"Fussy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wandering little creek whose shallow waters flowed through lovely meadows where boneset plants were white with bloom and giant eupatorium lifted its rosy heads. A red-headed flicker flew screaming from a field as they passed, and a fussy wren scolded at ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... silly reports, but, if any special formalities were prescribed, Mr. Chamberlain brushed them aside, and simply conducted himself with quiet, easy grace, always calm and self-possessed, and never fussy or needlessly obsequious. ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... thing of all! But for him, she could drop out! There was no getting away from him! He was as much permanently there as the chair upon which he was drowsing. She saw him as an incubus. And then Emmy being so fussy! Standing on her dignity when she'd give her soul for happiness! And then Alf being so ... What was Alf? Well, Alf was stupid. That was the word for Alf. He was stupid. As stupid as any stupid member of his immeasurably stupid ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... flirted. He gave her a ribbon and she promised to marry him. Just a bluff! And then he wanted his ribbon back, but she had already made it into garters, and when he tried to take them by force she boxed him smartly. He got fussy, drank a gallon of gooseberry wine, smoked two cigarettes and making out that he was a great bounder, threatened her with sudden death. Great dialogue! He would have gone to war, only there was no war at the time and anyway his "mother wouldn't ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... great appreciation which the people of Chatham had of Dickens's services at the readings, and says it was very good and kind of him to give those services gratuitously. He confirms the general opinion as to the origin of the "fat boy," and the "very fussy little man" at Fort Pitt, who was the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... came! I wanted you here to help make things go from the beginning. Max is having fits with his tie, and Alec is in distress because his pumps don't look as smart as he thinks they ought. Even Bob is more than usually fussy about the parting of ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... Mr. Follingsbee was forward, fussy, and advisory, in his own peculiar free-and-easy fashion; and Mrs. Follingsbee was instructive and patronizing to the very last degree. Lillie had bewailed in her sympathizing bosom John's unaccountable and most ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was there, the wife of the Squire of Ashe; thin and small, a contrast to Dame Harrison in her mild and somewhat fussy manner; her plain petticoat, too, was embellished with paniers, and in spite of the heat of the day she wore a tippet edged with fur: both of which frivolous adornments had obviously stirred up the wrath of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... spoiled. The hotel rooms were close and hot; I missed all the dainty freedom and purity of my own home; the people I saw were, it seemed to me, entirely in keeping with the rooms; that is, they were stiff and fussy, not quiet and busy. They were busy after their own fashion, indeed; but it always seemed to me busy about nothing. The children I saw too did not attract me; and I fear I did not attract them. I was sober-hearted and low-toned in spirit and strength; while they were ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... were Methodists, as were their ancestors on both sides. My mother was uniformly religious, but not fussy about it. I have seen her intensely happy, but never heard her shout. Her religion was a deep, smooth, current without fluctuation. My father was religious more by spells, but still he never went ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... reproaches on a multitude of subjects; all day long he was worrying her about small trifles with which he should have had nothing to do. It is a mistake to suppose that a man can not be brutal and fussy at the same time. M. de Talbrun was ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made three ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... His host, very fussy as he always was on the morning of his big shoot, came bustling towards Peter, Baron de Grost, with a piece of paper in his hand. The party of men had just descended from a large brake and were standing about on the edge of the common, examining cartridges, smoking a last cigarette ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more, for it so happens that Colonel Fitz-James is known to be an epicure, to be fussy and finical about all things pertaining to the table, and what is worse takes no pains to disguise it, and in consequence is considered an undesirable dinner guest by the most experienced housekeepers in the regiment. All this I had often ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... informed by the officer whose wards we were. He was a fussy, quick-tempered, withal kind-hearted little fellow, and kept dashing in and out of the room, really perplexed over housing accommodations for the night. The spy-hunters had been successful in their work of rounding up their victims from all over ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... fussy. He condemned the restaurant manager and got at loggerheads with the waiter. He must at least have a Mecklenburg salad as he came from Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The waiter did not know what it was and the irascible Teuton informed him bluntly that he was a Dummkopf. The ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... fussy pomposity of the Queen's jubilee, the voice of the thinkers has not been entirely silent. The utter failure of her reign to present a single noble thought or impulse, a single evidence of sympathy with the immense mass of suffering, has been sharply commented on, not only ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... would, though I have seen people who didn't like it. Some folks are fussy—here, my man," turning to the boatman, "here is the fifty cents I promised you if you would set me on board here. I shan't want you ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... 