"Tricky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occasion," 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Get the men here. Have them rush Wallace's cage here. Be careful until you get out. Those people have locked us in. I shouldn't dare open the door anyway, now, for he'd catch us before we could get out. I know the ways of these tricky cats." ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... many. Some delay 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 ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... 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
... 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
... Grumpy Weasel snapped, "you're altogether too anxious over this business. Everybody knows you're tricky. And I begin to think you're trying to get ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... what worry and annoyance it was! These Great Slave Lake Indians are like a lot of spoiled and petulant children, with the added weakness of adult criminals; they are inconsistent, shiftless, and tricky. Pike, Whitney, Buffalo Jones, and others united many years ago in denouncing them as the most worthless and contemptible of the human race, and since then they have considerably deteriorated. There are exceptions, however, as will be seen ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Brigham, the daring 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 no stewardship, and hiding away millions of the dollars for which the faithful ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... forrard to please him. When Wee Laughlin came from the wheel at eight bells, we learned that the ship was now heading to the nor'east, and away from our port; and the old hands, with many shakings of the head, maintained that some tricky game was afoot. The Old Man and the Mate were colloguing earnestly at the break of the poop; and Jones, who went aft on a pretence of trimming the binnacle, reported that the Old Man was expressing heated opinions on the iniquity ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... silver ones—silver with a very bad alloy. Then he wanted a pretty cotton-print handkerchief for a miserable silver bead. With such people it is impossible to strike a bargain. These Barbary Jews are the hardest and most tricky dealers in the world. Ibrahim has been laid up with a bad leg for five months, and intends going to Kuka when he gets better. He wanted me to sell him some mastic, but I refused. He said he wished to have one jolly day, but the fellow is almost a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... juts out in the bay over nine miles from the land. The same tides had scoured Smith's Island on the other hand—port side going out of the bay, but there are some nasty rocks in the channel. It's a tricky spot, that Smith's Point Shoal, and many a good vessel has gone to pieces ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... tricky ways that get over the men-folks. Mine won't hear a word against her." This from the third speaker, eager to be with the tide, evidently ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... slick rascals as well as I do, Frank, you'll understand that they often do just what everybody never dreams they'd be silly enough to try. That's the tricky part of the game, you see. Ordinarily that woods is the last place we'd think of looking for Jules. It ought to have an evil name for him, and make him shun it. You see, that's the way we'd just naturally dope ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... them you simply can't believe in them. Do you remember how you divorced your wife? It's nearly twenty years ago, and I dare say you have forgotten it all; but I remember it as though I'd divorced you yesterday. Good Lord, what a lot of worry I had over it! I was a sharp fellow, tricky and cunning, a desperate character. . . . Sometimes I was burning to tackle some ticklish business, especially if the fee were a good one, as, for instance, in your case. What did you pay me then? Five or six thousand! That was worth taking ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... thoughts are 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 will try to ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... dear Gretchen, 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 ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... indicator marked "Half speed," and it really meant half speed. Captain Zoradus Wass made scripture of the rules laid down by the Department of Commerce and Labor. There was no tricky slipping-over under his sway—no finger-at-nose connivance between the pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Cleena and I tell you to do. You'll be treated well. I'll show you how you can make a lot of that money you like so much; upon condition, though—upon the one condition that you simply behave correctly. You are wise enough to understand me. If you disobey or prove tricky—well, I have but to hand you over to the law and you're ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Sohr: these were sad experiences; ill to bear, with the Sea-Powers grumbling on you, and the world sniffing its pity on you;—but are not conclusive, are only provoking and even maddening, to the sanguine mind. Two sad failures; but let us try another time. "A tricky man; cunning enough, your King of Prussia!" thinks Bruhl, with a fellness of humor against Friedrich which is little conceivable to us now: "Cunning enough. But it is possible cunning may be surpassed by deeper ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... at my grandfather. “You old lunatic, I wish to God I had never seen you! No wonder you came back to life! You’re a tricky old devil and too mean ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... judge in reality; partly the size of the cash balance which rumor whispered he carried at the county bank, partly the fact that he was the only lawyer in that section, had earned him the title. But every trick of his tricky trade which he could invent he had brought against the owner of that little, dilapidated cottage in a vain effort to force him to sell. And yet the acre of neglect and ruin still clung like an unsightly burr to the hem of his ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... 