"Tricksy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have. I would have watched any child of mine upon whom was passing so strange a change; but thou knowest that Kate has ever been dear to me—I have liked to watch her in her tricksy moods. She has been more full of affection for me than her graver sisters, and even her little whims and faults that we have had to check have but endeared her to me the more. The whimsies of the child have often brought solace ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... A tricksy gust stirred at the door as if a mischievous hand twitched the latch-string, but it hung within. There was a pause. The listening children on the hearth sighed and shifted their posture; one of the hounds snored sonorously in ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... exquisitely satin-like in texture, but there was no break in Pamela's smooth cheeks, whereas Betty's dimples lurked not only around her willful mouth, but perched high in her right cheek, and you found yourself unconsciously watching to see them come and go at the tricksy maid's changing will. There was but little more than a year's difference in their ages, yet Betty seemed almost a ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... does not follow: there are strange depths of idleness in man, a too-easily-got sufficiency, as in the case of the sago-eaters, often quenching the desire for all besides; and it is possible that the men of the richest ant-heaps may sink even into squalor. But suppose they do not; suppose our tricksy instrument of human nature, when we play upon it this new tune, should respond kindly; suppose no one to be damped and none exasperated by the new conditions, the whole enterprise to be financially sound—a vaulting supposition—and all the inhabitants to dwell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the imagination deals with it thus, has no substantial relation to mortal affairs. It is a tricksy thing, distending and contracting as it dances in the mind, like sunlight on the ceiling cast from a morning tea-cup, if a forced simile will aid the conception. The farmer struck on thirty thousand and some odd hundred pounds—outlying debts, or so, excluded—as what Anthony's will, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Arlecchino, the tricksy and shifty spirit, the contriver, the busybody, the trusty rogue, the wonder-worker, the man in disguise, the mercurial one, lives on buoyantly in France to the age of Moliere. He is officious and efficacious in the skin of Mascarille and Ergaste and Scapin; but he tends to be a lacquey, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... woods early and late, setting snares for birds and rabbits, and was ever on the alert for a sight of the Hulder's golden hair and scarlet bodice, the tricksy sprite ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... England, destroy her wealth, and reduce her population to beggary. The power of Old England, the growth of eight hundred years, was to wither as the prophet's gourd unless she obeyed its behests. And a right "tricksy spirit" it proved indeed. There was a complete mental derangement on this subject. The Government undertook to own all cotton that could be exported. Four millions of bales, belonging to many thousands of individuals, could be disposed of to better advantage by the Government than ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... by a man of giant strength—and yet the cone and the books did not shift position. Hands patted the pillows on a sofa at Miller's right, and one of these cushions was flung against his chair. The room seemed to swarm with tricksy Pucks. At last the cone took flight again, and moved about freely among the heap of books and over Miller's head, while a variety of voices came successively from it, some of them speaking to Mrs. Miller and some to me. Several of the names given were known to Mrs. Miller, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... that 'son' is a paragon of all the virtues. So does this other mother who's just joined us, think of her beloved Montmorency Vavasour-Stark. What a name! Between them and their 'laddies' I reckon I shall have less peace than from the wildest of tricksy ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... his pangs a little longer!" cried Miriam, turning to Kenyon with a tricksy, fitful kind of mirth, that served to hide some solemn necessity, too sad and serious to be looked at in its naked aspect. "You love us both, I think, and will be content to suffer for our sakes, one other day. Do I ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr. Moore's Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry, while over all love waves his purple ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... found a diamond-mine, youngsters, something will have to be done about shares. Who finds keeps, you know. We'll have the place properly surveyed and see what happens. But don't begin counting your chickens too soon—these Australian diamond- mines are tricksy things; you never know how they are going to pan out. Wait a bit before you plan what ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... he speak his mind, and end his doubts? Ruth had been more tricksy than usual that day, and in a flow of spirits quite inconsistent, it would seem, in a young ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... his words are suited! The fool hath planted in his memory An army of good words; and I do know A many fools that stand in better place, Garnish'd like him, that for a tricksy word Defy the matter. How cheer'st thou, Jessica? And now, good sweet, say thy opinion, How dost thou like the Lord ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... from desire to hurt his neighbors. In fact, he never did positively touch a bird, to my knowledge, though he always acted as though he intended to annihilate them. He could hardly be called malicious; rather (shall we say?) mischievous, and like Ariel "a tricksy spirit." ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller |
