"Tricksy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fill them up with paint. Her forehead becoming unduly yellow, and the temples too shiny, she "laid on" a little white, and renewed the veins of her youth with a tracery of blue. All this color gave an exaggerated liveliness to her eyes which were already tricksy enough, so that the mask of her face would seem to a stranger even more than fantastic, though her friends and acquaintances, accustomed to this fictitious ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... with his mouse-like eyes, Peeps from the mortise in surprise At such strange quiet after day's hard din; Then boldly ventures out, And looks around, And with his hollow feet Treads his small evening beat, Darting upon his prey In such a tricksy, winsome sort of way, His delicate marauding seems no sin. And still the curtains swing, But noiselessly; The bells a melancholy murmur ring, As tears were in the sky: More heavily the shadows fall, Like the black foldings of a pall, Where ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Prajapati which are preserved in the Orphic hymns and in the Brahmanas. The conduct of the earlier dynasties of classical gods towards each other was as notoriously cruel and loathsome as their behaviour towards mortals was tricksy and capricious. The classical gods, with all their immortal might, are, by a mythical contradiction of the religious conception, regarded as capable of fear and pain, and are led into scrapes as ludicrous ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... sat and watched a little boat, Her name the 'Tricksy Jane,' A queer old tub laid up ashore, But we could see her plain. To see her and not haul her up Cost ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... than from desire to hurt his neighbors. In fact, he never did positively touch a bird, to my knowledge, though he always acted as though he intended to annihilate them. He could hardly be called malicious; rather (shall we say?) mischievous, and like Ariel "a tricksy spirit." ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... by one appearing In their lower sky, Come a host uncounted Like the stars on high, Flashing lights uncertain, Ever changing place,— Tricksy constellations That we ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... winds, and beaten down with rain, How can the roses dare to trust again The tricksy mistress whom they once adored? Even the glad heaven, chilled with stormy stain, Grudges its skylark pilgrims ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... same wilful and perverse mind will stand impenetrably dumb and blind before the noblest and sweetest prospect, and decline to receive any impression at all. What is perhaps the oddest characteristic of the tricksy spirit is that it often chooses moments of intense discomfort and fatigue to master some scene, and take its indelible picture. I suppose that the reason of this is that the mind makes, at such moments, a vigorous effort to protest against the tyranny of the vile ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as I sat in that open boat, midst of the Sunderbunds, at my domestic antipodes, happened to me the most wondrous transformation which the tricksy stage-carpenters and scene-shifters of the brain have ever devised. For this same far-stretching horizon, which had just been alluring my soul into the depths of the creative period, suddenly contracted itself four-square into the somewhat yellowed walls of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Darling of the Gods and The Rose of the Rancho. Color, light, and music, artistically blended, will hold the crowd better than the most absorbing story. This is the reason for the vogue of musical comedy, with its pretty girls, and gaudy shifts of scenery and lights, and tricksy, tripping ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... again and again! What crunching of the sturdy, dark-colored bread between the great knuckles! What huge helps of the famous sauces! What insatiable appetites! What nice appreciation of the right touch of the tricksy garlic! What nodding of heads, clinking of glasses, and warmth of friendship established over the wine-cups! At dessert everyone talked at once. On one occasion the subject of Gambetta's death was touched on; all the table, as one man, broke out into ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... them so gayly that her hard heart became a proverb through all the region round, wherever the rejected travelled. It is true that Mr. Erne had often expressed his film of dissatisfaction with the conventual results, and had planned an attack on matters of more solid learning; but, tricksy as a sprite, Eloise had escaped his designs, broken through his regulations, implored, just out of shackles, a year's gambol in liberty, and had made herself too charming to be resisted in her plea; and if, feeling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... dear discretion, how his words are suited! The fool hath planted in his memory An army of good words: and I do know A many fools, that stand in better place, Garnish'd like him, that for a tricksy ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... I would have watched any child of mine upon whom was passing so strange a change; but thou knowest that Kate has ever been dear to me—I have liked to watch her in her tricksy moods. She has been more full of affection for me than her graver sisters, and even her little whims and faults that we have had to check have but endeared her to me the more. The whimsies of the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... too-easily-got sufficiency, as in the case of the sago-eaters, often quenching the desire for all besides; and it is possible that the men of the richest ant-heaps may sink even into squalor. But suppose they do not; suppose our tricksy instrument of human nature, when we play upon it this new tune, should respond kindly; suppose no one to be damped and none exasperated by the new conditions, the whole enterprise to be financially sound—a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... else she was too confident in her own power to believe that he could relinquish her; at all events, Phoebe had sagacity enough to infer that she was not indifferent to him, though as the provoking damsel ran down-stairs, Phoebe's loyal spirit first admitted a doubt whether the tricksy sprite might not prove as great a torment as a delight to Robin. 'However,' reflected she, 'I shall make the less mischief if I set it down ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite! With spirits feather-light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin— (Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!) Thou imp of mirth ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Maggie Mooney, and they got to be chummy. The friendships of the Bowery by night may not be of a very exalted type, but when death breaks them it leaves nothing to the survivor. That is the reason suicides there happen in pairs. The story of Tilly Lorrison and Tricksy came from the Tenderloin not long ago. This one of Maggie Mooney and Nigger Martha was theirs ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Babylonian, and Greek. The character of these early transformers and creators is that of the communities in which they originate. Morally they represent both the higher and the lower sides of life, and this is true in all periods—the Hindu Indra is as tricksy and unmoral as the North American Coyote, and the early form of Zeus resembles these and other savage figures.[1423] The conceptions of the creator grew more and more ethically good, but the lower representations continued to exist side by ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... near us unafraid, Some strange enchantment doth the forest hold— Was that a sungleam, or a wand of gold By tricksy Puck or wanton Ariel swayed? Old oaks and beeches open wide their doors And hamadryads veiled in golden sheen Floating diaphanous o'er robes of green Walk with still ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... lovely star to long for, 5 Bends her splendour awhile to tricksy frolic; Peradventure a careful heart beguiling, Pardie, heavier ache perhaps ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... speak his mind, and end his doubts? Ruth had been more tricksy than usual that day, and in a flow of spirits quite inconsistent, it would seem, in a young lady ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... nameless brook that winds between them with a course which, in its infinite variety, clearness, and rapidity, seems to emulate the bold rivers of the north, of whom, far more than of our lazy southern streams, our rivulet presents a miniature likeness. Never was water more exquisitely tricksy:—now darting over the bright pebbles, sparkling and flashing in the light with a bubbling music, as sweet and wild as the song of the woodlark; now stretching quietly along, giving back the rich tufts ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... poverty—he returned to it in a state of proscription—although he perhaps felt comforted by an epistle of welcome from Pope, which did not, it is likely, affect him as it does us with the notion that its tricksy author was ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... soup, fried chicken and hominy. She fed him with the anxious solicitude of a nurse. Indeed Aunt Liza throughout evinced the greatest willingness to make friends; she was so fat and comfortable she just couldn't help it. It was only when Evan started to question her that she showed what a tricksy spirit inhabited the ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... species bore,—obviously West Side relics,—and she gave them the same whole-hearted interest she had given the majestic one herself. The two older, experienced women gazed at the scene half enviously. This was another magic quality that the girl possessed,—especially feminine, a tricksy gift of the Gods, quite outside the moral categories and therefore desired by all—charm. Charm made all that mob so happy to be there in the stuffy quarters, struggling to appease their thirst with the dregs of tepid sherbet; charm compelled the warm, enthusiastic ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... child of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. A piquant, tricksy sprite, as naughty as she is bewitching—a creature of fire and air, more elfish than human, at once her mother's torment and her treasure.—Nathaniel Hawthorne, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... in Canada. He writes every week. They're all right now. That other Rosalie that they brought in is looking after them. She's looking after them, that elf, that sprite, that tricksy scrap, that sunshine thing. She calls Harry father and Rosalie she calls mother. She has all her meals with them. There's no nurse. It's breakfast she loves best. She's on the itch all breakfast. When breakfast's done she's off her chair and hopping. She trumpets ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the woods early and late, setting snares for birds and rabbits, and was ever on the alert for a sight of the Hulder's golden hair and scarlet bodice, the tricksy sprite persisted ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... this first law of economics. Production exists solely for the sake of consumption, and must therefore—as ought long since to have been seen—depend, both in its amount and in the character of its means, upon the amount of consumption. And if some tricksy Puck were to carry off overnight to some European country all our wealth and all our machinery, without taking to that country our social institutions as well, it is as certain that that country would not be a farthing richer than it was before, as it is that China would not be richer if all the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... went, the tricksy youth Wandered afar from the maiden fair; Many a plot he laid, in sooth, Wherein the maid could have no share Sowing his seeds, Bringing forth weeds, Seldom a ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... in these dusk lands. Then shall thy children, shadowy bands That fly thy fond caress, with them abide In closest fellowship. And though they hide Sometimes from human ken their better selves, Still loved, remain these tricksy elves. Though yet indeed some quips and pranks they play, 'Tis but a jest, men know, when far away The flickering marsh-fires swift they light And children follow their false tapers bright Among the spongy bogs. The ship-lad smiles, When distant 'mid the waves the phantom isles Rise green. 'Tis ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... he said harshly. "You are all alike, you women, with your cat-like purrings and tricksy eyes that surpass most other things in deceit. I do not deny both that you know well how to feign and that I would like to believe you, but you must prove ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Heavens! When I think of all the cackle I have turned out for the heroes of the Halls!!! No wonder that the task I've now to tackle— Something new and smart for TRICKSY TRIP!—appals. I have tried three several songs—and had to "stock 'em," She's imperative; her last Great Hit's played out, And she wants "a new big thing that's bound to knock 'em." And "she'd like it by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... his pangs a little longer!" cried Miriam, turning to Kenyon with a tricksy, fitful kind of mirth, that served to hide some solemn necessity, too sad and serious to be looked at in its naked aspect. "You love us both, I think, and will be content to suffer for our sakes, one other day. Do I ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Turk-like brandishing a scimitar O'er anapasts in comic-trimeter; Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,' [Footnote: "The Suppliants," a fragment of a play by Aeschylus.] While we lounged on at our indebted ease: Instead of which, a tricksy demon Sets her at Titus or Philemon! When ignorance wags his ears of leather And hates God's word, 'tis altogether; Nor leaves he his congenial thistles To go and browse on Paul's Epistles. —And you, ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... between curiosity and repulsion towards the wife who was to be discarded by mutual consent. The sight of the scenes of his early childhood had stirred up warmer recollections of the pretty little playful torment, who through the vista of years assumed the air of a tricksy elf rather than the little vixen he used to think her. His curiosity had been further stimulated by the sight of his rival, Narcisse, whose effeminate ornaments, small stature, and seat on horseback filled Sir Marmaduke's ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sort of ethical pleasure in it, as being of the good tradition, of the old honest, simple material, from which pleasing effects in literature and civilization were wrought. He liked giving the children books, and writing tricksy fancies in these, where he masked as a fairy prince; and as long as he lived he remembered ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... an ungrateful beggar too," said Paragot. He went on talking, but I heard him not; for my childish mind quickly associated him with Prospero, and I wondered where lay his magic staff with which he could split pines and liberate tricksy spirits, and whether he had a beautiful daughter hidden in some bower of Tavistock Street, and whether the cadaverous Cherubino might not be a metamorphosed Ferdinand. He appeared the embodiment of all wisdom and power, and yet he had the air of one cheated of his kingdom. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke |
