"Impish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of him as simply an object of Mr. Casaubon's charity. Why should he be compared with an Italian carrying white mice? That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... he replied, "I mistook the apartment: ye cannot suppose, most worthy commander of this enchanted and impish conservatory, that, of my own free will, I would choose such company. Where is the sinner?"—Dalton desired Springall to show him to the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... arm. In a fork of this arm hangs a round, black, trumpet-shaped, hard rubber tube. This last is the receiving instrument. It is taken from its arm and held close to the ear. The answers are heard in it as though the person speaking were there concealed in an impish embodiment of himself. Meantime the talking is done into a hole in the side of the box, while the receiver is held to the ear. This is all that appears superficially. An operation incredible has its entire machinery ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... of dread in knowing that that great ball of fire was somewhere in the vault above her and yet unlocated in the sinister pall that spread over the skies. Her fancy ofttimes pictured him sailing in the west when he should be in the east, dodging back and forth in impish abandon behind the screen, and she wondered at such times if he would be where he belonged ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... throughout this conversation, making buttonholes in a new gray percale. Once, when Nell was back at the sink, she reached out a wavering, fat old arm, and gave Myra's apron-string a tug, as a bad child pulls a cat's tail in a sort of impish humor. Her eyes, blue and shining as a child's saucer, looked very wise. A little ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Cupid himself, he could not have hit upon a more impish arrangement than that. To place a girl like Beatrice beside a fellow like Keith—a fellow who is tall, and browned, and extremely good-looking, and who has hazel eyes with a laugh in them always—a fellow, moreover, who is very much in love and very much in earnest ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... had now filled from the stage and the tiring-rooms; and all gathered gleefully about to see what next the impish Nell would do, for avenged she would be they all knew, though the course of ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... a big sting-ray so full of his impish darts that it resembled an animated pincushion of monstrous proportions. It, too, realised the futility of kicking against so many pricks. On the other hand, Tom, with his heavy shaft and barbed point, relied on a single weapon. It seldom failed, for his ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of these were women, who mocked at and reviled the unfortunate Englishman, screaming like so many furies, spitting at him, and gloating over his miserable plight, as is the custom of a certain grade of womankind all over the world. Inspired by the example of their elders, a swarm of impish children added their shrill cries to the tumult, let fly an occasional blunt-headed arrow at the helpless captive, or darted between the legs of the guards in their efforts to strike him. Finally the exasperated warriors ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... have been happy for hours together watching the great stones grind, or the corn poured by golden showers into the hopper on its way to the stones below. Many a time had he crept up and hidden himself behind a sack; but George seemed to have an impish ingenuity in discovering his hiding-places, and would drive him out as a dog worries a cat, crying, "Come out, thee little varment! Master Lake he don't allow ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wrappers of pink blotting-paper. Much the most capable helpers whom the lonely printer had in his first years were two one-time compositors who had turned sailors and who, tiring of foc'sle life under Yankee captains, made up their minds to resume the stick and apron in the cannibal islands. Impish Maori boys made not inappropriate "devils." With such assistants Colenso, working on, had by New Year's Day, 1838, completed the New Testament and was distributing bound copies to the eager Maoris, who sent messengers for them from far and near. Pigs, potatoes, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... "Boloo!" they cried. "Baayah. Boloo!" They were the children of the men folk, the smoke of whose encampment rose from the knoll at the river's bend. Wild-eyed youngsters they were, with matted hair and little broad-nosed impish faces, covered (as some children are covered even nowadays) with a delicate down of hair. They were narrow in the loins and long in the arms. And their ears had no lobes, and had little pointed tips, a thing that still, in rare instances, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... hours of afternoon when the children are once more upon the street, you regret your illness. Here they come trooping by threes and fours, carrying their books tied up in straps. One would think that they were in fear lest some impish fact might get outside the covers to spoil the afternoon. Until the morrow let two and two think themselves five at least! And let Ohio be bounded as it will! Some few children skip ropes, or step carefully across the cracks of the sidewalk for fear they spoil their suppers. Ah!—a bat goes by—a ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... had dropped in upon. The water flew in all directions, and Migwan fled over the rocks to avoid being drenched. Medmangi and Nyoda also came up thirsting for vengeance, but Sahwah escaped by swimming under water around the dock and clambering out on the rocks. She made an impish grimace at Migwan, who was standing on the rock where she came up. Migwan leaned over and put a streak of soap on her face, Sahwah promptly caught Migwan by the feet and pulled her off the rock into the water. Struggling, they ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... Weber. I laugh out loud. Polyphemus, who has been regarding me with his one bantering eye from Carlotta's corner on the sofa, leaps to the ground and grotesquely curvets round the room in a series of impish hops. Heigh, old boy? Do the pulsations of the music throb in your veins, too? Come along and let us make a night of it. To the Devil with sleep. We'll go together down to the cellar and find a bottle of Pommery, and we will drink to Life and Youth and Love ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Mace. Try, for the next half hour, to keep as cool as an iceberg. Trust the treatment of the impish plebe to us. Greg, old fellow, will you be the one to go down and tell Mr. Briggs that his presence in this ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... that was a fortune to such a man, I persuaded him. Anne helped. She would have done anything for me. And she knew the Dorans. She knew Jack could never feel the same to me, as the mother of that impish girl. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... avowed with a chuckle, was to convey fear to the beholder of his work. It was an impish trick, and it brought him unwittingly into ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... much less than old brocade and lighted wax candles, which inspired him with a solemnity that widened his eyes and narrowed his features. He looked on a new, and never-before-imagined, life. And he was grave to excess, though, later, I found plenty of the London child's impish ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... moment several impish figures sprang out of the dense brush and fell upon him with vicious blows, as though ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... I watched them fall with the utmost care and was so sure of them that I felt that I could walk blindfold and pick them up. But when I came to the spot the ball was not there. This experience became so common that at last the conclusion forced itself upon me that the golf ball had a sort of impish intelligence that could only be met by a superior cunning. I suspected that it deliberately hid itself, and that so long as it was aware that you were hunting for it, it took a fiendish delight in dodging you. If, said I, one ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... to set up the button as rival to the safety pin in service to humanity. But our homage bends toward the former. Not only was it our shield and buckler when we were too puny and impish to help ourselves, but it is also (now we are parent) symbol of many a hard-fought field, where we have campaigned all over the white counterpane of a large bed to establish an urchin in his proper gear, while he kicked and scrambled, witless of our dismay. It is fortunate, pardee, that human memory ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... her there and went out. It was cold and still; the stars glittered, the earth was white. He walked far on the frozen snow, with a feeling as hard and cold as the bitter air. Some impish sprite seemed to mock him with the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... "I may take them indeed; but how believe they have been given me?" quoth he to the Warden with a tilt of one eyebrow. Whereat the Warden, aghast, wrote him off as a youth unreasonable, impracticable, and impish. Many others had the same opinion of Harry Boyce before the world was done with him. Few of them saw in his antics the uncertain spasms of too tender a conscience. But you ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... alternative was awful enough to quiet even the impish Hughie, who knew the tone carried no idle threat, and who loved a spelling-match with all the ardor of ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... capybara. It fears the peccari. The night air is alive with bats of many species, the most prominent one being the Dysopes perotis, which measures two feet from tip to tip of the wings. If these Cheiropters are as impish as they look, and as blood-thirsty as some travelers report, it is singular that Bates and Waterton, though residing for years in the country, and ourselves, though sleeping for months unprotected, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... voice. An Indian woman, not yet of middle age but already inclining to the stoutness which overtakes women of her race early in life, appeared in the doorway. She spoke sharply to the boy in the deep, throaty language of her people. The boy, with a last impish grin, gave the man's leg a final shake and scuttled indoors. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... stepmother completely, but tormented his sister Maud in a thousand impish ways. He disarranged her neatly combed hair. He threw mud on her dress and put carriage grease on her white stockings on picnic day. He called her "chiny-thing," in allusion to her pretty round cheeks and clear complexion, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... a perfect army of fairies which overran the whole land, and the myths concerning which would have filled volumes could they ever have been gathered. The gnome-like spirits of the mountains had peaked heads, and were of a vicious, impish disposition, but were powerless to injure any one who carried a ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... were my people! all I had, I gave— They snatched it thankless (was it not their own? Wrung from their veins, returning all too late?); Or in the new delight of rare possession, Forgot the giver; one did sit apart, And shivered on a stone; beneath her rags Nestled two impish, fleshless, leering boys, Grown old before their youth; they cried for bread— She chid them down, and hid her face and wept; I had given all—I took my cloak, my shoes (What could I else? 'Twas but a moment's want Which she had borne, and borne, day after day), And ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... no need to experiment with any new tricks," replied Mrs. Fabian, warningly. "There are enough sighing young men already, waiting to break their hearts and necks, for a mere glance from those impish ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... sore; until his eyes were red with the tears he had shed; until he was so weak he staggered when he first crawled out from under the plane and stood up. But it did him good, for all that, to have laughed so hard and so long over an impish trick that came from ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... herself presently, for she did not have to appear until the second act, and as she sat there, reading over her part, the call boy put in his head with an impish grin. ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... thoroughly enjoy the life amid the sylvan scenes about them. It is a curious sight to see these big anthropoids, almost as large as human beings, swing themselves deftly up among the festooned creepers at my approach—to see their queer, impish black faces peering cautiously out of their hiding-place, and to hear their peculiar squeak of surprise and apprehension as they note the strange character of my conveyance. Sometimes a gang of them will lope ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens |
