"Tricky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Oh you tricky devils!" he shouted at the machine. "How many kids have you frightened off that rock after they thought they had found a little peace!" He resented the snide bit of conditioning, but respected it at the same time. Pyrrans learned very early in life that there was no ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... land that was not for sale contains exactly eleven acres. Of course it is not difficult to find the answer if we follow the eccentric and tricky tracks of intricate trigonometry; or I might say that the application of a well-known formula reduces the problem to finding one-quarter of the square root of (4 x 370 x 116) -(370 116 - 74) ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... presently, when the novelty had worn off, and he had become tired of being good, the real Tommy appeared, and for at least a week we had really what Nurse calls a "regular time of it." There was not a trick he did not know; and the worst of it was that our boys became tricky too, and we really did not know how to bear the rough usage we all received, for we never had a moment's pleasure or peace of our lives; and what with sand in our hair, wet star-fish down our backs, and seeing our dolls shipwrecked in their best clothes off the steepest possible rocks, ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... "A bit tricky but not too difficult," he replied. "It's mostly a job of adapting the sonarphone arrangement from our ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... now is full of mathematical difficulties, submitted by its readers for the amusement of one of its staff. Every morning he appeals to us for assistance in solving tricky little problems about pints of water and herrings and rectangular fields. The magic number "9" has a great fascination for him. It is terrifying to think that if you multiply any row of figures by 9 the sum of the figures thus obtained is divisible by 9. It is uncanny ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... "he has come at last to his senses. And I'm very glad he has, very glad indeed. It's time he did. I think I made my displeasure sufficiently clear at the exceedingly tricky way he and the Baron conducted themselves at Palm Beach. And the Baron was no better than Philip. Indeed, I think he was very much worse. If Philip hadn't wandered about in the garb of Herodotus and murmured that impertinence about 'frost in Florida' it wouldn't have been so ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of a high nature, you become connected with people of the same mental caliber and you are able to help yourself. If your thoughts are tricky, you will bring tricky people to deal with you, who ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... the sort of place for a tricky old French woman to make a fortune in," he said to himself: "these people are simple enough to believe any thing;" and Dr. Eben went to his room, and tossed the lavender blossoms down on ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... his head with an evil grin, according to his custom when well struck, he found it followed practically instantaneously by another. The swab was about the quickest thing that ever got into a ring. He was like one of these bloomin', tricky, jack-in-the-box featherweights, instead of a steady lumbering "heavy". And the Gorilla allowed himself to be driven to a corner again, and let his head sink forward, that the incautious youth might ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... in the army the time of the Zulu war. Great hardship we got in it and plenty of starvation. It was the Dutch called in the English to help them against the Zulus, that were tricky rogues, and would do no work but to be driving the cattle off the fields. A pound of raw flour we would be given out at seven o'clock in the morning, and some would try to make a cake, and some would put it in a pot with water and be stirring it, and it might be eleven o'clock before you would ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the vast bearings of the real conspiracy made Philippe a man of great distinction in the eyes of Carpentier and Mignonnet, to whom his self-devotion seemed a state-craft worthy of the palmy days of the Convention. In a short time the tricky Bonapartist was seen to be on friendly terms with the two officers, and the consideration they enjoyed in the town was, of course, shared by him. He soon obtained, through their recommendation, the situation in the insurance office that old Hochon had suggested, which required only ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... You know how she acted; she had made up her mind she wouldn't go. Only she was tricky about it. She knew I had my eye on her, so she got ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... always heard that the Fox family was terribly sly and tricky. Still, Tommy was most polite. Really, she didn't ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the Tucson trail, and, not understanding why he turned them from their routine, walked asunder, puzzled at being thus driven in the wrong direction. They went along a strange up-and-down path, loose with sliding stones, and came to an end at a ledge of slate, and stood about on the tricky footing looking at their master and leaning their heads together. The master sat quiet on his horse, staring down where a circular pool lay below; and the sun rose everywhere, except in his mind. So ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... her and taking note of what she saw, so that she gave an indescribable effect of enjoying the gallop just as much as her rider, but in a different way. All in all, Gray Peter was a glorious machine; Sally was a tricky intelligence. Gray Peter's heart was never in doubt, but what would Sally's ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... the indispensable water-hole. It is short, but tricky. Teeing off from just outside the bathroom door, you have to loft the ball over the side of the bath, holing out in the little vent pipe, at the end ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... beyond the Khatkan to the barren ground where leopard and rock ape had ceased to be. "This magic is a tricky thing, sir. It builds and feeds upon a man's own imagination and inner fears. Lumbrilo, having triggered ours, need not strive at all, but let us ourselves raise that which ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... but they were truculent, surly fellows, both, and had been fretting all morning over the simple way in which they had been trapped, and so were inclined to make themselves disagreeable. Bastien Lagrange, who had always known them as two particularly tricky, unreliable customers, had preserved a discreet silence during the long drive, despite their endeavours to drag some information out of him. From what they knew of Douglas they felt in no way apprehensive of their personal safety, so, after the manner of mean men, they determined ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Shepherd talked, the twilight had deepened into darkness, the fire had died down, and the corners of the room were filled with mysterious tricky shadows that danced with the flickering flames on the hearth. Jean looked fearfully over her shoulder. There was a creepy feeling in the back of her neck, and Jock's eyes were as round as door-knobs. The ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... so I was anxious to make them while I could see. I looked at the moon—I could count on some light from her for an hour or so after sundown. But although I knew the last ten or twelve miles of my drive fairly well, I was also aware of the fact that there were in it tricky spots—forkings of mere trails in muskeg bush—where leaving the beaten log-track might mean as much as being lost. So I looked at my watch again and shook the lines over Peter's back. The first six miles had taken me nearly fifty minutes. I looked at the ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... surprise of everybody, neither side scored until the last quarter, and then both sides made a touchdown, Cartwright first! A high tricky wind spoiled both attempts to kick goal, and time was called with a score at 6-6. Cartwright had held State to a tie, for the first ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... trouble, because he knows the joinings and the difficulties of them, and these nevertheless afford us some pleasure, because they test the sharpness of our wits, and engross, our attention; so also these questions, which seem subtle and tricky, prevent our intellects becoming careless and lazy, for they ought at one time to have a field given them to level, in order that they may wander about it, and at another to have some dark and rough passage thrown in ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... winsome lass, I want no tricky wine, But amber nectar bring to me, Whose rich bouquet will cling to me, Whose spirit voice will sing to me From out the mug divine So, here's your toll—a kiss—away, You Hebe of the Rhine! No goblet's gold means cheer to me, Let no cut glass get ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... pilots who had been taken prisoners swore that no fleet could ever get through the Traverse, a tricky bit of water thirty miles below Quebec. But, in the course of the summer, the British sailing masters, who had never been there before, themselves took two hundred and seventy-seven vessels right through it with greater ease ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... to the First Army Corps under Sir Douglas Haig, an Irish and Scotch group of regiments, were the most successful of all. The bridge at Pont Arcy had been destroyed, but still one of its girders spanned the stream. It would have been tricky walking, even under ordinary circumstances, but nerve racking to attempt, when from every hill and wood and point of land, Maxims, machine guns and a steady rifle fire are concentrated on the man crossing that one girder. By the afternoon, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... that you have obviously landed in another time-track. One that is parallel to—but just a slight bit different from the one you formerly knew. To you, we seem to be the same officers as in that world; but of course, we're not. It isn't the same universe. Hyperspace is tricky stuff, as our men are finding out. You've just got bounced around by one of the trickiest ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... Even had the distance been less, it seemed to them that this was stretching the long arm of coincidence almost too far, but they did not say so; in fact, they both thought it wiser to abstain from any comment at all. The next hole was some three hundred and fifty yards, with several extremely tricky hazards, but, contrary to all reasonable expectations, both King Sidney and the Marshal distinguished themselves by doing it ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... flat, told to the absolutely simple hearted, and to the Teller, after explanations were over, it seemed that the Listener had in some way cut open modern genius and exposed a little tricky mechanism working on a view point ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... implied, but only knowledge and skill; 'craft,' indeed, still retains very often its more honourable use, a man's 'craft' being his skill, and then the trade in which he is skilled. 'Artful' was skilful, and not tricky as now. [Footnote: Not otherwise 'leichtsinnig' in German meant cheerful once; it is frivolous now; while in French a 'rapporteur' is now a bringer back of malicious reports, the malicious having little by little found its way into the word.] Could the Magdalen have ever ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... that I micht gae to America lang before the time came. I'd offers—oh, aye! But I was uncertain. It was a tricky business, tae go sae far frae hame. A body would be a fool to do sae unless he waur sure and siccar against loss. All the time I was doing better and better in Britain. And it seems that American visitors to Britain, tourists ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... Bob would repeat to her, spontaneously and gushingly, every new thing that they said, or did. And if Bob still had a nurse hanging about, she would have an eye and an ear and something to say to mother, too. If one of these boys happened to be tricky and deceitful, resentful and cruel, mother would be sure to know about it very quickly. She could straighten out Bob's feelings with regard to any of those things before real damage occurred; and she could see to it that such contamination was ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... his pocket and cuddled the bowl of his pipe. "If she's a woman, she's a heart-balmer if she gets the chance. They all are, down deep in their tricky hearts. There isn't a woman on earth that won't sell a man's soul out of his body if she happens to think it's worth her while—and she can get away with it. But don't for any ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... is spirited; but that is not a fault," Rhoda said. "He looks all right to me. But that little flea-bitten grey is a tricky one. You can tell that. See how her ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... desks ranged along the walls, With books and inkstands crowned; Here on this side the large girls sat, And there the tricky boys on that— See! how ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... to have if he and his family were to live, not in decency and comfort, but in something less than squalor. She did not put the question because she wished to spare her father—to spare herself the shame of hearing his tricky answer—to spare herself the discomfort of squarely facing ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... movin' into action, they was needed very sore, To learn a little schoolin' to a native army corps, They 'ad nipped against an uphill, they was tuckin' down the brow, When a tricky, trundlin' roundshot give the knock ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... man has," she thought. "He looks like a combination of a snake and a fox. I never before saw such tricky eyes. He is rather good looking, but there is something about ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... cautioning him to guard the closest secrecy. Two days afterward the letters arrived, and I directed my protege to spread the news as much as possible, to tell all the warders he saw and to show them his letters. We had at that time in the prison a wideawake but tricky fellow named George Smith. He had been clerk to an important firm of auctioneers in London, and had been sentenced by probably the most savage judge on the bench, Commissioner Ker, to fourteen years' imprisonment for receiving a quantity ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... said, meditatively, 'but one or two are very much out. By Jove! that's a tricky bend there.' He took a bearing with the compass, made a note or two, and sprang with a vigorous leap ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... said the Distressed One; "I will be bail for him, and I know that Malambruno has nothing tricky or treacherous about him; you may mount without any fear, Senor Don Quixote; on my head be it if any harm ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning, deceitful and tricky, understands and tells of the struggle between the great ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a little trouble with the languige. Its tricky. A lot of these French words is the same as ours only they dont mean the same thing. Like "Pan" an "We" an "Mercy" an "Toot sweet." As soon as I find what the words stand ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... going to keep us away from the corral, somehow. You remember he said he'd come back to get us to help him bring in some steers. Of course, you and he might be in cahoots on this, but Scott's tricky so I'm giving you some of the benefits of the doubt." Charleton turned in his saddle to favor Douglas ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... see how the wig can have been useful. I feel that Addison must have left it on the bedpost and tied up his bald pate in a tricky bandana after the fashion of Mr. Prior or Mr. Gay, one of whom, if I remember rightly, did not disdain to sit for his picture in that frolic guise. The wig, which adds age and ensures dignity, would have been out of place there; nor is it possible that The Beggar's Opera ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... avoid by going around, or better yet not even bother about, since he can lick any ship we have. That's not the answer," I told him. "This Pepe is smart and as tricky as a fixed gambling machine. That's his strength—and his weakness as well. Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to outthink them. Which is what I'm ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... still time—consider. We are going to beard the lion in his den. He is tricky, distrustful and savage. It may mean for us slavery, torture, or death. Meroe, let me finish alone this trip and this enterprise, beside which a desperate fight would be but a trifle. Return to my father and mother, whose daughter ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... that the protective devices of the suit were functioning at full efficiency. Then all three went out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedo bearing the stubby wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, the multifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets so characteristic of the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuverable breed. But this one had something that the ordinary speedster or flitter did not carry; spaced around the needle beak there yawned the open muzzles of a ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... But he said she was clever, and she is, if pertness and a ready tongue counts for cleverness. I suppose he pays her for what she tells him about Forbes, but he'd better save his money and fight on the square. I don't like this tricky politics, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... anxious that Beth should be educated, and therefore the books were produced every morning. Mrs. Caldwell had tried in vain to teach Beth anything by rule, such as grammar. Beth's memory was always tricky. Anything she cared about she recollected accurately; but grammar, which had been presented to her not as a means to an end but as an end in itself, failed to interest her, and if she remembered ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... "'Tis early days yet, hows'ever—time enough, my sons—plenty time!" promised Un' Benny Rowett, patriarch of the fishing-fleet and local preacher on Sundays. Some of the younger men grumbled that "there was no tellin': the season had been tricky from the start." The spider-crabs—that are the curse of inshore trammels—had lingered for a good three weeks past the date when by all rights they were due to sheer off. Then a host of spur-dogs had invaded the whiting-grounds, preying so gluttonously on the hooked fish that, haul in ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... racing about South Africa had made him homesick for the sight of the gophers by the wayside, and the endless panels of wire fencing along which we rushed. (The Prairie has nothing to learn from the Veldt about fencing, or tricky gates.) ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... guides through the upper part of the country, by a route unnecessarily circuitous and roundabout, and one that required many days' journeying; but, as soon as the straight road was indicated to him by a freedman, a Syrian by nation, he quitted that tedious and tricky road, and, bidding his barbarian guides farewell, he crossed the Euphrates in a few days, and arrived at Antiocheia,[384] near Daphne. There he waited for Tigranes, pursuant to the king's orders ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... was irresolute, vacillating and tricky. "A study of the foreign policy of the Protectorate," writes Mr. Gardiner, "reveals a distracting maze of fluctuations. Oliver is seen alternately courting France and Spain, constant ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... steam-drifters into harbour. Hence the price of fish: quotations very high; business nil, or next door to it. Our bay however, by a fortunate freak of the weather, has been amply calm for our little undecked drifters, though squalls off land have made sailing tricky in the extreme. We have seen the snow on the distant hills but none has fallen here. We have had the ground-swell, rolling in from outside, but ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... Am I to withdraw because you have been discarded? Why should I not borrow from this tricky ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... goods man, sailing on our old tack of conversation, "sometimes makes it hard for us, you know. I once had a case like this: One of my customers down in New Orleans had failed on me. I think his muhulla (failure) was forced upon him. Even a tricky merchant does not bring failure upon himself if business is good and he can help it, because, if he has ever been through one, he knows that the bust-up does him a great deal more harm than good. It makes 'credit' hard for him after that. But, you find lots of merchants who, when business ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... craze is in full swing. Ponting's mastery is ever more impressive, and his pupils improve day by day; nearly all of us have produced good negatives. Debenham and Wright are the most promising, but Taylor, Bowers and I are also getting the hang of the tricky exposures. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... much of paper in that Con-o-way. Court House. Got more paper in there than the house worth! Have to step to Con-o-way all the time. Struggle and starve myself out for these fifteen acres. Thirty miles to Con-o-way. Thirty miles back by the course I travels. All them tricky mens try to go and get old Ben's land sign to 'em. That's the mainest thing take me to Con-o-way every week. They all talk so sugar mouth till my name down; then when my name write is another thing. When I in too much trouble, I just has to ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... placed slantwise across the roads, where sentries stood with fixed bayonets, and through which no one could pass unless the laisser passer was produced. Some of those barriers were quite tricky affairs to drive through in a big ambulance, and reminded me of a gymkhana! It was quite usual in those days to be stopped by a soldier waiting on the road, who, with a gallant bow and salute, asked your permission to "mount ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... am I? But I prefer the bright morning; moonlight's a tricky, elusive thing, apt to dazzle and mislead one. However, does Mrs. Chudleigh intend to remain long? ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... Lady Ashton may be supposed to possess to the celebrated Dame Margaret Ross, the reader must not suppose that there was any idea of tracing the portrait of the first Lord Viscount Stair in the tricky and mean-spirited Sir William Ashton. Lord Stair, whatever might be his moral qualities, was certainly one of the first statesmen ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... preachin' about business shrewdness and how it paid, and how mean and tricky in little deals we Rubes was, and yet we didn't appreciate how to manage big things, till I got kind of ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... after another of the boys fell victim to the pony's powers. Finally, when the little animal's triumph seemed complete, Grant stepped into the ring and sprang upon his back. A tremendous tussle for the mastery immediately ensued, but though he reared and shied and kicked, the tricky little beast was utterly unable to throw its fearless young rider, and amid the shouts of the audience the clown at last stopped the contest and ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... recognized by tricky habits, constant crying, and other unusual characteristics. It was customary to recover the true child in the following way: The changeling was placed upon an iron shovel over the fire, when it would go shrieking ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... face flushed, and tears sprang to her eyes. She stood looking sadly down upon the money for a moment, then, with a weary sigh, replaced it in her purse, together with the ticket, and left the shop without a word; while the tricky pawnbroker looked after her, a smile of cunning triumph wreathing his coarse lips, as he gleefully washed his hands, behind the counter, with "invisible soap in ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... came the beginning of the real fun, when Mary turned up at Brownberry after dark one night in a proper tantara, with her eyes rolling and her bosom heaving like the waves of the sea. She'd come over Dart, by the stepping stones—a tricky road for an old woman even by daylight, but a fair ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... took up his paper-knife and tapped it against the edge of the table with one of the tricky movements familiar to thoughtful men when they ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... time, and not fasten their craft to the shore in a shallow creek when the river was at a stand or falling; it takes experience to learn some of the tricky ways of these western rivers; but once understood the cruiser is not apt to be caught a second time. Maurice snatched up the second pole and threw his weight upon it, while Thad also strained himself to the utmost; they could feel the boat move ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... granted; and the valet mounts the dickey— That gentleman of lords and gentlemen; Also my lady's gentlewoman, tricky, Trick'd out, but modest more than poet's pen Can paint,—'Cosi viaggino i Ricchi!' (Excuse a foreign slipslop now and then, If but to show I 've travell'd; and what 's travel, Unless it teaches ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the papers were ready and the shares of stock divided between the principals, an injunction was served on Dad by a tricky company in New York which claimed prior rights to the patent. This has held up everything so that Dr. Evans is not sure whether he will ever realize anything out of his invention or not. Of course, we are fighting the legality of Ratzger ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... now, tell me why you invented all this tricky yarn, complicating it by bringing in the sham journey to ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... tricky old man," exclaimed the skipper, hotly; "the idea of going and leaving a boy on our hands like that. I'm surprised at ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... It was tricky work, too, and troublesome. At first the ground was good stiff clay that the spades bit out in clean mouthfuls, and that left a fair firm wall behind. But that streak ran out in the second day's working, and the mine burrowed ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... altogether clear on this point; but Shannon, seeing that he was later to prosecute Stener himself for this very crime of embezzlement, and that Steger would soon follow in cross-examination, was not willing to let him be hazy. Shannon wanted to fix Cowperwood in the minds of the jury as a clever, tricky person, and by degrees he certainly managed to indicate a very subtle-minded man. Occasionally, as one sharp point after another of Cowperwood's skill was brought out and made moderately clear, one juror or another turned to look at Cowperwood. And he noting this and in order to impress them ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... relative. John was only my half-brother, you know, and he lived but six months after he married her. She is clever enough and tricky enough to be ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... hand fell upon his arm and he followed its leading, blindly, to find himself pushed through a narrow doorway and down a flight of tricky, wooden steps, at the foot of which, silhouetted against a street light, a tall policeman was on guard. He laid masterful ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... wishes others to believe them: on the contrary, the speaker is mostly only anxious rather to be considered humble, and consequently virtuous, and seeks that his self-blame should redound to his honour. Self-dispraise in general is no more than a tricky kind of boasting. It reminds me of oarsmen who turn their backs on the very place which with all the strength of their arms ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... me away. I may not care to take the case when I hear it, so what's the use of letting everybody know who I am?" Then he switched round in his chair, rose, and held out his hand. "Mr. George Headland, of the Yard, Mr. Bawdrey. I don't trust Mr. Narkom's proverbially tricky memory for names. He introduced me as Jones once, and I lost the opportunity of handling the case because the party in question couldn't believe that anybody named Jones would be ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... The question whether it is ever politic for a playwright to keep a secret from his audience is discussed elsewhere. What I have here in mind is not an ordinary secret, but a more or less tricky ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... trivial questions, gentlemen, all those tricky questions!" cried Mitya enthusiastically. "Or there's simply no knowing where we ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... means your success, his failure, your failure. If you were in charge of a highly complicated machine, you would not allow it to be ruined by careless misuse. You may have married a healthy animal, but animals are tricky and uncertain. He is still your lover and he will do anything reasonable for you, if you "go about it in the right spirit and in the right way." Be sure you "go about it in the right way." Be tactful, be patient, don't ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... little difficult to manage, sir, at times. She left Charleroi willingly enough, but she's tricky, and it is our duty to deliver her to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... and essayed extenuation. "It was—er—unworthy of me, of course; foolish—pig-headed—tricky, I suppose. I got mad. I'd nothing to sell, and the declaration is a farce when they examine after it. So I left them to find what they chose. I'm terribly sorry, for you seem to hate it so. But it's an idiotic and impertinent ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... picking than stealing," said he. "Tricky picking too, Raffles, but innocent enough ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... arts of these modern Sinons; and between them, though without any fixed purpose of doing so, they impressed my youthful mind with a sincere aversion to the northern inhabitants of Britain, as a people bloodthirsty in time of war, treacherous during truce, interested, selfish, avaricious, and tricky in the business of peaceful life, and having few good qualities, unless there should be accounted such, a ferocity which resembled courage in martial affairs, and a sort of wily craft which supplied the place of wisdom in the ordinary commerce of mankind. In justification, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for every mile, but also a heavy general fee for the whole journey. If he was found without his ticket of leave, he was at once arrested. But it was when he came to a bridge that the exactions grew insufferable. The regulations were somewhat tricky, for the Jew was specially taxed only on Sundays and the Festivals of the Church. But every other day was some Saint's Festival, and while, in Mannheim, even on those days the Christian traveller paid one kreuzer if he crossed the bridge on foot, and two if on horseback, the Jew ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... weeds and asked him just what tools he'd need. It was a simple question, predicating a simple answer. Yet he didn't seem able to reply to it. He scratched his close-clipped pate and said he'd have to look things over and study it out. Windmills were tricky things, one kind demanding this sort of treatment ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... me. They developed the stuff to fight off fungus on Venus, where one part in a billion did the trick. But it was tricky stuff; one part in ten-million would destroy the chlorophyll in plants in about twenty hours, or the hemoglobin in blood in about fifteen minutes. It was ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... wait a second. We got to be tricky about this." She was excited and tremendously in earnest. "If she gets to know I've been holding out the hat to you, we're wasting time. Give me the money, see? I'll make up a peach of a story about ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... account for the power and authority over certain minds exercised by this surprising production? I do not think it is exactly the wit in it. The wit is often entirely superficial—a mere tricky playing with light resemblances and wordy jingles. I do not feel as though it were the humour in it; for Byron is not really a humorist at all. I think it is something deeper than the mere juxtaposition of burlesque-show jests with Sunday-evening sentimentality. I think it is the downright ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... time he promised to be back again. The Lord High Chancellor, looking down with a displeased and dubious expression, replied that he must acknowledge that Kohlhaas' presence was more necessary just then than ever, as the court, on account of the prevaricating and tricky tactics of the opposition, required his statements and explanations at a thousand points that could not be foreseen. However, when Kohlhaas referred him to his lawyer, who was well informed concerning the lawsuit, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... best not to be. Rather tricky work, though, getting back. I've got to climb two garden walls, and I shall probably be so full of Malvoisie that you'll be able to hear it swishing about inside me. No catch steeple-chasing if you're like that. They've ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... "It's a very tricky and complicated affair indeed. However, I think we shall pull it off. Er—might I send ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... noticeable were the usual thickets of thorny, dry, and scraggy trees, seen even on the edge of the mesa. They are called guisachi, and in the vernacular of the common man the word has been utilised to designate a sharper. A man who "hooks on," as, for instance, a tricky lawyer, is called a guisachero. It is the counterpart of the "lawyer palm" among ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... about the stocky little fourteen-year-old chap, that we would often keep him longer with us, and treat him to a glass of anisette to hear his opinion of the writers whose work he handled. He was an amusing cross between a tricky little Paris gamin and a real child, and he hit off the characteristics of the various writers with as keen a touch of actuality as he could put into his stories of how many centimes he had won that morning at 'craps' from his ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... was not cheerful. When I got as far as Tuz I found a friend in charge of the dump there, and he let me draw what I wanted, so I turned back to try to get to the bridge by dark. One car after another got in trouble; first it was a puncture, then it was a tricky carburetor that refused to be put to rights; towing-ropes were called into requisition, but the best had been left behind, and those we had were rotted, and broke on every hill. Lastly a broken axle put one ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... misunderstood orders; the paperers have defalcated, and the universe generally comes to a pause. It is no matter in what faith I was nurtured, I am now a believer in total depravity. Contractors have no conscience; masons are not men of their word; carpenters are tricky; all manner of cunning workmen are bruised reeds. But there is nothing to do but submit and make the best of it,—a horrible kind of mechanism. We go forthwith into a chrysalis state for two weeks. The only sign of life is an occasional lurch towards the new ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... about quite serious things. In war, each country's soldiers are always the most courageous in the world. The other country's soldiers are always treacherous and tricky; that is why they sometimes win. Literature is ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... it, and he punched it out. One of those tricky special Company combinations. Kurt Borch ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... drawing a deep breath as the sound of wheels at last died away. "Everyone does want him now—and no mistake! That Sammyadd has done us again! Tricky brute! For any sake, let's ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... not stir a hair's-breadth to attack you,' I answered. 'Why should I, when I bear you no ill-will? If you come against me, however, I will assuredly beat you out of your saddle, for all your tricky sword play.' I drew my broadsword as I spoke, and stood upon my guard, for I guessed that with so old a soldier the onset would ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wrote, "who are so wise in the ways of those tricky things called nerves, must know that it was only a mild hysteria that made me say those most unladylike things. I have written Norah all about it. She has replied, advising me to stick to the good-fellow role but not to dress the part. So when next you see me I shall be a perfectly safe and ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Martian alkaloids were tricky things, and bracky smoke contained a number of them. It would take Earth at least ten years to discover and synthesize the right one—and it would still probably cost more than it would to import the weed from Mars. As long as the source of that weed was here, ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... up eggs for breakfast, but here are other things," he mutters as he rummages in his market-basket. "That memory of mine is pretty tricky; sometimes I can't remember things any better than I can find them when they are right under my nose. I've just found a line from Emerson that I've been hunting for two days—'The worm striving ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... would take Grunty Pig to uproot the old apple tree? Although Jolly Robin thought and thought, he could think of no one whom he might ask. To be sure, there was Tommy Fox, who was known to be an able digger. But Jolly Robin didn't trust him. Tommy Fox was tricky. And there was Billy Woodchuck, who came from a famous family of burrowers. But everybody knew that old dog Spot had chased him into his hole that very afternoon, and was watching Billy's ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... provided an ideal golf-course, which prospers though the little town is somnolent. It is here that St. Ives visitors do most of their golfing, and the ground is described as "a natural seaside course, with charming views in all directions. The holes are rather short and tricky, and put a premium on local knowledge. Last, but not least, Lelant can boast a climate absolutely ideal for golf in winter." Lelant Church is interesting, but has lost its fine old bench-ends and screen. It is connected ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... tricky ways do not suit me. Monsieur Arbillot proposed yesterday that I should do what you advise. He even offered to inform this gentleman of my relationship to Claude de Buxieres. I refused, and forbade ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... Wilberforce was there and had opportunity to observe his old and honored friend in the first flush of his new dignity. Here are his comments: "Gladstone, as ever, great, earnest, and honest; as unlike the tricky Disraeli as possible." To Dr. Trench the Bishop wrote: "The nation has decided against our establishment, and we bow to its decision, and on what tenure and conditions it is to be held, remains confessedly ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... One could hardly quote them all in an English Review. While dwelling on the system of bold misrepresentation adopted by Professor Whitney, Professor Steinthal calls him—"That vain man who only wants to be named and praised;" "that horrible humbug;" "that scolding flirt;" "that tricky attorney;" "wherever I read him, hollow vacuity yawns in my face; arrogant vanity grins at me." Surely, mere words can go no further—we must expect to hear of tomahawk and bowie-knife next. Scholars who object to the use of such weapons, whether for offensive ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... thing, he had learned just how far away one of these dreadful guns could be and still hurt the one it was pointed at, and to always keep just a little farther away. Also he had learned that a man or boy without a terrible gun is quite harmless, and he had learned that hunters with terrible guns are tricky and sometimes hide from those they seek to kill, so that in the dreadful hunting season it is best to look sharply before approaching ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... own opening, reasoning of course that as they had never heard of Stavlokratz they would not know of his opening; and with probably a very good hope of getting back his pound he played the fifth variation with its tricky seventh move, at least so he intended, but it turned to a variation unknown to the students ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... good, although tricky. In a case of aroused interest he could absorb an astonishing number of dates, or figures, or lines of poetry, at first glance or hearing. But he could also drop them as if he had never heard of them the moment his interest was gone. And they always seemed to drop out of ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... insisted, and as the old wolf was no great master of tricky argument, he was obliged ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... presently, reconsidering, he replied: "Well, you may go; but you must go on your ponies: it's too dangerous to go a-foot. And in any case, if the trail leads you up to the loose rocks or into the big timber you must stop. You know what a tricky beast Big Reuben is. If he sees that he is followed he will lie in hiding and jump out on you. That's how he caught Jed ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... have perfected a pigeon post. Even so, I cannot help thinking they would have been wiser to train the birds, while they were about it, to deliver the letters nearer the ground. Getting your letters out of those boxes must be tricky work even to the average ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... did take him to school with me once—what a tricky young rascal I must have been! He walked to the school-house door with me, and I forced him in—much against his will it was, but I always made him mind me. I seated him in the master's chair, and ordered him to stay there, while I went to my seat. Of course the boys all laughed, and ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... letters came, there was high wrath in Kostkov. The Lord John raved and swore. He blamed everybody, but most of all Stanislaus and the tricky Jesuits who, he said, were back of the whole scheme. He wrote to Cardinal Osius that he would not rest until he had broken up the Jesuit college in Pultowa and driven every schemer of them out of Poland. As for Stanislaus, ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... left Fensalir. In a few moments Loki appeared on the eastern side of Valhalla and plucked a bit of mistletoe from an old oak that shaded Woden's palace. No one saw him, for he was as sly as a fox and as tricky. Hiding the mistletoe in his hand, he hurried back to the circle of gods who were ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... swordsman—resourceful and extremely tricky. In fact, he seemed never to have heard that there existed such a thing as a code of honor, for he repeatedly outraged a dozen Barsoomian fighting customs that an honorable man would rather ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... caused by the sledge drivers who joined us late at night from Bakaritza with oats. Left at 8:40. Billeting party given an hour's start, travelling ahead of the point to get billets and dinner arranged. Marching hard. Cold sleet from southeast with drifting snow. The Shackelton boot tricky. Men find it hard to navigate. Road very hilly. Cross this inlet here. Down the long hill and up a winding hill to the crest again which overhangs the stream that soon empties into the big Dvina. To the left on the ice-locked beach are two scows. It is warmer now for the road winds between ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... discovered gas there, was one of the most trusting wealth-investing communities in the world. She had her simple rules of business conduct which years of usage had consecrated into all-powerful precedent, but her brokers and capitalists, however fearful of all things quick or tricky, had never previously figured as candidates for what in Western parlance are described ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... of course, Jack," he said, in his confident, convincing way. "But why should it? The danger is great, but nothing more than we're up against every day we set out for the clouds to give battle to a tricky Hun ace, who may send us down to our death. And I assure you we'd have at least a fighting chance to get across. What do you ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... bound fur de buryin'-groun', but how come you got separated frum the hearse?' Purfessor, that mare's entitled Christian name is Mittie May. Did you ever hear of ary thing on fo' laigs, ur two, w'ich answered to the name of Mittie May that wuz tricky?" ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... pride; despise him, and at once his audacity gives way; he speaks; shrug your shoulders and he is silent. You must not discuss with him; however good a reasoner you may be, you will be worsted, for he is a most tricky dialectician." ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... at Gulmarg is very good, the 18-hole course being exceedingly sporting, and tricky enough to defeat the very elect. Jane and I had conveyed our clubs out to Kashmir, knowing that they were likely to prove useful. I had also taken the precaution to pack up a box or two of balls, but I found my labour all ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... already told tales that promised this last thing should come to pass; how he was become fat-souled, grasping, and tricky, using his sacred office to enlarge his wealth, seizing the canons with their precious growths of wood, the life-giving waterways, and the herding-grounds; taking even from the tithing, of which he rendered ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... was of course forbidden me on account of that cursed system of caste which prevails from Peshawur to Rangoon and from Cashmere and Thibet to Cape Cormorin and Ceylon. The road was macadamized and shaded by rows of immense trees. The tricky and balky horses (Mongol ponies) delayed us considerably, but it was very amusing to see the methods employed to coax or coerce them. A groom held in his hand a piece of bamboo about two feet in length, at the extremity of which was fastened a strong looped horsehair cord, which was twisted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... is not difficult to see why Marcius is considered to have been a simple-minded and straightforward character, while Alkibiades has the reputation of a false and tricky politician. The latter has been especially blamed for the manner in which he deceived and outwitted the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, by which, as we learn from Thucydides, he brought the truce between the two nations to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... tried to be very kind indeed to him, and when he faltered that she could not possibly care for him, she reassured him so vaguely as to fill him with wild gusts of hope and herself with a sense of pledges. He told her one day between two sets of tennis—which he played with a certain tricky skill—that he felt that the very highest happiness he could ever attain would be to die at her feet. Presently her pity and her sense of responsibility had become so large and deep that the dream hero with the blue eyes was largely overlaid and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... regular frog-raising business couldn't go about it as slow as that," said the other, "though I have shot a few o' the big uns that way, 'cause they was too tricky to be grabbed with my hand net. If you stay with me a spell we'll get more'n one mess o' frog legs, if ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... your bedroom, for instance, where it will entertain your sleepless hours, if you are unfortunate enough to have any. You will probably like very indifferent drawings at first, the pretty, the picturesque and the tricky will possibly attract before the sublimity of finer things. But be quite honest and feed on the best that you genuinely like, and when you have thoroughly digested and comprehended that, you will weary of it and long for something better, and so, gradually, ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... laughed over this. The idea of Bland biting his tongue tickled him and served to blur his antagonism for the tricky aviator who had played so large a part in his salvaging ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... and boys "showed off" in their canoes in the shallow water under the bank, and in their bathing suits. They showed the more or less anxious parents just how skillful they were in the management of the tricky craft. ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... on brothers. They are too tricky. But how about Hal Crane? He is always interested in our troop doings, and besides he's a good scout himself. I think I would ask him," ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... in his hands. He righted the rocket, balanced it. Began the tricky task of landing. It took all of his talent, all of his training. Ponderously, the ship settled into the iron sand; slowly, the ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... news that influential persons opposed to Pierre Lanier had conspired to procure his arrest along with that of William Dodge. To outwit these enemies both of the Laniers and her husband must disappear. Their tricky foes would watch the mails and harass the Dodge family. For the present all writing must cease, and the Dodge family move. This removal must be prompt, and nothing was to be said about it. She did as advised. Her surprise was great at being conveyed in a roundabout way for ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... in the flitter seldom spoke. Raf kept his attention on the controls. Sudden currents of air were tricky here, and he had to be constantly alert to hold the small flyer on an even keel. His glimpses of what lay ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... be a very tricky thing for the superstitious. At dinner a night or two ago I happened to say that I had never been in danger of drowning. I am not sure now that it was true, but I still think that it was harmless. However, before I had time to elaborate my theme (whatever ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... this: I am longing for a real church home, where I can feel at one with, and in fellowship with real Christians. Pastor Jones, there are so many professing Christians who are Christians only in name. I cannot fellowship them. They engage in questionable practices; they are dishonest and tricky; they use bad language; and their bent is more toward pleasure than religion. My soul really craves a church home. Can you offer me such where I shall have ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... spark running through a length of fuse, the length depending altogether upon the time required to reach a point of safety after the fuse is lighted. The cap is really more dangerous to handle than is the dynamite itself. The cap is a tricky thing that may go off at any jar or scratch or at a spark from pipe or cigarette. You can, if you are sufficiently careless of possible results, light the twisted paper end of a stick of dynamite and watch the ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... jealous bridegroom. Merry Melodious MOZART! Old-fashioned he may be, like not a few of the best melodies and the best stories. Elegant Countess is Madame EMMA EAMES. Can she possibly ever have been Rosina, Dr. Bartolo's tricky ward! What a change matrimony makes in some folks! Old Dr. Bartolo bears not much resemblance to the other Dr. Bartolo, and Don Basilio, a kind of Ecclesiastical lawyer, is quite a rollicking wag as compared with the Basilio of the Barber of Seville. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... May spew deep discord when we least expect. I have it! well 'tis known that Wisdom's bird, While winging daily flight, hath hovered o'er Our foes politic, and hath often shunned To make her nest in Democratic boughs. 'Twere well to seek from out the tricky foe One who shall balance, like the flying wheel, The various acts of Francos and his crew And so most shrewdly curb the critic tongues That wag within the jaws of foes most keen, Thus hiding well, from all the thoughtless world. The deep intent which labors in our breast. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... Rambouillet's men to the stable where the deaf man's bay was standing, bidding him pay whatever was due to the dealer, and bring the horse to the south gate; my intention being to mount one of my men on it, and furnish the woman with a less tricky steed. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman |
