"Tricky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is under the influence of this collective domination. Or again, consider the jokes which make a great public assembly honestly shake with laughter, and imagine those jokes attempted in a private room! Our tricky politicians know well this difference between the psychologies of the individual and of the multitude. The cleverest of them often suffer in reputation precisely because they know what hopeless arguments ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... tricky Hassayampa rose from his source. On mischief bent he overflowed his bed, teasing the infant Arizona. He worried her, poor dearie—dear till she shed tears and nature adding to the gush of waters there flowed a brackish stream away; now named Saltriver and ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... in the girl's interest. Is that it?" Again Larpent's eyes, shrewd and far-seeing, were fixed upon him. They held a glint of humour. "It's a tricky job, my lord. You'll wish ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... according to his custom when well struck, he found it followed practically instantaneously by another. The swab was about the quickest thing that ever got into a ring. He was like one of these bloomin', tricky, jack-in-the-box featherweights, instead of a steady lumbering "heavy". And the Gorilla allowed himself to be driven to a corner again, and let his head sink forward, that the incautious youth might again put all his strength into ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... work "Die kuenstliche Beschraenkung der Kinderzahl" (The Artificial Limitation of Progeny)[235] claims that Socialism is playing a tricky manoeuvre by its opposition to Malthusianism: a rapid increase of population promotes mass proletarianization, and this, in turn, promotes discontent: if over-population is successfully checked, the spread of Socialism would be done for, and its Socialist ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... answering message at the enemy's head. If you have great luck a faint groan or a distant shout of pain may reward your efforts; but you can never be quite sure whether you have got home on your rival or not. Loophole shooting is very tricky, and the very best shots fire by the hour in vain. I ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... understand the science of eating, the wife must educate him. Remember his success means your success, his failure, your failure. If you were in charge of a highly complicated machine, you would not allow it to be ruined by careless misuse. You may have married a healthy animal, but animals are tricky and uncertain. He is still your lover and he will do anything reasonable for you, if you "go about it in the right spirit and in the right way." Be sure you "go about it in the right way." Be tactful, be patient, don't nag. Don't tell him of his faults, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... "these tricky ways do not suit me. Monsieur Arbillot proposed yesterday that I should do what you advise. He even offered to inform this gentleman of my relationship to Claude de Buxieres. I refused, and forbade the notary to open his mouth on the subject. What! should ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... as well as in finance the South was oppressed by its system. The merchant wanted cotton, for cotton was marketable, and could not be consumed by a tricky debtor. Single cropping was thus unduly encouraged; diversified agriculture and rotation of crops made little progress. The use of commercial fertilizers was greatly stimulated, but agriculture as ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... by a spark running through a length of fuse, the length depending altogether upon the time required to reach a point of safety after the fuse is lighted. The cap is really more dangerous to handle than is the dynamite itself. The cap is a tricky thing that may go off at any jar or scratch or at a spark from pipe or cigarette. You can, if you are sufficiently careless of possible results, light the twisted paper end of a stick of dynamite and ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... dear Gretchen, winsome lass, I want no tricky wine, But amber nectar bring to me, Whose rich bouquet will cling to me, Whose spirit voice will sing to me From out the mug divine So, here's your toll—a kiss—away, You Hebe of the Rhine! No goblet's gold means cheer to me, Let no cut ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... justified in delegating to Mr. Smith. For my own part, the conclusion I drew from the whole of Mr. Newby's conduct to my sisters was that he is a man with whom it is desirable to have little to do. I think he must be needy as well as tricky—and if he is, one would not distress him, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... He had been tricky again. Once out of sight of the guard, he made not for the Space Symphony, but for the Long Ranger, ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... she did. You know how she acted; she had made up her mind she wouldn't go. Only she was tricky about it. She knew I had my eye on her, so she got ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... concernment to us than any Battle. "Congress at Augsburg" split upon formalities, preliminaries, and never even tried to meet: but France and England are actually busy. Each Country has sent its Envoy: the Sieur de Bussy, a tricky gentleman, known here of old, is Choiseul's, whom Pitt is on his guard against; "Mr. Hans Stanley," a lively, clear-sighted person, of whom I could never hear elsewhere, is Pitt's at Paris: and it is in that City between Choiseul and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... done and when the papers were ready and the shares of stock divided between the principals, an injunction was served on Dad by a tricky company in New York which claimed prior rights to the patent. This has held up everything so that Dr. Evans is not sure whether he will ever realize anything out of his invention or not. Of course, we are fighting the legality of Ratzger ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... tentatively and with a decent humility about comparative differences within the same category of education and experience. Yet even this is a tricky enterprise. For almost no two experiences are exactly alike, not even of two children in the same household. The older son never does have the experience of being the younger. And therefore, until ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... secure from ill, The chimney corner snugly fill— A lion darting on his prey, A tiger at his ruthless play? Or is it that in thee we trace, With all thy varied wanton grace, An emblem, viewed with kindred eye Of tricky, restless infancy? Ah! many a lightly sportive child, Who hath like thee our wits beguiled, To dull and sober manhood grown, With ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... then came a long spell of plucky cricket, a stand not masterly but dogged and judicious, in which many a ball outside the off-stump was allowed to pass unmolested, and a few were unfortunate in just beating the edge of the bat. On the tricky wicket Teddy's work was cut out for him, and beautifully he did it. It was a treat to see his lithe form crouching behind the bails, to rise next instant with the rising ball; his great gloves were always in the right place, always adhesive. Once only he held them up prematurely, and a fine ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... amazing task, and no evidence is on record that he left anything to chance. Results are an eloquent answer to any doubts on that subject. In addition to policing the seas, he had the anxiety of watching the tricky manoeuvres of the French fleet, and planning for their interception and defeat should they weaken in their elusive methods. Of course, they were playing their own game, and had a right to, and it was for their opponents, whom Nelson so well represented, to outwit and trap them into fighting; ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... well that such matters did not settle themselves, but he seems to have imagined that all he had to do was to sit tight and that matters would have to come his way. The tricky and shuffling behavior to which he descended would be unbelievable of a man of his standing were there not an authentic record made by himself. The suspense finally became so intolerable that the Cabinet acted without consulting the President ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... least understand what Jefferson and Lincoln meant, and he may possibly find some assistance in this task by reading what they said. He may realise that equality is not some crude fairy tale about all men being equally tall or equally tricky; which we not only cannot believe but cannot believe in anybody believing. It is an absolute of morals by which all men have a value invariable and indestructible and a dignity as intangible as death. He may at least be a ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... had been engaged, subject to his approval, at a weekly four hundred and fifty by the Stone-Rafferty circuit. And in a quarter of an hour Solly Quhayne, having pushed his way through a mixed crowd of Tricky Serios and Versatile Comedians and Patterers who had been waiting to see him for the last hour and a half, was bowling off in a taximeter-cab to ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... mustache and essayed extenuation. "It was—er—unworthy of me, of course; foolish—pig-headed—tricky, I suppose. I got mad. I'd nothing to sell, and the declaration is a farce when they examine after it. So I left them to find what they chose. I'm terribly sorry, for you seem to hate it so. But it's an idiotic and ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Jeremy, prattling away like a madman. "I am weary of the stuff. I'm hunting the world over, in search of a friend. Nobody loves me. I want to find someone who'll believe the lies I tell him without expecting me to believe the truth he tries to foist on me. I want to find a man as tricky with his brains as I am with my hands. He must be a politician and a spy, because I love excitement. That's why I called you a spy. If you were one, you might have admitted it, and then we could have been friends, like two yolks in one ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... still time—consider. We are going to beard the lion in his den. He is tricky, distrustful and savage. It may mean for us slavery, torture, or death. Meroe, let me finish alone this trip and this enterprise, beside which a desperate fight would be but a trifle. Return to my father and mother, whose ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... thinking she might have left one for him before going away. He saw nothing addressed to himself, but on the ground, where it had evidently dropped, was an open note. Joe could not help reading it at a glance. To his surprise it was signed by Sanford, the tricky law clerk. ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... freely, he chilled his lungs, and for the rest of the trip he was troubled with a dry, hacking cough, especially irritable in smoke of camp or under stress of undue exertion. On the Thirty Mile river he found much open water, spanned by precarious ice bridges and fringed with narrow rim ice, tricky and uncertain. The rim ice was impossible to reckon on, and he dared it without reckoning, falling back on his revolver when his drivers demurred. But on the ice bridges, covered with snow though they were, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... means he is a rebel born, hating constraint and believing with Stendhal that one's first enemies are one's own parents. No doubt, after bitter experience, Wedekind discovered that his bitterest foe was himself. That he is a tricky, Puck-like nature is evident. He loves to shock, a trait common to all romanticists from Gautier down. He sometimes says things he doesn't mean. He contradicts himself as do most men of genius, and, despite his poetic temperament, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the wall, as in so many German homes, the famous order of the day of Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria, which commences with "Soldiers of the army! Before you are the English!" in which he exhorts his troops with all the tricky sophistry of hate. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... the Victorian period. She knows a lot more about everything than you think, and well for her that she does. Girls of to-day may be daring, they may be over confident, they may be hard, but at least they know something of the world outside their own environment. After all, life's a tricky job for a woman—don't begrudge her a little folly before ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... all of us naturally place more confidence in what he says and does. That provokes Halstead to do and say what he otherwise wouldn't. Instead of doing his best, he often does his worst. Ad is intelligent and conscientious; he despises anything that is mean, or tricky, and he has no patience with any one who does such things. So they don't get along very well; and I often think that it isn't a good thing for them to be together—not a good thing ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... of an open ridge, a short distance west of us, we saw a solitary horse, tethered, and feeding composedly, as if he had nothing to fear out here amongst the hills. Part of us keep our eyes upon him, lest his tricky owner should get the alarm and remove him; whilst others plunge into the coppice which fills the intervening hollow, and soon reappear on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... his own fondly brooding fancy. For not only did the highest learning in the land crowd the Hall in their academic robes, but the Lord Lieutenant himself took a prominent part in the proceedings, which were enlivened by military music and thunderous salutes. Mr. Polymathers nearly toppled off his tricky stool more than once without noticing it in his excitement as he rehearsed these splendid scenes, declaiming with great unction the formulas long since learned by all his heart, especially Ego, auctoritate mihi concessa, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... very close relative. John was only my half-brother, you know, and he lived but six months after he married her. She is clever enough and tricky enough to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... was just as pleasant to sit upon as the car seat and she knew nothing whatever about the tricky ways ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... has performed this feat for about the tenth time, he concludes that it was madness for him, a mere raw amateur at the business, to think that he could manage a complicated, tricky bed of this sort, that must take even an experienced man all he knows to sleep in it; and gets out ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... that your suspicions are aroused, you ought to be like a man mounted on a tricky horse, who always watches the ears of the beast, in fear of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... head upon which the brown hair curled slightly. The eyes were turned away, but the Secretary knew they were blue and that there was something in the face which appealed to strong men for protection. He shook his head slowly. The tricky little god was making sport of him, James Sefton, the invincible, and he did not ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... said he, "I shall want to be there to see. In spite of his pudding-bag shape he handles the sword as well as any man in England. I have crossed with him at Angelo's. And he has a devilish tricky record, Richard." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it for another four days. The question was a tricky one, for malignant immortality was beyond human solution. It was not just a matter of dealing out punishment. The problem now was the protection of the race from sudden annihilation. An insolvable problem, but one that must be solved. They ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... turning in brings up the subject of hammicks; show me a guy who can ride one all nite without being turned out, and I'll back him to ride the best tricky mule that P.T. Bamum ever trained. About the only way to do, when the nite is ruff, and the ship is rockin, is to sit down and wait until your hammick comes around, and jump on it and choke it into insensibility. ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... twilight had deepened into darkness, the fire had died down, and the corners of the room were filled with mysterious tricky shadows that danced with the flickering flames on the hearth. Jean looked fearfully over her shoulder. There was a creepy feeling in the back of her neck, and Jock's eyes were as round as door-knobs. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... had, without arousing suspicion, to make smooth the path for his spy just as you and I opened the door to the Hook for the late-lamented Hagan, and escorted him across in the mail-boat. We have helped false news over to the Germans scores of times. It is grand sport. My job was something much more tricky. I had to get plain proof that my man was a spy in the dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the very last minute, but to make dead certain of stopping him at the fifty-fifth second ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... half-meaning!" I think it is always quite plain what Mr. Shaw means, even when he is joking, and it generally means that the people he is talking to ought to howl aloud for their sins. But the average representative of them undoubtedly treats the Shavian meaning as tricky and complex, when it is really direct and offensive. He always accuses Shaw of pulling his leg, at the exact moment when ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... is very good, the 18-hole course being exceedingly sporting, and tricky enough to defeat the very elect. Jane and I had conveyed our clubs out to Kashmir, knowing that they were likely to prove useful. I had also taken the precaution to pack up a box or two of balls, but I ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... fine. Say, Bob, I ain't so darned sure that fellow'll be there so big when it comes to a show-down. He looks to me tricky rather than game. Take him by surprise. Then crawl his hump sudden. With which few well-chosen words I close. Yores sincerely, Well-wisher, as these guys sign themselves when they ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... reaching Lochias, would certainly not have taken place on any more fortunate day, or, to be more exact, if he had been in a calmer frame of mind; he himself alone was in fault, he alone, and no spiteful accident, nor malicious and tricky Daimon. Hadrian, to be sure, attributed to these sprites all that he had done, and so considered it irremediable; an excellent way, no doubt, of exonerating oneself from a burdensome duty, or from repairing some injustice, but conscience is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Indian is naturally cruel and revengeful is entirely opposed to his philosophy and training. The revengeful tendency of the Indian was aroused by the white man. It is not the natural Indian who is mean and tricky; not Massasoit but King Philip; not Attackullakulla but Weatherford; not Wabashaw but Little Crow; not Jumping Buffalo but Sitting Bull! These men lifted their hands against the white man, while their fathers held theirs out ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... colonel; "but, still it's well to be on the lookout for him. He's rather a tricky sort of ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... and caused a stampede among their inhabitants. A dozen portly matrons sat in the sand, rocking to and fro as the wave came up about them and receded; and children innumerable pranced around them, playing tag with the tricky surf that often ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... intriguing bachelor but a jealous bridegroom. Merry Melodious MOZART! Old-fashioned he may be, like not a few of the best melodies and the best stories. Elegant Countess is Madame EMMA EAMES. Can she possibly ever have been Rosina, Dr. Bartolo's tricky ward! What a change matrimony makes in some folks! Old Dr. Bartolo bears not much resemblance to the other Dr. Bartolo, and Don Basilio, a kind of Ecclesiastical lawyer, is quite a rollicking wag as compared ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... said the Distressed One; "I will be bail for him, and I know that Malambruno has nothing tricky or treacherous about him; you may mount without any fear, Senor Don Quixote; on my head be it if any ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the Joshua in which this most delicious of English prose writers speaks of the "wise falsifications" of the great masters. Before his death the critics, tiring of him sooner than the public, called Martin tricky, meretricious, mechanical. To be sure, his drawing is faulty, his colour hot and smoky; nevertheless, he was not a charlatan. As David Wilkie wrote: "Weak in all these points in which he can be compared to other artists," he had ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... lazy beggars going full speed," Philander was very emphatic. "Don't let 'em lag, or they'll wear you down. Don't ever let 'em get out of control, or put anything over on you, especially in sorting ore from rock. They're tricky. Use your shock-rod at every least sign of mutiny or loafing. Make 'em respect you. They know better'n to try to get away, 'cause they ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... purpose, as we supposed, of stampeding our cattle. They did not take us unawares, however, for we never turned cattle from corral until the assistant wagon boss surveyed the locality in every direction with a field glass, for the tricky redskin might be over the next ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... city a hundred miles away, does with the vats in his cellar after working hours, even if he has solemnly agreed not to adulterate his goods? For I must confess that there are a few men in our trade who are as tricky as ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... matters ahead of us, have perfected a pigeon post. Even so, I cannot help thinking they would have been wiser to train the birds, while they were about it, to deliver the letters nearer the ground. Getting your letters out of those boxes must be tricky work even to ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... fairly puzzled by the clever heading of Mr. Campbell and the terrible tackling of Mr. Arnott, but fought gamely to the last. In close dribbling he was the nearest approach to Mr. William M'Kinnon (Q.P.) I have ever seen, and while he was quite as tricky, wanted the tact to lead an opponent astray. He played ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... should not rear our steps up the Gog-magog hills, or even more Alpine fastnesses; nor, arrived at the top, should we 'ken' the prospect round; we might 'con,' but should more probably 'survey' it. Even 'anon' is a tricky word in prose, though I deliberately palmed it off on you a few minutes ago. Mark thirdly the varied repetition, 'if cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd—but cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.' Lastly compare ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... as to take off your superfluous flesh very rapidly. Take your time about it. If you live as long as both of us hope you may you'll have plenty of time. There's no rush, so go at it gradually. Be regular about it, but don't be too ambitious at the outset. Don't try to turn yourself into a tricky sprite in two weeks. For a fat man too abruptly to strip the flesh off his bones I regard as dangerous. It weakens him and depletes his powers of resistance and makes him fair game for any stray microbe ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... defeated in her cherished and determined ambition to ride Dale's mustang, and she was furious. The mustang did not appear to be vicious or mean. But he was spirited, tricky, mischievous, and he had thrown her six times. The scene of Bo's defeat was at the edge of the park, where thick moss and grass afforded soft places for her to fall. It also afforded poor foothold for the gray mustang, obviously placing him ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... been less, it seemed to them that this was stretching the long arm of coincidence almost too far, but they did not say so; in fact, they both thought it wiser to abstain from any comment at all. The next hole was some three hundred and fifty yards, with several extremely tricky hazards, but, contrary to all reasonable expectations, both King Sidney and the Marshal distinguished themselves ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... hands clean of those encumbrances we'll be in fit shape to delve deeper into the game and see what we get out of the grab-bag. Anyway, don't expect me until you see me heading this way and keep a sharp lookout, for from all accounts this crowd we're up against is said to be a tricky combination, always stepping on their toes ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... God of the Hohenzollern will prove to you before long that your power and your might, those rocks of bronze, are no more in His hands than a feather tossed in the wind; He will show you that a tricky horse can unseat you, regardless of your dignity, when you take your favourite ride, the road to Peacock island, ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... aunts you're looking for, Bob," he said briefly, when he was in possession of the facts. "Couldn't be many families of that name around here, not unless they were related. Do you know, there's a lot of that tricky business afoot right here in Flame City? People have lost their heads over oil, and the sight of a handful of bills drives them crazy. The Watterby farm is one of the few places that hasn't been rushed by oil prospectors. That's one reason ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... experiences; ill to bear, with the Sea-Powers grumbling on you, and the world sniffing its pity on you;—but are not conclusive, are only provoking and even maddening, to the sanguine mind. Two sad failures; but let us try another time. "A tricky man; cunning enough, your King of Prussia!" thinks Bruhl, with a fellness of humor against Friedrich which is little conceivable to us now: "Cunning enough. But it is possible cunning may be surpassed by deeper cunning!"—and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... he was, Johnny laughed over this. The idea of Bland biting his tongue tickled him and served to blur his antagonism for the tricky aviator who had played so large a part in his salvaging of this ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... him, and at once his audacity gives way; he speaks; shrug your shoulders and he is silent. You must not discuss with him; however good a reasoner you may be, you will be worsted, for he is a most tricky dialectician." ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... visit was to Miss Gale; that young lady was now very happy. She had her mother with her. Mrs. Gale had defeated the tricky executor, and had come to England with a tidy little capital, saved out of the fire ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... heard he was to sing for me, and she cabled across to him to take an earlier steamer and sing for her first. It was a little tricky. What is it you call it in the business world, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... prettiness of love-making leads to physical love inevitably, and I always thought and hoped and believed that after it I'd arrive at some Ultima Thule of understanding, of comradeship, of equality. Never! Ugh, they were soft! Soft flesh, soft spirit, tricky brain! Sometimes I have a nightmare of trying to get to heaven up mountains of woman-flesh—soft, scented stuff, sucking one in like quicksands. You're the only woman I've ever thought much about and not made love to! To you I couldn't ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... a snare to you and an embarrassment to me. She is a singularly attractive girl. No one can face her and accuse her. Britt says she is much more mature than when I saw her; and by that he meant to convey that she had grown clever, if not tricky. There is a bad streak in her, I'm afraid, for all her charm, and you would better let her entirely alone. Upon the most charitable construction she is hysterical, and her deception probably arises, as Britt says, from a diseased brain. In any case she is not ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... windows in this room are obviously windows by day, but at night two sliding doors of mirrors are drawn, just as a curtain would be drawn, to fill the window spaces. This is a little bit tricky, I admit, but it is a very good trick. The dining-table is of carved wood painted gray and covered with yellow damask, which in turn is covered with a sheet of plate glass. The chairs are covered with a blue and gold striped velvet. The rug has a gold ground with medallions and border of blue, ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... chair about with him.] Ask any Johnny in the City, he 'll tell you Mexico's a very tricky ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... so far and no further," repeated Pine with an angry snarl. "A Gentile she is, and Gentiles are tricky." He stretched out a slim, brown hand significantly and opened it. "I hold her and Garvington there," and he ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... easily avoid by going around, or better yet not even bother about, since he can lick any ship we have. That's not the answer," I told him. "This Pepe is smart and as tricky as a fixed gambling machine. That's his strength—and his weakness as well. Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to outthink them. Which is what ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... see how the wig can have been useful. I feel that Addison must have left it on the bedpost and tied up his bald pate in a tricky bandana after the fashion of Mr. Prior or Mr. Gay, one of whom, if I remember rightly, did not disdain to sit for his picture in that frolic guise. The wig, which adds age and ensures dignity, would have ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... indicate in many cases such attributes as [hua] hua "tricky," [heng] hen, "aggressive," [meng] meng "fierce," and other characteristics ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... gone, and could no longer help him with his savoury morsels. He was so oppressed with grief, that he could no longer play with his comrades as before. But Providence again came to his aid. The good Abbe Miraben heard the story of his expulsion from the Seminary. Though a boy may be tricky he cannot be perfect, and the priest had much compassion on him. Knowing Jasmin's abilities, and the poverty of his parents, the Abbe used his influence to obtain an admission for him to one of the town's schools, where he was again enabled to ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... a lot of tricky air currents along the surface of the water. The engines were running on lift to match exactly the weight of the ship, which meant that she had no weight at all, and a lot of wind resistance. The drive was supposed to match the wind speed, and the ship was supposed to be kept nosed into the wind. ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... of place for a tricky old French woman to make a fortune in," he said to himself: "these people are simple enough to believe any thing;" and Dr. Eben went to his room, and tossed the lavender blossoms down on ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... forget," she murmured, "that you know too much." "No, no! I don't know half enough; I know only what Miss Camilla and—and—Gholson could tell me," was my tricky reply, and I tried to look straight into her eyes, but they took that faint introspective contraction of which I have spoken, and gazed through me like sunlight through glass. Then again she bent her glance ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... have much to tell of this wonderful horse, for I learned to love him as one loves a friend who has endured the "ordeal by fire" and has not been found wanting. My wife's chestnut stallion was a trifle smaller than Kublai Khan and proved to be a tricky beast whom I could have shot with pleasure. To this day she carries the marks of both his teeth and hoofs, and we have no interest in his future life. Kublai Khan has received the reward of a sunlit stable in Peking where carrots are in abundance and ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... way to lecture, and a little late. You were conning over something as you walked, your lips working and muttering, your hand flung out this way and that as you got a speech into order in your mind; you were doubtless inventing one of your crooked questions, or pondering some tricky problem; never a vacant mind, even in the streets; always on the stretch and in earnest, bent on advancing ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to put a piece of paper over the chicken to prevent it burning, but Agnes said there was no danger of it burning; the oven never could get hot enough for that. But the oven, as Agnes had said, was a tricky one, and when she took the chicken out to baste it, it seemed a little scorched. So Evelyn insisted on a piece of paper. Agnes said that it would delay the cooking of the chicken, and attributed the scorching to the quantity of coal which Miss Innes would keep ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... "Is he active and capable?" Yes. "Industrious, temperate, and regular in his habits?" O Yes. "Is he honest? is he trustworthy?" Why, as to that, I am sorry to say that he is not to be trusted; he wants watching; he is a little tricky, and will take an undue advantage, if ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... switched the teleceiver screen on to the more powerful magnascope and studied the surface of the small celestial body. He saw a deep valley with a flat hard surface set between two tall cliffs. It would be a tricky spot for a landing, but it looked like the best place available. Tom snapped ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... "roped all the two-year-olds" in that first lesson, spent all evening handling them, and the Quarters looked on as he tested their tempers, for although most proved willing, yet a few were tricky or obstinate. All evening he sat, poring over the tiny Primer, amid a buzzing swarm of mosquitoes, with the doggedness all gone from his face, and in its place the light of a fair fight, and, to no one's surprise, in the morning we heard that "all ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... attached to the First Army Corps under Sir Douglas Haig, an Irish and Scotch group of regiments, were the most successful of all. The bridge at Pont Arcy had been destroyed, but still one of its girders spanned the stream. It would have been tricky walking, even under ordinary circumstances, but nerve racking to attempt, when from every hill and wood and point of land, Maxims, machine guns and a steady rifle fire are concentrated on the man crossing that one girder. By the afternoon, the engineers attached ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... up parcels for the Fleet. Ordinary people provide the blankets, sea-boots, chocolate, periscopes and so forth; Celia looks after the brown paper and string, which always seems to me the most tricky part. There are a dozen of them, all working together; and you can imagine (or, anyhow, I can) Vera or Kitty or Isobel, her mouth full of knot, gossiping away about her highly-placed relations, while Beryl or Evelyn or Lorna looks up from the parcel she is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... their bombs, then were they idiots indeed. They would fire their second shot at Fort Pilcher! This was impossible, for they had not yet fired their first shot. These Syndicate people were evidently very tricky, and the defenders of the port ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... rooster, "I think I could." You see he had no more excuses to make. Oh, wasn't he a tricky old rooster, ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... animal before me flushed. The other man was but a tricky politician of the creeping sort, a caterer to all prejudices, and a flatterer and favorer. This everybody knew. But he had become a part of the machine, was shrewd, and, with the machine ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... houses, and treated with great respect; or again, they may be ornamented with gold and precious stones. It was noted that the breast ornaments, which they call guanines were made of copper rather than gold, and it was surmised that they dealt with tricky strangers who sold them these guanines, palming off upon them vile metal for gold. Neither did the Spaniards discover the trick till they melted these ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the full name of a hybrid is a more tricky business. It is, as I have said, a collective designation for all the progeny of the particular cross concerned, and it may take one or all ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... months at Spires in a profound and melancholy solitude. The weight of the excommunication oppressed him with a thousand griefs. Weary of that state of uncertainty, and still, as ever, tricky and hypocritical, he conceived the idea of winning over the Pope by an apparent piety, and of satisfying his requirements by a brief humiliation; moreover, the decree of excommunication declared that it should be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... the daring already told tales that promised this last thing should come to pass; how he was become fat-souled, grasping, and tricky, using his sacred office to enlarge his wealth, seizing the canons with their precious growths of wood, the life-giving waterways, and the herding-grounds; taking even from the tithing, of which he rendered no stewardship, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... hasty departure to Canada, one evening, leaving his business in such a shape that his securities were compelled to pay fifty thousand dollars. Two others were associated with Mr. Wyckoff, and with the aid of their tricky lawyers they managed matters so that four-fifths of the loss fell upon the estate of ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... a little discouraged," said Mr. Kennedy. "You see, she is so uncertain; she's tricky as a kitten, and you can never tell what she'll be at next. If the trouble only all came to us, you know, we would be glad to bear it, for there is something very dear about little Katy that pays for care and bother. But how can ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Bullets whined round him as he turned back up the slope, but he ran doubled over, putting all his hope in the tricky, uncertain light. ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... give the tricky answers of a doe. I cannot wait; I must act before I lose my natural mind. But already I am yours. Whatever purpose you may have in thus charming a poor hunter, be merciful," and, throwing aside his ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... had to pay the usual "white penny" for every mile, but also a heavy general fee for the whole journey. If he was found without his ticket of leave, he was at once arrested. But it was when he came to a bridge that the exactions grew insufferable. The regulations were somewhat tricky, for the Jew was specially taxed only on Sundays and the Festivals of the Church. But every other day was some Saint's Festival, and while, in Mannheim, even on those days the Christian traveller paid one kreuzer if he crossed the bridge on foot, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... clever to eat it publicly," objected Miss Hoyle, the lady journalist. "Gipsies are an uncommonly tricky set. They probably had a midnight feast, and finished the last crumb of our provisions before daybreak. We shall get no satisfaction from Mr. Cox. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... issues the most alarming reports as to the frightfulness of the defences here I was agreeably surprised at the ease with which we passed. Von Weissman, to whom I had hinted that we might find the passage tricky, rather laughed at my suggestion, and described to me his method, which, at all events, has the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... handled his tricky curves so well that puny Cedarville was beaten by the contemptuous score ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... cudgel did not give forth its sharp sound from contact with the leader's head, for he had to do with a clever cudgel-player as well as one who had often proved his power as a tricky wrestler in contests with the best men of the neighbouring farthest west county. Nic's blow was cleverly caught on as stout a cudgel, and the next moment his left arm ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... understand Sisters; they are so strange, so tricky, uncertain as collies. Deep down they have an ineradicable axiom: that any visitor, any one in an old musquash coat, in a high-boned collar, in a spotted veil tied up at the sides, any one with whom one shakes hands or takes tea, is more important than the most charming ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... Leap," he replied. "I've got too much respect for my bones. It's awfully tricky; I've gone down from below it. You don't get such ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... so what's the use of letting everybody know who I am?" Then he switched round in his chair, rose, and held out his hand. "Mr. George Headland, of the Yard, Mr. Bawdrey. I don't trust Mr. Narkom's proverbially tricky memory for names. He introduced me as Jones once, and I lost the opportunity of handling the case because the party in question couldn't believe that anybody named Jones would be likely to ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... such a program at least twice as a matter of learning the basic training of the Service. But then they had had unlimited supplies to draw on and the action had taken place under no more pressure than that exerted by the instructors. Now it was going to be a far more tricky job— ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... I have bought him now, sir," Jonas said. "Of course I should not have done so if I had heard these things before; but I was told he was one of the finest horses in the country, only a little tricky, and as his price was so reasonable I thought it a great bargain. But I see now I was wrong, and that it wouldn't be right for you to mount him; so I think we had best send him in on Saturday to the market and let it ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... tricky and grasping in the day of his straightened circumstances, but he might never have developed into the scoundrel he became, had prosperity not fallen upon him by chance. Sometimes it is poverty, and sometimes it is wealth that plays ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... men, with most men indeed, Dunn would have seized or made some opportunity to dash in and attack, taking the chance of being shot down first, since there are few indeed really skilled in the use of a revolver, the most tricky if the most ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon |
