicity to attach to his address. He communicates it confidentially to those with whom he has business dealings, but he carefully conceals it from the prying world. As soon as the world knows it he moves. I once asked a chief of the Bohemian tribe whose residence was the world, but whose temporary address was sometimes Paris, why he had moved from the Quartier Latin to ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... but Miss Arabella herself was the chief objection. She was by no means handsome, and in addition she was possessed of a sharp tongue, and, as Captain Josh truly said, "a long nose which was always prying into other people's business." These frailties naturally increased as she grew older until she became a dread not only to her brother, Tom, but to all her ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... 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
... commanded to obey me in all things, Captain Goody, and does obedience lie in prying out my business? Another word and I will report you to those in Spain who know how to deal with mischief-makers. If you would see Dunwich again, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... as he spoke, and the next instant I was restored to my usual calmness, as far as the prying eyes which were fastened ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... investigator painted the gambling evil of the New York of the sixties. The dens of chance were in aristocratic neighbourhoods and superbly appointed. Heavy blinds or curtains, kept drawn all day, hid the inmates from prying eyes. Within, rosewood doors, deep carpets, and mirrors of magnificent dimensions. The dinner table spread with silver and gold plate, costly chinaware, and glass of exquisite cut: the viands embracing ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... been your friends, your tastes, how you have spent your time. Don't be foolish, young sir," he added sharply, as he saw the colour rise in my cheeks: "you will have a trust reposed in you such as few men have ever borne before. This prying into your life is from no motives of private curiosity. Wait until you hear the importance of the things which I am going to say to you." I was impressed into silence. The Duke continued—"You have heard, my young friend," he said, "of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see it through, he says. Isn't it fine of him? There is just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying entomological people overlooked. Anyway, we are going to devote next summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something exciting, Duane. Promise you won't ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... committees before which many theatrical managers were 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 combine to make the aspect of ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... intention. First of all, he was full of compunction for his bad temper of the night before; he was also slightly ashamed of what he was going to do; and then, too, he knew that she would resent his prying. What he did must be done with tact. He had no wish to make her unhappy over it. And so, when he saw her again, he did his best to make her forget how disagreeable ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... hand upon my arm, looked in my face with a long, stern, prying gaze, and his cheek grew more ghastly and livid with every moment. At last he turned, and muttered something between his teeth; and at that moment the door opened, and Thornton was announced. Glanville sprung towards him and seized him ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... however, Bud's ears caught the faintest breath of a hiss at the window, and he rolled softly out of bed on to the floor in his stocking feet. Sims was there and another man with him, and both were prying at the bars of the window with ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... negotiation, lay aside all their own most important occasions, and to be so retchless, heedless, and careless of what might concern the management of their proper affairs as to mind nothing else but a suspicious espying and prying into the secret deportments of their wives, and how to coop, shut up, hold at under, and deal cruelly and austerely with them by all the harshness and hardships that an implacable and every way inexorable jealousy can devise and suggest, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Tommy said, when he heard of it. "But you can tell him, Elspeth, that we shall allow no more of those prying women to come in." And he really meant this, for he was a modest man that day, was Tommy. Nevertheless, he was, perhaps, a little annoyed to find, as the days went on, that no more ladies came to be ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... mysteries were explained to us by Lieut. Gray, assisted by private instruction from those who had served in France. On the 31st the Battalion moved to a new bivouac area closer to the wadi, screened from prying eyes at Gaza by a gentle rise in the ground. Rations were a bit thin at this time, with the railhead so far behind us and so large a force to be fed, but the situation was greatly eased by the fact that we could now ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... woman has been grossly libelled; she is vain, frivolous, and fond of admiration, but nothing more. For a whole fortnight I have been prying into her life, but I can't hit upon anything in it to give us a pull over her. The debt may help us, however. Does her husband know that she ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... abasement, worse than a myriad mice, crept up and down over his soul. And the, as reflection began to assert itself, sheer terror took the place of humiliation. With every minute that passed the train was rushing nearer to the crowded and bustling terminus where dozens of prying eyes would be exchanged for the one paralysing pair that watched him from the further corner of the carriage. There was one slender despairing chance, which the next few minutes must decide. His fellow-traveller might ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... playing in the yard. Sally's eyes came to a focus upon him, crouching by a hole in the fence which kindly old Mrs. Wallingford had erected as a protection against the prying inquisitiveness of an eight-year-old determined to make life ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... however, furious to discover that Henrietta proceeded, more prudently than speakers on the stage who regularly allow themselves to be overheard by eaves-droppers, for she drew together the heavy damask curtains of the alcove and retired behind them with Anicza, so that neither prying eyes nor listening ears could find anything there ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... encyclopaedia of history, antiquities and chronology, a story book, a code of laws and conduct, a manual of ethics, a treatise on astronomy, and a medical handbook; sometimes indelicate, sometimes irreverent, but always completely and persistently in earnest. Its trifling frivolity, its curious prying into topics which were better left alone, the occasional beauty of its spiritual and imaginative fancies, make it one of the most remarkable books that human wit and human industry have ...
— Hebrew Literature
... some leaf) at the windows. Who has not heard such sounds, and who in his heart of hearts has not been only too well aware that they are nocturnal, exclusively nocturnal. The shadows of evening bring with them visitors; prying, curious visitors; grim and ghastly visitors; grey, esoteric visitors; visitors from a world seemingly inconsequent, wholly incomprehensible. Mrs. Gordon did not believe in ghosts. She scoffed at the idea of ghosts, and, like so many would-be wits, unreasonably brave by day, and the ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... despair To swell the mighty store-house of things known. In vain the sea expostulates and raves; It cannot cover from the keen world's sight The curious wonders of its coral caves. And so, despite thy caution or thy tears, The prying fingers of detective years Shall drag THY secret out into ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Anna is sternly loyal to her husband Paolo, but refuses to submit to his incessant prying into her individuality and questioning of ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... turned readily upon the newcomer the moment her secret labors had been hidden from prying male eyes. And there was no mistaking her cordiality for ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and absently put the note in a little rack over the mantelpiece. Then, recollecting that a prying servant or landlady might misinterpret it, he transferred it to his pocket. After breakfast, having satisfied himself before the mirror that his dress was faultless, and his expression saintly, he went out and travelled by rail from Sloane Square to West Kensington, whence ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... king!—Well doth he fare Who breathes in this rosy light, But, ah, it is horrible down there! And man must not tempt the heavenly Might, Or ever seek, with prying unwholesome, What he ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Avoid all prying; what you're told, keep back, Though wine or anger put you on the rack; Nor puff your own, nor slight your friend's pursuits, Nor court the Muses when he'd chase the brutes. 'Twas thus the Theban brethren jarred, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Gape deep enough? Ye winds that round me roar, Pity I crave, on rocks amid the sea— 'Tis Turnus, I, a willing prayer who pour— Dash me this ship, or drive it on the shore, 'Mid ruthless shoals, where no Rutulian eyes May see my shame, nor prying Fame explore." Thus he, and, tost in spirit, as he cries, This plan and that in turn his wavering ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... themselves with the vast waste of tunneled mountains denting the Austrian sky-line to the northward; and all day long Dominion reconnoitering parties wandered among valleys, alms, forest, and peaks in company sometimes with Italian alpinists, sometimes by themselves, prying, poking, snooping about with all the emotionless pertinacity of Teuton tourists preoccupied with ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... a well-worn road running due north from the village. This was to conceal their true line of march from the knowledge of the curious villagers. But when they were well away from the place, and safe from all prying eyes, they swung to the east and marched straight through open country for the foot-hills, plainly in view a score ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Higginbotham, in his cultivated, rather high voice. And he spoke with some heat. "This will teach them a lesson not to go prying into other ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... the lights of our great acetylene lamps (lit before the sky turned from opal to amethyst) prying into dark doorways and windows as Roentgen rays ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 1783, while it added an infant giant to the catalogue of earthly "principalities and powers," also liberated from the fetters of commercial, as well as political restraints, a people active, restless, daring, prying, and enterprising to the last degree; a people whose skill in navigation and swift-sailing vessels rendered them absolutely intangible to an enemy that took occasion to chase them, while their courage, when they thought proper to "stand to it," as dame Quickly says, made ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... that puzzle older brains have been met in simpler terms and solved wisely and well. The spirit and habit of active and even prying observation has been greatly quickened. Industrial processes, institutions, and methods of administration and organization have been appropriated and put into practice. The boys have grown more companionable and rational, learning many a lesson ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the competent witness of himself, who it known only by himself, (n. 18, p. 777.) In the second book he explains the Trinity, which we profess in the form of baptism, and says, that faith alone in believing, and sincerity and devotion in adoring, this mystery ought to suffice without disputing or prying, and laments, that by the blasphemies of the Sabellians and Arians, who perverted the true sense of the scriptures, he was compelled to dispute of things ineffable and incomprehensible which only necessity can excuse, (n. 25.) He then proves the eternal generation of the Son, the procession ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... down on the beach, sheltered from prying eyes by a sand dune, and directly opposite the crutch, which wobbled with every wave that struck it. "Think what it means," said Eloise, "and think what it might mean. It might be part of a shipwreck, or someone who needed it very much might have dropped it accidentally out of a boat, or the one ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... Gertie, prying her fingers away from those other detaining ones. "I'd fit into a three-room flat like a whale in a kitchen sink. I'm going back to Beloit, Wisconsin. I've learned my lesson all right. There's a fellow there waiting for me. I used to think he was too slow. But say, he's got the nicest ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... piercing eyes, made more prominent by the unusual lowness of the forehead, told more surely than language, of their owner's propensity to investigate the affairs of her neighbor, and proved her claim to the complimentary title, they had bestowed upon her, viz:—"That prying old mother, Wynn." But what was still more strange, was the silver hair of both these old people, and which their age did not seem to warrant. The lady, however, with a little lingering of feminine vanity in her heart, had made an awkward attempt at hair dye of ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Nassaus and Barneveld and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty; and after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings in the dark, he is not surprised if those who were systematically deceived did not always arrive ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, "O Lord, Thou knowest." Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... doing all this time? She did not mean to keep prying, but for the life of her she could not help throwing out casual inquiries. His reply was always, "Business"; and he would go on to give her details—all of which were tiresome. How much was he seeing of Fanny Carr and her detestable ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... straight course over the immense waste of water. Now was no more land to be seen at either hand; but the sky fitted close upon the edges of the sea like a dome of glass on a man's forehead. There was neither cover from the sun nor hiding-place from the prying concourse of the stars; the wind came searchingly, the waters stirred beneath it, or, being driven, heaped themselves up into towers of ruin. The cordage flacked, the strong ribs creaked; like a beast over-burdened the whole ship groaned, wallowing in a ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... this note, Thurston scarcely knew how to get it at once into Marian's hands. To put it into the village post-office was to expose it to the prying eyes of Miss Nancy Skamp. To send it to Old Fields, by a messenger, was still more hazardous. To slip it into Marian's own hand, he would have to wait the whole week until Sunday—and then might not be able to do ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... raised to a fine art in a Native State—where a man's life is worth far less than a cow's if the State be a Hindu one—provided that the prying eyes of British Political Officers are not turned that way. True, Dermot was in British territory, but in such an uncivilised part of it that his removal ought not to be difficult considering his habit of wandering alone about the hills ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... yet more malicious, an accusation not only of crimes which this gentleman did not commit, but which have not yet been committed, an accusation formed by prying into futurity, and exaggerating misfortunes which are yet to come, and which may probably be prevented. Well may any man, my lords, think himself in danger, when he hears himself charged not with high crimes and misdemeanours, not with accumulative treason, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... some excuse: he may betray, by hesitation and confusion, that he utters a falsehood; he must expose himself to be questioned; he must open the door and violate your privacy in some degree; besides there are other doors, there are windows at least, through which a prying eye can detect some indication that betrays the mystery. How different is it here! The bore arrives; the outer door is shut; it is black and solid, and perfectly impenetrable, as is your secret; the doors ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... clever, Charlie. She knew too much of our affairs, and was always prying into things that did not concern her. So father took an antipathy to the poor creature, and because she has served our family for so long sent her to care for the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... my companion, "and a famous one, Mr. Renault, for he drove certain wild cattle at a headlong gallop from the pastures at Saratoga—he and I and another drover they call Dan'l Morgan. We have been strolling here among these graves, a-prying for old friends—brother drovers. We found one drover's grave—a lad called Cresap—hard by the arch ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... that differs from the ordinary one. When the procession has wound its way through every street, the girls go to another house, and having shut the door against the eager prying crowd of boys who follow at their heels, they strip the Death and pass the naked truss of straw out of the window to the boys, who pounce on it, run out of the village with it without singing, and fling the dilapidated effigy into the neighbouring brook. This done, the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... a few bruises, and after an hour's exercise with rails and saplings, we succeeded in prying the wheels out of the mire. Then the driver discovered that one of the horses had lost his shoes, and insisted on having them replaced before he proceeded. We were midway between two 'relay-houses,' each being six miles distant, and the Jehu decided on taking the shoeless horse back to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he often declared, "concern nobody but myself. I trust in you, Gabrielle dear, to guard my secrets from prying eyes. I know that you yourself must often be puzzled, but ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... nights upon the hills, gazing as I do on the lustrous planet! Who will revel with her amid those old superstitions? Who, from our own unlegended woods, will evoke their yet undetected, haunting spirits? Who peer with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws, and challenge the whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter? Who laugh merrily over the stupid guesswork of pedants, that never mingled with the infinitude of nature, through love exhaustless and all-embracing, as we have? Poor girl! she ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... a round one thousand guilders! Weep not, I say. First, loose you, heart and shoes, From Hamelin. Put off now, the dust, the mould, The cobble-stones, the little prying windows; The streets that dream o' What the Neighbors Say. Think you were never born there. Think some Breath Wakened you early—early on one morning, Deep in a Garden (but you knew not whose), Where voices of wild waters bubbling ran, Shaking down music from glad mountain-tops,— Where ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... him forthwith in his flight. It appears, that the story of the captain's adventure was already pretty well known in the public places of the town, and as a visit of the marshal from Boston was a very extraordinary event in a place usually so quiet, a prying character who was upon the spot asked him if he was not looking for Captain E——. Upon receiving an affirmative reply,—"That's the man," said he, "you have just spoken to." The marshal started in pursuit and the captain had called out to such persons ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... such. Hence it forms no live feature of the language-mechanism and must be ignored in defining the general form of the language. The caution is all the more necessary, as it is precisely the foreigner, who approaches a new language with a certain prying inquisitiveness, that is most apt to see life in vestigial features which the native is either completely unaware of or feels merely as ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... lighted a fresh stogie. He played nervously with the ends of his fingers and wished he were out of the ward and safely out of range of the prying eyes of the press. In fancy he could hear his daughter screaming with horror at the sight of his name spread in glaring letters before the world and thought of her with a flush of abhorrence on her young face ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... two hundred years ago, you are now not over-praised, but more worshipped, with more servility and ostentation, studied with more prying curiosity than you may approve. Are not the Molieristes a body who carry adoration to fanaticism? Any scrap of your handwriting (so few are these), any anecdote even remotely touching on your life, any fact that may prove your house was numbered 15 not 22, is eagerly seized and discussed ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... pictures just finish them. I had no idea I was so good-looking. There is one apiece for each teacher, one for Tom, one for Dr. Vane, and one for Mr. Carson. That leaves me three over; and there may be someone I have forgotten in my list, so these will probably come in handy yet. And that prying Cassandra hasn't found out about a ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... They who lead the "simple life" may not make as much stir in the world as some others we know: but never make the mistake of thinking the life one lacking in interest. These "little journeys" of mine were for the purpose of prying into the secrets of our friends "the owls." As far back as the uncovered picture-writing of the ancients, Mr. Owl has been the synonym for wisdom. Does ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... But prying Friends o'er-heard my Vow, And murmur'd in my Ear; Damon hath neither Flocks nor Plough, Girl what thou dost beware: They us'd so long their cursed Art, And damn'd deluding sham; That I agreed with them to part, ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... head to foot with excitement and delight, and read as follows: "It is true, as you say so eloquently—too eloquently for my peace of mind—that goddesses can only love mortals. At eleven o'clock, when all the world is sunk in slumber, and no prying human eyes open to gaze upon her, Diana will quit her place in the skies above and descend to earth, to visit the gentle shepherd, Endymion—not upon Mount Latmus, but in the park—at the foot of the statue of silent love. The handsome shepherd must be sure to have fallen asleep ere ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... done, though, before the sordid life stirred again under the roof of the tavern, before the vulgar faces, with their greedy, prying eyes, should be there ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... vouchers containing the financial history of the Metropolitan since its organization in 1893 had been sold for $117 to a junkman, who had agreed in writing to grind them into pulp, so that they would be safe from "prying eyes." We shall therefore never know precisely how this money was spent. But here again the Chicago transactions help us to an understanding. In 1898 Charles T. Yerkes, with that cynical frankness which some people have regarded as a redeeming trait in his character, opened ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... mighty dab at a delicate little fuchsia that is just "picking up" from the effects of transplanting and a long winter journey. Seeing he was bent on making himself disagreeable, I put him into his cage again, first having to chase him all about the room to catch him, and prying him up at last from between a picture and the wall, where he had flown and settled down in his struggle to get out. For my Cheri is not in the least tame. He is an entirely uneducated bird. I have seen canaries sit on people's ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the curate was but a short distance from the lodgings occupied by Mr Rainscourt. They soon entered, and were hid from the prying eyes of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Laevsky. "This continual gossip about other people's affairs, this sighing and groaning and everlasting prying, this eavesdropping, this friendly sympathy . . . damn it all! They lend me money and make conditions as though I were a schoolboy! I am treated as the devil knows what! I don't want anything," shouted Laevsky, staggering with excitement ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... that he was an English spy, sent there merely for the purpose of prying into the state of her empire and her government. She therefore employed two Russian soldiers to seize him, and convey him out ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... objections to the bonus-on-conduct method of paying wages. It tended toward paternalism. Paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... Ezra. "It's been too sad an' mournful all along for me to go about to make a new quarrel on it. Let it pass. I make no doubt you acted for the best. Art too good a lad to tek pleasure in prying into the pain of an old man—as—loves thee. Leave it alone, lad. Let's think a while, and turn it over and ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... that point fairly settled to-night, so that there may be no uncertainty or delay in the morning. I would not urge the question were it not that in the morning we must either go on together as travelling companions, or say our final adieux and part. I am not in the habit of prying into men's private affairs, but, to speak the bare truth, I am naturally interested in one whose father has on more than one occasion done me good service. You need not answer me unless you please, senhor," added the man with the air of one who is prepared ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... interrupted, with a laugh. "Yet I'll answer it. Last night I was on the threshold of hell. To-day I am within sight of my heaven—I have my eyes on it—hardly three feet to sever me. And now you'd better go. You'll neither see nor hear anything to frighten you if you refrain from prying." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... but childless; his dame, like himself, was a 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
... Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startingly 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 humour, 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 by the bigness ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... it," she said simply. "He says that servants are always prying into one's concerns. Good night, Capitaine Rotherby! Thank you so much for taking me out this evening. After all, I cannot help feeling that it has been rather like the beginning ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "atmosphere" of his mountain pictures and in his studies of birds at home upon their nests. To judge, indeed, by the unruffled domesticity of these latter, one would suppose Mr. GORDON to have been regarded less as the prying ornithologist than as the trusted family photographer. I except the golden eagle, last of European autocrats, whose greeting appears always as a super-imperial scowl. Chiefly these happy results seem to have been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... clutching at the hope that this interruption might take them out of their usual boredom. He placed the letter by his plate, and would not open it, pretending carelessly that he knew what it was about. But his brothers, annoyed, would not believe it, and went on prying at it; and so he was in tortures until the meal was ended. Then he was free to lock himself up in his room. His heart was beating so that he almost tore the letter as he opened it. He trembled to think what might be ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... has traveled on a tourist car can readily understand that, even though one may not be prying or curious, one is apt to learn more or less of its other occupants, particularly those in the adjoining sections; and be the porter ever so watchful, he can not ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... as he was for an event which might determine the happiness or the misery of his life. He tried to forget it and wrote diligently, putting down words whose meaning he did not stop to consider, so that he had something to show to prying eyes if such should ever glance through his papers. But the sound had got on his brain, and presently became so insistent that he rose again and flung his window up to see if he were deceived in thinking he heard a ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... the gold she had won, I gave her my arm, and we left the 'ridotto', but remarking that a few inquisitive persons were following us, I took a gondola which landed us according to my instructions. One can always escape prying eyes in this way ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was less distinct. He fancied that in the penetrating quality of the other's gaze was an impertinence of prying. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... mind is intrinsically, necessarily, and always evil. But when a thing is thus evil in itself, there is no need to bring into the definition of the act, from a moral point of view, the intention with which it is done. There is no use in prying into ends, when the means taken is an unlawful means for any end. If a person blasphemes, we do not ask why he blasphemes: the intention is not part of the blasphemy: the utterance is a sin by itself. But if a person strikes, we ask why he strikes, to heal or to slay, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... and the glow-worms were the lanterns of workmen examining the outer side of the embankment and prying into ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... drunken ruffians, some sleeping with their heads on the table, others fallen under it, and others stretched their length on the beds, or at the side of the room. "They will stay there quiet enough till I want them, and no one is likely to come prying this way to ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... Aunt Margarine, almost beside herself, 'you odious little prying minx, setting up to teach your elders and your betters with your cut and dried priggish maxims! When I think how I have petted and indulged you all this time, and borne with the abominable litter you left in every room ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... "You dirty, prying civilian!" he panted at me, as he swayed this way and that with the pull of my body. "You shall have your wish, by G—! You want to see inside, do you? ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... had examined their consciences, perhaps they would have found the real reason of their discontent, and, turning their anger against themselves, would have done penance for having come to the exorcisms led by a depraved moral sense and a prying spirit." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... surgeon's[263] statement, and an earl's[264] harangues! A bust delayed,[265]—a book[266] refused, can shake The sleep of Him who kept the world awake. Is this indeed the tamer of the Great,[dy] Now slave of all could tease or irritate— The paltry gaoler[267] and the prying spy, The staring stranger with his note-book nigh?[268] 70 Plunged in a dungeon, he had still been great; How low, how little was this middle state, Between a prison and a palace, where How few could feel for what he had to bear! Vain his complaint,—My ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... highest in that part of the country. To this place Joseph went on the morning after the angel's visit, as this was the spot he had seen in his vision. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, Joseph found a large, rounded stone, nearly covered with earth. Prying this up, he found it to be the lid of a stone box which was buried in the earth. Raising the lid, he looked in, and there indeed were the sacred treasures about which the angel had told him. As he stood looking at them in wonder, the angel Moroni came to his side, and Joseph was ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... "H. DYSON (says Hearne) a person of a very strange, prying, and inquisitive genius, in the matter of books, as may appear from many libraries; there being books, chiefly in old English, almost in every library, that have belonged to him, with his name upon them." Peter Langtoft's Chronicles, vol. i., p. xiii. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... got 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
... went into this with open eyes. I was angry at the time, but I had thought of it often. And when I went out I went out! Now I've kept away and I don't intend to do any prying—as a matter of fact, I'm only back here for two or three days—but I have some natural curiosity, ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... came into the field. He was an investigator who brought to his aid a singular capacity possessed by the very few; the capacity for an unbiased looking for the hidden reasons of things. There was no field too sacred or too old for his prying investigations and his private conclusions. He was, as much as any man ever is, an original thinker. He knew of all the electrical experiments of others, and they produced in his mind conclusions distinctly his ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... manners were polite; but she did not make me very welcome. She spoke with affection of her former visitor, who, she said, had been very kind; but she presently remarked that she could not see why 'all these other people' had come prying into her affairs." On inquiry it was learned that after the former visitor had left town representatives of several charitable societies had called, and that one had hurt the woman's feelings by asking all kinds of questions without giving any explanation of his ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... perpetual state of disorder." Mr. Gayer notes [434] that the criminally disposed members of the caste take contracts for the watch and sale of mangoes in groves distant from habitations, so that their movements will not be seen by prying eyes. They also seek employment as roof-thatchers, in which capacity they are enabled to ascertain which houses contain articles worth stealing. They show considerable cunning in disposing of their stolen property. The men will go openly in the daytime to the receiver and acquaint him with ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... "if he did go to Hungary he would pretend that he had come from England," the object must have been that no one should know the country where the MS. had been recovered; any busybody would be thus effectively foiled in visiting the right spot, and there prying about, making inquiries and ascertaining all the particulars with respect to the alleged discovery of some recent rare manuscript. The place thus decided on by accident was a town in Saxony at the farthest eastern extremity ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... even a turn of the eye in all that scene. After years of acquaintance with the tinker he had not yet ventured a question as to his life history. The difference of age and a certain masterly reserve in the old gentleman had seemed to discourage it. A prying tongue in a mere youth would have met unpleasant obstacles with Darrel. Never until that day had he spoken freely of his past in the presence ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... booted him out of the ranch on sight," he said. "What right had he to come here prying into a lady's affairs?—at least a lady as far as HE knows. Of course she's some old blowzy with frumpled hair trying to rope in a greenhorn with a string of words and phrases," concluded Jack, carelessly, who had an equally cynical distrust of ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... excellent wife, and was much esteemed by Lord and Lady Lonsdale, and every member of that family. Among his verses (he wrote many), are some worthy of preservation; one little poem in particular, upon disturbing, by prying curiosity, a bird while hatching her young in his garden. The latter part of this innocent and good man's life was melancholy. He became blind, and also poor, by becoming surety for some of his relations. He was a bachelor. He bore, as I have often witnessed, his calamities with unfailing resignation. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... horrors of a guilty conscience, and all the terrors which haunt the man who sees himself in hourly danger of detection. He determined to keep his secret cautiously from his wife: he was glad that she was confined to her bed at this time, lest her prying curiosity should discover what was going forward. The species of affection which he had once felt for her had not survived the first six months of their marriage; and their late disputes had rendered this husband and wife absolutely odious to each other. Each believed, and indeed pretty ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... in fact, was lined with sheet iron a third of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden paneling. The shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If ever man could feel confident that he was absolutely alone, and that there was no remote possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that man was the cashier of the house of Nucingen and Company in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Mathilda was a great big woman, not so big perhaps as her Miss Mary, still she was big, and the good Anna liked them better so. She did not like them thin and small and active and always looking in and always prying. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... heard her strike him in the face, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan," so that he let her go. Whereupon she ran out at the door so suddenly that she threw me on the ground, and fell upon me with a loud cry. Hereat the Sheriff, who had followed her, started, but presently cried out, "Wait, thou prying parson, I will teach thee to listen!" and ran out and beckoned to the constable who stood on the steps below. He bade him first shut me up in one dungeon, seeing that I was an eavesdropper, and then return and thrust my child into another. But he thought better of it when we had come halfway ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... mean to look into, And watch our vantage in this business. We'll over-reach the greybeard, Gremio, The narrow-prying father, Minola, The quaint musician, amorous Licio; All ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... joke with the dwellers in the house. While all these pleasing occupations proceeded, the hour of Cudmore's trial was approaching. The tea-pot which had stood the attack of fourteen cups without flinching, at last began to fail, and discovered to the prying eyes of Mrs. Clanfrizzle, nothing but an olive-coloured deposit of soft matter, closely analogous in appearance and chemical property to the residuary precipitate in a drained fish-pond; she put down the lid with a gentle sigh and turning towards the fire bestowed one of her very ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... steeple, unsubdued of wing: Amusive birds!—say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head: Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The GOD of NATURE is ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... with a start that the village was empty. Then he remembered it was Sunday, and they were all in church. Thank God, there was none to watch him; no prying, curious eyes to disturb his thoughts. But they would soon be out again, and it behooved him to make the best use of his solitude while he might. He struck inland, his heart beating with a curious expectancy; at every sound he held his breath, and he would turn quickly and look ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... when it is stirred by grog and passion, and the soft touch of a woman's bosom. I know it I know it. But let Temana bring the bottle. I am not afraid to drink grog with thee, Ah, thou art not like some white men. Thou can'st drink, and give some to a poor old man, and if prying eyes and babbling tongues make mischief, and the missionary sends thee a tusi (letter), and says 'This drinking of grog by Pakia is wrong,' thou sendest him a letter, saying, 'True, O teacher of the Gospel. This drinking of grog is very wrong. Wherefore do I send thee three dollars for the school, ...
— Pakia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... passed but he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form—a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen... One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... 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 and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... not try to find out her secret by prying; let us go to her to-morrow, and tell her openly what we think. You fear that she will deny her action; I have no such fear; and if she does not stand our test, I give you my word for it, you shall not ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... shelter of a kind, and we soon adjusted ourselves to the prevailing conditions, and the outhouses surrounding it afforded ample accommodation for the detachments. The gun pits were cunningly concealed in the front portion of the orchard, special care having been taken against the prying eyes of hostile aeroplanes. We were fortunate in the choice of position made for our first time in the line, for two reasons, firstly, it was an interesting zone—including the village of Neuve Chapelle now immediately behind our front ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... when the Nameless Thing was discovered in Farmer Burns' corn-patch. When the rumor began to gain credence that it was some sort of meteor from inter-stellar space, reporters, scientists and college professors flocked to the scene, desirous of prying off particles for analysis. But they soon discovered that the Thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed at night with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it was practically weightless, since it had embedded itself ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various |