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 ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... 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 Shepherd laughed ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... 'has also proved a frost. I wandered round to Comrade Rossiter's desk just now with a rather brainy excursus on "The Eternal City", and was received with the Impatient Frown rather than the Glad Eye. He was in the middle of adding up a rather tricky column of figures, and my remarks caused him to drop a stitch. So far from winning the man over, I have gone back. There now exists between Comrade Rossiter and myself a certain coldness. Further investigations will be ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 effect of surprise.] ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... made guesses. I couldn't know that they were right. When you tried to kill me, you confirmed every one. Now, when we land on Orede I'm going to get you to try to put me in touch with your friends. It's going to be tricky, because they must be pretty well scared about that ship. But it's a highly ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... tricky thing," answered Holmes thoughtfully. "It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different. It must be confessed, however, that the case looks exceedingly grave ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... sketched in some of the theatrical frescoes in the "Chapel of the Eucharist," and a misguided personage named Orsel, splashed out the gaudy decorations of the "Chapel of the Virgin." The whole edifice glares at the spectator like a badly-managed limelight, and the tricky, glittering, tawdry effect blisters one's very soul. But here may be seen many little select groups out of the hell of Paris,—fresh from the burning as it were, and smelling of the brimstone,—demons who enjoy their demonism,—satyrs, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... fine. Say, Bob, I ain't so darned sure that fellow'll be there so big when it comes to a show-down. He looks to me tricky rather than game. Take him by surprise. Then crawl his hump sudden. With which few well-chosen words I close. Yores sincerely, Well-wisher, as these guys sign themselves when ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... should, and left undone what I shouldn't do, my dear and lovely sister?" he asked her, half-laughing and half-abashed. "It's a tricky business being here, you know—to put it no higher than that. And it might, with truth, be put far higher. I get so horribly fearful of letting you down in any way—however trivial—before other people. I balance on a knife-edge ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 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 a rule she forgot to apply it, until Aunt Victoria set her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... 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
... over to Mr. Burris. I got too 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 ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was no exception to the rule.—However, he was cleverer than Christophe. Though he was uncompromising and clumsy in handling his own affairs, when it came to promoting Christophe's success he was politic and even tricky: he displayed an energy and ingenuity well calculated to win support: he succeeded in interesting various musical critics and Maecenases in Christophe, though he would have been utterly ashamed to approach them ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... tell me why you invented all this tricky yarn, complicating it by bringing in the sham journey to Italy and ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... appealed to, and asked whether many of the childish freaks with which they are familiar—pullings of hair, pinchings, slaps, throwing about of objects, piling up of furniture, playing on accordions, &c.—are not more rationally accounted for as the tricky vagaries of sub-human forces, than as the actions of "spirits" who, while in the body, were certainly incapable of ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... grass was just as pleasant to sit upon as the car seat and she knew nothing whatever about the tricky ways ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... quite plain what Mr. Shaw means, even when he is joking, and it generally means that the people he is talking to ought to howl aloud for their sins. But the average representative of them undoubtedly treats the Shavian meaning as tricky and complex, when it is really direct and offensive. He always accuses Shaw of pulling his leg, at the exact moment when ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... to have acted, in a degree, the part of a demagogue. Yet he is not to be classed with those tricky and dishonest men, so common in our times, who play upon popular prejudices which they do not share, in the expectation of being elevated to honors and office. Mather's position, convictions, and temperament alike called him to serve on this occasion as the organ, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... over it for another four days. The question was a tricky one, for malignant immortality was beyond human solution. It was not just a matter of dealing out punishment. The problem now was the protection of the race from sudden annihilation. An insolvable problem, but one that must be solved. They ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... mustache 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 ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... petticoats round about. It was not unnatural, then, that my father, with his peculiar turn of mind, should set me down as being partially insane. I had also manufactured several very highly-colored verses in praise of Cape Cod; and these my publisher, who was by no means a tricky man, said had made a great stir in the literary world. And his assertion I found confirmed by the critics, who, with one accord, and without being paid, declared these verses proof that the author possessed "a rare inventive ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... she is, and will shift his helm as she shifts hers. 'Twill be a long running fight, and when one strikes, t'other won't have much to boast of. Perhaps they may sheer off after all—perhaps they may sail as consorts; God only knows; but this I knows, that Tom's sweetheart may be as tricky as she pleases, but Tom's wife won't be—'cause why? He'll keep her in order. Well, good-night; I have a ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... but spirited horses; droves of small donkeys, their masters perched on their cruppers, almost on their tails, their legs almost touching the ground, ready to be used in case the tricky animal falls or jibs, or even indulges, as it often does, in a roll in the dust of the road. In the East the ass is neither contemned nor considered ridiculous as it is in France; it has preserved its Homeric and biblical ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Bourmont and Lecourbe, the two arms of Ney as commander, through whom alone he could communicate with the troops, he not only kept with him, but consulted to the last, before he declared for Napoleon. This would have been too dangerous a thing for a tricky politician to have attempted as a blind, but Ney was well known to be only too frank and impulsive. Had the Due de Berry gone with him, had Ney carried with him such a gage of the intention of the Bourbons to defend their throne, it is probable ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine canals and past Doges' palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out and ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and enterprise, as in Quito; a proof that mental degeneracy does not necessarily result from the mixture of white with Indian blood. "There is, however," confesses Bates, after ten years' experience, "a considerable number of superlatively lazy, tricky, and sensual characters among the half-castes, both in rural places and in the towns." Our observations do not support the opinion that the result of amalgamation is "a vague compound, lacking character and expression." The moral part is perhaps deteriorated; but ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... said. "I used to pitch a tricky ball! I'll get a fuse ready, open a panel, and give it a throw. While I have the panel open, though, you fellows open up a loophole in front and do some shooting out of it to attract attention. I don't want any poisoned ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Valley to the west, and other settlers away up the Verde toward Camp Sandy. Then Sowerby swore his stock was run off, and Bennett presently remained the only ranchman to stand up for them. The agent declared them contumacious and tricky. Other whites—Arizona white was then a reddish-brown—added their evil word to the official's. It was the old adage over again: "Give a dog a bad name," etc., and the department commander had sent for scouts to coax them in, before despatching ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... see. It's a tricky place. I shall never forget the look of relief on that old fellow's face at sight of me. I believe he thinks to this day that I saved his life. He stuck to me like a leech all the way through the further caves and till we got ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... had a sly, artful eye and a way of shaking his head that was tricky—and try to catch him loose on the prairie with a bucket of oats as a coaxer! There were times on the trail when one could not see him moving except at close range. When he took such a spell, one ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the bondsmen of a public official who made a hasty departure to Canada, one evening, leaving his business in such a shape that his securities were compelled to pay fifty thousand dollars. Two others were associated with Mr. Wyckoff, and with the aid of their tricky lawyers they managed matters so that four-fifths of the loss fell upon the estate ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... baleful glare. "You should ask—with as much experience as both of us have had with these tricky motors. I choked it down, that's all. That same little fault has sent many a pilot home in a wooden box. Go get me a piece of that wire. We'll fix the skid, somehow, and when I get to Le Bourget I'll set her down on two points. And listen! From here ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... He had been tricky again. Once out of sight of the guard, he made not for the Space Symphony, but for the Long ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... for him before going away. He saw nothing addressed to himself, but on the ground, where it had evidently dropped, was an open note. Joe could not help reading it at a glance. To his surprise it was signed by Sanford, the tricky law clerk. ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... 