"Skittish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the moral, Which I with their amusement will connect (So children cutting teeth receive a coral); Meantime, they 'll doubtless please to recollect My epical pretensions to the laurel: For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish, I 've ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... not the slightest disharmony between sense and nonsense, humor and respectability, despite the skittish tendency to assume that there is. But, why, then, that widespread error? What actual fact of life lies behind it, giving it a specious appearance of reasonableness? None other, I am convinced, than the fact that the average man is far too stupid to make a joke. He may see a joke and love ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... I am all true lovers are, —Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, Save in the constant image of the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... unto God, into heaven, where he should see strange mysteries, which were not lawful to be seen by any other man. He prayed him, then, to get upon Alborak; but the beast, having lain idle and unemployed from the time of Christ to Mahomet, was grown so mettlesome and skittish, that he would not stand still for Mahomet to mount him, till at length he was forced to bribe him to it by promising him a place in paradise. When he was firmly seated on him, the angel Gabriel led the way, with the bridle of the beast in his hand, and carried the prophet ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... "Gee, but you're skittish this morning," said Ted, giving Sultan a vigorous slap on the haunch. "But just you wait a few minutes until I get on you. I'll take some of that ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... "Too skittish for me," responded the other with a sidelong look, for he had caught a note in Crozier's voice which gave him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lock on the inside; and the only sign of adornment was a couple of framed pictures, one close above the head of the bed, and the other opposite the foot, and both curtained, as we may sometimes see valuable water-colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. It was perhaps in the hope of finding something of this last description that M'Naughten's comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly disappointed. There was no picture. The frame surrounded, and the curtain ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had a light touch and a knowing way with women, and the prompt manner in which Miss Bart (as he would have phrased it) had "come into line," confirmed his confidence in his powers of handling this skittish sex. Her way of glossing over the transaction with Trenor he regarded at once as a tribute to his own acuteness, and a confirmation of his suspicions. The girl was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means of advancing ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in fashionable circles at decent intervals. Later, Peter learned to know their redoubtable relatives as "Rabbits" and "The Grampus," and he once saw a terrifyingly truthful portrait of "Rabbits" sketched on a skittish model's bare back, and a movingly realistic little figure of "The Grampus" modeled by her dutiful nephew in a moment of diabolical inspiration. It was explained to him that God, for some inscrutable purpose of his own, generally pleases himself by bestowing only the most limited human intelligence ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... about two feet in height, and 120 of them would be considered an ample number for a quiet little fox hunt. Some hunters think this number inadequate, but unless the fox be unusually skittish and crawl under the barn, 120 foxhounds ought to be enough. The trouble generally is that hunters make too much noise, thus scaring the fox so that he tries to get away from them. This necessitates hard riding and great activity ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... snorted, "Be a good thing for most of us roughnecks if we did have a smart woman to tell us how to fix up the town. Just as much to her kicking as there was to Jim Blausser's gassing about factories. And you can bet Mrs. Kennicott is smart, even if she is skittish. Glad to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... care if he is skittish about machinery," said Romper Ryan emphatically, "I'm going to see that Dick Austin becomes a scout before he leaves Woodbridge; he's the kind of ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... persuasion, while the ones which refused to be persuaded were simply lifted in by the sailors. 'Though all are thin and some few looked pulled down I was agreeably surprised at the evident vitality which they still possessed—some were even skittish. I cannot express the relief when the whole seventeen were safely picketed on ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the sequel to prevent the young folks from being too intimately acquainted with each other's inclinations. Grimes, of consequence, attributed the reluctance of Miss Melville to maiden coyness, and the skittish shyness of an unbroken filly. Indeed, had it been otherwise, it is not probable that it would have made any effectual impression upon him; as he was always accustomed to consider women as made for the recreation of the men, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... yet the more a man considers and observes them, the less he finds of difference between them and other men, though (blessed be God!) they are both princes of great nobleness and spirits. The Duke of Monmouth is the most skittish leaping gallant that ever I saw, always in action, vaulting or leaping, or clambering. Sad news of the death of so many in the parish of the plague, forty last night. The bell always going. This day poor Robin Shaw at Backewell's ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... his imagination, not won his heart; though he is not himself aware that such is the case. This fancy-sickness—for it appears to be nothing else—naturally renders him somewhat capricious and fantastical, "unstaid and skittish in his motions"; and, but for the exquisite poetry which it inspires him to utter, would rather excite our mirth than enlist our sympathy. To use an illustration from another play, Olivia is not so much his Juliet as his Rosalind; and perhaps a secret persuasion to ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the bar 'long 'bout sundown last night. Kinder skittish actin' hussy she was, but she turned out an' cleared off without much trouble. We was all ready ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... youngest girl, Signa, who has a pretty figure, mottled pink cheeks, and yellow hair, Alexandra is very fond, though she keeps a sharp eye upon her. Signa is apt to be skittish at mealtime, when the men are about, and to spill the coffee or upset the cream. It is supposed that Nelse Jensen, one of the six men at the dinner-table, is courting Signa, though he has been so careful not to commit himself that ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... like any one, and see what will come of it." There was a pretty sun-burnt girl about fifteen years of age that had given me a cock-stand. "That's a pretty girl Smith, I'd give a sovereign to have her,—is she loose?" "Don't think so yet squire, she be skittish; her sister's not fourteen, and they say she be in the family way, when one sister takes to it squire, the others generally do." "Where do you pay their wages?" I asked. The old fellow leered at ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the verse teaches that the skittish god must not be scared by a premature exhibition of the noose hid beneath the sieve of corn. Champagne suppers and love among the roses—yes. But there should be, also, cunningly hidden, the noose among ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... plenty er the new-issue quality ready an' a-waitin' to pull an' haul at 'im,' says I. Not that I begrudge the vittles—not by no means; I hope I hain't got to that yit. But somehow er 'nother folks what hain't got no great shakes to brag 'bout gener'ly feels sorter skittish when strange folks draps in on 'em. Goodness knows I hain't come to that pass wher' I begrudges the vittles that folks eats, bekaze anybody betweenst this an' Clinton, Jones County, Georgy, 'll tell ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... to the enemy, had inwardly shuddered. She was an excellent, estimable woman; but when ponderously arch, when extensively sly! Oh, dear no! It didn't do. Her gambols were too sadly suggestive of those of a skittish hippopotamus. Dominic Iglesias was conscious that he had a skin too little to-night; he could not witness them with philosophy. The kindliest intention, the best-meant words, might ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... chorister was a very amusing man. His voice was sepulchral but his conversation skittish. Eileen's repartees smote him to almost the only serious respect of his life, and one day he said: "Why, there's a future in you. Why don't you go on ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... to be, for presently Penobscot, always a skittish young racer, began to grow lively after he had shaken off the weighty shadow of Katahdin, and, kicking up his heels, went galloping down hill, so furiously that we were at last, after sundry frantic plunges, compelled to get off ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... thou shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it remember me; For such as I am all true lovers are, Unstaid and skittish in all motions else. Save in the constant image of the creature That is beloved. Twelfth Night, Act ii. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the hill in front of old Grout Nickelson's wuz steep, and the road a skittish one that wound around it above the creek. But imagine goin' along a road where you could look down thousands of feet into running water, and right up on the other side of you mountains thousands of feet high. And you between, poor specks of clay with ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... buggy; old Mr. Smiley's ponderous black with his comfortable phaeton, speaking the presence of Mr. Pound and Mrs. Pound, who used it as their own; the Buckwalters' rockaway and the Rickabachs' spring-wagon. Even Miss Agnes Spinner's bicycle had a fence panel all to itself, as though it were very skittish and likely to kick and set the whole road in commotion. To my own unimportant self I never attributed this assembly of all the great folk of the valley. There was some more potent reason. As I pondered, hunting for it, we came to the lane. Until I found that reason ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... she could not remember where she had seen her. Though she could remember nothing, the association seemed to be one of pain. In vain she beat her brains. Memory was an almost uncultivated quality with her, and, like the rest of her intellectual powers, had a nervous, skittish way of deserting her in need, as ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... imitation horse of some light material, fastened round the waist of the morrice-dancer, who imitated the movements of a skittish horse. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... told him not to lose his nerve; that a woman never meant 'no'; that she often says it only to be made say 'yes.' And I ended up with telling him if she got a little skittish, as thoroughbreds do sometimes, to try a strong arm. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... of my young lady's various pranks would fill a thick volume. A favorite trick of hers, on being requested to "walk like Miss Abigail," was to assume a little skittish gait so true to nature that Miss Abigail herself was obliged to admit the cleverness ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... with her. Then they went out, and mounting, rode back in the direction of Mudgee. Uncle Abe winked long and hard and solemnly at Andy Page, and Andy winked back like a mechanical wooden image. The two women nudged and smiled and seemed quite girlish, not to say skittish, all the morning. Something had come to break the cruel hopeless monotony of their lives. And even the settler ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... only advances had been a muffled request for the salt. The next morning, Miss Arthur's chair had been empty, and her charge, left to herself, had been more glacially circumspect than ever. Whatever skittish traits the pair might develop, Weldon felt assured that they would be solely upon the side of ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... take up, and them folks ain't come back. Why, I never did see Lou as skittish as she is now. I reckon it's because he's the son ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... who had become skittish by seeing her family always in danger, came to me with a very distressed countenance, and said, "What will you do if the mayor of Boston sends him word that you haven't been there? Then he will suspect the letter was a trick; and maybe he'll find out something about it, and ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... 1865, and was sent to San Diego, Texas; but I never was in a battle. And they was only one time when I felt anyways skittish. That was when I was a new recruit on picket duty. And it was pitch dark, and I heard something comin' th'ough the bushes, and I thought, 'Let 'em come, whoever it is'. And I got my bayonet all ready, and waited. I'se gittin' sorta nervous, and purty soon the bushes opened, and what ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... culled people gits mighty skittish ef dey tries to git em to vote dare ticket 'lection time, an' keeps dem at a proper distance wen de 'lection's ober. Some ob dem say dere's a trick behine it, an' don't want to tech it. Dese white folks could do a heap wid de culled folks ef ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... sympathy with a curt little nod. "I'm the biggest fool in Washington County. We've been setting traps for wolves. They've been getting our lambs. I jumped off my horse right into this one. Blacky is a skittish colt and when the trap went ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... well-fed and skittish horses whirled him rapidly along to Mr. Perekatov's house. It was a summer day, close and sultry. Not a cloud anywhere. The blue of the sky was so thick and dark on the horizon that the eye mistook ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... said Burr, not finishing his sentence, and the pair, urging their horses to a faster gait came up with the others. Just then the party met a robust countryman who saluted the Morgans, as he trotted by on a skittish colt. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... whether granite, gneiss, limestone, or slate formed the grander height beyond, thus leading to schemes of more distant rides to verify the conjectures, which Rachel accepted with the less argument, because sententious dogmatism was not always possible on the back of a skittish black mare. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shrinking form; but, instead of doing so, he pressed his arms closer round Rosalie and smiled—yes, by Jove, smiled—and, if you'll take the word of a retired master mariner, winked, with a peculiar, tender and calfish expression that in anybody else would have been called skittish. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... and channelled by drifts of hard and icy snow, and quite suddenly you may find yourself prostrate upon a surface of slippery blue ice. It may be easily imagined that it is no seemly place to exercise skittish ponies or mules in a cold wind, but there is no other place when ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Axtell grimly. "It was the least I could do, heaven knows. Some nights I haven't gone to bed at all. Even at that, I felt a little skittish when I went up for my exam. But I was desperate and went in largely on my nerve. When the Prof. looked over my papers I thought I heard him mutter to himself something that sounded like: 'All Gaul is divided into three parts and you've got two of them.' But that may simply have been ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... tinned meats. And she who was perhaps of no regard or station among natives sits with captains, and is entertained on board of schooners. Five of these privileged dames were some time our neighbours. Four were handsome skittish lasses, gamesome like children, and like children liable to fits of pouting. They wore dresses by day, but there was a tendency after dark to strip these lendings and to career and squall about the compound in the aboriginal ridi. Games of cards were continually played, with shells for counters; ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Scoured, ran. Screed, rip, rent. Sede, seed. Semescope, jacket. Sets, patterns. Seventeen-hunder, very fine (linen). Shachled, feeble, shapeless. Shaw, show. Shiel, shelter. Shool, shovel. Shoon, shoes. Shouther, shoulder. Sic, such. Siller, silver, money. Sin', since. Skeigh, skittish. Skellum, good-for-nothing. Skelp, run quickly. Skiffing, moving along lightly. Skirl, squeal, scream. Skriech, screech. Slaes, sloes. Slap, gap in a fence. Slea, slay. Sleekit, sleek. Slid, smooth. Smeddum, powder. Smethe, smoke. Smoor, smother. Smothe, vapor. Snaw, snow. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... specifying to which of the two latter classes our present medium belonged, one might venture to say she had safely passed the former. She was of that ripe and Rubens-like beauty to which we could well imagine some "Higher" spirit offering the golden apple of its approval, however the skittish Paris of the spheres might incline to sweet sixteen. I had a short time before sat infructuously with this lady, when a distressing contretemps occurred. We were going in for a dark seance then, and just as we fancied the revenants were about to justify the title, we were startled ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... reins of her skittish, snorting pony and picked up Lennon's new sombrero. Through the middle of the high peak was a neatly drilled ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... of the seasons. Ella and Grace did not manage badly, considering that they had only their girlish prettiness and the twine hammock to work with. But Flora, with her beauty, captured H. Charnsworth Baldwin. Chippewa gasped. H. Charnsworth Baldwin drove a skittish mare to a high-wheeled yellow runabout; had his clothes made at Proctor Brothers in Milwaukee; and talked about a game called golf. It was he who advocated laying out a section of land for what he called links, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber |
