"Stickler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of girl. If she is one of your high-steppers as to dignity and sense of honor, let him play mean and seem to do a few dirty tricks. If she's a stickler for manners and good taste, let him betray a few traits of boorishness or Philistinism; or if she has a keen sense of the ridiculous, let him make an ass of himself. I should say the last would be the surest cure and leave least ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... philosophical lectures in order to hide his political intrigues; and though Horace was a freedman's son, Brutus gave him the high dignity of a military tribuneship. Brutus as a Republican was, of course, a stickler for all the aristocratic customs. That he conferred upon Horace a knight's office probably indicates that the libertinus pater had been a war captive rather than a man of servile stock, and, ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... me at Board at Hackney-School. And when grown up to Marriageable years I wanted not for store of Sweethearts, and some of them of very good Estates: and yet my Father thought none good enough. But he being one that was a great and zealous Stickler for the Parliament in opposition to the King, and thinking that Charles Stuart (as then they call'd King Charles the Second), would never be Restor'd, laid out his Money in Purchasing of Crown-Lands, having (as he thought) got a mighty Peniworth: ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... own, that have handed so many to other people, with births, marriages, an' deaths, shipwrecks an' legacies an' lovin' letters from every port in the world. Telegrams too—I'd dearly like to get a telegram of my own. . . . But Government be a terrible stickler. You may call it red tape, if you will: but if Mrs Pengelly caught me holdin' back any person's letter, even though I knowed it held trouble for 'en, she'd be bound to report me, poor soul, an' then like enough I'd lose ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... what may happen to us," returned Bowse, who was a great stickler for the honour of the navy, and did not at all relish the colonel's observations. "I've done my best to please you, and I'm sure the officers of any of his Majesty's ships would have done the same. I've belonged myself to the service, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... as the distance increased, sprang on to the side, and, his eyes dim with emotion, waved tender farewells. If it had not been for the presence of the skipper—a tremendous stickler for decorum—he would ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... stickler for principles," Folco said, sourly; "he cares for no laws that he can break. But in this case he claims to be acting according to his right, since the breaking of the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was no holding up an issue of a "proof" newspaper; like the show, it must go on! The Department of the Interior running our public lands saw to that. Friday's paper might come out the following Monday or Wednesday, but it must come out. That word "consecutive" in the proof law was an awful stickler. But everyone who had hung around the print shop watching Myrtle work, took a hand ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the girls got into their gymnasium costumes. Then they clamored for breakfast, and had Mrs. Morse not appeared just then there certainly would have been a riot at the cook-tent. Lizzie was a stickler for orders, and she would not begin to fry cakes until Jess' ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... friend—never a great stickler for truth—embellished his version of the affair in such glowing colors, and set forth the courage that we had displayed in the fight in such a guise that we really began to think that our conduct ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the Turks by Suvorov in 1790, after a peculiarly bloody siege. (Byron chose this episode for treatment in Don Juan, cantos vii and viii.) Mickiewicz makes Rykov give the name as Izmailov; Rykov is a bluff soldier, not a stickler for geographical nomenclature.] ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... generation is groaning and wheezing under the pressure brought to bear upon it, TOM'S eyes, roving around from window to door, happen to light on a beautiful sucking-pig, that reposes in all the innocent beauty of baby pighood before the open door of a zealous stickler for human rights. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... he announced, with the most engaging simplicity. "We both stand in need of refreshment before we return to the serious business of our interview. You see me in my cook's dress; forgive it. There is a form in these things. I am a great stickler for forms. I have been taking some wine. Please sanction that proceeding by ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... get extra tanks. You're both old heads at lone wolf tactics. I'm beginning to think we have too much handling out of the control room." He bent forward and his smile faded. "But, remember this, I'm under a general who's a stickler for the book, ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... who lived in misery with her brother-in-law, and that Salvat who wandered from workshop to workshop like an incorrigible ranter whom no employer would keep; those two, with their want and dirt and rebellion, had ended by incensing the vain little clerk, who was not only a great stickler for the proprieties, but was soured by all the difficulties he encountered in his own life. And thus he had forbidden Hortense ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Burke, he is a stickler for monarchy, not altogether as a pensioner, if he is one, which I believe, but as a political man. He has taken up a contemptible opinion of mankind, who, in their turn, are taking up the same of him. He considers them as a herd of beings that must ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... a severe military critic, he was never an unjust one, neither did he spare his own men. Though not a martinet, which was foreign to every fibre of his nature, he was a stickler for rigid discipline. When the expedition was recalled, he was first quartered in Norwich, and then at the old familiar barracks of St. Helier, in Jersey. On his return to the latter place, in 1800, after ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... hounds, and the stables with gallant hunters; now, such horses as Queen's Crawley possessed went to plough, or ran in the Trafalgar Coach; and it was with a team of these very horses, on an off-day, that Miss Sharp was brought to the Hall; for boor as he was, Sir Pitt was a stickler for his dignity while at home, and seldom drove out but with four horses, and though he dined off boiled mutton, had always ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that Kedsty even now was instructing Staff-Sergeant O'Connor to detail an officer to guard his door. The fact that he was ready to pop off at any moment would make no difference in the regulations of the law. And Kedsty was a stickler for the law as it was written. Through the closed door he heard voices indistinctly. Then there were footsteps, dying away. He could hear the heavy thump, thump of O'Connor's big feet. O'Connor had always walked like that, even ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... was a "Hamlet-hesitating monarch," who had it not been for the burly giant Bismarck would have been swept into oblivion by the first whiff of gunpowder. A stickler for religious dogma, the pietists adored him, but the classes despised him; he was one of those men who discuss trifles with elegant ease, but who have no conception of what is behind this present widespread demand for a constitution. This King Fr.: Wm. IV lived in a mystic medival ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Wong Get desired an interview. Though the old lawyer did not formally represent the Hip Leong Tong he was frequently retained by its individual members, who held him in high esteem, for they had always found him loyal to their interests and as much a stickler for honor as themselves. Moreover, between him and Wong Get there existed a curious sympathy as if in some previous state of existence Wong Get might have been Mr. Tutt, and Mr. Tutt Wong Get. Perhaps, however, it was merely because both were ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... be just," defended Dorothy. "She has rather prim ideas about things, but she's a stickler for principle. I am glad she's over her ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... am sure he will agree with me. Now, Lady Dundas, if you please! I know your ladyship is a great stickler ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... of a French officer, but she appears to live in the kitchen! I asked the Mess sergeant whether the French people did anything curious in their cooking, and he at once said, "Yes; they never eat any meat, only vegetables and pork!" Our Divisional General, a Guardsman who is a great stickler for everything being quite right, was horrified the other day when crossing a bridge to see a Special Reserve sentry of the "Black Watch" with his rifle between his knees and his face buried in a bowl of soap. Of course, his job was to watch the bridge ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... present me to them," corrected the old dame, who was a stickler for etiquette. "They are genuine ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... purpose of introducing his companion. Personally, he would as readily have performed this office on horseback, but he knew that the schoolmaster was a stickler for ceremony. While the introduction was going on, Pierre took Mr. Nash's horse by the bridle, and led the procession home. There, Madame stood in the porch eagerly waiting for news of "ce jeune homme si courageux, si benveillont," ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... persuasions—for even in that remote region sectarianism had done much toward banishing religion—assembled promiscuously together and without show of discord, excepting that here and there a high stickler for church aristocracy, in a better coat than his neighbor, thrust him aside; or, in another and not less offensive form of pride, in the externals of humility and rotten with innate malignity, groaned audibly through his clenched teeth; and with shut eyes and ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... certainly no stickler for high-flown notions. I should be right glad if we understood each other. And ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting even Mrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for variety of expression. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... gone back to Eton, but he had teased and prayed to be allowed to "see the fun out," meaning the election. "And that devil's discomfiture when he finds himself beaten," he surreptitiously added, behind his father's back, who was a great stickler for the boy's always being "gentlemanly." So the earl had yielded. They arrived, as before, about breakfast-time, having traveled all night. Subsequently, they and Mr. Carlyle walked ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that the Cabinet's latest scheme for squeezing the Bishops out of the Constitution was to be presented; and for that to be possible, since he was so great a stickler for constitutional propriety, the King's consent had been necessary. A few days before, therefore, the Prime Minister had once more formally submitted the question; and the King had given his leave. "Produce what you like, Mr. Premier; I ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... I should fight for the Fair City. Now, though I am the elder burgess, yet I am willing, for the love and kindness we have always borne to each other, to give thee the precedence, and content myself with the humbler office of stickler." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a bit of a stickler for ceremony and the boys were always obliged to salute him when they ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... savoured of worldly compliment, and always showed himself a great stickler for Christian simplicity in every thing; so that, when he had to deal with men of worldly prudence, he did not very readily accommodate himself ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... interfere. This was a friend—one lone friend of her own sex amid all the waste of smouldering hate—some one surely to be wept over and made much of and caressed. The poor old hag recovered consciousness with her head pillowed on a European lap, and Duncan McClean—no stickler for convention and no believer in a line too tightly drawn—saw fit to remonstrate as he laid the jar of water ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... ten seconds of longitude, or a difference of only a few hundred feet. This, of course, was quite near enough for all practical purposes, but it did not completely satisfy either of us, Mrs Vansittart being, like myself, something of a stickler for absolute accuracy. We therefore tried again, this time working the problem of "equal altitudes", and before the day was out we had arrived at identical results, both as to latitude ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... no troubles between the Governor and people in the time of Governor Johnston's administration. Sometimes Edward Moseley, always a stickler for the rights of the colonists, would carry some dispute into the General Assembly, but the measures of Governor Johnston, as a general thing, were pleasing to all classes of the people and received ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... Heloise' it is the lady who is the aristocrat. Julie d'Etange, the daughter of a baron, wishes to marry the untitled St. Preux, to whom in a transport of passion she has yielded up her honor. But the Baron d'Etange is an implacable stickler for rank and she is a dutiful daughter; whence her marriage to the elderly infidel, Wolmar, and the well-known moral ending of the novel. The thought that concerns us here is best expressed by the enlightened ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... faces, and the familiar old tumult about the reanimated rooms of Casa Grande. Then Poppsy—I beg her ladyship's pardon, for I mean, of course, Pauline Augusta—has to duly inspect her dolls to assure herself that they are both well-behaved and spotless as to apparel, for Pauline Augusta is a stickler as to decorum and cleanliness; and Dinkie falls to working on his air-ship, which he is this time making quite independent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed a disheartening disability for flight. But even ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... cooperation and goodwill of men: It is not more blessed to be right than to be loved, Henry Clay's remark that he would rather be right than president notwithstanding. The absolute perfectionist is the most tiresome of men, and a waster of time and of nerves. The stickler, the fly-speckler, the bully and the sadist serve only to encumber those parts of the establishment which they touch; their subordinates spend part of their own strength clearing away the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... principal village street, shouting as he ran. At some doors he paused long enough to pound with his fist, awakening the dwellers who had not heard his call, for he was Rodney Stickler, the town constable and watchman, whose duty it was to sound the fire alarm, and summon the bucket brigade, in the event ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... great deal of fuss and bustle. James, a great stickler for the conventions, patted her shoulder for all good-bye. Urquhart ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... bishop, at this time, was Parker, a great stickler for the forms of the church, and very intolerant in all his opinions. He and others of the bishops had been appointed as commissioners to investigate the causes of dissent, and to suspend all who refused to conform ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... irritating to Protestants, could not shake his popularity. We shall best conceive him by examples nearer home; we may all have known some divine of the old school in Scotland, a literal Sabbatarian, a stickler for the letter of the law, who was yet in private modest, innocent, genial, and mirthful. Much such a man, it seems, was Father Dordillon. And his popularity bore a test yet stronger. He had the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proof rests on the petitioner. Because a case is undefended, it doesn't for one single shadow of a chance follow that the petitioner's plea is therefore going to be granted. No. The Divorce Court may be cynical, but it's a stickler for proof. The Divorce Court says to the petitioner, 'It's up to you. Prove it. Never mind what the other side isn't here to deny. What you've got to do is to satisfy me, to prove to me that these places and these circumstances were so. Go ahead. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... A well-known admiral—a stickler for uniform—stopped opposite a very portly sailor whose medal-ribbon was an inch or so too low down. Fixing the man with his eye, the admiral asked: "Did you get that medal for eating, my man?" On the man replying "No, sir," the admiral ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... senate, a bushel(775) of gold rings, which had been taken from the fingers of such of the Roman nobility as had fallen in the battle of Cannae. He concluded with demanding money, provisions, and fresh troops. All the spectators were struck with an extraordinary joy; upon which Imilcon, a great stickler for Hannibal, fancying he had now a fair opportunity to insult Hanno, the chief of the contrary faction, asked him, whether he was still dissatisfied with the war they were carrying on against the Romans, and was for having Hannibal delivered up to them? Hanno, without discovering the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... communicated by friends to the undertaking; and for which Mr. Shiels had the same consideration as for the rest, being paid by the sheet, for the whole. He was, however, so angry with his Whiggish supervisor, (He, like his father, being a violent stickler for the political principles which prevailed in the Reign of George the Second,) for so unmercifully mutilating his copy, and scouting his politicks, that he wrote Cibber a challenge: but was prevented from sending it, by the publisher, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... too, in his scolding; for nobody had come to be healed. They had come to worship; and even if they had come for healing, the coming was no breach of Sabbath regulations, whatever the healing might be. There are plenty of people like this stickler for propriety and form, and if you want to find men blind as bats to the manifest tokens of a divine hand, and hard as millstones towards misery, and utterly incapable of glowing with enthusiasm or of recognising it, you will find them among ecclesiastical martinets, who ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thing, and the reasonableness of the demand for a change. There is a very good bust of Chaucer, with a cap on, and there is a still more excellent bust of Lorenzo de Medici, which has also a cap; but we put the question to the most conservative of hatters, and to the greatest stickler for the etatus quo in head attire, whether he would tolerate the marble or bronze portraiture of either of those worthies with the modern hat upon its head? The idea is so preposterous, that, if fairly considered, it would make converts of the most obstinate sticklers ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... would grow in Cameroons and Congo Francais where it would have an excellent climate and pretty nearly any elevation it liked. But I believe tea has of late years been discovered to be like coffee, not such a stickler for elevation as it used to be thought, merely requiring not to have ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... churchyard of one of the parishes of Walsall, Staffordshire, is the following epitaph on a person named Samuel Wilks, who appears, like other persons of his name, to have been a great stickler for the rights of the people:—"Reader, if thou art an inhabitant of the Foreign of Walsall, know that the dust beneath thy feet was imprisoned in thy cause, because he refused to incorporate the poor-rates of the Foreign of Walsall and those of the Borough of Walsall. His resistance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... need wonder, says Burgundias (a vehement stickler for the Roman Catholic religion and the Spanish party), that the speech of this prince evinced so much acquaintance with philosophy; he had acquired it in his intercourse with Balduin. 180. Barry, 174-178. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a dress of white jet made with the long lines of the present fashion—in dress she was evidently a stickler. The neck was cut in a low square, showing the rise of the bust. Her own lines were long, the arms and hands very slender in the long white gloves. Probably she was the only woman in the house who wore gloves. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... knowing countryman, and a great stickler for the king and the church. At the Restoration, clergymen being scarce, he was asked if he thought he could preach; he answered that he could make a shift; upon which he was ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... possession of the immediate occupant, and will naturally become dim,—or perhaps be exaggerated,—in regard to the past, as history or fable may tell of them. No one need hesitate to speak his mind of King John, let him be ever so strong a stickler for the privileges of majesty. But there are degrees of distance, and the throne of which we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailed when unmeasured evil is said of one who has sat there within our ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... monotonous and colourless, and were looking forward to the termination of their visit. The life they had led for the past fortnight was not their way of life. They met each morning for breakfast at nine o'clock—Miss Heredith was a stickler for the mid-Victorian etiquette of everybody sitting down together at the breakfast table. After breakfast the men wandered off to their own devices for killing time: some to play a round of golf, others to go shooting or fishing, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... of the magazine, and it had been necessary for Archie to drape his reluctant form in a two-piece bathing suit of a vivid lemon colour; for he was supposed to be representing one of those jolly dogs belonging to the best families who dive off floats at exclusive seashore resorts. J. B. Wheeler, a stickler for accuracy, had wanted him to remove his socks and shoes; but there Archie had stood firm. He was willing to make an ass of himself, but ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... have been charitable, if the author had not pointed at personal characters in this Ballad of Charity. The Abbot of St. Godwin's at the time of the writing of this was Ralph de Bellomont, a great stickler for the Lancastrian ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... believe in these irregularities," said the elder Cruger, whose diplomatic training had made him something of a stickler for formality and precedent. "There will be time enough for that ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... but he is a man of very rigid principles and a great stickler in regard to any matters pertaining to the interests and duties of his office. Were I to divulge—as, I confess, my pen is itching to do—the dazzling—I will even say blinding—contents of these other grim compartments ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... about forty dogs, all branded upon their right thighs with the Bergenheim coat-of-arms. From time immemorial, the chateau's dogs had been branded thus with their master's crest, and Christian, who was a great stickler for old customs, had taken care not to drop this one. This feudal sign had probably acted upon the morals of the pack, for it was impossible to find, within twenty leagues, a collection of more snarly terriers, dissolute hounds, ugly bloodhounds, or more quarrelsome greyhounds. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... on this coming off, for I knew what a stickler Simon was for the respectable and the conventional and all that. Can't you see the two of us going through the streets together, five yards apart and dressed exactly alike! Wouldn't the small boys have liked it! That was my only idea in coming down here. I meant no more mischief, I'll ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... must not pass unnoticed, for it is the part of him that most closely identifies him with his forebears and so throws his more original, independent side into stronger relief. Our author is, not unexpectedly, an invariable moralist; is throughout a stickler for dignity; is sensitive to absurdities, improprieties, and slips in decorum; will have no truck with tragi-comedy in any of its forms. He hates puns and bombast, demands refinement in speech and restraint in manners. He regards Hamlet's speeches to Ophelia in the Player scene as a violation of ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... Godwin,[136] that the best of all governments had been that of England under George I. Though Cartwright said at the trial that Horne Tooke was taken to 'have no religion whatever,' he was, according to Stephens, 'a great stickler for the church of England': and stood up for the House of Lords as well as the church on grounds of utility.[137] He always ridiculed Paine and the doctrine of abstract rights,[138] and told Cartwright that though all men had an equal right to a share of property, they had not a right to an equal ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... and a good deal more of inquisitiveness could go in unravelling it. Even before they parted, late on the night of the adventure, they had discussed half a dozen plans for gaining admission to the house on Prince Street or that on East 5—th, by fair means or foul. Harding, who was something of a stickler for propriety in ordinary cases, in spite of the fact that he had on that one occasion been inveigled into following a carriage and playing spy under a front stoop—Harding expressed himself satisfied that there being now in their minds a sufficient certainty ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... that it is a great shame that the general should not do anything for Mr. Mordaunt's wife, for she was his own flesh and blood; and I am sure he had no cause to be angry at her marrying a gentleman of such old family as Mr. Mordaunt. I am a great stickler for birth, sir; I learned that from the late Lady W. 'Brown,' she said, and I shall never forget her ladyship's air when she did say it, 'Brown, respect your superiors, and never fall into the hands of the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Exactly. Well, then, Warlock, Wrangler. Wrangler, Warlock. And now the formalities have been observed. I don't know how it is with you, Warlock, but I'm a great stickler for the formalities. 'Pon my life, I consider them the web upon which the social fabric hangs together. They're not to be dispensed with upon any account whatever. While I was abroad recently, the American Minister and I were walking ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... he wanted the Serbian agricultural products when he was in need of them; nor would he leave an open door for the Serbian pigs, as he did not wish the price of the Hungarian to be lowered. Tisza went still further. He was a great stickler for equality in making appointments to foreign diplomatic posts, but I could not pay much heed to that. If I considered the Austrian X better fitted for the post of ambassador than the Hungarian Y, I selected him in spite of ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... better. You will have a bungalow to yourself," continued McClintock, "and your morning meal will be your own affair. But luncheon and dinners you will sit at my table. I'm a stickler about clothes and clean chins. How you dress when you're loafing will be no concern of mine; but fresh twill or Shantung, when you dine with me, collar and tie. If you like books ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... must have been some truth in Mike's words, for Vince, who was a great stickler for ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth And, stickler-like, the armies separates. My half-supp'd sword, that frankly would have fed, Pleas'd with this dainty ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... he meant to say more he checks himself. He looks at his plate.) No more, thank you. (The simple island meal is ended, save for the walnuts and the wine, and CRICHTON is too busy a man to linger long over them. But he is a stickler for etiquette, end the table is cleared charmingly, though with dispatch, before they are placed before him. LADY MARY is an artist with the crumb-brush, and there are few arts more delightful to ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... drinks not his morning draught, and apprehends a drunkard for not standing in the king's name. Beggars fear him more than the justice, and as much as the whip-stock, whom he delivers over to his subordinate magistrates, the bridewell-man and the beadle. He is a great stickler in the tumults of double jugs, and ventures his head by his place, which is broke many times to keep whole the peace. He is never so much in his majesty as in his night-watch, where he sits in his chair of state, a shop-stall, and environed with a guard of halberts, examines all passengers. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... dryly; "or at least the state in which it comes back is marvellous. I am not a stickler for dates, as you know, but if you could only contrive to fix a few periods in your minds, girls, just in a general way, you would not be so shamefully befogged. Your Anne of Denmark, Francesca, was the wife of James VI. of Scotland, who was ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tell you If I were an oppressor, or a man Feeling and thinking for my fellow men. Haply had I been what the Senate sought, A thing of robes and trinkets,[423] dizened out To sit in state as for a Sovereign's picture; A popular scourge, a ready sentence-signer, 190 A stickler for the Senate and "the Forty," A sceptic of all measures which had not The sanction of "the Ten,"[424] a council-fawner, A tool—a fool—a puppet,—they had ne'er Fostered the wretch who stung me. What I suffer ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... so, had little to complain of, except occasional short commons, arising not from unwillingness, but from disability, on the part of the kind-hearted natives, to satisfy the cravings of the hungry whalers, whose appetites were remarkable, especially that of lanky Doctor Long Ghost. The doctor was a stickler for quality as well as quantity; the memory of his claret and beccafico days still clung to him, like the scent of the roses to Tom Moore's broken gallipot: he was curious in condiments, and whilst devouring, grumbled at the unseasoned viands of Tahiti. Cayenne and Harvey abounded not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... addressing the Prince, "you will forgive an old campaigner for being a stickler for the rules and procedures of military operations. An inn-yard, with soldiery around and townsfolk gaping through doors and windows, is no place for a council of war. The gentleman is pleased to dream, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... a joy which may yet be ours—some day. But my writer of romances, who is such a stickler for grammatical accuracy, is surely the younger of a ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... the program of our itinerary mapped out by Alb, to have reached the big town in the afternoon instead of morning, and to have spent the time till evening in seeing sights. But all was changed now. Luckily Alb (who is an uncomfortable stickler for truth at all costs) could conscientiously inform the girls that Groningen's principal attractions might be seen ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... beyond measure. He did not at all take in my meaning, but he was very sensible of my rudeness. My uncle was ever the most amiable of men and the most tolerant, but for correctness of deportment and elegance of manner he was a stickler, and so flagrant a breach of both ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... divided into groups, and their convictions did not correspond with their personal qualities but with their respective positions. Thus, every student was a revolutionary, every official was bourgeois, every artist a free thinker, and every officer an exaggerated stickler for rank. If, however, it chanced that a student was a Conservative, or an officer an Anarchist, this must be regarded as most extraordinary, and even unpleasant. As for Sanine, according to his origin and education he ought to have been something quite different ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... an opportunity of 'calling' upon Mrs Browdie first; for although Mrs Nickleby very often observed with much complacency (as most punctilious people do), that she had not an atom of pride or formality about her, still she was a great stickler for dignity and ceremonies; and as it was manifest that, until a call had been made, she could not be (politely speaking, and according to the laws of society) even cognisant of the fact of Mrs Browdie's existence, she felt her situation ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... is to this date, as far as official action can make it so, and it is interesting to conjecture what the results might be were some malicious person, or some "legal-minded stickler for rigid adherence to the law," to bring suit against those whose deeds, titles, leases, or other documents declare ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... her merits and her riches have attracted many suitors, she has never been tempted to venture again into the happy state. This is singular, too, for she seems of a most soft and susceptible heart; is always talking of love and connubial felicity, and is a great stickler for old-fashioned gallantry, devoted attentions, and eternal constancy, on the part of the gentlemen. She lives, however, after her own taste. Her house, I am told, must have been built and furnished about ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... and probably thought his present repugnance arose from a want of true nautical spirit. The interference of the partners in the business of the ship, also, was not calculated to have a favorable effect on a stickler for authority like himself, especially in his actual state of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... a very moderate amount of spare time, and that at uncertain intervals, to devote to this seductive pursuit, I am always a great stickler for economy of time in all the processes, as well as for economy of material, the former with me having, perhaps, a shade more ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... it, monsieur," the captain laughed. "I suppose the king did not guess you were coming in your shirt. Anyway, his order was to fetch you direct. And direct you go. But never care. Our king's no stickler for toggery. He's known what it is himself to lack for ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... of Monte Carlo, Who is so very partickler, Has heard that you're also For ceremony a stickler— Therefore he lets you know By word of mouth auric'lar— (That Prince of Monte Carlo Who is ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... when it was too late to correct his error, that she was not a woman to be slighted in respect to the conventionalities of polite life, however trifling to a man of Harley's stamp these might seem to be. She was a stickler for form; and when she was summoned to go on board of an ocean steamship there to take part in a romance for the mere aggrandizement of a young author, she intended that he should not ignore the proprieties, even if in a sense the proprieties to ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... difference about some hens that strayed away to lay. Harricutt likely had him all primed. Jones, Gibson, Harricutt—three against three. Joyce's vote would decide it. Joyce was a new man, owner of the canneries. He was a great stickler for proprieties, yet he seemed to feel that a minister's word was ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Rhine colonies, and the thunder-storms that have raged about lately, there'll be need felt for all the p-p-prayers all the offer. They'll not leave the vacancy open long. I'll bet they have it filled by d-d-day after to-morrow. Old B-B-Bambilio is a stickler for pious precision an observance of all ritual matters and the Emperors are ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the right of priority. But I am not a stickler for my rights. Listen, both of you, to a confession. I don't feel sorry at being left alone with you two, much as I have been amused, especially by Arthur, who has a merrier soul than his ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... known in her day as they have been since," said Joan; "only the first leaves, so to speak, were above the soil: but so far as I can judge from what I know, I should say, not so. She was a great stickler for old ways and the ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... ones to little ones, from many to few, or from all to one, and there stop. But perhaps convictions will not thus leave him. Why, then, he will turn from profaneness to the law of Moses, and will dwell as long as God will let him upon his own seeming goodness. And now observe him, he is a great stickler for legal performance; now he will be a good neighbour, he will pay every man his own, will leave off his swearing, the alehouse, his sports, and carnal delights; he will read, pray, talk of Scripture, and be a very busy one in religion, such as it is; now he will please God, and make him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the skipper tailed on to the sheets and got her canvas spread. Then the skipper went below to the galley and prepared supper. Tunis Latham could be no stickler for quarter-deck etiquette on this voyage, that ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... dared try to wear down the rule that women must be veiled. Even his own dancing girls were heavily veiled in public, and all his relations with women of any sort took place behind impenetrable screens. He was a stickler for that sort of thing and, like others of his kidney, rather proud of the rumors that no curtains could confine. So he loathed and despised Yasmini even more than he had detested her mother, because she coupled to her mother's Western notions about freedom ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... and strongly marked. Had I seen him under ordinary circumstances, I should have set him down as a little-minded man; a small tyrant in his own way over those dependent on him; a pompous parasite to those above him—a great stickler for the conventional respectabilities of life, and a great believer in his own infallibility. But he was Margaret's father; and I was determined to be ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... wealthier and more educated neighbour with the bullying boast, "I'm as good as you," turns to his slave, and knocks him down, if the furrow he has ploughed, or the log he has felled, please not this stickler for equality. There is a glaring falsehood on the very surface of such a man's principles that is revolting. It is not among the higher classes that the possession of slaves produces the worst effects. Among ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... be their headquarters, for it was too near the Hudson Bay post; and from what he had heard about the stern old factor, he would never allow such an organization to get a footing within his territory—if he was a martinet and a stickler for fealty to the company, he was also an honest man, with a hatred for rascality that made him ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... "I am a great stickler for a good view myself," said Porthos. "At my Chateau de Pierrefonds, I have had four avenues laid out, and at the end of each is a landscape of an altogether different ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and, if they should, where's the danger? You, such a believer in the romantic—stickler for old knight-errantry—instead of regretting it, should be glad! Look there! Lovers coming from all sides—suitors by land and suitors by sea! Knights terrestrial, knights aquatic. No lady of the troubadour times ever had the like; none ever honoured ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... kept up the conversation, not so much by talking, as by listening appropriately to their friend. She was full of spirits and humour. She seemed to know everybody in Europe, and about those everybodies the wickedest stories. The Countess of Castlewood, ordinarily a very demure, severe woman, and a stickler for the proprieties, smiled at the very worst of these anecdotes; the girls looked at one another and laughed at the maternal signal; the boys giggled and roared with especial delight at their sisters' confusion. They also partook freely of the wine which the butler handed round, nor ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... king's messenger waiting again for me. He was a small, but keen-witted man called Jeremy Stickler, and I liked his company. He now came upon a graver business than conducting me to London. He held a royal commission to raise the train-bands of Somerset and Devon, and he brought a few troops with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... much satisfaction at his new acquisition. He was no stickler for conventionalities, and did not in the least object to appear at his destination—where he knew no one—with a ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... tracing the first from the creation, and deducing argument in favor of his opinions on the second from doomsday book, through all the intricate windings of the modern inclosure acts. Barney is a great stickler for reform in College, and does not hesitate to attack the fellows of Eton (whom he denominates black slugs), on holding pluralities, and keeping the good things to themselves. As Barney's avocation compels him to travel wide, he is never interrupted by ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... in Buffalo. He had come up to get a $1500 place, as he informed me. That would about satisfy him. That such jobs were waiting by the score for an educated German in this barbarous land he never doubted for a moment. In the end he went to work in a rolling-mill at a dollar a day. Adler was ever a stickler for etiquette. In Brady's Bend we had very little of it. At mealtimes a flock of chickens used to come into the summer kitchen where we ate, and forage around, to Adler's great disgust. One day they deliberately ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... soon be here, lug and luggage," predicted Leila with a groan. "It is the way they treated you that would have counted against them. Our president is a stickler for honor. He might readily expel them for ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... had been doing for several hours, with frequent toasts, speeches, firecrackers and an occasional rocket aimed directly at the eye of the tropical sun. Captain Triplett, being a stickler for marine etiquette, had conditioned that there should be no liquor consumed except when the sun was over the yard-arm. To this end he had fitted a yard-arm to our cross-trees with a universal joint, thus enabling us to keep ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... we find is this: An old-maidish personage, inhabiting boarding-houses, equable and lukewarm in all his tastes and passions, having no desultory curiosity, showing little interest in either books or people. A petty fault-finder and stickler for trifles, devoid in youth of any wide designs on life, fond only of the more mechanical side of things, yet drifting as it were involuntarily into the possession of a world-formula which by dint of his extraordinary ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... that Jephthah is the son of the harlot. He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy. He calls them His people who are not His people; and He calls her beloved which was not beloved. God at any rate is no stickler for hereditary rights. Moreover, it does not follow because you, my hearers, have God-fearing parents, that God has elected you. He may have chosen, instead of you, instead of me, the wretchedest creature outside, whose rags we will not touch. ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... health-preserving air of Mudfog, the Mayor died. It was a most extraordinary circumstance; he had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five years. The corporation didn't understand it at all; indeed it was with great difficulty that one old gentleman, who was a great stickler for forms, was dissuaded from proposing a vote of censure on such unaccountable conduct. Strange as it was, however, die he did, without taking the slightest notice of the corporation; and the corporation were imperatively called upon to elect his successor. So, they met for the purpose; ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... wherein it is stated to comprise "in superficies, French measure, two hundred and six arpents, one perch, seven feet eight inches, and four eighths of an inch," from which description one would infer the Major had surveyed his domain with great minuteness, or that he must have been rather a stickler for territorial rights. What would his shades now think could they be made cognizant of the fact that that very chateau garden, [269] which he possessed and bequeathed to his sons in the year 1800, which had been taken possession of ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the housekeeper looked back at the phaeton and the brougham. "Be a good boy, Zeke," coaxingly, "and don't forget now, because Mrs. Evringham is a great stickler—and a great sticker, too," added Mrs. Forbes in ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... should not have called yourself unhappy at all then. You should have told the whole, or kept quiet. Reason and necessity commanded you to forget me? I am a great stickler for reason; I have a great respect for necessity. But let me hear how reasonable this reason, and how necessary ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... be all of them," snapped Peter, who was a stickler for style. "Do keep to one simile at ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... sure of that," added Hyde, shaking his head. "Mr. Lowington is a great stickler for discipline; and he is not exactly the man to come below, and coax us ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... stickler for details. Other accounts differ as to John Lawson's exact fate, and no one is sure how ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... about telling you apart. She's sweet and gay and loving and I suppose we've all spoiled her. Aunt Kate thinks she's the loveliest thing in the world, and she has just devoted her life to the child. Aunt Kate is as good as gold, a stickler for some things and she's always been splendid to mother. But she's great on family. She can't cry you down, because you belong ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... finished, none but a friend could be allowed to inhabit it. Monsieur Mignon, the next owner of the property, was very much attached to his cashier, Dumay, and the following history will prove that the attachment was mutual; to him therefore he offered the little dwelling. Dumay, a stickler for legal methods, insisted on signing a lease for three hundred francs for twelve years, and Monsieur Mignon ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... there were fish here, and events proved I was right," said the colonel. "I hope the water isn't posted?" he inquired anxiously, for he was a stickler for ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... the undisguised relief on every face, the almost ghoulish satisfaction with which that close-knit group of friends seized upon an outsider as the probable murderer of that other outsider whom they had rashly taken into their sacred circle. Even Penny Crain, thorny little stickler for fair play that she was, relaxed ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... money matters, and a stickler for precision and uniformity, Rosas sought to govern a nation in the rough-and-ready fashion of the stock farm. A creature of his environment, no better and no worse than his associates, but only more capable than they, and absolutely convinced that pitiless ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... by a little handful of cranks, calling themselves "Protestant Home Rulers," who met on the 24th of October at the village of Ballymoney "to protest against the lawless policy of Carsonism." The principal stickler for propriety of conduct in public life on this occasion ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... views are compatible, the reader will judge. And it is hoped he will excuse the length of the extracts, from a consideration of the fact, that a great master of the "pen-craft" here ridiculed, a noted stickler for needless Kays and Ues, now commonly rejected, while he boasts that his grammar, which he mostly copied from Murray's, is teaching the old explanation of the alphabetic elements to "more than one hundred thousand children and youth," is also vending under his own name an abstract of the new ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown |