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 ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... eleventh, Wallace won the twelfth and lost the fourteenth, both making threes on the tricky thirteenth. Wallace took the medal lead by winning the fifteenth in another perfect three, and the sixteenth produced fours for both of them. It was Kirkaldy's turn to register a three on the next, this bringing them to the last hole all square on medal score, with Kirkaldy ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... in a certain skill. The lesson he had just received was not lost on him. He was cautious, tricky, and alert—more so than Tom suspected, and he put forth the utmost cunning of ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... saw there a head upon which the brown hair curled slightly. The eyes were turned away, but the Secretary knew they were blue and that there was something in the face which appealed to strong men for protection. He shook his head slowly. The tricky little god was making sport of him, James Sefton, the invincible, and he ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... is to detest all mannerism in language and expression; it is, not to take pleasure in, or to be arrested by, petty graces, elaborate subtlety, superfine finish, excessive refinement of any kind, a tricky ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... to light a cigarette, fell behind. But the wind was tricky, and with his third match he stepped into a stone archway, lighted his cigarette, buttoned his tunic high against the chill, and emerged to a silent but violent struggle just ahead. The two men had been attacked by three ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... him, private, that I'm setting up something tricky. He can laugh off anything his security guys report that I'm mixed up in. Joe'll see that he gets the whole picture beforehand. But he ain't to tell anybody—not anybody—that something is getting ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... flight of six steps, was a very handsome-looking door, with a projecting porch. All the windows, with smallish panes and largish frames, were relieved with stone copings; so that the house had an air of solidity and well-to-do-ness about it,—nothing tricky on the one hand, nothing decayed on the other. The house stood a little back from the garden gates, which were large, and set between two piers surmounted with vases. Many might object that in wet weather you had to walk some way to your carriage; but we obviated ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suspicions are aroused, you ought to be like a man mounted on a tricky horse, who always watches the ears of the beast, in fear of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... matched nicely—nicely, thank you. She was terribly worried over the woman's condition, and she gave herself wholly to her professional zeal and never dreamed that her manchild was at that moment riding deeper and deeper into the Badlands with a tricky devil of a man, looking for a baby ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... tricky old cow pony, but a natively vicious, powerful, and cunning young horse. While the cowboys held him Dan threw off his coat and hat and bound a bandanna over the bronchos's head and pulled it down over his eyes. Laying the saddle on swiftly, but gently, he cinched ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... be perfectly awful to lose everything that way; to feel it is all an injustice, yet not to be able to prove one's own claim," said Belle. "Tricky business men are worse to watch than spiteful girls, and we always thought they were about all that we could handle. There's Ted and Jean. Just look at ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... decided that the only way to get all the wood animals to have a good opinion of him was to give a big dinner, for he had somehow got rather a bad name among the animals for being so tricky. ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... eye on Ulysses, who had now got the bow in his hands, and was turning it every way about, and proving it all over to see whether the worms had been eating into its two horns during his absence. Then would one turn towards his neighbour saying, "This is some tricky old bow-fancier; either he has got one like it at home, or he wants to make one, in such workmanlike style does the old ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... boomed,' he 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 down on ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... intelligence bureau issues the most alarming reports as to the frightfulness of the defences here I was agreeably surprised at the ease with which we passed. Von Weissman, to whom I had hinted that we might find the passage tricky, rather laughed at my suggestion, and described to me his method, which, at all events, has ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... disappointed, any more than that other greater one; for on top of an open ridge, a short distance west of us, we saw a solitary horse, tethered, and feeding composedly, as if he had nothing to fear out here amongst the hills. Part of us keep our eyes upon him, lest his tricky owner should get the alarm and remove him; whilst others plunge into the coppice which fills the intervening hollow, and soon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... woods is young Mink, His coat is so lovely one never would think That'd he do naughty things, but we've often been told He is tricky and ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood
... sense of his own importance. Instead of being ashamed of his ailments he tries to describe as many as he can think of. His specific complaint may be a touch of sciatica, but he takes pleasure in recalling a bad habit of breathing through the mouth in moments of excitement, and a tricky memory which often leads him to carry about his wife's letters an entire week before mailing them. The need for a certain amount of self-castigation is implanted in all of us, and it is satisfied in the form of confession. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... earth is it that all girls are so tricky?" Dan asked himself savagely, taking it for granted that all girls are ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... I 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 ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... 