"Slippery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... balls! The old way would have been to impose new taxes. But how could he tax a people crying at his gates for bread? He made more promises which he could not keep; yielded, one after another, concessions of authority and dignity; then vacillated, and tried to return over the slippery path, only to be dragged on again ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... that they must be determined before any real progress can be made, or any agreement arrived at in the Interpretation of Scripture." (p. 370.) ... They must indeed. But can it be right in this slovenly, slippery style to shirk a discussion on the issue of which the whole question may be said to turn? especially on the part of one who scruples not to prejudge that issue, and straightway to apply it, (in a manner fatal to the Truth,) throughout all his hundred pages. Mr. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the Fair Fount The reaper's pottage smokes. The fisher baits his angle; The hunter twangs his bow; Little they think on those strong limbs That moulder deep below. Little they think how sternly That day the trumpets pealed; How in the slippery swamp of blood Warrior and war-horse reeled; How wolves came with fierce gallops, And crows on eager wings, To tear the flesh of captains, And peck the eyes of kings; How thick the dead lay scattered ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 31.—Weather very disagreeable; snow six inches deep, and from rain and sleet and thaw and freeze, has formed a hard crust, so as to make bad traveling—in the roads icy and slippery. To-day cloudy, damp and cool. A few days ago the mercury reached 8 degrees below zero, the lowest of the season. It is very hard on stock, and many of the cattle are without shelter, as usual. Accept New Year greetings for all THE PRAIRIE ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... came around every corner piercing and pinching to the bone. The walking was slippery; and though it was still early bedtime and the ruddy lamp-light filled the wet panes of some window every here and there, scarce a soul was stirring without, on horse or afoot, to be guided by ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... fact was, they all came every night except one, when there was such a storm, nobody went,—not even the teacher, nor Ann Maria, nor any of us. It snowed and it hailed and the wind blew, and our steps were so slippery Amanda could not go out to put on ashes; ice even on the upper steps. The janitor, who makes the fire, set out to go; but she was blown across the street, into the gutter. She did succeed in getting in to ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... of halls, each more magnificent than the last, the endless galleries and corridors, the walls decorated with sumptuous but bizarre hangings, the floors inlaid with marble and precious stones which were probably priceless and certainly slippery—possibly all these contributed towards the upsetting of Queen Selina's equanimity, but her manner was deplorably lacking in dignity and repose. She treated her ladies, for instance, with a politeness that came nearer subservience ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... done? In emergencies like that men think quickly and to the point. The raft must be passed, or all was at an end. The logs had been long in the water, and doubtless were slippery with river slime. The launch might be run upon and over them. Once inside the raft, it could never return. No matter for that. He was there to sink the Albemarle. The smaller contingency of losing his own life was a matter to be left ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... habits is somewhat like the management of the slipping of the wheels of a locomotive when the track is wet and slippery. The little folks ofttimes endeavor to apply the brakes, but they are minus the sand which keeps the wheels from slipping. The parent, with his well-planned discipline, is able to supply this essential element, and thus the child is enabled to gain a sufficient amount of self-control to prevent ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... wooden injuns before cigar stores, armed with a tommyhawk and scalpin' knife, these city petroleums, bein' rather slippery chaps, hain't half so savage as ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... so. When Henry the Fifth united, by act of Parliament, the estates of his mother to the duchy, he had the same predilection with his father to the root of his family honors, and the same policy in enlarging the sphere of a possible retreat from the slippery royalty of the two great crowns he held. All this was changed by Edward the Fourth. He had no such family partialities, and his policy was the reverse of that of Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth. He accordingly again united the Duchy of Lancaster ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but the unexpected. Many laugh who see an old woman fall upon the slippery pavement. This new spectacle was the absolutely undreamed-of to Nora, who was no scientist. Her laughter was irrepressible. In a trice the precedents of years were gone. Nora felt the empire of her dignity slipping ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... half round, and, as I alighted, I saw my aggressor, knife in hand, come through the doorway in pursuit. He had more courage than Spotty but less discretion. In the haste of his pursuit, he actually sprang over the sill on to the slippery top step, and the next moment was bumping down the stairs like an overturned sack of potatoes. As he picked himself up, half-stunned, from the prostrate Jew, on whom he had fallen, I regretfully felled him with the concussor. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... before long. In the mean time, and with a view to the severe duties of the professions selected, they are learning the alphabet, Charley vaulting over the hard letters with an agility which promises well for his career as circus-rider, and Talbot collaring the slippery S's and pursuing the suspicious X Y Z's with the promptness and ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... up the narrow path, slippery from a recent fall of light snow. Once Rose slipped, and instantly Judd's sinewy arm was about her waist, steadying her. Then, as she regained her balance and started forward, it tightened and drew her suddenly to him in a passionate, crushing embrace. She made no effort to struggle ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... shade less enthusiastic if he had foreseen the sequel. His assurance that there was "nothing behind the Bill" was only too true. There was not even a majority behind it; for the hostile amendment was carried by 44 votes to 35, and the LLOYD GEORGE Administration sustained its first defeat. "Nasty slippery stuff, oil," muttered the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... guide, "the fly is such a little acrobat it can crawl up the steepest and most slippery wall and walk upside down or right side up with the greatest ease. Perhaps some day you can make a fly keep still long enough so that you can look at its foot. At the end of the foot are two little round pads thickly covered with ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... Slippery and Half-hitches. Clove Hitches. Gunners' Knots and Timber Hitches. Twists, Catspaws, and Blackwall Hitches. Chain Hitch. Rolling and Magnus Hitches. Studding-sail and Gaff-topsail Halyard Bends. Roband and ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... were taken from knapsacks to cover over the men as they marched, but they soon filled with water, and had to be thrown aside. Both sides of the railroad were strewn with blankets, shawls, overcoats, and clothing of every description, the men finding it impossible to bear up under such loads. The slippery ground and the unevenness of the railroad track made marching very disagreeable to soldiers unaccustomed to it. Some took the dirt road, while others kept the railroad track, and in this way all organizations were lost sight of, but at night they collected together in regiments, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... direction when swimming, and their fur is soft, fine, and close underneath, while a longer, coarser set of hard shining hairs, are on the outside. Their teeth are very pointed, and well adapted to hold their slippery prey; their ears are very small, and close to their head, and they have a nictating membrane, or third eyelid, for the protection of their bright eyes. Their movements in the water are particularly elegant, they swim horizontally, and rapidly dive after their ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... As thus: there were the Mauryas, 320 to 190 B. C.; thence on thirteen decades to 60 B.C.,—and near enough to the reputed 58 of the reputed Vikramaditya of Ujjain. On again (thirteen decades as usual) to the seventies A.D.—and good enough in all conscience for that slippery Kanishka who so dodges in and out among the early centuries, and is fitted with a new date by everyone who has to do with him. On again, from 70 to 200; nothing doing there, I regret to say, (that we know about). Never mind; on thence to 320,—the nearest point ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... gasp, and turned faint, while Ned felt the hide-rope attached to the barrel turn wet and slippery in his hands. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... only amendment they ever had. In extreme dry weather in summer, they became exceedingly hard, and, by traffic, so smooth as to seem glazed, like a potter's vessel, though a single hour's rain rendered them so slippery as to be very dangerous to travellers." The roads in fact were and are, little more than lanes between the isolated woods across the low scrub of ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... into a mere province ruled by exarchs and logothetes from corrupt and distant Constantinople. This is one possible view of Cyprian's character and purposes. On the other hand, he may have been a slippery adventurer, intent on carving out his own fortune by whatever means, and willing to make the dead bodies of the noblest of his countrymen stepping-stones of his own ambition. In his secret heart he may have cared nothing for the noble old Goth, his master, with whom he had so ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... and went down to Fifty-ninth Street. He found an all-night garage, hired a racing-car, and at dawn he was driving furiously through Long Island, a hundred miles from New York, on a roadway perilously slippery with ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... ingenious account of the elements of speaking, and of the manner in which one may come to an understanding of ambiguous expressions, and of the principles of reasoning: then, after a few more things, it comes to the sorites, a very slippery and hazardous topic, and a class of argument which you yourself pronounced to ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... swollen cheek and escorted Morris up three flights of slippery brassbound stairs. Without the formality of knocking, they entered an apartment on the fourth floor where a woman ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... worked rather hard," said Mrs. Marvelle, with modest self-consciousness. "You see nowadays it's so difficult to secure suitable husbands for the girls who ought to have them. Men are such slippery creatures!" ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... having no other foundation than the calamities of the people, so often beaten by their enemies, that despairing of themselves they were contented with any change, if he had peace as in the days of Solomon, left but a slippery throne to his successor, as appeared by Rehoboam. And the agrarian, notwithstanding the monarchy thus introduced, so faithfully preserved the root of that commonwealth, that it shot forth oftener and by intervals continued ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... had become quite at her ease before we arrived. You would have been enchanted to see how much was made of our dear mother. Lord Hollybridge came out himself to give her his arm up the stone steps and across the slippery hall. The good old chief talked to her by the hour about you, and Avice's eyes shone all the time. After luncheon our kind hostess arranged that dear mother should have half an hour's perfect rest, in a charming little ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or a vehicle; but as she neared them they were only bushes or leaning, wind-beaten pines. She was drenched and her clothes seemed intolerably heavy. Oh, how David would laugh at her hat! She put up her hand, in its soaked and slippery glove, and touched the roses about the crown and laughed herself. "He won't mind," she said, contentedly. She had forgotten that he had stopped loving her. She began to sing under her breath the old tune of her gay, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... Rock Congress Spring Company." This company was formed in 1866, and was inaugurated under favorable auspices and with brilliant prospects of success. But though founded on a rock, it was not successful in withstanding the storms. Whether the rock was too slippery, or the Spring rains too severe, or what was the slip-up, or rather slip-down, we do not presume to say, but the company failed, and the spring was sold at auction during the present ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... us messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen, too. If they will only note the difference between long and short, the eel of Ocean's bottom may feel on his slippery skin the smooth messages of our Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness, look fearless on the secrets of a Queen. Any beast, bird, fish, or insect, which can discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraph alphabet, if he have sense enough. Any creature, which can ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... and feeling his way carefully down the slippery steps, handed it to the stranger. Acknowledging the action with a murmur of thanks, the fellow took it, and making a protection with his cape, struck a match to light his pipe. It flickered for a moment and flared up, illuminating ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... treated with unexampled perfidy. Other men had petted her, had amused themselves with her, and then thrown her over, had lied to her and laughed at her, till she had been taught to think that a man was a heartless, cruel, slippery animal, made indeed to be caught occasionally, but in the catching of which infinite skill was wanted, and in which infinite skill might be thrown away. But this man had been true to her to the last in spite ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... ever rushed over the desert. It is not like being bound to an arrow, for that motion would be smoother; it is not like being hurled upon an ocean crest, for that would be slower. You are rushing onward, and you are powerless; that is all. The frosty air gives such a brittle and slippery look to the two iron lines which lie between you and destruction, that you appreciate the Mohammedan fable of the Bridge Herat, thinner than a hair, sharper than a scimitar, which stretches over hell and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... a noble prey! Does not the huntsman, with unflinching heart, Roam for whole days, when winter frosts are keen, Leap at the risk of death from rock to rock— And climb the jagged, slippery steeps, to which His limbs are glued by his own streaming blood— And all to hunt a wretched chamois down? A far more precious prize is now my aim— The heart of that dire ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... sometimes shades her band of daylight as with pencil hatchings. The path grows slippery with mud, and umbrellas collide. Sudden jets of water from spouts overhead splash on her startled pavement. In her dismay, she takes it for the jest of an ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... is desolate, the lane to the river is slippery. The wind is roaring and struggling among the bamboo branches like a wild beast tangled in ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in desultory ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... duties, and truthful in speech. Sound and touch should be known as the two qualities of wind. Touch has been said to be of various kinds. Rough, cold and like wise hot, tender and clear, hard, oily, smooth, slippery, painful and soft, of twelve kinds is touch, which is the quality of wind, as said by Brahmanas crowned with success, conversant with duties, and possessed of a sight of truth. Now space has only one quality, and that is said to be sound. I shall speak at length of the numerous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... burned there in the windy rain and the dark impeded rather than helped the stranger on his way towards them. The feet of thousands of people, who had visited the spot since the news of the accident was made known, had worn away the last blade of grass from the slippery fields and had left a very Slough of Despond behind them. I was down half a dozen times, and when I reached the hovel where the rescue-party had gathered I was as much like a mud statue as a man. Everything was in readiness, and the descent was made ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... knightly lances, came riding up, they were received with such a blinding storm of arrows, that they broke and turned. Horses and men rolled over one another, and the confusion was terrific. Those who rallied and charged the archers got among the stakes on slippery and boggy ground, and were so bewildered that the English archers—who wore no armour, and even took off their leathern coats to be more active—cut them to pieces, root and branch. Only three French horsemen got within the stakes, and those were instantly despatched. ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... tried to keep pace with the sweep of the Bore over the Solway Marshes, but he had never undertaken a task so difficult as following this girl across a Norfolk marshland. The path she trod so unhesitatingly was narrow, and slippery, with the canal on one side and the marshes on the other. In keeping clear of the canal Colwyn frequently found himself slipping into the marshes. His feet and legs speedily became wet and caked with ooze, and once he nearly lost one of his boots, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... back and forth, as the wheels struck the deep ruts of the trail, occasionally exchanging a word or two, but usually staring gloomily forth at the monotonous scene. Miss McDonald and Moylan occupied the back seat, some baggage wedged tightly between to keep them more secure on the slippery cushion, while facing them, and clinging to his support with both hands, was a pock-marked Mexican, with rather villainous face and ornate dress, and excessively polite manners. He had joined the little party at Dodge, smiling happily at sight of Miss Molly's face when she ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... cottages to stop on the edge of the cliffs already showing yellow with gorse. Should the tide serve, he had it in mind to revisit a haunt of his boyhood. A moment's scrutiny showed him right in thinking that the tide was on the ebb and he started rapidly down a rough, rather slippery path. As he rounded an outlying rock he ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... intent Again she stretch'd, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between— Malignant fate sat by and smiled— The slippery verge her feet beguiled; She tumbled ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... a compliment, but that was flattery," Richmond, replied, taking his feet off one chair and putting them on another. "Let's ride home, John; it's 'most too slippery to walk." ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... physical impossibility. Besides, I was determined that the windows also should he found bolted. The solution was simple enough. I descended softly to my own room for a peculiar instrument which I had used for holding small slippery substances, such as minute spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was nothing more than a long slender hand-vice, with a very powerful grip, and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the shape ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... and dishonorable. Afterwards Clodius, the praetor, took the command against them with a body of three thousand men from Rome, and besieged them within a mountain, accessible only by one narrow and difficult passage, which Clodius kept guarded, encompassed on all other sides with steep and slippery precipices. Upon the top, however, grew a great many wild vines, and cutting down as many of their boughs as they had need of, they twisted them into strong ladders long enough to reach from thence to the bottom, by which, without any danger, they got down all but one, who ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... hill itself, it will be remarked, is covered all round, with the exception of the precipitous front facing the east, with piles of loose water-worn stones. At first view they appear only an irregular mass, and seem to be there only to make the ascent more slippery and difficult. Mr Skene, in his Celtic Scotland; points out that here we have the remains of an ancient fort. It is only recently, however, that the subject has come in for thorough investigation by Dr. Christison, one of the Rhind lecturers on Archaeology, who, by careful measurements ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... of the throne groaning). Oh see how well her Irish tongue can twist Her words to suit her will! Her words are smooth; So smooth that when one grasps them they escape The hand like shining, slippery, squirming snakes! And she has subtle words, caressing words, And words that set the mind on fire; hot words That burn, and haughty ones that swell and puff Like stallions' nostrils, and toss high their heads! Oh ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... day there was an ebb; the old slippery rocks, the old weedy places reappeared. Naturally, there was a shrinking of courage as misfortune ceased to be a mere announcement, and began to disclose itself as a grievous tyrannical inmate. At first—that ugly drive at an end—it was still Offendene that Gwendolen had ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... ammunition, of which they had been in need through the wretched management of everything that depended upon head-quarters; their ranks rallied and poured deadly volleys of Minie bullets upon the masses of the enemy struggling with the French. The slopes of the plateau were strewn with dead, and slippery with gore; the Russians, foiled everywhere, retreated. The French, fresh for pursuit, would not pursue unless the weary guardsmen led the van. Canrobert, the successor of Arnaud in command of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... beds to the twenty-five biggest guests. As to the rest, turn them out!" So the dwarf went to bed, and each of the magicians had a splendid room, and twenty-five of the biggest guests had beds, and the rest were all turned out. As it was pouring down rain, and freezing, and cold, and wet, and slippery (for the weather was very unsettled on this mountain), and all these guests, who now found themselves outside of the castle gates, lived many miles away, and as none of them had any hats, or knew the way home, they ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... the end. It was when we were in the fogs off the coast of Newfoundland. The work that tired one to death was not sufficient to keep one warm; the cold mist seemed to soak through one's flesh as well as one's slops, and to cling to one's bones as it clung to the ship's gear. The deck was slippery and cold, everything, except the funnel, was sticky and cold, and the fog-horn made day and night hideous with noises like some unmusical giant trying in vain to hit the note Fa. The density of the fog varied. Sometimes we could not see each ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... soldier, more dead than alive, had raised himself on his knees, when that demon in female attire rose again and embracing him most tenderly, bit his cheek so hard as to draw a regular stream of blood. I could stand it no longer, and proceeded on to the slippery ice to try to separate them, but hardly was I within reach than I was presented with a sound blow on my left knee from the mallet which she was still manipulating with alarming dexterity, by which I ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... severely, and was down all day, but we march, as I have always found that moving is the best remedy for fever: I have, however, no medicine whatever. We passed over the neck of Mount Kinyima, north-west of Moenekuss, through very slippery forest, and encamped on the banks of ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... shingled roof from the blue sky above. The old wooden race, on which the young green mosses shone like a coating of fresh paint on a faded surface, ran for a short distance over the brook, where the broad yellow leaves drifted down to the deep pond below. Across the slippery poplar log, which divided the mill from the road and the house occupied by the miller, there was a stretch of good corn land, where the corn stood in shocks after the harvest, and beyond this the feathery bloom of the broomsedge ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... was the secret, was it? He had tried to soap Baby, bit by bit, as he had seen Winny do, holding him, wrapped in a towel, on his knees—a disastrous failure. It was incredible how slippery he was.) ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... ship more hopeless and appalling. Every movement of her was ominous of the end of her agony and of the beginning of ours. We staggered away from the door, and, alarmed by a sudden roll, fell down in a bunch. It appeared to us that the side of the house was more smooth than glass and more slippery than ice. There was nothing to hang on to but a long brass hook used sometimes to keep back an open door. Wamibo held on to it and we held on to Wamibo, clutching our Jimmy. He had completely collapsed now. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... they worked! The slippery wet rope that bound the little forms was knotted several times, and the girls thought they must scream with the nightmare of it before they got ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... Have we a hole in the bow?" he questioned, of the frightened lookouts, who had been sent spinning across the slippery deck. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... quite terrified me. Without a false step I dashed round the slippery banks and dived again at his heels into the sea of bushes and tree trunks. We were now in the thick of the very dense belt that ran around the outer edge of the plantation, and the field was near; yet so dark was the tangle that it was ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... progress and career in active occupation, and in the exercise of high authority, at that period of life which, in all other places, has been employed in the course of a rigid education. To put the matter in a few words,—they are transferred from slippery youth to perilous independence, from perilous independence to inordinate expectations, from inordinate expectations to boundless power. School-boys without tutors, minors without guardians, the world is let loose upon them with all its temptations, and they are let loose upon the world ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fresh in our faces; the tiny wavelets run up with a silvery ripple, and die on the white sand; across the expanse of water the white buildings of Tiberias and Capernaum gleam forth. With gunwale all wet and slippery a fishing smack is drawn up on the deserted shore; near it the nets unbroken, although they had been heavy with finny spoils; yonder the remnants of a fisherman's breakfast and the dying embers ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... reply. His conscience was oppressed; he had a touch of imagination. He thought of the soft fingers which had bound up his head that morning: the handkerchief—her handkerchief!—was still around it. Now those fingers would be gripping at the slippery stones of the Vaal in a struggle for life, or more probably they were already limp in death, with little grains of gravel sticking beneath the nails. It was a painful thought, but he consoled himself by remembering ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... alfaquis, by his command, had denounced his son Boabdil as an apostate doomed by Heaven to misfortune, still the latter had many adherents among the common people. Whenever, therefore, any act of the old monarch was displeasing to the turbulent multitude, they were prone to give him a hint of the slippery nature of his standing by shouting out the name of Boabdil el Chico. Long experience had instructed Muley Abul Hassan in the character of the inconstant people over whom he ruled. "A successful inroad into the country of the unbelievers," said he, "will make more ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Out at either side, as he lay there still unable to rise, he caught glimpses through the spume-drive, glimpses of swift white water, that broke and creamed as it whirled past; that jetted high; that, hissing, swept away, away, to unknown depths below that narrow, slippery ledge. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... in their fright turned and trampled down the men behind. Rapidly the panic increased as the showers of missiles came tearing down, and soon the whole army was in a state of wild terror and confusion—a condition greatly assisted by the slippery nature of the ground. Then, with wild shouts, and brandishing their iron-studded clubs and their formidable halberts and scythes, down the mountain-side rushed, with the fury of their native avalanche, the heroic Confederates; and falling on their foes literally slew them by thousands. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and the great bales, that others were sewing up, weighing, and branding, were mounting high in the transepts of the building—the two arms of the capital T. The air was thick with woolly particles and the smell of sheep; the floor was dark and slippery, and everything one touched humid with the impalpable grease of the silky fleeces circulating all about the shed. Strict, downright, dirty business was the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... old. No leaves on four-year-old wood, therefore the leaves fall off the white pine the third year. Ask pupils to try to find out by observation when the leaves fall off the pines. Note the fragrance of the leaves, and that they are sometimes put into "pine" cushions, also, how slippery they are to ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... twilight under thee Walks Davenant, pensive in the paths where he, The blithest throat that ever carolled love In music made of morning's merriest heart, Glad Suckling, stumbled from his seat above And reeled on slippery roads of ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... stumbling and bolting along the great stones and ruts of the causeway; this we cleared without any accident, farther than my slipping once into the ditch, and now found ourselves upon the open hill-side, splashing freely over the soaked turf and slippery pathway. I was in high spirits, and though squirting the black puddle to my knees at every step, and seeing no more of the road I was to travel on than another one in advance, yet faced onward with great gaiety and good humour. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... the sea that surges through the door, bringing much wreckage with it. In a moment the place is so full that another cupful could not find standing room. Some slippery ones are squeezed upwards and remain aloft as warnings. JOHN has jumped on to the stair, and harangues the flood vainly like another Canute. It is something about freedom and noble minds, and, though unheard, goes to all heads, including ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... might have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake would have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they feared, vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with the inferiors whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a tactful word, or to humiliate with an ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... will venture to read this fragment mercifully dropped in Court by the child confederate of this slippery witness: it is headed Chorus, my lord; it doubtless forms a last part to the ridiculous song we all listened to in pained surprise. I contend, my Lord, that this fragment which has come into my possession is seditious; ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... and cautiously she tried it, but the continual spattering of the water had made the board on which she stood so slippery, that before her face could reach the stream, she came very near tumbling headlong, and so taking more of a cold bath than she wished for. So she contented herself with the drops her hands could bring to her face a scanty supply; but those drops were ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... avenues, even at that time adding beauty to the new city. The weeks I spent in Edinburgh are among the most memorable of my European experiences. To the Highlands, to the Lakes, in short excursions; to Glasgow, seen to disadvantage under gray skies and with slippery pavements. Through England rapidly to Dover and to Calais, where I found the name of M. Dessein still belonging to the hotel I sought, and where I read Sterne's "Preface Written in a Desobligeante," ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Frog had choked and spluttered and hopped about on the big lily pad trying to find out what it all meant. He thought it such a good joke that he couldn't keep it to himself, so when he saw Little Joe Otter coming to try his slippery slide he swam across to tell him all about it. Little Joe Otter laughed and laughed until he had to hold his sides. Then they both swam back to hide behind the Big Rock to watch until Grandfather Frog should forget all about it, and they ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... and a tremendous splashing, and Dick Winthorpe struggled to his feet, wiping the black fluid bog from his eyes, to see Solomon hauled right out, slowly at first, then faster and faster, till he was literally run over the slippery surface to ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... said: "Faint not, though your bleeding feet O'er these slippery paths of sleet Move but painfully and slowly; Other feet than yours have bled; Other tears than yours been shed Courage! lose not heart or hope; On the mountains' southern slope ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... (prancing forward, with a look of great glee) "what, a'n't you got out of that there passion yet? why then, I'll tell you what to do to cool yourself; call upon your old friend, Monseer Slippery, who was with you at Ranelagh, and give my service to him, and tell him, if he sets any store by your health, that I desire he'll give you such another souse as he did before: he'll know what I mean, and I'll warrant you ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... decided to do his own cooking, but in three days every dish in the house was dirty; the teapot was full of leaves, the stove full of ashes, and the floor was slippery. ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... little the night before, and kind Franz must have slept less; for he had given her his meagre bedroom and spent the night on the narrowest, hardest, most slippery of sofas in the sitting-room of the Bayswater lodging-house where Karen had found the Lippheims very cheaply, very grimly, not to say greasily, installed. It was no wonder that Franz's eyes had been so heavy, his face so puffed and pale that morning; ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... out into the slippery street, and turned their faces homeward. "I am glad, Lizzie," continued Bertha, as they turned corner after corner, "that our paths run together so far; having company is so much better than being alone this forlorn afternoon. And remember, I desire to know the answer to my invitation as early ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... forest was very bad, the mud deep and tenacious, the hills steep and slippery, and the mules had to struggle and plunge along through from two to three feet of sticky clay. One part, named the Nispral, was especially steep and difficult to descend, the road being worn into great ruts. We crossed the ranges and brooks nearly at right angles, and were always ascending ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... office of natural skates. So rapidly does the shell increase, that the frog does not fill up again till spring, when the antlers bud out. With this singular conformation of the foot, it has a lateral spread; and an additional assistance for maintaining a foothold on slippery surfaces is given by numerous long, stiff bristles which grow downward at the fetlock, curving over entirely between the divisions. The cariboo is thus enabled to proceed over the snow, to cross frozen lakes, or ascend icy precipices, with an ease which places him, when in flight, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... less of an exact science, and character a more incalculable element, than he had been taught in the schools. In the light of this revised impression, his own footing seemed less secure than he had imagined, and the rungs of the ladder he was climbing more slippery than they had looked from below. He was not without the reassuring sense of having made himself, in certain small ways, necessary to Mr. Spence; and this conviction was confirmed by Draper's reiterated assurance of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the big Salle Schmidt, the struggle began. It was not only the young and agile who raced each other to the tables. Men who looked as if they might have pulled one foot from the grave in order to reach the Casino, hobbled wildly across the slippery floor. Fat elderly ladies waddled with indomitable speed, like women tied up in bags for an obstacle race; and an invalid gentleman, a famous player, with his attendant—the first to get in—was swept along in a small bath chair ahead of the crowd, an expression of fierce exhilaration ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is hardly apparent, but in a few seconds one enters it down a steep and slippery path of well-worn stones. On either side are Turkish bazaars, out of which Turkish faces peer at the infidel dogs. There is very little of the Montenegrin element apparent. We only walked through the town once, as our destination was Prstan, the actual seaport ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... cordial. Life was even grander than she had thought!... She drooped into an intoxication. Among all that he had said, he had not said that he was not stronger than she. He had not relinquished his authority. She felt it, sitting almost beneath him in the slippery chair. She knew that she would yield to him. She desired to yield to him. Her mind was full of sensuous images based on the abdication of her will in ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... that, in a single instant, everything on the berth-deck—pots, kids, sailors, pieces of beef, bread-bags, clothes-bags, and barges—were tossed indiscriminately from side to side. It was impossible to stay one's self; there was nothing but the bare deck to cling to, which was slippery with the contents of the kids, and heaving under us as if there were a volcano in the frigate's hold. While we were yet sliding in uproarious crowds—all seated—the windows of the deck opened, and floods of brine descended, simultaneously with a violent lee-roll. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... grandeur are comfortably accessible and intimately enjoyable for more than two months each summer. The greatest places of the Canadian Rockies are never accessible comfortably; alpinists may clamber over their icy crevasses and scale their slippery heights in August, but the usual traveller will view their noblest spectacles from ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... windy, and wild. The New York streets were at their worst—sloppy, slippery, and sodden; the sky lowering over those murky streets one uniform pall of inky gloom. A bad, desolate, blood-chilling ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... attracted by our futile signals to the ship, and brought up pleasant visions of swarthy pirates, under the leadership of our interpreter, making us walk the plank, or fighting against us to the death on a deck slippery with ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... bottom of the stream were round and slippery, and the current swept along strongly, waist-deep, in the middle. More-over Robin had a heavier load than the other had borne, nor did he know the ford. So he went stumbling along now stepping into a deep hole, now stumbling over ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... grows wilder and grander. Seaward tower the rocky cliffs, falling sheer to their base, jagged slate rocks which are the home of gulls and ravens, with precipitous slopes of short and slippery grass, where the mountain sheep feed; inland the brown moor stretches, bare and open to the sky, with a cluster of little cottages and a grey church hidden and sheltered in ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... the snow—that you find slippery?" he asked, not requiring an answer. A moment later ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... by him as well as the comparison of particular arts—weaving, the refining of gold, the learning to read, music, statuary, painting, medicine, the art of the pilot—all of which occur in this dialogue alone: though he is also aware that 'comparisons are slippery things,' and may often give a false clearness to ideas. We shall find, in the Philebus, a division of sciences into practical and speculative, and into more or less speculative: here we have the ...
— Statesman • Plato
... in spite of my dread, and after a little twitching and shaking, with the lookers-on making remarks which only fidgeted me instead of helping, I managed to make the noose glide over the slippery body. ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... thrown overboard by a sudden lurch while walking upon it. Immediately afterwards, lines were rove along the stanchions, to prevent the same thing happening again. The few feet of deck upon which we could walk were slippery with ice, and we kept below, smoking gloomily and saying little. Another violent snow-storm came on from the north, but in the afternoon we caught sight of some rocks off Carlscrona, and made the light on Oland in the evening. The wind had been blowing so freshly that our captain suspected Calmar ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... lists, when there appeared to all the judges such a chance of his winning the prize, seemed incomprehensible to the spectators, and still more to the rival candidates. Some settled it with the exclamation "Inoui!" Others pronounced that it was English bizarrerie. Every thing seemed to smooth the slippery path of temptation—the indifference of her husband—the imprudence—of her aunt, and the sophistry of Madame de Clairville—the general customs of French society—the peculiar profligacy of the society into which he happened to be thrown—the opinion which he saw prevailed, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... could bring an inhabitant of Venus or Mars to the earth and ask him to judge of life on the earth from Zola's novels, he would say most assuredly: "This life is sometimes quite pure, like 'Le Reve,' but in general it is a thing which smells bad, is slippery, moist, dreadful." And even if the theories on which Zola has based his works were, as they are not, acknowledged truths, what a lack of pity to represent life in such a way to the people, who must live just ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... thunder-cloud, orders given in quick succession, then rally of men at the clew-lines, then a rush aloft and out on the straining yard, every movement of the vessel intensified, your feet sliding on the slippery foot-rope, with nothing to hold on to but the flapping sail, which threatens to knock you overboard every moment. The weather earing is passed, and then, "Light out to leeward;" you have your point barely tied when the yard gives a terrible ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... away when you have thought her won, For I'd be fed and hungry at one time. I think that all deep passion is but a kiss In the mid battle, and a difficult peace 'Twixt oil and water, candles and dark night, Hill-side and hollow, the hot-footed sun, And the cold sliding slippery-footed moon, A brief forgiveness between opposites That have been hatreds for three times the age Of his long 'stablished ground. Here's Concobar; So I'll be done, but keep beside me still, For while he talks of hammered bronze and asks ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... preparation more suitable to Timon's poverty, nothing but a little smoke and lukewarm water, fit feast for this knot of mouth-friends, whose professions were indeed smoke, and their hearts lukewarm and slippery as the water with which Timon welcomed his astonished guests, bidding them, "Uncover, dogs, and lap;" and before they could recover their surprise, sprinkling it in their faces, that they might have enough, and throwing dishes and all after them, who now ran huddling out, lords, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... said Sanders in a low voice, his hand on Hamilton's back, as they walked to the gangway. "Watch the Isisi and sit on Bosambo—especially Bosambo, for he is a mighty slippery devil." ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... the slippery ground beside the stones and contemplated his purchase. All at once his heart sank and he felt a profound disgust for everything within the range of his vision. He was suddenly aware of his own total and hopeless ignorance of everything connected ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... world seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... long 'fore the old dog'll git down to business this mornin'," he muttered to Thayor in his low voice, as he steadied him along a slippery log. "The dog says Freme's allys sot on keepin' up too high. He thinks them deer is feedin' on what they kin git low down in the green timber underneath them big slides. I ain't of course, sayin' nothin' agin Freme. Thar ain't a better ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... not been seen on the island for many a day, if ever. It was not a really dark night, so that lanterns were all that were necessary. Every one was helping either to haul up the boats or carry the bags to a high and dry spot, which was not easy work over slippery seaweed. The captain has sent ashore for us a ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... declare the truth about matters of high interest which a man honours and loves among wise men who love him need occasion no fear or faltering in his mind; but to carry on an argument when you are yourself only a hesitating enquirer, which is my condition, is a dangerous and slippery thing; and the danger is not that I shall be laughed at (of which the fear would be childish), but that I shall miss the truth where I have most need to be sure of my footing, and drag my friends after me in my fall. And I pray Nemesis not ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Giroudeau was quitting; cutting off, however, half the salary. Moreover, daily, at five o'clock, Giroudeau audited the accounts and carried away the receipts. Coloquinte, the old veteran, who was the office boy and did errands, also kept an eye on the slippery Philippe; who was, however, behaving properly. A salary of six hundred francs, and the five hundred of his cross sufficed him to live, all the more because, living in a warm office all day and at the theatre on a free pass every ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... But on the slippery piece of rock upon which he was standing he had no room to do this without losing his balance and tumbling over; so Power had in a moment taken off his own shoes and stockings, turned up his trousers above the knees, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... hear, though dulled by distance, the crash of the falling bergs into the foaming water beneath. I could not approach nearer for crevasses hemmed me in; the ice showed itself clear of snow and was so slippery I could hardly stand. One false step now, one small slip and I should disappear down one of these green rents, swallowed up in between those gleaming crystal sides to remain one with the glacier for all time. My idea had been to approach the face of the glacier from the top, but I found this to ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... arm to catch it. For the way now lay where path was none, and none might go but by himself, and only go by daring. Through blackberry brakes that tried to pluck me back, though I but strained towards fruitless growths of mountain-laurel; up slippery steeps to barren heights, where stood none to welcome. Fairy land not yet, thought I, though the morning is here ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... down the hill into the Valley of Humiliation. It was a steep hill, and the way was slippery; but they were very careful, so they got down pretty well. When they were down in the Valley,[172] Piety said to Christiana, This is the place where Christian your husband met with the foul fiend Apollyon, and where they had that dreadful ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... much as twenty years ago he would have swarmed up the ratlines. "Make yourself small," he commanded, as Skin, at imminent risk of falling, drew to one side before his onset. Cai was past him in a jiffy, over the eaves, balancing himself with miraculous ease on the slippery thatch. "Now ease up ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... trifling for the moment compared to this: there was nothing to be seen of the boat! The furious discharge of the squall would increase her weight by half filling her with water; the slashing wet of the rain would also render the icy slope up which we had hauled her as slippery as a sheet for skaters; a single shock or blast of wind might suffice to start her. Be this as it will, she had launched herself—she was gone! We strained our sight, but no faintest blotch of shadow could we distinguish amid the white water rushing smoothly off ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... carrying them far enough away, they said, to take them away from a peace to a truce, which was something far less secure than a peace, but the continuance of this floating, uncertain armistice would be the most dangerous insecurity of all. This would be going from firm land to slippery ice, and from slippery ice into the water. By such a process, they would have neither war nor peace—neither liberty of government nor freedom of commerce—and they unanimously refused to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the great world which he discusses so complacently and approvingly. The savant reposing in a palace-car, which is rushing through the midnight storm at a rate of fifty miles an hour, regards his situation with composure; but the unlettered engineer, whose eye is on the track,—who notes every slippery curve, swollen stream and overhanging bowlder,—who feels the motive power of that proud train swaying and plunging like a restless demon beneath his feet, is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... window and it was high up. There was no furniture but the bench on which he was sitting. But Tim was the son of a mason, and it was not for nothing that he had lived with gipsies for so long. He was a perfect cat at climbing, and as slippery as an eel in the way he could squeeze himself through places which you would have thought scarcely wide enough for his arm. His sobs ceased, his face lighted up again; he drew out of his pocket his one dearest treasure, from which night or day he was never separated, his pocket-knife, ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... race had been run. There had been no deceit in that. But then Silverbridge had promised that he would not "plunge." There are, however, promises which from their very nature may be broken without falsehood. Plunging is a doubtful word, and the path down to it, like all doubtful paths,—is slippery and easy! If that assurance with which Mr. Moreton ended his letter could only be made true, he could bring himself to forgive even this offence. The boy must be made to settle himself in life. The Duke ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... railway approaches ever are. Perhaps they appear more than usually hideous when built amid a fair green country, where for miles and miles one sees nothing but flowering hedgerows and soft pastures shaded by the graceful foliage of sheltering trees. Then the shining, slippery iron of the railway running like a knife through the verdant bosom of the land almost hurts the eyes, and the accessories of station-sheds, coal-trucks, and the like, affront the taste like an ill-done foreground in an otherwise pleasing picture. A slight sense of depression and foreboding ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... promised my betrothed a house in Cavendish or Portman-square, and a better-built landau than Mr. Sheldon's, in the remote future. With those dear eyes for my pole-stars, I felt myself strong enough to clamber up the slippery ascent to the woolsack. The best and purest ambition must surely be that which is only a ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... said, "Assuredly there needed nothing less than the example of the Savior to induce me to submit to such an indignity." He then reached his hands out to the executioners, and said, "Do as you will; I will drink the cup to the dregs." Leaning upon the arm of his friend, he ascended the steep and slippery steps of the guillotine; then, walking across the platform firmly, he looked for a moment intently upon the sharp blade of the ax, and turning suddenly to the populace, exclaimed, in a voice clear and distinct, which penetrated to the remotest extremities of the square, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame, Must be of high resolve; but what is he That thinks to gain a second Caesar's name? Whoe'er he be that climbs above his strength, And climbeth high, the greater is his fall! For though he sit awhile, we see at length, His slippery place no firmness hath at all, Great is his bruise that falleth from on high. This warneth me that I should not aspire; Examples should prevail; I care not, I! I perish must or have what I desire! This humour doth with mine ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... He rode in continual expectation of trouble. She was forever trying short cuts and getting snared in the fallen logs. Once she had been scraped from her saddle by an overhanging bough, and now, in attempting to find an easier path down a slippery ridge, her horse had fallen with her. Ward was ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland |
