"Impish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what one could aptly call a man. But thou'rt endowed with somewhat too much heart! How queer thou art, cross-grained and impish shrewd! A spirit too, thou couldst not be more shrewd. If all I say thou dost not think is true, In secret just a minute search pursue; For then thou'lt know if I love thee ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... bleary sons of noble lords Sway twin censers' fumes in silence, Until in myrtle groves we see A blazing arch where agate eyes Doth peer malignly from a crypt Thro' turbid phials of violence,— A scene of impish sorcery! Where, in furbished chambers there lies— As vypers write on evil script The ghastly deeds that sinners wrought— A glow-worm's fagot that arrays Dim shapes of souls of men that were. And cyphers nights of doomes to be, Till flaring pyres and yon red ghaut— So monstrous ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... habit of writing to strangers on the subjects next his heart. Once he approached Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne (afterwards Mrs. Hemans), who had not been encouraging. Now half in earnest, and half with an impish desire for dialectical scores, he printed a pamphlet on 'The Necessity of Atheism', a single foolscap sheet concisely proving that no reason for the existence of God can be valid, and sent it to various personages, including bishops, asking for a refutation. It fell ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Anne was a termagant—and ruled him with the heaviest rod of iron she could lift. But this last passion—the flickering, sputtering flame of his dotage—was the worst of all, both subjectively and objectively; both as to his senile fondness for the English princess and her impish tormenting of him. From the first he evinced the most violent delight in Mary, who repaid it by holding him off and evading him in a manner so cool, audacious and adroit that it stamped her queen of all the arts feminine and demoniac. Pardon ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... haunted the cloisters and quadrangles of the colleges at odd minutes in passing them, surprised by impish echoes of his own footsteps, smart as the blows of a mallet. The Christminster "sentiment," as it had been called, ate further and further into him; till he probably knew more about those buildings materially, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... and learned to take pleasure in synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the wicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... in its profits and losses, fevers and frenzies, it had that stage effect upon his imagination which is usually exercised over those who behold Chance presented to them with spectacular piquancy without advancing far enough in its acquaintance to suffer from its ghastly reprisals and impish tricks. He beheld a hundred diametrically opposed wishes issuing from the murky intelligences around a table, and spreading down across each other upon the figured diagram in their midst, each to its own number. It was a network of hopes; which at the announcement, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... such impish humour could not but frequently find themselves at loggerheads, but their liking for each other's society was genuine, and quarrels were followed by peace-making. "Sophia [as she nicknamed the young ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... "Ave!" hail'd the lady to the place, The impish band, each with his hand conceal'd his ugly face, And Satan stared as though ensnared, but speedily regain'd His wonted air of confidence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... mishap, others of the band seemed to lose their balance, and fared in the same fashion. The garland would topple over in a most impish way at every breath, although the arrows went through it. So Middle 'gan to feel better when he saw this one and that one tumbling on ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... around her lovely throat. She was dressing for dinner, really dressing. An impish mood filled her with the irrepressible desire to shine in all her splendor to-night. Covertly she would watch the eyes of mediocrity widen. Hitherto they had seen her in the simple white of travel. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... Grappling with Time, who clutch'd him like a fly, Victim of his own sport,—the jester's luck! He, whilst his fellows grieved, poor wight, had stuck His freakish gauds upon the Ancient's brow, And now his ear, and now his beard, would pluck; Whereas the angry churl had snatched him now, Crying, "Thou impish ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Among all the impish offspring of the Stone God, wizards and witches, that made Detroit feared by the early settlers, none were more dreaded than the Nain Rouge (Red Dwarf), or Demon of the Strait, for it appeared only when there was to be ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... to set up the button as rival to the safety pin in service to humanity. But our homage bends toward the former. Not only was it our shield and buckler when we were too puny and impish to help ourselves, but it is also (now we are parent) symbol of many a hard-fought field, where we have campaigned all over the white counterpane of a large bed to establish an urchin in his proper gear, while he kicked ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... An Indian woman, not yet of middle age but already inclining to the stoutness which overtakes women of her race early in life, appeared in the doorway. She spoke sharply to the boy in the deep, throaty language of her people. The boy, with a last impish grin, gave the man's leg a final shake and scuttled indoors. Carr impassively ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... blood could make them, the upper one pouting ever so slightly, and the soft brown hair was parted in the middle and drawn back from an exquisite forehead. The dark brown eyes were the girl's chief charm. They danced and sparkled in impish mischief, and had a way of shooting sudden glances which made themselves felt as keenly as arrows. And crowning it all was a sweet grace and womanliness which was good to see. From that hour my opinion of ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... fence built around it, bearing an inscription which would inform admiring tourists that here was the desk at which the brilliant author had been wont to sit when grinding out heart-throb stories for the humble Post. He took an impish delight in my struggles with my hero and heroine, and his inquiries after the health of both were of such a nature as to make any earnest writer person rise in wrath and slay him. I had seen little of Blackie of late. My spare hours had been devoted to the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... and was so sure of them that I felt that I could walk blindfold and pick them up. But when I came to the spot the ball was not there. This experience became so common that at last the conclusion forced itself upon me that the golf ball had a sort of impish intelligence that could only be met by a superior cunning. I suspected that it deliberately hid itself, and that so long as it was aware that you were hunting for it, it took a fiendish delight in ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... common prey is the capybara. It fears the peccari. The night air is alive with bats of many species, the most prominent one being the Dysopes perotis, which measures two feet from tip to tip of the wings. If these Cheiropters are as impish as they look, and as blood-thirsty as some travelers report, it is singular that Bates and Waterton, though residing for years in the country, and ourselves, though sleeping for months unprotected, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... believed that Mrs. Bright was manoeuvring to get him for a son-in-law and was chafing at Honor's lack of worldly wisdom in dividing her favours equally between him and Tommy whose prospects in life were less brilliant. The situation was one entirely after her own heart, to make or mar with impish deliberation. In spite of his comparatively inferior social standing and unattractive appearance, Tommy was popular with the girls for his ready wit. He dared to be unconscious of his disadvantages and stormed his way into the front rank of drawing-room favourites; but ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... burst aside the hanging tapestry. The light of the lamp in the circular room poured in through the gap. The creature in the chair checked his furious wheels, and looked back over his shoulder with an impish curiosity ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... gi' us zong, Blackburd, bo'!' cried a dozen voices to an impish, dark-eyed gipsy boy, of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... flower-seller, with an impish grin. "I reckon me aunt would say some of yer buttons was missin'. Youse can't be right in the upper story," and she pointed to her own head to illustrate ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... and that was the great St. John's wort. Therefore, all who wished to guard house and home from the unwelcome visitors, who pinched the maids, turned the milk sour and plagued their victims with a thousand impish tricks, planted it freely about their gardens; and thus it is that you see its golden flowers amid their shining rich green leaves and crimson shoots round ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... and have more enthusiasm," retorted the freshman, his freckled face alive with an impish grin. ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... disputants with evident interest. To the left a large space was devoted to three or four bulky casks, and here an aproned drawer sat astride of a rush-bottomed chair, grinning delightedly and exchanging nods and winks from time to time with an impish, undersized lad who lay on his stomach on a wine-butt with his head ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... he could not for a moment get Mrs. Arlington out of his mind. More than once, stealing a covert glance across the table, it seemed to him that Malvina was regarding him with a mocking smile. Some impish spirit it must have been that had prompted him. For thousands of years Malvina had led—at all events so far as was known—a reformed and blameless existence; had subdued and put behind her that fatal passion of hers for change: in other people. What madness to have revived ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... But who should be the executioner? They were reviled and upbraided. The Indian boys threw sticks at them as they passed, and then ran behind the houses. When they entered one of these pestiferous dens, this impish crew clambered on the roof, to pelt them with snowballs through the smoke-holes. The old squaw who crouched by the fire scowled on them with mingled anger and fear, and cried out, "Begone! there are no sick ones here." The invalids wrapped their heads in their blankets; and when the priest ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... grim sort of fellow, black from his trade, with big rollicking eyes. At times he was not easy to please, but if he took a liking, he was for joking at once. He approved of Parpon, and never lost a chance of sharpening his humour on the dwarf's impish whetstone of a tongue. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... whether or not her eyes were turned his way. Her attitude was pensive, disconsolate, curiously forlorn for a girl normally high-spirited. He was on the point of signaling to her when he remembered Furneaux's presence. There was something impish, almost diabolically clever, in that little ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... were threatened. Often after tramping twenty miles through the sleet-soaked, snow-drifted spring forests, arriving at an Indian village foredone and exhausted, the Jesuit was met with no better welcome than a wigwam flap closed against his entrance, or a rabble of impish children hooting and jeering him as he sought shelter from ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... twitching. Around him, but a long way off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by the sobbing booming music, and in the sunlit space between dancers and holy man, two or three impish children bobbed about with fixed eyes and a grimace of comic frenzy, ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... influence of the approaching spring had penetrated even into these abodes of darkness, and aroused in the bats a little life after their long hibernation; and their weak, plaintive squeak, which had something impish in it withal, came from every shadowy recess, and from the dark vault overhead. This "Rotunda" should have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... imparted a few plain truths—very pleasantly, Celia. He knew better; there's a sort of an impish streak in him—also an inclination for the pleasant by-ways of life. . . . He had better let drink alone, too, if he expects to remain in my office. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... into the world with him,"—that is, "reverence"—reverence for our great past as well as, I hope, a due estimation of the vigorous activity of the present. So our sweet-natured muse smiles benignly upon the impish gambols of the "new boy" who has the supreme advantage of not having been to school, for any appreciable length of time at least, and who seems to derive considerable satisfaction from his endeavors to improve the education of those who ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... if to present his misery in embodied form, he produced a note-book and tried to concentrate his attention upon the items therein recorded. Line after line of wavering figures danced in impish glee before him, defying inspection. But at the foot of the column, like soldiers waiting to shoot a prisoner, stood four formidable units unquestionably pointing his ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... that exaggeration takes for granted some degree of imbecility in the reader, whereas caricature takes for granted a high degree of intelligence. Dickens appeals to our intelligence in all his caricature, whether heavenly, as in Joe Gargery, or impish, as in Mrs. Micawber. The word "caricature" that is used a thousand times to reproach him is the word that ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... be hard to pick out a career more cheerless than that of Dancer, the miser, as he figures in the "Old Bailey Reports," a prey to the most sordid persecutions, the butt of his neighbourhood, betrayed by his hired man, his house beleaguered by the impish schoolboy, and he himself grinding and fuming and impotently fleeing to the law against these pin-pricks. You marvel at first that any one should willingly prolong a life so destitute of charm and dignity; and then you call to memory that ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mind all of a piece. For, if she flaunted herself before him, as if with an impish resolve to be his undoing, there were still times when he awed her by his words of fire, and by his high, determined stand in some circle to which she knew she could never mount. That night when he walked with her in the moonlight, she knew he ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... sitting in an acrobatic attitude on the floor facing him. She drank it, and an odd sparkle of mischief shot up in her great eyes. She surveyed him with an impish expression—much as a grasshopper ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... neighbor drops in at another, who is not of the same way of thinking, scold the poor children for doing those very things they had winked at before. But Roberta did not have it in her heart to scold anybody much, not even that impish Polly, who would go around after she had provoked her little mistress beyond endurance, sniffling and singing ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... retorted Klara, who seemed to take an impish delight in teasing the young man, "you are not in ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... scrapings of the dishes from the poor house-dog, as though he was a very magpie. He blew out the rush-lights, so that they were all in the dark after sunset; he made the fires burn cold, and played a hundred and forty other impish tricks of the like kind. As for the poor little children, they were always crying and complaining that the boggart did this and the boggart did that; that he scraped the butter from their bread and pulled the coverlids off ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... to exercise her impish arts of tantalisation and her wiles of fascination on Don Carlos during the remainder of her stay at Auchinleven. Sometimes she would seem, metaphorically, to throw herself at his head and appear to be eager to surrender herself, at other times ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... thing is clear; that his power be on the water, and no water will drown that ere imp, so it's no use trying no more in that way, for he be a sea-devil. But I thinks this: he goes on shore and he comes back with one of his impish eyes knocked out clean by somebody or another somehow or another, and, therefore, I argues that he have no power on shore not by no means; for if you can knock his eye out, you can knock his soul out of his body, by only knocking ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... human nature. In one hand she holds a divining-rod. "She says to the emigrants," observed Powers, "'Here is the gold, if you choose to take it.'" But in her face, and in her eyes, very finely expressed, there is a look of latent mischief, rather grave than playful, yet somewhat impish or sprite-like; and, in the other hand, behind her back, she holds a bunch of thorns. Powers calls her eyes Indian. The statue is true to the present fact and history of California, and includes ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a cheery "Yo-ho!" and up came a black, impish-looking boy of about my own age, kicking, struggling, and tearing at the rope ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... neighbouring lamp struck through the drizzle under Charlson's umbrella, so as just to illumine his face against the shade behind, and show that his eye was turned up under the outer corner of its lid, whence it leered with impish jocoseness as he thrust his tongue ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... till it guttered and flickered in its pool of melted tallow, and the shadows it threw upon wall and ceiling seemed instinct with an impish life of their own, as though they were dark spirits from the pit come to mock the final hours of the life that ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... you hear Yolara lisp a pretty little thing I taught her," said Larry as we set back for what we now called home. There was an impish ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... are poisoned, we're dead 'uns, sure," groaned the Captain, squirming on the ground, and endeavouring to sight his rifle on the impish creatures. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... an elaborate comparison between Mr. Gladstone and Herod. I had no doubt at the time, and my impression has since been corroborated by words reported to have been used by Mr. Chamberlain himself—that he used the word "Herod" in a moment of happy and almost impish inspiration with a view to provoking the retort which was so obvious. There was a self-conscious smile on his face when he uttered the words, and he seemed to be quite prepared, and almost delighted by the retort which followed so promptly. Furthermore, when several Tories ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... closed his eyes all sorts of lights danced before him, and strange, indescribable noises filled the air. It seemed that impish figures were frolicking all around, sometimes grinning in his face, and then skurrying far away through the aisles of the gloom. At last he slept. The slumber was sweet and dreamless, carrying him through the entire night, and affording him the very ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... Ballantree MacDonald have been such a one when she was eighteen? No, in spite of the haunting, almost impish likeness, I'm sure she cannot. But I think Somerled wonders, and that now and then the relationship and the resemblance creep between him and his instinctive perception of ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... trying automatic writing, or else was at a sance (we forget which), when a message came to her from the Unseen, stating that the treasure at Kilman Castle was concealed in the chapel under the tessellated pavement near the altar. But this spirit was either a "lying spirit," or else a most impish one, for there is no trace of an altar, and it is impossible to say, from the style of the room, where it stood; while the tessellated pavement (if it exists) is so covered with the debris of the former roof that it would ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... hear any more. The conversation had become displeasing to him, though he could have given no reason for his displeasure. But Poppy suddenly turned mischievous and naughty. She patted her hands gently together between her knees and swayed with rather impish merriment. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... had offered me wine in a general sort of way, I had declined. My beer experience had been enough for me, and I had no inclination to traffic further in the stuff, or in anything related to it. Unfortunately, one young Italian, Peter, an impish soul, seeing me sitting solitary, stirred by a whim of the moment, half-filled a tumbler with wine and passed it to me. He was sitting across the table from me. I declined. His face grew stern, and he insistently proffered the wine. And ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Until thy clumsy triangle of cloth, Despoiled of its traditions, is again What it should ne'er have ceased to be in France— The headgear of a village constable. I hate—but suddenly—how strange!—the present Sometimes with impish glee will ape the past!— Seeing thy well-known shape before me thus Carries my mind back to a distant day, For it was here he always put thee down When twenty years ago he sojourned here. This room was then the ante-chamber; here, Waiting till ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... look at and remarkably intelligent, but he distinguishes between magpies and men; he doesn't reveal himself; his accomplishments, vocal and mental, are for his own tribe. In this he differs from the daw; for the daw is less specialized; he is an undersized common crow, livelier, more impish than that bird, also more plastic, more adaptive, and takes more kindly to the domestic or parasitic life. Human beings to him are simply larger daws, and unlike the pie he can play his tricks and be himself among them as freely as when with his feathered comrades. We like him best because ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... their flocks, but the primary qualification for the office was, I imagine, the gift of aggressive political leadership. The Turkish government now favored one nationality and now another as the interests of the moment seemed to suggest. With an impish delight in playing off Slav against Greek and Servian against Bulgarian, its action on applications for bishoprics was generally taken with a view to embarrassing the rival Christian nationalities. And it could when necessary ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... no one could have shown greater presence of mind than the young ladies,' said that gentleman; and her father's 'I am glad to hear it!' would have gratified Gillian the more, but for the impish grimace with which Wilfred favoured ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... goes on and the dance is o'er, And the merry girls are homeward gone, But I see it all in my sleep once more, And I dream till the very break of dawn Of an impish dance on a red-hot griddle To the screech and ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... stories. Wear mourning for her, weep and fancy her dead, groan. Then she raises her head, her merry laugh rings out again; she spreads her white wings, flies one knows not wither, turns in the air, capers, shows her impish tail, her woman's breasts, her strong loins, and her angelic face, shakes her perfumed tresses, gambols in the rays of the sun, shines forth in all her beauty, changes her colours like the breast of a dove, laughs until she cries, cast the tears of her eyes into the sea, where the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Seraphine was one of the marching chorus at the Opera, and occupied the fine apartment on the rue Saint-Georges, where before her Suzanne du Val-Noble, Esther van Gobseck, Florine, and Madame Schontz had reigned. Of ready wit, dashing manners, and impish brazenness, Carabine held many successful receptions. Every day her table was set in magnificent style for ten guests. Artists, men of letters, and society favorites were among her frequent visitors. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... situation and its necessities; also a certain lightheartedness, eminently Gallic, which forms a leading trait in my character, and leads me to throw myself into new circumstances with the spirit of a schoolboy. It is possible that I sometimes allow this impish humour to carry me further than good taste approves: and I was certainly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at this point that another notion came into my mind, so antic, so impish, so fiendish, that if there were still any Evil One, in a world which gets on so poorly without him, I should attribute it to his suggestion; and this was that the procession which Jan saw issuing from the tenement-house door was not a funeral procession, as the reader will have rashly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bare shore. A gull comes sweeping by their heads and flouts them. There was a golden surface on the brown cliffs but now, and behold they are only damp earth. A taunting roar comes from the sea, and the far-out rollers mount upon one another, to look at the entrapped impostors, and to join in impish ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... laughed until his sides were sore; until his eyes were red with the tears he had shed; until he was so weak he staggered when he first crawled out from under the plane and stood up. But it did him good, for all that, to have laughed so hard and so long over an impish trick that came ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... constraint which was becoming unbearable when the blessed doorbell rang and delivered us, and Miss Josephine St. Michael entered with John Mayrant. He wore a most curious expression; his eyes went searching about the room, and at length settled upon Juno with a light in them as impish as that which had flickered in my own mood before ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... self-realisation, on the other hand, is a life of genuine self-expression; and a life of genuine self-expression is obviously a life of fearless sincerity. In such a life there is no place for untruthfulness or any member of its impish brood. The one concern of the child, as of the man, is to be loyal to intrinsic reality, to be true to his true self. His standard is always inward, not outward. He knows that he is what he is, not what he is reputed to be. Quantum unusquisque est in oculis Tuis, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... absolutely changed towards him; and from being his good friend, with established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness, his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his passion for her, to speak of the fever which had taken ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... Don's orders, the patrol came to headquarters to clean up for that night's meeting. Tim brought with him an impish, reckless desire for fun. While the others tried to sweep, he lined up a string of camp stools and played leap-frog down the length of the meeting-place, and got ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... lord the Prince knew nothing of all this, and little thought that the beautiful creature who caressed and fondled him was an impish and foul beast that had slain his mistress and assumed her shape in order to drain out his life's blood. Day by day, as time went on, the Prince's strength dwindled away; the colour of his face was changed, and became pale and livid; and he was as a man suffering from a deadly sickness. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... "I mistook the apartment: ye cannot suppose, most worthy commander of this enchanted and impish conservatory, that, of my own free will, I would choose such company. Where is the sinner?"—Dalton desired Springall to show him to ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the ground floor to the upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of legal tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to celebrate the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with an almost impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, obliterate the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be intolerably poor after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he had invested money in North and South America, and was able to entertain his sovereign ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... inspired him with a solemnity that widened his eyes and narrowed his features. He looked on a new, and never-before-imagined, life. And he was grave to excess, though, later, I found plenty of the London child's impish ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... laid her handbag on the desk and took the visitor's chair, impish mirth sparking in ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... did—presented him as a very naughty but intensely clever child, with the monkey element in humanity thrown into utmost prominence. But it is better not to do so. Panurge has some Yahooish characteristics, but he is not a Yahoo—in fact, there is no misanthropy in Rabelais.[104] He is not merely impish (as in his vengeance on the lady of Paris), but something worse than impish (as in that on Dindenault); and yet one cannot call him diabolic, because he is so intensely human. It is customary, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... sound of the beating surf before we found one: and there an impish fancy took me. I had been losing grip on Farrell, and despite my small triumph of that morning, I felt a sudden desire to test him. Pretending that my purpose was only to cross and report, I waded the stream and ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not stop. He stood before the fire, his feet planted firmly on the rug, and poured out a flood of pompous platitudes. Faith heard not a word. She was really not listening to him at all. But she was watching his long black coat-tails with impish delight growing in her brown eyes. Mr. Perry was standing VERY near the fire. His coat-tails began to scorch—his coat-tails began to smoke. He still prosed on, wrapped up in his own eloquence. The coat-tails smoked worse. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... look like the impish devils that Michael Angelo sculptured, putting out their tongues in silent ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Life of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the collaborators do not allude to that curious vein of impish humour which at times possessed him, turning him into a sort of big rollicking schoolboy. There was one episode which I can give with Tree's actual words, for I wrote them down at the time, as a supreme example of the art of "leg-pulling." Amongst ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... from the stage and the tiring-rooms; and all gathered gleefully about to see what next the impish Nell would do, for avenged she would be they all knew, though the course of her ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... devil in the bottle directly in front of him was more impish than it had been at all. Donaldson rose. The pup rolled to the floor. Donaldson crossed the room, picked out the bottle, drew back his arm, and hurled it against the wall, where it broke into a thousand pieces. It left a gory-looking blotch where it struck. He went back ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and thoroughly enjoy the life amid the sylvan scenes about them. It is a curious sight to see these big anthropoids, almost as large as human beings, swing themselves deftly up among the festooned creepers at my approach—to see their queer, impish black faces peering cautiously out of their hiding-place, and to hear their peculiar squeak of surprise and apprehension as they note the strange character of my conveyance. Sometimes a gang of them ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... struck a big sting-ray so full of his impish darts that it resembled an animated pincushion of monstrous proportions. It, too, realised the futility of kicking against so many pricks. On the other hand, Tom, with his heavy shaft and barbed point, relied on a single weapon. It seldom failed, for his right ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... and scream for hours, almost in convulsions; and then, when he was worn out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment. He was burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in the daytime he was a thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of pimples and sweat, a ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the students at tea, and displayed himself in an impish mood that sometimes possessed him. He did not notice that Ann Veronica was preoccupied and heavy-eyed. Miss Klegg raised the question of women's suffrage, and he set himself to provoke a duel between her and Miss Garvice. The youth with the ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Old Man, as depicted in the stories told of him by the Blackfeet, is a curious mixture of opposite attributes. In the serious tales, such as those of the creation, he is spoken of respectfully, and there is no hint of the impish qualities which characterize him in other stories, in which he is powerful, but also at times impotent; full of all wisdom, yet at times so helpless that he has to ask aid from the animals. Sometimes he sympathizes with the people, and ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... impish in your mood to-day!" exclaimed Lady Engleton. "What should we do without our Great Majority, as you call it? It is absolutely necessary to put some curb on the wild impulses of pure reason"—a sentiment that Hadria greeted with chuckles ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... of Scorch's sayings and his impish doings; so they were some miles on the journey before she began to ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... herself astride a downward sweeping branch just above Roy's head. There she perched like a slim blue flower, dangling her tan-stockinged legs and shaking her hair at him like golden rain. She was in one of her impish moods; reaction, perhaps,—though she knew it not—from the high tragedy of that other Tara, her namesake, and the great greatest-possible grandmother of her adored 'Aunt Lila.' Suddenly a fresh impulse seized her. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of afternoon when the children are once more upon the street, you regret your illness. Here they come trooping by threes and fours, carrying their books tied up in straps. One would think that they were in fear lest some impish fact might get outside the covers to spoil the afternoon. Until the morrow let two and two think themselves five at least! And let Ohio be bounded as it will! Some few children skip ropes, or step carefully across the cracks of the sidewalk for fear they spoil their suppers. Ah!—a bat ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... privileges which they, at his age, had never enjoyed. Timmy also always knew how to manage his delicate, nervous father. John Tosswill realised that Timmy might some day grow up to do him credit. Timmy really loved learning, and it was a pleasure to the scholar to teach his clever, impish, youngest son. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... things angered him like an impish trick from a fellow-creature. Like Prester John's, his table had been spread, and infernal harpies had snatched up the food. He went out of the house, and moved sullenly onward down the pavement till he came to the bridge at the bottom of the High Street. Here he turned in upon a bypath ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... in it since you say the word," answered Hal, with an impish grimace. "You may as well see me in it and get used to the sight; then you won't be taking me for an alderman when you meet me ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... be one of the people that all sorts of odd things happen to, and now fortune has played one of her impish tricks and Jean has become a very considerable heiress. And I was there, oddly enough, when the god in the car alighted, so to speak, at ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... stop gaps, taking the same place a washer does that makes a loose screw fit, and contriving to get driven in like a wedge between any two chairs where there is a crevice. I shall not call that boy by the monosyllable referred to, because, though he has many impish traits at present, he may become civilized and humanized by being in good company. Besides, it is a term which I understand is considered vulgar by the nobility and gentry of the Mother Country, and it is not to be found in Mr. Worcester's Dictionary, on which, as is well known, the literary ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... has a right to do as she likes, I hope, Quilp,' said the old lady trembling, partly with anger and partly with a secret fear of her impish son-in-law. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the sniffing and snorting of the keen-scented Pomposo in the hollow not only revealed the cause of his former terror, but decided me to take another direction. After a moment's hesitation, he concluded to go with me, although I am satisfied, from a certain impish look in his eye, that he fully understood and rather enjoyed the fright of Pomposo. As he rolled along at my side, with a gait not unlike a drunken sailor, I discovered that his long hair concealed a leather collar around his neck, which bore ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... with a chuckle, was to convey fear to the beholder of his work. It was an impish trick, and it brought him unwittingly ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... the window stood a robin red-breast; the impish bird had its head turned to one side, and was peeping into the room: "Come out," it chirped, "come out." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... bracken, singing softly to herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity of the shadowy places, was latest of all. Anne could run like a deer, however; run she did with the impish result that she overtook the boys at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among them just as Mr. Phillips was in the act ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he went to bed and lay staring into the darkness that the mental tumult subsided and the moral tumult began. The questions that he had resolutely kept in abeyance all evening began to dance in impish insistence before him. What right had he to take Shields's place, when he had said exactly the things that Shields had been fired for saying? Did he want to go the way Shields had gone, compromising with his conscience in order to keep ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... seemed to think of him as simply an object of Mr. Casaubon's charity. Why should he be compared with an Italian carrying white mice? That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... from my conscience. It's simply your impish persistence that makes you desire my society. It can't be ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Cathedral Close, where the calm silence of the old place ought to have quelled the angry throbbing in his veins; but it had an opposite effect, and the cries of the jackdaws which clung about the mouldering tower sounded like impish derisive laughter. ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... "She is an interesting specimen, and furnishes variety, of a certain kind," she added with an impish grin, glancing comprehensively at the disordered room. "As long as I have taken her unto myself as a roommate I might as well do what I can for her. What seems so strange to me is that with all her money she is so crude and slangy. She doesn't ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... up-stairs at the shortest notice of danger. This piscatory propensity had been severely punished by both Monsieur and Madame C——, who could not afford to encourage such an expensive Izaak Walton; but there was no managing the child. He seemed to possess an impish capability of eluding detection and angry denunciations. To be sure, circumstances were against any very strict guard being kept over the youngster. Madame C—— was a very weak woman, a very weak woman indeed,—she declared ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Johnny's best lines. It always had a deal of effect—one way or another. It startled Maria Angelina. Her eyes opened as if he had set off a rocket—and something very bright and light, like the impish reflections of that rocket, danced a moment ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... aloofly, with a coldness which bordered on hostility, as she flipped her mask into its pocket on top of the gill-pack. Below his rocky perch she came to a halt, her feet slightly apart in the sand, an impish twist to her lips as ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton |
