"Fussy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trustee and would-be lover, Bill Chester, proposed to come out and join the party there. That was something to look forward to, for Sylvia was very fond of him, though he sometimes made her angry by his fussy ways. Chester had not approved of her going to Paris by herself, and he would certainly have shaken his head had he known of ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... by hand, or a small motor-boat will take us over the lake to the foot of Himmelbjerget. Our motor-boat, with fussy throb, carries us away down the narrow river which opens into the lake. The life on the banks of the river is very interesting. As we sail past the pretty villas, with background of cool, green beech-woods, we notice that a Danish garden must always have a summer-house ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... of his heart in the other. Willy had a little harmless, childish dandyism about him which his mother rather encouraged. "I'd rather he'd be this way than the other," she said when people were inclined to smile at his little fussy habits. "It won't hurt him any to be nice and particular, if ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... upon his face, spectacles, a red button nose, and aged black raiment. He was evidently enormously impressed by my uncle's monetary greatness, and by his own inkling of our identity, and he shone and brimmed over with tact and fussy helpfulness. He was eager to share the watching of the bedside with me, he proffered services with both hands, and as I was now getting into touch with affairs in London again, and trying to disentangle the gigantic details of the smash from the papers I had succeeded in getting from Biarritz, I ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... blotting-paper on which may be read a portion of her letter to a young man whom she indiscreetly though innocently adores, nothing very serious comes of his machinations, and our interest in the book is mainly confined to the emotional relations between Sir Charles, a fussy elderly martinet, his too young wife, and Maisie, her seventeen-year-old step-daughter, who varies from deeper moods to those of a silly and self-willed child. Then there is Captain Mayhune himself, a man of good impulses and evil, in whom, somehow or other, though never without a struggle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... China Cat," said her sister Angelina. "She is so white that the least speck shows on her. Real white cats are very fussy about keeping themselves clean, so I do not see why a white China Cat should not be treated the same way. You dust the Nodding Donkey, Geraldine, and I'll dust ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... to dine with him at Welden's to talk over some private business about house property.*** Wynell (the authority for Godfrey's being 'master of a dangerous secret') did expect to meet Godfrey at dinner, and, knowing the fears to which Godfrey often confessed, might himself have originated, by his fussy inquiries, the rumour that Sir Edmund was missing. The wild excitement of the town might add 'murdered by Papists,' and the rumour might really get into a letter from London of Saturday night, reaching Tixall by Monday morning. North says: 'It was in every one's mouth, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... mothered him. "Mrs. King really slept," she said cheerfully. "She said she had a good nap, and dreamed!" She sat down in a low chair and made herself relax comfortably; only her eyes were tense. She never did fussy things with her hands, Honor Carmody; no one had ever seen her with a needle or a crochet hook. She was either doing things, vital, definite things which required motion, or she was still, and she rested people ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... away the old man, not without some slight compunction. "But in my opinion she's too dark for such somber dresses. I've told her so a score of times." Then as he watched the woman before him rolling up the goods he proceeded to ask with fussy importunity what she thought the express charges were likely to be, for he wanted to pay the whole bill and be ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... uneventful, save for one fact—at the Staatsbahnhof, at Vienna, just before our train left for Budapest, a queer, fussy little old man in brown entered and was given ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... is growing into night as the train draws up at the old station that Tita knows so well. She looks out of the window, her heart in her eyes, taking in all the old signs—the guard fussy as ever—Evans the porter (she nods to him through eyes filled with tears)—the glimpse of the church spire over the top of the station-house—the little damp patch in the ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... no more troubles in Samoa. That is what we want; a man that knows and likes the natives, qui paye de sa personne, and is not afraid of hanging when necessary. We don't want bland Swedish humbugs, and fussy, footering German barons. That way the maelstrom lies, and we shall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he didn't fix the place up. He was as coolly polite as an iceberg, but he told me in so many words that it was none of my business. That it was his business to look after the interests of his employer and collect the rents, and not to humor the whims of a few fussy women who ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... contemptuous disdain of public opinion. But the inconsistency may very well be one solely in appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped social surfaces of life, the ignorance—really, the happy and hieratic ignorance—of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and permanent and notable in the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... was actually decided upon. "'A capital little fellow.' That means a nasty fussy little man!" I cried to ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... good enough," said Mr. St. Clair, "you're too fussy about trifles, Isabel. Come, children, scurry off to bed, you'll get no beauty sleep ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... that the methods he pursued in the management of the house were the outcome of a naturally malignant disposition. This was, however, not the case. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Kay did not mean well. But there is no doubt that he was extremely fussy. And fussiness—with the possible exceptions of homicidal mania and a taste for arson—is quite the worst characteristic it is possible ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... evidence would be extremely offensive here, sir. For my part, I think, the sneaking hankering after titles and ceremonies, among our wealthy men and women is a very great weakness. Every one knows that nothing would please fussy Mr. Adams better than to be a duke, or even a lord—and he is by no means alone in ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... would have said it. She volunteered no opinion, but when asked, she compared Milly's new cook unfavorably with her former one. When her praise was anxiously sought, she observed that it was undesirable to be careless in one's housekeeping, but less disagreeable than to be fussy and house-proud. She added that Milly—whom she called Mildred—must be on her guard against relaxing into domestic dulness, when she could be so extremely clever and charming if she liked. Milly was bewildered and distressed. She felt ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Belgian artist, M. Rotsartz{3}, is doing a drawing of me. I go to Lady Bagot's hospital, where he is laid up, and sit to him in the intervals of soup. That little wooden hospital is the best place I have known so far. Lady Bagot is never bustled or fussy, nor even "busy," and her staff are excellent men, with the "Mark of the Lamb" ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... met his. He seemed to see his father as a pathetic cheated simpleton, and to hear the innumerable children of his sister crying for food; he remembered that in the old Bursley days he had always distrusted John Stanway, that conceited fussy imposing young man of twenty-two whom his father had taken into partnership and utterly believed in. He forgot that he had hated his father, and his mind was obsessed by a sentimental ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... "I wisht you could 'a' seen us. It cert'ny is nice livin' when you can wear fussy-fixy velvet and silk clothes and lacey waists. John Edward and Elmore, bein' boys, couldn't get no good of them, so we give John Edward the little lace-flounced umberill to carry and Elmore a painted open-and-shut fan.—Them's the things the lady give ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... own impressions incline me rather to represent the Earth as a fine noble young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always at full gallop, and moving upon such an infinity ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... not without charm, though approval may have been lacking here and there, and at the first crossing Alice suffered what she might have accounted an actual injury, had she allowed herself to be so sensitive. An elderly woman in fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a streetcar; she was all of a globular modelling, with a face patterned like a frost-bitten peach; and that the approaching gracefulness was uncongenial she naively made too ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Lorenzo is also a doubtful piece of sculpture. It has been attributed to Verrocchio, Donatello and Rossellino. It has least affinity to Donatello. The detailed attention paid by the sculptor to the floral decoration, and the fussy manner in which the whole thing is overcrowded, as if the artist were afraid of simplicity, suggest the hand of Rossellino, to whom Albertini, the first writer on the subject, has ascribed it. Donatello made the Marzocco, the emblematic Lion of the Florentines, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... is poised on the wharf. Another wants to "lay over" at Richmond, and is using most abusive language to a mulatto waiter, who has put his trunk on one side of the boat and carpet bag on the other. A third, a fussy old lady with two rosy-faced daughters she is, against her southern principles, taking to the north to be educated, is making a piteous lamentation over the remains of two bonnets-just from the hands of the milliner-hopelessly smashed in her bandbox. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... eyes for being so sharp, my pretty Sally," said the man who had just entered, whilst worthy Mr. Jellyband came bustling forward, eager, alert and fussy, as became the advent of one of the most favoured guests ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... dear fellow, you are rather too dainty and fussy for a very successful wooer," he said. "It's beautiful on paper, and absurd in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of this splendid eloquence would have elicited. For what really the House wanted to learn was the great enigma which had been kept for seven long years—in spite of protests, hypocritical appeals, and, ofttimes, tedious remonstrance from over-zealous and over-fussy friends. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... dear Davy!" Janet was laughing above her inclination to cry. "I do believe you are right. I'm going to pay particular attention to the little fussy things. Dear knows! if I do them all well, I'll have little time for discontent." She stood up—she and Davy were in the living room, while Mark was doing duty aloft—and flung her strong, young ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... coach-and-six, with all the ribbons in his hands, and a thorough knowledge of his horses and his road, sits upon his box in repose; and that repose inspires me with confidence in him; but if he should be constantly on the look-out for some trick, and constantly examining his harnesses, and constantly fussy and uneasy, I should lose my confidence in him, and wish I were ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... mean-spirited; confined, illiberal, intolerant, besotted, infatuated, fanatical, entete [Fr.], positive, dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative^; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opiniatre; bigoted &c (obstinate) 606; crotchety, fussy, impracticable; unreasonable, stupid &c 499; credulous &c 486; warped. misjudged &c v.. Adv. ex parte [Lat.]. Phr. nothing like leather; the wish the father to the thought; wishful thinking; unshakable conviction; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the novelist's characters, no two clergymen, no two British matrons, no two fussy spinsters, no two men of fashion, no two heavy fathers, no two smart young ladies, no two heroines, are alike. And this variety results from the absolute fidelity of each character to the law of its own development, each one growing from within and not being simply described ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... others you might add that in addition to the things mentioned you eat other fruits, including berries, insects of various kinds, birds when you can catch them, Mice, Turtles, in fact almost anything that can be eaten. You are not at all fussy about the kind of food. But you have one habit in regard to your food which it would be well if some of these other little folks followed. Do you know ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... snickered, and then hurried away to finish packing. Curtis, whose belongings were locked and strapped hours ago, remained on deck, and watched the preparations for bringing the great liner alongside the Cunard pier. When her engines were stopped in mid-stream a number of fussy little tugs began nosing her round to starboard. It seemed a matter of sheer impossibility that these puny creatures should move such a monster; but faith can move mountains, and in half an hour, or less, the tugs had moved the Lusitania to her ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... sent by Archie to look a little after the poor castaways of the Patna, came upon the scene. He ran out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and very full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as the principal person was concerned, but he approached the others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, found himself involved in a violent altercation with the chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn't going to be ordered about—"not he, b'gosh." He wouldn't be ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the fussy and incompetent Earl of Loudon, 1756-57, whom Franklin likened to Saint George on the sign-posts, "always galloping but never advancing." He gathered twelve thousand men for the recapture of Louisburg, but exaggerated reports of the French strength frightened him ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... she displayed a caution in lowering herself that surprised him. Every foothold she tested carefully with her weight. Once she asked him to place her shoe in the crevice for her. He had never seen her take so much time in making sure or be so fussy about her personal safety. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... the sweet melody of her love-story, this apprehension of Derek's regarding his mother. The Derek she loved was a strong man, with a strong man's contempt for other people's criticism; and there had been something ignoble and fussy in his attitude regarding Lady Underhill. She had tried to feel that the flaw in her idol did not exist. And here was Freddie Rooke, a man who admired Derek with all his hero-worshipping nature, pointing it out independently. She was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the kingbirds to be sure that the end was not yet. Also, I longed to watch the restless pair whose ups and downs I had found so interesting. I should like to see the orchard oriole in the role of a father; a terribly fussy one he would be without doubt. Above all, I most desired to see the infant orioles, to know if they begin their quarrels in their narrow cradle, and if their first note is a scold. But the troubles of this courtship ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... once were inclined to be fussy; You turned at inferior rye; You moped at a dubious vintage And shrieked if ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... gettin' an attack of modesty. "I'm kinda fussy about my food and I been figurin' out different ways of cookin' up stuff to get the best outa it, for years. That's the only amusement I got. I ain't so much as a cook, but you oughta see me play ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... salad, you know, 'dinner rolls, sandwich bread, fancy cakes, Maraschino cherries, maple sugar,' that's to go hot on the ice, I'm going to serve it in melons, and 'candy'—just pink and green wafers, I think. All that before it comes to the actual dinner at all, and it's all so fussy!" ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... enough enjoyed his discomfiture immensely. Going into Salle III where there were shouts of laughter (the convalescents were sent to that room) I saw a funny sight. One little man, who was particularly fussy and grumpy (and very unpopular with the other men in consequence), slept near the stove, which was an old-fashioned coal one with a pipe leading up to the ceiling. The concussion had shaken this to such an extent that accumulations of soot had come down and covered him from ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... mouth. I was not to be discouraged, however, and in the end he showed me into the ante-chapel which is curtained off from the quire. There was only one other person in the ante-chapel, a florid, well-dressed man with a rather mincing and fussy way of worshipping. The monks led by Brother Lawrence (who is not even a novice yet, but a postulant and wears a black habit, without a hood, tied round the waist with a rope) passed from the refectory through the ante-chapel into the quire, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... his creatures. Now you drive away even the merely intelligent rabble. The average man knows your defect—knows that one who believes Christ rose from the dead is not by that fact the moral superior of one who believes he did not; knows, indeed, of God, that he cannot be a fussy, vain, blustering creature who is forever failing and forever visiting the punishment for his ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... it—and there is a great deal of so-called Christian witnessing to-day without it—noise, advertising, skill in getting up externals, and all the other unworthy methods which Christian churches sometimes stoop to adopt, are powerless, as they ought to be. You may accomplish a great deal by fussy activity which calls itself Christian earnestness, and has not God's Spirit in it. But it is no more growth than are what the children call 'devil's puff-balls' which they find in the fields in these autumn mornings; and it will go up in poisonous, brown dust like ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... need not expect to enjoy the frills of a private room and special nurses and think the doctor will take care of you for a nominal fee; there is no reason why he should. Having a baby is not a disease, and you will not need to have fussy care. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... 'Ah!' said the fussy and half-distracted little man who represented the great foreign house so neatly defrauded, 'Ah! if I had not come down this morning, not one othair would haf know. I am the one only expairt. See! I am praisant ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... reply. 'Why should it be so?' 'I think it is because with them it is a work of self-abnegation, and of duty to God, and they are so quiet and self-forgetful in its exercise that they do it better, while many other women show such self-consciousness and are so fussy!" ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and looks like a pepper-caster. Whether it is happy or not depends upon those two little doors. There are times when it feels it wants the bottom door shut and the top door open, or vice versa, or both open at the same time, or both shut—it is a fussy little stove. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... movements are exactly of the type to which the muscles of a growing boy least readily respond, quite as the admonition to be accurate and faithful is that which appeals the least to his big primitive emotions. The demands made upon his eyes are complicated and trivial, the use of his muscles is fussy and monotonous, the relation between cause and effect is remote and obscure. Apparently no one is concerned as to what may be done to aid him in this process and to relieve it of its dullness and difficulty, to mitigate its ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... you, my dear. I've got my own ways, you see. I'm a fussy old fellow. And I've got my servant—my blackamoor. He'd frighten all the neighbours. And you'd fuss yourself, thinking I wasn't comfortable. I'll come up to-morrow afternoon and stay on to dinner, if you like. And just leave the boy to me a bit. Good night, ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... does not need to control the purity and nature of the organisms that will do the actual work of humus formation, and has a broad selection of materials that can go into a batch of compost. Easier because critical and fussy people don't eat or drink compost, the soil does; soil and most plants will, within broad limits, happily tolerate wide variations in ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... pervaded the entire surroundings. The building no longer appeared secular, unecclesiastical. Not in the midst of all the pomp and ceremonial of the Easter service had the chancel and high altar disengaged a more compelling influence. All other intrusive noises died away; the organ was hushed; the fussy janitor was nowhere in sight; the outside clamour of the city seemed dwindling to the faintest, most distant vibration; the whole world was suddenly removed, while the great moment in the lives of the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... little, square, pale, flat-faced, good-natured-looking, fussy man, with very intelligent eyes, yet great credulity of countenance, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Reform? Oh! just a fad,— Its advocates, in fact, as bad As those who want Cremation. A set of foolish, fussy fools Whose misplaced ardour nothing cools— A ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... not clean—rather than take the risk of having her three servants desert in a body. When she had unwisely complained to Oliver, he had remarked impatiently that he couldn't be bothered about the housekeeping, and Lucy had openly accused her of being "fussy." ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Sam in his softest voice, "I regard this as one of the greatest occasions of—of—my life," (Hear! hear! from a fussy guest; and Hush! hush! and then we shall hear here better, from an angry one). "I little thought," continued Sam, warming apparently with his subject—or the heat, "little thought that on this great occasion I could—could—I ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... was about fifteen years old, there was a white man or two, but colored leaders mostly got about a thousand colored people to start for the West walking. Warren had sisters and brothers who started on this trip. Warren had some fussy brothers, his mother was afraid would get in jail. They kept her uneasy. They shipped their "stuff" by boat and train. He never saw them any more but he heard from them in Louisiana. Louisiana had a bad ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the bookseller's shop years and years ago. You will never be strong Christians, you will never be happy ones, until you make conscience of the study of God's Word and 'continue steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching.' You may produce plenty of emotional Christianity, and of busy and sometimes fussy work without it, but you will not get depth. I sometimes think that the complaint of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews might be turned upside down nowadays. He says: 'When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles.' Nowadays ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the company and its workmen, indeed, seem to me to be governed by a sensible avoidance on the part of the company of everything like fussy paternalism; and to this, in some measure, I have no doubt, must be attributed the remarkably smooth and easy working of these relations through so long a course of years. The workmen are treated, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... emboldened in my refusal, when I consider how mixed, or how selfish, are often the motives of those who solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is, moreover, an important consideration, connected with this subject, which often escapes notice, ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... attainments. Who would guess it who read all these trivial comments, these catalogues of what he had for dinner, these inane domestic confidences—all the more interesting for their inanity! The effect left upon the mind is of some grotesque character in a play, fussy, self-conscious, blustering with women, timid with men, dress-proud, purse-proud, trimming in politics and in religion, a garrulous gossip immersed always in trifles. And yet, though this was the day-by-day man, the year-by-year man was a very different person, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... priceless gift of making each nationality, each personality, believe that he is devoted to its service alone. He turns lightly from one language to another, as if he had each under his tongue, and he answers simultaneously a fussy French woman, an angry English tourist, a stiff Prussian major, and a thin-voiced American girl in behalf of a timorous mother, and he never mixes the replies. He is an inexhaustible bottle of dialects; but this is the least of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... distrustful, fussy, and suspicious, to an extent that he had never been before. It was with the most insulting precautions that he examined every Sunday his wife's accounts. He took a look at the grocer's, and settled it himself ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... one who deliberately tried to be insolent without even the excuse of knowing the work he was supposed to be doing. On the other hand I have met men of real ability engaged on military railway work, who remain quietly courteous and helpful even when beset by stupid, fussy, and querulous travellers. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... breath, cal'latin' to catch what Stephen Peter used to say he caught when he went fishin' Sundays. Stevey said he generally caught cold when he went and always caught the Old Harry when he got back. I cal'lated to catch the Old Harry part sure, 'cause Captain Lote is always neat and fussy 'bout his desk. But no, the old man never said a word. I don't believe he knew the ink was spilled at all. What's on his mind, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... a moment. "Wouldn't Ploversdale be apt to be fussy about experiments? He's rather conservative, you know, about the way people are turned out. I saw him send a man home one day who was out without a hat. It was an American who was afraid that his hair was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... fence at the point where they reached it, and Dave Cowan idly lolled by this while the Wilbur twin sprawled in the scented grass at his feet. He well knew he should not be on the ground in his Sunday clothes. On the other hand, if the gypsies stole him they would not be so fussy as Winona about his clothes. None of them ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... the energy in her, and she had no reserve left for play. War work seemed to mean something to Sophie besides write-ups in the society column and pictures of her in sundry poses. These things besides, surrounded her with all sorts of fussy people, both male and female, and through this cordon Thompson seldom broke for confidential talk with her. When he did Sophie baffled him with her calm detachment, a profound and ever-increasing reserve—as if she ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... old ladies would be made quite uncomfortable by such fussy attentions. The Backfisch goes on to say that she was equally assiduous in waiting on the old gentlemen. She picked up anything they dropped, polished their spectacles for them, and listened to their ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the region of the Island that most of the battles take place between organized labour and the apostles of free labour. Let there be any industrial trouble of any kind, and down upon the district swoop dozens of fussy futilitarians, to argue, exhort, bully, and agitate generally. Fabians, Social Democrats, Clarionettes, Syndicalists, Extremists, Arbitrators, Union leaders, Christian Care Committees—gaily they trip along and take charge of the hapless ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... how I can have any—that is, as I am made. Now, you know, I've none of the fussing, baby-tending, herb-tea-making recommendations of Aunt Sally, and divers others of the class commonly called useful. Indeed, to tell the truth, I think useful persons are commonly rather fussy and stupid. They are just like the boneset, and hoarhound, and catnip—very necessary to be raised in a garden, but not in the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... later. It struck me, namely, that they might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things—one who, moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for certain labours—once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the late Mr. Mumford had been a noble soul who wore full face lambrequins and was fussy about his food. From the picture Mrs. Mumford showed Vee and me, I judged he must have looked like an upstate banker; but come to get down to cases, she admits he was in the coal and lumber business ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... dreary little settlement into a centre of mercantile activity. Seven years ago I journeyed down the Yukon towards Siberia and a problematical Paris in a small crowded steamer, built of roughly hewn logs, and propelled by a fussy little engine of mediaeval construction. We then slept on planks, dined in our shirt-sleeves, and scrambled for meals which a respectable dog would have turned from in disgust. On the present occasion we embarked on board a floating palace, a huge stern-wheeler, as large and ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... fussy creature—this cat!" Frisky said to himself. "I promised Mr. Crow I wouldn't hurt her; but I didn't promise him that I wouldn't tease her." So he bobbed up and down ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... big a fool of me, my dear, as you choose," said the prospective bride to the fussy little girl who fluttered about her. "It's only for a day, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... his unshar'd — All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar'd, Followed their old friend's bier. FOLLY went first, With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers'd; And after trod the bearers, hat in hand — LAUGHTER, most hoarse, and Captain PRIDE with tanned And martial face all grim, and fussy JOY, Who had to catch a train, and LUST, poor, snivelling boy; These bore the dear departed. Behind them, broken-hearted, Came GRIEF, so noisy a widow, that all said, "Had he but wed Her elder sister SORROW, in her stead!" And by her, trying to soothe her all the time, The fatherless children, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... to the pestilential fuddy-duds who do not approve of tobacco, particularly the fussy-old-maids. Personally, when I hear any of these conscientious objectors to My Lady Nicotine air their opinions, I wish that they could be placed in the trenches for a while. They would soon change their minds about rum issues and tobacco, and I'll wager ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... candidates ruined just because the women got wrought up over tenement-house an' fire laws an' truck like that. Yes sir, they're out seein' Whitewater this minut, or will be if you can't divert their minds. Call 'em off, George, if you can. Get 'em fussy ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... under any class or type; there is no democracy of hands. Some hands tell me that they do everything with the maximum of bustle and noise. Other hands are fidgety and unadvised, with nervous, fussy fingers which indicate a nature sensitive to the little pricks of daily life. Sometimes I recognize with foreboding the kindly but stupid hand of one who tells with many words news that is no news. I have met a bishop with a jocose ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... mutual complaints, as if everybody were against everybody, agreeing in nothing but in appealing to the elder sister. First, there was Alda's story. Never had there been such a miserable time—with Geraldine interfering, fussy, fretful, fault-finding; Clement intolerable in primness and conceit, only making the children worse when he pretended to keep them in order, and making such a fuss about Geraldine, when nothing ailed her but change of weather, incurring the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a fussy conscience, a nervous fear of wrong-doing, who are without intelligence and imagination, but you never meet the noblest, and serenest, and largest examples of goodness without these attributes," ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... good master; he was a Christian if there ever was one. He had a wife that was fussy and mean. "I didn't call her Mistus, I called her Minnie." But, she quickly added, "Master was good to her, just as kind and gentle like." When asked what was the matter with the wife, she just shook her head and did not reply. Asked if she ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... now so completely out of fashion that nobody cares. You are modern enough to laugh at it; I am not; and I still continue faithful to my Classons and Cuyps and Vetchens and Suydams; and to all that they stand for in Manhattan—the rusty vestiges of by-gone pomp and fussy circumstance—the memories that cling to the early lords of the manors, the old Patroons, and titled refugees—all this I still cling to—even to their shabbiness and stupidity and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... well on board. Randy was much amused by the passengers, especially those who were peculiar in their manners. There was one fussy old gentleman who went up and down the river twice a week. He always wanted to sit in a corner in the shade and asked a dozen times a day ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... if one may say it, a little too conscientious in the execution of his duties, and rather apt to be fussy and a trifle overbearing in his manner. He posted copies of the rules on each of the four walls of the room, and insisted on decorous behaviour and perfect silence. The consequence was that he soon became the butt ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Nicholson and Snow are offering. That is one of the reasons why I am hurrying on my way to San Francisco much sooner than I had expected to go. I haven't a suitable dinner dress because my trunks have gone, but among such old friends it won't matter. I have one fussy blouse in my bag, and I'll be over as soon as I can see to closing ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... in, and pounce eagerly on chairs and telephones; the usual Fussy Family waste precious minutes in trying to get seats together, and get separated in the end. Undecided persons flit from one side to another. Gradually they all settle down, and stop their ears with the telephone-tubes, the prevailing expression being one of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... think one does, always," he remarked placidly. "I sometimes think that accounts for a good deal! There's a man, now—see that fussy little fellow getting out of his motor ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... parent is not so excusable. His fussy vanity is an inferior article to the mother's silly but amiable pride. His obtrusive affection is two-thirds of it egotism, and blindish egotism, too; for if, at the very commencement of the wife's pregnancy the husband is sent to India, or hanged, the little angel, as they call it—Lord ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... notice of, caused him no umbrage whatever; but it annoyed him to see a gentle, ladylike girl like Madaleine subjected to the whims and caprices of an old woman, who, in spite of her high birth, was naturally vulgar and inconsiderate. "Hang the fussy old thing!" he repeated, with considerable heat. "I wish you had nothing to do with her. I'm sure she would drive me mad in a day if I were constantly ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... with Valentine and the two girls, but greeted Jack with a cool stare, which the latter returned with interest. Grenford Manor was very different from Brenlands. Aunt Isabel was fussy and querulous, while Mr. Fosberton was a very ponderous gentlemen in more senses than one. He had bushy grey whiskers and a very red face, which showed up in strong contrast to a broad expanse of white waistcoat, which was in turn ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... every attitude of fear or passion. A hundred years after the picture was painted, some dignitary took it into his head that portions of the work were too "daring"; and a painter was set at work robing the figures. His fussy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... when we get old and step out of the high road of life. He found out that his son did not appreciate his advice, and that Mrs. Tom cared still less for his frequent appearances. Indeed, he himself once saw her bounce out of the shop as he entered, exclaiming audibly, "Here's that fussy old man again." Tozer was an old man, it is true, but nobody (under eighty) cares to have the epithet flung in his teeth; and to be in the way is always unpleasant. He had self-command enough to say nothing about it, except in a very modified ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... selling oranges, bananas, pineapples, corals, and seashells—many of the latter treated with puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its white gulls flashing about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the same black forest of ships in the up-stream and ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... sunny and hot, and the fussy little river rambling through the Long Meadow was talking ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of the altar stands a ministerial figure,—none other than Manetho, who must have taken orders,—and joins together, in holy matrimony, the yellow-bearded Thor and the dark-haired Helen. Master Hiero, his round, snub-nosed face red with fussy emotion, gives the bride away; while Salome, dressed in white and looking very pretty and lady-like, does service as bridesmaid,—such is her mistress's whim. She seems in even better spirits than the pale bride, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... were the only person in the world."[22] The life of the cloistered saint may be abundantly justified—for the spiritual activity of some of them has been of far greater service to mankind than the fussy benevolence of many "practical" busybodies—but the idea of social service, whether in the school of Martha or of Mary, ought surely never to be absent. The image of Christ as the Lover of the individual soul rather than as the Bridegroom of the Church was too dear to these ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... not have just chickens or beef," Sandy would plead when a company dinner was under discussion. "Let's have one of Justine's fussy ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... my word, I can't guess; if some great reverse of fortune befell him, and he had to work for his livelihood, or if some other direful calamity gave a shock to his nervous system and jolted it into a fussy, fidgety direction, I dare say he might make a splash in that current of life which bears men on to the grave. But you see he wants, as he himself very truly says, the two stimulants ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of perpetual warfare with his wife, and yet, apparently, they never thought of separating. They dwelt in a fussy, scroll-work house, painted white and buried in thick evergreens, with a fussy white fence and barn. Cutter thought he knew a great deal about horses, and usually had a colt which he was training for the track. On Sunday mornings one ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... weary, and others fresh from the stables being put to. A great many vehicles—some private carriages, others, like mine, of that public class which is equivalent to our old English post-chaise, were standing on the pavement, waiting their turn for relays. Fussy servants were to-ing and fro-ing, and idle ones lounging or laughing, and the scene, on the whole, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... minutes before seven Lord De Guest came into the small drawing-room, and found Johnny seated there, with a book before him. The earl was a little fussy, and showed by his manner that he was not quite at his ease, as some men do when they have any piece of work on hand which is not customary to them. He held something in his hand, and shuffled a little as he made his way up the room. He was dressed, as usual, in black; but his ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Reformation epoch here opens itself to us. In this case, also, we shall gain the conviction that a true genius takes the liveliest interest in the fate of his own nation, and does not occupy himself with distant, abstruse problems (such as fussy metaphysicians would fain philosophise into 'Hamlet'), whilst the times are going out of joint. The greatest Englishman remained, in the most powerful drama of his, within the sphere of the questions that agitated his time. In 'Hamlet' he identifies Montaigne's ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... parts with a coolness that would have delighted John Drew, and would have been suspicious to anybody but a fussy old mill-owner. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... love to wash the dishes, And also dry them, too. It makes your paws so soft and white, I really think—don't you? Some folks are awful fussy, When e'er they dust or sweep. They'd rather pile the dirt all up In ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... sum of twelve dollars; who had resorted to gross lies and mean deception to carry her point. Upon my honor and conscience, I would rather have lost the twelve dollars I had advanced than had the old woman turn out to be a swindler. She might be fussy, she might be disagreeable, she might be a dozen things that are uncomfortable and unpleasant, if she had only meant to be true and honest, and ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... Committee." Still, all this being so, the fact emerges that the important factor in the problem of the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the false image of the traditional parent has been created in the schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is always "writing to complain." Now, he who pays the piper does not necessarily call the tune. That would be too absurd. But he has a veto on any tune he too positively dislikes, and it is well known that ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell |