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 paid ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... audience and allow the owner to place it in the box, as shown in Fig. 1. This box should be about 3 in. long, 4 in. wide and 2-1/2 in. deep, says the Scientific American. It should be provided with a hinged cover, M, with a lock, N. The tricky part of this box is the side S, which is pivoted at T by driving two short nails into it, one through the front side and the other through the back, so that when S is pushed in at the top, it swings around as shown ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... had noticed the solitary diner. The Era man drifted closer, moving unhurriedly, thinking furiously. It was no good trying some tricky approach; his best bet was the straight-from-the-shoulder bit. No point in hesitating. He ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... has performed this feat for about the tenth time, he concludes that it was madness for him, a mere raw amateur at the business, to think that he could manage a complicated, tricky bed of this sort, that must take even an experienced man all he knows to sleep in it; and gets out ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... PUCK, a tricky, mischievous fairy, identified with Robin Goodfellow, and sometimes confounded with a house spirit, propitiated by kind words and the liberty ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his paper-knife and tapped it against the edge of the table with one of the tricky movements familiar to thoughtful men when they give themselves ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were full of a hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that is cornered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, but a quarter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner was singularly free from embarrassment when Chalmers ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... spot—his figure painting. The entire essay should be read, for it contains a study of the Joshua in which this most delicious of English prose writers speaks of the "wise falsifications" of the great masters. Before his death the critics, tiring of him sooner than the public, called Martin tricky, meretricious, mechanical. To be sure, his drawing is faulty, his colour hot and smoky; nevertheless, he was not a charlatan. As David Wilkie wrote: "Weak in all these points in which he can be compared to other artists," he had the compensating ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the enemy's head. If you have great luck a faint groan or a distant shout of pain may reward your efforts; but you can never be quite sure whether you have got home on your rival or not. Loophole shooting is very tricky, and the very best shots fire by the hour in vain. I ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... understand the science of eating, the wife must educate him. Remember his success 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, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... rustler's daughter," she cried. "That's so much more terrible than I'd suspected. It was tricky cattle deals I imagined he was engaged in. But only to-night I had ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... played it well, because she played her own willful, tricky self, and she kissed her taper fingers to the enraptured audience, and felt sorry to think it might be ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... clean my revolver. He always did things at queer times. I suppose it went off. It had a tricky hammer. It went off. By accident—not... He hadn't any reason to... He said, only yesterday, when he got back, that he couldn't stay away from home any longer. He said he had to come home. So, you see, there isn't any reason to think... He was cleaning it. And ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... Conway will drift by about ten o'clock or ten-thirty, Mr. Parker. I know he will not cause you any more inconvenience than he finds absolutely necessary, sir. He's tricky, but he isn't mean." ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 and ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... was 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 sight when he ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... "terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism that largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus. There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyed by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate with him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before our ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... His bold tricky eyes swept over her, and somehow she felt more gratified than by all the bulging glances of the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... painted woman and the politely talkative young man, and passed without a word from outside for the girl whose nerves were fraying with the suspense. The old woman and the little girl had served them with a meal which would have been judged delicious in any European hotel and though Arlee's nerves were tricky her young appetite was not and she ate and talked with a determined little air of trying to dissipate the strangeness ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... patience and tactful management, many refusers may be taught to repose sufficient confidence in their riders to make an effort when required, but that can be done only by gentle means and easy tasks. Old tricky offenders cannot be cured of this or any other vice. A lady who is hunting on a doubtful jumper should be careful not to upset other horses by letting her refuser perform in front of them, but should show consideration for her companions by keeping a backward place, supposing that several ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... and 'seventies, and indeed Mr. Durant's evangelical protestantism might not have relished the parallel. Boston seems, for the most part, to have averted its eyes from the spectacle of the brilliant, possibly unscrupulous, some said tricky, lawyer bringing souls to Christ. But he did bring them. We are told that "The halls and churches where he spoke were crowded. The training and experience which had made him so successful a pleader before judge and ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... a miracle is now behind instead of at the side of the horse. And before the horse going at top speed can be reined in and turned round, the rhea has had time to recover his wind and get a hundred yards away or more. It is on account of this tricky instinct of the rhea that the gauchos say, "El avestruz es el mas gaucho de los animales," which means that the ostrich, in its resourcefulness and the tricks it practises to save itself when hard pressed, is as clever as the gaucho ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... unless he himself can get the credit for their installation. In disposition he is stubborn and obstinate. He is also reserved and suspicious. Being of the selfish type, he will look after his own interests first in all things. No. 1 lacks straightforwardness and frankness of disposition, so he will be tricky, slippery, and do things in an underhanded way. He has very great dislike of detail and will have a tendency to procrastinate if given an opportunity, I believe he has passed the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... must be taken, lest out of this freedom there grow a lazy indifference about killing the wantonness of the flesh; for the roguish Adam is exceedingly tricky in looking for permission for himself, and in pleading the ruin of the body or of the mind; so some men jump right in and say it is neither necessary nor commanded to fast or to mortify the flesh, and are ready to eat this and that without fear, just as if they had for a long time had much ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... neighbourhood." It had been otherwise with my first Expedition: a forlorn hope, a miracle of moral audacity; the heaviest of responsibilities incurred upon the slightest of justifications, upon the pinch of sand which a tricky and greedy old man might readily have salted. It reminds me of a certain "Philip sober," who in the morning fainted at the sight of the precipice which he had scaled when "Philip drunk." I look back with ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... will respond, without any doubt, but it will be after his own fashion. The boy will take that master's measure with extraordinary rapidity; he will call him by some disparaging nickname, with an unholy approximation to truth; he will concoct tricky questions to detect his ignorance; he will fling back his benefits with contempt; he will make his life a misery, and will despise him as long as he lives. Let a man of masculine character and evident ability set himself to rule and drill boys, holding no unnecessary converse ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... to bring 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 to be ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... always now was pure white, not so fast as Silver Star and very tricky, called The Dancer, from a nervous habit of dancing on his hind-legs at starting and stopping, like a circus-horse. He was difficult to mount, and edged away shyly as Diana tried to get her foot into the stirrup. But she ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... she did. 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 this ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... word "tramp" with a shocking lack of pride—led him inevitably into the far Northwest. Men were doing things up there. The country fairly seethed with the activity of live, virile men who were taking the first staunch grip upon the tricky wheel of fortune and were turning it to their own account. Every man was building; no man complained of conditions, for conditions were so new and so ready to hand that he who found fault was merely lessening his own chance to secure his share of the vast resources that ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... ago, for clearness of statement, and for an easy and straightforward method of speech he had few superiors. His language was excellent, his manner that of a man who had something to say and was intent upon saying it. He was at no time a tricky orator, nor did he aim at rousing the feelings, but in the clearest possible manner he would make his points and no amount of prejudice was sufficient to resist his conclusions. He was a great reader, and reflected on all that ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... is one of the healthful exercises of the spiritual life. Unless we count, memory is apt to be very tricky and to snare us into strange forgetfulness. Unless we count what we have given away, we are very apt to exaggerate our bounty. We often think we have given when we have only listened to appeals; the mere audience has been mistaken ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... exploded by a 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 dynamite ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... little 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 no thought for people's convenience ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Possibly the Germans, who are in many matters ahead of us, 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 ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... dry, hacking cough, especially irritable in smoke of camp or under stress of undue exertion. On the Thirty Mile river he found much open water, spanned by precarious ice bridges and fringed with narrow rim ice, tricky and uncertain. The rim ice was impossible to reckon on, and he dared it without reckoning, falling back on his revolver when his drivers demurred. But on the ice bridges, covered with snow though they were, precautions could be taken. These they crossed on ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... steamers! Tricky, they is, and unsyfe ... No, yer gryce, the W. Stryker Packet Line Lim'ted, London to Antwerp, charges four pounds per passyge and no ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... piece of 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) squared—that is a quarter of the ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... V admitted slightingly. "But he's so tricky, so—so absolutely impossible! A girl friend of mine has a brother that goes in for that sort of thing. I think he invented something that goes on a motor, or something. And I know he was terribly cheated by Bland Halliday. I think Bland borrowed a lot of money, or ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... to write something about the odour and taste of this well-flavoured earth. The fact is, both the sense of smell and the sense of taste; have been shabbily treated in the amiable rivalry of the senses. Sight and hearing have been the swift and nimble brothers, and sight especially, the tricky Jacob of the family, is keen upon the business of seizing the entire inheritance, while smell, like hairy Esau, comes late to the blessing, hungry from the hills, and willing to trade its inheritance for a ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... adorable, tender prettiness of love-making leads to physical love inevitably, and I always thought and hoped and believed that after it I'd arrive at some Ultima Thule of understanding, of comradeship, of equality. Never! Ugh, they were soft! Soft flesh, soft spirit, tricky brain! Sometimes I have a nightmare of trying to get to heaven up mountains of woman-flesh—soft, scented stuff, sucking one in like quicksands. You're the only woman I've ever thought much about and not made love to! To you I couldn't ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... gazed 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 ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... girl's elfish personality, with unhappy eyes. Just what did Mignon mean by intimating that several persons were "going to be surprised" when to-morrow's practice game was over? It sounded like a threat. No doubt it was. Suppose—some one were to be hurt through this tricky playing of Mignon's team! Suppose that some one were to be Marjorie! Mary shuddered. She remembered once reading in a newspaper an account of a basket-ball game in which a girl had been tripped by an opponent and had fallen. That girl had hurt her spine and the physicians had ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... atmosphere of Paris 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 friend Pierre. Pierre was another employee of the ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... involves the player in a somewhat tricky piece of cross-country work. There is a nasty ditch to be negotiated. Many an optimist has been reduced to blank pessimism by that ditch. "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," might be written on a notice ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... horribly 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
... lure you on to their backs, where, unless you have a perfect understanding of the game, the joke will be on you. Instantly one is mounted, the humility departs; he plunges and starts about, or sets off like the wind, regardless of thorny bushes, tricky ground underfoot, or ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... "When the tricky raccoon heard this he hurried back and at once untied the rope from the bushes and refastened it to the post near the water. When the second brother came along he easily found the water, and filling the kettle he returned to the wigwam where he vigorously accused his brother of lying. ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... was well enough on the following Tuesday after Black Friday to attend another meeting of the W.S.P.U. at Caxton Hall, to hear one more ambiguous, tricky, many-ways-to-be-interpreted promise of the then Prime Minister. Mrs. Pankhurst pointing out the vagueness of these assurances announced her intention then and there of going round to Downing Street to ask ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... riding-switch. "It's a tricky climate," he observed, "but I am keeping an eye on the weather. I don't anticipate anything of the nature of a ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... bride answered: "I don't know about that; but the Japanese must be awfully tricky, for Pinkey says so and the captain of the ship, who hates every inhabitant of the Empire, said the banks had to ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... trim ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought up with a crash against her own image in that long and tricky mirror which forms a broad full-length panel set in the marble wall at the north end of Peacock Alley. Passersby and the loungers on near-by red plush seats came running, but she was unhurt except for a forehead bump that remained ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... and unlawfully, the heads of railroads met to agree on rates which by discriminating against one locality in favour of another crushed out competition, raised the cost to the consumer, and put millions in the pockets of the Trust. Here were planned tricky financial operations, with deliberate intent to mislead and deceive the investing public, operations which would send stocks soaring one day, only a week later to put Wall Street on the verge of panic. Half a dozen suicides might result from the coup, but twice as many millions of profits had ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... tricky indeed, but when they are used by secret police...." Bors allowed himself to rage for a moment only, at the idea of that kind of terrorism practiced by a government on its supposed citizens. It would be intended to enforce the totalitarian idea that what is not commanded ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of the year. What, that last one hardly sank down before it was taken and this seems to be a jim-dandy of a boy too by the way he pulls. I hope I don't lose him now," and he began to play the captive as cautiously as his experience in landing tricky ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... when he comes down," suggested George Watson, who used to be a mean, tricky boy, making a lot of trouble for Bunny and Sue. But, of late, George ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope |
