"Finicky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If you really believe you have a penchant for sturdy and rather grubby worthiness unadorned you are mistaken. The inclination you have is merely for a pretty face and figure. I know you. If I don't, who does! You're rather a fastidious young man, even finicky, and very, very much accustomed to the best and only the best. Don't talk to me about your disinterested admiration for a working girl. You haven't anything in common with her, and you never could have. And you'd better be very careful not to make a ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... and lowered them for others, they rang the bell for the servant, they identified the colleges as the train slipped past Oxford, they caught books or bag-purses in the act of tumbling on to the floor. Yet there was nothing finicky about their politeness: it had the Public School touch, and, though sedulous, was virile. More battles than Waterloo have been won on our playing-fields, and Margaret bowed to a charm of which she did not wholly approve, and said nothing when the Oxford colleges were identified wrongly. "Male ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... had worn off, Percy was not so "finicky" in her tastes, Bessie was more careful of other people's feelings, Grace really seemed almost cured of laziness, Frank was by no means so hoydenish as she once was, and as for Wynifred, she was just as hearty and happy as it ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... quite recent. And his trousers don't fit as his trousers usually do. He used to be finicky about ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... nose. I never spent a bad night in army blankets, though when out on leave I am sometimes a victim of insomnia between clean cold sheets. But the moment the Reveille uplifted you from your couch, that couch had to be made ship-shape according to rule. No finicky "airing"! The mattress must be rolled up, with the pillow as its core, and placed at the end of the bed. On top of it a blanket, folded longwise and with the ends hanging down, was laid neatly; on top of that you put the other two blankets, folded quite otherwise; then you brought ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... ever since she had put up her hair and lengthened her skirts—to break Aunt Cyrilla of the habit of carrying that basket with her every time she went to Pembroke; but Aunt Cyrilla still insisted on taking it, and only laughed at what she called Lucy Rose's "finicky notions." Lucy Rose had a horrible, haunting idea that it was extremely provincial for her aunt always to take the big basket, packed full of country good things, whenever she went to visit Edward and Geraldine. Geraldine was so stylish, and might ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... our own interests. Poetry is my chief one at present. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that games are what count. Where should we be without them? And I damn well hope the House is not going to get into a finicky, affected state of mind, despising them because they are too slack to play them. That's why you hate them, Betteridge, because you are no good at them. My great ambition is to be captain of this House and win the Three Cock. Of course the worship of sport is ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... respect which must not be marred by crude expression. They compare snobbishness to immodesty, and profess that the pleasure of acquaintance with the great should be so enjoyed that the great themselves are but half-conscious of the homage offered them: this is rather a subtle and finicky critique of what is in honest minds a ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... all that, Harry," said Happy, "but Arthur is sure to be the one who will raise the trouble about the shroud. You know how finicky he is about his clothes. He'll find fault with the quality of his shroud, and he'll say that it's cut either too short or too long. Then he'll insist, while all the billions wait, on draping the shroud in the finest ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern banks are getting finicky about paper, and—I think things are going to be—slower—and that we ought ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... shan't bother Doris now," said Patricia easily. "I'm in for a while at least, and it would seem like spying to ask questions. I'm too thankful to be in Artemis Lodge to be so awfully finicky." ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... channels open.... Obstructions clear? What had it said? There'd been only the blurred image of a finicky, delicate, but perfectly normal technical ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... would have felt dishonored. The McCune papers could have been used for Halloway's benefit, but not for his own; he would not ride to success on another man's ruin; and young Fisbee had understood and had saved him. It was a point of honor that many would have held finicky and inconsistent, but one which young Fisbee had comprehended ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... was also "eating." "We much prefer them all that way," said he. "I suppose you would consider our tastes very finicky, on Earth; but the fact is we are able to distinguish between minute variations in flavoring such as would escape all on earth ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... don't mind! Most doctors are finicky. Don't worry about the medicine. I'll see that Ann ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... "I'd better get the thing over before I buy the thread. I should never be able to stand Miss Dayson's finicking! I should scream out!" But the next instant, with her passion for proving to herself how strong she could be, she added: "Well, I just will buy the thread first!" And she went straight into Dayson's little fancy shop, which was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... ashamed. After all, one drinks tea largely to please one's fellow men, Barbara, and to give oneself tone and an air of gentility (though, of myself, I care little about such things, for I am not a man of the finicking sort). Yet think you that, when all things needful—boots and the rest—have been paid for, much will remain? Yet I ought not to grumble at my salary,—I am quite satisfied with it; it is sufficient. ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... kitchen! Lastly, because Julian could not pass the night in the house, Louis, the interloper, had the effrontery to offer to fill his place—on some preposterous excuse about burglars! And the fellow was so polite and so persuasive, with his finicking eloquence. By virtue of a strange faculty not uncommon in human nature Julian loathed Louis' good manners and appearance—and acutely ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett |
