"Cannily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... back one night after the two younger women had left. She informed him bluntly that she didn't think he was anything much of a lawyer. He retorted hotly that he'd done everything any lawyer could do. Janet eyed him cannily. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... none; but even they, if brought up Christians, are no dissenters from this creed, and however rackety in the nursery, in an orderly-kept parlour or drawing-room how like so many pretty little white mice do they glide cannily along the floor! Let no such horror, then, as a flitting ever befall us or our friends! O mercy! only look at a long huge train of waggons, heaped up to the windows of the first floors, moving along the dust-driving ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... went on smiling, and replied he was willing enough to sacrifice to their noble rage, not indeed the pretty girls, whom he besought them rather to treat cannily, but the Fanatics, the chiefest foes, he said, of ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... She gazed cannily at the white paper parcel. It was the largest box he had ever given her; he always gave her sweeties when Mr. Philip had been talking against her. Ought she therefore to deduce from the unusual size that he had been saying something unusually cruel? But, on the other hand, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... enraptured, and Horace was despatched to Jake with the proffer of a magnificent opportunity. Horace cannily tried to extract from Jake the promise of a commission before he told him. Jake promised. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... beginning. For weeks, they obtained only an occasional favorable slant of wind, and these, as often as not, in the shape of short, sharp gales. They made the most of them; the blind man on the poop coached cannily, and Ruth and the boatswain carried on to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... this over," objected Wiley cannily. "I don't like to put up that option for security. That bond and lease is worth half a million ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... dollars a year, but she went on remembering his engagements, writing his letters and soothing the outraged feelings of his clients just as she had done in humbler days. She was, in the good, old-fashioned sense, his better half. Her amusement was the stock market and she played it cannily and with considerable success ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... reflecting grimly on the disastrous overthrow of the promising speculation on which he had embarked. "My certie! there was naething left for't, when madam's fingers had grippit me, but to slip through them as cannily as I could. What's Jaffray's marrying, or no' marrying, to do wi' her?" he wondered, reverting to the question which Anne had put to him at parting. "And whar's the sense o' her errand, if she's reely bent on finding her ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... gin I bena mista'en, there's a byous [extraordinary] heap o' things has happened since then. Gang yer ways, but gin ye hae message or word for Jock, juist come cannily oot, an' he'll be here till dark ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... likewise out late it would be wiser and infinitely more discreet on his part did he avoid further disturbing Mrs. Braydon, who presumably was alone and who might be easily frightened. So he would just slip on past the Braydon apartment, and in the hallway on the fourth floor he would cannily bide, awaiting the truant ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... up with an indulgent smile. His face was round and smooth but for a perfectly docile little moustache, his lips full and red, his nose delicately chiselled; but his eyes, though large, were set cannily close together. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... to insult me?" cried the Colonel, rather suddenly. "This is what we are come to now. Here's a brat of six begins taking notes against his own father; and he improves on the Scotch poet—he doesn't print 'em. No, he accumulates them cannily until he is twenty, but never says a word. He loads his gun up to the muzzle, and waits, as the years roll on, with his linstock in his hand, and one fine day at breakfast he fires his treble charge of ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Thomas Trumbull, 'if it is a work of necessity, and in the honest independent way of business, no doubt there is balm in Gilead. But prithee, Robin, wilt thou see if Nanty Ewart be, as is most likely, amongst these unhappy topers; and if so, let him step this way cannily, and speak to me and this young gentleman. And it's dry talking, Robin—you must minister to us a bowl ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... fought for, it was not all his fancy painted it. He found himself poor indeed,—practically penniless. He complained sadly that he was paid his salary in the worthless continental paper money, and he refused to take it. Often he cannily took merchandise of all kinds instead of the low-valued paper money, and he became a good and sharp trader, exchanging his various goods for whatever he needed—and could get. Merchandise was, indeed, far preferable to money. The petition of Rev. Mr. Barnes to his Willsborough people has been ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... 'm silly, an' greet till I dee, Kintore is the spot in this world for me. But the lass o' Kintore, oh! the lass o' Kintore, Be warned awa' frae the lass o' Kintore; There 's a love-luring look that I ne'er kent afore Steals cannily hame to the heart ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... heirship and movables, like a gentleman, at cock-matches, bull-baitings, horse-races, and the like. Now, Donald Bean Lean, being aware that the bridegroom was in request, and wanting to cleik the cunzie (that is, to hook the siller), he cannily carried off Gilliewhackit ae night when he was riding DOVERING hame (wi' the malt rather abune the meal), and with the help of his gillies he gat him into the hills with the speed of light, and the first place he wakened in was ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... long study window and got him cannily off, for the air and motion, after a dash of cold water, brought him around, and he was glad to be safely landed at home. His rooms are below, you know, so no one was disturbed, and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... began again, uncertainly. And then, because his Scotch peasant reticence had been quite broken down by Bobby's shameless devotion, so that he told the little dog many things that he cannily concealed from human kind, he confided the strange weakness and dizziness in the head that had overtaken him: "Auld Jock is juist fair silly the ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... she, 'my ain bairn, when ye hae won the croun, use it na' at all, though a' the fiends fra' hell tempted ye, but carry it to the kirkyard at mirk midnight; an' when ye hae cannily lichted a bit bleeze, burn the king's croun, an' say wha' I shall tell ye. "I gie back more than I hae taken, an' I rest on Christ's smercy;" an' then shall ye be safe an' happy if ye fail na' to be constant ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... comely precision of finely adjusted clockwork, though at times John Bulmer's face showed a spurt of amusement roused by the brigand's extravagancy of gesture and Cazaio's contortions as he strove to pass the line of steel that flickered cannily between his sword and ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... led to contempt. On the other hand, his avoidance of any assumption of meddlesome authority prevented the irritation and dislike which free men inevitably feel for the self-important type of leader. Thus he cannily steered himself and his mates between the two rocks which might have wrecked the expedition before it was well started. And Knowlton, ex-lieutenant, and Tim, ex-sergeant, seeing and ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... you forgot you had a horse to lead, and he does not like the look of this bit. Climb back again and take him by the head; still he will not budge. Try again to the right. Bang! goes your knee into a boulder. Circle cannily round the horse to the left; here at last is something like a slope. Forward horse—so, gently! Hurrah! Two minutes gone—a ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... Wetherby matter once and for all. And the big Irishman seemed almost pathetically pleased at her announcement, and it was entirely conceivable that Rodney Harrison would provide flesh-pots and diversions. All in all, she was cannily glad to abide by her hasty and handsome offer, and she worked steadily at her letters while Mrs. Richards wrote at ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the four queens; and black, white, grey, and crutched friars for the four knaves; and had staked their very rosaries, swearing like troopers when they lost. And how about midnight a sly monk had stolen out, but had by him and others been as cannily followed into the garden, and seen to thrust his hand into the ivy and out with a rope-ladder. With this he had run up on the wall, which was ten feet broad, yet not so nimbly but what a russet kirtle ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... attraction to that distant point where the fair artist sat and plied her solitary task—and not long did I attempt to resist it: while my little neighbour was exchanging a few words with Miss Wilson, I rose and cannily slipped away. A few rapid strides, and a little active clambering, soon brought me to the place where she was seated—a narrow ledge of rock at the very verge of the cliff, which descended with a steep, precipitous slant, quite down to the ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... posses combing every scrap of cover for a famous criminal turned fugitive. He had only to lie quiet a few days, somewhere, then get in secret touch with Walling. Walling would do anything for money. And he had the money—four millions and more, cannily saved from the crash that had ruined so ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... went slowly and cannily—and that was why the Leichardt's Land Government believed in him. He had the reputation of never spending a penny on his private or public ambitions where a halfpenny would serve his purpose, and he was ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Pardee made sudden thousands. Mrs. Pardee would buy silver, linen, and other household furnishings ranging all the way from a grand piano to a patent washing machine. The piano and the washing machine usually were whisked away within a few weeks or months, at the longest. But she cannily had the linen and silver stamped—stamped unmistakably and irrevocably with a large, flourishing capital P, embellished with floral wreaths. Eventually some of the silver went the way of the piano and washing ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... cannily forbore argument. He had learned more valuable pointers in the past few days on the matter of rebuttal than Blackstone ever revealed ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... true horrors at this siege, there was thus much roughness of conduct among the soldiery, and of this the Whigs were sure to be the victims. With the example of Leach and Lovell before their eyes, the wiser among the provincials spoke cannily and walked softly, and attracted as little attention as possible. But among the poorer class there was much distress for lack of food and fuel, for even when the troops had plenty, it was difficult ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... him), much the picture for framing in a club window of a Sunday morning; a seasoned, hard-surfaced, knowing creature for whom many a head waiter must have swept previous claimants from desired tables. He looked forty years so cannily that I guessed him to ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... landlady, by which he had in fact bribed her to silence, and transformed her into a devoted servant always under his eye; hence the various means by which he had found it possible to quiet the members of his own family and of Phoebe's—needy folk, most of them, cannily unwilling to make an enemy of a man who was likely, so they understood, to be rich, and who already showed a helpful disposition. When once he had convinced himself that he had no clue, and that Phoebe had disappeared, it had not been difficult indeed to keep his secret, and to hide ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... right on this side," said Elihu Titus, cannily peering at the nether mechanism in pretense that he had left his seat to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson |