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 Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... demurred Mrs. Dale. "It is an excellent match; and his carelessness now—well, it is only to be expected from a young man who would carry his mother off from—from our care, to be looked after by a hired nurse. He thought," said Mrs. Dale, bridling her head and pursing up her lips, "that a lot of 'fussy old women' couldn't take care of her. Still, it will be a good marriage for Lois. I'm bound to say that, though I have never ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... it was in London, not on the island, that the most important developments of the Salissa mystery would take place. He wanted to know what Steinwitz was doing, and whether Konrad Karl was still enjoying his spendthrift holiday in Paris. He would have liked to be in a position to watch the fussy activities of Sir Bartholomew Bland-Potterton. Later on I was able to tell him something, not of Steinwitz or Konrad Karl, but about Sir Bartholomew. It was impossible to live in London during the latter part of July without perpetually bumping against Bland-Potterton. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Consul Lingford was a fussy, elderly gentleman, and in the two years of his service at Attu-Attu had never encountered so unprecedented a case as that laid before him by Boyd Duncan. The latter, with his wife, had been landed there by the Annapolis, which had promptly ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... dreadfully fussy while I was a woolly lamb," said Dorothy, "for it didn't feel good, a bit. And I wasn't quite sure, you know, that I'd ever get to be a ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... 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; my mind ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Pohick Church; if he felt the need of recreation he went fishing or fox-hunting or attended a horse race or played a game of cards with his friends, and he had few things to trouble him seriously. But fussy kings and ministers overseas were meddling with the liberties of subjects and were creating a situation out of which was to come a mighty burden—a burden so Atalantean that it would have frightened most men, but one that he was brave enough and strong enough ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... effigy, on the corner of Sixth and Wood streets, to show somebody's disapproval of his course in the election of John Quincy Adams. The Democratic editor, McFarland, was tried and found guilty of the offense, and took revenge in ridiculing his opponents. Charles Glenn, a fussy old gentleman, member of our church, was an important witness for the prosecution, and in the long, rhyming account published by the defendant, he was ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... are now ready to begin, let us begin right. I have not much sympathy with finical, fussy gardening. One of the chief fascinations of gardening is the endless field it affords for skilful sleight of hand, short-cuts, unconventional methods, and experiments. The true gardener soon ceases to be a man of rules, and becomes one of strategy, ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... 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
... for her, with the precious "Michael" struggling to free himself from his coverings. Hawkes soon had a cab alongside. He helped Peg into it: then she stretched out her arms and O'Farrell opened the sail-cloths and out sprang "Michael," dusty and dirty and blear-eyed, but oh! such a happy, fussy, affectionate, relieved little canine when he saw his beloved owner waiting for him. He made one spring at her, much to the lawyer's dignified amazement, and began to bark at her, and lick her face and hands, and jump on and roll over and ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... worry you," said Trimmer. "They listen more out of habit than anything else. If you're fussy we'll go for ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... approached me and were lost to sight again as soon as seen in the eddy and whirl of the crowd. There was temper here, and tenderness there; this person was steadily bent on business, that on pleasure, and one fussy little man escorting his family somewhere was making the former of the latter. There were two young lovers alone with their love so far as any outward consciousness of the crowd was concerned; and there was a young wife silent and sad beside a neglectful elderly husband. It was the 'buses ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... fussy, Hood," Deering began good-naturedly, "but would you mind telling me what's next on ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... Lady Torrington, a fussy little woman, her hostess of the night before, on her way down the room stopped and shook hands ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... affairs, and that in turn for the foreign office. He was universally regarded as a stronger man than any of his chiefs during this period; but his public and private actions alike were always marked by a certain fussy quarrelsomeness which prevented him from being ever accounted a statesman of the first rank. The spirited foreign policy, calculated above all things to precipitate a quarrel between France and Great Britain, of which for many years he was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... The fussy little captain, as far as Caius could judge, was not acting a part. The sailors were French; they could talk some English; and they spoke in both languages a ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... to be horrid, but Lord! you're getting as fussy as Verona. Ever since she got out of college she's been too rambunctious to live with—doesn't know what she wants—well, I know what she wants!—all she wants is to marry a millionaire, and live in Europe, and hold some preacher's hand, and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... repaired to Lisbon. There he was put in better heart by a nun, who said Our Lady had sent her to promise him success. Every part of the service was new to him. He was a fussy, anxious little man; set himself to inquire into everything, to meddle with things which he could not understand and had better have left alone. He ought to have left details to the responsible heads of departments. He fancied that ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... which the great soldier would sit at dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the whole ceremony into twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine and a cup of coffee, and then being interrupted by a fussy little female who wanted to talk about the ethics of history, or the possibility of a new form of government. Napoleon, himself, was making history, and writing it in fire and flame; and as for governments, he invented governments all over ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... women that, even before this era, when "old maids" were open to all kinds of insult, there were women brave enough to refuse to barter their souls for the animal comforts of food and shelter. Speaking about "old maids," by which term we mean now a prim, fussy person, it is well to remember that there are male "old maids" as well as female who remain so all through life; also that many "old maids" marry, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... un-Christian as Suso's advice to "live as if you 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 lonely men ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... say once that she was beautiful. Max is papa's friend; he is a grown-up man, though he isn't as old as papa. He used to come here a lot, and we children like him first-rate; but now he's in Europe. Well, to come back to Nora: she likes to be called Eleanor, but we don't do it; she is so fussy and so very proper that Felix has nick-named her Miss Prim, and we do call her that. Miss Marston thinks Nora is the best behaved of us all; and sometimes, when Nannie is in papa's study, she lets her ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... round the feud; but if anyone had had patience to examine it to the bottom he would probably have found the long and short to be that Mr Bickers, being unhappily endowed with a fussy disposition and a sour and vindictive temper, had incurred the displeasure of the boys of his rival's house, and not being the man to smooth away a bad impression, had aggravated it by resenting keenly what he considered to be an unjust ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... sort of scrupulousness is very ill-bred, if you'll excuse my saying so, Rose. We are not supposed to know anything about fastness, and wildness, and so on, but to treat every man alike and not be fussy and prudish," said Emma, settling her many-colored streamers with the superior air of a woman of the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... do in preparation for making them is to prepare the design. Simple designs work out better than fussy ones and are more likely to be within the ability of the amateur. Having determined the size of the tray, draw on paper an oblong to represent it. Inside this oblong, draw another one to represent the lines along which ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... chicken-coop on the side lawn, where a fussy hen was calling to her children that strangers had arrived. Beth exclaimed at the honeysuckle vines and Louise sank into a rustic chair ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... more variety, or you may need less. You may need a sincere, honest, tactful, patient confidant and friend, or you may need to be saved from your friends. You may be exhausting your vitality and fraying your nerves by social exigencies,—those empty occupations which fill the lives of so many fussy, loquacious females,—echoless, wasted, babbling moments, of supreme important to the social bubbles who ceaselessly chase them but of no more interest to humanity than the wasted evening zephyrs that play ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... hands languidly 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 adorned with a ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... of early morning when errant bats flitted home to cling to the ridge-pole, squeaking and fussy flutterings denoted unwonted disturbance. Daylight revealed a half concealed, sleeping snake, which seemed to be afflicted with twin tumours. A long stick dislodged the intruder, which scarce had ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... 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.
... ugly dispositioned animals, who are always in a ferocious mood, just like certain ill-tempered human beings, who believe everything and everybody is trying to injure them. The common shrew, for example, is noisy, bold and fussy. He seems to delight in calling attention to himself by his grunty, squeaky voice. He advertises himself as a bad animal; and bad he is, for his terrible odour prevents other animals from coming near. Horses and mules are at times quite ferocious, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... charily, however, or rather with principle. He quietly insisted on his rights; but as he granted hers without a word, and never irritated her by small, fussy exactions, good-breeding prevented any serious clashing of wills, and their married life had passed in comparative serenity. As time elapsed her will began, in many ways, to defer to his quieter and stronger will, and then, as if life must teach her that there is no true control except ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Fogo resumed his work, and thought no more about it; but Caleb alternated between moods of pensiveness and fussy energy for some ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... necessary to suppress the names? This elaborate and unscholarly tenderness for the feelings of the friends and relations of the dead, and for those of their descendants even, is becoming, in our judgment, a nuisance. Had people been so fussy and timid always we should have no history worth reading. After all, men, and women too for that matter, have got to stand on their own feet. We are not our grandmothers' keepers. No one will think at all the worse of Mr. Smith because some lively diarist has hinted that his ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... appreciate so well as she the comedy going on before her. When she found an opportunity for intervention; when, with little or no trouble to herself, she could rearrange a scene or prepare a novel situation; so much the better was she pleased, and all the more disdain did she feel for the fussy, pompous mortals who were ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... required, as would be the case in Colonial designs. In either case the dark shadow which the sash casts on the glass should be suggested, if the scale of the drawing be such as to permit of it. Do not try to show too much. One is apt to make a fussy effect, if, for instance, one insists on always shading the soffit of the masonry opening, especially if the scale of the drawing be small. Besides, a white soffit is not a false but merely a forced value, as in strong sunlight the reflected light is considerable. If the frame ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... a great deal of fussy attention to myself. Never did my own wardrobe seem so meager and ill-assorted; never did I cut myself so many times while shaving; never did I use such unsatisfactory shoe-polish. I finally gave up in despair my effort ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... Beebe's home, it was enchantment enough. It was a good afternoon for the shoe business, Mr. Beebe having two customers. One of them was a very fussy woman who had a small boy in charge. Joel was in high glee at being called upon to help lift down ever so many boxes, until pretty near every shoe in the stock was tried on. Mrs. Beebe kept coming out of the little parlor at the back of the shop, ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... have been a sad surprise, for the Germans had always taught, in their delightful authoritative fashion, that the chief industries of the young Englishman are lawn-tennis and afternoon tea. They are a fussy people, and they find it difficult to understand the calm of the man who, having nothing to do, does it. Perhaps they were right, and we were too idle. The disease was never so serious as they thought it, and now, thanks to them, we are in ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... nudging the Clan Macgregor out from her pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea-monster, newest and biggest of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they made up for their insignificance by self-important and fussy puffings and pipings, while, like an elephant harried by terriers, the vast mass slowly swung outward toward the open. From the pier there arose a ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... too, about some things. There was a grocery shop at one end of the street, kept by a respectable woman, but Beth refused to go to it because the respectable woman had a fussy little Pomeranian dog, and allowed it to lick her hands and face all over, which so disgusted Beth that she could not eat anything the woman touched. It was in this shop that Beth picked up the moribund black beetle that kicked out suddenly, and set up the horror of ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... knew," he said largely, "were a fussy lot—dressed to kill, and navigating the boat from the head of a dinner-table. But I suppose you know. I was only regretting that she hadn't seen you the way you're looking now. That's all. I suppose I may regret, without hurting ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was a fussy and ambitious person, full of literary and other schemes; devising a plan for extracting oil from beech-nuts, and writing a Pindaric ode on the occasion; felling forests in the Highlands to provide timber for the navy; ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... can have a right good time first, anyway, if you keep away from ugly things and fussy people. And I reckon you really go to Heaven afterwards if you haven't been ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... think I was hysterical," she cried, under her breath. "He would think I was vulgar and stupid, that I was a fussy woman with foolish ideas, which made him ridiculous. Captain Os-born is of his family. I should be accusing him of being a criminal. And yet I might have been in the bottomless pond, in the bottomless pond, and no one ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a desire to possess and dominate the minds and souls of others. It was only now that he saw how large a share in the obstruction of God's Kingdom had been played by the love of the elder and the parent, by the carefulness, the fussy care, of good men and women. He had wandered in wildernesses of unbelief, in dangerous places of doubt and questioning, but he had left his wife and children safe and secure in the self-satisfaction of orthodoxy. To none ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... 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
... struggles between fallen consequence and rising wealth. The last may, and does have the best of it, in the mere physical part of the strife; but in the more moral, if such a word can be used, the quiet ascendency of better manners and ancient recollections is very apt to overshadow the fussy pretensions of the vulgar aspirant, who places his claims altogether on the all-mighty dollar. It is vain to deny it; men ever have done it, and probably ever will defer to the past, in matters of this sort—it being much with us, in this particular, as it is ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... I had to—when folks are so wrapped up in their business. There, with Susan's compliments! Susan's the heifer you rounded up for me in the ditch. I know she made you a lot of work, tracking holes in your banks you're so fussy about. Do you really think ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... was nothing they were not capable of doing—except taking reasonable care of their invalids! They either fussed about too much, or else they did not fuss about at all. They all began by doing the right thing: they all ended by doing the wrong. The fussy ones had fits of apathy, when the poor irritable patients seemed to get a little better; the negligent ones had paroxysms of attentiveness, when their invalids, accustomed to loneliness and neglect, seemed to become rather worse by ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... Waupegan cottage Bassett and Fitch enjoyed the wholesome airs of the country. Late in the afternoon the fussy little steamer that traversed the lake paused at the Bassett dock to deliver a telegram, which Bassett read without emotion. He passed the yellow slip of paper to Fitch, who read it and ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... many-pillared cloud of black smoke, the same smartly painted bumboats 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 ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... apparently too scared to run, with Teddy, like Fate, grimly at their heels, steadily "pointing" them off the premises. We were a little anxious, therefore, as to how Teddy would take our little terrier, with his fussy, youthful self-importance, and eternal restless poking into other folks' affairs. But Teddy, as we might have told ourselves, had had a long and varied experience of terriers, and had nothing to learn from us. Yet I have ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... idea of a makeshift washstand. It should be made of a sizeable drygoods box, with shelves, and the top padded and covered to match the drapery. The mirror which hangs over it may be draped, or simply framed in white enamel, gold, or whatever blends with the room. Overdraping not only looks fussy, but means additional bother and care. The drapery is thrown over a frame fastened ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... that suddenly he let his loose legs relapse and clapped his spurs into his animal, which reared horribly, and in the end sent him on the ground. I thought I should die of laughter. Then everybody became more and more fussy, because they were afraid of L——, but, fortunately, the general started off ahead, muttering to himself, and we rode after him like some procession. It seemed to me very absurd, and at that point I lost all confidence in the success of the expedition. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... she had learned how to set off her massive lines instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her long eye-glass to glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the large beauty of her arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was nothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprised that, plastically at least, the Princess ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... a periscope was sighted at 1,500 yards by the quartermaster first class on duty; general quarters rung, the executive officer signals full speed ahead, the commanding officer takes charge and manoeuvres for position—and then something happens which the censor may be fussy about mentioning. At any rate, oil and other things rise to the surface of the sea, and the Germans are minus another submarine. The chief machinist's mate, however, comes in for special mention. It seems that he ignored the ladder and literally fell down the hatch, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... opinions which I do not believe. And I may be the more 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 ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... to her with tangles and little jealousies; and, if she could not always straighten them out, she had a marvellous way of comforting. Young men drifted toward her by some species of magnetism, though she had none of the fussy motherliness of some old ladies. With faculties still keen and bright, a great fund of good-humor that had the sparkle of champagne rather than any insipid sweetness, she never wearied or palled on any one. She kept herself well informed of ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Vergennes in rendering aid to America, which Franklin would not believe, or could not see. Nor were the relations of Adams very pleasant with the veteran Franklin himself, whose merits he conceived to be exaggerated, and of whom it is generally believed he was envious. He was as fussy in business details as Franklin was easy and careless. He thought that Franklin lived too luxuriously and was too fond of the praises ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... feeling a false security. She would have been restless and fussy else—it is the way of her sex when danger is about. As she was making no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and queen-like, wrapped in her ample shawl and leaning back in her seat with a quiet grace which Mrs. Harrington attempted in vain to imitate. Indeed, the effort only made the ambitious little woman appear more fussy ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Symons. Ada and I both like Professor Amery so much." And she prosed on about the lecture and the books she was reading, and did not much care to talk over the old times, which were still very dear to Henrietta. It amazed Henrietta to think that she had once blushed and trembled at the look of this fussy, garrulous little governess. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... hope it won't be real," Mr. DeVere said, "But—Oh, well, I suppose I may as well admit the truth. You'll probably call me fussy and all that, and laugh at the superstition of an old actor. But you know we have our traditions, though I am free to confess that I have lost many of them since entering on this moving picture work. But I had a dream about ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... so glad there is not to be a fuss," Ethel said at last, when St. Pancras' clock was striking two: "for I always thought that a fussy wedding would be horrid. You see, Lesley, I have dressed up so often in white satin and lace, as a bride, or a girl in a ballroom, or some other character not my own, that I feel now as if there would be no reality for me in a wedding if I did not wear ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to find Bruvver Jim," she said. "You're goin' away from fussy old me to where you'll ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... "You're the only person I ever felt that way about. Absolutely the only one. But you've got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails in such a world as this. When men get too high-toned and aristocratic, too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down and under. But I'll try to be everything you wish—to you. Not to the others. That would defeat our object; for I'm going to ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... they were shown into a small sitting room up stairs, where the proprietor, a fussy little gentleman, and apparently very uneasy ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and the other, a muse, with the brow of one and the slenderest hand and foot, whom he and others were hopefully piloting towards a second class at least—possibly a first—in the Honour Classical School, had broken down in health, so that her mother and a fussy doctor had hurried her away to a rest-cure in Switzerland, and thereby slit her academic life and all her chances of fame. Both had been used to come—independently—for the Master was in his own, way far too great a social epicure to mix his pleasures—to ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fine faith in human confidence as an administrative function. He had to have a relation, somehow expressed—and as he was the vividest and happiest of letter-writers it rarely failed of coming; but once it was established it served him, in every case, much better than fussy challenges, which had always the drawback of involving lapses and inattentions in regard to solicitudes more pressing. He incurably took for granted—incurably because whenever he did so the process succeeded; ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... they seem to think of it so. Once or twice, when I've paid calls with mamma, they were so fussy and show-off. You know how I mean,' ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... childish face. Apparently not approving of this unorthodox baptismal procedure, the boy is borne away. Curled up in the German's warm berth, this little eight-year-old bareback rider, wearied with the night's performance, sleeps until the next evening, unconscious of what has happened. Our fussy old 'granny' sits out on deck, rolling and pitching with the boat's motion, wondering what ails that chap who never ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... established bore on its roll the most illustrious names in the country; at the home of the Thrales Johnson tasted and appreciated all that was best in the home life of the time. He had a devoted friend in the person of a fussy, fantastic, opinionated, conceited little Scotch gentleman, Mr. James Boswell of Auchinleck, who clung to his side, treasured his utterances, cherished his sayings, and made himself immortal in immortalizing his hero. It is good to remember that when George the Third ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... crowd was gathered at the New York end of the Brooklyn Bridge waiting for trolley-cars. An elderly lady, red in the face, flustered and fussy, dug her elbows into convenient ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the convoy generally begin to find out how matters stood, than like a parcel of fussy and frightened old women, they began to pop, pop, pop, firing away their one and two-pounders in all directions, and those farthest from the scene of action serving their guns the quickest, and firing the oftenest. It seemed to them of but little consequence, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... party to land was a tall young man in white ducks, while directly behind came another elderly man with a very high forehead and a fussy, excitable manner. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... owl sitting in the crotch of a tree, and he replied with a laugh: "All right, old Fussy," and stopped whistling until he had passed out of the owl's hearing. At noon he came to a farmhouse where an aged couple lived. They gave him a good dinner and treated him kindly, but the man was deaf and the woman was dumb, so they could answer no questions to ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat, almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the butler ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the postage department. Fussy little brute. Won't leave you alone. Always trying to catch you on the hop. There's one thing, though. The work in the postage is pretty simple. You can't make many mistakes, if you're careful. It's mostly entering letters and ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been Dick's genial manner of boyish comradeship that had really warmed Miss Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her heart to a friend it was without stipulations. Dick was a man's man. Essentially ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... the houses to get a drink of "tiste," and were visited by a fussy little man who told us that he was secretary to the judge and keeper of the "estanco," and in fact the ruling power in the town, which he placed at our disposal. We, however, wanted nothing but our "tiste" and to get some information about a cave we had heard was in the neighbourhood. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... 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 ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a report ordered upon the death of a prisoner," said Vickers. "The chaplain, a fussy but well-meaning person, has been memorializing about it. You may as well do ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... rarely disturbed by anything, showed on this occasion a fussy solicitude about his trunks and boxes; nor was he appeased until he had seen them all on a truck, waiting for the inspection of the customs officers. Mr. Hawker, slouching along the pier with his ulster collar turned up ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... who were well 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 ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... 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
... "I certainly have most outspoken cousins! They don't seem to hesitate to tell me what to bring and what not to bring them. But I'm sure of one thing! Bumble Barlow won't be so fussy particular; she'll take whatever I ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... who did not openly laugh at it or, being scaremongers, rabidly approve it—considered it a great shame and a great pity that the poor old man should thus victimise those closing years of his life which should have been spent in that honourable retirement which is the right place for fussy old people of both sexes ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... belt, with a band of green on its either side; but within the great circle that was spread beneath his eyes were none of those toiling specks that tell of a Hunt in labour. The check was brief; the hurrying hounds, busy as ants, cast themselves right and left forward, combining in fussy groups, that would suddenly disintegrate as if by an access of centrifugal force; crowding each other jealously along the top of a bank, flopping into the patches of bog, snuffing greedily at the orange stems of the bracken. Soon, reiterated squeals from a leading lady told that the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... short side whiskers, a chunky, fussy, and hot-tempered man, but whether Madge Pemberton had managed him, or whether he'd worn her out, I couldn't make up my mind about the likelihood. I sat a while talking with him, and watching Madge McCulloch, his daughter, lay the tea table. I thought how I'd give something ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Peggy agreed, dimpling. "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 ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... fussy creatures, and Trot found much amusement in watching their odd motions. They were so spry and excitable that at times they ran against one another and upset the platters of food, after which they began to scold and argue as ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... 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 that, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas |
