"Sneaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more sneaking and cowardly of my shipmates whispered among themselves, that Jackson, sure of his wages, whether on duty or off, was only feigning indisposition, nevertheless it was plain that, from his excesses in Liverpool, the malady which ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... to you what he signs?" said Handy. "I suppose if we all wants to ax for our own, we needn't ax leave of you first, Mr Bunce, big a man as you are; and as to your sneaking in here, into Job's room when he's busy, and where ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... what a sight it must be to behold the plenipotentiaries of royal impotence, in the precedency which they will intrigue to obtain, and which will be granted to them according to the seniority of their degradation, sneaking into the regicide presence, and with the relics of the smile, which they had dressed up for the levee of their masters, still flickering on their curled lips, presenting the faded remains of their courtly graces, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to the particular kinds of dresses That the clergyman wore at church where he used to go to pray, And whatever he did in the way of relieving a chap's distresses, He always did in a nasty, sneaking, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... when his learned display was interrupted by a double knock, and—oh, mercy on us!—enter Mr. Gammon. Whether he or Snap felt more disconcerted, I cannot say; but Snap looked the most confused and sneaking. Each told the other a lie, in as easy, good-natured a way as he could assume, concerning the object of his visit to Titmouse. Thus they were going on, when—another knock—and, "Is this Mr. Titmouse's?" inquired a voice, which brought a little color into the face of both Gammon and Snap; for it ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... that I wrote for literary exercise years ago, failed to impress the girls, who returned them. At the fire they proved to be fireproof, and fell through the floor. The sneaking detectives found them and brought them to me. Jim is now at my room, completely ignorant of the charges against him, poor ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... way off, schizo. My hitting the road has nothing to do with those split-heads. Nothing, you understand? There's nothing foggy or dreamy about me. I wouldn't be here with you guys if I hadn't been so interested in a wasp catching a caterpillar that I never saw the Bohas sneaking ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... author of Montorio: it is one of those things which will either succeed greatly or be damned gloriously, for its merits are marked, deep, and striking, and its faults of a nature obnoxious to ridicule. He had our old friend Satan (none of your sneaking St. John Street devils, but the arch-fiend himself) brought on the stage bodily. I believe I have exorcised the foul fiend—for, though in reading he was a most terrible fellow, I feared for his reception in public. The last act is ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the car," he said. "Sir Samuel proposed it to his wife, as if he thought it would be rather more select and exclusive for her than drinking it in the inn; but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was because he wanted to let me off. Not a ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... clean-limbed he was; how easily his clothes fitted. It seemed as impossible for Major Walters' tie to work up round his neck as for his toes to protrude through his boots. He gave one the impression of having followed cleanliness of thought and person all his life. I began to have a sneaking admiration for the man. I beheld in its openness that which I had often seen pierce through Paragot's travesty of mountebankery or rags, but which singularly enough seemed hidden beneath his conventional garb—the inborn and incommunicable quality of the high-bred ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... here," she said furiously, "or I'll go to Mr. Spencer and complain about you. I'm no more a spy than you are. Not as much!—the way you come sneaking around listening and watching! Now ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Now at last the mystery surrounding Morrison & Daly's unnatural complaisance was riven. It had come to grapples again. He was glad of it. Meet those notes? Well I guess so! He'd show them what sort of a proposition they had tackled. Sneaking, underhanded scoundrels! taking advantage of a mere boy. Meet those notes? You bet he would; and then he'd go down there and boost those stocks until M. & D. looked like a last year's bird's nest. He thrust the letter in his pocket and walked ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Prototype of Tartuffe we are shown President La Roquette at the court of Louis XIV., obliged at last, in spite of his long continued successful efforts to suppress the play, to witness his own public unmasking in the person of Moliere's Tartuffe, of whom he is the sneaking, hypocritical original. We hear him in anger declare his readiness to join the Jesuits and we join in the laugh at his discomfiture. The scene of The Royal Lieutenant, written to celebrate the hundredth recurrence ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... for he was fearlessly striding towards the house, not, as before, sneaking among ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... right," said Ben, a pleased look in his eyes. "I tell you we will make it lively for those Tories when they come sneaking around here." ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... comes sneaking along in the midst of a paragraph in common Roman letters and by the living jingo, you discover it just as Mr. Crusoe discovered ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... of a kid to put himself forward, but he's really the whole thing. He's been sneaking around town for months, picking up information. He has a confounded cheerful way of making friends that has cut him out for the job of politics, if he would just put himself on the right side. Of ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... neither brave, polite, nor wise." I very well remember hearing the old gentleman say that, though he had given away hundreds of these cards, he had never learned that one of them had done any good. I do not wonder at it. It was a sneaking way of doing good, or of trying to. If the old man had remonstrated personally with these swearing fellows, and told them that their habit was both vulgar and wicked, does any one suppose that the result would have been so unsatisfactory? He had not pluck enough to do this; so he gave them ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Promised Land, because he allowed the children of Israel to provoke him, and "he spake unadvisedly with his lips." Peter was the most zealous and defiant of the disciples, bold and outspoken; yet he degenerated for a short time into a lying, swearing, sneaking coward, afraid ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... escort Clerambault according to their promise, but they had not dared to come up because they were an hour too early. Clerambault sent for them, laughing at their excess of zeal, and they admitted that they had thought him perfectly capable of sneaking out of the house without waiting for them; an idea which he confessed ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... to get drunk regularly every day. She would hang about for hours outside the cellar door for the purpose of sneaking in on the first opportunity and lapping up the drippings from the beer-cask. I do not mention this habit of hers in praise of the species, but merely to show how almost human some of them are. If the transmigration of souls ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... your funeral, ye sneaking half-breed Canuck! How about it, boys," he added turning to the crowd, "do I ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... "you pack of screaming blackguards! how dare you attack children, and insult women? Fling another shot at that carriage, you sneaking pigskin cobbler, and by the Lord I'll send my rapier ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Johnny, without looking up, or intermitting his sneaking, restless walk from one corner of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... to sell the Harkness vote if our crowd would vote later on the way he wanted us to!" declared Gibson. "You would think he had half the vote of the Hall in his pocket," and he glared at Halliday, who thereupon lost no time in sneaking out ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... get a shot at a Yankee, a Southern girl raved about the "murdered patriot" and the "dastardly wretch" who had anticipated him. But I do not criticize, for I remember an English account of the battle of New Orleans, in which General Pakenham was represented as having been picked off by a "sneaking Yankee rifle." Those who were engaged in the actual conflict took more reasonable views, and the annals of the war are full of stories of battlefield and hospital in which a common humanity asserted itself. But brotherhood ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... get some more shot, Court," cried Philip. "I'll serve the sneaking coward out for getting me in ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... space of time. That was all. Instinct was at work in the little community, the foundry, where swarthy creatures with bared arms flitted like demons about the great furnace, moulding the fused metal into shapes. These found leisure to curse the "sneaking Frenchman" at the hotel; but the imprecations were gathered up in the whirl and clash of machinery, the din of bells, the hoarse shouting of many voices, and went no further. Outside, the hills towered high above the little hamlet, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... Though the sneaking scoundrelism of her husband displeased him, he did not think her the less attractive, but his desires were no longer beyond control. In spite of the distrust which she aroused, she might be an interesting mistress, making up for her ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... or ten days I shall know about the contest. If I win, as I really have a sneaking hope that I shall, since I have condensed the best of two dozen houses into one and exhausted my imagination on my dream home, I will surely telegraph, and you can make it a day of jubilee. If I fail, I will try to find out where my dream was ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... been wasted, but discuss them together calmly. For I am not so much consoled by a sanguine disposition as by philosophic "indifference,"[246] which I call to my aid in nothing so much as in our civil and political business. Nay, more, whatever vanity or sneaking love of reputation there is lurking in me—for it is well to know one's faults—is tickled by a certain pleasurable feeling. For it used to sting me to the heart to think that centuries hence the services of Sampsiceramus to the state would loom larger than my own. That ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Rustem, who, for reconnoitring purposes, entered the Tartar camp as a spy. There he beheld Sorab, and could not help admiring the young warrior, of whose many brave exploits he had already heard. While thus sneaking about the enemy's tent, Rustem was discovered by the two servants whom Tamineh had placed by her son's side, both of whom he killed before they could give the alarm. Thus, when Sorab and Rustem finally came face to face, there was no one at hand to point out the son to the father or inform ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... and Jone was asleep on a settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I was on the point of shouting, "Fly! oh, Saxon!" when the door opened and the maid who waited on us at the table put ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... sneaking out through the rear door, found himself in a small, brick-paved yard hemmed in by a high wall thickly fringed on the top with a hedge of broken bottles. At one time in its history the house had ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... cried; "listened when you weren't sneaking under my eye! A fine occupation for a man who can dove-tail a corner like an adept. I wish I had let you join the brotherhood you were good enough to mention. They would know how to appreciate your double gifts and how to reward ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... fellows!" exclaimed Tom, with some disgust. "There's that chap sneaking off again. We've got to ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... have not reeked since April 25. The battleships keep moving and belching out their deadly hail, encircled always by the destroyers, while an aeroplane hovers, at a low height, over and around them, peering into the depths of the Aegean in case a submarine should come sneaking up. The French guns ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... was a long one; and, having sat up so late, he felt sleepy. He was, therefore, in no very friendly humour with the wolves— upon whose account he was thus compelled to keep awake. Every now and then, as he saw them sneaking about in the darkness, he could not help muttering an angry ejaculation; and he had made up his mind, as soon as morning came, to empty his gun at one of the pack, by ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... my eyes in the direction of our horses and saw that a number of them had raised their heads and were looking off down the river as though they had seen something. I sprang to my feet and saw nine Indians coming up the river in the direction of our camp, but they were apparently sneaking along slowly. I could see at once by their movements that they did not think they were discovered yet. I said to Jim: "The Sioux are on us," and he sprang to his feet, saying, "Let us mount our horses and meet them before they get among our pack horses," ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... and opened the door, and presently a ridiculous little draggled object, as black as a cinder, its long hair caked and clotted with dried mud, shuffled into the room with the evident intention of sneaking into a warm corner without attracting public notice—an intention promptly foiled by the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... been away from the settlement nearly a month, and he returned to find the colony in confusion and misery. Many had died, and those who remained were quarrelling among themselves. Indeed some were on the point of deserting and sneaking off to England in the one little ship they had. They were not in the least pleased to see Smith return, and they resolved once more to get rid of him. So they accused him of causing the death of the two men who had gone with him, and condemned him to death. Thus Smith had only escaped ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... what a sight it must be to behold the plenipotentiaries of royal impotence, in the precedency which they will intrigue to obtain, and which will be granted to them according to the seniority of their degradation, sneaking into the Regicide presence, and, with the relics of the smile which they had dressed up for the levee of their masters still flickering on their curled lips, presenting the faded remains of their courtly graces, to meet ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... he proposed to do should he get speech with the girl, it is probable he would not have known what to answer. Courtesy, nay, decency required that he should, inquire after his antagonist. If he saw the girl—and he had a sneaking desire to see her—well. If he did not see her—still well; there was an end of a foolish imbroglio, which had occupied him too long already. In an hour he could be in his post-chaise, and a mile out ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... dress up and be on parade. Very good; I arrive. The old women, in everything clean and new, are already drawn up in a row, waiting. Near them struts the old garrison rat—the superintendent with his mawkish, sneaking smile. The old women yawn and exchange glances, but are afraid to complain. We wait. The junior steward gallops up. Half an hour later the senior steward; then the superintendent of the accounts' office, then another, and then another ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the hand of the sneaking thern had reached out through the concealing darkness of my bed-chamber and wiped away a patch of the disguising red pigment as broad as my palm. Beneath showed the tanned texture of my ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... father died, I rustled about on the little money he left, and I got to sneaking into other women's homes. I didn't mean harm at first, but after awhile it seemed so easy to sneak and so hard to—make good! But down in my heart, as truly as God hears me, I've been homesick for—what I ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... When Angelica ceased sneaking she knelt before the king and awaited his answer, and everybody gazed on her with admiration. Orlando especially felt irresistibly drawn towards her, so that he trembled and changed countenance. Every knight in the hall was infected ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... whose sloop he had just sunk and rifled: "I am sorry that they [his crew] won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief when it is not for my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security—for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery. But damn ye altogether; ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... peculiarity of judgment that was singularly in opposition to all his open professions, a peculiarity, however, that belongs rather to his class than to the individual member of it. Ultra as a democrat and an American, Mr. Dodge had a sneaking predilection in favour of foreign opinions. Although practice had made him intimately acquainted with all the frauds, deceptions, and vileness of the ordinary arts of paragraph-making, he never failed to believe religiously in the veracity, judgment, good faith, honesty and talents of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... like a man, if he has nothing to hide? Why must you let him come in like a thief by a back-door, if you have nothing to be ashamed of? The tap-room is open to anybody. Anybody can walk in and get a drink if they want to. Then why this whispering and this sneaking?" ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... which had formerly distinguished him as an officer in his Majesty's military service. "Yes, it is the devil, I verily believe; and there is no way but to send for the priest, to get him out of a house that never was troubled in this way before. Where are those sneaking curs?" as Patrick and the rest in a body peeped into the room through the door they had forgotten to shut in their flight, and too much frightened to stay quietly anywhere. "Patrick," called out the 'Squire, "go at once ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... bottle of port, and those who "boxed Harry." What glorious fellows the first seemed! What airs they gave themselves! What oaths they swore! and what influence they had with hostlers and chambermaids! and what a sneaking-looking set the others were! shabby in their apparel; no fine ferocity in their countenances; no oaths in their mouths, except such a trumpery apology for an oath as an occasional "confounded hard;" with little or no influence at inns, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... very sad matter, no doubt, to lose the intelligent respect of such gentlemen as Mr. Augustus Bellerington, but it sometimes has to be done; that is, unless their good opinion is to be gained by some nice little stroke of sneaking cowardice. ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... I was building a mill up at Rum River we had to go to Princeton to get some things, so I started. I had to pass a camp of those dirty Winnebagoes. They had trees across for frames and probably two hundred deer frozen and hanging there. I was sneaking by, but the old chief saw me and insisted on my coming in to eat. I declined hard, saying I had had my dinner, but I knew all the time they knew better. I had on a buffalo overcoat and a leather shortcoat inside. In the tepee, they had a great kettle of ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... their strength. Mistaken men he loves in spite of their mistakes—if only they be not weaklings. There is no place anywhere in the Dean's philosophy of life for a weakling. I heard him tell a man once—nor shall I ever forget it—"You had better die like a man, sir, than live like a sneaking coyote." ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... miles up the canon from Wallace and the grade drops two hundred and thirty-five feet to the mile, being a masterpiece of engineering. Ed gets his two cars to the main line, all right, whistling a careless ditty. Then when they should of stopped they did not. They kept sneaking and creaking along on him. He couldn't get the brake of the forward car up very tight, and in setting the brake of the rear car, with a brakeman's stick for a lever, he broke the chain. Then his two cars really ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... children will be ladies and gentlemen," he said, "if you prevail on their father to play the part of a sneaking parasite?" ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... had been in the cat's clutches once. It was hardly to his discredit. He had been with his wife at the time, had heard the sneaking footfall, and was in the act of pushing her into shelter when he felt himself ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... and entrances. When I did make a raid on anarchist headquarters in Paris, it was always to secure some particular man. I had my emissaries in plain clothes stationed at each exit. In any case, the rats were allowed to escape unmolested, sneaking forth with great caution into the night, but we always spotted the man we wanted, and almost invariably arrested him elsewhere, having followed him from his kennel. In each case my uniformed officers found a dark and empty cellar, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... attention awaken'd to acts of daring Vice, or pre-eminent Virtue, may think the mean, base, cowardly, hypocritical Character not sufficiently interesting to claim their particular notice;—and that the exposing to the general knowledge of the World, those miserable, sneaking qualities which have not courage to rise into general notice, and are too mean to be long the topics of any conversion, is drawing aside the veil where it ought to be covered with thicker folds.—But when the mean Character, conscious of the universal contempt of those ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... of hunting for Max," the big man replied, "for he took good care of himself, and came sneaking home, safe and sound, while he left you, little girl, to look out for yourself ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... that Jimmy Skunk was punishing Reddy Fox for rolling him down hill in a barrel, and while Reddy was sneaking away to the Green Forest to get out of sight, Peter Rabbit was lying low in the old house of Johnny Chuck, right near the place where Jimmy Skunk's wild ride had come to an end. It had been a great relief to Peter when he had seen Jimmy Skunk get to his feet, and he knew that Jimmy hadn't been ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... flat ground, must be as old or older than the Conquest. In Devonshire I am sure that they are. But there many of them, one suspects, were made not of malice, but of cowardice prepense. Your indigenous Celt was, one fears, a sneaking animal, and liked to keep when he could under cover of banks and hill-sides; while your bold Roman made his raised roads straight over hill and dale, as 'ridge-ways' from which, as from an eagle's eyrie, he could survey the conquered lowlands far and wide. It marks strongly the difference between ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the United States, by the way, has started a rumour that I hear once in a while—that it is really owned by Americans—nonsense yet awhile. To the fairness and helpfulness of the newspaper men there are one or two exceptions, for instance, a certain sneaking whelp who writes for several papers. He went to the Navy League dinner last night at which I made a little speech. When I sat down, he remarked to his neighbour, with a yawn, "Well, nothing in it for me. The Ambassador, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... start, Reginald looked round laughing, and exclaimed, 'Who would have thought of Claude sneaking there?' and Phyllis ran to the protecting arm, which he stretched out. To her great surprise, he drew her to him, and kissed her ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ill; not openly and above-board, as we say, but in such a nasty sneaking way, he is always trying to injure me. He knows sometimes I fall asleep after I am called. Well, he dresses so quietly, (I sleep in his room, I wish I didn't,) he steals down stairs and then laughs with such triumph when I come down late and get a lecture or a fine for it. If I am very ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... "A sneaking hound!" Varr did not lower his voice, indifferent to whether the retreating clerk learned his opinion of him or not. "I ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... words can express how sorry I am that my letter should have caused you and father so much trouble. My suspicions however have in no way diminished. James is as bad as ever. He has a horrible sneaking way of coming upstairs and he dreams too and shouts out "oh why did I do it; murder! robbery." So tonight I shall tell him that I have found him out and could not possibly marry him. Of course he will have nothing to do with me and I shall be penniless, but as you will ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... opposition, into an assumed hardness and defensive cynicism. There are readers so unluckily constituted that they can see nothing in Thackeray but this bitterness, this cruel sense of meanness and power of analysing shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible ambitions. All of us must often feel with regret that he allowed himself to be made too unhappy by the spectacle of failings so common in the world he knew best, that he dwelt on them too long and lashed them too complacently. One hopes never ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... the streets of Paris with Henri de Malfort and a wild party, masked, to hear Beaufort address the populace in the market-place, and when I was so unlucky as to lose the emerald cross given her by the great Cardinal, for whom, I believe, she had a sneaking kindness. Why else should she have so hated his Eminence's very much favoured ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... wake, 'we were going home to bid Mistress Agnes take her choice of us; but this morn we've met a pursuivant that is come with Norroy King- at-arms, and what doth he but tell us that no sooner were our backs turned, than what doth Mistress Agnes but wed—ay, wed outright—one Tom of the Lee, a sneaking rogue that either of us would have beat black and blue, had we ever seen him utter a word to her? A knight's lady—not to say two—as she might have been! So, my lord, we not being willing to go home and be a laughing-stock, crave your license to be of your ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and I'll knock your head off,' cried Jentham, rising with a savage look in his eyes. 'If you aren't a spy why do you come sneaking round here?' ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... with him yesterday and call it quits. But he wouldn't touch me. He jest leaned back and smiled at me and hated me with his eyes, that way he has. He don't even look at me except when he has to, and when he does I feel like someone was sneaking up behind me with a knife ready. And he ain't said ten words to me since I come back." He paused and considered Kate with the same dark, lowering glance. "To-morrow ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... He was never inwardly content on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and he could be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it. He was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always felt any arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn't been referred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Delia had made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain as guests of the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn't be of the company: she was sure those gentlemen wouldn't rope HIM in. ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... wild-dog puppy from the Ysabel bush, being taken back to Malaita by one of the Meringe return boys. In age they were the same, but their breeding was different. The wild-dog was what he was, a wild-dog, cringing and sneaking, his ears for ever down, his tail for ever between his legs, for ever apprehending fresh misfortune and ill-treatment to fall on him, for ever fearing and resentful, fending off threatened hurt with lips curling malignantly from his ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... listened and looked and asked questions, and of what I heard, and of what I saw I could write much; but for the censor I might tell of armour-belts of enormous thickness, of guns of stupendous calibre, of new methods of defence against sneaking submarine and torpedo attack, and of devices new and strange; but of these I may neither write nor speak, because of the aforesaid censor. Suffice it that as the sun sank, we came, all three, to a jetty whereto a ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... and Eurekas," reeled off the Girl with her eye upon Billy Jackrabbit, who had quietly come in and was sneaking about in an endeavour to ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... a cowardly, sneaking, good-for-nothing pack of poltroons, here in the north. There's for you! There's what you get for your pains, Sirs. And for the rest, General Schuyler is to be disgraced, and old Gates is to be set over us again, and——no matter for the ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... the issue of the business. And my reason for thinking so is this,—that I already see enough to discern a character of boldness and determination in Mr. Ricardo's doctrines which needs no help from sneaking equivocations, and this with me is a high presumption that he is in the right. In whatever rough way his theories are tossed about, they seem always, like a cat, to light upon their legs. But, notwithstanding ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... too, to feel the discomfort of my position, and became sensible of a sneaking wish to be before a comfortable fire. I crossed two or three fields, and eventually coming to a road I followed it, and, after paddling through the mud half a mile further, I struck a village, and in ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... day," Ree answered, little inclined to engage in conversation with the man, for the fellow's appearance was far from favorable. The sneaking glance of his eyes, his unshaved face and uncouth dress, half civilized, half barbarian, gave him an air of lawlessness, though except for these things he might have ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... hound sneaking round back doors for bones, on account of Mr. Bolton, myself. My father lost more than 'most anybody, but I wouldn't change places with the man. Say, do you know he has been in State's Prison ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... walked back and forth in the darkness, and as the farmer stood by the fence, began to talk in a loud voice. "Well, Tom Butterworth, you're fooling around with Fanny Twist," he cried into the silence and emptiness of the night. "You're sneaking into her shop late at night, eh? Steve Hunter has set Louise Trucker up in business in a house in Cleveland. Are you and Fanny Twist going to open a house here? Is that the next industrial enterprise we're to have here ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... Collin, otherwise known as Trompe-la-Mort, condemned to twenty years' penal servitude, and I have just proved that I have come fairly by my nickname.—If I had as much as raised my hand," he went on, addressing the other lodgers, "those three sneaking wretches yonder would have drawn claret on Mamma Vauquer's domestic hearth. The rogues have laid their heads together to set a trap ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... temper is kindled from a coal out of hell," she said, "and that is the God's truth; but she couldn't do ill with them, if Archie Braelands wasn't a coward—a sneaking, trembling coward, that hasn't the heart in him to stand between poor little Sophy and the most spiteful, hateful old sinner this side ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... into flame? He had not forgotten, however, that he had suffered, and her presence acted like some wonderful balm to his wounded soul. It was his turn now and he could afford to humor her. Though there was nothing triumphant in his manner, he, nevertheless, enjoyed that sneaking feeling of satisfaction which most of us experience on beholding the discomfiture of those who have treated us lightly. Moreover, he thoroughly realized what the coming of Blanch and his family meant. They had come to laugh at him and his surroundings—to ridicule his ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Biddy! that on honest woman like me should be called a parrybellygrum to her face. I'm none of your parrybellygrums, you rascally gallowsbird; you cowardly, sneaking, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... ready to yield to a friend's arguments. . . . A sneaking scamp, that's what he is. Why does he ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... a Whig, or a sneaking half-and-half, I can't help you much,' he remarked. 'I can pop a young Tory in for my borough, maybe; but I can't insult a number of independent Englishmen by asking them to vote for the opposite crew; that's reasonable, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to keep anything from father, mother," Polly would say. "If he chooses to misbehave, that isn't my fault. I mean to have Mr. Moggs, and it's only natural I should like to see him." Neefit, when informed of these visits, after swearing that Moggs junior was a sneaking scoundrel to come to his house in his absence, would call upon Moggs senior, and swear with many threats that his daughter should have nothing but what she stood up in. Moggs senior would stand quite silent, cutting the skin on his hand with his shoemaker's knife, and would simply bid ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... felt a sneaking admiration for Crane. The son-of-a-bitch had a disarming quality of honesty. If he planned to knife you, he drove straight in, ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... of that concerning himself which he would not have known by others! This was how the woman, whom he had brought back from death with the life of his own heart, had served him! Years ago she had sacrificed her bloom to some sneaking wretch who flattered a God with prayers, then enticed ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... tell-tale, you," cried Oscar, "what did you tell Ralph about the blackboard for! I 'll learn you to mind your own business, next time, you mean, sneaking meddler. Take that—and that," he continued, giving Whistler several hard blows with his fist. The latter attempted to dodge the blows, but did not return them, for this he knew would only increase the anger of Oscar, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... shoots her, bumps into the lamp, goes out by the back door, and comes around front to join the party.... You say yourself he has admitted to everything but the trip to Nita's room and the shooting—even to sneaking back to get his bag, which I believe also contained the gun until he had a chance to dispose of it on his way to ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... even after his legs are gone," said Ferry. "Knows too much to go by the sally-port. He's sneaking ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... sneaking round, and stealing the cake which Poll had laid aside for her supper. Poll missed her cake and was furious, but the dog licked ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... ungrateful, pig-headed, brutish, obstinate, sneaking dog,' exclaimed Mrs Squeers, taking Smike's head under her arm, and administering a cuff at every epithet; 'what does he mean ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Lord of that Star. They were in sore need of a watchful shepherd now. Satan was stiff and chilled, but he was rested and had had his sleep, and he was just as ready for fun as he always was. He didn't understand that sneaking. Why they didn't all jump and race and bark as he wanted to, he couldn't see; but he was too polite to do otherwise than as they did, and so he sneaked after them; and one would have thought he knew, as well as the rest, the hellish mission on which ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... which he wanted to have taken up for high treason.(719) He was every minute interrupted by loud bursts of laughter; which was all the answer he received or deserved. His suffragan Price has published a short, sneaking equivocal answer to Burke, in which he pretends his triumph over the King of France alluded to July, not to October, though his sermon was preached in November. Gredat—but not Judaeus Apella, as Mr. Burke so wittily says of the assignats.(720) Mr. Grenville, the secretary ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to be a sort of unspoken agreement among them all that Hervey Willetts should be thought of ruefully, and in a way of disapproval. But, oddly enough, none of them seemed quite able to conceal a sneaking liking for him, shown rather ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... strangers to have demanded a leader more to their wishes. Besides this, our friend Hereward was admitted by him into his society, attended him, as we have seen, upon secret expeditions, and shared, therefore, deeply, in what may be termed by an expressive, though vulgar phrase, the sneaking kindness entertained for this new Achilles by the greater part of his myrmidons. Their attachment might be explained, perhaps, as a liking to their commander, as strong as could well exist with a marvellous lack of honour and esteem. The scheme, therefore, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... know that I have got wherewithal to pay the reckoning?' I demanded. 'Brother,' said Mr. Petulengro, 'I was just now looking in your face, which exhibited the very look of a person conscious of the possession of property; there was nothing hungry or sneaking in it. Pay the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... sanguinary one, only ended by the extermination (according to Assize-Court methods) of the poachers. But the keeper, as I say, takes all this as a matter of course. He recognises that poachers, after all, are men; as a sportsman, he must have a sneaking sympathy for one whose science and wood-craft often baffle his own; and, therefore, though he fights against him sturdily and conscientiously, and, as a rule, triumphs over him, he does not generally, being what I have described him, brag of these victories, nor, indeed, does he care ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... times I reported them to Mr Henley for striking the men and using foul language towards them. They called me a sneak and a tell-tale, and said that I was fitter for a nursery or a girls' boarding school than to come to sea. I said that I saw nothing sneaking in preventing men from being ill-treated, and reminded them of a proverb I had met with, "That curses, like pigeons, are sure to come home to ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... method of getting away unseen, took on a new and sinister meaning. Helen May shivered at the thought of Starr riding away in search of the man who had tried to kill him, and of the risk he must be taking. And what if the fellow came back, sneaking back in the dark, and tried to get in the house, or something? It surely was lucky that Starr-of-the-Desert had just happened ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... It seems a sneaking kind of thing: she has got none of it. My sister makes excuses for me, but the moment I begin to listen to them I only feel ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... let Mr. Perkins know you'd been watching us! You didn't come up to the bench and speak to him! No! You waited till he was gone! You were only brave enough to do your talking in front of a lot of girls! Ha-a-a-a!" Then her anger mounting, "You talk about sneaking! That's because you've sneaked ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... right, the hymn went to the tune of "Ariel," and I can see John Snodgrass, the precentor, sneaking a furtive C from his pitch-pipe, finding E flat and then sol, and standing up to lead the singing, paddling the air gently with: Down, left, sing. Well, no matter about that now. What I am trying to get at, is that we have all a lost Eden in the past and a Paradise ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... "If it wasn't for that sweet young lady below, who should not have her eyes shocked with scenes of blood and fighting, I wish they would both of them come on at once, and have it out, if they want to rob us, instead of sneaking round, and bothering us in this way. If I do get alongside them, I will give it them; but we shall have something else to do before that, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... to let the truth be known. 'I am an honest man! I am an honest man!' he repeated, in a voice that brought tears to our eyes. 'You must believe me when I tell you that I am a thief—a vile, low, cunning, sneaking thief as soon as I've had a glass or two. Take me somewhere where I may tell ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... a sneaking feeling that all this modern fuss about "art" and the "creative vision" and "the projection of visualized images," is the itching vice of quite a different class of people, from those who, in the old, sweet, epicurean way, loved to loiter through huge digressive books, with the ample ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... heavily on me by sneaking into Fraserville and kidnaping old Ike Pettit. That fellow has always been a nuisance to me; I carried a mortgage on his newspaper for ten years, but Thatcher has mercifully taken that burden off my shoulders by paying it. Thatcher can print anything ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the time of her marriage I thought her amiable and sweet-tempered. But soon after the wedding she threw off the mask, and made it clear that she disliked me. One reason is that she has a son of her own about my age, a mean, sneaking fellow, who is the apple of her eye. She has been jealous of me, and tried to supplant me in the affection of my father, wishing Peter to ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... His scattered faculties came sneaking back like defeated soldiers to camp. But they had all one tale of disaster and one only to tell. He must ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... a sneaking suspicion you would be!" said Connel. "Cadet Manning, one of the first things an officer of the Solar Guard learns is to care for the needs of his men and prisoners before himself. Did ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... liar, Corrigan," said the young man, holding the other's gaze coldly; "you're a lying, sneaking crook. You have no claim to the land, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... unhappy, mind you. I have found the words already - placid and inert, that is what I am. I sit in the sun and enjoy the tingle all over me, and I am cheerfully ready to concur with any one who says that this is a beautiful place, and I have a sneaking partiality for the newspapers, which would be all very well, if one had not fallen from heaven and were not troubled with some reminiscence of the ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Something is going to happen, I think. Wait a minute—yes, it's going to happen right now. What's that animal sneaking along through the woods, closer and closer up to where Bully and Dickie are playing? What is it, eh? A cat! I knew it. A bad cat, too! I could just feel that something ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... he is, a proud old fool is he; But, spite of that, I'll find a way to fix the old gum-tree. I've bought a station in the North — the best that could be had; I want a man to pick the stock — I want a super bad; I want no bully-brute to boss — no crawling, sneaking liar — My station super's name shall be 'Jack Dunn of Nevertire'! Straight Dunn of Nevertire, Old Dunn of Nevertire; I guess he's known up Queensland way — Jack ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... a private entrance into my camp. It's a track no one would suspect of being a track, and by its aid I can approach noiselessly. I've got into a habit of always sneaking back to camp—just in case anyone should be there. This afternoon I came along quietly, more from force of habit than from any real idea of looking out for intruders. But half-way along it a sound pulled me up suddenly. It was ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even. If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... agreed Mr. Maynard. "I used to think it was fun, but I've seen so many New Years come sneaking in, that it's become an old, ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... a minute," said Eagen with a sneer. "I'm goin' out of your house, an' I'm goin' to drag this sneaking cur out with me—out on the solid ground an' give him what's comin' to him. An' then," he added in a terrible voice; "I'm goin' to go out an' get his pardner—Rathburn, The Coyote—get him when the others can't come within a ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... daring fellows; the last apologies that we had for the knight errants of yore. Ah, sir! the country has been sinking gradually into tameness and commonplace. We are losing the old English spirit. The bold knights of the post have all dwindled down into lurking footpads and sneaking pick-pockets. There's no such thing as a dashing gentlemanlike robbery committed now-a-days on the king's highway. A man may roll from one end of England to the other in a drowsy coach or jingling post-chaise without any other ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and got up. The air being chilly, I put my clothes on and sat for a while by the window. So it happened I caught sight of Hassan, very much afraid of lions, but obviously more afraid of being seen from the hotel windows. He was sneaking along as close to the house as he could squeeze, his head just visible above the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the light was by no means perfect. The doorway, for obvious reasons, was narrow and there was a huge rock, long ago rolled inside with much travail, which could on occasion be utilized in blocking the narrow passage. Barely room to squeeze by this obstruction existed at the doorway. The sneaking but dangerous hyena had a keen scent and was full of curiosity. The monster bear of the time was ever hungry and the great cave tiger, though rarer, was, as has been shown, a haunting dread. Great attention was paid to doorways in those days, not from an artistic point of view exactly, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... self-evident truth. But I say, with a perfect knowledge of all this hawking at the Declaration without directly attacking it, that three years ago there never had lived a man who had ventured to assail it in the sneaking way of pretending to believe it, and then asserting it did not include the negro. I believe the first man who ever said it was Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, and the next to him was our friend Stephen A. Douglas. And now it has become the catchword of the entire ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... even in the slums one needs to eat. Without warning I tumble from my air castles because some horrible monster gnaws at me, and will not let me be, however much I try to ignore him. That mean, sneaking thing is hunger. And because I am only mortal, and because the will to live is stronger than I, I must eat my bread. I often cry when I think of this contemptible weakness. I have often tried to overcome this annoying healthiness of my body. How can people be ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... I have two brothers even now in the German army. They watch us—and they put Prussian sous-officiers over us to spy. So when we see the sous-officier sneaking about, we raise our voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when we are alone—well, then ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... do you mean? How did the raft disappear? And when did it disappear? And where were you, whom we left to look after it? If you have lost that raft you'll answer to me for my share in it, and I'll see that you make it good too, you sneaking—" ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... the trench mortars opened up, a maddening terror seized him and he wanted to run, to get away from that horrible din, anywhere to safety. So quietly sneaking around the traverse, he came to the entrance of a communication trench, and ran madly and blindly down it, running into traverses, stumbling into muddy holes, and falling ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... on this when talking over the matter subsequently; so, seeing what a chicken-hearted fellow he was, my cocky little chum sat down again and began tucking into his tea, Andrews getting up presently and sneaking away when he thought the ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "The sneaking cur!" muttered Rimrock in a fury and a passing woman drew away and half-screamed. He ignored her, pondering darkly, and then to his ears there came a familiar voice. He listened, intently, and raised his head; then tiptoed along the wall. That voice, and he knew it, belonged to Andrew McBain, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... called up the police and, as she put it, did her duty. I suppose from the German point of view it is the duty of people to spy in each other's houses. From an Anglo-Saxon point of view it is something rather like sneaking ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... was coming to you," retorted the young inventor. "The next time you come sneaking around this airship, trying to damage it, you'll get worse, and I'll have you arrested. You've had your lesson, ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... he but dislike him! and his dislike jealousy fostered into hatred. Cowed before him, like Macbeth before Banquo, because he was an honest man, how could he but hate him! He called him, and thought him a canting, sneaking fellow—which he was, if canting consist in giving God His own, and sneaking consist in fearing no man—in fearing nothing, indeed, but doing wrong. How could George consent even to the far-off existence of ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... when a steerage passenger, in order to curry favour, was prostrating himself before him after this fashion, assuring the Captain, "That his thoughts coincided exactly with his own," he burst out in a towering passion, "D—— you Sir! haven't you got an opinion of your own? I don't want such a sneaking puppy as you to think my thoughts, and echo my words. I should despise myself, if I thought it possible that we ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie |
