"Fussy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will never be happy ones, until you make conscience of the study of God's Word and 'continue steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching.' You may produce plenty of emotional Christianity, and of busy and sometimes fussy work without it, but you will not get depth. I sometimes think that the complaint of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews might be turned upside down nowadays. He says: 'When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... closed its doors. A meeting of the creditors was called, at which H. H. Rogers was present, representing Clemens. For the most part the creditors were liberal and willing to agree to any equitable arrangement. But there were a few who were grumpy and fussy. They declared that Mark Twain should turn over his copyrights, his Hartford home, and whatever other odds and ends could be discovered. Mr. Rogers, discussing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mistake. The colonel will very likely be some fussy individual who magnifies his own importance, and who will send a squad of volunteers to escort me, and I want to avoid that. These officers always stick by each other; they're bound to. I want to go alone with Stoliker. I have a score to ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... back before the rest came! I wanted you here to help make things go from the beginning. Max is having fits with his tie, and Alec is in distress because his pumps don't look as smart as he thinks they ought. Even Bob is more than usually fussy about the parting ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... outspoken when it might be, there would, I suppose, be no fear of its desecration at any after time. But lo! only last night, I had to write, on the part of Mr. Carlyle, to a certain ungainly, foolish gentleman who keeps back from him, with all the fussy impotence of stupidity (not bad feeling, alas! for that we could deal with) a certain MS. letter of Cromwell's which completes the collection now going to press; and this long-ears had to be 'dear Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I said (to use a mild word) 'commend me to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... don't lay my arrest up against Cavanagh. I'm ready to pass that by. And as for this other business—this free-range war in which the old man is mixed up—I want you to know that I'm against it. Dad knows his day is short; that's what makes him so hot. But he's a bluff—just a fussy old bluff. He knows he has no more right to the Government grass than anybody else, but he's going to get ahead of ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... me. But still my own impressions incline me rather to represent the Earth as a fine noble young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always at full gallop, and moving upon such an infinity of angles to human shinbones, that the final purpose of such ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... which I do not believe. And I may be the more emboldened in my refusal, when I consider how mixed, or how selfish, are often the motives of those who solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is, moreover, an important consideration, connected with this subject, which often escapes notice, namely, the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... definite,' said Crowther, returning to his grievance. '"Substitute some athletic pursuit involving less danger to the general public: something more conducive to the preserving of law and order,"' he quoted, bitterly, with a clever imitation of the fussy little Doctor's pompous manner. 'Fancy giving up hare-and-hounds for some "pursuit" like croquet, or ping-pong,' ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... is not absurd. It is insignificant. It is absolutely insignificant—absolutely. The craze of an old woman—the fussy officiousness of a blundering elderly Englishman. What devil put him in the way? Haven't I treated him cavalierly enough? Haven't I just? That's the way to treat these meddlesome persons. Is it possible that he still stands behind ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous air and radiant sunlight—all spoke to me, clearly and unmistakably, of something new and beautiful, of something which, though ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... day's toil was done, but Ella would not hear of housekeeping. To be sure, it would be very pleasant to keep up a grand establishment and give splendid dinner-parties, but she knew that Howard, with his peculiar notions, would expect her to do just as his "dear, fussy old mother did," and that, she wouldn't for a moment think of, for she really "did not know the names of one-half the queer-looking things ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... full of hope and happiness and victory and joy! He did not sing like this to the masters in the church yesterday; not even to the shoemaker this morning did he sing like this. It is not hard to see the reason. Yesterday he tried to be a master, and when he sang he was wondering how these fussy old fellows would measure his song with their rhyme-gauges and their foot- rules. How could anybody sing when he was thinking of that? Even then it was not a bad song and the goldsmith's daughter would have known it if she had been the ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... indeed enter where Angel and Devil alike fear to tread. At least, that is the old and orthodox conception of the clerical profession, and although it might be sometimes foolishly and conceitedly pushed to extremes by other men, there was nothing in Ringfield of the mere fussy moralist and pulpit egoist. After all, as he entered the house and, guided by the voice of its owner, found his way to the room looking on the dusty country road, he saw nothing very terrible, only a thinnish, fair, middle-aged man, wearing a black skull-cap and clad in a faded and greasy but ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... nothin'," he says; gettin' an attack of modesty. "I'm kinda fussy about my food and I been figurin' out different ways of cookin' up stuff to get the best outa it, for years. That's the only amusement I got. I ain't so much as a cook, but you oughta see ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... my quarters in the chapar-khana, a party of Persian travellers appear upon the scene, and with them a fussy little man in big round spectacles and semi-European clothes. Scarcely have they had time to alight and seek out quarters than the little man makes his appearance at my menzil door in all the glory of a crimson velvet dressing-cap and blue slippers, and beaming gladsomely through his ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... more, for it so happens that Colonel Fitz-James is known to be an epicure, to be fussy and finical about all things pertaining to the table, and what is worse takes no pains to disguise it, and in consequence is considered an undesirable dinner guest by the most experienced housekeepers ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... speak of as "sensitive." For every machine would be perfectly educated, that is to say, would have the suitable molecular adjustments, which would act not the less infallibly for being free from the fussy accompaniment of that consciousness to which our prejudice gives a supreme governing rank, when in truth it is an idle parasite on the ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... caught it and bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow little brook, that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a fussy little tormenting river, that won't and can't sail a sloop. What are you going to do about it? You are going to wind up your lead and line, shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale the purple hills, till you come to water again, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... stages to Switzerland. A festive journey, yes; but the expression regards the mental progress rather than the apparent. Mr. Dillwyn, being an old traveller, took things with the calm habit of use and wont; and Lois, new as all was to her, made no more fussy demonstration than he did. All the more delicious to him, and satisfactory, were the sparkles in her eyes and the flushes on her cheeks, which constantly witnessed to her pure delight or interest ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... next morning Alaric and his new companion met each other at an early hour at the Paddington station. Neverbend was rather fussy with his dispatch-box, and a large official packet, which an office messenger, dashing up in, a cab, brought to him at the moment of his departure. Neverbend's enemies were wont to declare that a messenger, a cab, and a big packet always rushed ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... were not merely a cruel practical joke. Or was he yearning for the simpler and more natural life which he had led until two years ago? We had many an expensive meal together, and often, as he ate, he would say: "Oh, it's all nonsense, Mr. Levinsky. All this fussy stuff does not come up to one spoon of my wife's ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... dear. I've got my own ways, you see. I'm a fussy old fellow. And I've got my servant—my blackamoor. He'd frighten all the neighbours. And you'd fuss yourself, thinking I wasn't comfortable. I'll come up to-morrow afternoon and stay on to dinner, if you like. And just leave ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... was Mr. Weatherley who appeared. Mr. Weatherley was distinctly fussy and there was some return ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more or less fussy, and this old gentleman seems to have been one of the more fussy ones. Being maintained at the public expense, he had ample leisure, and not content with limiting his attention to the rights of ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... people with a fussy conscience, a nervous fear of wrong-doing, who are without intelligence and imagination, but you never meet the noblest, and serenest, and largest examples of goodness without ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... something like pleasure to the final settlement of the Home Rule question by the ordeal of battle. In the meanwhile he and Dan Gallaher by no means hated each other, and were occasionally in full sympathy when the police or some ridiculous Government department made trouble by fussy activity. ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Gilmour. "She's got spinal complaint, and we saw her lying on the sofa in the queer little parlour crammed with curiosities that Nell took such a fancy to. She seems a very nice girl, so happy and contented although in such a helpless state! Her old mother, whom I know you thought fussy and selfish, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... perception, —want of tact,—coarseness of nature,—utter lack of power to understand you. Were you ever sitting in a considerable company, a good deal saddened by something you did not choose to tell to any one, and probably looking dull and dispirited enough,—and did a fussy host or hostess draw the attention of the entire party upon you, by earnestly and repeatedly asking if you were ill, if you had a headache, because you seemed so dull and so unlike yourself? And did that person time after time return to the charge, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... showman. Read in the original, as a revelation of the writer's character, the very reverse is the impression; he is there presented not in any ludicrous light but rather in a good-humoured and fussy way. He met his friend the Rev. John Macaulay, one of the ministers of Inverary, who accompanied them to the castle, where Boswell presented the doctor to the Duke. 'I shall never forget,' quaintly adds the chronicler, 'the impression made upon my fancy by some of the ladies' maids tripping ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... heard the outer flap of the airlock open, then someone pounding on the inner door. Habit of curiosity conquered, and his eyelids blinked. He looked up to find a strange man beside his bed. The man was fat, fussy, pompous. But he looked prosperous, and ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... butted into real society when you went outside, Casey. If she has all that money she's apt to be pernickity. I hate fussy ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... wretched companies have ceased to pay a dividend— All these and other worries, though they're very near the limit, I Maintain that I can face with philosophic equanimity; But, when I by my family and fond and fussy friends am asked To trot about in public with my features influenza-masked, My sense of humour wrings from me (or possibly a lack of it) The protest of the camel at the straw that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... time, and in his house retained his cheerfulness and good-humour.... In matters of business he was an easy master to serve, and the duties of his private secretary were light as compared to others in the same position. He never made work and never was fussy, and even at the busiest times never seemed in a hurry.... Large matters he never neglected, but the difficulty of the private secretary was to get him to attend to the trifling and unimportant ones with which he had ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... or sent into exile in consequence of their duels, when M. de Bouteville, of the house of Montmorency, who had been previously engaged in twenty-one affairs of honor, came to Paris to fight the Marquis of Beuvron on the Place Royale. The Marquis's second, M. de fussy d'Amboise, was killed by the Count of Chapelles, Bouteville's second. Beuvron fled to England. M. de Bouteville and his comrade had taken post for Lorraine; they were recognized and arrested at Vitry-le- Brule ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... prepossessingly white and clean, ushered her into the little drawing-room, which was furnished with more simplicity and individual taste than is usual anywhere in New York, cursed of the mania for useless and tasteless showiness. There were no messy draperies, no fussy statuettes, vases, gilt boxes, and the like. Mildred awaited the ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat, almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the other hand, was a fussy and rather pompous individual, who delighted in brass buttons and gold lace and invariably presented a magnificent appearance. But, like Taylor, he was an excellent officer and thoroughly competent to handle ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... all Frankfort was not to be found among the mighty who ruled the Empire, or among the merchants who trafficked therein, or among the people who starved when there was no traffic. The most anxious man was a small, fussy individual of great importance in his own estimation, cringing to those above him, denouncing those beneath; Herr Durnberg, Master of the Romer, in other words, the Keeper of the Town Hall. The great ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... two forms mean exactly the same thing. And here, again, "The Logicians" seem to me to take much too humble a position. When they are putting the final touches to the grouping of their Proposition, just before the curtain goes up, and when the Copula——always a rather fussy 'heavy father', asks them "Am I to have the 'not', or will you tack it on to the Predicate?" they are much too ready to answer, like the subtle cab-driver, "Leave it to you, Sir!" The result seems to ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... was far more interested in the winks and flatteries of the grocer's boy and the milkman than in any conquest of the fussy little fat man, who ate whatever she slammed before him and never raised ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... was not a man of ideas, his merits as a creator—as a realiser of types—were supreme. Many of his dramatis personae no doubt became old-fashioned in a sense; but who can deny the truth to life of the Kirk Elder, the slavey, the policeman, the fussy City man, the diner-out, the waiter (did he not invent "Robert"?), the cabman, the hen-pecked husband, the drunkard, the gillie, the Irish peasant, the schoolboy, and the Mrs. Brown of Arthur Sketchley's prosaic muse? The wealth of his limited fancy, and his power of resolving it into well-ordered ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... these things, quietly, without parade or press-agenting, all the energy in her, and she had no reserve left for play. War work seemed to mean something to Sophie besides write-ups in the society column and pictures of her in sundry poses. These things besides, surrounded her with all sorts of fussy people, both male and female, and through this cordon Thompson seldom broke for confidential talk with her. When he did Sophie baffled him with her calm detachment, a profound and ever-increasing reserve—as if ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and Alice Robinson the next. Mrs. Simpson wanted I should have her first because I've had so much experience in babies. Come in and look at her sitting up in my bed, aunt Jane! Isn't she lovely? She's the fat, gurgly kind, not thin and fussy like some babies, and I thought I was going to have her to undress and dress twice each day. Oh dear! I wish I could have a printed book with everything set down in it that I COULD do, and then I wouldn't get disappointed ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... antiquated and very dull sermons, for the delivery of which he would excuse himself to his private friends by saying that his salary was but four hundred dollars a year, one third of which he took in No. 2 mackerel no one would buy of him. He was excessively fussy; and if he advocated temperance to-day, he would to-morrow take a sly smash, never forgetting to add that it was recommended by his physician, who was likewise a man of great learning. Under the influence of this medicine, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... without charm, though approval may have been lacking here and there, and at the first crossing Alice suffered what she might have accounted an actual injury, had she allowed herself to be so sensitive. An elderly woman in fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a streetcar; she was all of a globular modelling, with a face patterned like a frost-bitten peach; and that the approaching gracefulness was uncongenial she naively made too evident. Her round, wan eyes seemed ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... music?" asked his mistress, knitting as she spoke. "He came from Germany; there's where you get the best singers. Some canaries won't sing before company and some won't sing alone; they are fussy,—I call it pernickitty. Why, I had one with a voice like a flute; but I happened to buy some new wall-paper, and she didn't like the looks of it, and after that she never ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... about the serrated edges of masses, like those of trees seen against the sky. These are very difficult to treat, and almost every landscape painter has a different formula. The hard, fussy, cut-out, photographic appearance of trees misses ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... proud and happy when you girls say you like my home. To me it's just the loveliest place in the world. I wouldn't change it for anything modern. Sometimes Auntie Gibbs gets fussy and says it's ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... messed up and candidates ruined just because the women got wrought up over tenement-house an' fire laws an' truck like that. Yes sir, they're out seein' Whitewater this minut, or will be if you can't divert their minds. Call 'em off, George, if you can. Get 'em fussy about sumpen else." ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... suspicion and attract attention from his person, He took his ticket, and rushed on to the platform, to find the porter and the box at the door of the guard's van. Dobson was not there. With the vigour of a fussy traveller he shouted directions to the guard to take good care of his luggage, hurled a shilling at the porter, and ran for a carriage. At that moment he became aware of Dobson hurrying through the entrance. He must have ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... and the perfect symmetry of its saloons and galleries. There is a garden a-making, projected by Mr. Evelyn, a great authority on trees and gardens. A crowd of fine company had assembled to see the newly finished hall and dining parlour, among them a fussy person, who came in attendance upon my Lord Sandwich, and who was more voluble than became his quality as a clerk in the Navy Office. He was periwigged and dressed as fine as his master, and, on my being civil ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... still remains to be noticed. It is this: Our principles ought to be strong enough to govern our habits. Habits may make us disagreeable and fussy; principles make us broad, far-seeing, sympathetic, and independent. Success in life depends upon having the principle of order. Always do the important thing first; for that is what order means. Some boys and girls are orderly about their rooms, ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... other, a muse, with the brow of one and the slenderest hand and foot, whom he and others were hopefully piloting towards a second class at least—possibly a first—in the Honour Classical School, had broken down in health, so that her mother and a fussy doctor had hurried her away to a rest-cure in Switzerland, and thereby slit her academic life and all her chances of fame. Both had been used to come—independently—for the Master was in his own, way far too great a social epicure to mix his pleasures—to tea on Sundays; to sit on one side ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... marked contrast to the bluebottles and flies that seemed to choose their point of alighting with a sham intentness which did not disguise their lack of any definite purpose. Now and again a feral, domineering wasp would join the crowd, coming up with the air of a fussy, inquisitive overseer. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... rendering aid to America, which Franklin would not believe, or could not see. Nor were the relations of Adams very pleasant with the veteran Franklin himself, whose merits he conceived to be exaggerated, and of whom it is generally believed he was envious. He was as fussy in business details as Franklin was easy and careless. He thought that Franklin lived too luxuriously and was too fond of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... returned and loitered about, ostentatiously waiting until Miss Leavitt should be free to serve him. Win was showing dolls to a fussy woman who could not be satisfied with the most beguiling porcelain or waxen smile. At last, having looked at several dozens, she flounced away, announcing that she would go to Bimgel's. This threat, being uttered ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... with short side whiskers, a chunky, fussy, and hot-tempered man, but whether Madge Pemberton had managed him, or whether he'd worn her out, I couldn't make up my mind about the likelihood. I sat a while talking with him, and watching Madge McCulloch, his daughter, lay the ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... the children. Here the different reactions of a man and woman—e.g. to a boy's pranks—causes a taking of sides that is disastrous to the peace of the family. Usually the American father believes his wife is too fussy about his son's manners and derelictions, secretly or otherwise he is quite pleased when his son develops into a "regular" boy,—tough, mischievous, and aggressive. But sometimes it is the overstern father who arouses the mother's ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... stenciled "Ship Southern Cross, U. S. South Polar Expedition." As fast as a gang of stevedores, their laboring bodies steaming in the sharp air, could handle the muddle, the numerous cases and crates were hauled aboard the vessel we have noticed and lowered into her capacious holds by a rattling, fussy cargo winch. The shouts of the freight handlers and the sharp shrieks of the whistle of the boss stevedore, as he started or stopped the hoisting engine, all combined to form a picture as confused as could well be imagined, and yet one which was in reality merely an orderly loading of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... have a right to do so I have fully satisfied my own conscience, an exceptionally fussy one. Of the four joint authors, he whom I call "MacShaughnassy" has laid aside his title to all things beyond six feet of sun-scorched ground in the African veldt; while from him I have designated "Brown" I have borrowed but little, and that little I may fairly claim to ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... had to admit that probably all these things were really good for me. But it got to where everything I did was something that was good for me—and that was bad. Hell, it isn't natural for a young fellow just out of college to live like a fussy old man of seventy with a grudge against the ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... army as inextricably bound up with Highcastle prestige. But our Government departments knew better: their problem was how to win the war with Augustus on their backs, well-meaning, brave, patriotic, but obstructively fussy, self-important, imbecile, ...
— Augustus Does His Bit • George Bernard Shaw
... wandering little creek whose shallow waters flowed through lovely meadows where boneset plants were white with bloom and giant eupatorium lifted its rosy heads. A red-headed flicker flew screaming from a field as they passed, and a fussy wren scolded at ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... novelist's characters, no two clergymen, no two British matrons, no two fussy spinsters, no two men of fashion, no two heavy fathers, no two smart young ladies, no two heroines, are alike. And this variety results from the absolute fidelity of each character to the law of its own development, each ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... I came to Wilson's, I was shown up, and found that he was sitting with Miss Penclosa. For half an hour I had to endure his fussy talk about his recent research into the exact nature of the spiritualistic rap, while the creature and I sat in silence looking across the room at each other. I read a sinister amusement in her eyes, and she must have seen hatred and menace in mine. I had almost despaired of having speech with ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stream in, and pounce eagerly on chairs and telephones; the usual Fussy Family waste precious minutes in trying to get seats together, and get separated in the end. Undecided persons flit from one side to another. Gradually they all settle down, and stop their ears with the telephone-tubes, the prevailing expression being one of anxiety, combined with conscious and apologetic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... you are mistaken. She is too fussy; she irritates people. But for the old admiral she would often get into difficulties. Beechhurst has taken to ladies' meetings and committees, and all sorts of fudge that she is the moving spirit ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... that no matter how fussy a fello was when he wore a vest as soon as he begins to call a coat a blouze no one thinks he knows whats what. If you got any old magazenes what was old before the war started send em to the soldiers. They wont know the difference. Some wimen sent our regiment the Baptist Review for three ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... them, unless I inspect them personally. These are the patients who try one's soul, Babe. I would rather deal with Asiatic cholera than with one fussy old woman with a digestion. They eat hot bread and fried steak, and then ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... take care of," said Bel. "Not fine, nor fussy; but real sweet and pleasant. Sunny windows and flowers, and a pretty carpet, and white curtains, and one of those chromos of little round, yellow chickens. A best china tea-set, and a real trig little kitchen; pies ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of his famous trabucos,—"upon my word, I can't guess; if some great reverse of fortune befell him, and he had to work for his livelihood, or if some other direful calamity gave a shock to his nervous system and jolted it into a fussy, fidgety direction, I dare say he might make a splash in that current of life which bears men on to the grave. But you see he wants, as he himself very truly says, the two stimulants ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... isn't as old as papa. He used to come here a lot, and we children like him first-rate; but now he's in Europe. Well, to come back to Nora: she likes to be called Eleanor, but we don't do it; she is so fussy and so very proper that Felix has nick-named her Miss Prim, and we do call her that. Miss Marston thinks Nora is the best behaved of us all; and sometimes, when Nannie is in papa's study, she lets her go ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... come to the right conclusion, for the very next day a dog-cart was driven to the Cove, stopped at the Colonel's gate, and a little fussy-looking gentleman, with sharp eyes, a snub nose, and grey hair, which seemed to have a habit of standing out in pointed tufts, came up to the door, knocked, and ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... sighted at 1,500 yards by the quartermaster first class on duty; general quarters rung, the executive officer signals full speed ahead, the commanding officer takes charge and manoeuvres for position—and then something happens which the censor may be fussy about mentioning. At any rate, oil and other things rise to the surface of the sea, and the Germans are minus another submarine. The chief machinist's mate, however, comes in for special mention. It seems that he ignored the ladder and literally fell down the hatch, dislocating ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... good. She is feeling a false security. She would have been restless and fussy else—it is the way of her sex when danger is about. As she was making no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... steps on the gravel walk, a fussy, fidgety little woman appeared from the room beyond, and stopped in astonishment at sight of the giant coming up the steps. Before she had a chance to express her surprise, however, he spoke, addressing the panting child fanning ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... BARBARISM.—Amid the fussy pomposity of the Queen's jubilee, the voice of the thinkers has not been entirely silent. The utter failure of her reign to present a single noble thought or impulse, a single evidence of sympathy with the immense mass of suffering, has been sharply commented on, not only in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... a lot of other places, stopping at most of them, for I was still rather weak, and the mater was fussy about my overdoing it till we settled down at Sorrento. That's a place on the Bay of Naples, and just the loveliest bit of it—oranges everywhere. It's ten miles from Castellamare, the nearest railway-station, but the drive along ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... it," said Arthur. "Mobs of any kind are rare in the Southern country. We are not (in spite of the bad qualities ascribed to us by the Abolitionists) a fussy people. Sometimes, when an Abolitionist comes along, we have a little fun with him, the negroes enjoying it exceedingly. Slaveholders, as a general thing, desire to live a peaceful, quiet life; yet they are not willing to have their ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... 'Ah!' said the fussy and half-distracted little man who represented the great foreign house so neatly defrauded, 'Ah! if I had not come down this morning, not one othair would haf know. I am the one only expairt. See! I am praisant ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... free from effort, or chatter about food, is admirably adapted to rendering them agreeable. I am clearly of opinion that no one ought to give any entertainment that has not the means of making it pass off as a matter-of-course thing, and without effort. I have certainly seen a few fussy dinners here, but they are surprisingly rare. At home, we have plenty of people who know that a party that has a laboured air is inherently vulgar, but how few are there that know how to treat a brilliant entertainment ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... portion of her letter to a young man whom she indiscreetly though innocently adores, nothing very serious comes of his machinations, and our interest in the book is mainly confined to the emotional relations between Sir Charles, a fussy elderly martinet, his too young wife, and Maisie, her seventeen-year-old step-daughter, who varies from deeper moods to those of a silly and self-willed child. Then there is Captain Mayhune himself, a man of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... sketch, or draft of just what a revolution might be for once, and what it would have to get over being afterward, as soon as possible, never seems to have occurred to many people. One sees them rushing about the world trying to get up exact duplicates, little fussy replicas of a revolution, and of a kind of revolution that the real world put quietly away in the attic seventy years ago. The real world, and all the men in it who are facing real facts to-day, are getting ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... which she had been showing to the ladies on each side of her; for, in fact, neither she nor any one else could, without the greatest difficulty, refrain from laughing at the monkeyfied appearance of Titmouse. The alderman was a stout, stupid little man—a fussy old prig—with small angry-looking black eyes, and a short red nose; as for his head, it seemed as though he had just smeared some sticky fluid over it, and then dipped it into a flour-tub, so thickly laden was it with powder. Mr. Deputy Diddle-daddle was tall and thin, and serious and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... and quietly, found his Prayer-Book somewhere in the far depths of his kit-bag, and ran down to sit on the sea wall and wait for Akela and the last Cub or two (the ones whose boots had got lost, or who were so fussy about parting their hair, etc., that dressing ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... his motoring outfit, was still an unprepossessing figure. He wore a pince-nez; his manner was fussy and inclined to be a little patronizing. He had the air of an unsuccessful pedagogue. He was obviously regarding Burton with a new interest. During tea-time he conversed chiefly with Edith, who ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fussy than careless," said Chowne, "because life cures a chap of being fussy, if he's got a brain and a sensible outlook; but the careless and slack sort go from bad to worse, and I ain't here to keep my constables in order: they be here to strengthen my hands and keep the ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... His host, very fussy as he always was on the morning of his big shoot, came bustling towards Peter, Baron de Grost, with a piece of paper in his hand. The party of men had just descended from a large brake and were standing about on the edge of the common, examining cartridges, smoking a last cigarette before the ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lock-gates sever. What does it matter, friends, after all? The slow, the skilful, the dull, the clever, The snake-swift "swell" and the splashing 'ARRY, the puffing launch, and the trim outrigger, The calm canoest who hugs the timbers, the fussy punter who toils like a nigger, All will anon be well out in the cutting, the old gates shutting slowly behind them, And where are those who so shoved to the front? At the tail of the race you may presently find them. The G.O.M. (with his collars for sails), that jaunty ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone with Claude. Now they were a menage a trois. She recalled the beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The river seemed to have a soul, to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... crowd were several students that my old readers have met before. They included a hot-headed lad named Tom Thornton, a fussy fellow called Puss Parker, and Fred Flemming, Willis Paulding, Andy ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... time no one was listening to Gadabout. Any further fussy complaining of this little craft was drowned by the Commodore reading aloud. He had bethought him of a book containing some chapters on Brandon that we had got from the manor-house. And reading made us hungry; and there were two ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... are hearty eaters; but they are not, like the French, fussy and finicky over their food. Their stomach is not their God; and the cook, with his sauces and pates and ragouts, is not their High Priest. So long as the dish is wholesome, and there is sufficient of it, they ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... because they needed people to look after them and direct them and control them. We're as different from working people as a race-horse is from a cart-horse. Things that are quite natural to us are simply finicky fussy things to them. I wish to God talking like this didn't make a fellow feel like ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... as big a fool of me, my dear, as you choose," said the prospective bride to the fussy little girl who fluttered about her. "It's only for a ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... glancing over his spectacles to see if she by any possibility could be amusing herself at his expense—good, old, fussy, fault-finding Veritas; but indeed Francesca's eyes were so soft and lovely and honest that the more he looked at her, the less he could do her the injustice ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tavern, where a lovely barmaid in white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn Church. There ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... servant of all work. Mr. Mearns is a calm, rather bilious- looking, elderly man. There is nothing bewitching in his appearance; he looks like what he is—a quietly-disposed, evenly-tempered, Methodist minister. He is neither fussy, nor conceited, nor fond of brandishing the sword of superiority. He goes about his work steadily, and is as patient in harness as out of it. He has northern blood in his veins which checks impulsiveness ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Christ is not merely the just man, innocent, silent before his accusers. The stationary, white-draped figure, raised high above the agitated crowd, with tranquil forehead slightly bent, facing his perplexed and fussy judge, is more than man. We cannot say perhaps precisely why he is divine. But Tintoretto has made us feel that he is. In other words, his treatment of the high theme chosen ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was a fussy little person in a shiny black coat and a soft hat that was too big for him. No matter how much paper he stuffed inside the brim, the hat never seemed to fit right. Peering through glasses that were always threatening to fall off, he moved away from the Star Institute ...
— Be It Ever Thus • Robert Moore Williams
... do in preparation for making them is to prepare the design. Simple designs work out better than fussy ones and are more likely to be within the ability of the amateur. Having determined the size of the tray, draw on paper an oblong to represent it. Inside this oblong, draw another one to represent the lines along which the metal is to be bent up to form the sides. Inside this there ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... caretakers: there was nothing they were not capable of doing—except taking reasonable care of their invalids! They either fussed about too much, or else they did not fuss about at all. They all began by doing the right thing: they all ended by doing the wrong. The fussy ones had fits of apathy, when the poor irritable patients seemed to get a little better; the negligent ones had paroxysms of attentiveness, when their invalids, accustomed to loneliness and neglect, seemed to become rather ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... said Trimmer. "They listen more out of habit than anything else. If you're fussy ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... tears. Lucy, however, came to her relief, and said she was feeling blue because Harry would not be present! Just before the hour for the party Lucy descended to the parlor, where her father was reading, in order, as she said, to let him see whether her dress were fussy enough to suit him. He approved her taste, and after asking if Lizzie, too, were dressed in the same manner, resumed his paper. Ere long the covered sleigh stood at the door, and in a few moments Lucy and Lizzie were in Anna Graham's ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... two thousand years old; but she carelessly lost track of her age a few centuries ago and skipped several hundreds. She's a little fussy, you know, and afraid of growing old, being a widow and still ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... look at a guard. He found our one and only T. B. Ponks doing sentry. "Turn out the guard," was the order. "Eh?" was the response. "Where is the guard?" asked the flushed suite. "A dunno," said T. B. The suite was inclined to be fussy, but our Brigadier is essentially human. "Where are the other lads?" he asked genially. "They 'm in theer," said T. B., pointing to the entrance with no particular enthusiasm. The Brigadier and his staff made as if to enter. "'Ere, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... cough, and seemed dull and had headache. Of course I laughed at my mother's fears, took my football jersey from before the fire—she had washed it, and was just as particular about airing as your mother is—fussy, you would say—and off I ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of interest had sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been Dick's genial manner of boyish comradeship that had really warmed Miss Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her heart to a friend it was without stipulations. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... (the authority for Godfrey's being 'master of a dangerous secret') did expect to meet Godfrey at dinner, and, knowing the fears to which Godfrey often confessed, might himself have originated, by his fussy inquiries, the rumour that Sir Edmund was missing. The wild excitement of the town might add 'murdered by Papists,' and the rumour might really get into a letter from London of Saturday night, reaching ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... course covered with mould, he was none the worse; and those who were well enough enjoyed his discomfiture immensely. Going into Salle III where there were shouts of laughter (the convalescents were sent to that room) I saw a funny sight. One little man, who was particularly fussy and grumpy (and very unpopular with the other men in consequence), slept near the stove, which was an old-fashioned coal one with a pipe leading up to the ceiling. The concussion had shaken this to such an extent that accumulations of soot had come down and covered ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... such that one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and a splendid body-guard for Marty in her solitary woodland rambles—never left her side for a second. I have often watched him from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his responsibility—almost fussy about it. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... China Cat," said her sister Angelina. "She is so white that the least speck shows on her. Real white cats are very fussy about keeping themselves clean, so I do not see why a white China Cat should not be treated the same way. You dust the Nodding Donkey, Geraldine, and I'll dust ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... was dated the day before yesterday, the second had come yesterday, and the last that day, an hour before. Their contents were quite trivial, and all referred to Karmazinov and betrayed the vain and fussy uneasiness of Varvara Petrovna and her apprehension that Karmazinov might forget to pay her a visit. Here is the first one dating from two days before. (Probably there had been one also three days before, and possibly another four days ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... fussy while I was a woolly lamb," said Dorothy, "for it didn't feel good, a bit. And I wasn't quite sure, you know, that I'd ever get to ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... was dull, with an incipient drizzle as we started out at six o'clock. The fish were now rising, at any rate, in my pool. At the very entrance to it, which was, in fact, the connecting run from The Rocks, I killed, after a fussy tussle and plenty of leaping out of the water, a grilse of 4 lb.; and we had barely rowed out into the stream when a fish of 6 lb. or 7 lb. leaped head and tail out of the water at my fly without touching it. The overcast character of the evening suggested ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... It was surely a great step in advance when all the Elohims were combined into one Supreme Elohim that was everywhere present and ruled the world. Instead of dozens of little gods, jealous, jangling, fearful, fretful, fussy, boastful, changing walking-sticks to serpents, or doing other things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Folkestone, and all the people on the pier smiled at us. We scuttled ashore and shook ourselves for delight. There was a policeman, a postman. Who are these fussy fellows with badges on their arms? ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... rarely disturbed by anything, showed on this occasion a fussy solicitude about his trunks and boxes; nor was he appeased until he had seen them all on a truck, waiting for the inspection of the customs officers. Mr. Hawker, slouching along the pier with his ulster ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Lieutenant, or, as he was called in courtesy, Captain Whittier, the officer in command of the coast guard station between Poole and Christ Church; his principal station being opposite Brownsea Island, the narrowest point of the entrance to the harbour. He was a somewhat fussy little officer, with a great idea of the importance of his duties, mingled with a regret that these duties did not afford him full ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... his years. There is danger, and very real danger, lest we should take for granted what the "Grad-grinds" tell us, that the only thing which matters is that we do work, and are not idle. Work for its own sake is not enough. It may turn men into machines—all clatter and monotony; or it may make them fussy nuisances. "A soulless activity," says Canon Ainger, "may save a man from vagrancy only by turning him into a thing; or it may keep him from idleness by making him an egotist." There is the man who, to use the common ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... "but he had a sort of fussy irritable way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got it fixed in my mind that he was old. As a matter of fact, he was about forty-five, he may have ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... is just how it is," repeated Ivan Ivanovitch; "and isn't our living in town, airless and crowded, our writing useless papers, our playing vint—isn't that all a sort of case for us? And our spending our whole lives among trivial, fussy men and silly, idle women, our talking and our listening to all sorts of nonsense—isn't that a case for us, too? If you like, I will tell you a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the payment of an exorbitant rent in advance, and the receipt of innumerable letters from a restless and fussy steward whom he had not yet seen, went as evidence, he knew himself to be the tenant in possession of a great shooting in Morayshire. He had several photographs of what was called the lodge, but looked like something between a mansion ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... that I must have been a very stupid child most of the time, and that the befogged state of my mind was certainly a pity and perhaps a shame. Yet there was a sort of advantage in it: fogs choose with much good sense what they will emphasize; and the intellect bereft of fussy clearness may have a startling grasp that reminds one of occult methods. My observations could not pretend to so much, but they caught truths not very often stared into capture by a little girl; and my father interested me more, and was more ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... and take every opportunity to put a crimp in the business for the owners. I envied the owners (we've all got a touch of that in our system), because they were rich and were making profits. I knew what their profits averaged. By calling fussy little strikes often enough I could have kept the profits close to the zero mark. Thus the men would be making wages out of the business and the owners would be making nothing. But I declined to let my actions be governed by envy. The Ten Commandments forbid ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... reminded me of some mothers of a larger growth, she was so fussy, so careful that her charges did not go too fast for their strength, while her spouse made it his business to see that she did not keep them tender by over-coddling. He allowed her to brood them for fifteen minutes; longer than that he would ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... reached the offices of the law firm, Mr. O'Brien, a short, fussy, albeit comfortable-looking little person, greeted all the members of the family and the various heirs and assigns with a hearty handshake. He had been personal counsel to Archibald Kane for twenty years. He knew his whims ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... to do all that was required and applauded my friend's self-control and good sense; indeed, I could not help contrasting the conduct of this busy, indefatigable man, cheerfully resigning himself to most distasteful inaction, with the fussy behaviour of the ordinary patient who, with nothing of importance to do, can hardly be prevailed upon to rest, no matter how urgent the necessity. Accordingly, I breakfasted alone, and spent the morning in writing and despatching letters to the various persons who were expecting visits ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... darkness, and caused the damp, grey foliage to smile once more with aniseed and red raspberry, and to sparkle with the gold of their mildew. Also, there came hovering about us goldfinches with their little red-hooded crests, and fussy tomtits in their cravats of yellow, while a nimble, dark, blue woodpecker scaled the stem of an apple tree. And everywhere, yellow leaves fluttered to earth, and, in doing so, so closely resembled birds as to make it not always easy to distinguish whether a leaf or a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... I had the best—were beefy members of their dinkey colonial Government or fussy, timid barristers I had to carry on me mouth. Seldom it was I carried a good pair of hands and a cool head in me nine years' runnin' with the Quebec and Montreal hounds. And lucky the same was for me, for it forced me to take the bit in me teeth, ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson |
