"Slyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him hastening toward the woods and noted his skulking air, but as he had grinned in his old good-natured way they had, at the time, thought nothing of it. Now, however, the diabolical reason of his slyness was apparent. He had been shrewd enough to disarm suspicion, and by now was far away. Even Mrs. Daly, who was visiting with a neighbour, had seen him stepping out by a back way, and had said with a laugh, 'I reckon ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... unnatural productions, extorted by the force of artificial fire out of filthy manure, asked, with a faltering voice, if Mrs. Pickle was not of her way of thinking? This young lady, who wanted neither slyness nor penetration, at once divined her meaning, and replied, with seeming unconcern, that for her own part she should never repine if there was no pine-apple in the universe, provided she could indulge herself with the fruits of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... extreme line on this matter solely because of some calculation of social harm; many, but not all and not even most. Many people think that paper money is a mistake and does much harm. But they do not shudder or snigger when they see a cheque-book. They do not whisper with unsavoury slyness that such and such a man was "seen" going into a bank. I am quite convinced that the English aristocracy is the curse of England, but I have not noticed either in myself or others any disposition to ostracise a man simply for accepting a peerage, as the modern Puritans would ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and the monk with friendliness, and, just as before, a little slyness, as though he were ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to be criticized unkindly by those who are envious of you, although you have no suspicion that these people are anything but friendly in their feeling towards you; there is slyness and deception, and it would be well to be on your guard or you may find unpleasant gossip has been ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... The slyness of the rascal tickled the boy so much that he pushed back his hat, clapped his hands, and burst out laughing as he had not done before for weeks. Every one looked round surprised, and Sancho regarded them with a mildly inquiring air, as if he said, "Why this unseemly ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow-creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled slyness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there began the most pitiful business. She was pleading with him in a whining, wheedling, silly voice, which would have broken down an Englishman. Grifone himself was pricked. It was like a child, frightened into slyness, coaxing its mother. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... with the purpose of being transferred to the patronage of the Duchess—I mean of the Lady Marjory of Douglas. Now, this beetle headed provost, who is after all but a piece of blundering valiancy, has, like most such, a retainer of some slyness and cunning, whom he uses in all his dealings, and whose suggestions he generally considers as his own ideas. Whenever I would possess myself of a landward baron, I address myself to such a confidant, who, in the present case, is called Kitt Henshaw, an old skipper upon the Tay, and who, having in ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... reserved behaviour, and frigidly declining to understand the Major whenever he called (which he often did) on any little fishing excursion connected with this project, the Major, in spite of his constitutional toughness and slyness, was fain to leave the accomplishment of his desire in some measure to chance, 'which,' as he was used to observe with chuckles at his club, 'has been fifty to one in favour of Joey B., Sir, ever since his elder brother died of Yellow Jack in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... genius combined the excellencies of many masters. His "Golden Targe" and "The Thistle and the Rose" are allegorical poems, full of colour, fancy, and music. His "Two Married Women and the Widow" has a good deal of Chaucer's slyness and humour. "The Dance of the Deadly Sins," with its fiery bursts of imaginative energy, its pictures finished at a stroke, is a prophecy of Spenser and Collins, and as fine as anything they have accomplished; while his "Flytings" are torrents ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... others. She is the pretty, good-natured, well-principled, and rather well-educated menial, whose prudence comes to the aid of her principles, whose pride does not interfere with either, and who has a certain—it is hardly unfair to call it—slyness which is of the sex rather than of the individual. But, as such, she is quite admirably worked out—a heroine of Racine in more detail and different circumstances, a triumph of art, and at the same time with so much nature that it is impossible to ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... more considerate form. The effect of calm, retrospective avowal is to create a kind of feeling which is essentially unlike our feeling at what is actually avowed. Still it is clear that his unlucky career as apprentice brought out in Rousseau slyness, greediness, slovenliness, untruthfulness, and the whole ragged regiment of the squalider vices. The evil of his temperament now and always was of the dull smouldering kind, seldom breaking out into active flame. There is a certain sordidness ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... upon the 30th of June—or rather, as I suppose, it had run out already, and the month of grace would expire upon that day, after which any American citizen might post a notice of his own, and make Silverado his. This, with a sort of quiet slyness, Rufe told me at an early period of our acquaintance. There was no silver, of course; the mine "wasn't worth nothing, Mr. Stevens," but there was a deal of old iron and wood around, and to gain possession of this old wood and iron, and get a right to the water, Rufe proposed, if I had no objections, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Titterton's chuckles, And old Bottleby's hearty guffaws As he drove at my ribs with his knuckles, His mode of expressing applause: While Jean Bottleby—queenly Miss Janet - Drew her handkerchief hastily out, In fits at my slyness—what can ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... in this manner, the burrow is exempt from calamities similar to those which, too often, depopulate it in May. Let the Gnat come now, if she dare, to steal the Halictus' loaves! Let her lie in wait as long as she will! Neither her audacity nor her slyness will make her escape the lynx eyes of the sentinel, who will put her to flight with a threatening gesture or, if she persist, crush her with her nippers. She will not come; and we know the reason: until spring returns, she is ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... ain't just up to some o' your arts,' said Christopher, with a contented face, in which his blue eye twinkled with a little slyness; 'but I'll tell you what, she can cook a dish o' pot-pie that you can't beat, nor nobody else; and her ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... for fame was none other than Mignon La Salle. With her usual slyness, she kept her own counsel. Nevertheless, she believed she stood a fair chance of winning the prize of which she dreamed. For Mignon could sing. From childhood her father had spared no expense in the matter of her musical education. An ardent ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... came anigh unto the Maid, where she did lie so quiet, I saw that something moved in the wood, and was running. And truly it did be an Humpt Man, and came forward very silent and with a quick slyness, as that he did track the Maid secretly; for he lookt alway to the earth. And I perceived that he was that one of the Humpt Men which the Maid had cut with the knife; for the blood did show upon the shoulder and the breast; and this bleeding mayhap to have slowed the Man; so that Mine Own did ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Sunday night, I shuddered. It seemed as though a venomous snake had put its folds around my neck. Zibe Turner, called the monster dwarf, seems to me to be almost less than human. He combines the ferocity of the tiger, the slyness of the fox, and the shape of a monkey. I am doubly alarmed when he ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... first time the affair had the hateful appearance of an intrigue, like a court adventure. It was the Italian servant, Howat decided; and immediately he recognized why he disliked the other—it was because he expressed an aspect of slyness that lay over Ludowika and himself. He put that from him, too; but it was like brushing away cobwebs. His hunger for Ludowika increased all the while; it became more burningly material, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... his slyness. Look at him now." For the crocodile, thinking itself unobserved, was crawling slowly toward the bank of the river. When it reached the end of its tether and could go no farther, it lay down and, lifting its head, looked all around as innocently as if it never ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... with a certain slyness, "Have you heard anything about her already? At the club? From that fool woman ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... gentlemen lolling at the doors and tumbling into the streets in their apoplectic opulence." Nothing about the ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and "winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe." Nothing about the canisters of tea and coffee "rattled up and down like juggling tricks," or about the candied fruits, "so caked and spotted with molten ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... not the custom to allude to the Lords, and when the order of parliamentary proceedings was perhaps better observed than it is now—to be in—in point of fact,' says Cousin Feenix, cherishing his joke, with great slyness, and finally bringing it out with a jerk, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... with cherubic slyness, "he would give his left hand for such a chance to please us! Perhaps you haven't noticed that my nina is rather attractive; but it has not escaped the observation ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hearty laugh, and Gaspare's eyes gleamed with pleasure while Hermione and Maurice drank. Then Sebastiano drew from the inner pocket of his old jacket a little flute, smiling with an air of intense and comic slyness ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the road from the railway tracks, leaving Frederick staring helplessly after her. At the door of the mission she halted with the slyness that had been taught her from the cradle, bending her head forward to ascertain if any person were witness of her action. She opened the door and fled like a young deer toward the organ, then, ripping the crimson cloth from the altar, she fled out again into the night, ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... by the way, Mr. Dudgeon, I shall be glad to see you at lunch at half-past one. (He pauses a moment, and adds, with politely veiled slyness) Bring Mrs. Anderson, if she will be so good. (To Swindon, who is fuming) Take it quietly, Major Swindon: your friend the British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office. (He ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... was silent without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak—as though many persons were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the miner's part; continued presents of dust from him to the lady; on her part continued trips to Folsom, a lessened caution, and a brag of manner based upon her very just popularity at the Gap; next, Drylyn's first sickening dawn of doubt, jealousy equipping him with a new and alien slyness; the final accident of his seeing the shot-gun messenger on his very first visit to the Gap come out of the Gazelle's tent so early in the morning; the instant blaze of truth and fury that turned Drylyn to a clever, calculating wild beast. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... dissipation of the fine, young fox-hunter, the half intoxicated chuckle with which he holds the bottle, the grief of his daughter and wife, and the little shoeless boy with his hoop, are finely contrasted with the rich humour and extravagant burlesque of all around them. The slyness of the Head Constable, in the left hand corner, half smothered in his mock robes, is expressively told; and the painter is a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... with a pitchfork, and in terror then, for his slyness and cunning were on a par with his other pleasant peculiarities. One of the poor devils he killed entered the stable all unsuspecting. Geronimo had broken his chains, and stood close against the wall of his stall in the darkness, waiting. The man came within ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Abroad, published in 1869, a semi- burlesque account of the adventures of a party of American tourists in Europe and the East. Roughing It, and other works of his published subsequently, have been equally successful. The qualities of his style are peculiar, slyness and cleverness in jesting being his ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the narrow, menacing eyes, for he knew that Howells challenged him to a duel of slyness with the whole truth at stake. The detective's manner increased the hatred which had blazed in Bobby's mind when he had stood in the bedroom over his grandfather's body. For a moment he wished with all his heart that he might accept the challenge. He did ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... Cedarstrom or the half-foolish Delia in the house, it was impossible to keep from daddy's eyes the things that went wrong. Now it was different. Mrs. Watkins was very sly in making everything appear all right before Broxton Day. On the other hand Janice showed an equal amount of slyness (of which she had been previously accused!) in helping hide the numerous things that ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and from the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered on her brow, there must be something ticklish in the second. The husband pronounced it; a well-directed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... find out!" she would say apprehensively, and then perhaps giggle at the slyness of it all. Tommy had to make merry with her, as if it was one of his boyish plays. If he was overcome with the pain of it, she sobbed at once ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... and then their fears, to turn them round her finger (she used to call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest at work. And her face was ever changing, working too; ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... ashes. It was to the credit of the visitor's powers of perception that he did not ask for other than was set before him, and compel his host to disclose his poverty. He was a man of middle age, with a shrewd face whose expression was spoiled by an occasional look of slyness or glance of suspicion. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... trade or "craft." Two words which we use to-day with a better sense than any of these, and yet which have a slightly uncomplimentary sense, are knowing and artful. It is surely good to "know" things, and to be full of art; but both words have already an idea of slyness, and may in time come to have quite as unpleasant a meaning as these three which have the same ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... most expression possible; and even now, when he was silent, and sat there with his wig laid aside, his glass in both hands, his mouth funnily pursed, and his chin out, he seemed the mere picture of a merry slyness. It was plain he had a word to say, and waited ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... o' cratur a'thegither, and cared for naething he could na see or hanle. He never thoucht muckle aboot God at a'. Jacob was anither sort—a poet kin' o' a man, but a sneck drawin' cratur for a' that. It was easier, hooever, to get the slyness oot o' Jacob, than the dulness oot o' Esau. Punishment tellt upo' Jacob like upon a thin skinned horse, whauras Esau was mair like the minister's powny, that can hardly be made to unnerstan' that ye want him to gang on. But ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... wasn', an' ye needn' be t'rowin' anny o' yer slyness on me. Ye know ye'd have no self-respect fur me. No; now ye know ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... untwisting the lines from the plow handles preparatory to making another round. He suddenly remembered to be discreet, and winked one eye with indescribable slyness. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... fine white 'dot' on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may make so bold, plunge into the middle of the Avonne and get to that stone down there. If we head the otter off, it will come down stream; for just see their slyness, the beggars! they always go above their burrow to feed, for, once full of fish, they know they can easily drift down, the sly things! Ha! if I'd been trained in their school I should be living now on an income; but I was a long ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... me to perceive that he was concealing something under his arm as he stoked the coffee-machine, and upon my asking what it was, he glanced round the courtyard with histrionic slyness, placed the object on the table beside my cap, and stepped back to watch the impression, his manner that of one who declaims: "At last the missing papers ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... like that of a parrot, and half hidden behind one of the great marble lions in the shade of the loggia he discerned a grotesque little creature, with the figure of a child and a woman's face, old in its expression of slyness and malignity. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... my lot from very childhood! All have read upon my countenance the marks of bad qualities, which were not existent; but they were assumed to exist—and they were born. I was modest—I was accused of slyness: I grew secretive. I profoundly felt both good and evil—no one caressed me, all insulted me: I grew vindictive. I was gloomy—other children merry and talkative; I felt myself higher than they—I was rated lower: I grew envious. I was prepared to love the whole ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... us. One looked in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads, and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness. There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in its place there is plenty of cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. The men look like women and the women like children, except that their features are so hard and forbidding. The better classes wear a supercilious expression of features that makes the toes of one's boots tingle; and yet in ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... of this right come under the general head of stealing. People call it theft, when it is effected with secrecy and slyness; robbery, when there is a suggestion of force or violence. The swindler is he who appropriates another's goods by methods of gross deception or false pretenses while the embezzler transfers to himself the funds entrusted to his care. Petty thieving is called pilfering or filching; stealing on a ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... you to have some jam," I should have failed entirely to smother my laughter. Do you think the doleful one would have seen the fun of the remark if she had any power over the body or soul of that devoted child? Nay. She would have whined about slyness, and cunning hints, and greediness, and the probabilities of utter ruin and disgrace overtaking underhand schemers, until that child would have been stunned, puzzled, deprived of self-respect, and rendered entirely wretched. Long ago I heard of a doleful one who ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... I shared, without a doubt; and, indeed,—in perfect innocency, I hope, but perhaps with a touch of slyness too,—I proposed at the end of the summer holidays that I should stay at home. 'What is the use of my going to school? Let me be with you when we rise to meet the Lord in the air!' To this my Father sharply and firmly replied ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... velvet, and when the toilet was over the head found its rest behind the wing, and profound sleep followed. Sometimes my friends would make a spring upon the sofa by my side, I fear with a view to forthcoming worms, of which they well knew I was the purveyor; and nothing could exceed the slyness of their eyes as they looked up at me and mutely suggested an expedition to that ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... a fold of her skirt. Dorinda had been undressed and rocked to sleep at sunset. Preciosa had gone upstairs at the same time. I saw her lying upon the foot of our bed after supper, her eyes narrowed to slender slits with sleep or slyness. I had a shrewd impression that if I were to go upstairs now I should not find her in the same place. Instead of verifying the surmise in this way I stole noiselessly out of the family group, sauntering along carelessly until I turned the corner of the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... so," returns Adrian, now greatly wounded at her determined reserve, as he deems it. He calls to mind all Mrs. Talbot had said about her slyness, and feels disheartened. At least he has not deserved distrust at her hands. "Promise me," he entreats at last, "that, if ever you are in danger, ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... mixture of mauvaise honte and impudence, a clumsiness, a slyness, and a consciousness in his bearing and countenance, not distinctly boorish, but low, which turned his good looks into an ugliness more intolerable than that of feature; and a corresponding vulgarity pervading his dress, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... surer. I suppose she has lost it and is afraid to own up for fear she'll be punished. It's a dreadful thing to think she tells falsehoods. It's a far worse thing than her fit of temper. It's a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can't trust. Slyness and untruthfulness—that's what she has displayed. I declare I feel worse about that than about the brooch. If she'd only have told the truth about it I wouldn't mind ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... retired corner of the bar-room, were interested spectators of the scene. Through the padded swinging doors entered, as in a play, character after character. Each actor as he entered stopped for a moment and stared about him, and in this act revealed his character-his conceit, his slyness, his bravado, his self-importance. There was great variety, but practically one prevailing type, and that the New York politician. Most of them were from the city, though the country politician apes the city politician as much as possible, but he lacks the exact air, notwithstanding ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... himself to ten years younger, he lifted his hat in answer to her smile, and came up jauntily. It was a good time now to see what the viscount was really like. He appeared to be about sixty-five, and the dignified aspect which he wore to a gazer at a distance became depreciated to jocund slyness upon nearer view, when the small type could be read between the leading lines. Then it could be seen that his upper lip dropped to a point in the middle, as if impressing silence upon his too demonstrative lower one. His right and left ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... seldom that we find a touch of that easy slyness which gives an additional zest to surprise; ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... men, as pallid of face as Newman, himself, and their faces gave one the impression of both slyness and force. A grim looking pair; I should not have cared to run afoul of them on the Barbary Coast after midnight. I already knew the names they called each other—the only names I ever knew them by—"Boston," for the blond fellow with the bridge of his nose flattened, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... very fairly well with Sergeant Cuff so far. But the slyness with which he slipped in that last question put me on my guard. In plain English, I didn't at all relish the notion of helping his inquiries, when those inquiries took him (in the capacity of snake in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... will meet the mourning woman. Great delight. The queen of hearts is in the same row:—well met. But the queen of jealousy[68] and the murderer[68] stand between them and separate them. The dog[68] means faithfulness, the cat[68] slyness. The queen of melancholy stands beside the dog.—Take care of yourself, for some woman, who is ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Remonencq was short and thin; his little eyes were set in his head in porcine fashion; a Jew's slyness and concentrated greed looked out of those dull blue circles, though in his case the false humility that masks the Hebrew's unfathomed contempt for the Gentile ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... I am on the road. More likely though, it's a parting-of-the-ways. I shouldn't be surprised if the Doctor meant something sly by putting these two books in my hand. Somehow, the old gentleman has an amazing sly look—a sort of wild slyness—about him, seems to me. His wisdom seems a sort of sly, too. But all in honor, though. I rather think he's one of those old gentlemen who say a vast deal of sense, but hint a world more. ^Depend upon it, he's sly, sly, sly. Ah, what's this Poor Richard says: ^{c} God ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... nothing to be dragged. Perhaps it was through oversensitiveness that Brigit and I dwelt suspiciously upon Bedr's motives, and asked each other who it was he had expected at the House of the Crocodile. Even Anthony did not accuse the Armenian of anything worse than slyness and cowardice, according to him the two worst vices of a man; but he volunteered to find out what mysterious night-disturbance in the street had caused the sudden closing of the doors. It was Biddy's thought that the person Bedr wished ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... somehow seemed familiar; but I attributed that to the idea of perfect beauty that was graven on my soul. The more I looked at her the surer I felt that I had never seen her before, though a smile of inexpressible slyness had begun to play about her lips. One of her gloves fell, and I hastened to restore it to her, whereupon she thanked me in a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... thou grave mocker! I did not suspect such slyness in thee: proof enough I had almost ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... evening. I have just returned from St. Germain. Everything is settled—with more slyness on my part. I begin to think I am a born Jesuit; there must have been some detestable sympathy between ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... threw into the room quite light enough for him to see by. He half knelt by the table and began to draw. He worked for about twenty minutes steadily, and he tore up two or three unsatisfactory sketches. The poor drawing would not matter if he could catch that subtle look which was not slyness but something more dignified and important. It was not difficult to get the marked, aristocratic outline of the features. A common-looking man with less pronounced profile would have been less easy to draw in one sense. He gave his mind wholly to the recalling of every detail which had photographed ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and questions shall be answered in their proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate them; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them. But all this is just now by the bye; my present subject is my Accuser; what I insist upon here ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... sardonic smile hovered perpetually about his mouth, which was garnished with ranges of the keenest and whitest teeth. His features were sharp; his eyes small, set wide apart, of a light gray colour, and with all the slyness of a fox lurking within their furtive glances. Indeed, his general resemblance to that astute animal must have struck a physiognomist. His head was shaped like that of a fox, and his hair and beard were of a reddish-tawny hue. His manner was stealthy, cowering, suspicious, as if he feared ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... consequence, with an unencumbered property of fifteen thousand per annum, besides expectancies. "Here's a game of chess for you, Transit," said Echo; "why, every move upon the board is a character, and not one but what is worth booking. Observe the arch slyness of the jockey yonder, ear-wigging his patron, a young blood of the fancy, into a good thing; particularising all the capabilities and qualities of the different horses named, and making the event (in his own estimation) as sure as the Bank ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of De Artigny. Personally I had little to fear; I knew his cowardice, and that he would never venture to use physical force with me. Even if he did I could rely upon the gallantry of De Tonty, and of De Baugis for protection. No, he would try threats, entreaties, slyness, cajolery, but his real weapon to overcome my opposition would be De Artigny. ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... was a dark-haired man of about forty years of age. His face was pale, with an almost unhealthy pallor, from which his small dark eyes glittered restlessly; his thin lips, tightly closed, were set in an almost straight line. Clean-shaven, sleek of hair, he wore an expression of cautious slyness that implied a mental attitude ever on guard against some sudden exposure of his real feelings. Such ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... about our search in Elche with all the slyness possible, prying here and there like a couple of thieves a-robbing a hen-roost, and putting cross-questions to every simple fellow we met,—the best we could with our small knowledge of their tongue,—but all to no purpose, and so another day was wasted. We lay under the palms ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... among us. Once after that, when Vermifuge was mentioned, Addison winked to me; and I think we were pretty well aware that something funny had started, unbeknown to Gram. Theodora, however, knew nothing of it. Whether this reprehensible slyness would have continued among the rest of us, until we had taken up the whole of the elderberry wine, I cannot say; but about a month later, a dismal expose was precipitated one Friday night by the arrival of Elder Witham. There was to be a "quarterly meeting" at the meeting-house ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... stood silent, but every feature eloquently expressed first amazement, and then slyness and cunning; his knavish, malicious eye, measured Otto ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... folk. It behooved me to counter with equal slyness. I wondered whether she had known all along of Boyce's mishap, or had been informed of it by his mother. Knowledge might explain her unwonted outburst. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... and crusted; When traitors came to steal his son reputed, My own small boy I deftly substituted! The villains fell into the trap completely— I hid the Prince away—still sleeping sweetly: I called him "son" with pardonable slyness— His name, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Tedham ventured, with a sort of timorous slyness, "that perhaps you might approach it casually, without any ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... reconcile one single party or one single power to the Holy father. During his ten years' dictatorship, he has neither gained the esteem of one foreigner nor the confidence of one Roman. All he has gained is time. His pretended capacity is but slyness. To the trickery of the present he adds the cunning of the red Indian; but he has not that largeness of view without which it is impossible to establish firmly the slavery of the people. No one possesses in a greater degree than he the art of dragging on an affair, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... though familiar in itself, has been often praised for the striking contrast it presents to the scenes which follow.—The same look in different circumstances may convey a totally different expression. Thus the eye turned round to look at you without turning the head indicates generally slyness or suspicion; but if this is combined with large expanded eyelids or fixed eyebrows, as we see it in Titian's pictures, it will denote calm contemplation or piercing sagacity, without anything of meanness or fear of being observed. In other ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... knew and would not tell me? And—this, I think, was what was chiefly in my thoughts—was Crone playing some game of his own and designing to use me as a puppet in it? For there was a general atmosphere of subtlety and slyness about the man that forced itself upon me, young as I was; and the way he kept eyeing me as we talked made me feel that I had to do with one that would be hard to circumvent if it came to a matter of ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... with ironical people, when he talks nothing in his face smiles but his eyes and eyebrows. At such times there is no trace of hatred or spite in his eyes, but a great deal of humour, and that peculiar fox-like slyness which is only to be noticed in very observant people. Since I am speaking about his eyes, I notice another peculiarity in them. When he takes a glass from Katya, or listens to her speaking, or looks after her as she goes out of the room for a moment, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... temptation had a personal source. There are beings who desire to draw men away from God. The serpent, by its poison and its loathly form, is the natural symbol of such an enemy of man. The insinuating slyness of the suggestions of evil is like the sinuous gliding of the snake, and truly represents the process by which temptation found its way into the hearts of the first pair, and of all their descendants. For it begins ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... his Governor. "Senor," said he, "you are right. I have seen Mexico. I have been a scholar, as well as a soldier. I knew Von Resanoff's Russian slyness. My father was at the Presidio in 1807, when he obtained rights for a few fur hunters. Poor fellow! he never lived to claim his bride, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... an amiable-looking man. Above his gigantic body was a lowering face that showed a capacity for slyness or viciousness, whichever better served his turn. As Kark talked to him, his brow grew blacker and he plucked savagely at his knife-hilt. It dawned upon Alwin then that he must be Kark's father, the steward Thorhall of whom ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... and poorer classes, have certainly less sincerity and straight-forwardness than their neighbours. An anecdote is related illustrative of the slyness of the Bohemians, compared with the simple honesty of the German, and the candid unscrupulousness of the Hungarian: "During the late war, three soldiers, of each of these three nations, met in the parlour of a French inn, over the chimney-piece ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... malefactors of great wealth, but as despicably mean, in that they used their power to oppress the poor and helpless classes. The Labor groups when they burst out into violence merely responded to the passion which men naturally feel at injustice and at suffering; to their violence they did not add slyness or legal deceits. But Roosevelt had no toleration for the Labor demagogue, for the walking delegate, and all similar parasites, who preyed upon the working classes for their own profit, and fomented the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... cell at midnight to lead Tsiganok to the execution he began to bustle about and seemed to have recovered his spirits. Again he had that sweet taste in his mouth, and his saliva collected abundantly, but his cheeks turned rosy and in his eyes began to glisten his former somewhat savage slyness. Dressing himself he ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... not daunted; there was something which she determined to know, possibly roused thereto by a vague sense of incongruity in the other's appearance. "It's a long ways to come and leave a family," she remarked with painful slyness. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... could be taken required no stretch of policy to plan, nor spirit of enterprize to effect. It was like marching behind a man to knock him down: and the dastardly slyness of such an attack would have stained the fame of the United States. Where there is no danger cowards are bold, and Captain Bobadils are to be found in the Senate as well as on the stage. Even Gouverneur, on such a march, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... been brought about by the subordinate agency of such causes as Variation and Natural Selection." In the first edition the words (as I fully expect it will," do not occur.) about bats on islands, and then with infinite slyness have quoted your amended sentence, with your parenthesis ("as I fully believe") (My father here quotes Lyell incorrectly; see the previous foot-note.); I do not think you can be annoyed at my doing this, and you see, that I am ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... a most reprehensible act of slyness. She turned full upon him the batteries of her lustrous dark eyes, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... lyrics, so it acquired the precision, the flexibility, the nettete, which satiric treatment of the follies and evil chances of life, the oddities of manners and morals, require. It became bright, if a little hard, easy, if a little undistinguished, capable of slyness, of innuendo, of "malice," but not quite so capable as it had been of the finer and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Tubbs did not lead on. He stood quite still, regarding Miss Browne with a smile of infinite slyness. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... attack your highness, And then, with wonted wile and slyness, They left me in the lurch: Unhappy wretch! for now, I ween, I've nothing left to vent my spleen ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... gave a kind of profound slyness to his last utterance; then he began to make a survey. Not without surprise, he saw that the room was neatly kept, comfortable, and ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... long done his day's work in the mine, and after his pipe was going to work in his garden, where his vegetables were coming forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners—quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... fine address, the manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light notions, steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost everything:—no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, cunning,—slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead scent, supplied by the weak fever-smell in his ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Red Star agreed; on the next, Pravda reviewed the "threatening situation." Two days later Izvestia devoted a column to "Blackmail, Peter the Great, Suvarov and Imperialist Slyness." Twentyfour hours after, the Ministerial Council of the Union of Soviet Republics declared a state of war existed—through no action of its own—between the United ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... and suddenly he grinned his slow half-drunken grin, which was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. "H'm!... I had a presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have your own two thousand. That's a dowry for you. And I'll never desert you, my angel. And I'll pay what's ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... quite made for pantry-sprawling; But wot's the use? Trot myself hout for 'Ebrews, or some tuppenny kernel? No, not for JEAMES, if he is quite aweer of it! It's just infernal, The Vulgar Mix that calls itself Society. All shoddy slyness, And moneybags; a "blend" as might kontamernate a Ryal 'Igness, Or infry-dig a Hemperor. It won't nick JEAMES though, not percisely; Better to flop in solitude than to demean one's self unwisely. Won't ketch me selling myself off. I must confess my 'art it 'arrers ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... enough to distinguish a form lurking under the tree by the river bank. I went in, put out my light, and returned to my former position. You watched the house and I watched you. You are not very clever, for all your slyness. You will never be clever enough to become a good thief—meaning a successful thief. After a half hour I saw you rise and take the path to the village. I followed you. Do you understand now? God has protected the just and ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... his forehead with his fist, clenched his teeth, closed his eyes and leaned heavily with his elbow on the table. But a minute later his face suddenly changed and with a certain assumed slyness and affectation of bravado, he glanced ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking, from their shelves, in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustering high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shop-keeper's benevolence, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... him sly and deceitful, and started another quarrel over nothing. While this particular battle was raging, there came an interruption which Mary V first considered sinister, then peculiar, and at last, after much cogitation, extremely suspicious and a further evidence of Johnny's slyness. ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... high prices, governing the men with so iron a sway, and arranging everything so entirely according to his own fancy, that he is a complete sovereign in his own small way—the tyrant of Tampico. He has in his weather-beaten face such a mixture of bluffness and slyness, with his gigantic person, and abrupt, half-savage manners, that, altogether, I conceive him to be a character who might have been worthy the attention of Walter Scott, had he chanced to encounter him. Old and repulsive ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Belles-Lettres, and hoped for the support of the party of the Ducs. That was why he received influential hypocrites, provincial Tartufes, and priests every week. He doubtless had to drive himself to do this, because in spite of his slinking slyness he was jovial and enjoyed a joke. On the other hand, he aspired to figure in the literature that counts at Paris, and he expended a good deal of ingenuity inveigling men of letters to his house on another evening ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... immediately helped each other, like good scavengers, to carry away the carcase. When men were employed out of doors they had to drive the foxes away with sticks, and they became, in consequence of the slyness and cunning with which they knew how to carry out their thefts and the skill which they showed in combining to gain an end which they could not compass as single animals, actually dangerous to the shipwrecked men, by whom they ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... blue eyes, and soft, light, wavy hair, and perhaps Gooch was jealous of his attracting more notice than Griffith, and thought he posed for admiration, for she used to tell people that no one could guess what a child he was for slyness; so that he could not bear going out with her, and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thus, the likeness between them was striking; the same Creole skin, pink over a delicate duskiness, the same supple figure, the same impenetrable grey eye, and in both faces a slight defect hardly to be noticed; the finely-cut nose was a little out of line, giving an expression of slyness, of something not to be trusted. While each watched and waited for the other, the pause was filled by the distant ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... was getting the better of her, that minute you were in the room?' said Nyttleton to Tayling, when their client had left the house. Nyttleton was a man who surveyed everybody's character in a sunless and shadowless northern light. A culpable slyness, which marked him as a boy, had been moulded by Time, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... that I have any personal knowledge of the matter, however: and if I were to repeat the current reports, Miss Elliott would call them gossip and repudiate them, and me too, perhaps. She has the reputation of having the 'wisdom of the serpent;' the slyness of the cat, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... burned to put many questions to the rest of the company. If, through my foolish and outreaching slyness with the girl behind the counter, the door of my comprehension had been shut, Juno had now opened it sufficiently wide for a number of facts to come crowding in, so to speak, abreast. Indeed, their simultaneous arrival was not a little confusing, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... slyness on his part, Ippegoo fell into another hearty though inaudible laugh, after which he went off to communicate his news to Okiok and Angut, but these worthies having gone out to visit some snares and traps, no one knew whither, he was obliged ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Unknowingly deceitful, I practised untruth. Loge artfully tempted me." He explains himself to Fricka, when she asks why he continues to trust the crafty Loge, who has often already brought them into straits: "Where frank courage is sufficient, I ask counsel of no one. But slyness and cunning are needed to turn to advantage the ill-will of adversaries, and that is ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... which we were very fond, and we hated her for oppressing us with a sense of many surreptitious favors. Objectively, she was a slim, hoopless little woman, with a tendency to be always at the street-door when we opened it. She had a narrow, narrow face, with eyes of terrible slyness, an applausive smile, and a demeanor of slavish patronage. Our kitchen, after her addition to the household, became the banqueting-hall of Giovanna's family, who dined there every day upon dishes of fish ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of the atonic first syllable is normal in English (p. 61), it would be hard to find a case in which a meaningless prefix has been added. Nor does the meaning of demure approximate very closely to that of ripe. It now has a suggestion of slyness, but in Milton's time ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... don't love me," she replied, looking at him with the coquettish slyness of a woman who is not quite ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... side, and his hat a little more on one side than his head, (but that was evidently accident; not his ordinary way of wearing it,) with such a pleasant smile playing about his mouth, and such a comical expression of mingled slyness, simplicity, kind-heartedness, and good-humour, lighting up his jolly old face, that Nicholas would have been content to have stood there and looked at him until evening, and to have forgotten, meanwhile, that there was such a thing as ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the vases of plants, whose rich wreaths of brightly coloured blossoms hung down, making a setting for the group; and while Violet by her blandishments invited the peacock to approach, he now and then, with smiling slyness, made thrusts at it with her parasol, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and tickling him with straws. One fine blue-eyed girl of about thirteen, with her flaxen hair all in beautiful confusion, her frolic face in a glow, her frock half torn off her shoulders, a complete picture of a romp, was the chief tormentor; and, from the slyness with which Master Simon avoided the smaller game and hemmed this wild little nymph in corners, and obliged her to jump shrieking over chairs, I suspected the rogue of being not a whit more blinded ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... favourable, that when they parted at night, she would have felt almost secure of success if he had not been to leave Hertfordshire so very soon. But here she did injustice to the fire and independence of his character, for it led him to escape out of Longbourn House the next morning with admirable slyness, and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw himself at her feet. He was anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins, from a conviction that if they saw him depart, they could not fail to conjecture his design, and he was not willing to have the attempt known till its success might be known likewise; for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... knock rung through the dark of the house when the eldest of the three grim men would always run to the door. O, what a face had he. There was more slyness in it than ever his beard could hide. He would put out a gristly hand; and into it Amuel Sleggins would put the letter from China, and rejoice that his duty was done, and would turn and stride away. And the fields lit up before him, ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... him, plucking at the skirts of his coat, and tickling him with straws. One fine blue-eyed girl of about thirteen, with her flaxen hair all in beautiful confusion, her frolic face in a glow, her frock half torn off her shoulders, a complete picture of a romp, was the chief tormentor; and from the slyness with which Master Simon avoided the smaller game, and hemmed this wild little nymph in corners, and obliged her to jump shrieking over chairs, I suspected the rogue of being not a whit more ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... face changed. A queer look of extraordinary eagerness, almost of slyness, transformed it, chasing away something of its soft beauty. "Hush!" she said, "we can't talk of such things now. Some time soon, perhaps! I forgot we were not alone. I must introduce you to my Aunt Mabrouka, my father's widowed half-sister, who"—and ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... than that. Slyness, you may say, belongs to the whole sex, and I've known men say as they ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... by them, when, as fortune would have it, he encountered the face of the wicked little cousin, who, half afraid for her brother, and half laughing at Nathaniel Pipkin, presented as bewitching an expression of countenance, with a touch of slyness in it, too, as any man, old or young, need look upon. She drew her arm coaxingly through the old man's, and whispered something in his ear; and do what he would, old Lobbs couldn't help breaking out into a smile, while a tear stole down his cheek at the same time. 'Five minutes ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... to answer. She had already said enough to cause her to bite her lip as she disappeared down the basement stair. Decidedly the boys were right. An uneasy feeling followed any conversation with this girl. Yet, while there was slyness in her manner, there was a certain frank honesty visible in it too, which caused me to think that if she could ever be made to speak, her ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... victims play," he would quote. Early in the venture he good-naturedly came to dine en famille with his amiable and interesting sister-in-law. He was in a delightful mood, and seemed to be applying all the points of his own Dora's attempts at housekeeping, with a pleasant slyness: the more so as the little lady of the house was the very replica of that piquant and fascinating heroine. She was destined, alas! to but a short enjoyment of her little rule, but she gained all hearts and sympathies by her very taking ways. Among others ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... more or less familiar with alcoholic types. In the genuinely dissipated face there was always a suggestion of slyness in ambush, peeping out of the wrinkles around the eyes and the lips. Upon this young fellow's face there were no wrinkles, only shadows, in the hollows of the cheeks and under the eyes. He was more like a man who had left his bed ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... was not the equal of her great-niece in beauty, her portraits being rendered uncomely by a portentously long nose, longer even than Mrs. Siddons's, and by a very curious expression of the eyes, going near to slyness. But the face is one which can be imagined as much more beautiful than it seems in the not very attractive portraiture of the time, and her actual attractions are attested by her contemporaries with something ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... will hardly return to Doctor —— with pleasure. Chaucer with as thin a jest could have made an admirable poem, for the interest would have been distributed by his lightness of touch, by his descriptive power, by slyness, by geniality, by a changeful ripple of enjoyment over the entire piece. With Browning, when we have arrived at the apex of the jest, we are fatigued by the climb, and too much out of breath to be capable of laughter. In like manner few persons except the Browning ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... looking down upon those beautiful shoulders and white arms and head of soft and shining hair, it was hard to believe she was in some conspiracy of which she had kept her husband in ignorance with the slyness of a snake. I felt sorry for him. So at the moment of my first doubt of her, I found that pity—begging your pardon!—had at last made me ready to forget that I had never liked him or his cold ways, and ready to forgive the once he laid violent hands on me. My mistress ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... I might at least have a musket and some cartridges in case of an attack. We agreed that I should send the man back with Ney's corps; and I went off, with the soldier accompanying me. He was a slow-speaking Norman, with plenty of slyness under an appearance of good nature. The Normans are for the most part brave, as I learnt when I commanded the 23rd Chasseurs, where I had five or six hundred of them. Still, in order to know how far I could rely on my follower, I chatted with him as we went along, and asked ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... pole-cat, her features singularly sunken and attenuated, it was not easy to tell her age; she looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent chin, parted from her cheeks by strange hollows, all suggested the countenance of an artful dwarf, a living ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... in all their quarrels. And when the patriarch was gathered to his fathers, he left cattle on a thousand hills to his son. Young Johnny is a mere repetition of his father. He cannot read or write, and in conversation his nominatives are not always true to his verbs; but he has all the slyness and craftiness of the Indian. I heard that he was immensely disgusted at the white immigration. He acknowledges that his beeves are of greater value, and he has no small admiration for dollars and cents; but he fears that his moral and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... singularly expressive of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook's was that day. His watchfulness of my guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of power, and turning up his ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... slyness, and gave me a dunt with his elbow on the side, a bit of the faun, a bit of the father, a ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25] Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations about local traditions ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... daughter might be if a wooer would wish to woo. She knew perfectly well that if Dr. Ellridge called, Lily would wonder why he called, and would sit all the evening in the same room with her fancy-work, entirely unsuspicious. Lily might even think he came to see her. Mrs. Merrill had a measure of slyness and secrecy which her daughter did not inherit. Lily was not brilliant, but she was as entirely sweet and open as the flower for which she was named. She was emotional, too, with an innocent emotionlessness, and very affectionate. Mrs. Merrill made almost no objection ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hundred, if I chose to exert my mind and waste my breath, which I never do. I prefer coming at once to my last charge against the horse, which is the most serious of all, because it affects his moral character. I accuse him boldly, in his capacity of servant to man, of slyness and treachery. I brand him publicly, no matter how mild he may look about the eyes, or how sleek he may be about the coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever he can get the chance, of the confidence reposed ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... with the recent attempts at murder made by the women, because he was quite fearless in regard to that, and scoffed at the possibility of being killed by women. He also carefully fastened the window-shutters. He appeared to be somewhat excited, and went about his operations with an air at once of slyness and ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... cat in slyness or cunning, watching stealthily for prey and springing upon it in ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... you awake, Little Three Eyes? Are you asleep, Little Two Eyes?" So the two eyes of Little Three Eyes fell asleep, but the third did not go to sleep, because it was not spoken to by the verse. Little Three Eyes, to be sure, shut it, and made believe to go to sleep, but only through slyness; for she winked with it, and could see everything quite well. And when Little Two Eyes thought that Little Three Eyes was fast asleep, she said her little sentence, "Little goat, bleat; little table, rise," ate and drank heartily, and then ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... at many moments from his eyes. But not only his eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it. His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut, reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere, combined with something eager and passionate, in his expression and manner. Charmian guessed him ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... rain—as he came suddenly out of the shed, he saw a boy at the bars. It was Nate Griggs! No; only for a moment he thought this was Nate. But this fellow's eyes were not so close together; his hair was less sandy; there were no facial indications of extreme slyness. It was only Nathan's humble likeness, his younger ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... as one who loved to say little oddities, was affecting one day, at a Bishop's table, a sort of slyness and freedom not in character, and repeated, as if part of The Old Mans Wish, a song by Dr. Walter Pope, a verse bordering on licentiousness. Johnson rebuked him in the finest manner, by first shewing him that he did not know the passage he was aiming at, and thus humbling ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... was apparently too absorbed in her duty of making the tea to answer the remark. For an instant she was redder than a rose. No one would have suspected Sir Denis of slyness, but the look he shot at the girl was certainly sly. Under the white tablecloth he ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... hiding &c. v.; occultation, mystification. seal of secrecy; screen &c. 530; disguise &c. 530; masquerade; masked battery; hiding place &c. 530; cryptography, steganography[obs3]; freemasonry. stealth, stealthiness, sneakiness; obreption|; slyness &c. (cunning) 702. latitancy[obs3], latitation[obs3]; seclusion &c. 893; privacy, secrecy, secretness[obs3]; incognita. reticence; reserve; mental reserve, reservation; arriere pensee[Fr], suppression, evasion, white lie, misprision; silence &c. (taciturnity) 585; suppression ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... nothing but political ruin to stare at, and they were anxious to look the other way. The words of Tony's song were more or less meaningless, though he sang them remarkably well, but the tune, with its air of slyness and furtive joyousness, appealed in some unaccountable manner to people who were furtively unhappy, and who were ...
— When William Came • Saki
... replying. His thin face was swarthy, his short-cut gray hair matching the cold gray of his eyes. It was an odd face, completely blank of any thought or emotion, yet capable of shifting to a strange biting slyness in the briefest instant. It was a rich face, a face of inscrutable depth. He pushed his chair back, his eyes watchful. "We know your people were here," he said suddenly. "Now they've gone, and yet you remain behind. There must ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... destined to score success with his lance, the dwarf at least had won a victory through his comical situation and ready wit. Fair ladies forgot his ugliness; the pages his ill-humor; the courtiers his vindictive slyness; the monarch the disappointment of his failure to worst the duke's fool, and all applauded the ludicrous figure, shouting, waving his arms, struggling with inexorable destiny. Finally, in despair, his hands fell ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... seemed at first strongly impressed with the notion that the younger brother was under Beaufort's protection; though at last he appeared reluctantly convinced of the contrary. Robert, however agitated, preserved at least enough of his natural slyness not to let out that he suspected Vaudemont to be Philip Morton himself, for he feared lest his daughter should betray that ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... And if it is hard to catch with the finest of camel's hair pencils, you may think how hopeless it must be to pursue after it with clumsy words. If I say, for instance, that this look, which I remember as Lizzie, was something wistful that seemed partly to come of slyness and in part of simplicity, and that I am inclined to imagine it had something to do with the daintiest suspicion of a cast in one of her large eyes, I shall have said all that I can, and the reader will not be much advanced towards comprehension. I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... observed by a department store detective stealing hosiery and a bracelet. She perceived she was being shadowed and walked up to the counter and ordered some children's garments, having them charged and sent to a fictitious name and address. The detective thought this a masterpiece of slyness, this endeavor to throw them off the track. Since the family, who really kept an account at this store, appealed to the manager to have Edna let off as it was an ordinary trick of a growing girl, the charge was withdrawn. Detectives who had been employed from a private agency ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... become serious, Betty, who had come in a few minutes later, slipped off with the baby while the other two were arguing. She did it so cleverly that when they discovered her treachery they made common cause against her, and went amiably home together vowing vengeance upon Miss Betty for her slyness. ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... must be an end of this. I can put up with your slyness no longer. How dare you have secrets from me, miss?—your own twin sister! You and I, who used never to have a thought we did not share. How dare you have a lover, and not tell me all about him? What was the meaning of your weeping like a fountain ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... my son!" said he with infinite slyness, "just you get out of that chair and light ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... men like himself, who had never had anything to do with that evil thing—book-learning. When I gently asked why the sight of me had made him think about it, he explained, with a look of infinite slyness, that he saw I was reading a book. Then came an amusing disclosure. At fourteen I was a very much overgrown lad, almost as tall as I am now, and weighing almost as much and he had mistaken me for one of the ordination pupils ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... messenger had done no more for us than this, I think he would have earned his money. But the harmless young man is a regular Jesuit at a private inquiry, with this great advantage over all the Popish priests I have ever seen, that he has not got his slyness written ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... night.... Why is that? And if they only wanted to warm themselves——But they are up to mischief. No, woman; there's no creature in this world as cunning as your female sort! Of real brains you've not an ounce, less than a starling, but for devilish slyness—oo-oo-oo! The Queen of Heaven protect us! There is the postman's bell! When the storm was only beginning I knew all that was in your mind. ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... this little creature— How modest seems his feature! He nestles so demurely, You'd think him safer surely; And yet for all his shyness, There's danger in his slyness! The cunning rogue! Young loves to sell! My ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various |
