"Qui vive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ellipticity, taking, on the average, about three-quarters of an hour to complete a circuit. Since, on completing a revolution, they must necessarily pass through the point from which they started, they kept us constantly on the qui vive to avoid being knocked over by them as they swept ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... your wishes, sir; but you see the public is on the qui vive, so to speak, over this case, and it is our business to get hold of every item which we can to add to the interest. You have checked us off on some rather ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... farm, and safe from all ordinary dangers, but he must keep out of the way of scythes and sickles if he chooses to haunt the hay-fields. And so Attaphila, snug and safe, deep in the heart of the nest, had to keep on the qui vive when the ant harvesters came to glean in the fungus gardens. Snip, snip, snip, on all sides in the musty darkness, the keen mandibles sheared the edible heads, and though the little Attaphilas dodged and ran, yet most of them, in course of time, lost part of an antenna ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the qui vive till daylight, and prepared for the combat. The fishing implements were laid along the hammock nettings. The second lieutenant loaded the blunder busses, which could throw harpoons to the distance of a mile, and long ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... of the subject seemed to have something in it, a fact which, of course, could not be admitted. There were, not long before, in The Westminster Gazette some remarks by "Madame Qui Vive" to the effect that even a female Absalom or a Melisande could not do without what she called the "clever devices of the coiffeur," and claims were made of woman's right to adopt the fashion of the days when both men and women ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... completely spoiled, and the elephants very much reduced. There are now very few herds of elephants in Ceylon that have not been shot at by either Europeans or natives, and it is a common occurrence to kill elephants with numerous marks of old bullet wounds. Thus the animals are constantly on the "qui vive," and at the report of a gun every herd within hearing starts off for the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... dames, and decide which one among them he should favour with his most languishing glances. As he scrutinized one after another, his eyes finally reached the masked lady, and at once his curiosity was on the qui vive—here was assuredly something promising at last; he was convinced that the richly dressed, graceful incognita was a victim to his own irresistible charms, and he directed a long, eloquent, passionate look full at her, to indicate that she was understood. To his delight—his ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... in a hurried whisper, and at that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui vive?" * and the click ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that immediately outside it were the 'gunyahs', or huts; and, "plenty you shoot," she added showing her white teeth as she grinned with glee at the thoughts of the cheerful surprise she had prepared for her old companions. We were not thoroughly on the 'qui vive', for we thought this unknown bay would be the very spot in which the blacks were likely to seclude any prisoners from the 'Eva', and accordingly willingly followed the lithe figure of our little guide, as she wound her way through the tangled brake, like a black ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... not wonderful that all were on the qui vive as they ascended the mountain road leading to the castle of Alcantra. Magdalena started at every sound, and even Clara, fearless as she was, felt relieved when she saw the lofty turrets and extensive battlements she had dimly remembered, spreading out ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... scruple. Whenever anybody was ill, this little kind society knew what medicines were prescribed. Everybody in the town knew what everybody had for dinner. If Madame Rumpel had her satin dyed ever so quietly, the whole society was on the qui vive; if Countess Pultuski sent to Berlin for a new set of teeth, not a person in Kalbsbraten but what was ready to compliment her as she put them on; if Potzdorff paid his tailor's bill, or Muffinstein bought a piece of black wax for his moustaches, ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no more trace of the little storm when they indifferently give us all the details we wish. So sudden are their changes and moods, so violent their little outbursts, that we must needs be on the qui vive in our dealings with them. But yet they are so lovable that we can never be vexed ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine |
