"Touch-and-go" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he remarks that Captain Soutar had landed "the small stores and nine casks of oil with all the activity of a smuggler." And it was one thing to land, another to get on board again. I have here a passage from the diary, where it seems to have been touch-and-go. "I landed at Tarbetness, on the eastern side of the point, in a mere gale or blast of wind from west-south-west, at 2 p.m. It blew so fresh that the captain, in a kind of despair, went off to the ship, leaving myself and the steward ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... titter, however, that Cibber can produce this afternoon, or evening,[A] nor does the audience take the usual relish in that touch-and-go rubbish of a duet sung by a supposed Indian and his love, a duet in which the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Versailles is here. This Monsieur Doltaire speaks for it. I know not if all courts in the world are the same, but if so, I am at heart no courtier; though I love the sparkle, the sharp play of wit and word, the very touch-and-go of weapons. I am in love with life, and I wish to live to be old, very old, that I will have known it all, from helplessness to helplessness again, missing nothing, even though much be sad to feel and bear. Robert, I should have gone on many years, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... say hearts are often caught on the rebound, and if all ill-treated suitors spoke out warmly yet sternly like Sam Winnington, and did not merely fence about and either sneer or whine, more young fools might be saved, even when at touch-and-go with their folly, after the merciful fate of Clary and to the benefit ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... It may be much more and it can't be much less, What with wrangling and jangling to drive a man daft, And rank bad dis-cip-line both forrard and aft, A ship that's ill-found and a crew out of 'and, And a touch-and-go chance she may never reach land, But go down in a squall or broach to in a sea, For them drunken skippers—they're the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various |
